Its not just about Sunita...

This is not just about Sunita. Though she shares her name with Sunita Williams, who was on the front page of TOI yesterday, she represents that strata of Indians which is poles apart from Sunita Williams.

Sunita used to work in my house as a maid some months back. She was a thin lady in her mid 30s (looking like 45) from some small town of Maharashtra, near Pune. I never knew about her personal story until yesterday. There were times when we did not like her work, and her demanding less work and more money, we did not like her especially when she stopped coming to our house, saying that she is not well and kept on sending her 12-13 year old girl who was not working well at all. Even after being ill, she used to strech herself to get some extra money through working. Atlast, we have replaced her in our house with another maid before a month. The whole thing sounds so boring and so familiar, isn’t it?

But I want to discuss something more than this. Yesterday I came to know about her personal story. Her husband left her for another woman some years back. They had 2 children, one boy and one girl. And her husband took away her boy from her, leaving Sunita and her young girl child without any means to earn. Sunita came down to Pune, the land of opportunities for the IT world. She started working as maid in our building as her sister also was working for the same. She and her daughter used to earn enough to sustain themselves and the little Monica (her daughter, I don’t know if she is going to school or not). Though I don’t consider them to be very good and gentle most of the human beings, they were good.

Yesterday, I got the news that Sunita died after her chronic sickness that consumed her for months. I don’t know what would life bring for Monica now.

Well, Its not just about Sunita.

Suddenly, I see, those 30 odd maids coming to my building and think what might their lives be like? What kind of family do they have? And if they die suddenly, how would their family be supported? And after that while coming to office in the bus I saw hundreds of these people on road, working on construction sites of this developing city, Maids going in the other similar building as mine, people picking garbage, people living in small huts near the great IT park, which is like the pride of Pune….. No one cares for them as there no one has the time to do so.

I feel guilty that even when I know that these are the problems I am more concerned with my promotion, my work, my career, changing coaches of Indian cricket team, the new DLF IPO, the French open results, my onsite trip that is getting delayed and am in the same rat race of making more money. Its not that I cannot do anything for this, it just that I don’t want to. Doing it would bring me out of my comfort zone and will put me in a situation where I will have to invest my resources, time and efforts to change it and I am not ready for it. I feel ashamed.

It’s these cities where the rich is getting richer and the divide is increasing day by day. There is no safety net for the poor who work for getting this new face of “India Shining” work in the entire world. These people working for building the great malls, the IT parks, and maintaining the entire support system of the society, definitely deserves a lot more than what they are facing.

Well, today morning while coming to the office, outside my office gate I saw an agent of LIC , selling a specially designed life insurance package for the Infosys Employees, who has that extra money to invest and are working in a safe AC cubicle, solving the defects that some program is giving them. Even they are not concerned about people like Sunita, who probably doesn’t have the education or resources to understand the importance of life insurance and its impact that their family might have. If Sunita had a life insurance cover I think it would have done some good for her daughter.

I don’t know how would it be possible but I would like to see Insurance companies doing something for this along with the people for which these people are working for.

We as employers of these maids, security people or our companies as employers of many such contractual workers can do our bit in making them educated and getting a life insurance cover for them.

If a maid works in 5 houses the owners of those 5 houses can definitely pay some money towards the premium of her life insurance and make her life secured and give the earning hand of a family a safety net they can rely on.

How I wish to see a time when we will take responsibility for others in our society and might take up the issues that would not make our country a place of extremes.

Some Photos around Pune

It was some 7-8 months back that i had gone to these places, the weather around just after monsoon is amazing. We had lost our ways while going from Lonawala to Mulshi and we never knew where mulshi was, but the road that we took gave us some of the very beautiful picturesque moments as above.

Water in Monsoon always has a soothing effect to eyes too.

