Padhna manaa hai

(Another angry post, sorry. It's an issue that has affected me personally for pretty long, and I wish I could muster Ashish Shakya's kind of humor about it, but here it is, what I've wanted to say for all those years.)


A piece of paper circulated by the society secretary has been lying on the dining table for some days. It contains a list of rules and regulations for people living there on rent i.e. people like me and my husband. Not surprisingly, one of the rules states that no flats or row houses in the society may be rented out to students. Because students are not fit for living in a civilised housing society full of married people and families with kids. But wait, are none of those kids students themselves? Given that most of us have spent a good two decades of our lives as students, it’s a wonder our parents didn’t throw us out of their house long ago. Or didn’t get thrown out by the other peaceful residents of the society for keeping students in their house.


No wait, you say, when nice, genteel people refuse to have ‘students’ as their neighbours, they don’t mean the good little kids who have the decency to stay back and study in their own hometown. They mean those pesky little rascals from far-flung towns and states who travel all the way down to Pune, the glorious Educational Capital, to earn their degrees. Aha! The point emerges. So these boys and girls are denied the privilege of living in my exclusive neighbourhood not because they study. The subtext is, that you are not welcome in my neighbourhood because you don’t belong here. If you’re not from this state, this city, it proves beyond any doubt that you are a dirty, smoking, drinking, meat-eating, floor-littering, garbage-hoarding, never-bathing troublemaker. Keep your filthy, outer-state feet off my driveway; we had it washed last month!

Why I don't wear a sari on International Women's Day

When all my female colleagues were mutually planning to wear saris to office the day before International Women's Day, I politely refused to participate. The first time I did this - refused to drape a sari on Women's Day, 5 years ago - I drew some flak from my then colleagues, notably my best friend who alleged that I just loved being different for the heck of it. Any other time of the year, she pointed out, I don't mind turning up for work draped in the national garment, so why not today? I'm sure my present colleagues and new friends have the same question - so here are some of my reasons. (Note: some bits of it are not very pleasant. Do not click if you are easily offended.)

Of variations and values

“There is only one value system in the world... and that is Indian Value system and Indian is known for that in the world... I think <> has explained this best.”

These were the ending notes of an interesting conversation I recently had with a very intelligent and enterprising gentleman. The subject of the conversation or the great thinker named by the gentleman has nothing to do with the following post. Only two phrases caught my attention:

1) Only one value system

2) (which is) Indian Value system

Our conversation was cut short as soon as we both realised that we are not going to meet eye to eye on something here. And speaking strictly, for myself, I do not want to relive the experience of trying to explain to some friends once how Sanskrit is not literally the mother of all languages. Soon after I started discussing terms like language family, language tree, Indo-European languages and their branches etc, I realised I had transgressed into unholy territory. I did not venture any mention of languages not related to the Indo-European family at all. Suffice to say, the rest of my views on value systems go to my blog, which, being sparsely read, has very little chance of offending anyone.

Dull and boring does not equal intelligent - notes on Astitva

I'll start by confessing that Mahesh Manjrekar films don't impress me much. I don't think Vaastav was the gritty saga it is touted to be, unless a generous dose of gaalis make it gritty. I won't get started on Me Shivajiraje Bhosale Boltoy, for I intend to continue this blog. So I'll stick to Astitva, the so-called feminist story - hey, I'm a woman, so I'm allowed to talk about this one right?

The film was supposed to be something remarkable, a lot of people appreciating it, and generally taken as a ‘serious’ film.

1) The ‘serious’ tag is my first problem. What’s up with all those drab make-ups and thick glasses? Agreed, a lot of middle aged women do look like that, but here the thick glasses seemed to automatically label them as good, sensible women. Sorry, cotton sarees & specs do not a lady make.

Ring out the old: some ads I never want to see again

1. Zomato.com
What's with all those thappads? Wait, don't tell me, I don't want to know. Thankfully, the ads are about the New Year's Eve, and the happy bells of 2012 will indeed ring them out. Sadly, that cannot be said about some of the other ads that are robbing me of my happiness.

2. goibibo.com
Again some thappads? Really guys, is the entire Indian advertising industry so totally out of ideas?

3. Snapdeal
I don't know if I'm offended by the sheer racism of depicting Yamraj as a South Indian villain or simply by how dumb and unfunny the ad is. Maybe both. Notice how all the most annoying ads are about websites? Speaking of which...

4. bestylish.com
"There is a thin line between sexy and sleazy," says Vidya Balan, who can incidentally use that line as a skipping rope. The 'sexy footwear' ad on the other hand, is far, far away from that line - and you know on which side it is.

