Crime and Punishment

All day, I have been watching various people expressing their opinions on why Sanjay Dutt should have been pardoned and let off under probation. Now, the Information and Broadcasting Minister has joined the bandwagon.

"As a minister, I do not want to question the judiciary, but in a civil society time has come to gauge the parameters for an unintentional fault, for which Shri Sanjay Dutt had already suffered long enough, in first instance."

What I don't understand is how the world seems to assume that he would have gotten off. What shocks me more is the mass of opinion that believes that he deserves to be let off. Let us remind ourselves of what Sanjay Dutt has done - he was in illegal possession of AK-56 rifles and a 9mm gun. He even confessed to having kept grenades for some time in his house. His defence was that he believed that these were for his personal security. Who was he under a threat from to keep an AK-56 for protection? While he might have not known what his actions would have led to, it is ridiculous to presume, as Mr. Dasmunsi has done, that it was an "unintentional fault". What did he think these weapons would be used for? Noble causes like waging war on Himesh Reshammiya in the years to come?

This sympathy for Sanjay Dutt seems to suggest two things - one, that we aren't able to accept that our heroes could be punished for their wrongs; and two, that we think the judiciary should share this public sentiment. Without going to deep into the debate of whether the judiciary should reflect public opinion, I believe that in criminal cases of this nature, a judge must look at the facts and evidence put before him, and pass whatever sentence he deems fit, because irrespective of what the standing or popularity of the accused is, criminal justice requires to fulfil the objectives of retribution and reformation. The judiciary, and not the people, or the film fraternity, or Mr. Dasmunsi are in a position to make sure that these ends are achieved.

Film stars in India have always had more than their share of reverence, sometimes bordering on worship. We also sometimes tend to confuse film stars with their screen personalities. If this judgment had come in the Khalnayak era, we might not have had this much trouble accepting it. Just that this judgment comes when the image of Sanjay Dutt is that of Munnabhai - a gangster with a heart of gold. I guess Sanjay has to face the truth now, just like Munna did in both movies. The world will hope, that the end, like the movies, is a happy one.

***

Of Fielders and Openers

Couple of weeks ago, I spoke too soon when I wrote Dinesh Karthik off as an opener in Test Cricket. I referred to him as 'the fielder', because he didn't show much promise with the bat, and not could he do any bowling. I compared him to Jimmy Kamande - the infamous Kenyan cricketer of whom Harsha Bhogle asked after five matches, "What does Jimmy Kamande do?". I was aghast when he was picked over Yuvraj for this Test series.

He's answered his critics with fine half-centuries in the two Tests. He's shown that he can attack and defend confidently. He's always been a fine fielder, and a player with what Greg Chappell called "good attitude".

But there's still a doubt - is he better than Sehwag? Humble submission - no. Sehwag has 12 hundreds in Test Cricket. Too early for Karthik to score hundreds, perhaps. Let's give him a little more time. My point is, he doesn't look like he can score big hundreds. The best openers - Gavaskar, Hayden and the like had the ability to score big hundreds. Sehwag has 8 scores of over 150 - an extremely high percentage of his hundreds. When he gets set, he dominates. He's scored a triple-century and two double hundreds. All in the subcontinent. But then we're forgetting his 195 in Australia and his 180 in West Indies. In the last home series against Australia, he was the only Indian batsman to score a hundred. His form in the longer version has dipped only slightly in the series against South Africa. In the matches since that famous series in Australia, his average is 50.35, higher than Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, Wasim Jaffer, Dinesh Karthik and VVS Laxman. The honour of the Indian batting order in the last three years has been saved by two batsmen - Virender Sehwag and Rahul Dravid, and to drop one of them for having one bad Test Series against South Africa is stupid. Sehwag has been India's most consistent opener since Gavaskar. It is high time we recognised that fact, and stopped tinkering with the combination at the top. Instead, perhaps, some changes in that famed middle-order may be more sensible.

Given all that, I'm impressed with Karthik. If he can score hundreds, I might even be willing to concede that he could play as a batsman in the side.

