A New Theory of Life

(Spike informs me via email of a couple of facts that I've gotten wrong. The post has been suitable modified and his email has been reproduced at the bottom of this post.
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Now, I've been giving a lot of thought to philosophy and all things related - especially, the Purpose (or lack thereof), the Meaning (or lack thereof), the Answer (or lack thereof) and the Question (or lack thereof) of life. Now, it all boils down to one issue, ok, maybe two - first, reorganising one's life based on devotional serials on Sun TV, and second, the secret of sweetening cappuccino served at Barista? The latter is still waiting to be solved - my last experiments involved three sachets of Barista sugar. The former, whose mysteries have been unlocked, will be discussed in detail here.

Now, devotional serials are of two sorts - the Traditional School and the Adventurous School. In the Traditional School, a well-known mythological tale is re-enacted for educational/ recreational purposes. Lots and lots of gold paper, fake jewellery, cardboard sets, bare-chested men, and overly made-up men are employed to generate feelings of unimaginable devotion amongst the masses. While the venture sometimes succeeds, often, it only generates mass narcelepsy and acute cases of chronic boredom. A good case in point is the new and 'improved' Ramayan, where Rama's wedding (in an bizarre accurate interpretation, princesses were found for the other three princes at the same time - orey kalliley naalu maanga) was shot over five episodes in excruciating detail. This even included a whole ten-minute segment where the everyone looks at wedding photographs. Sharp, aren't you? There were no photos at the time. You're puzzled aren't you? Well, technology, it seems, was available - highly skilled painters painted each scene, and such paintings were on display! Only, the paintings looked at lot like they were Photoshopped photographs.

Life, we gather, from these serials, is gloriously fake. It is the world's worst illusion. And the production values are really bad.

And then, there is the Adventurous School. This is where Gods and Demons fight out their rivalries in the modern era - amongst corporate rivarly, warring siblings, estranged lovers and multitudes of mustachioed men. In these serials, unlike the Traditional School, evil and virtue is demarcated very clearly. The evil are unabashedly, relentlessly, incurably evil. They have no reason for being evil - they just are. The good, on the other hand, are unabashedly, relentlessly, incurably good. God, of course, protects the good, and the Bad God protects the Evil. Good God is, unsurprisingly, stronger and better looking. Bad God wears black, has bad teeth and unkempt hair. (Rumours are that Ishant Sharma is auditioning for a couple of roles.)

Funnily enough, its the Bad guys who are more enterprising than the Good guys. They also show more spirit, and a greater will to achieve their goal. The Good guys just wallow in self-pity and desperate devotion. The Good guys, in turn, get to see God as often as we see Australia winning a cricket match. They react to this with a half-in-tears expression of extreme gratefulness coupled with generous measures of expression of helplessness. The Bad guys also have two stock expressions. The first is the Plotting Expression - this is usually a long-speech explaining The Plan, followed by resounding evil laughter. The second is the Plan Foiled Expression - this is one of uncontrolled anger (may involve the throwing of a couple of cardboard props) and followed by The Plotting Expression unveiling the next Plan to destroy the Good.

The Good suffer for long (at least as long as the serial runs), and the Bad have a great time coming up with plan after plan. It is only at the end of the serial that the Bad is eternally destroyed.

Therefore, I have a new theory of life. The choice before each man is three hundred episodes of laughing and plotting followed by destruction, versus three hundred episodes of crying and praying, followed by destruction of Baddie (I've also heard that God has stopped providing the No New Baddie Guarantee with his package these days - three hundred episodes could become six hundred, and God forbid (quite literally), nine hundred). The choice, hence, is clear.
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Spike's mail:
"Valmiki, The Ramayana (Abridged and Translated by Arshia Sattar) (2000) p. 89 (Balakanda)

"Best of men, the clans of Janaka and Dasaratha are matched beyond all expectation. None other can equal them' said Visvamitra 'Rama and Sita, Laksmana and Urmila are matched in virtue and beauty. There is one more thing that I would like to add. Kusadhvaja, my younger brother is a righteous king and he has two daughters who are unrivalled on earth for their beauty. Let them marry prince Bharata and the wise Satrughna...

Janaka saw that Vasistha agreed with Viswamitra's proposal and so he joined his palms in respect and said to the two sages '... Let Kusadhvaja's daughters be given as wives to Bharata and Satrughna, for then the alliance between our clans will be strengthened! All four couples shall be married on the same day, the one determined by the wise as the best for the marriages.""

NOT a Review of Sarkar Raj

Let me reiterate at the outset that this is not, and I stress, not a review of Sarkar Raj. These are merely uncritical (and the term 'uncritical' is crucial), amateur (equally crucial qualification) notes on my experience of watching the film yesterday with the mysterious A.X (who now blogs here - oh, don't bother clicking on the link, the blog is only open to invited readers - I wonder if A.X. needs to be 'in love' with these readers to invite them). Again, I stress - I am not a critic, and this is not a review. I mean, I don't want Ram Gopal Varma revealing to the world that I hound producers who refuse to touch me. Oh, my favourite bit from his diatribe:

"Khalid Mohammed has made such horrendous films like Fiza, Tehzeeb, Silsilay etc (sic). If he or anybody thinks otherwise, the whole industry knows how many actors and investors are queuing up in front of his house fighting each other to get his films made (sic). Even I made big flops and precisely because of that I don’t become judgmental on someone else’s work (sic)."
(Emphasis mine)

So, A.X. and I watched Sarkar Raj last evening. It was a delightfully gay evening - we walked from Cunningham Road to MG, bought a phone for his mom, ate sandwiches at Indiana's (burgers weren't available!), and then went for the movie. The movie, however, was anything but gay. (I mean 'gay' in the 'happy' sense.)

