A Time To Reflect

charukesi August 30th, 2008

Weekend reading - this time from Tehelka - Naseeruddin Shah on the gritty elation of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (Tehelka does have a way of putting these things- gritty elation, ok whatever) -

In those days, the titles of films were not identified by abbreviations, we just called it “this f—-ing film we’re shooting now

And

The script of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro seemed to have been revealed to Kundan Shah in an inspired moment of transcendental, if not downright hallucinogenic, lunacy. I had never read or seen anything like it at the time, and while I was not absolutely sure that it was even coherent, I itched to have a crack at it.

Totally. Have you not wondered what Kundan Shah was on as he thought up the Mahabharat sequence and the drunk Om Puri talking to the corpse and wheels, and the thhoda khao, thhoda phenko scenes?

Go read…

And if that is too tame, (coming from Tehelka, i.e.), read Kundan Shah as the joker villian…

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charukesi August 11th, 2008

I learn - Now, with the completion of 100 days in the Southern metropolis, TOI celebrated the occasion with a special 104-page pullout, ‘Chillax’, with its August 7 edition. Chillax? (cringe). But celebrating a hundred days - really? What were they expecting - to be thrown out of the theatres market, end of the first week?

And oh sorry - I just read on - ‘Chillax’, a combination of ‘Chill’ and ‘Relax’, is a common enough lingo amongst the youth and represents vigour, cosmopolitanism and youthfulness. That makes sense. Now I go try some Sleepax to see if the flu I am coming down with gonishes.

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charukesi June 26th, 2008

So Kalpana Chawla was not the first. See this piece in Time Out on Sunny the Supersleuth, a short-lived seried created by the Shavurs on the exploits of Sunil Gavaskar, who apart from his known skills on field, could detonate bombs, overpower kidnappers and fly through the air like Superman.

Don’t miss the quivering damsel in clear distress, flaming red hair and all…

The Shavurs said they were loosely inspired by another Indian comic-book series of the time, Supremo, scripted by the lyricist Gulzar, which featured Amitabh Bachchan as a caped wonder - oh, the 80s were a much more exciting time than I thought - Bappi Lahiri or no Bappi Lahiri (but then, the 90s had Kumar Sanu, so why am I cribbing?)

***
Caught Pyaar Ke Side Effects the other day on TV - scene at the pub - yaar, why are all superheroes unmarried? Ranvir Shoery as the pesky Naanu asks, and answers - Imagine Superman flying off to save the world - and his mobile phone rings -

Female voice at the other end - darling, where are you? when are you coming home for dinner?

• Indiawatch , Media Matters
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charukesi May 20th, 2008

On the same say, in agencyfaqs, two articles about advertising on vehicles - Rickshaws: No longer just a transport option and Taxi advertising: It’s an ad-cab world . You can get away from television, but never away from advertising?

On a related note, Chennai looks so much cleaner, greener, thanks to the fact that those giant hoardings, and yes, even gargantuan cut-outs and posters (both cinema and political) have all come down. You can actually see trees now, said a friend who’s always lived in Chennai. As this article says, Hoardings disappear, Chennai reappears.

Of course, now in place of hoardings, there are kiosks lining the road along the side and the middle - step out of the airport and you are told (you cannot miss it) - if it is Chennai, it is the Hindu - oh really, what about Times of India then? you may well ask… In response, Times of India has kiosks (squeezed in wherever the Hindu has left space) saying -Times of India - Changing Times (or tunes?)

As I drove out of the airport and made my way towards Guindy, I was reminded of Delhi say, eight years ago when ToI and HT had fought a similar kiosk war…

Related posts : Advertising to invade textbooks

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charukesi February 27th, 2008

Time was when, finding myself otherwise jobless (which is all the time) I used to head to rediff.com for my daily dose of entertainment. Insipid stories, terribly written out - but the comments following the articles making every moment spent on the site worth it.

It just seems to be getting worse… The problem is when good writers sneak in their pieces when no one (viz. me) is looking - and the same kind of comments show up.

