Jai Ho Bollywood

I have never reviewed a movie on my blog but when a certain movie with deshi theme generates so much international/domestic media interest and gets nominated for almost all international movie awards(Oscars, Golden Globe etc), I thought to check out the buzz all by myself. Its a different story how I ended up watching the movie in a slick city theater(my only second movie in a theater after Don2 in 2006!!). Alright so here is my verdict on this movie - Slumdog Millionaire(SM) is an out and out bollywood masala type feel good movie made in a potupurri of hindi/english language. Thats about it folks - nothing less nothing more.
The storyline is so much bollywoodish - hero's childhood trauma, lost love, struggling life, a villain and eventually a happy ending! So how come a movie which is almost a bollywood formula film dished out in the backdrop of notorious Mumbai slums could strike a chord with the world audience? I thought about it for a while longer and soon got messed up in the cobweb of too many plausible reasons which clogged my mind. This blog was an afterthougt of that quagmire which completely hung up my thinking apparatus called brain so to speak and hope it would boot up my brain normally once I am done with the post. So here are those cluttered thoughts in random order enumerating why the movie created history of sorts -
1) The first and foremost reason SM got noticed by the world audience - it is made by a seasoned holywood director Danny Boyle (I saw 'A Life Less Ordinary' a few years back and only realized now that it was one of the 20 odd movies directed so far by him). I would like to put my neck out on the line by making an almost racist statement here-had this movie been made by an Indian director, I bet it would have been just like another run of the mill bollywood movie which might have done a weeks business(or even less) and then would have quickly faded in our ephemeral memory. To prove my point, compare this movie with Oscar referred Lagaan starring Aamir. Both the movies have exactly same common themes - feel good factor, never die spirit, a love angle and an ultimate victory in trying circumstances. Yet Lagaan couldn't make it even in Foreign film category in the then Oscars whereas SM is a hot favourite in almost all mainstream categories spanning the entire gamut of the current Oscar awards. Its very difficult to pin point this anomaly but I have made a few attempts in as many points below. So read on.
2) The movie literally personifies feel good factor with love being its epicenter. Now considering the times we are living in - recession, terrorism etc, it ain't a surprise that anything which feels good would connect with the audience instantly. However it doesn't lessen the goodness of the movie by any means.
3) The biggest contributing factor for making this movie a hit as per my hyposthesis here is the clever interwinding of a T.V show called 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' with the main plot of the movie. Now for this sole point, I would give entire credit to Vikas Swarup, the author of the book 'Q&A' which is adapted in the movie. The show is a well known T.V show in almost all civilized countries of the world and hence was a common running thread to connect the story with the planet's mortals. I would bet my money in saying that this movie would not have connected so well had it not been for the inclusion of the game show in the movie.
4) A.R Rahman got accolades from all over the world for his music in the movie. Let me be bluntly honest here - he has scored an absolute average routine music as per his own standards for this movie. We in India as Indians know what A.R Rahman is and what kind of sole touching music he can churn out. I would put it this way - the world just got introduced to A.R Rahman's talent through this movie. However the talent as exhibited by him in this movie is not even the tip of the iceberg to put it that way. Its like the world self rejoicing in the discovery of a stoneage wheel when Rahman has already given us(the Indians) formula one cars!!

Notwithstanding all the above mentioned points, the movie is definitely a must dekho for all the movie lovers in India but with a caution line - dont overexpect from this film(we are so used to this genre of films). But to the foreign audience - expect the unexpected, unexperienced thrill of a typical masala bollywood film which you have been unaware about since stoneage!! I was not so gung ho about this movie being nominated at almost all biggies in the Hollywood arena as I fail to find much Indianness in a film made by a foreign director(just as with the much acclaimed movie Gandhi). And I also agree with Big B when he recently said that why we Indians go crazy whenever we find anything India related getting nominated or even mentioned in their affairs? Are we so insecure/unsure about our own identity? I guess I would have another post on this point some other day. However I am absolutely gung ho about the fact that this movie has put the bollywood masala formula on the world map and it wont be a surprise in coming years to find many more India/bollywood centric/themed movies finding their ways to the Oscars.
Jai Ho Bollywood!

