SlumDog Millionaire (SDM) bagged 8 out of 10 Academy Awards – a clean sweep in all aspects! Its Felicitation and Merry-making time - not only because the movie had a smooth home-run today but also (and probably more so) because every winner mentioned ‘Mumbai’ in their speeches in a ‘never seen before’ reverence. The Indians are proud and our news channels and websites responded with their predictable and by now beaten-to-death clichéd pop ups – “India has finally arrived”. India won in the reels but gentlemen get real! I don’t think SDM won because of the way it projected India and tried to spin a feel-good factor projecting a less-fortunate rising above the ashes and ending up winning both – the money and the woman. It didn’t win because it captured the indomitable spirit of mankind or because it had the genius AR Rahman. It won because US wanted it to win or to put it better US needed it to win for reasons which are pure commercial in nature and far from creative meritocracy.
I saw SDM in its opening week in India. I had read the book before. SDM disappointed me. It would have worked big time had it not been promoted with all the “Oscar” hype and the said clichés. It was pretty similar to an average Bollywood masala feel-good entertainment caper which gets rolled out almost every third week. It has foot-thumping songs, a hero growing up fighting against all the situations and destined to win, it has a love story playing up the super-safe reunion track and it has betrayal, sacrifices and all the smorgasbord of Indian cinematic sentiments. And then it has the Indian poverty and wretchedness which always titillates the international audience. It was quite average or to put it more generously, average at its best. We make such stuff dime a dozen and thankfully, these days we make much better movies. Then why SDM worked big time for all and sundry. Let me first enlist my doubts over the factors which everyone says has made SDM such a magnificent watch:
1. The spirit of the movie – hasn’t the same spirit been captured innumerable times till date and in a much better way? Frankly in India almost every other movie is about an underdog having the last laugh. These days the mention of the phrase “indomitable spirit” sounds nothing more than procrastination. We fuck up everywhere in life (read: the world today), then we make these mind-fuck uplifting movies and celebrate the human spirit! Danny doesn’t offer anything new.
2. The technique - the Indian technicians have performed much better – watch out Binod Pradhan in Eklavya. That’s called cinematic exactitude and a top notch deliverable. SDM was good but not outstanding.
3. The Performances - I have done my R&D over other nominations – Frost/Nixon, The Milk and The Reader. I had managed sneak peeks of these movies. Thankfully SDM was not nominated in these categories because it just had no chance at all!
4. AR Rahman - The music is good but again the phenom called Rahman has given much much better soundtracks in the past. Listen to Delhi 6 and SDM would sound as if it has come from Anu Malik who has upped his ante a bit.
Then why did SDM win?
The answer is, as I have mentioned before, US needed it to win. All the major 6 studious of US are going through a low. Four of them have shown a negative growth and two of them are marginally positive. Even if you isolate the impact of slowdown, these studious have displayed a stagnant revenue growth. What they need is a market beyond US – a market big enough which can fuel their growth and give them the numbers. They need a market where there is a proclivity towards movies in entertainment. And can it get better than India. India has very limited means of entertainment and therefore cinema always enjoyed the dominance. Inspite of the huge market size, the Hindi movie is a mere $ 2 bn industry today. This shows the void and the resultant opportunity. And this is what the US studious have seen and lately started trying to exploit it. They got a beautiful opportunity in SDM. It was not an Indian movie but positioned in India with Indian characters. It has all the elements which are savored by Indian audience and it had stuff which titillated the international audience. It was not an outstanding work of art but an intelligently packaged piece of entertainment palatable to many a bellies. And this is why a movie which was supposed to release directly in Home-Vidoes suddenly captured everybody’s attention. India is a perfect hedge for all the Hollywood studios and SDM was a perfect product/instrument to enter India. Having SDM won the Oscars, I can bet that now all the studios are just ready to turbo-bat similar products in India and other markets. Its makes perfect commercial sense. And therefore SDM, inspite of all its vulnerabilities and flaws, was bound to win. As Clinton said – Its always about the economy, stupid”! This was exactly the reasons few years back when India gave the world a slew of beauties in Miss Universe and Miss Worlds (Aishwarya, Sushmita, Priyanka, Lara, Yukta – all winning almost back-to-back, why we don’t see any of them winning now?). The cosmetic behemoths of the world were looking out for a newer bigger market at that time – and they found it in India. Therefore they first built the aspirations of Indian women by making Indian winners and then fed to those aspirations through their products.