In February, Sidin’s hilarious How to score a Valentine’s date in 10 days! attracted 86 comments, ranging from the mildly abusive…

v-date,bulshit
by Supriya mehta on Feb 09, 2008 12:31 PM | Hide replies

Hi,Ithink your analysis about girl is totally incorrect,& u has enough time to spend , making showoffs, did you personally ever tried the same,kindly lets us know the result,it’s a totally rottan idea.

…to the sincerely woeful…

Valentine’s Date
by cute plumcake on Feb 09, 2008 10:52 AM | Hide replies

Sidin these are cheap tricks yaar… to find a soul mate you need to be truthful to yourself and lovable..

I mean, how can one not feel all warm and fuzzy about ‘cute plumcake’?

Immediately after that, Anita’s travel piece on Top romantic spots for a perfect Valentine’s Day. The comments which are as always irrelevant or rude, suddenly take a turn towards ‘down with western culture’ - India survived for corers of years without vanentines day. Only two hundred year old country like USA is teaching us the way of expressing such love. New generation is falling for it.

Corers of years. Indeed.

This commenter Jayant Tilak goes on and on, to end with - Only those can respond, who can give their very considered opinion. No foolish comments expected please.

And poor Palani was disappointed, he expected to find out about erogenous spots and found himself reading about cool getaways instead - and suggests rediff has manipulated the title to attract readers like him - why not call it places instead of spots, he asks.

I mean, what? When is rediff going to get a comments filter or any kind of policy at all? On writing, reading, commenting…

So, here is what I have been wondering - why would good writers want to write for rediff?

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charukesi January 14th, 2008

At home in Chennai, the TV is always on, background noise to drown the noise of the T nagar traffic. And for my parents, noise that is vital in an otherwise silent house with just the two of them. And so kolangal kolangal, la la la la it goes in the late evenings, and news headlines through most of the day, and assorted soaps and game shows, interrupted by thunderous voices announcing indiya tholaikatchiyil mudal muraiyaga - for the first time in the history of Indian television - and what? a movie released six months ago to be shown on Sunday afternoon. History of Indian TV, indeed. And what is with that thunderclouds and lightning announcement tone?

… As I write this, Barkha Dutt is asking the studio audience what they think about writing explicitly about sex on personal matters on blogs. And I have one eye on the TV, and my peripheral vision shows my mother deeply interested in what Meenakshi Madhavan is saying there, and someone in an armchairy analytical way is saying something about blogs being “self-affirming and empowering” - “holding forth to an audience…” (turns out she is a psychologist… sociologist?). Oh, never mind.

About when the fates conspired.

Last night on one such Tamil show, two “teams” sit opposite each other, women in their twenties and women in their forties. Mothers and daughters, perhaps. Definitely women from two different generations. I do not know what the discussion is all about - till one of that twenties says on the mike - I was always jealous of my mother while growing up - she was more beautiful… she had “more color” (local term for fairer). I kept cursing fate for being so dark And when I got married, my mother-in-law said, I hope your children do not take after you and take after your mother instead… But vidiyin vilaiyaattu (game played by fate?) and my children are also dark…

Thunderous applause from the audience… I wonder if the woman is happy - atleast my children are not growing up jealous of me?

• Society & Development , - Television
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charukesi August 24th, 2007

We have finally started watching the Jeeves and Wooster DVD set I bought recently. My husband and I have read each of the books so many times that it is great fun knowing what line is to come next - the anticipation and then the pure pleasure of hearing it said in those rich English tones.

As difficult as it is to recreate the magic that surrounds Wodehouse language, the series has managed it considerably. This is what I found on the P.G.Wodehouse books website - In 1989 Stephen Fry & Hugh Laurie were approached about playing Jeeves & Bertie Wooster in the first television adaptation of PG Wodehouse for over twenty years. They were initially unconvinced about taking on the characters However after seeing the quality of the scripts they agreed.

