Tamas

A collection of CDs covering the entire series of Tamas has just come out. Am going through it right now.

The production values are quite ordinary, but the acting, the screenplay is just fantastic.

Watching people like Harish Patel, Virendra Saxena, KK Raina, and many other familiar faces whose names I can't even recall, who went on to become regular character actors in some of the most iconic Indian films and serials, is amazing.

But, what captures you the most are the images. Tamas is part of the oldest images of my life. The scene where Deepa Sahi jumps into a well, and I haven't seen ahead to confirm if that memory is real, has been one of the most deeply etched marks in my memory. I would have been 5-6 years old when I last saw it.

And the Tamas family getting together in the classic Mile Sur Mera Tumhara video of course. Or I might be confusing one thing from the past with another again.

The film/mini-series is as much a landmark in Indian cinema as the partition was a nightmare on the country's psyche. I have written multiple times earlier how pointless it seems now that so many people died during the birth of two nations that are unbelievably similar. Pakistan and India together would have kicked so much ass.

The fact that India has celebrated Eid this week with as much fervor (though Ganesh Utsav seems to have stolen the thunder here in Mumbai) as possibly in any other part of the world proves that.

To an extent.

I still feel that we are (more than a bit) biased towards Hinduism. Despite the fact that most of us respect religious freedom, we do not realize how Hindu-ized our regular institutions are. We need to balance that gap.

But, I think we are getting there. For me Eid is as much a celebratory occasion as Diwali is. And it's the same for many of my friends. And not just because it gives you an office holiday. Or a Khan film release.

But also because you appreciate what the day stands for.

Step-children

I am in a really bad mood tonight. Mostly because I know I won't be able to sleep late tomorrow on a rare holiday morning because the morons in my housing society will try to push their pop-patriotism on everyone else by playing 'Ae mere pyaare watan' right from 8 am.

But, also because I am watching a rather emotional episode of Just Dance. I have generally come to see through the plastic emotionality that most TV programs thrust on us, but, and maybe it was because I am drunk, or maybe because I feel very strongly about it, I could not keep from crying when Irfan, one of the contestants on the show, had to state that he is as Hindustani as anyone else.

The fact that a Muslim citizen still has to say that is extremely painful. It makes me ashamed of myself. And my country.

Really liked Rajit's performance. Don't know in terms of the technicalities, but the dance was good to make one realize how we are leaving the green in our flag behind. The saffron and the white will not go far if we continue doing that.

Ae mere pyaare watan, the pyaar we have for you is standing on very weak grounds.

This and That

I am a stickler for these things, so am more than a bit distressed when I am not able to figure out if the freaking thing is called Dahi Vada, Dahi Wada or Dahi Bada. My vote would be for the first option, even if I have been calling it the last one all through my life. The reason I bring it up of course is because I learned to make it last week.

I am sorry if my gushing posts on learning to cook new dishes resemble a newly wed housewife's, but it sure is a satisfying feeling to make yet another much-admired dish from your childhood. And make it well.

It did not start very well though. My vadas kept burning up with the paste inside remaining wet and raw. A distress call home (I really do sound like a housewife!) made me realize that the oil was probably too hot. After cooling the oil down a bit, the vadas came out great. I am beginning to feel cooking is not as difficult a job as people make it out to be.

Of course, cooking the same boring shit everyday must be mind-numbing.

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Samit Basu has redeemed himself a bit now. Since I had read close to 160-170 pages of the 340-odd paged Turbulence, I thought I might as well read it through. Nope, despite working in finance, I am not very familiar with the concept of sunk costs. On page 209, which is right in the middle of an international crisis caused by some Indian superheroes, there's a line 'The Indian prime minister has already appeared on TV, bleating gently about the need to remain calm...'. Given my overflowing fountain of love for Manmohan Singh these days, that line seemed very very apt. He does bleat quite often, doesn't he.

Damn, I was planning to have mutton biryani tomorrow for lunch, but bleating being associated with the most inadequate PM we have ever had is likely to keep me off any mutton for some time.

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Saw the first episode of Just Dance. I don't see what the fuss is about. For one, calling Hrithik Roshan the 'God of Dance' through the show is really jarring. Having him refer to himself as a Superstar is even more so. I think the celebrity-featuring shows that have really hit a chord with the audience are those where the celebrity becomes a part of the audience. Crosses that perpetual line that divides the common man and the star. Here that divide is being made even more prominent.