So now it seems that among other things, capitalism has taken another toll in the US society – meritocracy. Greed for money has trumped the quench for art. Does meritocracy stand any chance in today’s world or be it damned!. Well that’s another question and another debate. Right now lets enjoy SDM because it has definitely proved one thing – its not that SDM has fed to India’s popularity but rather India has fed to SDM’s success. Therefore reversing the gear, I do admit – Indian has arrived.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Jammu Vs Kashmir
I chose to write on the captioned subject because in my view whatever is happening in the Valley is one of the most defining events of the present times and something which was long in waiting and although the way it has unfolded has stunned almost all the political parties and ruling governments, yet I think that this was the only logical and predictable outcome of all the subversion and indifference which the people of Jammu had faced for past half a decade. I also chose to write this because of my deep seated despise towards English Media of our country which as usual have presented a distorted half-baked picture of the scenario in their typical condescending style. Their chat shows are a mere sham and a charade in the name of a democratic debate. I agree that everyone is entitled to their opinions but I have a problem with ones who come with a pre-determined agenda and spread misinformation to achieve that. I dare to proclaim that the English Media’s intellectual liberalism is smeared with a definite Agenda and destructive criticism and a supposedly neutral media is the most polarized platform I have ever seen. Yes, the Rajdeep Sardesais and the Arindam Chowdhris of the world play on my nerves.
Let me first put the facts in the right perspective: the Jammu revolution is NOT ABOUT THE AMARNATH SHRINE LAND and it is APOLITICAL.
The Amarnath Shrine land issue is just a trigger or rather a catalyst in the bigger frame of picture. It just gave vent to the pent-up feelings of the people of Jammu. No one can deny the fact that the interests of the Jammu citizens have been shortchanged since independence for appeasing the fickle minded residents of Kashmir. The population of Jammu is almost 1.5 times that of Kashmir, yet Kasmir has more constituencies. Infact recently the Congress, in line with its age-old appeasement policies, has stalled a move delimiting the number of constituencies in Jammu. Consequently The Chief Minister had never and can never come out of the Jammu area. Kashmiris get more ration and education subsidies and many other privileges. Every policy of Central Government is Kashmir centric and not Jammu & Kashmir centric. In short the treatment meted out to the people of Kasmir and Jammu have always been highly disproportionate skewed heavily in favour of the former. Jammuaites were unwanted guests in their own states. Then happened the fateful speech given by Omar Abdullah in the Confidence Vote session in Parliament in July. Riding away on his youthful exuberation in his speech he even dared to say that the Indian Muslims know how to fight for their rights and how they have snatched back the land which belonged to them. As expected the English Media hyped the speech and gave it an iconoclastic stature. But I wish a middle-aged pragmatism would have rather come into play that this irresponsible youthful iconoclasm. This speech was like a nail in the coffin for the pride of Jammuaites. They called it enough-is-enough and a SMS campaign was started calling everyone to demonstrated the displeasure. So the revolution actually started from the middle-class kitchens and living rooms of pushed-down Jammuaites and soon snowballed into a unprecedented proportion. It was a POPULAR rebel and not a political one. That’s different that BJP jumped later into the fray. This is a movement started by the very people of Jammu and therefore of a different stature having a deeper impact on the polity of the region and country.
The movement has made it very clear that the people of Jammu & Kashmir are not happy with dialogues alone. They need a solution now. The people of Jammu are fed up with the indifference shown towards them and they have taken it to the streets. This has left not only the Congress but also the Kashmiris astounded. The time has come to take a definite course of action…..the time has come to amputate the sore limb to prevent the cancer spreading everywhere in the body. In my view the jammu state should be separated from Kashmir. Why Jammu should suffer in order to keep Kashmiris satiated? Its kashmiris who keep on crying “Azaadi” and still keep on geeting all the goodie-bags whereas Jammuaites who are more mainstream get a slipshod treatment. In my view this is the golden opportunity to take a corrective step to mend the historical blunders. I propose a three way approach:
1.Separate Jammu and Kashmir into two different states
2.Purge Kashmir off all the separatist tendencies with an upper hand (refer conflict over Gaza strip in West Bank in Israel which is very much similar to the Kashmir issue)
3.Accord special time-bound privileges to Jammu to make them more mainstream.
The Congress will have to realize that one cannot run away from issues in order to avoid the issues……rather go and kill them. You cannot deny the existence of the much rampant separatist tendencies exisiting among the people of Kashmir….accept it and then crush it. Do not get into the “appease-your-enemy Gandhiism”. Its all about a perception game. You can only deal with such tendencies and Pakistan if you are stronger. Elevate yourself and use a stronger hand if required. Admonish and slap if required but believe me once things are made straight to everyone, everything will fall in place. At times its best not to give people choices……sometimes it spoils them.
