Whims published... It's not an expert's opinion, It's not an online diary, It's not a web journal... It is just my whims published

• Did you guys notice the striking similarity between the teenage sister(?) of Nargis Faqri named Mandy in the movie Rockstar and French actress Audrey Tautou; The female who played the lead role in the movies Amelie and The Da Vinci Code. I was already smitten by Audrey Tautou and now by this Mandy! Talking of Audrey Tautou, the movie I fell for her is neither Amelie nor Da Vinci Code. In fact, I am a ‘Dan Brown Agnostic’, when my friends who had read the novel were enjoying the movie in theatre, I had fallen asleep! The movie that cast the magic on me was Priceless, a French rom-com which I watched in UTV World Movies some time ago. It is a nice little movie with this cute actress in it. I would like to take the name of Priceless in the same breath as that of Pretty Woman and Nottinghill, for its high cuteness quotient. Watch this movie without a miss.
• Since I mentioned Rockstar, I must say I liked the movie incredibly. Was unable to mention in my blog as the post on it has been the state of draft for quite some time and I am failing miserably to transcend my thoughts about the movie into words.
• I know it is quite late to comment on the music of Rockstar after many people admiring it and some calling it an average work of A R Rahman. But I will comment about the film’s music anyway as I have taken the name of the movie. Remember the song ‘Masakkali’, the first hit song in Mohit Chauhan ARR combo? I remember watching the interview of ARR during the release of Delhi-6 in one of the news channels. When the interviewer asked who is ARR’s favourite contemporary singer, ARR mentioned the name of Mohit Chauhan and even hummed his favourite song by Mohit Chauhan - ‘tum se hi..’ from Jab We Met. I was not very surprised by what ARR said, because it is very common for celebs to say their most recent work being their best and to take the artist’s name they have last worked with as their best colleague ever, as they would be paid to promote their recent work. With my limited knowledge of music, I do not think Mohit Chauhan is an accomplished singer, although there is a sect of film music to which his distinct voice and style of singing suits perfectly. After all, to score a match winning century in cricket you do not need to be a technically perfect batsman. I was amazed to see almost all the songs in Rockstar being sung by Mohit Chauhan. Not sure if ARR has used the any other singer so extensively in any single movie before. I no more doubt ARR. Mohit Chauhan must be his favourite contemporary singer. I must also say, listen to ‘Naadan parindey..’ carefully. It is sung by both ARR and Mohit Chauhan. In few places, it is difficult to say who is who. In high notes, their voices blend beautifully in unison.
• I took part in 5th Bangalore Midnight Marathon which was held on 10th December. I finished the half marathon with my personal best timing of 2 Hours 7 mins and 58 secs. It was really an amazing feeling to run in the night with so many of enthusiastic runners. The energy really was infectious.
• Got to read a quote by Javed Akhthar in TOI recently, which perfectly sums up the debate of who is the master of one’s destiny. “Your life is designed by three important factors – circumstances, coincidences and you. At any given moment, any of the three could be the chief designer”.
• There is a scene in ZNMD where Farhan insists Hrithik and Katrina to take a stroll after dinner, so that he can share some private time with Nooria. On their long walk, during their conversation about the ‘type’ of guy Katrina prefers, Katrina blames Hrithik that he belongs to the type of guys who considers money as the only important thing in life. To which Hrithik retorts, “don’t judge me, you don’t know me”. I found this statement ‘very much mine’. I have said the same thing in the past many a times to different people under different circumstances. Is it the itch to shout out that I am off the herd, an exception to the generalization.. a craving for distinctness.... Hmmm...
• The mention of ZNMD makes me write that it is really amazing that Farhan Akhar is associated with all the three best male bonding movies in Bollywood according to me. He forayed into direction with DCH, then he acted in Rock On!!, which was directed by Abhishek Kapoor, lastly he has acted in yet another brilliant movie on male bonding with ZNMD, directed by his sis Zoya.
• It has been quite some time since amma is staying [vacationing] in my native. This has rekindled my passion for learning cooking. I have been trying out few of the dishes on my own with some useful tips from akka. I am glad that there has not been a disaster till date. I believe any person with good amount of common sense can never be a bad cook, but to be a really good cook, you need to have real talent man...
• Whenever I prepare some dish which has come out pretty good, I keep it in fridge sticking a small note on the door of the fridge for my cousin to taste it. My cousin who stays in our home works in night shifts. Since I hardly get to speak to him during the weekdays, the sticky notes has been the effective medium of communication between us. These handwritten sticky notes reminded me of amma teaching me to write letters to my aunts and cousins during my school days. I used to be really happy when I used to get the reply for my letters. The advent of email and SMS has killed the communication through postal letters. The joy of seeing those cute handwritten paragraphs, the crossed lines, the corrected misspelt words is certainly irreplaceable. I feel there was warmth in that medium of communication... the emails and SMSs look pale, cold and impersonal in comparison.