Hugh Laurie is just perfect as Wooster - he is my idea of Bertie - bumbling and clueless. Stephen Fry as Jeeves, while is superb, is taking a bit of getting used to. For one, I had always pictured Jeeves as older, much older than Bertie. I have no idea why. And then, there is that smug look on Fry-Jeeves’ face that I cannot digest - Jeeves does not smile that way, if Jeeves if feeling smug (as he no doubt does all the time, what with Bertie’s negligible intellect, I am sure he does not show it that way.

We were watching “Gussie presents the prizes” last night (one of my absolute favorite pieces from PG) - and in the first scene, As Gussie steps out of the cab, my husband and I both identified him correctly. And then at Brinkley Manor, Madeline Basset was just perfect, soppy and treacly as ever. However, a different Madeline Basset in the other episodes, nowhere near Wodehouse’s Basset - none of the soupiness.

And I immediately thought of Amisha Patel - my perfect Madeline - from whose lips ‘don’t you think stars are god’s daisy chains‘ would not sound terribly preposterous. Or even every time a fairy sneezes,a wee baby is born (which as we well know, is not the case). And from there to wondering who the other characters (from Indian TV / cinema) would be was for me but a morning’s job - the closest I could come to Wooster was Ritesh Deshmukh (yes, I know, it was a pleasant though not very fruitful morning I spent on this) - so who will your Wooster be? and Jeeves?

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charukesi May 13th, 2007

Life in a.. Metro. Caught the show first day (a thing I rarely manage). The movie juggles (mostly unsuccessfully, I think - simply because you just sit and wait for the act to fall apart) several characters, each of them related to others in the movie one way or the other. (Just to tell you - I developed a crick in my already painful neck from keeping track of who’s bonking who and who the who is actually married to and who is related to who else how). The actors all did their bit very well but somehow I kept thinking of what I read somewhere - that Konkana Sen Sharma had signed on the movie without even hearing the script. Not that she got a bad deal - she with Irfan felt the most real… kept the movie together in some ways.

What I loved was how the rain was almost a distinct character in the movie… For all the references to metro (local trains), the rain was what defined the city best in the movie - sudden showers, umbrellas open, people going about their work as usual. Sharman Joshi throwing away his umbrella just to walk under the same umbrella as his love, Kangana Ranaut… ek aleki chhatri me aadhe aadhe bheeg rahe thae… Uma and Baradwaj in their reviews of Metro have mentioned the rain, each giving a different meaning to its role in the movie…

I can think of only two other movies (songs actually) where the Bombay monsoon has been the central character, the actors flitting in and out of it, almost peripheral to the rain which sets the mood. Rimjhim girey sawan - the one sung by Lata, not Kishore (which while is wonderful, does not show Bombay comes to life during the first spells of afternoon showers in June) - Maushmi Chatterji getting wet in the rain in gorgeous, squeaky-cleaned-by-the-rain South Bombay - pehli bhi yun toh barsey hain badal, pehli bhi yun toh bheega tha anchal - but now with romance in her life (a smooth-talking Amitabh Bachhan) the rains suddenly assume new meaning in her life.

And then sawan barse tarse dil in Hariharan’s melting (he surely deserves much beter than what Bollywood has given him so far?) and Sadhna Sargam’s melodious (and non-sqeaky) voices (listen to it here - opens only on ie)- I remember a longish stint I had in Chennai in 2000; unwell and jobless, I was watching television when I caught this song for the first time - and I ached to be back in Bombay. Bheege balam, phisle kadam barkha bahar me - all the romance and magic of the monsoon, with all the mundane and inconvenient phisle kadam (the girl falls in love with a most unsuitable boy - from another caste? religion?).

The rains in Bombay are like your long-awaited trips home - or an eagerly expected guest - the first few days are magical, wonderful, everything you hoped and waited for all this while - and before the week is out, real life slowly pinches its way in… Life goes on as earlier, you work your way around the rain (or the guest) - and also enjoy those rare flashes when you realize all over again how grateful you are for this - the rain - or this trip home with a family that dotes on you…

But for all the slippery muddy roads, the post 26th July paranoia, the clothes that never dry, the trains that run late, the slush and the misery, Bombay rains make me mushy. They mean to me long drives to the hills. The monsoon to me is a time to dream, when you look for excuses to stay back from work, and sit at home, sipping chai, listening to the rain outside. When you want to drive to Marine Drive in those short no-rain spells, just to breathe the smell of corn getting charred on coal, and feel the giant waves leave gentle salty drops on your cheeks.

