Jab We Met... And DDLJ

Is there any rule that states reviews of movies need to be written as soon as the movie is out? Thing is, I've just seen Jab We Met, five or six months after it got released (courtesy Moser Baer – still cannot believe DVDs cost Rs. 49/- !). Adored the movie like all met so far.

And compared it to DDLJ – again as any Bollywood moviegoer ought to have already done.

At the risk of talking about what everyone has seen and heard, here goes my forty nine paisa worth … and like a good myth and story, hope you don’t mind if the movie is rehashed once again.

I am going to first begin with comparing moms and dads. Then I’ll go along to compare trains. (Can’t help it, trains are the leit motif of my current life… indeed, have always been so… trains have taken me to known destinations, have taken folks away to destinations unknown…)

We shall also talk of acronyms. When Jab We Met is already so succinct and wonderfully Indinglish, why make a much- longer- in- phonetic-terms JWM (Jay-Double U-Em) out of it, right? Unlike Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, a local language mouthful, that just needed to be ruthlessly downsized to DDLJ, and so what if the vistas were London and Switzerland. (Already the so called younger gen Adi Chopra and Karan Johar with their KANK, KKHH, K3G sound passe, the speed at which things move in today's planet!). And if there is time (which I am sure I’ll find since I am procrastinating in the writing of my forthcoming international presentation), we shall talk of Hindi movie ishtyle ‘pyaar-vyaar’ in the ‘90s versus the ‘00s. If not of earlier.

I begin with a question to Javed-saab. After all, you & Salim wrote the ever-eternal and cult-following line ‘Mere Paas Maa Hai’ in the ‘70s.

How do you place the character of Shahid Kapoor’s mom in the story? Is she present or is she absent? If she is present, why is she voiceless? If she is absent, why is she present at all? At this rate, where do you think, is the ‘mom’ likely to be headed in ten or twenty years time?

And which one was the bride’s dad exactly? In DDLJ, Amrish Puri was the hugely larger-than-life, humungously louder-than-life father-figure. Here, in Jab We Met, for someone who was not paying all that much attention to inessentials (me), there was some confusion between Kareena’s ‘dad’ and ‘chacha’ with the two characters seeming quite interchangeable. It was grandpa Dara Singh as created by Imtiaz Ali that had a firm grip, and always stood out, ancient deer antlers above him, true relics of a bygone era.

Point kya hai, you ask? Point yeh hai, ki grandpas are always putty in grandchildren’s hands, and if we now celebrate ‘family’ by blissfully rubbing out the beech-wala generation, it only means what we have all always known but never been ready to face. The face of future India is one in which we parents shall be present if we sort of fit in, within the youth’s scheme of things! And never you mind all that gyan about Indian tradition that reveres age and experience.

And so. While both movies celebrate the ‘no cause to rebel in life, everything is so hunky-dory’ post-liberalization phenomenon, chronologically the initial one that had to come along and pave the way was DDLJ. This movie indicated that prior to boy and girl coming together, huge labour pains in the form of garmagaram family dialogues, even painful and gory violence was necessary. Whereas by the time we reach the more recent Jab We Met, we see that we can conveniently brush off all family objections by a simple ‘Oh, they’ll come around, give them time’. Conservative attitudes of the girl (remember Kajol?) are passe, and as long as she is 'true' to her love, the family is with her. We can even 'happily run away' from reality. It is the modern pyaar version… If the guy and gal truly script their love together, other family members merely provide the much needed props and the backdrop. Along with Bollywood things like the fun Pritam soundtrack, halt-in-the-tracks lines such as 'Manzil se behtar lagne lage hain yeh raaste' and endearingly choreographed dances. Where the bottomline is Jo kuchh insaan real mein chahta hai na, actual mein, woh usey mil jata hai.