***

Love and Death

Ingmar Bergman met Death yesterday. He was 89. I wonder if he asked Death for a game of chess. Thank you, sir, for giving us those powerful images. Thank you for making me think.

Tribute to him here through two stills from “Persona”.

The Sunday Late Night Movie

Doordarshan, on Sunday nights after 11 pm, shows regional language films - and it has the habit of picking some of the better ones. The great thing about this set of films is that they are all amongst the best regional films, and there are no advertisements. Unfortunately, if you miss the name of the movie at the beginning of the movie, you might never know what you're watching! Two years ago, I watched one of the best Indian movies ever, The Terrorist, about a suicide bomber in the days leading up to her bombing - a haunting, touching movie unequaled in its profundity, beauty, and its extremely personal nature. I found out its name only when I read Roger Ebert's review online quite by accident. Last month, I watched in awe Kanooru Heggadathi, Kuvempu's Kannada literary classic directed by Girish Karnad - a typical Indian arthouse film. Again, I realised what movie ti was only because it was set in Kanooru and was about a heggadathi (a mistress, if I understood the term in its entirety). Last weekend, it showed a Malayalam film about a college guy in Cochin in the 70s - again, an excellent film whose name I am yet to discover. This post is about Autograph, the Tamil movie that played last night. I would have never known it was Autograph if Amma hadn't told me when i started watching it.

Autograph is about this guy, Senthil, who goes back to his village and the town where he went to college distributing invites to his wedding. It celebrates nostalgia and unabashed sentimentality - the sort I will feel for Manipal twenty years from now. But Autograph is more than that - it chronicles his relationship with three women - one in each phase of his life. From the girl in his class in the tenth standard with whom he cycled home each evening, to the college girlfriend who was forcibly married off to someone else and the girl who put his life back on track after this loss. It traces these relationships with such insight that would make any viewer think about parallels with his/her own life. Its message is simple, and like most simple things, profound. The movie tells you that things and people move on, and there is no loss that one cannot cope with.

His childhood sweetheart, the simple Kamala tells him when they're leaving school in the tenth that her father will not allow her to come to school again, and so they will not meet each other as often. But, Senthil himself moves to Alapuzha in Kerala where he goes to college. This is the setting for the most moving story - that of his college girlfriend, and the shock and guilt that he experiences when he meets her again after ten years.

What Cheran, the director and lead actor does well is how he picks his women actors - none of them, including the deglamourised Sneha loks out of place in their setting. Often, in college-school movies, we've seen the lead actress standing out - her make-up more pronounced than the other sahelis who surround her, or her Punjabiness standing out amongst her Tamil friends in Tamil movies, or the fact that she wears more revealing clothes than all the other women in the film, or simply that she is much prettier than everyone surrounding her. Here, the women look real - just like the girl you and I had a crush on in school or college and not some supremely pretty former Miss World who inexplicably studies in your college and falls in love with you.

Where Cheran scores again is in showing the audiences that relationships between people get more complex as they grow older. I shall not reveal more at this stage. Go watch the movie, while I try and get my hands on other movies directed by Cheran, and wait for next Sunday when a new regional film is shown on DD!

Cricket at 112

"Running in from Garage End at full speed and bowling with an Akram-copy action, left arm over-the-wicket to the batsman standing with his trademark, easy, elegant stance, is the opening bowler. The batsman is yet to get off the mark in nine balls.

"Ooh! That was a jaffa. That ball just took off from a good length and crashed into the garage. A demon in the pitch. The batsman walks down to examine, and with a little benign smile and a casual comment walks back to his crease. Bowler running in again for the fourth ball of this over. Bowling wide of the crease, angling it across the right-hander hoping to induce an edge. Oh, bowled him! How did that happen? It was almost the exact same spot where the last one bounced, and this time, it just died down on the batsman. This has to be the toughest pitch to bat on in the world!"

