Love Brinjal - Part III

Penultimate Part. Perhaps. Previous Part - Press. Pehla Part - Press.

***
I love her. So much. So so much.

The Delhiness of Delhi is often lost on Delhiites. But I shall get to that later. Let me start with how I got to Delhi in the first place. A dear Delhi friend told me that the Karnataka Express, curiously abbreviated as KK (At first I thought that the Delhiites think Karnataka is actually Karnata Ka - a sequel to Calasso's most famous work, but then I realised that Delhiites know nothing of Calasso, the concept of a sequel or work. I take back that statement - they would know of sequels after Dhoom 2 and Krrish. Or maybe they just look at them as episodes of a saas-bahu soap.) was the train to take. He said it was more romantic than the Sampark Kranthi, which, apart from stopping only thrice during the whole journey, had a certain revolutionary flavour. It was the old world charm of chai and Chacha Chaudary on railway platforms versus water in Laloo's matkas. He forgot to mention the small matter of non-availability of tickets in the KK.

The highlight of travelling unreserved for forty-eight hours was how I mastered the art of bladder control, because losing control of your bladder meant losing control over the little space you had. Other interesting incidents included a man taking a Krishna idol out of his bag, performing an elaborate pooja, and passing the aarti around; another man built like a bear in more ways than one deciding to take his shirt off for a major part of the journey to beat the heat; a youngish couple entering the compartment with a harmonium to entertain all and sundry; the numerous boards on walls on the outskirts of Delhi with numbers of seedy doctors promising to cure "health problem" and the dreaded "gupt rog"; and lastly, the customary tax-collectors - the hijras - who collected an additional long-hair surcharge from me - "Tum hum mein se ek ho"! I tried explaining that that should have counted for a discount, but my argument fell on deaf ears (and greedy eyes).

When I reached the station, I gave her a call from a telephone booth, "Hello?"
"Hey. Hello. This is me."
"You?!"
"Yes."
"But you're calling from a Delhi number..."
"Yeah. I'm in Delhi... I just wanted to know the address of the place where you're staying."
"Dude, I am in Bangalore!"
It took me seven whole seconds to register that. She asked, "Are you there?"
"Yeah... Um, so what do I do?"
"What kind of question is that?"
"I'm in Delhi. Shall I just take the next train and come back?" That was a ridiculous question. I had nothing else to do in Delhi - I was scared of the Punjabis and unaware of the differences between any other communities. My Hindi was limited to jaldi, aao, jaao, mera naam joker and behnchod. I wanted to go back.
"No. Wait. Give Gaurav a call, and go to his place. Have a bath, and then take the train back."
"Bathe?"
"Yes. Two days on a train, and you don't even feel the need to bathe!"
"This was a fairly clean train."
"Did I detect some sarcasm?"
"No. You didn't."
"What are you doing in Delhi?"
"I came to see you. I was missing you..."
"Elephant fart," she said. This was her alternative to 'bullshit'. She picked that up from me.
"Why else would I come here?"
"Maybe...."
"Maybe what?"
"It's okay. I don't want to tell you. It'll just start a fight."
"Maybe what?" I was trying my firm voice, and it worked.
"Maybe, just maybe, you came to check on me and Gaurav."
How? How did she know? Was it that obvious?
"Of course not! Whatever gave you that idea?! Man, I can't understand how you can even think something like that!"
"Now I'm sure."
"My god! First you tell me that I'm not romantic enough, and when I travel across the coutnry for you, you dismiss it."
"You're a paranoid guy. I can't believe you did this."
One of my uncles once told me that when you want to cut a call mid-way, and make it seem like it was a fault in the connection, cut it while you're talking.
"How can I..." Beep, beep. Engaged tone at her end. I calmly paid the phone booth guy and left.
***

So, as I was telling you, the Delhiness of Delhi is often lost on Delhiites. Trying to find a bus to Vasant Vihar, I asked a conductor, "Yeh bus Vasant Vihar jaata hai?" The conductor said, "Jaata nahin, jaati hai," laughed meanly, and drove away! I laughed at my fate - I was left here in an unknown city, having to speak a language that attached a gender to every object. That too, without any logic! I mean, what was feminine about a bus? It struck me as more masculine than a table any day - and yet, the bus was a woman, and the table was a guy - if you gave them one night together, we might have a bus with four wooden legs instead of tires.