And then the whole train thingy. Today, we stand proud in our own Indian skins, and Laloo-land railways is good enough for us, thank you very much. London and Switzerland give way to Ratlam, Kota and Bhatinda. And although we laboriously lock and chain our belongings in real-life trains, sleeping fitfully and waking up with a start to check if all is in place every few minutes, in reel-life it is absolutely possible that we have all our stuff carefully delivered at the next station by a station-master we rude-talk to.

Am I beginning to sound whiney now? It is true I pretty much thought DDLJ was over-hyped, once upon a time. But believe you me, I loved, absolutely was smitten by Jab We Met, and have now seen it four times in three days (the new Rs. 49/- pricing feels even more paisa-vasool - value for money, the more you see it) and with the round-the-clock presence of a movie at home that has an eleven year old in it... it may actually be more than 4 times.

Imagine. If we extrapolate this to my fellow Indians, who are all much quicker off the mark than I have been, I cannot even begin to imagine the number of times we have all met up with Jab We Met so far.

A final curious question – do they still run that DDLJ daily single matinee at Maratha Mandir, as proudly as ever? God! What an anachronistic contrast! :-)

In the Holi Interstices of Life

Tough to know if I'm coming or going - this frenetic month. But experientially rich nonetheless. Moving from the left to the right of the country. To top everything, my letter ‘a’ of the new E series cell-phone decided to go defunct & hide itself. With life and business being conducted on the sms, I find I do figure out w'ys to keep ‘a’ out of the picture. Soon, even seem to think with no ‘a’ in it! This write-up till now, title et 'l, without ‘a’... But most irrit'ting. Vowels r essent'l like so m'ny other ch'r'cters, in life. Not complaining too loudly since this cell-phone is one’s client too!

West Bengl, Krntk, Mhrshtr… Brdwn, Kolh’pur, Sol’pur, Bij’pur. Unilever project in smll towns, plus PhD fieldwork. Not to mention qlty time with mom in her vill’ge school in the birth village of Sri Ramakrishna, Kamarpukur, district Hooghly, where she is now resident past one year. And then, b'ck to short interv’ls at home when - here - m comfort’bly living out of suitc’ses.

Just bck fm an outstn trip – t’ken with family in tow ( me on work at Sol'pur… dtr on her spring break in school, hubby's decided to recruit in sm'll town desh, pretty successfully I might add... he got some excellent engineers). Str’t eleven hours drive b’ck from Bij. But wh’t a wonderful 2 day get’wy. 3 of us roadies on the Golden Q’dril'teral highway. Not knowing who we will meet next, where we'll stay at next, eat next, see next. Qlty bonding within. With everything im'ginable b'ck in the boot – why am i pushing this non-a business to the extreme?? You want a fan? We hve a mini electric p'nkha. Pillows? Hai na. Ordin'ry nahi chalega - bolster hi ch'hiye? Woh bhi hai. Gifts to give junta? 300 of them (OK, this one ws for the Sociology PhD fieldwork). ‘Discovered’ this new archaeological marvel at the Mhrshtr-Krntk border, tks to the excellent archaeologist Dr. Jadhav of Solapur University for pointing the place out.

KudalSangam, next to the coming together of the two tributaries of Krishna river, Seena and Bhima, and here an unbelievable eleventh century temple. Surrounded by miles of untouched greenery. Two garbha-gruhas side by side inside the temple that has emerged just six years ago, from centuries of being hidden – one for Shiva and one for Vishnu … with novel frescos on the ceiling carved out of single stone representing the bala-krishna, that you can twirl around 360 degrees and look at. Sunlight that reaches deep inside through seven doors in a direct ray, only on the solstice of 14 - 15 Jan every year.

And what a magnificent sight.... the 360 torsos each jutting out from the lingam - together in the shape of this large elegant shivling. Never seen anything like this anywhere. 360 is the number of days in the Marathi calender. The two huge Naga wall frescos were equally mesmerizing. Snakes have always held our fascination down the millenia. Sudhir Kakar has an excellent analysis in 'Intimate Relations' - what a book in every which way.