I am not professing whats happening in Jammu is right but what I am trying to say is that this was inevitable. You reap what you sow. One should still take it as an opportunity and act decisive and definite. Rarely you get a chance to correct history and people of Jammu have provided us one. Lets grab it.
I leave this question to all of you…………..SHALL JAMMU BE SEPARATED FROM KASHJMIR?
Let me first put the facts in the right perspective: the Jammu revolution is NOT ABOUT THE AMARNATH SHRINE LAND and it is APOLITICAL.
The Amarnath Shrine land issue is just a trigger or rather a catalyst in the bigger frame of picture. It just gave vent to the pent-up feelings of the people of Jammu. No one can deny the fact that the interests of the Jammu citizens have been shortchanged since independence for appeasing the fickle minded residents of Kashmir. The population of Jammu is almost 1.5 times that of Kashmir, yet Kasmir has more constituencies. Infact recently the Congress, in line with its age-old appeasement policies, has stalled a move delimiting the number of constituencies in Jammu. Consequently The Chief Minister had never and can never come out of the Jammu area. Kashmiris get more ration and education subsidies and many other privileges. Every policy of Central Government is Kashmir centric and not Jammu & Kashmir centric. In short the treatment meted out to the people of Kasmir and Jammu have always been highly disproportionate skewed heavily in favour of the former. Jammuaites were unwanted guests in their own states. Then happened the fateful speech given by Omar Abdullah in the Confidence Vote session in Parliament in July. Riding away on his youthful exuberation in his speech he even dared to say that the Indian Muslims know how to fight for their rights and how they have snatched back the land which belonged to them. As expected the English Media hyped the speech and gave it an iconoclastic stature. But I wish a middle-aged pragmatism would have rather come into play that this irresponsible youthful iconoclasm. This speech was like a nail in the coffin for the pride of Jammuaites. They called it enough-is-enough and a SMS campaign was started calling everyone to demonstrated the displeasure. So the revolution actually started from the middle-class kitchens and living rooms of pushed-down Jammuaites and soon snowballed into a unprecedented proportion. It was a POPULAR rebel and not a political one. That’s different that BJP jumped later into the fray. This is a movement started by the very people of Jammu and therefore of a different stature having a deeper impact on the polity of the region and country.
The movement has made it very clear that the people of Jammu & Kashmir are not happy with dialogues alone. They need a solution now. The people of Jammu are fed up with the indifference shown towards them and they have taken it to the streets. This has left not only the Congress but also the Kashmiris astounded. The time has come to take a definite course of action…..the time has come to amputate the sore limb to prevent the cancer spreading everywhere in the body. In my view the jammu state should be separated from Kashmir. Why Jammu should suffer in order to keep Kashmiris satiated? Its kashmiris who keep on crying “Azaadi” and still keep on geeting all the goodie-bags whereas Jammuaites who are more mainstream get a slipshod treatment. In my view this is the golden opportunity to take a corrective step to mend the historical blunders. I propose a three way approach:
1.Separate Jammu and Kashmir into two different states
2.Purge Kashmir off all the separatist tendencies with an upper hand (refer conflict over Gaza strip in West Bank in Israel which is very much similar to the Kashmir issue)
3.Accord special time-bound privileges to Jammu to make them more mainstream.
The Congress will have to realize that one cannot run away from issues in order to avoid the issues……rather go and kill them. You cannot deny the existence of the much rampant separatist tendencies exisiting among the people of Kashmir….accept it and then crush it. Do not get into the “appease-your-enemy Gandhiism”. Its all about a perception game. You can only deal with such tendencies and Pakistan if you are stronger. Elevate yourself and use a stronger hand if required. Admonish and slap if required but believe me once things are made straight to everyone, everything will fall in place. At times its best not to give people choices……sometimes it spoils them.
I am not professing whats happening in Jammu is right but what I am trying to say is that this was inevitable. You reap what you sow. One should still take it as an opportunity and act decisive and definite. Rarely you get a chance to correct history and people of Jammu have provided us one. Lets grab it.
I leave this question to all of you…………..SHALL JAMMU BE SEPARATED FROM KASHJMIR?
Friday, August 22, 2008
Nationalism
Last Independence week, I was surfing through a magazine wherein I got stuck on a particular article which partly touched on (obscure) topics such as patriotism and nationalism and that made me create this blog and share my thoughts with you.
