Badlapur Effect

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Two Strikingly Handsome Men - All The Way Deep Inside

Paul Newman......... Sunil Dutt

Two of the most amazing men on this planet have now moved on.

Yesterday, Paul Newman.
Three years ago, Sunil Dutt.

This is what Paul Newman has said : I'd like to be remembered as a guy who tried - tried to be part of his times. Tried to help people communicate with one another. Tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being.

Sunil Dutt died in 2005.
And this is what Sunil Dutt has said, and dedicated his entire life for : "Disease and suffering have no religion and no nationality."


Paul Newman : Forever changed the lives of all those he touched with his generosity, humour and humanness. Quietly turned over the entire value of his ownership in Newman's Own, to charity. An astounding US $ 120 million.

Owned The Hole In The Wall Gang Camp, a summer camp for children with cancer and other blood-related diesases (and their siblings) in Ashford, Connecticut. Also runs a fall "Discovery" program for inner city kids, also in Ashford.

Finished 2nd in the 1979 Le Mans 24 hr. race in a Porsche 935.

(1987) Won Best Actor Oscar for "The Color of Money" (1986).

(1990) Chosen by People magazine as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the world.

(1995) Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#12).

Sunil Dutt - Whatever we speak of him will never match up to his towering presence. Whatever he did for India, Indians will never be able to be grateful enough. I was not even aware of one more aspect that I came to know from my friend - he blogs thus: The details of his will is another proof of his greatness. He wished nothing should be named after him, not even a postage stamp.

This planet in its relentless rush towards its future may not find the time to halt and say thank you. To these stalwarts.
Generations to come may not even be aware of the full extent of the persons they shall have missed.


Sunil Dutt : Jalte Hain Jiske Liye....

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward


Another factor, not at all trivial :
Their respective loving monogamous relationship. Paul Newman with Joanne Woodward.
Sunil Dutt with Nargis.
Till the very end.
In an industry - and indeed increasingly in this world, where this is not just an exception. It is downright queer.

What is it that went into the making of these men? Why are they so rare?

Postscript :
From the Economist, Oct 4th 2008, that points out that Paul Newman was 'the most generous individual, relative to his income, in the 20th century history of the United States' (profits of over US $ 250 million went to charitable causes around the world including Hole in the Wall camps):
Paul Newman thought little of his blue eyes. He asked his fans whether this was all that they valued him for. His epitaph, he once said, should be "Here lies Paul Newman who died a failure because his eyes turned brown"

Celebrity bugged him in every aspect : the studio contract system from which he rapidly escaped, the Hollywood gossip mill, from which he fled into long-term marriage, motor-racing and Connecticut, the loveless pressure for Oscars and nominations. All this was 'rubbish'. He was unbothered when age began to furrow the brow and fill out the jowls. Unlike Robert Redford, he never made any attempt to preserve his prettiness. Hollywood could deal with him as he was...
Mr. Newman was not a man for plans; he preferred creative chaos.

And in the issue of Oct 13, 2008, Time, and written by Robert Redford :

Paul was very engaged at work. He was there. he liked a lot of rehearsal. But he was fun too. Whenever he made a mistake on set, he would enjoy it more than anybody.
What impressed me about Paul was that he was very realistic about who he was. He knew the world of hyperbole and distortion he was in. That meant he maintained a certain amount of privacy. This commitment to his profession was as serious, as was his commitment to social responsibility and especially to his family. He had a life that had real meaning...
Whatever success one of us would have, the other would knock it down. If you are in a position to be viewed iconically, you'd better have a mechanism to take yourself down to keep the balance. I think we did that for each other.

Bade Ghar Ke Bete... Why I have No Issues with Abhinav's Rich Background

All my friends, quite a few in the media - are talking about Abhinav winning the Gold Medal in a shooting event at the Beijing Olympics - simply because he had a dad who could afford to give him the best of the best training. A sort of scorn for the State, yet tinged with pride.

Look at these two pictures - see the similarity?
Both are Bade Ghar ke Bete... Scions of wealthy parents.

All I say is this :
Better for the nextgen of the 'haves' to be shooting in the Olympics, than at the hapless Jessica Lalls, here in India.

We have hundreds - perhaps thousands of very well-to-do indulgent Indian parents out there. Who will do anything for their children.