I tell you, what a country we belong to. Hidden treasures everywhere. Spotted by just a few. In the people, in its towns, in its digs. Folks ever smiling in spite of the worse possible struggles and situations in life, in the eternal and somehow assured wait for emerging triumphant. The Shaikh family in Solapur, that gamely moves along debts and all. The Nagane family hit by yet another tragedy after the third daughter's wedding. This other woman just met, with three children, who makes beedis and earns Rs. 35 for every 1000 made (and if the raw material provided by the factory owners runs out before the magic figure of 1000 is reached, she is expected to replenish at own cost) who wants to give us 'sherbet', yet another family who makes the cylindrical paper package covers that cover the tobacco sold in villages. She gets Rs. 5/- for every 1000 such covers made. We time her. She takes 6 seconds to make one.... Average of 9 per minute, that is 500 per hour, and thus two hours of working like a machine with no break gives her rupees five. My daughter is awed. By the value that the same money that carelessly passes through our hands, can command.

Bijapur – one more town that is so much a part of this nation, yet not quite on the beaten trail – with its Gol Gumbaj of the Adil Shahi sultanate. The original geodesic dome. HUGE. Made around 1640. A whisper at one end of its inner ring verandah that is at 7 floors height - we go up the minaret on its outside, what a view! - and this can be heard at the other distant end of the cavernous inner diameter. Even the rubbing of the palms (as instructed by a helpful fellow tourist, what would we do without them) is clear, and I as I walk to the other end, I overhear my daughter quietly negotiating the next Coke with her dad, even as they wait for me to reach the other end. I whisper a 'No thanda' firmly, and they are both startled at the clarity. The Adil Shahi must have turned in his grave deep down there below at mundane Coca Cola conversations.

If he hasn't already done so that is. He has his wife tombed on one side and his 'Hindu dancing consort' entombed on the other :-) , so we were told - again by yet another helpful chap .

Right now, back here on this holiday, every neighboring apartment building worth its brand new sturdy foundations is strenuously playing up the loudspeakers. The one to our West is playing ‘Harre Ram Harre Ram Harre Krishna Harre Ram’ from the movie Bhool Bhulaiyya. Our lobby – building friends have by now called at least 5 times asking us to come down and join the community celebration – is playing Nagara Nagara Nagara bajaa. The reverberations of the hits of 2007. A building further away is playing a more ghisa-pita old Holi song. Some silsilays are best erased yet remain a burr deep in the mind. What to do. Sounds of actual drums also. The mishmash in total – surprisingly – is not cacophonic. Ek ajeeb sa festive sa mood hai. Sounds. Colours. Smells...

Home reverberates with the khandaan. The three musketeers – Isha, Anupama, Ishani – ages 11, 10 and 9 – have at last managed to pester their Ron-kaka to wake up, leave home and bring abeer and pichhkaris. Their two grandmoms from Kolkata - Thamma and Bubu have at last located enough purana kapda for all to wear. Chhod-dada, their favorite grandpa visiting from Kolkata, insists on sleeping through it all to their chagrin. Aja, the other favorite and resident grandpa has refused to step out of his home at Powai Park. Bulpi-pishi is busy dishing out cheese omelettes, and Tina-kaki has just got the terrace ready water pipes et al, for the imminent dunking session. Breakfast has also triggered IAI to go make a ‘fruit-chaat’ for all. 3 bachchas plus 2 adults in the kitchen (not me) – it is a happy and holy mess all around. I love it!

But I digress. Where was I? Yes, in Bijapur. My holiday reading was ‘The Routledge Companion to Post-Modernism’. My attempt to make sense of subjects such as Critical & Cultural Theory and my life – not necessarily in that order.

And my daughter Isha was reading Skellig.
Her homework assignment from school. I tried reading it. A play with a 12 year old protagonist Michael. Who discovers this creature in his garage. Who loves Chinese food, but could be an archaeopteryx. Or is it all in his imagination? His friend Mina can see it too anyway.