Somethings Don't Need Narration :)

Section 354 got some clarity

Today morning 8 o clock while rushing through the morning activities of breakfast and running to catch the bus to office in time i picked up "TOI" from the door. Saw two headlines on the front page and was forced to put the news paper in my bag to read it on my way to office :

The first one was about the complete game theory of the Cricket world cup with a photograph of the man in blue on it, everything was so familiar, i knew the men in blue, i knew the 3 scenarios of whether India, Srilanka or Bangaladesh will go to the semifinals, i knew all of it so well. And it was definitely interesting.

And second one, just next to this read " Finally, SC defines woman's modesty" with a face of helpless girl completely horror struck. I could niether understand the context nor the headlines. But i wanted to read this.

The tone of this article was a hopeful one where Mr. Dhananjay Mahapatra, the reporter, had menitoned that there is an Section 354 in the law of Indian Penal Code which deals with the offence of "outraging the modesty" of a woman. The word modesty did not have any clear meaning in this article and that was clarified by the supreme court yesterday.

The clarification said " The essence of a Woman's Modesty is her sex"

This moves me, this hurts me, this makes me think and ridicule over how insensitive have we been for all these years towards woman. And suddenly i realize that when people say cricket world cup they only mean about the Men's cricket world cup. So are we true fans of the sport, i must say not really, we have a set frame of mind and we have just been following it.

To me, there are a thousand things which could lead to immodesty while anyone interacting with a woman and this is not just related to her sex. All I am saying is this law is just making the harassment part a little more specific and detailed but saying that “the essence of a woman’s modesty is her sex” is wrong. There are personality traits, freedom, independence, respect, which are a part of anyone’s being and it does not depend on his / her sex. But these are a few things that are not available easily to a woman, and to me that is discrimination and this outraging her modesty, which is not in case of man.

It is about pride that a woman feels for being a woman. But we have now by law associated it just to her sex. And the law goes on to detail what can be possible acts of outraging this modesty which has all the overtones of sexual assault on a woman.

Don't you people feel that there is something wrong somewhere? we need to treat women with more respect. There are a thousand ways in which the modesty of woman is getting outraged.

To me a man forcing his wife to live in a particular way, to behave, to dress, to eat, to think in a particular way is also outraging the modesty of woman. But this has no sexual overtones so it is ok as per SC.

Do let me know what you feel on this.

Eklavya : A Royal Farce

A starcast that can be envied by any other film maker.....
Performance exactly showing us the view of the film maker.....
Wonderful settings in a Royal fort....
A plot that has a potential of being a mind tickling thriller.....

What More could you ask for?

I know what more to ask for.... I ask for a good story telling skills, a good direction, a good screenplay and a script that could reveal itself in bits and pieces.... I did not get it.

Eklavya (which was earlier titled Yagna) is a story of a royal guard of a fort, for whom the dharm is to safeguard the people living in the fort, above all his Rana - the King. Though the Kingdom of the kings have been lost and the royal family lives in the modern day India in the same old royal fashion. Let me tell you the story briefly in a different way....

In the land of Modern India, there was a King and a Queen, who happily lived with their 2 children, a prince and princess who are twins. The Prince is very intelligent and smart, the princess is mentally challanged, but the love between the two is definitely there. The Prince grows up and goes to a foreign land for studies. There is a Father-son duo of King's brother and nephew who wants the wealth of the king. There is a Deputy supritendent of Police, who wants the royal family to get in trouble for all the atrocities that they have done towards the subject in the name of Untouchability. And there is a Royal Guard, who is the only one out there to save lives.

The queen dies, no one knows why? The King wants to kill the royal guard. The Prince wants to save the royal guard. The brother of king and his son betrays the king later and the prince helps them. The Royal guard wants to protect the life of the prince even after knowing that he has betrayed the king.

Motives for each of the character in this case is unkown and you want to know more why a character is behaving in the way that he is... and the plot slowly unfolds itself, giving you the reason of Queen's death, then the reason of Prince betrayal of the king, then for the betrayal of King's brother, then for the Royal guard's secret and finally everything fits into its place.

