Movie Review- OK Kanmani (2015)

When was the last time I watched a movie concealing an 'inconcealable' sheepish grin that is nothing more than a symptom of pure intoxication throughout its running time ? When Tara tiptoes to rise up to Dulquer feasting his face with her engulfing eyes, and says “Enna Kanmani na koopta?” I was smitten. I frankly want to ask my engaged friends what is the call-out name they have for their sweethearts. Have you ever called them ‘Kanmani’? Doesn’t it sound too old-fashioned ? Doesn’t ‘Kanmani’ sound too incongruous to the exotic plush of the places where you practice love such as Barista, Express Avenue, Pizza Hut? Then how does Tara fall for that 3000 year old word from Adi? Or try calling your love with that word and see how she reacts. I don’t know. This is what a Mani Ratnam or Gautham Menon can do to movies. They hate the so-called, so-much-in-demand trite ‘realism’ and weave worlds of fantasy which becomes instantly relatable to us because they are textured with some kind of a real life sensibility. The real life sensibility is essentially upper-class and rooted in the milieu of the maker. These are niche movies in every sense of the word. If you want realism, download Satyajit Ray and hang yourself from your ceiling.

The reason why I am almost celebrating this movie is because I was responsible for making it work for me more than it would have, even for the film maker. I had a tight schedule for the last three days and nearly forgot that I had booked for this film this weekend. This morning, only when I started for the film I realized that I am going in for a Mani Ratnam movie and what to expect from it. This is in complete contrast to what I did for Shankar’s ‘I’, dreaming about the movie for months together and gathering every piece of information about it like how a hungry hen gleans for its bit of grain when everything is almost over. The film, in short, gave the pleasure of a cancelled plan, the elevating high of an unexpected office holiday, the liberating satiety of a sudden chicken biriyani offered to you when you are being consumed by depression.

A few days back when people were raving about ‘Mental Manadhil’ , I chose to download it and put a testing tongue into it to examine its much-revered taste. I was disappointed frankly. People told me it would improve on subsequent hearings and I could not concur. And when I type this review in the searing heat of my solitary room space, I have to acknowledge that I am stifling my every instinct to break out into an orgiasmic shout of ‘Mana Mana Mana Mental Manadhil’.

Look at the scene when the couple meet for the first time. It happens in a wedding at a church. He spots her distinctly among the crowd and to his surprise, she is already staring at him. They do not go and meet instantly but communicate through charming gesticulations for quite a while. Their world is complete, in just an instant. They keep talking even after they leave the hall and come to the facade of the church. Generally as a convention, scenes like this will show the conversing couple intercut with shots that describe the events that go around them. Here the camera does not leave them for an instant. Their detachment from the external world is total. They have found each other as though they are fulfilling a prophecy. They are unconcerned about their environment as much as we are. The camera leaves them only after they stop talking and rejoin the real world.

People were praising P.C.Sreeram’s cinematography in the movie. By cinematography, they refer to the lighting, the color tone of the film and I don’t know if that is really a talking point in a Mani movie. When you are asked about how well did Dravid play an innings, wouldn’t be superfluous to say that the innings was technically first rate. Isn’t that a taken-for granted aspect? When Dravid swings his bat to play a stunning hook shot that sends the ball to the six and that is something worth noting. When Tara turns to Adi and suggests ‘living’ the rest of the ten days of togetherness to its fullest, I couldn’t prevent myself from wondering at the beauty of the frame. Please look at that shot. ‘How marvelous her motionless face cuts itself out in deep relief against the rippling waters of the calm Arabian sea’.

When I was slowly curling a tuft of my cephalic hair with my fingers to guess how Mani was going to preach the lessons of the old-school morality to the young couple, the scene where they wait in a hospital for a pregnancy test arrived. It was a masterstroke to have Kaniha give tips to Adi on pregnancy issues and childbirth. My heart was sinking and I began prognosticating a climax where a cute, lovable baby unites its parents into a forced marital union.  When Tara, at the end of the scene declares why she actually brought him to the hospital, I was reveling in a relief of amazement.