And does having the main character as a child, make the book a children’s book? More so, a padhai wala book? Talk of post-modern works. If I began the book clueless, have ended it even more mystified. Can’t imagine our Indian boards – ICSc, CBSE, any of our state boards ever recommending a book like this as part of academic reading. What is this book?? Is it weird, or what!

Yet it is a compelling play. Compelling also in its lack of a clearcut narrative (belied by the presence of a ‘narrator’ on every page). The only aspect that makes you do a double-take is that this book is supposed to have won quite a few awards. It's a very recent book released in 2003. And the ultimate paradox - it's a recommended book for 11 and 12 year olds in an IB school. Post-modernism turned upside down. Have asked my daughter to explain life as the book and the character Skellig sees it. If this is essential reading, I am surely missing something - perhaps need to understand life as the nextgen sees it, once explained to me.

And with this general delicious feeling, I now go back to catch a much needed and well-earned snooze. On this lazy frenetic, noisy day of Holi, life is quiet.

Managing Hurt...

This is something Swami Chidananda sent - as usual his timing is impeccable! (More on him in www.fowai.net)

When a blade hurts us physically, there are medical means to heal the wound. Let us consider here psychological hurt, and see what can heal the injury.

This topic is of utmost importance. All spirituality is essentially about being free from hurt. When our mind is totally cleansed of all the scars of the past, that itself is moksha, liberation. The root cause of hurt and of its continuation is one and the same in the cases of other common psychological ailments such as fear, worry, greed and jealousy.

We say, “I am hurt.” The wise ask us, “Who is hurt? Who or what is that ‘I’ that is hurt?”

The entity that is hurt is a conception of I. Many thoughts, born of memory, build this concept. If I have enjoyed fame and name for years, there is a large bundle of memories of all that and I carry a ‘me’ that expects special regard and attention from others, who are common men (and women) in my eyes. When I do not receive any special consideration, it hurts me. Even in the case of a relationship between just two people, it is the attachment to memories that keeps certain expectations arising and, when they are not fulfilled, there is hurt. Go anywhere in the world, you will soon be caught in the net of expectations. Spiritual centers are no exception. You expect the so-called gurus to constantly pay attention to you; what is more tragic, some (unripe) gurus seek attention or continued admiration from a good number (if not all) of their followers.

A mind that expects nothing cannot be hurt. Such a mind is an empty but alert mind.

We cannot go far by merely deciding not to expect. Willpower is a charming aspect of mind’s capabilities, which actually is utterly incapable of blessing us with true freedom. Intelligence and willpower are poles apart when it comes to how they influence the human mind. The former is born of total seeing while the latter breeds on partial consideration. With willpower, we may win battles but are sure to lose the war. Its glories are short-lived and it puts no end at all to any human misery. Will power gives us energy in a chosen direction and helps us achieve tasks but we are back to square one very soon. Intelligence removes basic misconceptions and leads us to illumination.

We need to give up our hurried ways that often border on panic, and take a dispassionate look at how we think. What drives our thoughts? Does a certain self-image act as the basis of all our reactions to situations? Is this image closer to facts or is it sustained by fancies?
Do ideas of ‘what we should be’ have a great power to shape our thoughts? Is the fact of ‘what we are’ on the back seat, helpless and hapless?

True intelligence is the ability to see through the games that our own thoughts play. It is about gaining basic understanding of how the machinery of thought functions within us. It is not a matter of generating great thoughts; it is rather made of insights into the structure of thought.

Self-observation, carried with intelligence, dismantles all the images in the mind. The walls of the hall then shine brightly without the clutter of too many framed pictures upon them. Such a mind comes upon silence. It has transparency. Old hurt leaves it and new hurt cannot then be.

Swami Chidananda

Monday, March 17, 2008

MANY LIES, MANY MASTERS…

1.5 million copies sold. Says the jacket. True story, it says. Of a psychiatrist, his young patient and the past-life therapy that changed their lives.

