Giri-Isms?

It’s been some time since we have been subjected to GANGHIGIRI, a newly coined ‘cool’ term in the legacy of populist erosion and mutation of public memory. One wished that it would die out in the regular life-cycle of all the ‘cool’ terminologies, but it just continues to threaten, revisit and laugh at the vast vacuum that we have comfortably embraced and coined-IDEOLOGY.

Not only in India, but all across the world, ‘Gandhigiri’ has been promulgated, proclaimed and accepted as The Great Indian Ideological Resurrection. Articles after articles are pouring with this effulgence of reaffirmation ideology.
While my mother happily watches the latest edition of Munnabhai doing another of his countless brainless acts on the silver screen, in some far corner of the country, I contemplate upon the reasons I should react to the now-legalized absurdity.

Personally, I would not want to react to this brainwashing exercise, but on second thoughts I feel that the issue is deeper than what meets the eye. The point is not whether you prescribe to a viewpoint or not, it is about the perspectives or the lack of them that make us comfortably accept these societal (also suicidal) blunders. I am not criticizing any personal opinion on the issue; I am just bewildered by the unilateral response by all and sundry. It just does not bake my cookies just to think of the way it has been lapped up, it almost appears as if a Prophet or a Savior came and opened up our eyes to an extinct truth. I am not even going at the film, because it no longer belongs there, it has become a national obsession – Gandhigiri! A quick-fix heal for all your problems! I won’t be surprised if I see that as a punch line for the Congress in the upcoming elections, the connections with the party through the Dutt family is way too obvious to be ignored.

I am at loggerheads. May be someone can help me being more digesting of the current goings-on.




Someone has an anti-wave view, have a look:


This recent flick 'Lage Raho Munnabhai' is being lauded for popularising Gandhian thought. But really, if you see instances of 'Gandhi-giri', it wouldn't take you much time to acknowledge that these pseudo-Gandhians have got it all wrong. They have but a weak understanding of Gandhian philosophy, but still have no qualms in adopting his style of protest. This is just the normal politics dressed as Gandhianism.This has in fact been going on for many years now. Satyagrahas by politicians, for whom lying is an occupation. How many of those have we seen!Now, let's see what instance of "Gandhi-giri" the Hindustan Times has to offer.
Gandhigiri lased with a doze of realism. That is what it took Water Resources Minister Saifuddin Soz to persuade his Cabinet colleagues to junk the heavily Sankritised Gribi Unmoolan for the simpler, easily comprehensible Garibi Hato slogan [...]To drive home the point, Soz invoked the Mahatma’s advocacy of Hindustani, a happy blend of Hindi and Urdu so easily understood by millions of unlettered Hindus and Muslims across north India.
Well, I must concede that this is Gandhi-giri indeed. Only, it is Indira-Gandhi-Giri and not Mohandas-Karamchand-Gandhi-giri.
Let's now come to the biggest frauds amongst them all. The Gandhi-giri of Central Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah.
"I believe in ahimsa (non-violence) in not merely turning the other cheek, but converting someone peacefully to the cause, so all types of citizens come to accept the RTI as being beneficial to them."
I suppose that he forgot that Gandhi refused to negotiate Bhagat Singh's release with Lord Irwin despite pressure on him from all quarters to do so (in the early 1930's). Why? If this were the case, why have this man as the commisioner? Why have courts, why have laws if they are not to be implemented? Wajahat Habibullah can't hide behind Gandhi after disrespecting the law of the land. Gandhi would not have protected him.
Another rather humorous news report:

In the wake of the nationwide 'GandhiGiri' mania caused by the hugely successful 'Lagey Raho Munnabhai', comes a brand new craze that is sweeping across India – 'Giri-Giri', inspired by low-profile former president V.V.Giri.The sensation has apparently been sparked off by a rather sedate, 45 minute documentary on the rather sedate Dr.Giri called, quite appropriately “The V.V.Giri Story”, by young filmmaker Jai Shankar Iyer. “ I never really expected it to take off quite like this.”, said a visibly emotional Iyer. “Let's hope Giri-Giri can transform the nation in the same way Gandhi-Giri did. Booyakasha!”, he added, surprising those present with an impromptu Ali-G impersonation.“It's inexplicable! People all over India are suddenly solving their personal problems by attending blade meetings, shaking hands with random diplomats, signing assorted papers, and supporting Bangladesh – just like Dr.Giri would.”, said an excited Priya Krishnan, making her second appearance on Son of Bosey.

In addition, it has been reported that a disturbingly large number of people are suddenly becoming slightly balding, middle aged men who look mildly like batman. (What? Whaaaat?!? Oh, really? Just look at the picture. Hah!)“Actually, I wonder how his name can be V.V.Giri?”, asked renowned wildlife photographer S.U.Saravanakumar, currently in Bristol for the WildScreen film festival. “Technically, his name is VenkataGiri VarahaGiri, and can only be shortened to V.Giri V.Giri, or maybe V(Giri+Giri).”, he explained, displaying his keen analytical mind, and the ability to use concepts of algebra to shorten names.“Gandhigiri is old hat. Giri-Giri is the new mantra. Laisaalangadi GiriGiri. South Indians love Jangiri!”, yelled an incoherent Koidy, before immersing himself in his copy of 'Hellbrandt Grimm' once more.Various companies have already moved to cash in on the Giri-Giri sensation by bringing out books, posters, coffee-mugs, comics and videogames based on V.V.Giri. Airtel has also introduced a downloadable ringtone based on his famous speech at the Fourth Commonwealth Law Conference in 1971. After the success of GandhiGiri and now Giri-Giri, there is an unprecedented interest among Venture Capitalists to fund other freedom-fighter based Giris. Among those rumoured to be in the pipeline are SubramaniaBharathi-Giri, LalaLajpatRaiGiri, and even Khan-Abdul-Gaffar-Khan-Giri.