Depressing plot turn after depressing plot turn are punctuated by Abhishek Bachchan's I'm-intense-because-my-face-never-changes expression (honestly, Big B's sentimental speech to Abhishek Bachchan's photograph at the end seemed so natural, because Abhishek's expression was the same throughout the movie - Sarkar could have mistaken him for the photograph!), Aishwarya Rai's what-am-I-doing-in-this-movie look, the sidekicks' please-cure-my-constipation mien and the just-in-case-you-don't-get-it-,-this-is-a-serious-movie background music. In fact, that is the real problem with Sarkar Raj and Ram Gopal Varma in recent times - he takes himself too seriously. Its reflected in the unnecessarily arty lighting in each scene of the movie (twice in the first ten minutes, characters come out of the darkness into the light and stare menacingly), camera movements that toe the line between high craft and a drunken cameraman, dialogue straight out of an 80s Hindi movie, and a grey-gloved, enigmatic contract killer who evokes more laughter than fear.

And then, there are the villains - a double-crossing Deputy CM with Jim Carrey-esque facial contortions, a needlessly slimy Hasan Qazi (play unmistakable cheap movie villain background music), the two villains whose identities I shall not reveal (I don't want to spoil Big B's Poirot-like explanation at the end), and Vohra. Now, Vohra has his trademark line, "Wohraa, not Vohra," that seems to be inspired by Dr. Winkel ("Vinkel, not Winkel") in The Third Man (yes, yes, I'm obsessed). RGV will obviously claim that there's no inspiration whatsoever, and probably that he's never even watched the film, which is a pity, because Sarkar Raj could well have done with some music by Anton Karas (Man, that zither! Is there anything as haunting?).
Recently, I watched Kshana Kshanam again, and managed to catch the last half of Shiva on TV. I wonder where that Ram Gopal Varma's gone. As I go through his filmography I see classics like Gaayam, Govinda Govinda, Rangeela, Satya, Kaun, and Company. After Company comes the fall - with Bhoot that looked like a Ramsey Brothers product, the average Sarkar, unmentionable Darna Zaroori Hai, the seriously flawed Nishabd, a bad remake of Shiva, and an even worse remake of Sholay. His older films had great humour (watch this selection from Kshana Kshanam); they had everlasting characters - Bhiku Matre (Manoj Bajpai) from Satya, Chandu and Satya in Kshana Kshanam, the villain eating Eclairs chocolate in Ananganaga Oka Roju, or even Durga, the villain in Jungle; most importantly, his older movies had soul. His newest one only has Abhishek Bachchan imitating Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator.

Recent Obsessions

KVN and Soul-searching

When I was thirteen or a little less, I remember listening to MS singing "Akhilandeshwari" on a tape from a little cassette player in Thatha's house in Madras. That is possibly my earliest memory of listening to a song and being spellbound, not by technical wizardry or speed, but by its grace, soul and emotion of the rendition. It wasn't the first time I heard "Akhilandeshwari", nor the last, but I cant recall any other version as vividly as this one.

That is exactly what I feel of KVN's music. There is music that stimulates your brain, and then there's music that tugs at your heart. KVN's music isn't void of technical perfection or scholarship, but it does the latter so effectively that you almost don't notice the former. Recently, I came across a recording of Thaye Yashoda in Thodi (my obsessions with Thodi are fairly well documented on the internet and otherwise). Unlike my usual favourites - meditative aalapanas that go on for ever (like M.D.Ramanathan's Sahaana raagam), this one is just three-minutes long. Yet, it left me soul-searching for the rest of the day. There is something divine about his music, a divinity matched by few.

Harry Line
The Third Man is quickly becoming one of my favourite films of all time - the character of Harry Lime, and that scene on the Ferris Wheel contributing in no small measure to this. In no other movie, have I come across a character as exciting has Harry Lime - a dead black-marketeer, a killer, maybe, a mas murderer, who is the best friend of an alcoholic pulp Western writer, loved madly by a beautiful woman client. Above all, what makes him all the more enduring is the fact that you know so little about him. Different people say different things about who he was, and what he was like. At the end of an hour, when he appears, first his shoes, then his silhouette, and then the light revealing a handsome Orson Welles with that smirk on his face, you're completely bought over. He's on screen for hardly ten minutes, yet, the movie belongs to him, and him alone.

I mean, when a character says,

"Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays."

Or when he makes that speech [video],

"Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly."

You can't help but wish they wrote a part like that for you! Or, you listen to what the Brain (from Pinky and the Brain) has to say on the same issue (in an episode called The Third Mouse),

"In Italy under the Borgias they had 30 years of murder, bloodshed, warfare and produced indigestible pasta, boring operas, and the Fiat. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The Swiss bank account, the best cheese in the world, and Heidi."

So, if you haven't watched The Third Man, watch it. When 'The End' appears, stare at the screen in awe, and watch it again.