Well - may they all learn a thing or two, from the Bindras - Apjit and Babli rather than from the Sharmas - Vinod and whatever, who were ready to cover the tracks of son Manu Sharma - pictured here at right, in his shortlived 'acquittal' in 2006. For the murder of Jessical Lall, in 1999, with so many witnesses who were then arm-twisted. Justice has since prevailed, and he is serving Life Imprisonment.

Unfortunately, the truth is this: Each of us can list at least six families - those in the media - the celebrities and politicians, or even in own circle friends or society, where there is a higher probability of parental 'cover-up' tactics rather than the patient year-in-year-out training, as seen with Abhinav. So, for sure, he has an Olympic size back up system at home.

Better a training ground at home, international coach, than a Mercedes or a BMW. And dad's unlimited political clout.

What Happened to the Child?

Sulochana Bai cannot read or write. Her conversations are peppered with words like 'danger', ' 'emergency', and that favorite word used by so many folks : 'Chapter', to be used this way: 'yeh aadmi ek chapter hai'. Chapter = What a Character.
She was with me, next to me at a hospital in front of the MRI department, and wanted to know what MRI was. Was it X-Ra (that's the way she pronounced it - X-Ra).

As I struggled to come up with an explanation, she came to my rescue herself:
'CT- Can type ka kuch hai kya?'
Yeah!
'Haan na, CT-Scan ke tarah hi kuch hai.'

Bai may be illiterate, but she is the current head - adhyakhsh - of the mahila mandal in her residential area. Time spent with her is always so illuminating. About life in the basti, social tensions, how resolved, how not. And I always wonder why I don't talk more often about these essentials, rather than day to day stuff like 'kapda-dhona, sukhana, bartan saaf karna, kuda-kachra'.

She asked me if I remembered what she had told me a couple of years ago - of the couple that had died by pouring 'rakel' kerosene on themselves, in her neighborhood? Of course I recalled the incident. The man was a perennial drunkard, and the wife struggled to make ends meet, to send her seven year old child - who was slightly handicapped physically - to school.

One day after the usual late night fight over her money, she had - in a fit of pique - poured kerosene on the man, and dared him over god knows what. He was part -drunk, went and picked up a match, lit it. Before she knew what was happening, he went and caught her in a tight bind, saying ' *#@*, come, you die with me'.

The little boy had come running to Bai's house, the neighbors went running back. The man had over 80% burns, she had less - 60%. Was conscious, narrated what had happened. Over the next few days, she succumbed first. He went a day or two later.

Her sister arrived from somewhere in the boondocks of Northern Maharashtra.
When the neighborhood said - and this is always such a heartening aspect of life in a basti - they would pool in and continue to send the boy to school, the aunt said, No need, I'll take him back with me, to myhome. And send him to a good 'English' school there. I owe this to my sister.

Bai became suspicious when she happened to see this woman trying on various saris of the dead sister, when she thought no one was looking, inside the small home.
But the police said they wouldn't stop her from taking the child. After all she was the legitimate relative. The basti women on their own, quietly removed the dead woman's bank book, and kept it in their own safe keeping. With some Rs. 30,000/- in it. That they could not touch, of course, but the idea being that it could go to the child some day.

The dead man, it seems, had just sold the hutment. For some Rs. 25,000/- advance and this issue and the money already in the home was the root cause. Of all that had then taken place. Aunty dearest got this money, sold the TV, almirah and whatever else she could get hold of, and went away.

This was two years ago.

Last week, she arrived, asking for the bank book. Saying how the boy was now in fourth standard doing so well. After all, he had always been a quiet, shy and such a good student at his studies as all the neighbors were aware of. She arrived with this man, who went off to catch a drink. Bai and the other women of the mahila-mandal smelt a rat, and continued drilling her, talking to her, trying to figure out how the boy was doing.

A couple of hours later, the man comes back, completely drunk, and tells them 'Don't you believe a word of all that she is saying. She threw him out two years ago. She just wants the bank money now'.

This 'aunty' later, I am told, escaped.

After a sound thrashing from the basti women. Apparently, in a moment of distraction, while they debated what to do, how to get the police to take some action.... Basti life and the police after all share a strange, uneasy equation - they had wanted to be sure of what to do.