Here are some excerpts from an article on Boston Globe, titled “How Gandhi Got His Mojo Back”!
In India and the West, the legacies and teachings of prominent historical figures are all too often lost among pop culture, new technology, and the media. But a new hit movie in India has somehow managed to make Indians shift their focus from Brad Pitt, who is adored there, to the most important figure in modern Indian history -- Gandhi.
Gandhi's sudden popularity among all ages and cultures in India brings to an end a long period in which his fame and influence had faded. While Hollywood holds a similar significance in people's lives as Mumbai-based Bollywood, the most popular branch of the Indian film industry, and has more money, resources, and global reach, it has not been able to create the same kind of response as Bollywood was able to generate for a historical figure.
On a smaller level, Reuters India reported that a girl, Shweta Polanki, broke up with her boyfriend when he made whistling noises to get the attention of a waiter, a gesture that is belittling and disrespectful, according to ``Gandhigiri."
The actor who played Munna Bhai, Sanjay Dutt, said that Gandhi, ``looking down from heaven, must be happy to see a nation reawakened."
The actor who played Munna Bhai, Sanjay Dutt, said that Gandhi, ``looking down from heaven, must be happy to see a nation reawakened."

Another comment on the article says:
If "there is no such thing as Gandhism" as the Mahatma himself claimed, how can there be Gandhigiri? Etymological similarity with dadagiri and goondagiri offers an explanation. The craze is an astute creation of commercial salesmanship. A less profiteering form of Gandhigiri among English liberals prompted a verse in that Bible of the fashionable left, the New Statesman and Nation,
"Hitler with his Brown Shirts, riding for a fallMussolini with his Black Shirts, back against the wallDe Valera with his Green Shirts, caring not at all,Three cheers for Mahatma Gandhi, with no shirt at all."
It would be grossly unfair to dismiss the reportedly 43,870 Gandhian groups worldwide as people with an eye on the main chance. But it is entirely appropriate that today's enthusiasts should focus not on Gandhi's concept of the village but on the fun and frolic of a paunchy, ageing bleary-eyed "hero" of the Hindi screen. Rajkumar Hirani's preposterously unreal but hilariously funny fantasia only demonstrates how easily Indians are moved by tear-jerking sentiment amidst the splurge of song, dance and colour that is Bollywood at its best.

If "there is no such thing as Gandhism" as the Mahatma himself claimed, how can there be Gandhigiri? Etymological similarity with dadagiri and goondagiri offers an explanation. The craze is an astute creation of commercial salesmanship. A less profiteering form of Gandhigiri among English liberals prompted a verse in that Bible of the fashionable left, the New Statesman and Nation,
"Hitler with his Brown Shirts, riding for a fallMussolini with his Black Shirts, back against the wallDe Valera with his Green Shirts, caring not at all,Three cheers for Mahatma Gandhi, with no shirt at all."
It would be grossly unfair to dismiss the reportedly 43,870 Gandhian groups worldwide as people with an eye on the main chance. But it is entirely appropriate that today's enthusiasts should focus not on Gandhi's concept of the village but on the fun and frolic of a paunchy, ageing bleary-eyed "hero" of the Hindi screen. Rajkumar Hirani's preposterously unreal but hilariously funny fantasia only demonstrates how easily Indians are moved by tear-jerking sentiment amidst the splurge of song, dance and colour that is Bollywood at its best.


Links/acknowledgments:

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1013-20.htm

http://krcfart.blogspot.com/2006/10/travesty-of-gandhianism.html

http://www.bosey.co.in/2006/10/new-film-on-vvgiri-sparks-off-giri.html

http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/003869.html#comment94123

D O N

D O N
Music Review- Tushar Shukla


This has to be the most mature work of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy to date. Though it is hard to say if it is their best, but complex and multi-layered it is. One saw the same quality in Lakshya or Armaan.

Aaj ki raat
A slow techno groove that reminds one of Raat baaki and other seventies dance numbers done mostly by Bappi Lahiri, opens this easily consumable dance track. This one does not take much time to get to you, but this fact also dilutes its credibility in going any further than that. More than the original genre of the 70’s dance hits, this mix is reminiscent of the Akbar Sami Jalwa mixes, especially the Sami mix of Raat Baaki comes closest to it.
The male vocals have been used rather intelligently, and the beat is pleasantly underplayed. The entire track has a generally low-key, non-offensive feel to it, which works in case of the kind of expectations the score and film have generated, and the same mood is followed in the slow fade out of the song.

Khaike paan
Allusions to the original are unavoidable. But the track scores in terms of its opening beat, which is faster yet groovy. The dhin tak dhin tak dhin is very much there, even though bleeding into a smarter electronic back beat. Sung rather exuberantly by Udit Narayan, one wonders if there could be a better substitute for him.
Nice to hear him after all these days. The song raises curiosity about how SRK has realized it on screen, which I must say is some task. He has taken ample interest in his spoken interludes which gel very well with Udit’s vocal main track.
Overall, a decent effort which might not re-invent the wheel but is good enough for the given circumstances. One appreciates the restraint practiced not to alter the basic essence of the now immortal track.

Main Hoon Don
This is my favorite of the lot, first because of its cosmic feel intro and subsequent solo. It is almost reminiscent of Vanraj Bhatia’s magical theme track for Discovery of India, the TV series.
Shaan exudes the phallic power required in the track, almost to the verge of self-obsession, an essential quality present in the original Don theme too.
One special mention for the lyrics. They deserve to be heard in isolation for their selection of words. Listen closely to “bahut hi khatarnak hoon main…” and you will know why.
SEL show their class in producing the most inspiring signature tune of the recent times. This required a certain level of work and they have done full justice to it. This has been a year of good signatures anyways, be it Rang de basanti, fanaa, omkara or this one.
Another commendable aspect is the retention of the question-answer format and the self-proclamatory tone of the track.
The violin solo and the following second verse give a depth to the character and the plot. The lyrics also complement the complexity of affairs here. And this is where one registers the presence of Farhan Akhtar as the man behind the music, who gives a character to the music and does not mind that coming in way of making the music a little less pleasing on the ears.
In simple terms, one could call that experimental, but I would not use it.