I made my 18^th attempt to complete reading ‘Many Lives, Many Masters’, my interest in half life mode. i.e. going down exponentially - half-hearted as compared to the last time I tried reading - each time.

How come so many folks swear by this book, and I find the going so totally uphill?

Don’t get me wrong. I would absolutely love to do a past-life therapy on myself. Imagine if science can get my DNA to talk, and tell its fascinating history. Imagine – if I can re-look at the seed of me that existed at an earlier point of time – for something of me was there, always, in the past, that is as sure as I stand here living and breathing.

If I decide to begin my journey, say, a mere hundred years ago, there are clearly eight people I am, for sure, merged in – the four sets of parents of my grandparents. Each with future bits of me… my predilections, my genes, my inherent tendencies…Ah, that’s the one I got the dust allergy from. Oh, he’s the one who dislikes sweets, is it? And wow, look at how well she sings and plays the instrument – why did this gene evade me? My ancestors, while they gave me the genes, what I would love to know more of, is what is called the ‘environment’ they each lived in - each bound in social roles, so many untold thoughts, so many untold histories. And all stories, in a real and fascinating way, enmeshed deep deep inside me, in the mist of the past.

Imagine. As I go back further and further in time, there are not just eight, but perhaps hundreds who I am, in a real sense , a part of back at any point of time – I am a living proof of their presence on this planet today. This is such a soul-stirring feeling, such a seamlessly connected to the wide world feeling, so much my-continuing-life feeling. So simple in the truth in it. So awesome too.

Just like the flower blooms so simply,

The morning in my life has woken up the same way.

… and I hope that my evening time also recognizes

To end in the same tune…

Tagore, I think. Who else can put in focus, our time on this planet, so well.

And science tells us there are no endings. If I am a drop in the ocean, I am so, along with billions of molecules. When I merge and go back, and then re-emerge, it will be as another combination of molecules perhaps, but what a mesmerizing history each subpart might have. Like the billions of strands in the double helix of my DNA.

Yet, what do we do - we look at the whole, and seek the past of the complete drop as such. That is because we are so attached to the 'me' of this life!

That’s what this Brian Weiss is missing the point on. When the true reality is so very fascinating, how can these descriptions of past life, by one young girl – each sounding suspiciously like some pages out of a school history text book hold my attention? I mean, her past lives (and the many masters) would do yeoman service to the world, not by providing what is being presented as 'gems of wisdom' but by perhaps going to times that would make it truly incredible - such as deciphering the Indus Valley script, no? Why isn’t anyone ever from some place like this, in her past lives? And that’s the basic defect in the Weiss logic. That he well camouflages under the academic degrees, and with continuous explanations that he rambles on & on about - of his own doubts, and thus smartly tying up of every loose end that could degenerate into outright suspicion by other readers such as me, of course written in a fairly easy to read style.

But then, if indeed she had deciphered the Indus script, the irony is that the book may not have become this famous. Whoever heard of reality – such as archaeology – sell a million and half copies? And that is a telling comment on what we humans seek – doubtful answers to the unknown are always more interesting than some proven and concrete solutions.

I loved watching the movie Ghost – still watch it if I catch it on any of the channels. Enjoy the chemistry between Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, and the story is one you want to believe in - you want to imagine it real. It is exactly what a good 2 hour movie is supposed to do – provide entertainment, in a world of make-believe simulations outside. I loved reading Roots too, once upon a time, and could never understand why folks dissed the book saying Alex Haley created a work of fiction. So what? That’s great, it was well-researched, and an important addition to the racial anthology, I felt.

But I just cannot bring myself to fit this Many Lives Many Masters anywhere into my acceptance grey cells. It is a piece of shit - to me. And my opinion each time I try to complete it, only digs in deeper. And thank god for blogs where one can bare one’s feelings as it is!