No one has any idea where the little boy is today.
Is he somewhere begging. Did some kind soul take him under his / her wing (our minds would want such an outcome, and these are the 'happy endings' we wish are happening). Is he alive at all. Does he have anyone to call his own.
And what about his state of mind? What happens to a shy, quiet, endearing seven year old? Who was a favorite of the neighborhood. And yet, how could a seven year old ever find his way back to a certain loving basti of this large metropolitan city from some place 250 kilometres away?

And having heard this incident, what can we do? Do I leave it as it is? Another story to be filed away in my mind? And how do believers explain this 'logic' of God?

And how come some 'shy, unassuming' kids become Abhinav Bindra, chased by all the newspapers. Others - I don't even know this child's name - fall between the cracks of our attention?

At Long Last, A Great Satisfying Read!

There are some excellent reviews out there. Of the Case of Exploding Mangoes.
New York Times
Jai Arjun

And some overly critical ones as well. The Guardian for example.

What can I add? Yet it is one of those books that affects deeply and goes beyond trite words such as unputdownable, brilliant and so on.
And I don't think it is merely because we in the subcontinent are aware of this moment of our regional history - Of Zia's assassination in 1988.

Each of us will have our own favorite parts in this book as we read it ...
One to me, is this. ... Almost at the tail end of the book, 'Ali' the protagonist (who is in every alternate chapter, author writing in first person) grabs the book his friend Obaid is reading - "Chronicles of a Death Foretold", and reads the first sentence.
"So does Nasr really die?"
"I think so"
"It says so right here in the first sentence. Why keep reading it when you already know that the hero is going to die."
"To see how he dies. What were his last words. That kind of thing"
"You are a pervert, comrade." I throw the book back at him.

And Mohammed Hanif has most successfully thrown history back at us - After all, we all know Zia (a hero in his own eyes at least) is dead, and the book in the very first chapter describes his last walk up to 'Pak One'. The one that explodes four minutes after take-off.
Like a Moebius strip we come back at the end of the book to the beginning, and it is magnetic enough to make me want to continue reading all over again.
So I would wager that this viciously satirical book will have hundreds of thousands readers like me, across the subcontinent, across the US and the rest of the world, devouring every bit. Reading the book at a multiple of levels.
To the West, this book reminds of Yossarian and Catch 22. To us Indians, it is seminal as well . Somewhat like what English August was to the IAS, this one is to the Pakistan Air Force - and I expect all Armed Forces anywhere in the world. I was also reminded of Manil Suri's Death of Vishnu somewhere - I am not quite sure why.
Here then is a master writer. His command over language, situations, satire is awesome. Even the words related to religion. Words that the rest of the world is usually mortally scared of, words used gingerly in general in the fear of hurting sentiments of some moral guardians somewhere. Ditto for his searing indictment of archaic laws in a radically Islamized nation.

And New York Times has indicated the book's zany timeliness - the book is about a time when the Soviet forces were about to pullout of Afghanistan, now in real-time of the book release, it is NATO's pullout time from Afghanistan; back then it was the mystery of Zia's death along with so many of his key Generals, now it is Benazir who has recently been assassinated. (NYT also makes a very pertinent observation in the beginning about the fact that it is 'Men' who love to write about things like assassinations!)

I for one am most fascinated by the Reality Show nature of the current world we live in. Our entire media. TV shows - Fear Factor, the choice of our music icons, Big Brother and what not. That tread a thin line between fact and fiction, where it is all a simulated reality. So when a popular lead music icon dies - in real life last week, it is almost as if the reality show TRPs just shot up, so it was worthwhile to someone somewhere. Kind of eerie.

This author - coincidentally or not, he works in the world of 24 X 7 TV: BBC - follows such a genre as well - with 'a foot in both boats' as we would say - of real history as well as masterfully manufactured fiction. And gets away with it. I have often wondered how people who are alive in real life take it when they seem to wander into the realms of fiction via the imagination of authors.
Do they shrug it off as non-facts, or do they get all het up? In this book, apart from the usual General Beg, CIA etc. , Mrs. Zia ul Haq comes off - if not exactly smelling of roses, at least a person one can wonderfully empathize with. Similarly Nancy Raphel, wife of the then US Ambassador to Pakistan (the ambassador went down in Pak One along with Zia) surely she exists somewhere out there. Is she then to be treated as 'real' or not, as part of this world we live in? Or should she be treated as a faded shadow, no longer relevant thus to be 'fictionalized'. Perhaps she is a fictional character through and through. And there is no Nancy Raphel?