Don Remix
This mix carries the chilled out feel of the album, and is again brilliantly restrained in delivery. The grunge feel adds to the abrasive and acidic complex protagonist’s character, which I must say would be the dream project of any film composer.

I wish the background score carries the same maturity and depth.


Theme music
Knock knock knock
Yes, who is this?
Don.
Slow fade in establishes the mystery of Don. And the track serves the perfect compliment to the now quintessential sound of the album, and moreover sets the mood for an adventurous cinematic ride full of chases, betrayals, encounters, revelations, sabotages and the works.


Don Revisited
Midival Punditz are a renowned name in lounge and house circles, and they serve the guest composers here to further complicate the matters!
Their sound is more lounge than SEL’s versions, but it falls in with the genre of the film, with ample gray-ness and treason.
This track refurbishes the original themes and dialogues from Don in a techno avatar.
One can’t stop wondering at the timeless wonder that this plot is, and that makes the entire project so ambitious yet intriguing.


Ye mera dil
The intro reminds one of the famous Black Eyed Peas song. It later builds the mood for a ‘jhakaas’ dance track with enough verve and chutzpah. But the track comes with the heavy luggage of being one of the most played and remixed track in party circuits, so there is not really much room left in the audio aspect to explore anymore.
Now it is only up to the video if there is any wonders to be done.
Not much to comment on the music in this one. Everything falls down in this one, does not boast of the otherwise great work done in the other tracks.
More of an easy come-easier go number.

Moriya Re
This one is an original! And a fitting conclusion to the album. The genre of the loud, Ganesha number just goes to show the diversity and command of the composers with an equal ease that they show in their more commonly found and acceptable compositions.
Shankar does full justice to the vocals. And mark my words, this will be the most famous Ganesha song ever! And will feature in the now oversized crown of SRK’s community dance songs.
Musically, the chorus is impressive in its innovation with a western blend-in to an Indian Ganesha rhythm. But many might not like the number in the album, given the overall lounge feel. But that ‘situational;’ feel might also help it fetch the brownie points in terms of the narrative continuity in the film. More so, because I am told this song introduces the second protagonist in the film, a look alike of Don. So this serves the “Ee hai Mumbai nagariya” slot in the narrative.

Drunk on Omkara

An above than average score that you will enjoy if you have a flavor for Vishal’s cinematically visual music and Gulzar’s poignant poetry and play of words in a rustic setup. One is tempted to wonder as to why his music does not excel despite every ingredient being there. May be its time Vishal, the composer gives way to a different, independent composer which might also free and not interfere with the creative faculties of Vishal, the film maker.


Beedi
Made to click, this number performs within its set borders of the ‘item’ genre. And it does impress with some innovations in an otherwise low-scope ‘pataaka’ number. The words “padosi ke chulhe se aag lai ley” loudly and proudly announce that it is a Gulzar number. Reminds one of some of the yesteryear the tracks he had done with RD Burman and Asha Bhosle. Sukhwinder provides the fillers with his now trademark rhythmic voice, which can easily substitute any bass guitar back-loop.

Laakad
Vishal revisits his obsession and successful teaming-up with Rekha, the singer, who also happens to be his wife. Together, they have created some beautiful songs in a class of their own in films like Maqbool (Rone do), Chachi 420(Ik who din bhi they), and the famous pop track- Tere ishq mein.
This one too falls in the same class, but one does feel the lack of growth from the afore-mentioned tracks. The class is there, but where do we go from there?
Emotionally, the song creates images of a post-tragedy situation, a theme very typically Shakespearean.

Naina thag lenge
Mysticism blended with purity. Slowly the cartwheel gains momentum as the song picks up in tempo. Obsession with Naina. Post midnight croonings with a touch of Sufism and desert lost-love feel.
A touch of betrayal, a betrayal that the heart readily agrees to. A pleasure detachment.
Eyes that take me through to the heavens and back, make me dream the clouds that would never rain. I still can’t afford to trust the eyes. It befuddles the rain.
Naina thag lenge. Naina baawra kar denge.
Nainon ki mat maanion re naino ki mat sunio.
They will con you and entice you and dupe you and rob you of your sleep.
The song cries, don’t love me. I am not yours.


Namak
Mujra in flesh and blood. A naughty flavor. A dramatic feel to a cinematic situation. Reminiscent of the ravines of Madhya Pradesh. Does not go any further than the rustic simplicity. The only exciting thing about the enterprise is the vocals and the words. The sparsely present electronica do not succeed in hiding themselves amidst the rural, raw orchestration. This leads to the ‘polluted’ soul of the song. Would have been much better with a truly sparse ensemble.
However, there is a strong possibility of the song growing on you.


O Saathi Re
Classic melody enveloped in morning hues. Typical Vishal feel of being brilliant but yet not out there in terms of emotional stamp. Sounds more like a remix of a 50’s track, thanks to the better experimental lounge remixes done lately.
Gives a thematic feel with the use of a piano.
The quintessential Vishal strings are very much here too. Shreya Ghoshal sounds more like Mahalakshmi. Gulzar could have done away with the incessantly used Mukhra.


Omkara
An ode to the small town ‘daaru ka theka’, the song works at a multitude of levels. An infectious beat and a haunting chorus makes this a sure shot winner. The lyrics need a couple of listenings to interpret though. Though, one might not even think of doing that given the pleasant flowing track of the Mukhra.
Vishal gets everything correct and in place in this one. Makes a perfect driving companion too. There is an undercurrent of the glorification of evil too, more towards the latter half. An impressive orchestration which elevates instead of overshadowing Sukhwinder’s magical vocals, which seem to have been tailor made for the song, or rather vice versa.