Performances? Dulquer has nothing to do. Nithya Menon has the upper hand here and a lesser heroine would have fleshed Dulquer’s work out neatly in contrast to others and made it look like a top-notch performance. What a choice Menon is!! She is neither petite nor sexy. Her plumpness teams beautifully with her cherubic face and how effortlessly she nails all men with her irresistible effervescence. I was thankful for keeping the old couple always at bay and hats off to Mani for curbing his instincts to allow the oldies impart life lessons to the fledgling couple.

Let me conclude. Mani Ratnam is back. After a flurry of releases whose mediocrity and loudness was all the more mind-numbing, here is a movie that revived the Tamil film buff from inside me. After five years, I am feeling deeply for the first time that I don’t have a girlfriend. The romantic inside me has been resuscitated after a long coma. I am in love.

Jayakanthan - A tribute

The privilege of writing a tribute to an icon like Jayakanthan should legally be restricted to only those who are well acquainted with his magnificent oeuvre. Otherwise people like me, to whom JK is not more famous than say, Sir C.V.Raman , will start uncorking their bottles of ink to record their so desperately made up obeisances. If someone asks me,  “Who was Sir C.V.Raman?” I would reply with a school-boyish alacrity, “ Sir C.V.Raman was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his invention of Raman Effect”. When faced with the second question ,”Good.  What is Raman Effect?”, I would have to stammer “Well… Umm. I love physics. But…”

My tribute shall be based upon the only interaction I had with his work, that too in a field, where he is not so known for. Cinema. To top it all, I have seen only one of his cinematic works-Sila Nerangalil Sila Manidhargal(SNSM). So as I am wiping my face to rid myself of the guilt that surrounds me as to the crime of deriving mileage to gather attention from his sad demise by flexing my writing muscle, I choose to proceed, with much difficulty.

SNSM was a black and white movie released in 1976 written by JK and directed by Bhimsingh. It narrated the story of an adolescent Brahmin girl, jettisoned away by her own family after she is raped by an anonymous person. She takes refuge in her old uncle who unfortunately, demands her body in return for his care and succor. She does not choose to refuse his help on account of his abominable desires, because she has nowhere to go.  At the same time, she does not succumb to his desires, respects him with all her heart since he has not yet done away with her in spite of her dogged resistance. As time passes, she grows up to become a Government official and gains her much- needed independence only to meet the man of her destiny again -the one who outraged her chastity.  She is fated to meet the man who had turned her life upside down with a sleight of a hand, crushed all her hopes and made her lonely forever. The woman is faced with the question as to whether she should avenge this unscrupulous beast for his heinous act, or wait … is he really the unscrupulous beast she assumed him to be?

We are in for surprises throughout the narrative as the woman moves into her middle age and befriends her rapist.  She discovers that he is married unhappily, and has an adolescent daughter. She finds that, this man is more flesh and blood than she thought, who is deeply repentant of his past and considers his failed marriage as his deserved punishment. The film beautifully meanders into the relationship of the woman with his daughter who suffers from the estrangement of her mother. As the story unfolds, the woman’s uncle grows more like a beast waiting to prey upon her and the man transforming into a pathetic , wounded little animal that needs attention and sympathy. By the end of the movie, it looks more like a role reversal , as everyone who is bound to support the woman,  turning into scary epitomes of selfishness and the supposed bad guy progressing from reprehensibility to respectability.

We need to realize that the film was released in 1976 when our movies still had not learned to sympathize with women who no longer, were considered to be ‘pure’. The film not only broke the rules of life, but also that of Tamil cinema, where, for its first and only time, it had a raped protagonist, entrusted her into the hands of an incestuous care-taker, allowed its villain to go physically unpunished and if that is not enough, shuddered its audience into announcing that the rape was not completely a ‘rape’. You would have declared a film that goes along like – Guy rapes girl;Guy is ‘sentenced’ to marry her; Girl hates him first; Then mistakes Stockholm Syndrome for love;Girl starts loving him to eternal marital bliss- as utterly regressive. Why should the woman always marry her rapist? Is that the maximum punishment a man deserves for his act? But what will you call a film that allows her heroine to develop feelings for such a man out of her own free-will and solid judgment?

No critic, of the yesteryear, I suppose would have been willing to remove the ‘moralist’ hat to analyze the film for its deep complexities. 