Parenting Blues

They say children are a gift of God. I can bet whoever said this never actually went through the arduous journey of raising one all by themselves. I have a 2 year old naughty son (from my legal wife that is !!) and all I can say is that it hasn't been what it's made out to be. Somewhere I read that parenthood is like a secret society, nobody tells you what goes on inside until you get in and when you do, it’s way too late !! Now don’t get me wrong here – I love children and I love mine more than anything else in the world(Note – All men like their own children but other’s wives!!). It’s also true that they bring along with them all the fun and innocence and all the good things which you would have never experienced otherwise. In fact this post is not to contest the pure and cherubic joy children bring to our lives. This post is to ponder over what lies beneath – the whims and fancies of a child which form an integral part of a child’s upbringing package and every parent’s seemingly unending travails.

I might agree that this post is more an outcome of the fact that I am witnessing the timeframe in a child’s initial years which is categorized as ‘Devil’s age’ and ranges typically from 1 year to 3 years. This is the age when they realize they have super powers they were never told before and start becoming naughtier, stubborn and literally ‘out of control’ in the process. Try telling them one thing and they do the exact opposite. Ask them to sit at one place and they start running all over. I have been browsing through the net to understand how to deal with the situation and bring in more discipline in the child. Almost all websites have one common set of points/theme to address the issue– lots of patience, love, affection and more patience. Some sites did go into the specifics as to how a child craves for attention and most of his actions are to attract other’s attention with his behavior/misbehavior. The underlying principle is to reward good behavior while censuring the child subtly for all the misdeeds he causes. I discovered further that the parents need to be consistent in exhibiting their behavior towards their wards lest they misconstrue one time laxity in rules as a manipulative tactic which can be adopted time and again to circumvent the rules and eventually become his/her personality.

All these sound logical and simple. However when it comes to the actual implementation, it’s not as easy. Imagine a situation when you are playing with your child all nicely with the mother gone out for some chores. All is going fine when suddenly Murphy and his mysterious law smiles at you !! The child starts behaving obnoxiously and as you are just about trying to manage him does the door bell go off and the cell phone starts ringing all at the same time. In the middle of all these, you also just realize that you have an ‘urgent’ biobreak to attend to which is giving you last minute warnings !! So how do you keep your cool in such a situation? Not just humanly possible. Another instance I would like to quote. Many a time I have family friends coming over and now almost all of them have same age kids. A very typical situation which almost every parent would identify with is the fight between the kids over sharing of some stupid toy. Now such a situation is quite tricky in the sense that since the toy belongs to my kid, he has the first right of ownership over it but the other kid being a guest too has the right to play with the toy. Now believe me its next to impossible to manage such a situation. There are some prescribed workarounds for such situations but I haven’t seen any of them really working. You should consider yourself lucky if you get any help from the guest parents(very rare), all in all a very tough situation to manage.

It would be inappropriate of me though if I don’t mention a few positive tricks which do work at times. One of them I have seen is to tell them with lot of affection and love about their act of indiscipline and how they should avoid it next time. But the key here is patience and perseverance. It wouldn’t seem to work initially but if you persist, it does have a positive effect. Another trick from my bag which does work to a great extent is to let your ward know that you would stop all means of communication with him/her if they misbehave. I am not sure if it’s a design attribute in a human being but the moment someone ignores you by not talking/communicating with you for a while, you just can’t take it for long. This holds true for children too and you can use this absolute non violent method very effectively for instilling discipline in them. My last tried and tested trick which one should know and implement only if everything else fails – just hold your child firmly when he is not listening to you and take him away to a different room in your house. By this time, the child would be crying at the top of his lungs. Now ensure that you have the most favorite thing/toy of the child kept in this room. Immediately hand it over/show it to the child and start playing with him. The key here is to distract his attention from whatever he was crying for. My 2 year old is crazy for digital camera(seems the boys are crazy for all electronic gadgets from day one of their life!!) and I use it as a diversionary weapon to make him forget whatever he was crying for. It really works. The child would stop crying as if nothing had happened a moment before and you wonder how virtuous their short term memory loss could be!!