The Tragedy of Omkara: Theme Music
Not a very true visualization of a great tragedy like Othello. Falls below expectation, more so considering the neat work Vishal has done in the past with the themes of Maachis and also to certain extent, Maqbool (another film that lacked the primary attention of an otherwise infallible composer)

Inspired by Mehfuz

Early morning incense stick smoke, those sounds from the local radio getting louder with the growing din. Reluctance to get up from the dreamy bed, reluctance to enter a real world. Dream again. Don’t give up. You gotta live again. An outside shot of the street from behind the window grid. Door hai taro mein tere sapne to kya. No one will stop you, the sky. The earth. Come on now. Keep the faith. I still could hear the shehnai from the evening that I saw you clad like a bride. I could almost see you coming towards me; I dressed like a prince too. Dream again. Never give up. Chak de. Hans de. Jee ke dikha. That long queue on Mother Dairy. That rush for getting the spot behind ‘her’ in the long and pleasant wait for my turn. Khoya hai tu kahaan. Jo hua so hua. Tere aansoon lakh lakh takaa dein. You are the hope. You are the reason. I am not going to school today. I love seeing my classmates going to school, while sipping the morning tea standing on the balcony in the morning sun in my pyjamas. I will put the TV on probably after that, and sleep after that, probably. I don’t want to decide what I want to do. Dream again. Dad will leave for office in a while. Mom will scold me again for lack of sufficient sickness to miss school. I will catch a film on TV, a film about aliens, and space ships, and lost space missions, and artificial intelligence, a film which I never knew before. Dream again. Never give up. You gotta live again. Jee ke dikha. The sleep is saturated now. Its gonna be 2 pm, time for school ki chhutti. And time for mom to come back from Sharma’s aunty’s house. Oh now I can see my classmates coming back from school. They look tired. What fun! “Hey Ajay! What happened in the Math class? I was a little sick so decided to skip school, besides I didn’t want to get punished for the tenth time for the same math problem” jee ke dikha.
Haar na maan na. Time to catch up on a daily serial that started last Monday. It comes daily! People say it’s called a soap. Weird. How can you watch the same people everyday. But come to think of it, I am seeing mom dad and didi for so long now! Even they might think the same about me. chalo, the boring soap is over now. Lets go to Ajay’s place and gain some sympathy from Aashi, Ajay’s sister. After all, I am sick yaar! Haar na maan na. Then we will play cricket and I will not bowl, only take my batting which is pending from yesterday. After all I am sick yaar! Beeti nu mitti paa. Today I will have some fun. No running towards the boundary line on that hot turf. No getting hit five times in an over by Rohan. Today he will bowl. After all I am sick.
Oh my god! I broke Malhotra aunty’s window glass yet again. I am not bothered about the glass actually. I am worried about the ball because it was mine and it will never come back. Aunty will keep it and give it to her Chunnu. And he will tease me and make faces at me all the time now. No cricket for today now.
Park View Apartments is so boring man. I wish we stayed in Sahyadri Apartments in the next block. Everything is beautiful there- the garden, the skating rink, the girls!

Since the time I decided not to think of you, I have missed you more than ever before. Ya I know I saw you with Rahul the other day in Jwaala Hedi but it might be just a one off case. I know you will fight with him one of these days. Then who will listen to your side of the tale? No I am not smiling. I simply know how things go with guys like Rahul. They don’t even know how many girls like you come and go in their lives. And here I am, looking out my window, every evening down at the sidewalk, watching you go to meet him. Tu bewafaa. I saw you yesterday in a lemon suit with a sky blue dupatta. You never looked so good. If I would like to think about you ten years from now, I would like to think of you wearing that lemon suit with the sky blue dupatta. I do not know what passes slower- the evening or the time. Few people have gathered in the garden below for evening walk but no hint of you. I can’t read into my book any longer. These diagrams of animal and plant cell are becoming alive and beginning to scare me now. May I should get my star map now, now that I think you would not come. And here comes my great neighbour, Vikas, for no reason at all on the terrace except for hurting me by laughing at my futility. He doesn’t need to say anything to hurt him. The moment I hear his chappals climbing upstairs and bang opening their noisy metal door, I know I should be pretending to look busy. From tomorrow, I will get my guitar upstairs. Or probably the walkman. See I forgot looking at the garden. Do I see you? Umm…where are you…..i can see all the regular faces but you. May be it’s a bad day. Annoying Vikas is still staring at me. no, I am not gonna drop in my occasional Hi at him. Let him stare at me for as long as eternity, for all I care. Anyways, soon I will hear his mom shouting his name out loud from down below. Ha! Then I will have a secret laugh.

I forgot you. Probably not. remember there used to be a girl you used to come to learn guitar from me. ya I know why you are smiling. She only came for two days. But the point is not that. The point is that she came AGAIN! And who can forget the funny cycle she used to ride on to come here, and the way mom used to stare at her. The second day, mom made tea for us! That was the heights. It was so embarrassing! Probably that was the reason that drove her away from me. be it some reason or the other, girls always run away from me. and remember Shilpi? The girl with a prettier elder sister, whom I used to force didi to talk and hang out with. But did was so dumb. She used to talk to Anamika, but never took me along to her place, so that I could get to see a glimpse of Shilpi and probably drop that illusive Hi. Had I gone on did’s assurance, I would have to wait for Shilpi’s marriage to visit her house. Thankfully, for the class assignment, I had a reason to go to her place! I put on my favorite and best white pullover. I thought I really looked smart in it. And oh my god! That was some day! I ring their bell and there I see Shilpi and her sister standing there and smiling at me, as if all this was planned, and only I was kept unaware of that intentionally.

Dawn over Ranjishpur

Dawn over Ranjishpur: Purely for the perverted at mind
A Gangster film noir with super star cast from Titanic 22 of Playground fame

If you're unlucky to be born into a socially, economically and racially isolated community that has poverty, crime, drugs and violence as its everyday realities, the odds are stacked incredibly high against you. It literally takes so much effort, strength, struggle and plain ol' good fortune to simply avoid becoming a gangster, let alone do anything more with life. Most who find themselves in the situation described above never even enter this fight and out of those that do - only the rare ones succeed.

A self-deprecatory self-indulgent self-destructive narrative inspired by Noire set amidst the dark lanes of Nafrat Hill, a gritty portrayal of suburban life in the badnaam muhalla’s of Ranjishpur. Life is a rare occurrence here, and smile, an occasional mistake.