This could easily have been the most intriguing and thrilling plot of our times, but just think if you knew the motive of each character at the time of sequences as they happen on the movie screen infront of you.... It kills the complete thrill and unexpected turns of the story telling.

This is exactly the issue with the movie. Without developing the characters, the story gives us the motives that each one has, and the characters' responses to the situation absolutely predictably runs in your mind before it comes on the screen.

Amitabh Bachhan (as Eklavya) acts very well, without letting the Bachhan persona getting mixed up with the character.... But... I wish director could have done it. The revelation that the royal guard is the center of the story and the royal games are played because of some secret of his, if it would have come at the end would have made the movie interesting. But that would reduce AB's role drastically which i am sure the director might not like. So what do you do... you tell the secret first and then describe the royal games. A good performance gone waste.

Jackie Shroff as (JyotiWardhan, King's brother) Looks sinster but does not find the chemistry with Jimmy shergill which was very important for him in the movie. Jackie shroff has acted fairly well, and being VC's favourite gets one of the most important roles.

Do you remember Ajit Wachhani's role in Hum Aapke hai Kaun ? .... I know i have caught you thinking .... that is exactly what will happen when after 2 years some one would ask you about Raima sen's (as Nandini, the princess) , Jimmy Shergil's (Udaywardhan), Parikshit Sahani's, Sharmila Tagore's (the queen) role after 2 years. The short duration of the movie, does not allow you to understand the minds, motives and personalities of any of these characters.

The rest, Sanjay Dutt (as DSP Chauhar), Saif Ali Khan ( as the Prince) and Vidya Balan (As Rajjo, Prince's Love Interest) have performed very well. Sanjay Dutt and Vidya Balan shines in absolutely unimportant roles.

So, if we forget all these short comings of the movie, there were a few good things in the movie.

• Firstly, the cinematography by Nataraj Subramanian was definetely note worthy
• Abhijat Joshi, the writer of the movie should be applauded for the concept of the movie (earlier too he had written movies like Mission Kashmir, Kareeb, and above all Lage raho munnabhai (along with Rajkumar Hiranandani)
• Performance by Boman Irani as a "Not so Manly" King is amazing. He captures the nuances of the character very well.



• Saif Ali Khan and AB did the best they could possibly do for the movie.

The music of the movie by Shantanu Moitra was just average. "Chanda re... Chanda re..." is a nice composition, but picturising it in the bright daylight with some kite flying did not seem to be the best idea.

The Costumes by the real Kings of today (Raghavendra Rathore) are good. Creative producers Rajkumar Hirani and Vir Chopra does their work well. Action sequences by Tinnu Verma are strictly OK.

Sets By Nitin Desai are the best part of the movie. Though there is no favourite scene for me in this movie, but the cottage of Eklavya designed by Nitin Desai and team to me was the best thing in the movie, a nice place for a modest person to live with lots of candles in the house.

But the movie, which is essentially story telling is not made of characters but of an overall impact of all the pieces of Jigsaw.

First time i felt that the movie was shorter than what was required. The movie is 1 hr. 50 Min in length. I would have loved a little elaborate effort of building up of suspense at every step.

Direction of Vidhu Vinod Chopra after a break of 7 years (last being Mission Kashmir) disappoints. Though the effort for collaging on such a huge canvas of 2 hrs is not an easy task.

(Trivia : Vidhu Vinod Chopra's short documentary "An encounter with Faces" (1978) was nominated for Oscars)

I have a strong feeling that the movie is going to work well overseas for the overall royal treatment of it. EROS International, the worldwide distributor of the film are going to profit at the end of it.

So A good concept gone waste deserves not more than 2* for the some of the pieces of jigshaw.

Maa Sunao Mujhe wo Kahani.... Jisme Raja Na ho Na ho Rani.....