 Another surprising aspect of the film was an appreciable amount of unavoidable sexual dialogue, and the censors should have had JK at knife-point, as all these dialogue are spoken in English throughout the film.

It was a beautiful touch to show the young rapist, who reportedly was on a virtual ‘raping’ spree during his scandalous youth, grow into a complaining father, on account of his daughter’s unwillingness to comply with his elderly conservatism on her dressing and relationships.

Every main character in the film, is imbued with shades of irrepressible sexual hunger which blows the tenuous screens of morality to smithereens, questioning every belief that was thrust upon us , right from our childhood. It is not my point here to dispute the significance of morals or to dismiss them, as archaic and completely useless. To study certain slices of real life situations only through the lenses of morality and tradition, shall not yield the solutions that mankind badly needs to fix its daily problems. The very function of art is, to take its patrons on journeys into unchartered territories and offer a multitude of perspectives into the various aspects of life. That’s what SNSM did.

 JK is reported to have infused so much sensibility into the popular art forms. He must have been the first one to introduce his audiences to surrealism, as seen in his chilling short story ‘Nandavanthil Oru Aandi’ . I was ashamed to find that when I was searching for surrealism in the works of Bunuel, Bergman in Europe, here was someone who had mastered it in my mother tongue.

JK was a man who had a dubious resume, that would include a breathtaking variety of jobs he had to do for his livelihood from a proof-reader to a milk-vendor. As a result, it is said that his fiction was all very personal and woven around people from all walks of life, especially around the lumpen elements of society like prostitutes and pickpockets. Hence, the daredevilry to question established foundations of thinking and attempts to empathize with people whom we would generally abhor.

Recently I was surprised to learn that an unprecedented number of 5 lakhs of French people had gathered to protest the murderous attacks unleashed on the magazine Charlie Hebdo, in response to its non-conformist,radical journalism. It is said that any award winning book in Paris sells copies that outnumber the total population of Paris. Tamil Nadu is said to have a population of around the same number but  sells Sahitya Akademi award winning novels to the tune of a mere 3000 per year. We remained mute when right wing elements forced our writer Perumal Murugan out of his profession. That is the respect we pay to our writers. I still feel had JK been an English novelist, he would have joined the canon that houses the likes of Franz Kafka, Dostevysky,etc.

U.R.Ananthamurthy, an icon of Kannada literature was given State Funeral recently on his demise. I could see so much anguish all around me even when K.Balachandar left us. In the last two days, I could not see even one status on Facebook wall or a mention of JK’s name during casual conversations in my office. This is no place to proselytize the masses from their precious pursuits of survival into the noble religion of reading. All I expected was some awareness of the presence of a great icon amongst us. We can excuse ourselves that we are too busy for all this or may be you can accuse me of pretending to be too highbrow. Either way, I am beginning to feel that my aforementioned guilt is slowly withering away off me.

The Congress, the AAP, the Adversary

The below article is an ambitious attempt to juxtapose the histories of two different political parties both of which originated in different eras. Both were started with lofty ambitions and both of them failed to recognize that they were too ill-equipped for their respective missions. Above all,there is something else that brings them together- they face the same enemy.

THE CONGRESS –ALL IN ONE

By the end of the 19^th century, almost a century into India being colonized by the British, the adverse impacts were beginning to be felt throughout the country. The Great Imperial British engine was operating at full efficiency at that time.The Indian mercantile class had no answer to the sophisticated machinery of the capital intensive British industry which set the tone for predatory pricing of its consumer goods in the Indian market through large scale production at low input costs. The Indian peasantry on the other side, was smothered by heaps of multilayered taxation with each layer consumed by a corresponding level in the British administrative hierarchy. In short, the pestilence of colonial exploitation spared neither the rich nor the poor wreaking universal havoc throughout the subcontinent.

This necessitated the creation of a representative entity that would transcend the boundaries of class, religion and geography and would speak up to the imperial British Government in a single voice, the concerns of its hapless, heterogeneous subjects.