Ghetto….drug dealers running the community….children taking to crime as the only available alternative for living….in this ghetto, rise these unapologetic characters who decide to legalize their endless misery and transform theirs and the lives of people around them into a life of luxury….these characters are funny yet brutally shocking….tears have no emotional value attached to them, they are a passé…agony is a way of life….loneliness is your only friend…redemption is not needed anymore, the only redemption would be escape from reality….money is more of a necessity than a reward…it is up to these characters now to either mire in their fates or to celebrate their despair…power without any character, power without responsibility, power given without a sense of reason or ownership….but as with all natural systems, this too shall saturate at some level, where some people will rise above the average mediocrity and challenge their fundamentals…absence of authority….innocence amidst the apparent intransigence….a system or lack of it that perpetuates a cycle of violence…ok now back to the game!


S T A R R I N G

KARAN- the modest madman
ALWIN- the rock star
DHEERAJ- the shameless wizard
CHAITANYA-the brat
RAHUL-the self-professed conman
DAVID- the unchallenged Don
PRINCE-the smooth operator
CHARLES-the smart talker
&
GAJAA-the man

WATER : Reflections of Reality

Chuyia's Father: [to young Chuyia] Child. Do you remember getting married? Your husband is dead. You're a widow now.



A woman trying to keep her faith and understand it. Another trying to discover a sense of self-worth by her faith in love and renewal. A man looking for a change in an orthodox world of stagnation.
The orthodoxy/theocratic theme is brilliantly and ironically juxtaposed in a continuing images of serene water of the Ganges. Water is the main character of the film. Water falling down from the skies on water down below. Water that falls down on Narayan as he is crossing the streets looking for Kalyani. Water, that young Chuiya goes to get for the dying widow, only to meet Narayan(life). The inmates of the ashram spend all their lives in the pursuit of God, yet they are damned to the neglect of an otherwise rising patriarchal society, in wake of the freedom struggle showing early colors of success. Strong element of dignity in characters that cold look asking for pity, if not handled deftly. The first shot of the lotus in the pond sets the mood straight.

Images from India, picture perfect postcard India, water as a character, rain, the Ganges, damnation, life long curse, “she will go to heaven on eating the laddoo…., and god willing will be reborn as a man…..”
Compelling sequences – the last scene at the railway station, the old lady eating the laddoo, the conversation between narayan and his friend, young Chuiya’s fearless rejection of the compulsions, “don’t let your shadow cast near us”, the old priest and his faith in faith- - bird in the cage …contradictory to expectations …self imposed prison……Gandhi…Antaratma vs. religion….”why do they send us here?...where do widowers go? Is there an ashram for them too? Shakuntala’s waking up everyone towards the end, is metaphorical of the sleeping society.


Naina neer bahaye
A lone head bends down on the floor in an empty room, against an invisible god. What is the future, what is the past? This moment too does not matter now; it will not matter in the times to come too. Still I rejoice and dance in the hope of meeting my beloved in some other world. Tears trickle down my face, still I smile. Why do I smile? Water that rubs against these stones on the bank, flowing down centuries of pain, looks pale against my tears. They seem to weigh everything on a balance of truth. Truth does not concern me anymore. I would rather be lying.
The bowl of poison that Meera drank and found her lord, did not work for me. Who would I get if I drink it? My lord seems to have left this empty room ages ago. The water must have taken him too, to greener shores. Love, they say, is like the water of holy Ganges, it makes poison turn into an elixir of life. They say I do not deserve to live too.
Love is Lord’s flute; love is Radha’s lover. This is the brook of the seven notes, keeps gushing down like tears down my face.

Piya Ho
In pursuit of my lover, I leave the shore.
In the blue moonlit night, I leave the shore.
In the waning light from the holy candles, I keep my hope alive, and leave the shore.
I wear white, and it sums up my faith.
For the millions who have left before me, and the millions who will live by this faith, I leave the shore.
My hope walks with me, and with you my heartfelt beloved and cohort, I leave the shore.
On this road of hope, you are my unwilling companion,
And in your devotion, I leave the shore.

Oh, nightingale! Tell me which way I should seek.
Oh, peacock! Wouldn’t you chant one more time what they say you always chant.

Does the one, for whom I slowly burn, know my pain?
Does the one, for whom I leave the bank, know my pain?

I hear things that were never meant to be said.
I hear songs that no one sang.

In the blue moonlit night, I see two eyes.
Eyes that say the unsaid to me, eyes that echo the blue of the moon.

Eyes that see a familiar face, the face that looked like mine.
A face that shines in the dark.

I don’t see those eyes any more.
All I can see is the unending nothingness.

And yet wishing I see my face again, I leave the shore.

Bangri Marori
Krishna, the lord, has the crown adorning his head.
And Radha has a thread around her neck.

I am incomplete without Krishna.
Krishna’s might does not need my longing.

Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me

Political ideology is something I can identify with a little more than I did before. That does not mean that I have been adopted by some former Education Minister, but just that I can see things a little clearer. What remained a far-off phenomenon for me brushed past me and pulled me in without a warning. Going by an ideology or an idea of a polity is one thing and taking a stance that is chiseled by strange occurrences, more like a cosmic phenomena, is another.
Few things that brought about this change of sorts could be my recent episodes of public embarrassment. I was stopped one night on the way home, and forced to testify being a drunkard amidst a bevy of cops who looked more like alien to me. They could have said the same about me. It looked like a scene straight out of Crash. And I, for some unimaginable reasons, was haggling with the merciless bearers of the law and legal code of conduct in an offensively aggressive tone. I had no fear, which reaffirmed their once scrawny suspicion of me being drunk to my wits. It went on, and I started enjoying the whole chemistry between me, the hauntingly empty city street, the men in khaki and the commoners in red, blues and yellows, looking paler in comparison to the bitingly gaudy color of authority. As the night went on, it brought along few more surprises in terms of my brushes with disrespect, disgust and embarrassment.
As I would have liked to believe, it should have been over with the night. But my misfortune continued the following week. And as if it was a cosmic plan to inspire me to write or do something revolutionary, event after event kept happening-people showing me the middle finger in the middle of the street for no apparent reason whatsoever, guards of my own building taking me on and asking me my whereabouts, parking guys threatening to assault me, auto wallahs showing their machismo to scare the hell out of me, and some weird French guy driving us out of our regular freak-out-hang-out-smoke-out-make-out-break-out-fake-out spot in the most possibly condescending way. Especially in the last episode, it looked like we are visiting the land of Chocolat and Champagne and had committed some ghastly crime instead of it being the other way round; excuse the ‘crime’ bit.
I had enough of all this, so came home and did my much practiced and revered intellectualization about the whole ‘big deal’ about getting raped everyday, every hour by someone or the other at the cost of your survival and apparent dignity.
Suddenly, all the exploited people in the world appeared brothers and sisters to me! Racism in the west, human trade in Africa, exploitative governments, labor laws, intellectual property, infringement of copyright, omnipresent plagiarism….like Celine Dion would have said, “it’s all coming back to me now”, or some shit like that….
Suddenly, Rang De Basanti has metamorphosed from being that cult-hit movie to an adaptation of my own life. I have become a topic of research, my angst a cultural treasure.
Frankly speaking, I do not really know if we need a revolution. I, for one, might do with one but the entire system? Probably not. And what would they do with it anyways? Tell their children they were revolutionaries? No way. It might be a personally rewarding experience to make people or authorities that stripped me apart of my self-respect, but would someone swooning over a girl in a café give a shit if I ask for a gram of sympathy? Yes. No. may be.

Documentary Films - a study

Documentary film as a very concept is something which can’t be defined in a textbook sense. It encompasses everything ranging from amateur home video to rare war footage. What started off as an exploration of the camera as an artificial eye took form of a well planned and motivated shooting exercise. There are immensely diversified forms of the medium and it would be impossible to talk about all of them even if the intentions are honest and the research is exhaustive because no matter how hard one tries, it is practically impossible to catch hold of all the significantly critical or definitive works primarily because of the absence of the very definition that we talked about earlier.
What one can do, instead, is to explain one’s perspective from what he has seen. And I would like to do just that- present my personal recollection of watching and relishing the films that I watched and relished.
If we go by a chronological dissection of the journey of a docu film, we come across the first ever films to be shot, which were the basic “discovery” and “awe” phase. The very images of those archaic films fill you with a sense of being there, as if it all were a cosmic event for you to see the times gone long back or lives lived eons ago, now left to the mercy of some film stock. Talking about film stock, it was a deciding factor in fixing the major intentions of shooting a film. Unlike today’s fortunate(or unfortunate- debatable) time when we have no limits to the things we can shoot over and over again just to get that perfect shot or that perfect still, our docu-ancestors had to make sure they were doing justice to the logistically precious film stock. So everything ranging from the subject to the location to the cast was decided once the balance amount was known, after the investment in the essentials of course.
So imagine that you intend to make a docu on railways- you would need to find out what exactly you wish to show. This concept which I perceive as Selective Filtering is the prerogative of the director. It is entirely up to him in his so-termed “subjectivity” as to how he wishes to realize the “vision” he has (if he has one). for example, going back to the Railways example, I wish to show a particular community of travelers- why they travel, do they have an alternative other than railways to commute, what is their financial state, what are the cultural repercussions of their decision, is this fact a prime mover of an economy or can be easily dispensed with, so on and so forth.
So as you saw, we might have limitless things to choose from in case of fixing the subject.
As with films, the “idea” is the closest you can get to understanding why a creative endeavor “succeeds” or “fails”. If the idea is something that inspires you to wake up in the middle of the night, take a walk and start writing, you would see the whole thing in your mind, and what could be a better example of a creative vision than this.
So if I am fired about my creative “germ” and engrossed in its appeal, I might as well be good at convincing others to see a shared dream.
We will stick to the same Railways example for convenience sake. And mind you, this is not something that I am personally close to. As a matter of fact, this would be the farthest topic from what my creative instincts will fathom. But coming back to the topic, what next? I have a brilliant plan; I have a couple of shoulders to carry it on. We sit and discuss, we brainstorm endlessly on our own perceptions and opinions about the topic. This discussion takes form of a structured paper which stands like a testimony of the process we have been through. So things are on paper now and we are all good to go realize our dream project. We hit the roads or the desired location for the shoot. It might be a collage of different indoor and outdoor locales. Some pieces might require artificial light in a studio; some might need to be interview format, while some mostly almost others need to shot in real-time on real locations like trains and stations. Apart from that, you might want to put in music and excerpts of images from different media. Again, you are the decider. What also might be required as a pre-exercise before starting the shoot is a survey or kind of a hit-the-road session. This helps in knowing the people we will work with, probably bettering or concretizing/structuring our intentions in a practically feasible manner, and furthermore get as accustomed and closer to the process as possible. This reminds me of the concept of Blocking in films, where you leave the camera on at the actual location of the shoot, for a stretchable time, just to finalize the quantity of lights, the spacing of characters, the movements, the basic vision of the filmed reality, the comfort level between the actors and the camera and the predictions of a possible fall-out, if any.
Now we have the idea in mind and on paper, the location in place, the logistics worked out. We need to fix up a shoot schedule now. The places that we wish to shoot- are they accessible legally, do we need to inform the authorities or seek permission to work under the legal framework? We need to answer all these critically important questions in this phase of the pre-shoot. The people come next. Ideally, if I were to see a film on the railways, what would I have liked watching or wished that I would see will form the things that I would like to look like in the final film. This essentially means I need to align my vision with reality. I need to see things happening in real. You might call this a script, but it is more of a cinema child- so I do not wish to dilute the cinematic terminology and would like to stick to the basic concept of an idea of a shoot.
So I write the script- the way the shoot will be done, the estimated time in reels, the things that I would like to show. Now trust me, I need to peep through an imaginary pair of eyes to see what my inside world will look from outside. The script would also have the people I wish to show, the time of the day I wish to do it at, the fictional/doctored elements involved(if any) and so on, the exclusion or inclusion of these varied elements would again be subjective according to a director.
So now I have the so-called screenplay on paper. I know exactly when I will shoot what. Now it is left to the logistics to fix days and location for the shoot, give an estimated gestation period to the shoot, talk to the actors/people, get them comfortable and rub-off their possible fear and apprehensions in facing the camera. Now it is very crucial to remove the element of camera-consciousness from the people who are being shot. The minute you get the sense of the person in front of the camera being conscious to an external presence, you lose the battle.
Coming back to our favorite excuse for a shoot- The Railways, I now know the people I would be showing on film- the janitors, the ticket sellers, the passengers, the relatives, the hawkers, the coolies, the beggars et al, how much time would each of them and why. This would depend on the alignment of individual “sequences” with the overture of the basic idea and the theme of the film. This semblance is very important. Each scene should form an important contributor, an indispensable part of the whole.