Just close your eyes and think for a moment, How do you want your world to be?
Think yourself enjoying all the good things of life that you want with the people you love....
Think of the days full of smiles.... Nights full of fairy tale dreams.....
A world where everyone loves you... adores you... respects you..
Where you are independent to live a life the way you want to.... Think of a place like that....

And you have entered "Parzania"

Parzania is the world of little "Parzan" (Cutely played by Parzun Dastur), which he has built for himself and his little sister Dilshad (Pearl Barsiwala), where the mountains are made of icecreams, where cricket comes before anything else and where the teachers have faces of donkeys to make the class interesting.

Parzania is a world of innocence.

Rahul Dholakia, true to his roots sees the land of Ahmedabad as Parzania, a world of innocence that he might have built in his mind for all the times when he lived away from it. The utopia was broken when the dark phantoms of hardlines fundamentalist opened their ugly feathers to cast shadow of darkness on Parzania. One event that changed many lives, created hundreds and thousands of tragic stories which will be written in histories black book.

Parzania is a story of one such family of Cyrus (Naseerudin shah) and Shernaz (Sarika) who were neither a part of problem nor the solution but were simple victims of the situations created around them. Its a story of butchering of innocence for unreasonable acts of crime. The story moves as a third person view, as seen by people who were victims but did not belong to any of the religion that were involved. The story is basically told in 3 parts, first dealing with the land of Parzania, second with the phantoms of fundamentalism and third the aftermath.

Land of Parzania

The story is told from eyes of a Parsi Family and an American, Allan Webbings, who is on his dissertation studying Gandhi, in the land of Gandhi. Corin Nemec acts well as a person who believes in the principles of Gandhi and who understands the difficulties of following him. The prelude to the main event shows the happy family with their new found friend Allan in a way that makes them look like our next door neighbours. The dialogues between the two kids, Parzan and Dilshad takes you to the land of Parzania. Along with them are a few characters which sets an overall context, there is the lewd "chhagan" who deals in everything that is illegal, there is a Gandhian who is helping Allan for his work, there are the neighbours of the chawl in which Shernaz and Cyrus lives, there is Chai wala who works hard to earn a bread for himself and his old father and there is a chhotu.

The character of the chhotu i fealt was a very well thought one. A young teen, who knows not what his religion is, is born on roads and have been exploited and abused by Chhagan, one who works in the chawl and plays with the kids of chawl. He helps Shernaz and her daughter, becoming one amongst the riot makers. To me chhotu represented the crux of the story, Just like chhotu, niether Gujarat, nor India is a region that is for one particular religion, however torned and pitiable is its condition, it is secular and should do the things that are "right" and "just".


The phantoms of fundamentalism

Then comes the part of riots, which i think was very well shot, creating the horror around the whole event that is depicted in the movie.

The scene makes you run along with Shernaz, Dilshad and Parzan in all the parts of the chawl making you pray for the safety of the family. Parzan is lost in the riots and Shernaz and Dilshad have to run for saving their lives. The whole chawl is dead, blood and fire seems everywhere.

Cyrus is not allowed to reach his home because of the curfew and is helpless to learn that one of his kids is lost in the riots. The whole horrifying scene of terror with the chants of "Jai Shri Ram" at every killing, paints your thoughts with the unreasonable saffron, depicting the thoughtless behaviour of a mob driven on someone else's malign plan.

I feel the scene where Allan watches a lady burnt alive by the rioters makes you understand the helplessness of the victims. The idea of innocent people getting butchered for nothing hits you hard and even without any Gory scenes makes you feel short of a free space and air around you. The story is about the one of the most brutal attack on humanity that happened at the time of Gujarat Riots and the movie makes it look so.


Aftermath

The story as it moves makes you feel that the story is not just about one family but there were many many families that were affected. You feel the pain of loss that a victim of riots goes through. On a different level it asks many philosophical questions about religion, about beliefs, about justice, about politics, about social setup that we have in our country.