As far as my knowledge takes me, Nationalism denotes an ideology and a culture which has its roots in the French Revolution and it focusses on the nation. But how relevant is this term today in India or was it ever relevant for a diverse country like ours? As a nation wherein the dialect changes every 50 kms, where every region is fraught with its typical issues, where the franchise votes primarily on the basis of caste and religion which are again present in a pluralistic form, can nationalism pragmatically exist as an ideology in such a multilayered nation or is it just a Shakespearen idea of romanticism? There is also a strong chance that we might be living with the wrong interpretation of the ideology where often the crude chest-thumping jingoism is regarded as nationalism. Moving to the next grade of inquisitiveness, the other question which challenges me is that what kind of nationalism has proven to be succesful - American Nationalism (where celebration of individualism sum upto nationalism), British or Russian (where it almost takes the form of imperialsm), The Islamist nations (where nationalism always evokes the feelings of diabolical extremism and extermination of anything Unislamist; but anyways the proclivity of this section of the world towards religion is much more that towards the nation) or the Chinese (where subversion seems to be integral for nationalism to thrive)
I thought and thought hard on the abovesaid.
It began with all smoke and screen but then the more I thought about nationalism in the context of India, more I got sure about the fact that more than anyone else India definitely needs a strong flavour of nationalism to be bestowed on its citizens. Nationalism is a must for India to live with confidence and security and thrive inclusively amidst so much of diversity.
Mani Shankar Aiyer said that India has gained a lot of confidence since Independence, yet lost a lot of it too. So true for a nation wherein a large section of poor people are nowadays described as a distraction! We are busy in counting millionaires from India (though the same people also preaches for inclusive growth at convenient forums). Its good to celebrate but lets not forget the bigger picture. Lets not forget that a subject can only be as good as its king and we can only feel safe, confident and prosperous if the country becomes one. Therefore there should not be any berth for individualism when it comes at the cost of nationalism. Lets not confuse community- serving as nation-serving. Nationalism is not about winning cricket matches. Its about accomodating for the sake of nation (rather than sake of each other which only provokes partisan politics). Let Nation be the centre-head of all the policies. Lets there be a uniform law, lets there be a strong upper hand which punishes everyone guilty equally to subdue threat to life, let there be POTA, lets demolish all religion based incentives, all vote banks, all unauthorised temples and mosques, let there be a bit of Hitlerism linger for the force of nation and let there be just one word resonating - the NATION. Lets think collectively that India too can rule the world and how cool is that!
The biggest nemesis of nationalism are so called liberals and marxists. I dont want to waste space talking about marxists because they are as alien to the coutry as to this planet. My main grudge is against the liberals. They surely get an orgasmic pleasure in disparaging and denouncing anything "nationalist" as intellectually stifling and how well they have managed to percolate this among today's youth. I can bet a fortune if you can get right answers from 5 out of 10 youngster to questions such as First president of India, the current President of India and the sequence of colours in our National Flag but look at the ease with which they tell you how many stars are there in the US flag. They have abandoned their Indian Polity Awareness long back but can debate smoothly on who will make it to the Oval Office - Obama or Mckain. They sound genuine yankees while speaking Englsh but can hardly write their names correctly in Hindi, even if they manage to, they make sure to tell you that it took all the world' s effort to do so as they are out of touch with this lost- generation language. This is how the psyche of a nation gets affected and people stop taking pride in their own stuff. How many French or Germans speak English?
All this enforces my belief in Nationalism. If supremacy of Nation is made the single-most object of all our energies, then soon all the bigotry and secteriasm will melt away. a perfec eaxple is the state of Israel. Being a pocket-sized country and all sorrounded by enemies, yet it not only survives but has got the guts to challenge everyone around them - this is possible only because the state of ISRAEL is bigger than anything in Israel. The whole war started for the common good of Jews but intellectually it was replaced with the common good of Israel because it is for sure a better and stronger tool for bonding. Every boy and girl in Israel undergoes a mandatory military training for 3 and 2 years respectively. This is when the seeds of Nationalism are firmly implanted in the psyche of nation. We cant emulate them in ditto. I also agree that we cannot have cookie-cutter policy recommendations indifferent to contextual differneces to run the country, but we can surely try to imbibe the idea into everyone's psyche that nation is bigger tah anyone else and we all have to accomodate for the nation. Lets all become the champions of nationalsim.
But then these are mere conjectures of mine after reading an article. if you think else, do let me know. Do let me know whether my blogspace should be named as "country and me" or "me and country".
Signing off.