I wish to shoot a film on “The Saturated Development –Indian Railways”. It would consist of interviews with politicians, people on the road, people not on the road who write off railways as an archaic and lowly medium of travel, the artists and nature lovers who seek to explore newer sources of inspiration in the scenic countryside and the not-so scenic places en route. I would like to show some lonely shots of the train in a point-of-view manner. I would like to show why and how it works wonderfully for some and not for the others. I would like to pitch in some music to complement the feeling of journey; I would like to capture a moving India that lives on the wheels of these otherwise archaic wagons connected to the locomotive we all loved as kids.

Actuality films
Early films that delved with showing an actual event in real time, with almost no storytelling. The cameras could hold very small amount of film- may a minute or less in length.

Romanticism: Nanook of the North (1922)
A little element of directorial subjectivity comes in, with a pinch of imagination and a dash of personal motive.

Newsreel tradition: Russian Kino-Pravda newsreel series (cinema truth, or cinema verite in French), Why We Fight (Frank Capra- USA)
Reenactment of war footage by an eye-witness.

Realist tradition (Berlin, Symphony of a City, Rien que le heures, Man with the Movie Camera)
Focusing on man within man-made environments; it leaned more towards the impersonal (philosophical/holistic) or the avant garde

Propagandist tradition (Triumph of the Will-Leni Riefenstahl)
Made to serve a larger cause of administration-fueled persuasion, in an Orwellian color

Defining a Documentary Phase
Originality and rawness of the medium; improvisation; Italian Neo- Realism; French New Wave; intentional expulsion of a script, invisibility of the camera, suspension of superficiality, creative treatment of actuality.

Cinema verite (Harlan County, Don’t Look Back, Lonely Boy, Chronicle of a summer)
Although sometimes used interchangeably, there are important differences between cinéma vérité (Jean Rouch) and the North American "Direct Cinema", pioneered among others by French Canadian Michel Brault, Pierre Perrault, Richard Leacock, Frederick Wiseman and Albert and David Maysles. The directors of the movement take different viewpoints on their degree of involvement, Kopple and Pennebaker, for instance, choosing non-involvement, and Rouch, Koenig, and Kroitor favoring direct involvement or even provocation when they deem it necessary. The fundamentals of the style include following a person during a crisis with a moving camera (not a tripod) to capture more personal reactions. There are no sit-down interviews, and the shooting ratio (the amount of film shot to the finished product) is very high, often reaching 80:1. From there, editors find and sculpt the work into a film. The editors of the movement, Charlotte Zwerin, Muffie Myers, Susan Froemke, and Ellen Hovde are often overlooked, but their input to the film so vital that they were often given co-director credits. Famous cinéma vérité/direct cinema films include Showman, Salesman, The Children Were Watching, Primary, Behind a Presidential Crisis, and Grey Gardens.

The '60s and '70s
In the 1960s and 1970s documentary film was often conceived as a political weapon against neocolonialism and capitalism in general, especially in Latin America, but also in the then turbulent Quebec society. La Hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces, from 1968), directed by Octavio Getino and Fernando E. Solanas, influenced a whole generation of filmmakers.
Compilation films
The creation of compilation films is not a recent development in the field of documentary. It was pioneered in 1927 by Esfir Schub with The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty. More recent examples include Point of Order (1964),directed by Emile de Antonio about the McCarthy hearings and The Atomic Cafe which is made entirely out of found footage which various agencies of the U.S. government made about the safety of nuclear radiation (e.g., telling troops at one point that it's safe to be irradiated as long as they keep their eyes and mouths shut). Meanwhile The Last Cigarette combines the testimony of various tobacco company executives before the U.S. Congress with archival propaganda extolling the virtues of smoking.
Non-fiction film can also be used to produce the more subjective reflective attitude characteristic of essays. Important essay film makers include Chris Marker, Guy Debord, Raoul Peck and Harun Farocki.
Modern documentaries