It sure was the toughest pitch to bat on. Any ball on a good length would climb up to your shoulder, irrespective of what pace the ball was bowled at. If it was a little shorter, it either sat up to be hit, or just flew miles above your head. The bounce sometimes was so much that yorkers bounced over the stumps! When I was younger, I thought it was the sloping nature of the pitch that gave it this bounce. I even bowled a few down the slope to see if it skidded off the pitch then. A little later, I wondered if it was the fact that there it was, in fact, an unevenly laid road. Maybe, it was just my high-arm action, and Sharan's ability to extract 'jump' from any track with his legspinners. Whatever it was, it made batting really tough. When I heard Sunny Gavaskar and the likes talk of 'chin music' and the 'perfume ball', I thought, "The team should practice here, in front of our house for a while!"

Strangely, neither of us became very good players square of the wicket. The explanation is simple - there were houses on either side, and you could only score runs straight. So, when the ball bounced to around chest height, if you attempted a shot, it was never the pull or the hook. It was a tennis forehand. And just like the tennis forehand, you watch which way the bowler is likely to go on his follow through and hit it on the other side.

It wasn't this simple though. The pitch had its hot spots - these strange patches from which the ball would refuse to bounce. For years we practiced the art of hitting those patches, and failed miserably. And then there was the magic wicketkeeper. Any ball that touched the bat and hit the back garage on the full was out. And because we batted right in front of this garage, there was no respite when you edged the ball. Caught behind became the most common dismissal - usually it was the forehand that wasn't properly controlled, because the bounce was too much to handle. Oh, this keeper could never effect any stumpings. So, when I decided I'd had enough of Sharan's loopy legspinners that turned violently, and bounced over my head, I'd try walking down and taking them on the full.

Batting there required extraordinary concentration. One mistake, and the pitch wouldn't forgive you. One Sachin-like drive-on-the-up and you were out. Consequently, we never played limited overs matches. It was always two innings. An average match still lasted only about an hour, with the two innings' scores totalling to an average of around 20. I remember a day when I batted 40-odd balls without scoring! I was still highly impressed by my skill - I had lasted 40 balls on that pitch!

The rules were even stranger. There was a boundary that wasn't very long. A four was a four. But if you hit a six, it counted for one run. So, if there was a non-striker, then you change ends. There were four house roofs also to deal with. We could easily scale three of them, but the rule was still that if the ball ends up on the roof, then you're out. And, your score is reduced to 0. Not the team score, but your personal score. But on most occasions, it was just two of the three regulars - Sharan, Adhi and I - and personal score and team score was the same.

Then there are the more eccentric rules. The ball has to cross a water pipe about seven feet in front of the batsman for the batsman to run. This was the most irrelevant rule because nobody ever bothered running. We scored in fours and ones (the sixes that counted as ones!). Now, there was this huge mango tree that formed a canopy for about half the pitch. If the ball hit the tree, as it often did, and the fielder caught it, the batsman could still be out. Many times, the ball took ages to escape from the various branches of the tree and finally fall down, and fielders would place themselves in strategic positions to try and catch the ball when it actually fell down. On the other hand, if the ball hit an electric wire and fielder caught it, it wasn't out! The evolution of these rules was simple - Sharan made them up as we played along - and it was usually to his advantage, because he was the youngest, and allowed to cry himself to victory.

And then there were the variant we played - eleven players - a concept we borrowed from the hallowed verandas of the first floor at 80, West Marredpally. We'd have a notebook where we wrote down two teams, and take batsman and bat for them. The rule was, however, that if the batsman in real life was a left-hander, then you batted left-handed and vice versa. Sometimes, Sharan would get out one too many times and would be forced to bat left-handed, and other times, I'd end up batting right-handed. If you were bowling for a paceman, you had to bowl quick, and even copy his action if you could. Same for spinners.

Despite the complicated rules, the game had a simplistic feel to it when we played it there. No elaborate field settings, no strategising, no pacing your innings, and no getting settled (you were as likely to get out on 100 as you were on 0, because the pitch was too unsettling to allow and settling down). The game went on at a lazy pace - sometimes through the day with breaks for lunch and tea. Nobody dived around while fielding, no batsman ever bothered pinching a quick single and no bowler ever exerted himself. And yet there was a passion attached to the game. We hated losing. We fought over every caught behind, every boundary and every ball loss. We cherished big wins, and recalled them for years. I still remember scoring a hundred on the morning of my seventh standard Kannada public exam against Adhi, and the match getting abandoned because Amma came home to check if I was studying.