The story is told as it is, and lives the analysis entirely to you, it does not take a stand but shows you the gruesome reality which makes you take a stand. There are many scenes which makes you feel the hard hitting facts reality come in your face, which makes you feel choked and leaves you heavy hearted. This is not because of great acting, great direction etc., though it is there, but this is because the truth itself is so hard hitting. The truth itself is so harsh to except that you dont need a dramatization of events to make it feel more tragic


Naseerudin shah, has acted wonderfully as a god fearing man who even after the riots( when you are questioning religion per se) feels that being religious will bring his son back from the unknown. The kids have acted really well, Nemec is good as a person with a lot of termoil within himself. His angst, his reactions, his disgust, his blabbering sprinkled generously with the loathsome, painful abuse of words, makes him real and understandable. Raj Jutsi has represented the reactions and reflections of a victim turning criminal himself very well. Asif Basra shines in his small role as "chhagan", a bad man with a good heart, who finds himself guilty of getting others killed for his survival. When a mob moves towards you to kill you and asks to say where does their prey lie, what would you do? and how would you feel after that?

But above all this in a superlative performance comes Sarika, you live the movie from the eyes of Shernaz all by arguably her best performance till date. The last scene where she, in front of the NHRC yells at police, politicians, governance and system for being responsible for her son's loss, you feel like adding some words to her speech abusing all of them.

My favourite scene in the movie is the one where Naseer is thrown in to backyard of a police station which is full of heaps of deadbodies, bruised, burned, torned, lying there lifeless, without anyone to accept them. The task for him is to find his son's dead body out of the heap. Hoping at every step that he does not find him and still hoping that he gets some evidence of him from somewhere. A helpless father thrown in the valley of death for no reason at all, he sees a body of a child lying with his head on other side, wearing a shirt like his lost son. The trauma of removing the other deadbodies from his way and getting to see the face of the child is evident in his eyes and the relief of not finding his son seems natural. The relief is immediately followed up with a realization. Realization of the fact that the child lying there is someone else's "Parzan" and they might or might not find him. The whole scene without a dialogue could not have been done in a better way. Hats off to Naseeruddin Shah.

The music of the movie by Zakir Hussain keeps the tragedy aggravated in your mind for a long time after you have finished watching the movie. The direction by Rahul Dholakia (Only other movie that he directed being "Kehta hai dil Baar Baar" ) is good as an almost Debut film. I thought he missed the point at 2 places which could have made a great impact on the film, one being the lesser usage of Gujarati in the movie that loosens the connection you can find with the characters a bit, secondly, i would have loved to see him dwell in the minds of rioters who did all that happened, their motives and view of issue. But it takes a lot of courage to make a movie like this and Rahul wins all accolades for this.

All in all first 4* movie of the year.

Guru Bhai ki Amar Kahani....

Though this is seemingly an outdated post..... this was due........

Last weekend we saw "Guru" and i did not get time to write the review for the same. The question is "How was the movie?" And the answer gives my mind a feeling of Deja Vu, last time i had felt like this when I had watched "Rang De Basanti"... So what was common between the two movies? I think one striking commonality between the 2 movies was that the director in getting overindulgent with his concept of the script and making a statement, went overboard to state something that is not entirely acceptable and correct..... The message that the both the movie gives is confusing...... Rakeysh Mehra apparently gave a message that "taking law in Hand is Okay, when you want to change the society", And Mani ratnam also reiterates the same thing in his own style.

I must agree at this point that apart from the message, i think the execution of the movie, its dialogues, the performances of the lead actors were truly amazing. The cinematography of Rajiv Menon, especially for the village scenes were breath takingly beautiful. The direction never lost the grip. Maniratnam has proved again his mettle of delivering a good story in a beautiful way. I think he is the only Director till now who could evoke the "never found" chemistry between the lead pair of Aishwaraya Rai and Abhishek Bachhan.