The next time, I passed the grammar test and was admitted into the bus.

As I passed the India Gate on my way to Gaurav's place, I saw the strangest sight - the pools of water created for landscaping were teeming with people bathing and washing clothes. When I pointed this out to a middle-aged man sitting next to me, he said, "What else do you want them to do in that water?"

After much vernacular-grappling and address-hunting, I reached Gaurav's place. In my life, I hadn't been to a more Punjabi establishment. There were photographs of his loving family plastered across the house. The decor was most garish, some Gurdas Mann played through the radio - Worldspace's Tunak channel, and the latest Stardust, Maxim, Dainik Jaagran, Femina and Filmfare were strewn on the floor. The drawing room had a curious map framed and put up on the wall - it was a map of Ludhiana. "Parents live there," he said, "Home town. I feel emotional about it."

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. This guy was her ex-boyfriend?

And then he made a loud phone call to a certain paaji, who arranged for my train ticket by the next morning's gaddi. For the rest of the day and night, I lazed around the house forced to appreciate the nuances of Punjabi smash hits, and vivid descriptions in those songs on the exquisiteness of the kudi. As a part of the hospitality, I was offered the Tamilian version of the kudi - the drink - a typically Punjabi McDowell's with soda.

When the first rays of the rising sun rebounded off the mirror and flashed in my eye, I got up to leave. Hung over and still recovering from the previous journey, subconsciously, I sang in an interminable loop, "Thoda daru vich pyaar milaade..."
***

Lifts make for a fascinating study. Being in a closed lift with an unknown pretty girl can be quite an uncomfortable experience. The girl knows she's pretty, and that the guy could be observing her in ways that he shouldn't observe her. The guy makes an extra effort to ensure he doesn't come across as the undesirable types - an exercise that usually proves counterproductive. What is even stranger, is being in a lift with a uniformed liftman, and having continuous devotional chanting playing instead of the usual lift music.

That was the distinguishing feature of the lift in her apartment. You were always subjected to "Om Shree Maha Ganadhipataye namah", or "Om namah Shivaaya", or "Om Shakti Om", or the Gaayatri mantra. Recently I found out that the liftman, uplifted and enlightened by the constant chanting became a Godman and established an ashram on the outskirts of Bangalore, where devotees were put in models of lifts, and made to listen to chanting.

On this night, we were coming back from a movie to her apartment, and she commented that the greatest advantage of coming back at night was that the chanting would be turned off. I subtly put the point across that the lift usage by other residents is also very minimal after midnight. And so, when we got into the lift, almost immediately, we fell into each others arms. When I pushed her against the wall (and unknowingly a little button), suddenly, out of nowhere came, "Swamiye Ayyappa, Ayyappa Swamiye; Swamiye Ayyappa..."!
***

For two whole weeks we fought about my trip to Delhi. I told her about everything I braved in the train to get to her, hoping it would convince her of my love. She seemed to think that it was mistrust that drove this, and love could never have produced such effects. She was right, but I argued forever. I mean, I loved her. If I didn't, I wouldn't have worried about whether she was making it with someone else, right?

"Wrong. That is caused by jealousy..."
"No, I'm serious. This is love. Ask these guys who are reading this... Guys, tell her. I love her. You know that. Tell her that."
"This is between us. You guys stay out of this!"
"But they're my witnesses. Guys, refer her to the opening lines of this part!"
"You added them in just now. Bastard."
"Fine. Don't believe me."

This state of stalemate finally ended on a Sunday morning.

To be continued.

Blog Day

Presenting, finally, a festival or commemoration created in the last two decades that had nothing to do with greeting card companies - Blog Day - when every Blogger (at least the ones that hear about and bother to 'celebrate' Blog Day) puts up 5 new blog recommendations.

Here are mine:
1. Word Imperfect: If the faithful reader of this blog (usually my alter ego called Xeno - I named him when I was seven - he's a nasty, straight-talking, smoother, cooler, better looking version of me) has observed an improvement in my already insurmountable vocabulary, I'd credit it to this blog. The funda is simple. An obscure English word is put up. You make up a meaning for the word. The most inventive meaning wins.