Cricket died a natural death in our street when I moved to Bangalore, and Sharan started playing basketball in the evenings. Last year, when I heard that we were moving out of 112, and I came back to Manipal to help with shifting, I hoped that Adhi and I would play one last Test Match. Unfortunately, we were all too busy packing and moving to our new house.

While it seems highly unlikely that we'll ever play there again, with each of us in a different city, I still carry a little hope in my heart - to run in left-arm over-the-wicket, wide of the crease, angle it across the right hander and get him caught behind forehanding!

Love Brinjal - Part I

This is one of many parts of a story that will, hopefully, appear on this blog at regular intervals. 'Love Brinjal' is a direct translation of one of my favourite Tamil expressions - 'Kaadal Kathhirikka'. All characters in this story are fictional and creations of my imagination. If they bear any resemblance to any characters real, I tender apologies to such characters!
***

"Chill, da. There are other fish in the ocean. You might never find them, but they are there," she said, smiling.

At once, this became the prophecy and curse of my life. Every now and then, I'd get an inkling that the fish I was looking for existed, but I never found it. On many occasions, I'd believe that I had found this fabled fish, sitting next to me in a bus, or at a concert, or at a friend's birthday party. And then she would open her mouth, and very quickly, become another one of those squids that inhabit the ocean. One of the more infamous cases of this was at a bookstore in Delhi. Now this could have happened only in Delhi.

While I was looking through the Indian authors section in a little bookstore on a wintry January evening in Delhi, this girl walks into the shop. Without doubt, she is the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She could have been Miss Universe! (Now, there's another girl I saw much earlier who could have also been Miss Universe, but I'll get to her later.). Women in Delhi, I believed, were too stupid for my psuedo-intellectual, Herman Hesse-reading, discoursing, anti-globalisation self. It was a sweeping generalisation, (All generalisations are usually sweeping!) but I believed it strongly. Until this girl walked into that bookstore. She was a beautiful woman in a bookstore - like Tendulkar playing a cover drive in the Sydney Test - a sight you never thought you'd see. She walked straight towards the Indian authors shelf - towards me! I looked away. I didn't want her to catch me staring. First impressions last long. She looked through the books, occasionally taking one out of the shelf and reading the back page. She was judging the book by its cover - just like me. I had found the fish. After what seemed like seven years to me, and one minute to the rest of the world, it became clear to everyone that she was looking for something in particular. For some reason, she asked me.

"Hey, have you seen that Abhijit Sawant book around?"

I thought of the day when the prophecy was made - the day I was branded an unlucky fisherman. They say knowledge is power. Balls. Knowledge is pain. Now I knew there were other fish in the ocean. Before the day of enlightenment, I would have presumed that there was no fish left, and stopped fishing. But now I knew.

The scene was as filmy as they came. We were at this quiet corner of Cubbon Park, having this intense conversation on the question that would be answered with the Adamsian "42". But then, it probably was not as filmy. Nobody in the movies ended a relationship thinking of fish and oceans. Nobody in movies ended their relationship with the guy saying, "Don't stop me now," referring to the smoking of a cigarette, and both parties smiling. Nobody ended their relationship at Cubbon Park, they sang songs there! Finally, I did something really filmy. When she held out her hand and said, "Let's go," I said, "You go. I'll leave in a while." And when she left me sitting there alone, smoking my first Milds in two months, looking depressed as hell, I was in a movie, every action rehearsed to coincide with the music that slowly drowned out the sounds of Cubbon Park, the camera zooming out, and a sad song taking over.

In a Hindi movie, this would be followed by this sequence where I gatecrash at her wedding and win her back. A French movie might have ended with a scene where she cheats on her husband and I emerge winner. But this one was Woody Allen style, where linearity of time is never really the concern. This one started there. As she walked away, it started drizzling. The drizzle never really went beyond a bracing moisture in the air, although it got more bracing all the time.