The Indian National Congress was formed hence , that was led by a team of illustrious leaders in Surendranath Banerjee, Lala Lajpat Rai, Dadabhai Naoroji etc. The INC grew gradually into a massive nationwide movement when the reins were handed over to Mahatma Gandhi and Pt.Jawaharlal Nehru. The success of the INC in luring even the uninterested common man into the stream of political movement lay not only in the effectiveness of Gandhi’s Satyagraha or the crusade for social equality that he initiated in parallel. The Congress movement based its struggle on an indisputable critique of colonialism and imperialism, meticulously evolved after intensive analysis into the roots of sufferings of all the social classes in India post the advent of the Europeans. This was the strongest point of the Congress movement which succeeded in convincing every Indian citizen that his suffering was a result of the anti people policies pursued by the imperial British government.

The Congress had solidified into more a mass movement than a party and, inspite of the reversals the British faced in the Second World War, and the emergence of other international developments that undermined its hold on its territories, the contribution of the Congress in liberating India should never be underestimated.

Post-liberation , the Congress , under the leadership of Nehru, was happy to offload the responsibilities it had assumed as a movement and to restrict itself to the role of a mere political party. Jawaharlal Nehru became the first Prime Minister of India. He who had so far succeeded in emancipating Indians from British slavery, now had to emancipate them from poverty.

Nehru believed in socialism and could only speak more socialism than he could practice. The Government was setting up ration shops on one side but its ministers were doing clandestine favours for the Indian big business. The Government ignored primary education completely. India was faring poorly in healthcare while the Government was setting up industries for mining and heavy engineering. The Government, however, had succeeded in kick-starting the dead engines of the Indian economy and India, to some extent did show signs of growth. But the fruits of India’s development, just like today were not getting distributed equally.

Whatever could have been the failings of the Congress, the following facts need to be acknowledged. The Congress was solely responsible for the mobilization of all the separate, dissimilar nation-states of the Indian sub-continent into an integrated  Indian Union. Many of the colonized countries of the world, post liberation had regressed into autocracies due to internal strife but Nehru’s Congress managed to keep India together as a cohesive, democratic Republic with secularism as its distinguishing ideal.

Post the death of Nehru, the Congress unfortunately, rudderless in the dangerous seas of uncertain times, began the process of recruiting self-centered sycophants to the Nehru family. The same party which had been established by intellectuals and patriots committed to the goal of freedom and which was seen by foreign countries as the most progressive Indian organization brandishing the idea of a secular, democratic, non-aligned India to the world , was beginning its downward spiral to a near moribundity to which it was to reach a few decades later.

The preponderance of an intellectually malnourished, power-addicted class of politicians at the core of the party organization deprived even the faintest hopes of the party regaining its old-time values. The only objective of the Congress became securing the votes of all the sections of the people even at the cost of sacrificing its Gandhi and Nehru at the altar of the ballot. The Congress rubbished the principles of democracy when it declared the Emergency and trampled upon secularism when it sponsored the massacre against Sikhs in 1984. Towards the end of the millennium, the Congress opted to align itself strongly in favour of the U.S placing India at the mercy of the global economy. In other words, Europe and the U.S wanted India to be opened for their entry and the same Congress which had shut Europe out of India, a few decades back had decided to atone for its past sin.

THE FAST DECLINE

India was liberalized in 1991 by the Congress Government and twenty years into it, India had exemplified what Joseph Stiglitz, the former Chief Economist of the World Bank, had to theorise about the current state of liberalized countries under the clutches of international finance institutions.

He points out that, the prescriptions of neo-liberalism , that were administered to the ailing Third World Countries, brought about radical changes in their political, cultural and social facets. The changes were, no doubt extremely regressive and pernicious in the long run for the country’s economy. One such change was the sudden pervasiveness of corruption throughout the client country and India, as though proving his point, was beginning to record unforeseen levels of corruption post-liberalization. Stiglitz in his book, names a lot of directives that the client countries had to follow  if they were to receive loans from the IMF and the World Bank , some of which are listed below.

• Privatize the assets of the government especially any undertaking of the public sector       irrespective of its performance.
• Remove all internal restrictions for the local or the international business community that might hamper the ease of doing business.
• Make credit facilities easily available with less borrowing restrictions to the business community at the cost of limiting loans to the less lucrative sectors such as agriculture

The Congress faithfully adhered to all these directives which led to the following consequences.