While all the things I have penned above can not be done away with(neither do I want to really speaking), the experience is in itself so unique and enriching and one just has to witness it to understand...well the secret society!!

I Wonder

That’s right. I often wonder who really architectured the whole concept of seven wonders of the world. Since childhood, we have been told there are seven wonders in the world and that these represent some of the most intriguing and amazing man made/nature evolved phenomenon which have enthralled the human race since ages. But as I started understanding it better, the whole concept of seven wonders of the world is in itself flawed to a great extent. If you dig into it further, you really start wondering as to who officially authorized the initial list of seven wonders of the world which includes places like Stonehenge, Great wall of Chine etc. Then comes the list of seven naturally existing wonders which includes places like Mount Everest, Grand canyon etc. Again there was no consensus as to what really qualifies to be called a wonder and somebody(read media giants like CNN/BBC etc) just came up with a consolidated list and published them on their media channels. The last straw came when I heard about a supposedly worldwide initiative wherein an organization invited popular votes from the world audience and asked them to vote for their favourite wonders of the world as percieved by them. Well it seems our very own Taj Mahal could make it to the final 7 but I was not too impressed with the overall exercise as it lacked credibility and transparency.

 Alright enough of that ‘what is right/what is wrong’ sermons. My point here was I have been fascinated with this whole seven wonders of the world thing and always used to wonder if I would ever get to witness atleast one of them. Well, the good news is or rather I can claim that I have witnessed a few of the so called wonders of the world and somehow tempted to draw a comparison between them just so to prove that apples can be compared with oranges!! So far I got to see the Grand Canyon, the Niagara falls and our very own the Taj. Let me write a few lines on each one of them and then we get to the comparison mode –

1)   Grand Canyon – Just one word folks – Truly Majestic(well, that’s 2 words I know). This happened when I was on my first US trip though I wasn’t really that excited to witness the wonder. I mean I had read about it a lot but being a part of high school text book syllabi, it kind of kills the excitement I guess. It’s like whatever you read during high school years was pure bookish and never meant to exist in reality. Well then there I was right at the edge of the wonder itself literally speaking. One look at the wonder and you are like ‘what the hell!!’, ‘what really happened here’ and you never get a chance to put your jaw back in its normal position. The first look at the Canyon sends shivers down your spine and makes you wonder how could such a thing ever happened on planet ‘Earth’. The gorge never ends when you look down and never ceases to amuse you when you look up. The scientific explanation is that the Colorado river was responsible for cutting the earth that deep as if somebody had just cut a full size cake. The bottom most point of the Grand Canyon is around 1.8 km deep, you might as well think of catching a cab to reach that deep! It’s almost 6 years that I witnessed the wonder and I still can recall the visuals so vividly. I still doubt if something of that scale can be done by a simple stream of flowing river.

2)   Niagara Falls – This was during my second trip to the US with wify accompanying me. The high point of this trip was that I drove all the way to the Niagara falls which is a good 6 hours drive one way. And we had to be back the same day which makes it 12 hours of drive in a 24 hours day! But as I discovered later, it was worth the efforts. Absolutely mesmerizing and extremely gigantic is how I would describe this wonder. The sheer amount of water flowing through the fall makes you wonder why we still have water shortage in our home ! The fall it seems gets frozen during the winter season when the temperature reaches sub zero levels. I wish I could witness that as well. The Niagara fall ride called ‘Maid of the Mist’ was an experience itself wherein you are taken right at the bottom of the fall in the middle of wild streams making you feel as if the boat you are riding on is about to overturn. 

 3)  Taj Mahal – ‘Sublime’ and ‘Pure’ are the epithets I could think of while witnessing the monument the first time. Absolute beauty, you just go breathless at its first sight. The legend has it that the emperor Shahjahan was besotted by his 17 year old cousin Mumtaj Mahal and just couldn’t take his eyes off of her. He married her eventually and had 14 kids in as many years it seems (please don’t analyze this information in any greater details as it has led me to a lot of unhealthy questions which I am unable to find in spite of being an ‘adult’!!). So when the queen was gone in his life, the emperor thought to immortalize her memories in what we now know as the ‘Taj Mahal’. The saying ‘Love is in the air’ actually gets personified when you visit the wonder and invariably makes you hold the hands of your beloved as you get completely captivated and mesmerized by the moment’s tenderness.