There has been plethora of debates, interviews, blog posts by celebs, comments and counter comments about the way Indian underbelly is depicted in the movie Slumdog Millionaire.

Before jumping into the debate, let me give you a fictitious analogy. Assume an acquaintance of yours drops into your home unexpectedly. The moment he enters the house, he observes nook and corner of your house with sheer curiosity of a newly arrived guest. He notices a huge cobweb in the corner of walls underneath your attic. Then in few other corners of your house too. Not only he notices, but also utters a word about untidiness of the house. What would be your reaction?

I hope you got the relevance of the analogy (quite lame though). Our reactions to Slumdog Millionaire or to any foreign filmmaker making a movie on the hard realities of India (that we are not so proud of) would fall into at least one of options A, B, C or D, mentioned above. Certainly there is an element of embarrassment when an ‘outsider’ points at the filth in our house.

Would our reactions be different if the movie had been directed by our own desi filmmaker?

Would our reactions be different if the movie had not hogged the limelight as it has done now with winning 4 Golden globes and earning 10 Oscar nominations?

Are we expressing the anger only because we are worried about the projection of India to the so called First World?

Why don’t we talk about Smile Pinky or The Final Inch [which are Oscar nominations for this year’s best short documentary films], which deal with similar themes?

In my opinion, after all Slumdog Millionaire is a fiction movie which deals with the hard realities of India. The movie might have exaggerated the slums and poverty in few places, but we can not deny the fact that Dharavi is the 2nd biggest slum in Asia (after Orangi Town in Karachi, Pakistan) and close to 1 million poor people of India live there in Dharavi. There have been movies in the past by Indian film makers which have dealt with similar subjects. Why should we treat Danny Boyle differently from Madhur Bhandarkar, Govind Nihalani and Mira Nair? 

If our concern is projection of India and the notions First World derives out of this, I say it is also India but not India in its entirety. Also how just it is to set our notions about a country watching the movies made on it? Or does any one ever refer to the movies or television series of a country to study the geography or history or politics or progress of that country for that matter? If yes, then it is as fair as presuming US as a land of teenage pregnancies after watching Juno, calling it a land of troubled families and pervert fathers after seeing American Beauty, To presume China as a land only about Martial Arts after watching innumerable famous Chinese movies, to presume Iran as the country where children wear torn shoes after watching Children of Heaven, to presume Brazil as the land of drug dealers after watching City of God and at last UK as land of racists after watching Big Brother! When firangs called India is a country of snake charmers, I laughed at their ignorance. My reaction would be no different if they now think Dharavi is India. 

You can only capture or understand a zilch of India in a fiction movie or a documentary. India is not only culturally and demographically diverse but also economically diverse. 

Forbes lists 4 Indians in the roster of top 10 richest men on earth, at the same time 300 million people leave below poverty line in India.

India can design PSLVs to reach Moon indigenously, but in rural areas there is no adequate transportation for kids to go to their schools.

Indian Pharmaceutical industry is one of the biggest exporters in the world with US$ 7.2 Billion (in 2007-08) but India is also known as Diabetes capital of World, It has close to 2.5 million HIV infected people, a source says the estimate of new cancer cases every year is 8 millions in India, which is one of the highest in the world.