The first directive to sell all the public assets in every country resulted in the heads of the respective ministries indulging in surreptitious deals with big businesses that promised shares of the public assets at throwaway prices in return for hefty bribes. The previous NDA government was alleged to have indulged in such questionable practices in selling the shares of SAIL , NTPC,etc. As time progressed, the same frivolous practices extended to the sale of the nation's natural resources which resulted in the recent 2G, coal block allocation scams that were touted to be the biggest public scandals ever committed on earth.

The second directive to facilitate the business sector to start and run new business resulted plenty of secret land allocation deals between the heads of the administration and the corporate heads that sold land for pittances to the exchequer. There are plenty of such irregularities remaining unresolved at courts of law raised by the CAG, some of which happened at Gujarat in relation to the Adani company and at Karnataka with regard to software multinationals.

The third directive to provide credit facilities to the corporate sector with relaxation of plenty of lending restrictions resulted in unprecedented amounts of NPA to the public sector banks. The banks, went way beyond the new relaxations and were happy to ignore even the credit worthiness of the customer to offer heavy loans, even if he had an obvious record of loan default with other banks. It goes without saying that the bank officials indubitably were complicit in such transactions. The recent case of the owner of the United Breweries defaulting on a huge loan is one glaring example of this.

Hence, India under the Congress, was beginning to write new definitions of corruption. These allegations of corruption naturally tarnished the image of the UPA Government and disillusioned the masses which had reposed faith in the leadership of the the most qualified economist in the country, Dr. Manmohan Singh. Along with corruption, high inflation owing to frequent hikes of fuel prices, forward trading practices betrayed the faith of the people who had given the UPA Government a second term.

People’s anger peaked against such a non-performing, super-corrupt Congress government that ultimately led to some sporadic protests by an Anna Hazare, an ex-serviceman and an active Gandhian. The news starved media was aware of the fact that such events of public agitation even though were not phenomenal compared to the euphoric JP movement of the 1970s , was nevertheless sensational and was ready to devote its time and resources towards capturing the vigour or exaggerating it whenever needed, for wholesale public consumption. The media perception soon became the nation’s perception and the Hazare movement gathered its much needed momentum.

The movement was titled ‘India Against Corruption’ and eradicating corruption was its recurrent motif. This attracted the educated youth of the country and even the politically ignorant masses because it spoke their language and also mainly because, the torch bearers of the movement were not ready to analyse the origins of corruption from any historical or theoretical standpoint. On the eve of the 2014 general election the media were successful in dubbing the rise of the electoral derivative of the movement, the Aam Aadmi Party as a revolution.The fledgling AAP branded itself as the only incorruptible, transparent  political alternative to the trite virtual ‘two party politics’ of the Congress and the BJP.

What was surprising of the AAP was its success in drawing even the most principled and committed socio-political activists into its fold. Medha Patkar, SP Udayakumar , Gnani Sankaran for whom parliamentary democracy was an obnoxious idea till then, had suddenly developed an inexplicable faith in its efficacy. The reception was complete and the media, in no time declared that the AAP had easily gained the political space occupied by the Left parties in India, The middle class more than others, firmly believed that the victory of the AAP on a national level will mark the beginning of a new era in Indian politics.

The AAP, as everyone might be aware managed to emerge as a single largest party in the Delhi assembly in 2013.But it soon resigned due to various issues with its allies and with the Central Government. The AAP lost heavily in the general elections but managed to claw back its lost ground in 2015 routing the mammoth BJP in 67 out of 70 seats in Delhi.

The AAP now seems to have arrived resoundingly and the expectations of its sympathizers have been revived now. But all we see now, is an ugly internal conflict within a party between its frontline leaders. The differences seem to be personal and all I see is that the clash is no different from what we have been seeing all these years within the DMK or the Congress. It is too early to pass judgment on the AAP but I don’t see any significant changes the AAP can really bring about if it follows the present course.

IDEOLOGY ,THE CONGRESS, THE AAP

Any party, in my opinion, should be formed at the conclusion of an internal political discourse that shall determine its political leaning. This political leaning firmed up by a profound understanding of the political economy of the country in question shall serve as a beacon for the future course of the party irrespective of whether it is in power or not. In simple words, a party should either belong to the left or the right. I shall discuss in this space why the Congress did not assume such a political shade and what would have happened if it had.