In its concept, the show is not different from Dance India Dance, which really seemed to have a better quality of dancers. Can't believe they are paying HR so much for this.

Irrational Surds

I have been making fun of Baba Ramdev's 'protest' on Facebook and otherwise too in one-on-one conversations. I don't think too many people take him seriously. It's great that he is teaching Indians to live a healthy life, but we are well past the time when a half-naked man (I wanted to say fakir, but then fakirs don't own islands and fly around in chartered planes) can dictate political terms. Especially someone as utterly unimportant as Ramdev.

But, I was shocked when I got to know that the Central Government actually used violence to evict him from the place he and his followers had gathered to carry on their hunger strike. The Government could have easily ignored this idiot's fast, but they have ended up according it so much importance. The Government is trying, as visible to the naked eye, to get the Lokpal Bill passed, even if not having the PM within its purview seems like a really pointless issue to stall things for, and Ramdev's fast was a very obvious effort to create ground for a future career in politics.

It's like Manmohan Singh's government can't do anything right now. I don't understand what's gone so wrong in just two years. The country voted him back with a higher vote share than in the previous elections in 2009. It might have been partly because it has looked for a long time now that BJP is filled with senile leaders feeling up an elephant and smiling at their reflections in a mirror, and not so much because of UPA I's own merits.

But, I feel right now that I am being ruled by a eunuch. Who is guarding the harem so that Rahul Gandhi's virginity is not lost too soon.

I don't want this moron at the helm of things for the next 3 years.

Rahul Gandhi

I am happy that Rahul Gandhi has been arrested. I would be happier if Mayawati has the guts to make him spend one night in a roach-infested cell where he goes to the loo in full view of his fellow convicts. Where hopefully he is even sodomized or beaten.

From what I have seen of him till now, he is a moron, an absolute idiot and someone who thinks, unfairly, that just being born a Gandhi gives him the right to rule us. His comments to the media make me cringe. The day India elects him as our PM (which, unfortunately, seems very likely) would be as bad and as shameful as Asif Ali Zardari being chosen as Pakistan's President.

I despise Mayawati. My recent trips to Lucknow have made me pretty much weep when I consider how much greater the city could have been if it hadn't been for the Mulayam Singhs, Kalyan Singhs and Mayawatis, but it certainly will be worse if Congress takes it over.

Rahul Gandhi, I am willing to fund an all expenses paid trip for you to Essel World. Even riding pillion on a bike, if you enjoy those thrills. Just leave India alone.

Your current PM is doing a very good job of riding pillion as far as ruling is concerned. Unfortunately, there is no driver on the bike PM Singh is riding pillion cross-legged on.

Palestine and Kashmir

It makes my blood boil at times when people treat me with polite amusement when I start sounding all passionate about graphic novels. There are an amazingly high number of people who seem to not realize that it is a medium that can say so much, so effectively, and is not only about superheroes wearing their undies over their leotards.

Not that undies over leotard type comic books are things to scoff at.

This is very similar to the life-long irritation I have had with people who consider fiction a waste of time, and utter with great pride that they read only biographies or books like the one about the monk who sold his Ferrari.

Maybe such people should read one of those graphic novels that have the ability to change your complete perception of the medium, with not many graphic novel artists probably being more effective than Joe Sacco. I have been a fan of some of his previous works like Safe Area Gorazde, Palestine and Notes from a Defeatist, all of which hold a special position of pride on my bookshelf.

But, his latest creation - Footnotes in Gaza - is quite something else even in the light of the brilliant work he has done over the years. The hardcover edition is a 400-plus page wrist-sprainer of a book, which deals with two forgotten incidents of massacre of Palestinians by Israeli forces.

These incidents occurred in the 1950s during the Suez Canal Crisis, and Sacco deserves great credit for making the effort of traveling to Gaza Strip, talking to the residents there in detail and chronicling all of it for us. Because the incidents really had been relegated to footnotes of UN reports over the years otherwise.

