An Unfortunate Case-Study of 18 Modern Women

A room
Slashed in two.
Only men there.
And none here, please.
Let's not be savages.

Pretend at civility.
Smile, only at those
Kitted exactly like you.
Put your square attitude
In a square hole.
 
Run
When conversations run
To anything beyond   
Your holy trinity
Of husband,
Children, 
An in-law or two. 

Judge.
Comply. 
Obey. 
Venerate.

And if you 
Ever
Find the time,
Grow a spine. 

  
 
   

Agneepath. Or, The Return of Mega Masala Bollywood.

I HAVE to begin this with an analogy. Agneepath is like masala chai. There is cinema which is subtle and nuanced. Like a perfectly brewed first flush, Darjeeling cuppa. And then there is that glass of kadak, dhabe-wali chai, robust and full-bodied and bursting with a million, loud flavors. That is the category this Dharma Productions fare belongs to.

The movie is a remake of the 1990 Amitabh Bachchan starter by the same name. Interestingly, the production house chooses to retain the time frame of the original instead of contemporizing it. It begins in 1977, in a small island off the Maharashtra coast, where a fiercely idealistic Master Dinanath Chauhan is trying to teach the important lesson of self-reliance to the exploited populace of Mandwa. The feudal structure obviously can't tolerate dissent and the schoolteacher is implicated in that most-heinous of crimes-the sexual abuse of a poor, polio-stricken, girl child. Three strikes. The man is brutally killed in front of his son and pregnant wife. And thus is born the avenging hero, the conflicted, complex, brooding Vijay Dinanath Chauhan. Destined to be eternally locked in battle with the menacing Kancha Cheena. 
    
Hrithik Roshan makes a handsomer Vijay than Amitabh Bachchan, for sure, but the baritone of the original was something else. The recital of "Agneepath", easily the high point of the Bachchan flick pretty much misses the mark here. Hrithik serenades the viewer with his beautiful green eyes, his emotive face and the extreme vulnerability that has been his trademark from his very first film. His nemesis, appropriately attired in black, represents the opposite bed of e aesthetic spectrum. Sanjay Dutt flexes his bulk, his tattooed arms, his padded-up face and produces an immensely repulsive villain. The other baddie is played by the one-time teen heartthrob, Rishi Kapoor, who throws off his charming persona and spouts dialogues about the nubility of under-age virgins, instead. He is creepy and sleazy and perfectly cast.

This then is the canvas of Agneepath. A movie with heroes and villains, each in their separate, pre-defined roles. It takes us back to an earlier age of Hindi cinema, one where the hero cannot die without fulfilling his raison d'être, the reason for his existence, no matter how many blows/bullets/knife-thrusts he takes. It isn't a movie that provokes thought or generates a discussion. It asks for complete suspension of disbelief and transports the viewer to a world that necessarily balances itself out at the end of the day. It makes Hrithik dance and Priyanka Chopra look pretty and Katrina Kaif defy each one of Newton's laws of motion. It showcases violence. There is blood and copious amounts of it. There are beheadings and gruesome murders and fires and explosions. And surprisingly, it all works together. Karan Malhotra, the director-protégée of the absurdly non-nuanced Karan Johar, has an interesting sensibility and manages to give this overly-dramatic film a cohesive, non-parodic structure.          

Agneepath brings back to life the early 90's over-the-top drama and does so minus the overt vulgarity and the aesthetically challenged colour schemes that defined the genre. If only it had wound up in 2 hours instead of the once-mandatory three, I would have been sitting in my seat, whistling, as the end credits rolled.   

A tortured Haiku

Freezing cold outside;
Inside, heat from hundred yawns.
Better out than in.

Accidentally

I saw a butterfly
Dancing on broken bits of glass.
A shimmering yellow
Flitting through reflected light,
She cut such a pretty picture.
The glass lay untouched,
Scattered like cheap beads
From a child's box of baubles.
Somewhere in the middle of a busy flyover.

Horror!

Last evening I watched Paranormal Activity 3. It was scary, in bits. It begins with the kid who can see the resident ghost, the innocuously named Toby(who is, but doesn't want to be called fat). 5 year old Christy talks to Toby, has him attend her tea-parties, runs around the house, chasing him, at 4am, jumps from her first-floor room into the living area below and lands promptly on her feet. Toby the goof then goes rogue. Like Jason Bourne on steroids, he upturns furniture, sticks it all up on the ceiling, picks up the other kid by her hair and whirls her around gleefully, pulls beds, slams doors, smashes a perticularly ugly lamp. I could do with some of that energy. And how cool would it be to have ALL the furniture off the floor when trying to sweep and scrub!

Anyway, the story goes on, mostly operating in horror cliches. There is one scene of crystalline perfection. The baby-sitter, goofing around with the kids, dresses up in a white sheet and goes about flailing her arms. She then sits at the kitchen table, reading under a pretty Tiffany lamp and right behind her is a kid-sized shape, draped in the same sheet. She turns and poof, the shape collapses, leaving the sheet behind. Scary? Hell, yes!