During the pre-independence days, Nehru and other leaders tried to color the Congress movement with ‘red’ness but were soon stopped by Gandhi who believed in the subordination of the class struggle to the political struggle and wanted both the industrialist and the farmer to fight the British with a single minded resolve . Also the multi-class representation of the Congress prevented any such transformation. The Congress was seen as a party that transcended political ideology whose only objective was to free India from the Europeans. This move, to a very large extent worked, as India went on to attain independence, and the objective of the Congress to unify the nation on a purpose was somehow achieved.

However post-liberation, once the movement became a party,the Congress, had it anointed itself as a left wing party, would have prioritized universal healthcare and free education , expanded the country’s industrial muscle and created a self-sufficient independent economy. Even during the changed times of the 1990s, had the Congress practised left-wing politics, it would have stood against the economic invasion of the U.S and the Europe. Even if liberalization is deemed inevitable in the present day scenario, the Congress could have followed the model of China or South Korea, and infused firm state-control into the play of market forces.

Or had it chosen otherwise, it could have traversed the model of the United States and tapped the benefits of free market capitalism to the country’s advantage.

But the Congress did neither. It welcomed FDI in all sectors and found FDI anti-people when it was allowed to languish in the opposition. It effectively weakened the PDS during its rule but at the end of its ten year term, wanted to push the Food Security Bill forward which is pretty much the revamp of the PDS. The Congress, stalled the process of recruitment to the Public Sector but implemented a Rural Employment Guarantee programme effectively.

Now let us turn to the AAP and put forth some questions.

Did the AAP, the real-time incarnation of the cinema vigilante heroes, take note of the fact that the growth of the beast of corruption has overtaken the growth of India’s GDP, only post liberalization? Did the AAP want to recognize the fact that unbridled freedom to market forces shall foster corruption alone and not growth? Does the AAP have any alternative action plan that can obliterate the roots of corruption rather than cutting its overgrowth as and when possible?

THE IMPORTANCE OF IDEOLOGY –THE WAY FORWARD

There might be a few questions that might arise in the mind of the reader who has come thus far and I am bound to clarify them as much as I can. Why should a party stick to an ideology and confine itself to it?? Why should a party always subscribe either to the right or the left? Why cannot a party be run by the sole virtue of honesty?

To answer the first question, one must recognize that ideology should not be seen merely as a limiting factor that tunnels your vision and tethers you to a single sticky standpoint. Ideology offers you a prism through which you interpret political phenomenon. What it gives you need not be always the reality but its usefulness in offering insights about a political development should not be discounted. It is the onus of the observer to analyze a development based on contradicting ideologies, compile the observations obtained from each examination and arrive at a conclusion which is convincing to oneself whose inherent subjectivity shall not be denied at any cost.

To answer the second question as to why should a party always choose the left or the right, I shall have to build more on the contention that I have rolled out now. The ideology which I have been talking so much about cannot be in any circumstance, a purely political one, completely divorced from economics.  To reiterate, politics cannot exist without economics. No war in the history of the world has been fought without the intention to acquire more wealth. No king acquired territories merely for earning the prestige of owning one. Even the prestige of owning a piece of land stems from the material benefit it might bring to its owner. Since it is economics that fuels politics, it is indispensable for any honest, discerning politician to learn what both the divergent schools of economics written by Adam smith and Karl Marx had to say.

Answering the third question becomes easy for me now as you may see that the principles of honesty and uprightness can only guide you to walk through a chosen path but does not validate the legitimacy of the choice.

You can also contend that a party can draw a line between the left and the right and conflate the merits of both the right and left ideologies to form a new effective product. History has so many precedents as to explain why a centrist party shall always end up falling on the right side.

Yet, if the new enlightened AAP can manage to evolve such a new centrist ideology and toe that line, I will be glad to welcome it. But the stand of the AAP that it is beyond the fetters of ideology and the pride that it draws from such a proclamation, unintentionally bares its vacuous intellect. As I used to tell my friends often, before you think you are breaking a rule, you must know the origin of the rule and the significance of its existence.