At some point, 'Ali' calls Lata and Asha the 'old, fat, ugly Indian sisters who both sing like they were teenage sex kittens' . So should Lata and Asha ignore it. After all wherever they are spoken of in the book, it is as if in Ali Shigri's thoughts and his world , as if 'through the mouth of a fictional character'.
Or is it about the author's own aversions?

American reviewers of course are hugely amused that OBL of Laden & Co is in the book as well, when he comes to the party thrown by the ambassador and where all Americans come dressed as the mujahideen.

And I begin to feel : do we in our own lives nowadays live like that? Not quite sure where fact ends and fiction begins. And perhaps it just doesn't matter in this post-modern world we inhabit.

Aka 'Cigarette smoking is injurious to health', we all know the line 'All characters in this book bear no resemblance to anyone living or dead'.
Random House the publishers have done away with this statutory announcement in this book.
Making you wonder why all the other books all these days required it anyway!

Ultimately it is Le Carre's description of the book - 'Deliciously Anarchic' - that says it all.
My money is on this book for the Booker.
If this book misses this year's Man Booker, all it means,
critics' critiques have begun to override the public imagination and the mangoes were sour.

ABHI NA JAO CHHODKAR...

Recently this song Abhi Na Jao Chhodkar Ke Dil Abhi Bhara Nahin has been spoken of by Shankar Mahadevan and even by Farhan Akhtar as their 'all time favorite'. In the build up to their new film Rock On.

Undoubtedly, Hum Dono had some of the most amazing songs of all time.
I can listen to them again and again for hours.
A tribute to Sahir Ludhianvi as to Jaidev.
Kabhi Khud Pe, Kabhi Haalat Pe Rona Aaya...
Allah Tero Naam, Ishwar Tero Naam... each a jewel.
And especially the song Abhi Na Jao in Hum Dono could be part of the story of so many young couples falling in love - it is that toe-curlingly wonderful in its everyday point of view.

The only thing is this.
There was another HUGELY talented music director and Thumri singer. By the name of Balakrishna Das. A student of Bade Ghulam Ali Khan saheb. Who had also assisted the legendary composer R.C. Boral for a while in the '40s/ '50s.
... and there is this absolutely adorable Oriya song Nayana Sunayana Re that is his composition. His HMV record of this song, sung in his own voice was out in the late 50s. Long, really long before Abhi Na Jao happened in 1961, this love song was on many Oriya lips. And the tune?
You guessed it....

Does that reduce Jaidev's talent? I don't think so. His national awards - luckily received for other movies, not Hum Dono are (hopefully ! :-) ) well-deserved.

Perhaps all it does is this : it enhances the stature of Balakrishna Das... Here was a music director who had been approached by Bimal Roy to compose for his movies, but this non-materialistic gentleman did not find Bombay his 'cup of tea'.
Even when Abhi Na Jao reached stratospheric heights, and he was asked to take Jaidev to task, Balakrishna Das shrugged it off. 'It's OK. Let him be' he said. (Btw, two of Balakrishna Das's other tunes would be familiar to Bollywood aficionados ... am waiting to get the irrevocable details from Orissa - shall upload as soon as I get it)

These then, are the people who make India what it is.
Tolerant, all-encompassing, loving.
Sometimes walked and trampled over.

Abhi na jao chhod kar ke dil abhi bhara nahin
Abhi abhi to ai ho abhi abhi to
Abhi abhi to ai ho bahar banke chhai ho
Hawa zara mahak to le nazar zara bahak to le
Ye sham dhal to le zara
Ye sham dhal to le zara ye dil sambhal to le zara
Main thodi der jee to lun nashe ke ghunt pee to lun
nashe ke ghunt pee to lun
Abhi to kuchh kaha nahin abhi to kuchh suna nahin
Abhi na jao chhod kar ke dil abhi bhara nahin

Sitare jhilmila uthe
sitare jhilmila uthe charag jagamaga uthe
Bas ab na mujhko tokana
Bas ab na mujhko tokana na badhake rah rokana
Agar main ruk gayi abhi to ja na paungi kabhi
Yahi kahoge tum sada ke dil abhi nahin bhara
Jo khatm ho kisi jagah ye aisa silasila nahin
Abhi nahin abhi nahin nahin nahin nahin nahin
Abhi na jao chhod kar ke dil abhi bhara nahin

Adhuri aas
Adhuri aas chhodke adhuri pyaas chhodake
Jo roz yunhi jaogi to kis tarah nibhaogi
Ke zindagi ki raah men jawaan dilon ki chah men
Kayii muqam aenge jo ham ko azamaenge
Bura na mano baat ka ye pyaar hai gila nahin
Haan yahi kahoge tum sada ke dil abhi bhara nahin
Haan dil bhara nahin nahin nahin nahin nahin

So We Understand Each Other...