People have a habit of forgetting things, no matter how traumatic. Especially if the traumatic incidents keep hitting you incessantly over decades. For a community, large parts of which has not known any reasonably long period of peace, the massacres of Khan Younis and Rafah might just be a blink in their painful history, but, as Sacco says in the foreword, it goes a long way in understanding how 'hatred was planted in the hearts' of the people of Palestine.

I was in Iraq when the First Intifada was on, and the understandably pro-Palestine Iraqi media would give a lot of coverage to those young boys throwing stones and crude Molotov Cocktails at the Israeli forces. I had never seen unrest like that on TV before. And, unsure of the historical context though I was, I used to wonder what kind of dissatisfaction would make young people come out on streets like that and face armed forces fearlessly. It seemed like the last act of desperation - the final step you took after you realized that nothing else could save you. Nothing else could make others hear your side of the story.

So, over the last few months, it has been extremely spooky seeing fairly similar clips from Kashmir. Reading Footnotes in Gaza, I am forced to think if, irrespective of cross-border instigation, India has really been remotely as inhuman to Kashmiris as the Israelis were to the Palestinians. So much so that the young boys there too would come out on the streets to throw stones at our forces.

I understand that the situation is much too complicated for me to make a general comparison like that.

But, I hope people in Kashmir don't hate me as badly as the people in Rafah hate an Israeli.

Leaving Vidarbha

It might be evident that suicide is one of my favorite topics. I am intrigued by the various reasons why a person would want to end his/her life. In that spirit, I have been trying to understand the Vidarbha farmer suicides, including visiting some parts of the region because of some work-related assignment recently, and I have come across some startling facts. Startling for me, at least.

Most of the farmers who are committing suicide had a much better standard of living compared to farmers in backward states like Bihar, UP and Orissa. They owned significantly large pieces of land, their families owned cell phones, they had married off their daughters in grand style.

In fact, just taking loans to hold grand marriages so that neighbors would not consider them poor was the reason for so much misery. Relying purely on cash crops - like cotton and soybean, alcoholism, sending sons to private colleges they could not afford - these are just some of the reasons I had not realized were responsible for the much-publicized deaths.

Farmers were just living beyond the means they could afford to, and many took their lives, without thinking about the wives and daughters they were leaving behind, because they could not bear to not afford those means any more. Many were expecting that the compensation their families would get from the government after their deaths would help tide over the situation.

I cannot feel any degree of support for these people. Yes, there might be genuine cases of destitution in Vidarbha, where excessive reliance on unsustainable crops or belief in the wrong kind of financial institutions might have caused farmers to hang themselves or eat pesticides, but it largely comes across as another crop of Indians stretching their feet beyond what the bed-sheet permits.

The problem is not so much from the Government's side, as many self-righteous NGOs and social reformers allege, but from within. Tackle alcoholism. Teach the farmers to live within their means. Let them know that marrying your daughter by taking unserviceable loans is not intelligent. That might help save some lives.

Only some though. The impression I also get is that the situation has reached a tipping point where men almost unanimously feel that killing themselves is a good way to handle relatively temporary difficult times. It is a scary situation when a large chunk of the population decides to give up and not fight instead.

Idiocracy

I don't understand why people can't realize that the success of democracy, or at least the good of our country, does not lie in every Tom, Dick and Harry voting. Masses are generally dumb, popular beliefs are more often than not wrong and most Indians are too biased by religion, caste, region and issues I can't even fathom. In such a scenario I am not sure asking every idiot to go and exercise his vote, perform his 'duty', is all that intelligent.

I mean, if this creature is considered the front-runner to be the PM, there has to be something wrong with our polity. Who the hell gets a statue of him/her/it-self made holding that dangling purse. But if Kanshi Ram has a man-purse on, the ma'am might as well have one too.

This image of one of those over-rated directors in the Hindi film industry, who are respected because they have white hair in their beard and speak like a retard (thus making idiotic journalists think that there must be some deep meaning to every thing they spout) appeared to me like the best picture to capture the craziness of righteousness that asking everyone to vote in elections is, btw.

What also shocked me is the fact that 74% of Mumbai lives in slums (mentioned in the Rediff article that this pic was a part of)! I am moving there in a few weeks and the thought of being one among the elite 26% makes me feel so happy with my life. But also so sad for almost every other person I would be running into (the Maths is wrong, but I am used to being conservative in my projections).