2. Totally Basmatic - As an ardent follower of Hindi cinema, and writing about Hindi cinema, I came across this most entertaining blog - this chick (okay, girl) from the US writes here about Bollywood movies. She's seen as many Hindi movies as you and me. She can tell you who the playback singers for all songs of Yeh Raaste Hain Pyar Ke without batting an eyelid. Most importantly, she gives you the most accurate insights into Bollywood - especially when she tells you, "it was an enjoyable time-pass, after all."

3. Finding JTAG on the iPhone - I read this blog everyday. I sometimes go through all the 200-odd comments that every post gets. I still don't understand what this blog is about. All I know is that it involves iPhones. Some tinkering, soldering, buying and selling. And LOTS of people read it!

4. Which Main? What Cross?: I discovered this quite by accident a few days ago, and have been hooked since. This blog is definitely one of the best photoblogs I've come across - they're photos of metrosexual, cosmopolitan, seemingly boring Bangalore. One is put up every day, and each photograph teaches you something - about Bangalore, about life in the city, or about photography.

5. Blog of Nikhil Parekh - Poet and three-time World Record Holder - He claims this is the world's largest blog - although that is not his world record. His world record is for most number of references to the thesaurus in a single day. His second world record is for extraordinary pomposity backed by the most dubious credentials. His third world record is for the most meaningless, mind-numbing "poetry" in the world. Jag Iyer (My good friend, and Patron-saint of the JMC) once said about someone, "Macha, people took one look at this guy and decided that the word moron wouldn't be strong enough to describe what he is. So, they invented brain-moron." Jag Iyer would have said that about Nikhil Parekh if he had known about him.

1, 2, 3, Slight Happiness...

I still remember going to Guru Kripa Studio in Udupi as a little kid to get my first passport sized photograph clicked. And unlike the scores of passport photos I use these days, this one was for a passport. It was an occasion at home - the two little boys were dressed in all their finery to make sure they looked good in their passports that would last them for ten years. All the excitement surrounding the photo reached its climax when I threw a tantrum - I wanted to wear my maroon Snoopy shirt for the photo, and Amma had pale blue stripes in mind. The latter would have looked stately, but the former had character. And even at the age of seven, I chose character over formality.

And so my old passport had this picture of a little boy in a maroon shirt with little Snoopys (Snoopies?) staring into the camera with his over-large eyes, his short spiky hair making his protruding ears even more prominent. Even with that shirt and hairstyle, there was something formal about the photograph, the solemn expression on a seven year old's face, fully aware that it will be captured for eternity and used by grown-ups for serious businesses. (Or it could just have been something I ate that afternoon.)

There is something about passport photos that makes people give their unnatural expressions - sometimes as if they're actually holding a slate with their names and crime numbers, sometimes as if they're apologetic about the way they look on that day, and often as if they've put their week's share of make-up for that photo.

I think it's the general weirdness of the whole clicking-a-picture routine that brings out the worst in people. Firstly, you know you're being photographed, and unless you're a model and are used to it, you tend to view the camera as this alien eye watching you, and you have this instinctive reaction to not show your true colours. Sometimes, you're trying too hard. Face it, whatever we do, we can only look as good as we are. Secondly, you know you're the only one in the photograph - that creates a feeling of insecurity because you know that there is nothing else in the photo to distract the viewer. Thirdly, this is something you'd rather not do, and unlike those pictures of you in college with hands covering your face, the point of this photo is to see your face clearly.

But that first one was the last serious passport photo I took for a while because we shifted loyalties to Studio Abhilasha in Manipal. The photographer was a stout, bald-headed man whose English wouldn't have seemed out of place at an English Spoking Class. His studio was a messy room partitioned by wooden panels into three - the main reception, the studio, and the third room to which he'd direct you with, "Please sir, fresh before photo." There was a little basin with Ponds Dreamflower Powder and Mysore Sandal Soap.

That line always made this ritual more fun - "fresh before photo". You were suddenly put at ease. All the nervous hair-adjusting, collar-straightening, shiftiness was abandoned. You were yourself again. When you sat on that little stool, he'd place the lights like Chaplin in one of his movies - choreographed humour! Always the same two things would fall down, and he'd trip on the same wire.

And then he'd say that trademark line that took away any little seriousness that we were saving for the photograph:

"1... 2... 3... Slight Happiness..." Wide Grin. Click!