**

When I rushed into her house, she was in the kitchen. Making rasam. In an interview, Vishwanathan Anand said that no two women can make the same rasam. They might have learnt from the same person and follow the same recipe, but the rasam is never the same. I haven't heard a truer statement about South Indian women.

"Quick. Get your sruti box out."

"Why?"

"This is the opportune moment to feel good about our music."

She didn't understand what I meant, but got the sruti box and turned it on. I sat on the dining table, and sang five notes. She looked at the sky and replied, "You bastard!"

I continued singing. She kept looking out of the window, and then looking at me and saying, "Not working."

But it was bound to work. It was overcast, and rain was imminent. She joined in, and almost immediately, it started pouring. I don't know if it was my imagination or the truth, but the rain seemed to follow our singing, as if it were dancing to our music. She ran out to the balcony, and in a very movie-like manner, stood in the rain with her arms wide open. I followed suit, and we stood there, on the sixth floor balcony, in heavy rain, with Amritavarshini still playing in our ears, the sruti box droning on in the background, and we kissed.

"Wait... This can't happen" she said, breaking away
"Why?"
"You're too young."
"Five years isn't all that young!"
"You smoke too much," she said.
"That's hardly a reason."
"Have you ever kissed someone who smokes?"
In fact, I had.

***

This was one of those days, three hours after India had thrashed Bangladesh in another inconsequential, insipid one-day. I realised that I felt more and more like the Bangladesh cricket side. Especially when it came to women. From being a geeky, inexperienced bumpkin, I was suddenly thrown amongst a battery of the fairer amongst the fairer sex who seemed to find my lack of charm cute. On this day, I was bowled over by yet another girl, much like the Bangladesh side by Zaheer Khan. I decided at 8 pm that a Milds would brighten my evening, and took my Scooty to the Little Cigarette Shop. On my way back, I got stuck at The Signal as usual - a place where much of my life's exciting events took place. This incident rates amongst the most exciting.

While I puffed on my Milds at The Signal counting backwards from 180 along with the clock, a Thunderbird pulled up next to me. On the Thunderbird was the other woman who looked like she could have been Miss Universe. She asked, "Do you have a light?"

And then there was light, I thought. I was never very eloquent when it came to describing love, or even conceptualising love, and the sad thought was a manifestation of this limitation. 148 seconds remaining. I rummaged my bag for a matchbox. Where the bloody hell had it disappeared? 112 seconds now. She was asking another guy for it. I saw him shake his head. Relief. 99 seconds. It had to be in my bag. But then it wasn't. 80 seconds. Oh, wait. It was in my pocket. Rummage, rummage. 68 seconds. There. I handed it to her. In one smooth movement, she lit the cigarette, and handed me the matchbox. 44 seconds. I was now totally in love.

For some reason, she liked me too. Things progressed and pretty quickly, we were an item - she on her Thunderbird, and me on my Scooty (or sitting behind her) - setting the town on fire. Bangalore was suddenly on top of my favourite cities list, because I discovered the joys of claustrophobia at Pecos, free beer with each food item at Windsor Pub, the cheapness of getting drunk at Ganesh Bar.

One thing irked me, though - the Metal I was forced to listen to. Innumerable concerts spent standing cluelessly in the front row, headbanging to mindless growling, and even more number of nights spent in her room listening to the latest that the Brotherhood of Growlers had to offer. Countless days spent discussing lyrics of the Grand Panjandrums of the Brotherhood, and copious amounts of illicit substances actively or passively consumed.

One day she said, "These lines are so deep - 'reverberations of drowning death, meticulations of reptilian breath.'"

I had had enough of pontification about death! I felt like Bangladesh team again, analysing the end each evening. I quit, and hoped that Bangladesh would too, before all Test Match records became irrelevant.

**

Life in a... Metro

One morning, Anurag Basu got up and decided to make another remake. This time, with a twist. Remake two Hollywood classics into one. And so, while husband cheats on wife like Fred McMurray (Mr. Sheldrake) in The Apartment, wife cheats on husband Brief Encounter style. Now, he realised that he doesn't have the class to pull off these remakes, and he needs more material that will help him to bring in other actors. In comes, Konkona Sen - the wife's sister, Nafisa Ali - the wife's dance teacher, and Irrfan Khan and Dharmendra - the respective loved ones. Oh, I forgot the band that pops its head everytime a song comes along. First time, I thought it was innovative. But five times, playing similar-sounding songs got on my nerves. I agree each band has its own sound, and in most cases, this is desirable, but that shouldn't stop them from making five distinct songs!