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charukesi April 14th, 2007

Alistair gets 6 months for killing 7 people - front page - Times of India (link when it gets uploded on their website - for now, log into their e-paper).

Dilip in country you know - But please do not worry particularly about public reaction to this sentence. Because — so lucky! — it came down when people are occupied with a far more vital discussion in the same country: about patriotism that may or may not flow from cakes and instrumental versions.

Come now, Dilip the TOI does ask for reader responses - do you believe justice has been done? - in mytimesmyvoice, no less…

So what if they expect readers to express their reaction under the subject : World Cup - surely supporting the country’s cricket team is patriotic too? I guess this is just ToI’s way of showing what they have learnt over years and years - there are some subjects which are sure to gain public attention and some which never do. Insults to national honor and a losing sports team belong to the former.

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charukesi February 23rd, 2007

Now that the dust has settled over Guru, the reviews have been written and read, and reviewed in turn [many bloggers in the entertainment space - and otherwise - seem to live by this simple adage - when in doubt, write about Maniratnam], I can say this aloud. Why did the movie need Gulzar? for ta ne na ne and moyya moyya and emo emo emole? And I listened to the tape again and again in the car….

Gulzar was not in the gimmicky hummable nonsense - he was in pheeki pheeki beswadi yeh ratiya… who else could write about flavorless nights with such ease and elegance? Surely, when it comes to things earthy and physical, there is no one to beat Gulzar. Geela man shayad bistar ke paas pada hai [Izaajat] - I cannot imagine anyone else using the word bistar in a song and making it sound oh, so romantic and soulful and not crude and item-numbery. And raat kat jaayegi toh kaise din bitayenge [Sitara]. Matter-of-fact acceptance of the ease with which nights get spent in the company of the loved one. And from the same song,

Mere ghar ke aangan me chhota sa jhoola ho
saundhi saundhi mitti hogi, lepa hua chulha ho

The simple pleasures of living close to the earth. Lepa hua chulha. The closest I have come in a movie to Bharati’s Kaani nilam vaendum…

Thandi safed chaadaron me jaagein daer tak [Mausam]. Anything to do with the senses…

From Humne dekhi hi un aankhon ki mehkti khushboo [Khamoshi] to (aankhein) personal se sawaal kartey hain [Bunty aur Babli]

Since I am anyway in a rambly mood, I may as well mention those phrases in tamil that have stuck to my mind the same way. Here I consider Vairamuthu to be Gulzar’s counterpart - smells, sounds, senses… pasi konda naeram thaalikkum osai sandosha sangeetham [Minsara Kanavu]

From his fist song in Nizahalgal and this memorable line - vaanam enakkoru bodi maram

and the metaphor in Payanangal Mudivadillai,

varum vazhiyil pani mazhaiyil paruva nilaa dhinam nanaiyum
mugileduththu mugam thudaiththu vidiyum varum nadai pazhagum

to the physical, sensual in AlaiPayuthey,

sonnadhellaam pagalilae purivaen
nee sollaadhadhum iravilae purivaen…kaadhil koondhal nuzhaippaen

I think Vairamuthu was there at the right time with the right people - Ilayaraja, Bharatiraja, and then A.R.Rahman and Maniratman. So, even as the debate goes on about whether there can be a great poet than Kannadasan… and what about Kavignar Vaali?, Vairamuthu remains the popular lyricist, so to say.

But as it happens, the most evocative line in Tamil film music remains for me one penned by Vaali (in the movie Nizhalgal where Vairamuthu and Gangai Amaran also wrote other songs) - pudu raagam padaippadaale naanum iraivane - create and you are god.

Go ahead, add to the list…

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