As far as my knowledge takes me, Nationalism denotes an ideology and a culture which has its roots in the French Revolution and it focusses on the nation. But how relevant is this term today in India or was it ever relevant for a diverse country like ours? As a nation wherein the dialect changes every 50 kms, where every region is fraught with its typical issues, where the franchise votes primarily on the basis of caste and religion which are again present in a pluralistic form, can nationalism pragmatically exist as an ideology in such a multilayered nation or is it just a Shakespearen idea of romanticism? There is also a strong chance that we might be living with the wrong interpretation of the ideology where often the crude chest-thumping jingoism is regarded as nationalism. Moving to the next grade of inquisitiveness, the other question which challenges me is that what kind of nationalism has proven to be succesful - American Nationalism (where celebration of individualism sum upto nationalism), British or Russian (where it almost takes the form of imperialsm), The Islamist nations (where nationalism always evokes the feelings of diabolical extremism and extermination of anything Unislamist; but anyways the proclivity of this section of the world towards religion is much more that towards the nation) or the Chinese (where subversion seems to be integral for nationalism to thrive)
I thought and thought hard on the abovesaid.
It began with all smoke and screen but then the more I thought about nationalism in the context of India, more I got sure about the fact that more than anyone else India definitely needs a strong flavour of nationalism to be bestowed on its citizens. Nationalism is a must for India to live with confidence and security and thrive inclusively amidst so much of diversity.
Mani Shankar Aiyer said that India has gained a lot of confidence since Independence, yet lost a lot of it too. So true for a nation wherein a large section of poor people are nowadays described as a distraction! We are busy in counting millionaires from India (though the same people also preaches for inclusive growth at convenient forums). Its good to celebrate but lets not forget the bigger picture. Lets not forget that a subject can only be as good as its king and we can only feel safe, confident and prosperous if the country becomes one. Therefore there should not be any berth for individualism when it comes at the cost of nationalism. Lets not confuse community- serving as nation-serving. Nationalism is not about winning cricket matches. Its about accomodating for the sake of nation (rather than sake of each other which only provokes partisan politics). Let Nation be the centre-head of all the policies. Lets there be a uniform law, lets there be a strong upper hand which punishes everyone guilty equally to subdue threat to life, let there be POTA, lets demolish all religion based incentives, all vote banks, all unauthorised temples and mosques, let there be a bit of Hitlerism linger for the force of nation and let there be just one word resonating - the NATION. Lets think collectively that India too can rule the world and how cool is that!
The biggest nemesis of nationalism are so called liberals and marxists. I dont want to waste space talking about marxists because they are as alien to the coutry as to this planet. My main grudge is against the liberals. They surely get an orgasmic pleasure in disparaging and denouncing anything "nationalist" as intellectually stifling and how well they have managed to percolate this among today's youth. I can bet a fortune if you can get right answers from 5 out of 10 youngster to questions such as First president of India, the current President of India and the sequence of colours in our National Flag but look at the ease with which they tell you how many stars are there in the US flag. They have abandoned their Indian Polity Awareness long back but can debate smoothly on who will make it to the Oval Office - Obama or Mckain. They sound genuine yankees while speaking Englsh but can hardly write their names correctly in Hindi, even if they manage to, they make sure to tell you that it took all the world' s effort to do so as they are out of touch with this lost- generation language. This is how the psyche of a nation gets affected and people stop taking pride in their own stuff. How many French or Germans speak English?
All this enforces my belief in Nationalism. If supremacy of Nation is made the single-most object of all our energies, then soon all the bigotry and secteriasm will melt away. a perfec eaxple is the state of Israel. Being a pocket-sized country and all sorrounded by enemies, yet it not only survives but has got the guts to challenge everyone around them - this is possible only because the state of ISRAEL is bigger than anything in Israel. The whole war started for the common good of Jews but intellectually it was replaced with the common good of Israel because it is for sure a better and stronger tool for bonding. Every boy and girl in Israel undergoes a mandatory military training for 3 and 2 years respectively. This is when the seeds of Nationalism are firmly implanted in the psyche of nation. We cant emulate them in ditto. I also agree that we cannot have cookie-cutter policy recommendations indifferent to contextual differneces to run the country, but we can surely try to imbibe the idea into everyone's psyche that nation is bigger tah anyone else and we all have to accomodate for the nation. Lets all become the champions of nationalsim.
But then these are mere conjectures of mine after reading an article. if you think else, do let me know. Do let me know whether my blogspace should be named as "country and me" or "me and country".
Signing off.
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