Love Brinjal - Part II

Continued from here

***

Increasingly, I find Coffee Day unbearable - the yuppiness of the place, the music and the crowd, the violet and red with 'ambient lighting' inside, and more than anything else, the fact that you cant ask for "Coffee" and get coffee. The company I keep has coverted me into the Koshy's 12 buck coffee and the Fabindia-ised Alliance cafe types. A dear friend theorised recently that Coffee Day was the new-age Cubbon Park. Just look around, she said, and put these people in the Cubbon Park context - they fit! In those days, though, I was a through and through Coffee Day man. Sipping on the lemon tea that I hated more than I hated beetroot and staring blankly into space as if I was communicating with Him, I was a perfect photograph for promotional material. "Coffee Day - It's More Than Just Coffee".


On this day, I hated Coffee Day even more because the one we decided to visit was empty, except for this loud table occupied by four thugs. With their gold chains and "mamu"s, they looked like the cast of Munnabhai. She was late, and I was feeling uncomfortable in their presence. I wasn't scared, but I didn't feel up to telling them to keep it down.

But this was a visit like no other. This boy was coming to "see" her, and while the parents chatted over filter coffee, dahi-vada, sojji and bajji at home, the "boy" and the "girl" would go away to the Coffee Day nearby to get to know each other better. It was like blind dating. Check out singles in your community. If gotrams are agreeable, parents arrange meeting. If boy and girl are agreeable, get married.

Here, the girl wasn't agreeable, because she was in love with me. Or so I thought at that time. We had arranged the perfect gag - they would come to Coffee Day, I'd be sitting there, pretend to have bumped into her, and would proceed to scandalise the poor boy.

Halfway into my glass of lemon tea, they walked in - the boy, a bespctacled IIT Madras graduate who worked in the US, and the girl, a pretty architect from Madras who the Beatles composed "Girl" for. The Munnabhai boys threw lecherous glances at her - "Kya figure, Mamu!". She looked my way and winked. I waited till they setlled down at a table.

"Hey, hottie!"
"Hottie yourself!" she said. Nice boy wore nervous expression. The girl has guy friends?
Hug. Expression gets nervouser. She punched my tummy and said, "Stopped gymming?"
"You don't come there anymore."
Now the Nice Boy was even more nervous. Girl goes to gym and meets this guy with long hair there. Will she do it once we're married?
"So, new boyfriend"? I asked, pointing at Nice Boy. Nice Boy thought, new? So, there have been old also. How many? Is this hippie-like guy one of them?
"No, he's come to 'see' me!" she said with a laugh.
"Marriage and all aa? I didn't think you were capable. After all you've done..."
Now why did he say that? Is there something I should know? Maybe she had physical relations with other men. Did something happen?
"Stop fucking around," she said.
Hello? She uses the f-word? I use it too, but I'm a guy!
"Do you mind if I..." I said, pulling up a chair. It wasn't a question. All of us knew I was going to sit with them now.
Now he realised he had to do some talking. "So, you've had boyfriends?"
"Three," she said and referring to me, "Could be four also, if you count this guy."
I laughed. So, I was right. This druggie is one of them.
"What about you?" she asked.
"Love failure," he replied earnestly.
***

For days we laughed about his 'love failure' - this girl who dumped him for another software engineer. But all that mocking seemed so ridiculous now. I was a love failure, and he wasn't. At Cubbon Park, she revealed that she was actually going to marry him. Societal pressure, she said. She couldn't wait beyond 26 to get married.

"But we used to laugh about him all the time!"
"He's a nice guy. What we did wasn't right."
"There are so many nice guys in the world! Why him?"
"See. I have to get married now, and this guy's sweet, smart and settled."
"Sweet, smart and settled! Is that what he put up on tamilmatrimony.com?"
"In fact, yes."
"I'm smarter, suaver and so-cool!"
"Um, you aren't ready for marriage."
"Who said that?"
"How old are you?"
"20..."
"Exactly."
"But I will be 21 in like three months."
"You'll marry me? On November 19th?"
"I... I, um, I could."
"I rest my case."

Fine. She was probably right. "But you've never before been too impressed by the settled types..."
"Who? Arjun?"
"Yeah. He was a struggling playwright. Alcoholic. Piss off."
"There was still something about him..."
***

"Stop being struthious!" she screamed.
"I'm being struthious?!" Arjun asked.