Just completed The Motorcycle Diaries. First the book and then, the DVD movie.

Although I had purchased my copy of this all-students-must-own book two years ago, got around to reading it now. Post vipassana. Post - well, so many other things as well...

Am awed anew. At Che Guevara the iconoclast.

This twentieth century icon begins his memoirs on his youth thus :

This is not a story of incredible heroism, or merely the narrative of a cynic. It is the glimpse of two lives that ran parallel for a time, with similar hopes and convergent dreams.

And with these words on the first page of your diary, Che, I have felt a deep bond of kinship, that has strengthened as I have gone through all the pages. The quiet strength, the underlying sense of humour, the eye-opening moments, the loneliness of adventure even when shared with marvellous friend Alberto.

And I have felt so proud of you!

... to know that I share my date of birth with you.

... To recognize how the trials & tribulations of human lives always touched you in life, especially on this most seminal of trips when you were 23-24 , a very 'Coming of Age' age.

... To be totally moved at your vision of a single race not divided into unstable and illusory nations and narrow-minded provincialism. You mention America and mean 'Mexico to the Magellan Straits.'
I think of the entire planet. And when you describe certain lives, it is like seeing my fieldwork in Solapur come alive... Some give the impression they go on living only because it is a habit they cannot shake. I am reminded of the beedi workers met in my fieldwork again, when you say: On top of the very low wages paid in the south, unemployment is high and the authorities afford workers very little protection.
How things have stayed unchanged, Che, 40 years since you were murdered, even as the world has moved on, in man's indefatigable thirst to take control and exercise total authority.

In my need to establish more spiritual and emotional points of contact, I find I can link a few more. Some might say tenuous, but in this journal of your self-discovery, mere mortals like me shall seek other parallels with legendary souls who went on to find themselves :

... To find out you were born in Rosario, a town that I have visited up the Mar del Plata on a most incredibly memorable ship voyage (the only time I have been on a ship that actually went up a river - she traveled across the Atlantic from Antwerp, and then slowly and majestically moved up this river with breathtaking banks visible both port and starboard, all the way to Rosario) , a city I recall in vivid detail. Both its comic aspects ( my first evening ever at a sailor's 'pub' and all because I, an officer's wife, had asked good friend Piggy, the Captain of the M. V. Mannan (Piyush Srivastava actually) about where all the sailors disappeared to as soon as we berthed at any port - and he insisted I go along to 'see' for myself, much to the shock and horror of the officers but more so, those 'girls' in the pub :-)) .
Also the underbelly of the city, with the sight of its middle class begging and selling off everything owned - Argentina those days of the mid '90s was in severe recession.

To know you visited Necochea for a day on your motorcycle - a town I visited for exactly a day too, and one I recall as fascinating - pride of place in the town square held by the statue of - a dog. And where in its port, I had my first close and hilarious 'brush' with a moustached walrus. To know you played soccer and went to medical school in Buenos Aires, that city where time stands still. Where I felt I was transported into another era and catapulted as if into the insides of a beautiful movie.

You write : 'The person who wrote these notes passed away the moment his feet touched (back in Argentinian soil). The person who reorganizes and polishes them, me, is no longer, at least I'm not the person I once was. All this wandering around - has changed me more than I thought.'

The movie rephrases these original words and ends thus:

I am not me anymore. At least I'm not the same me I was.
Was our view too narrow, too biased, too hasty?
Were our conclusions too rigid?
Maybe.

Change and Che.
Isn't that true - even if not in a world-changing way - of all our diaries and journals? Of all of us? The global and universal theme of a search for one's identity.

And Che leaves us at the end of his introduction chapter 'So We Understand Each Other' thus :

It will be hard for you to find an alternative to the truth I am about to tell. But I will leave you now, with myself, the person I used to be.

Che, salut !! To the young you and to the you you became. A legend and inspiration to all those who denounce suffering. Hatred. Inequality.

From both me that was.
And the me I have become.