Since I am in my wisdom-distribution mood, let me also crib about how obviously wrong Malinga's bowling action is. That Sinhalese bastard so obviously throws. Even if the Sri Lankan team is not evenly balanced (communally-speaking) on the whole, they are at least evenly balanced in terms of people who chuck. Muralitharan, who also happens to be the highest wicket-taker in Test and One-dayers, is the Tam chucker. One less injustice that Prabhakaran could crib for!

Worshipping Gods

I do a fair bit of wikipedia-hyperlink-navigation at work, on occasions when I don't have too much work at hand. So, today I was reading up on the Latter Day Saint movement, the one started by Joseph Smith Jr.

Reading it, I was reminded of the South Park episode (Season 7 Episode 12), where they explain 'All About Mormons'. And it made me think of something that I hadn't when I saw the episode a couple of years back.

According to Wikipedia, 'The Book of Mormon is a sacred text of the churches of the Latter-Day Saint movement. It was first published in March 1830 by Joseph Smith, Jr. as The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi. According to Smith, the book was originally written in otherwise unknown characters referred to as "Reformed Egyptian" on golden plates that he discovered in 1823 and then translated. The plates, Smith said, had been buried in a hill near his home in Manchester, New York, where he found them by the guidance of an angel named Moroni'.


In the South Park episode, there's this part:

Blacksmith: There goes that kooky Joseph Smith
Customer: You know, he claims he spoke with God and Jesus.
Woman: Well, how do you know he didn't?

Well, how do we know he did and wasn't just high on some quality weed when he came across some weird chap in the forest who might have introduced himself as,"I...am...a...moron. Moron...I".

And the thought that I was talking of was this - how do we know a frustrated chap in his forties living in Mecca in 610 CE actually received a revelation from God, and did not just think up the entire thing as a final shot at doing something worthwhile and achieving fame.

Or, for that matter, how do we know if, several years before this, a shepherd from Egypt actually did receive two stone tablets authored by God (if only there was a Booker then!) on the top of Mount Sinai, and did not just come up with the theory to control the unruly crowd he had decided to lead but had given up on pretty soon.

The three stories are fairly similar, and appear equally fantastic. As much as Area 52 or a stone idol drinking milk. It's just that the first one I spoke about was the most recent, less than 200 years old, and so appears more unbelievable than the other two.

And, well, I picked the 2nd and 3rd examples because they are similar to the first. In general, all religion, not the kind where one paints his face red and shouts Go ManU! at his TV, but the one where you start believing that there is some cool dude sitting up there or flowing all around you, taking the fall for all your dumb acts (you know stupid stuff we keep doing time and time again - wars, disturbing nature's balance, marriage, etc), is based on such humongous leaps of faith.

Why make fun of Mormons then? At least the Mormon men have more (legal) fun than those from any other religion. Hey, I just realized that there is another similarity between the first example and the second one. The former does not have a limit as far as I know, while the latter has a limit of 4.

Soiled Sons

The whole Raj Thackeray issue brings forth several other problems that cannot be attributed completely to the Great Son of Maharashtra's Soil.

The most shocking was this piece of news that was on top of Rediff's news-stories today for a short while. When I saw it my first reaction was - "Fuck! They actually went ahead and killed someone today for the arrest!", and then I realized that it was a story from last Sunday. Yes, MNS activists did beat the guy up, but not to avenge Thackeray's arrest. And it's really sad on the part of the Rediff news desk to portray it that way. I can think of some hot-blooded Biharis already planning to take it out on Maharashtrians around them.

Another Rediff article led me to this site for Shiv Udyog Sena, which was the brain child of Raj Thackeray when he was still a part of Shiv Sena. They have a good vision, but I don't know if they actually did anything much except create nuisance. Their website sure is pathetic. The funniest part has to be this profile of Bal Thackeray. The page title says Caricatures by Shri Raj Thackeray. And this profile does pretty much look like one.

More than anything it makes Maharashtrians appear to be these weak kids, who had been bullied for ages by North Indians, and who needed this senile cartoonist to finally let them taste the fruits of their own soil.

How can Maharashtrians let this joke of a family insult them every day?

Update: Rediff seems to have removed the page now. They are better than TOI and Aaj Tak in that they at least feel shame and correct their mistakes.