Hardly had I finished with one scary kid when another jumped on screen in last night's episode of Supernatural. Sam and Dean (and the sexy car) go after a killer painting and the homicidal ghost turns out to be a chit of a child who had offed her entire family with a rusty razor that surprisingly enough is painted into this early 20th century family portrait. The kid is creepy, even without the artistically painted dark circles under her eyes. Her doll with the unblinking eyes is worse.

I thought I'd had enough exposure to the horror genre already but then came this morning and I found myself in class on a Saturday morning, attending a pointless lecture on writing research proposals. And I finally figured what real horror was all about.

Learning to teach.

Day 2 at the Orientation Course for supposedly newly-appointed under/post-grad teachers. The genreal junta is upwards of 40. A lot of grey in the room. Grey hair. Not cells. Those seem to be in severe shortage. The first session is with this decrepit old dude who laughs mid-way through every sentence and insists on calling pedagogy "peda-goggy". Surprisingly enough, his lack of a sense of humour meets with distinct approval from a snickering roomful of mostly-inarticulate teachers. End of the session, the sexist pig (all teachers are "he", all students are "she") points to me, sitting in the backbench, fiddling with my phone and says, "You're not listening. I can't see your face with all the hair." Said hair was obviously all over. Like me, it has a mind of it's own. And doesn't react well to stupidity. Or sexism. I tuck my hair behind the ears, freeze my face into a wide smile and go, "See all you want, now." The schmuck has the decency to look embarrassed while the class titters. That went well, right?

Session 2. Another long lecture. This time about education in India. A lot of faff. Way too much idealism. Too much of socialism without any background of politics/economics/reform. Guess that is what teachers all over learn to do. Be all full of hot air, ready to explode. At least, always ready to release.

It scares me, this general air of incompetence. And the validity it seems to have acquired in my profession. This perhaps is the future we are faced with. At one point of time, it was "publish or perish". Now, it is "plagiarize or perish". Do not try to think. Do not even think about being an individual. And do not be embarrassed while at it. That is the lesson I came back with.

Death of the teacher?

I hate you, but then you should know.

[Everyone writes love songs. They roll right off the tongue. But we don't write enough songs of hate, do we? Of gut-wrenching, stomach-cramping, ass-hurting hate. Here's mine. Not heartbreak. Just hate. As crazy as that first flush of mad love. Don't take it too seriously. Can't do that with love. Or with hate.
Add a few fa-la-la-las. What's a song without them, anyway?
And always read between the lines.]


You should've been ugly.
Outside, instead of in.
I wish you were ugly.
Ugly as sin.

You make my skin burn.
Not with desire, no no.
You make my insides churn.
It's so not love, oh no.

You're such a dreadful slob.
Your stuff all over the place.
Such an unhinged,smutty slob.
I'd never ever suck your face.

You make me hurl, you do.
You break my heart in two
Million pieces. You do.
You Janus-faced douchy poo.

Do I need to say it?
Do I have to spell it out?
I hate you, you git,
You're such a sodden lout.

Metronymic, of sorts.

Sardines packed in six cars
Three hundred commoners, we.
Jostling, almost jousting,
Protecting an elbow, a knee.
Sqeezing in in-between spaces,
Contortionists for a day.
Balancing in vestibules,
On our stinky, weary, way.
A headphone creates illusory space
Or serves as a prop
When we wish to eavesdrop.
Friends are judged,
Stories are spun,
Gossip dispensed,
Especially in Coach Number One.
We fit all possible types:
The geek, the muse, the college prude;
The hair-swishing bimbette, the sporty dude.
A hipster sways, a lech stares;
In one corner, a harried mum glares
At a privacy-deprived randy pair.
We peek, we prod, we poke, we pry
We're the Delhi Metro,
You, you hapless commuter, and I.

Comfort

Sometimes my refuge is a book.
Sometimes it's the bottom of a glass.
An amber swirl, a golden whiff of agave.
And sometimes a clear, vodka-crystal kick.
Sometimes, words make magic.
Spin worlds, implode and explode.
Cascade. Cavort. Crash. Cure.
Words, sometimes, are my curse.
Easily spoken. Stubbornly unbroken.
Inconveniently true. Sometimes.
And then there's the comfort
Of an old friend. And tequila sunshine.
Or the long-suffering lover
And ageing Scotch.
Or even the long, single afternoon
Of images, memories and a fast-beading beer.
But the best, by far,
Is recognizing in you
A little part of me.

In a Sulk

The door stared right back at me. Go away. Turn right around and go away. I wouldn't listen. Couldn't afford to. Everything I wanted was in there. One plank of wood in between. And two unyielding egos. I tried staring it open. It sighed. You should know better.

The mirror squealed, once. It was only calling attention to itself. You don't trust me. I didn't. It was too old. Had seen way too much. Of me. Of the other. It hung there, quietly reproachful.

I sat down at the desk. Traced the scratches on its surface. Make me a portal. I'll make it easy. I covered it in scribbles. In noughts and crosses. It sat back, silent and indifferent.

Death Comes to Pemberley: Austen re-visited?