The reason this movie really got on my nerves was because The Apartment was so badly remade even without being acknowledged ever. The Apartment is one of my favourite films of all time, and Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine's play the most lovable characters on screen. Replace them with Sharman Joshi and Kangna Ranaut. Neither is lovable in the least. Sharman's character, with his dream of finishing his father's hotel (the usual Hindi-movie sentimentality. Incidentally, his father was a musician. I have heard of cricketers opening restaurants. This is new.) takes away from the essence of The Apartment.

The Apartment is a comment on the corporate world, made in the 1960s. Jack Lemmon doesn't want to build any hotel. He wants to make money. He wants to get to the twenty-sixth floor. He wants a panelled office. If he had a plot like that in Bombay, he would have gladly sold it and lived comfortably. Ok. The character has changed in the remake, what is wrong with that, you may ask? The essence of the plot has changed with this fundamental change in what the character is. Sharman Joshi suddenly decides, for no reason, to abandon his hotel-building plans. He doesn't even look for another job! While it makes logical sense for Jack Lemmon to quit his job when he realises that he has to 'become a mensch', it makes no sense for Sharman to not fulfil his father's dream - an aim he has been pursuing for years. On pure acting terms, whereas Jack Lemmon could be compared to Brian Lara with the bat, Sharman is Brian Lara with the ball.

Kangna Ranaut is the low point in a bad movie. She cried well in Gangster. She won a couple of awards for her crying also. But here, she's none of that breath of fresh air that MacLaine is in The Apartment. Nobody knows when and why she falls for Sharman. We all thought he justified his single-minded, money-making obsession by referring to the hotel. Why does he have to quit his job then for her to make the decision to leave Kay Kay?

Kay Kay's character brings out more flaws in the characters in the desi Apartment. The relationship between him and Kangna was apparently founded on the cornerstone of 'no emotional attachment'. Kangna's English in real life isn't very good, and it clearly affects the characters she plays, because she is still 'emotionally attached' to Kay Kay, and demands the same from him. Why she doesn't get out of the relationship that she knows is 'emotionless' is unfathomable! The fact that she attempts suicide instead is even more ridiculous.

More than all of this, the smaller scenes, like Sheldrake taking the key from Buddy for the first time, Buddy looking at the broken mirror, the exchanges between Buddy and Fran in the lift , the relationship between Buddy and the doctor, have all been either executed badly, omitted or dumbed down. In the end analysis, Anurag Basu underestimated the depth of the characters in The Apartment and tried to cram a two-hour long movie into one fifth of another two-hour long movie. The result was that nobody's intentions were clear, and nobody's actions made any sense.
Above all, when you're making a movie about characters, the audience has to feel for at least one character. In this rip-off of The Apartment, the characters are so one-dimensional and shallow that it is impossible to empathise with any of them. Sharman doesn't feel bad when he has to spend nights away from his apartment, Kangna commits suicide for no reason, and Kay Kay is the 'villain' anyway.

When you're making a movie that has many stories, the trick is to pick your stories well. Love Actually, Amores Perros and even Crash to an extent, manage to do that. Metro goofs up all the stories. A certain teacher, taught us a course titled "Universal Protection of Human Rights". We wondered, "Isn't he taking upon himself too large a burden?" When you've taken a burden upon yourself of potraying Life in a... Metro, the biggest mistake you could make is to render the Metro itself irrelevant. Not for a second in the movie does Anurag Basu manage to create a Bombay that is unmistakeably Bombay. Watch Taxi Driver, and in five minutes, you know it's New York, without a single shot of the Manhattan skyline or the Statue of Liberty. Watch even Khosla ka Ghosla, and in minutes, you know it's Delhi. Sharan and I thought Metro was set in Calcutta till we saw the scenes on a local train!