Now coming to the comparison part – Though all the 3 wonders are sheer magic to your eyes in their own ways, I personally found Grand Canyon having much more profound effect on my psyche than the other 2. Probably it has to do with ‘Fear’ factor that is synonymous with the Canyon and it seems human psychology registers and reacts more strongly to fear factor than beauty factor which is more prominent with the other 2 wonders viz. the Niagara and the Taj. But again, this is purely speaking from human psychology angle. From every other perspective, all the 3 are equals or incomparable and have their own aura so to speak. I would like to conclude saying that even though beauty does lie in the eyes of the beholder, the official/unofficial wonders of the world provide a new meaning to the definition of term ‘beauty’ and have to be witnessed in person to believe that wonders do happen.

A Decade Of Labour

That's right - it was exactly a decade ago on 10th Sep 1998 that I started my career in a company called Tata Consultancy Services. I was to report first day in the training center of the company in a city called Trivendrum which is almost the southernmost tip of India. Seems the extreme location of the training center was chosen more by design as they didn't want anyone to escape easily once trapped !! So there I was - in a completely new place with no known faces around. I had only reached there just a day before after a grueling 36 hours train journey from Nagpur. The place is known as God's own country but to me it seemed to be nothing more than a prosaic countryside with its people looking stuporous who needed to be shaken out of their slumber to put it that way. Well I agree that my perception may have been influenced by the fist day anxiousness and jitters but the place failed to impress me anyways as I discovered later. But back to my story - I was spent and consumed by the time I landed in my hotel from the railway station. It was around 6 in the evening and I had no idea about what to do next and more so about 'things' to come. The game had just started. In an hours time when I was settled in the hotel room, it was dinner time and I was told that the hotel would not serve us any food which basically meant going out in the town(sorry I dont' find Trivendrum be called  a city) and arrange for your own morsels. With a dead set of legs, I headed out to the market area in search of food with an acquaintance who was in the same boat as that of mine. Soon we discovered Trivendrum is not even a town-it's a Village!! No offense meant here to anyone from that part of the country but you would relate with that when you read the next few lines. First thing we observed about that place(lets not call it either town,city or village but lets just use the neutral 'place') was that the market shuts down by around 8 pm(that's like sun rise for me now!!) and nobody understands any language you speak. So with lot of difficulty, we found a dimly lit restaurant which was still open and more importantly serving people!! We went inside and sat on a table which also had a couple of chairs to park the posterior(so thoughtful of them I must say). Next thing I was looking for was a menu card and when I tried to explain that to the waiter(well, lets just say the serving person to protect the dignity of the term 'waiter'), he pointed me to a blackboard in the corner of the room which had a few words scribbled on it which I could not read for obvious reasons. Yes that was indeed the menu card of the restaurant and one was supposed to order food from those listed 8 to 10 godly items. I then saw a man sitting next table eating something similar to dal-rice. I thought atleast something looks familiar and ordered the serving person to get the same dish for myself. In about exactly 3 minutes(pretty good service time!), the serving person came with a big thaali with lot of dal/sambaar served along with something which looked like rice. I prayed to god(that was the first time I realized the importance of praying Him before having your food) and started having my food. With my first morsel just about touching my tongue, I realized that the journey of my career was not going to be a smooth one at all. It seems the rice which was offered on my plate was a variety of rice called 'Boiled rice' and it was way too tough on appetite to be even termed a food item. Kerala is the largest producer of rice in India and I had no doubt that quantity and quality cant go hand in hand. Anyways, I somehow gobbled up whatever amount of food I could from that menu item and headed back to the hotel once again noticing the deserted streets on way back though it was only about 9 pm. Next day was an all important first day of my career and I just wanted to catch some sleep before embarking on the wonderful journey.