Box office analysts have noted that this film genre has become increasingly successful in theatrical release with films such as Super Size Me, Fahrenheit 9/11 and March of the Penguins being the most successful examples. Compared to dramatic narrative films, documentaries typically have far lower budgets. This has made them attractive to film companies because even a limited theatrical release can be highly profitable.
The nature of documentary films has changed in the past 20 years from the cinema verité tradition. Landmark films such as The Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris, which incorporated stylized re-enactments, and Michael Moore's Roger and Me, which made claims of chronology that were later questioned by critics such as Pauline Kael, placed far more overt interpretive control in the hands of the director. Indeed, the commercial success of the documentaries mentioned above may owe something to this narrative shift in the documentary form, leading some critics to question whether such films can truly be called documentaries; critics usually refer to these works as "mondo films". However, directorial manipulation of documentary subjects has been noted since the work of Robert Flaherty, and may be endemic to the form.
The recent success of the documentary genre, and the advent of DVDs, has made documentaries financially viable even without a cinema release. There are now around thirty quality feature-length documentaries on notable photographers, for instance, a situation that would have seemed incredible twenty years ago. Documentaries are also being released only on the internet for those with broadband access, notably Stolen Honor (2004) about John Kerry.
Modern documentaries have a substantial overlap with other forms of television, with the development of so-called reality television that occasionally verges on the documentary but more often veers to the fictional or staged.
The making-of documentary shows how a movie or a computer game was produced. Usually made for promotional purposes, it is usually closer to an advertisement than to classical documentary.
Modern lightweight digital video cameras and computer-based editing have greatly aided documentary makers, as has the dramatic drop in equipment prices.
A docudrama or docu-drama is a type of work (usually a film or television show) that combines elements of documentary and drama, to some extent showing real events and to some extent using actors performing set pieces to take dramatic liberty with events.
Mockumentary, a portmanteau of mock documentary (also fictional documentary or false documentary), is a film and TV genre, or a single work of the genre. The mockumentary is presented as if it were a documentary, though it is not factual. It is a commonly used medium for parody and satire.
Mockumentaries are often presented as historical documentaries with b roll and talking heads discussing past events or as cinéma vérité pieces following people as they go through various events. Examples of this type of satire date back at least to the 1950s (a very early example was a short piece on the "Swiss Spaghetti Harvest" that appeared as an April fool's joke on the British television program Panorama in 1957), though the term "mockumentary" is thought to have first appeared in the mid-1980s when This Is Spinal Tap director Rob Reiner used it in interviews to describe that film.
The false documentary form has also been used for some dramatic productions (and precursors to this approach date back to the radio days and HG Wells' The War of the Worlds).
Mockumentaries are often partly or wholly improvised, as an unscripted style of acting helps to maintain the pretense of reality. Comedic mockumentaries rarely have laugh tracks, also to sustain the atmosphere, although there are exceptions - for example, Operation Good Guys had a laugh track from its second series onwards.
Mondo film is a documentary film, more precisely a pseudo-documentary, usually depicting sensational topics and scenes.
The fad started with Mondo cane (1962) by Gualtiero Jacopetti and proved quite popular. Mondo films are often easily recognized by name, as even English language mondo films included the term often "mondo" in their titles. Over the years the film makers wanted to top each other in shock value in order to draw in audiences. Cruelty to animals, accidents, tribal initiation rites and surgeries are a common feature of a typical mondo. Much of the action is also staged, even though the film makers may claim their goal to document only "the reality". Today, mondo films are generally considered to be camp.
The Russ Meyer film Mondo Topless was one of the few "documentaries" restricted to the old midnight movie circuit of the pre-VCR era, as it explored strip clubs in 1960s San Francisco, at a time when strip clubs were a novelty in the United States restricted to centers of port-city decadence such as San Francisco.
Other examples of movies in this genre include Mondo di Notte by Gianni Proia, Mondo Balordo by Roberto Montero and Mondo Ford by Ricardo Fratelli.
The eighties saw a resurgence of Mondo movies, though now they focused almost solely on onscreen death, rather than cultures of the world. The Faces of Death series is probably the best known example of this type of mondo, or 'death' movie. The producers at this time still used faked footage, passed off as real.
The mondo film in the 21st century has transformed into a very 'in your face', gory spectacle, as seen in the 'Faces Of Gore' and 'Traces of Death' series. There is very little fake footage and many of these use news footage of accidents from the far east.
A nature documentary is a documentary film about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures, usually concentrating on film taken in their natural habitat. Nature documentaries are most frequently made for television, particularly for public broadcasting channels, but some are also made for the cinema.
Most nature documentaries focus on a particular species, ecosystem or scientific idea (such as evolution). Although most take a scientific and educational approach, some anthropomorphise their subjects or present animals purely for the viewer's pleasure.
Although almost all nature documentaries have a human presenter, the presenter's role varies widely, ranging from explanatory voiceovers to extensive interaction or even confrontation with animals.
Well-known nature documentary makers and presenters include David Attenborough, Richard Brock, Jacques Cousteau, Marlin Perkins and Jeff Corwin.
The Panda Awards for nature documentaries are given every two years.
A pseudo documentary is a film genre which uses documentary style, location shooting and actuality film footage in the context of fictional narrative filmmaking. Most notably, it was associated with a briefly popular cycle of films that Hollywood put out in the late 1940s, especially those produced by Louis de Rochemont and directed by Henry Hathaway.

Reviews
The Housewife’s Flower
A fresh and a new take on the monotonous lives of a group of salesmen in Germany. They work for a company called Vorwerk. The film in a very real and unimaginative (temporal exteriority) manner, chronicles the lives of five salesmen, they go from door to door, each have a distinct style of selling, communicating and approaching people. The film gives you a sense of proximity to life in its daily routines, in its highs and lows, and its predictable and unamusing journey. What worked for me and as far as I can guess, not for others, is a sense of identification with the subject. These were a different group of people in some far end of the world but I could see images from my life in their ‘different’ lives. The meets at the end of every business day, the continuity(or inertia of success or failure), the same disgusting feeling of facing life every morning, the forgetting phase every night at bed, and so on….

WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception)
A very bad start (the narrator trying to be Martin Sheen from Apocalypse Now- staring at the ceiling fan to the sounds of The Doors’ The End) made me think I have made a bad choice. But as the fast paced narrative took my attention, I was gripped into this rather investigative film about how misrepresentation of facts by the media in case of the gulf war and the recent infamous case of the non-existent but omnipresent WMD’s.
What it made me think was the eternal debate between form and content. And this film did it all the more, because though I must admit neither did the narrator have an incredibly impressive voice like the Hollywood actors nor the way the millions of bits from TV news reports, interviews with TV stalwarts from ABC, FOX, CNN, BBC and SKY, interspersed music bits to complement or highlight the irony of “we-bring-you-the-truth-as-it-happens-across-the-world” news reports, were put together, still I was deeply engrossed in the somehow-incongruous flow of the film. Why? Primarily because of the very subject of media “muzzling” and manipulations. Secondly, due to the investigative finesse of the director which unlike the Michael Moore’s now famous yellow-journalism genre, presents an unbiased “friendly” tone through-out. There is an appreciable level of vulnerability in the narrator approach which makes you one with the complex issues of international politics and the war tactics.