I had to butt in, "Um, what does 'struthious' mean?"
"What are you doing here?" she asked, "This is my part of the story!"
"Well, I'm the writer. I have the right to know what my characters mean!"
"Ok. Struthious means 'like an ostrich'".
"Why is Arjun like an ostrich?" One look at the guy told me that he couldn't run too fast, and that he didn't have a long neck.
"You know, ostriches bury their head in the mud. He does that - bury himself in his work all the time."
"I'm a writer, and I'm inspired," he said, "I have to write today and now!"
"If you write such trash when you're inspired... 'Softly the poignant dew drop on the chrysanthemum leaf of the morn...'"
"Morn rhymes with porn," I butted in.
"Just leave me alone. Now."

And she did leave him alone, to his romantic, naturalist, poetic, trashy, brain-softening writing, his worship of Lord Old Monk, subservience to King Romanov, his Smirning-off on richer days, and the King Flakes of Gold that kept him going.
***

She went instead for strapping, Delhi-ite Gaurav who swore, "Woh meri behen jaisi hai." Later, both of them realised they were capable of incest. When she went to Delhi years after their college romance, she insisted on staying with him. I'm not a trusting guy by nature, and decided to make the trip to Delhi to check on her.

To be continued.

Kannada and Culture

The Karnataka Rakshana Vedike (check out their website if you can read Kannada) is this organisation in Bangalore that, going by their name, protects Karnataka. From what, I am still trying to figure. In my five years in Bangalore, I have seen this group plastering signboards with charcoal because they were in English and not Kannada. Non-Kannada movies have been banned on occasions - or been forced to release late. Tamil channels have been off-air. Non-Karnataka shopkeepers and businessmen have been troubled recently. Trains have been stopped in their tracks. They have even disrupted traffic so many times, most recently, in the most bizarre manner - an autorickshaw rally!

What are they trying to achieve? Their motto (translated), "Kannada is the community (caste?), Kannada is the religion, Kannada is God," is contrary to their work - that not only puts Karnataka in the same bracket as the most parochial states of the country, but also takes away one of Karnataka's biggest historical assets - its ability to accept outsiders as its own.

"We are the same people, who recognised Bendre as our thought poet, Masti Venkatesha Iyengar as top notch short story writer, also recognised Girish Karnad. These were non-Kannada speaking people. It could happen only in Karnataka. You name any other language, it might at best allow a person who’s good in that language, they might accept him, but they will not crown him as the king of that language. Karnataka did it."

- Pandit Rajeev Taranath, Sarod player in the Deccan Herald

This is where the objectives of KRV become meaningless. Their ideology is that "...Kannada language needs to take centre-stage in all walks of life in Karnataka - be it administration, commerce, education, industry, science & technology, whatever". This, they believe, will lead to the overall development of Karnataka. At a conceptual level, as society has developed, it has come in contact with other societies, and assimilated and absorbed from them. This is but natural to the idea of progress. Even a "culture" progresses only when it comes in contact with other cultures. To think otherwise, is to subscribe to the extreme view that cultures are stagnant entities. But let us leave these philosophical debates aside - what is progress for one, might not necessarily mean the same for the other.

The Karnataka Rakshana Vedike thinks that the Westernisation and Hindi-isation of Karnataka is leading people to consider Kannada as inferior. The solution does not, and should not lie in opposing Western influences, but in promoting Kannada. Getting a person stuck in a traffic jam, and making him wade through a thousand autos is only going to antagonise him even more.

Taking myself as an example - I have lived in Karnataka all my life, and have studied Kannada in school till the tenth. I must say, that I enjoyed my Kannada textbook a lot more than my Hindi or English one. It has even inspired me to go looking for Kumaravyaasa's Bharata - the whole Mahabharata in shatpadis (verses of six lines each). It is another matter that I'm yet to find it! The KVR could make this classic available and accessible. Instead, the KVR reminds me every morning when I open the newspaper that I'm not Kannadiga by birth. I speak the language more fluently than I speak any other language, save English. I can abuse better in Kannada any day. It is the only Indian language in which I would be capable of reading any serious literature without the help of annotations and translations. What do I get for all this? Fiery speeches telling me that I'm from the land that took their Cauvery away?

If only the KVR would use their resources constructively, and not destructively, it might achieve something. Seriously.

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!