I fell in love with P.D. james when I read the first Adam Dalgliesh mystery. Cover her Face. The book had me hooked. It reminded me of the classic Christie. The setting was period. The English countryside. Contemporized with a generous dose of sexual desire and intrigue. When I then heard of Death Comes to Pemberley, I HAD to read it. A sequel of sorts to the eternally entertaining Pride and Prejudice. Murder in the Victorian country house, beautiful men and women, familiar characters. Got to be good, right? 

Well, the book was procured, begun with much fanfare and devoured ravenously to the last page. 

Unfortunately, there isn't much I'd be able to say about it that would live up to the hype. Admittedly, it is well-written. The historical research is detailed and rendered as authentic as is possible. The characters are all logical extensions of Austen's world. James spends a considerable amount of time setting the background, developing the histories of Elizabeth and Jane and Bingley and Darcy. She gives them the right clothes, the right words and the right emotions. Despite the correctness of all formal elements, the book doesn't work.

Elizabeth and Darcy are passionately in love. "In love" like in a chick-flick. He wants to hold her hand so he can feel his world righting itself. She looks up to him as only a Victorian woman can. Jane is as much in awe of Bingley as she was when he was walking all over her in deference to the snob values of his best friend and his sister. The man is still a pushover. As a 21st century reader, the least I expected from a "Murder Mystery" based on Austen's novel was a little bit of spice. Darcy unhappy. Stuck in an "unsuitable" marriage. Bingley having an affair on the sly. Elizabeth running a women's rights group. Jane fed up of bearing children every alternate year. At the least. Instead, what we get is an insipid extension of the period drama minus the edgy intensity that has so far defined James's work.

The writer spends most of her energy and the reader's time in getting the background right. Therefore, there is the working class, circumscribed by it's desire to please and it's recognition of it's rightful, subservient place in the order of things. There is the usual distraught woman, the threat of scandal and subsequent overthrow of the social order. Feeble clues in the form of initials carved on tree trunks and a rather unconvincing murder. It follows logically that the final revelation of the murderer and the cause of the crime are even more unconvincing. 

Anti-climactic doesn't even begin to describe it. It's a yawn and then two more.
What really bothers me, at the end of this rather unsatisfactory read, is why did James do it? Why take on characters that daunt you instead of setting you free? Why handle someone else's story as a historical relic instead of making it your own? Why negate the very idea of an adaptation? That, and not the murder, is the real mystery I wish P.D.James had solved for me.

Dogma- Watch it!

The best test of whether or not a friend is going to be around for the long haul? Ask them to recommend a movie and watch it.
I watched Kevin Smith's Dogma(1999) today and know that the self-confessed nerd, my colleague/friend SGJ who raved about it, could have been my soulmate in another dimension.

The movie has everything going about it. The cast is a Kevin Smith special of sorts. There is Ben Affleck, Jason Lee, and Jason Mewes from his earlier features. Smith himself plays Silent Bob and steals the thunder from even the incredible Alan Rickman. I want more of Silent Bob.

Ben Affleck is almost tolerable. He actually is good at being bad. What a revelation! He killed Armageddon, put me to sleep in Pearl Harbour and really stank it up in Daredevil. And all this while the dude could act. Waste of time, all these years.

There is also Matt Damon doing a reasonably good job of playing the conflicted angel. Loki's argument against organized religion, based on Lewis Carrol's "The Walrus and the Carpenter" had me hooked from the word go. Damon's convincingly, self-righteously borderline-evil. His Voodoo moment is pure gold. It is also rather interesting how Smith turns the relationship between Bartleby and Loki on its head, transforming the pacifist into the maniacal avenger and vice versa. Smart movie-making, that.

There is more to it than the cast, though. The movie explores the difficult territory of religion. Like the best fantasy and the best satire, Dogma uses humour to deal with a serious, ponderous issue. The one brilliant idea that emerges out of this cinematic experience is that ideas are more important than beliefs. Beliefs are rigid. Ideas are mutable. They evolve. Religion, therefore, can only be interpreted by the individual. God as male/female, black/white, flower child/skeeball player, depends entirely on how your rational/irrational mind perceives it.

The one problem is I have with the movie is how it moves away from atheism entirely and seems to endorse the existance of an omnipresent , omnipotent god. On the other hand, that is probably the framework within which the movie purports to work and to expect "Dogma" to transcend religion altogether is perhaps a little far out.

Dogma is a smart, intelligent film. Funny, sharp, and with a massive bite. If you've missed it, like I did, compensate. Right away.

Stupid Sun

Where are you, you gormless ball of fire?
You golden-gobbed, gilt-fleshed glorified globule;
What in the deuce, if I might enquire,
Is the meaning of this disappearing act you pull?

Like hair off an ageing superstar's head,
Like a hausfrau's frown after a Botox shot,
Like the red of that haircolour that's bled,
You've gone off absurdly and frankly, lost the plot.

Mornings have been gloomy, dull and grey
Afternoons morbidly slow, sluggishly two-tone.
Creep that you are, you've suddenly gone fay,
Sneaking into some hidey-hole, some off-radar zone.

So full of gas(literally and otherwise),you old humbug,
You make promises of bliss that you shamelessly renege.
If only I could trasmogrify your Midas-touched mug,
You'd end with your beatific face beautified with egg.