But what stands out completely over all this was the background score..... the best by Rahman in recent times..... Though the music and composition of songs could have been better. Gulzaar saab too has written some beautiful lyrics (especially Aye Hairate Aashiqui by Hariharan and Alka Yagnik...) , but sometimes has gone too abstract and uncomprihensible (Ek lo ek muft..., Trivia is Bappi Lahiri has sang this song on Rahman's tunes). "Maiya Maiya" rocks. Every time a song comes as a back ground score or a short tune like "Jage hai der se...." It sounded very melodious.

As far as acting is concerned Abhishek stands out with the best performance he has given till date, Aishwarya complemented him truly with a great chemistry. The scenes where only two of them are on screen, your heart goes out to both of them. Madhavan, after "Rang De Basanti" again comes in a nice "cameo". Best part of his character was that "Shyam Saxena" was very focussed on destroying one person (guru bhai) by any means for the larger good of the society. Though it feels that the intensity was a little less. Arya Babbar too played a role of a egoist brother-in-law of a successful Guru bhai well. But one person for whom the movie is a true "Comeback" in all senses is Mithun Da. From an actor of such repute and experience, you expect a strong performance, and he delivers. The most interesting part i feel is, after all his 14 movies a year stint, which makes you feel "eeks" watching, he stands out so convincingly true to a "Communist" character of an "Independent" newspaper editor. Vidya Balan's role, which many said was something that could have been done away with, was a very important role in my view.

Ok, Coming to My Favourite scene in the movie :

After the time when he and his company are alleged for fraud, the hundreds of people who supported him all the days, alleges him for being a criminal and tells him that he made them a partner in the crime..... comes the time when for the first time in the life of the Gurubhai, he takes a back seat and thinks amidst a great inner turmoil in a painful silence sitting with his wife in the remains of his old house (representing the life he began). He asks himself "Kya main gunehgar hu?" "Am i a criminal?" with a few dialogues, but absolutely awesome performance the actors make you feel choked. I think most of the successful businessman might relate to the scene. When a Man runs fast he hardly sees what are the things he is stepping on to move ahead.

But above the acting, cinematography, direction, music and lyrics stands the story. Mani Ratnam and Vijay Krishna Acharaya has shaped the inspired story (from Dhirubhai's life) in a way that just makes you think and think again. It tells a tale of a Man who loves to think big, and keeping moving on and on.

The story is more about ideologies, than about Gurukant Desai, the story of about a capitalist who wants to make money, taking all possible means, keeping people with him as a partner, and removing all the roadblocks to attain his aims ( Gurubhai : " Main do tarah ki chappal leke chalta hu ek sone ki aur ek chandi ki, jisko Jo chahiye uske muh pe wo marke aage badhta hu!!"). Along way comes a communist with his idealist nature who stresses ethics and the right means above the success. And so begins the classical dual between the two ideologies. Maniratnam has nicely shown the conflict of the ideologies and i guess this was the point where i felt that Vidya Balan's character might have been conceived. She to me was a link between the communism of "Manikdas Gupta" and "Capitalism" of "Guru Bhai". I think her role stresses the fact that any well framed ideology would lead to development of the society, it is for the bigger cause and the bigger cause is more important than the ideology chosen. "But why was she on a wheel chair?" Only reason that i think for that is also the same. Human nature has a little to do with the ideologies that follow two people of absolutely conflicting idelogies "Shyam Saxena" and "Guru Desai" loved the girl equally putting everything aside. And on the death of the link between them, all 3 of them (Guru, Manikdas and Shyam) faces the same loss.

So what is wrong with the movies? The only wrong thing i found was the message. I think that the director got over indulgent with the character and have portrayed him to be a good successful man at the end even when he has taken his own liberty with the ways of doing things. The movie stresses that what is important is aim and the means does not really matter. This to me is a little disturbing. But the movie has its own feat from the point of view of Movie Making.

Watch it for Abhishek, Watch it for Maniratnam, watch it for Rajiv Menon.

Overall a 3.5 * rating for the first noteworthy film of 2007.