Well before I could realize, its 10 years into my career and, believe it or not, I still go to work daily !! Jokes apart, its been an experience in itself and if I were to talk about it, I can go on and on relating those ups and downs of the decade long journey so to speak. And let me also confess that all these years have not been that easy as well though given a chance, I probably would have chosen the same path every time. Its funny but so true that any painful experience is accompanied with lot of pride and a feeling of achievement whereas anything which is pleasurable/fun giving always gives rise to guilt feelings. On this 'Pride' scale, my decade long career would top the list and I guess these 10 years would always be remembered as life defining epoch of my life. Though they say learning is a continuous phenomenon, the first decade of my career would be seen steepest on my learning graph depicting signs of more failures and less of success thus maturing up to the realities of life. But as they say, journey is important and not the destination. On this note, I am ready for the next innings(or decade) of my career with the same elan and enthusiasm as I had on my first day in TCS in Trivendrum as a trainee engineer.

Cheers to Life!! 

Mera Bharat Mahan

‘I am proud of my country’. Well, I agree that this line has become a cliché and has been so widely abused that it has lost its true meaning in contemporary time. So if you utter this line to anyone, you draw a blank face with a degree of cynicism starting to crease in and you get a feeling that you have said the stupidest thing in the world. And I do not blame that person even by a cent since the state of affairs in our country is such that anyone with an iota of brain would find it difficult to find one good thing to be proud about. You name it and we are almost the leader in that area – Corruption (we are ranked 74^th which is even below the nascent democracy Bhutan in the latest corruption perception index as released by Transparency International), Poverty and illiteracy (the less said the better), Unemployment (7.2% in 2007 which is almost double that of China’s 4% for the same year), Terrorism (India tops the country with maximum number of casualties killed in terrorism related violence beating even the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan) and so on. So what really made me or rather spurred me to open the post with that cliché? Read on to uncover the billion dollar question!

I have brought this up in many of my discussions with my peers/close friends and have found it to be one BIG positive about the country I take pride in calling mine and that to put in one word is – Democracy. In my opinion, this is one thing which we as countryman have taken so much for granted that it goes unnoticed completely. Let me relate a real life scenario which will support my conviction – It so happened that the head of the country is out on an international trip and the government he heads suddenly looses majority in the parliament due to the pullout of a few alliance parties. This situation is akin to emergency/coup kind of emergency where in the head of a state is ousted by anti-party elements. A situation of this kind would have involved nation’s military/army interference to keep the situation in control. But look at what happened in this country – the PM continued his trip uninterrupted with absolutely peaceful law and order situation in the country (actually it’s so stable inherently that no one even thought of it as a law and order issue, the Sensex climbing by 500 points on the same day just to give an idea as to how healthy the system works). The political maneuverings have started in the background but strictly within the democratic boundaries as set by the constitution so to speak. This kind of situation is unthinkable in any other political setup but democracy. In other words, the system is so unshakeable that even when a government loses the right to govern, there is absolutely no anarchy, no lawlessness, no threat of instability. Hats off to this seemingly ‘Business as Usual’ system called Democracy.

Let me relate here an interesting anecdote which I still remember so distinctly. A few years back, I had the opportunity of interacting with my company’s top management and one of them was from the US and had come down to India for some strategic team meeting. In one such conversation with him about a specific key project, I was trying to explain him the challenges faced in managing people/employees when we were trying to introduce a new technology enterprise wise. He interrupted me saying we need not worry about employee’s sentiments (resistance) and just go ahead with implementing the new technology without bothering about them. I tried to convince him again but to no avail. I then took a different route which worked like a magic. I told him, in fact let me quote the exact terms which I threw upon him – ‘Hey Mike, here is the problem (in typical American accent). India is a BIG democracy and people out here are so used to the system that nothing can move until they will it. So we got to take our employees in confidence before implementing the new system’. And believe me, he got the message instantly though he was very subtle in his consent and kept referring back to that term ‘Democracy’ in a sarcastic way in his subsequent conversations (that’s their way of looking at the rest of the world).

So the bottom line is – People rule in our country in every sense. So even though one would find many flaws in the system, the basic structure which supports it is indeed a marvel in itself. Long live Democracy, Long live India.

Jai Hind