5. 'December! December!'
Some car, I don't even remember which. Apparently they have some good deals going on in December. Thankfully, only 3 more days of watching that little kid jumping about with joy.

6. Tata Sky - Muffin!
Pregnant women are NOT dumb, annoying, unreasonable, selfish, obsessive fiends. Anyone who thinks otherwise, meet me outside my office unarmed and alone and we'll settle this like gentlemen.

And this is all the trash I'm exposed to without watching a single Hindi entertainment, movie or music channel. My mom was right. Television is bad for your brain. Man, do I miss Lalitaji!

The Foggy Picture

It is not easy to pull off a film about films and filmwalas. Keeping the world of the real people behind the movies clear and distinct from the filmy world these characters inhabit, without indulging in documentary-like realism is a tight-rope balance. Ram Gopal Varma managed this in Rangeela, wherein the 'real' characters, zany and entertaining and over-the-top though they might be, were not extensions of their film-within-film roles. Zoya Akhtar's Luck By Chance is a loving, if indulgent look at the world of films, peopled by very real, vulnerable and flawed characters. There were of course, many lovely films in the 70's that deliberately showed us glimpses of behind-the-scenes realities of the film world to bring out the sharp contrast between the fantasy world woven by those artists and the actual world they live in - think Guddi and Golmaal (the film shoot where Amol Palekar goes to meet his friend Deven Verma, and manages to borrow an actor's costume). Entertaining, enjoyable films with a clear demarcation between the two worlds they portray. The Dirty Picture isn't one of them.

The film is packed with subtle messages delivered with a jarring tone. In the first half, the world of the young Reshma is far removed from the fantasy-world she watches on screen. Then as she gradually makes her way into this world, her own life becomes progressively less real. I must add that I cheered for the gutsy Balan at her every scandalous move, be it her bold seduction of a leading male star or the cool retorts to an artsy director. Minutes before the interval, as if in warning, she tells you, "I'm not a film which will change after the interval." And change, the film does. What started as a mockery of the OTT masala entertainers of the 80s, ends up imitating the very genre, complete with a ramp showdown right out of Khoon Bhari Maang. It's like telling us, the audiences, that the actors and actresses of the 80s not only did weird stuff on the screen, they carried on the charade in their real life too. The result is a something that bears neither the gritty edge of a Madhur Bhandarkar drama, nor a dreamy escapism. And when the story draws to its very expected conclusion, you want to feel sadder for the unfortunate actress than you actually are.

Tu Tithe Mee - old people are not all tragic characters

Warning: This is going to be a rambling post, and incidentally it is not about Baghban. So you may skip directly to the fourth paragraph and lose out on nothing.

Whenever I hear someone talk about what a sweet, sad and touching film Baghban is, and how it makes parents reflect on their sad, imminent future, it makes me realise how little we Indians demand of our movies. Give us a kind old couple with golden hearts, a bunch of selfish kids who relentlessly mistreat them, a motley bunch of friends who help the old couple pull things together, and watch us wet our hankies. Like in many things, my dislike for Baghban stems not so much from the film itself - I think Hema Malini was looking gorgeous, and the improbability of having a teenaged granddaughter within 40 years of marriage (hastily explained in the opening scenes as a result of both Amitabh and his oldest son having married very early - what the heck?) or a man claiming to have worked 40 years in a bank which was established less than ten years before the film was made - these are all goofs that we have long forgiven Hindi cinema for.

My bias against the film comes from the fact that the story is so time-worn - I’ve seen half-a-dozen films in the Doordarshan days with similar sad tales of old people - two of them had a 40-something Rajesh Khanna play much older characters. Now there is nothing wrong in re-adapting an old plot with a new look. The thing is, Baghban adds nothing to the story by way of interpretation. The sons and daughters are all like one big, insensitive monolith. The two happy-family songs in the family at the beginning and the sudden turn-around in all the characters as soon as they learn that their old father is broke after retirement, has all the depth of a Madhur Bhandarkar film. In real life, when old parents move in with their sons and bahus after many years of both couples living independently, there always are domestic problems, conflicting lifestyles and a difficult phase of adjustment. This does not happen because either the parents or the children are bad people, but because they are different. But again, Baghban is not a psychological study, it is a Hindi film with an emotional story. And there comes the main source of my prejudice - just a few years before Baghban, there came a Marathi film called Tu Tithe Mee, whose traces are all too evident in the later Hindi film. And Tu Tithe Mee is such a gem.