IITs and IIMs are one of the best educational institutes in the world but the same country has innumerous Govt schools with no teachers and no proper facilities for children.

India is estimated to surpass China in population in 2030, but also India accounts for more than 20% of the global maternal and child deaths.

India has a varied caste system from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and boasts of unity in diversity but also accounts to thousands of barbaric deaths in the caste riots every year.

These are just few examples depicting poles-apart facts coexisting in this glorious country. There are things to be really proud of, there are also things that make us Indians cringe. So when there is an honest attempt of making a movie on hard to chew facts of India, do not banish the director or the movie. But when First World thinks India is a nation of slums and poverty, just laugh at their ignorance.

TOI columnist Santhosh Desai says very rightly in his last column of ‘Citi Citi Bang Bang’, “It was perhaps more understandable why we were touchy about the representation of Indian poverty 20 years ago. At that time, we feared that to be our unchanging reality and it made us deeply ashamed. Today, when we believe that India is on its way up, why do we still respond negatively?” These lines quite sum up my thoughts too.

The dictionary definition of the word ‘chug’ reads as, ‘To move or travel while making dull explosive sounds’.
I no more agree with this definition after I listen to the song ‘O sayaa..’ from Slumdog Millionaire, music scored by The God of music A R Rahman himself.

The movie is quite in news before its release in India because of the Oscar and Golden Globe nominations in four categories. I believe even the audio is not released in India, but thanks to piracy I got to lay my hand on the music of Slumdog Millionaire. BTW, I did not know who Danny Boyle was until I Wiki’d for his bio. After reading which I had to laugh at my own ignorance. It’s the same guy who has directed Trainspotting and The Beach. That adds Slumdog to my must-watch list.

Coming back to the definition of ‘chug’, the other day while I was traveling in train back to home, had a discussion with a friend about the sound of chugging of the train wheels. We were discussing the rhythmic noise it produces. I am amazed to see how ARR has used the same rhythms in ‘O sayaa’ of Slumdog. I think Shivmani and ARR when combined can extract fine quality of music from any noise in the world. ‘O sayaa’ must be picturised on some train sequence in the movie. The song begins with a pacy techno beats and magical voice of ARR complementing it. Then begins the chugging of train wheels. The beats transform to crescendo further. Now chugging of train wheels is accompanied by other orchestration and gets transcended to classy music. By this time I bet you would have started swaying involuntarily. To describe the transition of sound from chugging of train wheels to rhythmic beats, I am falling short of adjectives. So I would settle for the phrase ‘Its so Rahman!!’ Listen to it to experience the sheer genius of ARR.

Not only this, I found many other tracks of Slumdog great. As in one of the interviews Danny Boyle says that he wanted ARR to score ‘something very pulse-y’ for this movie. ARR took 2 months to conceptualize the music and just took 2 weeks to deliver this incredible product. There are also many other pulse-y numbers and classy background scores. I loved ‘Jai ho’ sung by Sukhvinder – the resonant voice of Sukhvinder makes the song even more splendid, ‘Ringa ringa ringa’ sung by Ila Arun and Alka Yagnik – brings back the memories of controversial ‘Choli ke piche’, ‘Gangsta blues’ rapped by Blaaze makes me consider him as a special talent, ‘Paper planes’ by MIA – an original song of MIA herself is used by ARR, also sounds good. ‘Lathika’s theme’, ‘Mausam & Escape’, ‘Riots’, ‘Liquid dance’, ‘Millionaire’ proves the eminence of ARR in the modern era of music. There is also a surprise track in this album, ‘Aaj ki raat’ of Don with some top-up beats by ARR. No wonder ARR won Golden Globe for this album.

Though I have downloaded the music, I am a chor with some usool you see :) So I am planning to buy the Audio CD of this album. Guys, don’t miss to listen to this audio.
I consider Slumdog Millionaire as one of the best works of ARR till date. I hope ARR wins Oscar also for this.