So why did I have to include the two supposedly antagonistic parties of Congress and the AAP in this discussion? The Congress, during the time of its inception targeted British colonialism only because it rightly diagnosed it as the cause for mass poverty in India . It succeeded in slaying  it through sustained, committed political struggle. But it was only a half-victory because it could manage only to eradicate colonialism and that the party’s ideological emptiness did not allow it to look any further. The Congress could not recognize that colonialism was nothing but a more ruthless form of capitalism. Would the East India Company invade a country that has no natural resources or any country that is not ready to serve as a cheap labour market? Was not the EIC and other imperial countries driven by the interests of their own big businessmen and, was not imperialism, the crude form of what they now call the neo-liberalism? May be some of the Congress leaders had seen what they should have, but had remained mute, since Congress was not a principled left-wing party to shift its focus to nailing capitalism down after its first goal was achieved. Now as we see, the Congress possibly breathing its last days paying for its ideological vacuity. Now since the AAP has proved electorally that it can fight the BJP, all that is expected from them is immediate ceasefire of the ongoing internal feud and engage in a sincere attempt to study the dynamics of the struggle that it promised to wage to the people. Just like how India had to fight the tentacles of capitalism originating from the West a few centuries ago, it now stares at what looks like a repetition of history. The challenge for the AAP, if it really is true to its cause, thankfully is not two-layered as the Congress was destined to face. It does not need to fight colonialism first to get to its older brother. There is only one fight, only if it decides to indulge in grappling with ideas rather than grappling with its own men.

An open letter to MS Dhoni from a hater

Hi Mr.Dhoni,

There have been plenty of occasions for me, in the past, to address you.This one, as India bows out of the World Cup Semi final, shall be the most appropriate for a Dhoni hater like me to do that. A Dhoni hater, as regarded by the ‘true’ lovers of the game,  are haters of the Indian team as such.They suppose that we are now celebrating India’s exit out of the tournament out of so much hate for you.I don’t have the time for them as to exonerate myself from the ignominy. Let us remain traitors, as such.

I actually wanted to address on the occasion of you, completing 100 wins as the ODI captain. I am your hater and I cannot unfetter myself out of my strong impressions on you to come out and congratulate, on such a humongous achievement. Enough said.

As I can see the whole of India, rarely in its 65 year long history, cutting across divisions, from a Brahmin to a Dalit, from a Christian to a Parsi, from a Kashmiri to a Kannadiga, from a CEO to a municipality scavenger, from a RSS-man to a Naxal sympathizer, as though in pursuit of an Alexandrian conquest, aligning behind a single individual.That is behind you. The social media likens you to a Rajnikanth or Ajith Kumar and not a single Kamal Haasan fan or a Vijay fan seem to be offended by it. Even during the India-Pakistan wars of 1971 or 1999 or the Indo-China war of 1962, did the nation display such unbreachable solidarity. Cricket, and (unfortunately) cricket alone has been succeeding in uniting India.

Therefore, in some ways, you are the privileged individual who symbolizes Indian unity.This is not to say that you are the first or the only one to conjure this sort of unprecedented euphoria. But, for people who are less than 30 years of age, like me, the Dhoni cult is something that is remarkably peculiar.(and for haters like me, obviously abhorrent)

In 2004, on a hot afternoon, a lanky,unattractive, long haired boy wicketkeeper was reported to be tearing the Pakistani pace battery to smithereens. He was said to be a MS Dhoni. “Enna da peru, Dhoni, kappal nu??” was my first reaction on hearing your name. You had ended up scoring 148 in an ODI. A few months later, during a Diwali eve, India lead by my Rahul Dravid, was chasing a mammoth 290-something against Srilanka in a home ODI series. I was talking with my relative that India will lose if Dravid loses his wicket ( I don’t remember Sachin playing the series, may be he was out on an injury) as we were losing early wickets. He replied immediately, “Dhoni irukaanla??” I saw you walking out of the pavilion to take strike. I went out, having no interest to watch India lose. After coming back, he beaming at me, “Dei India won”.

“Oh , enga thala evlo adichaaru?”

“183 da”

“Oh mass ah?”

“Dei Dhoni da”

“Avan evlo adichaan?”

“Dhoni than da 183 not out”

The next day newspapers carried an image of you holding the cricket bat with its handle to the crowd and the other end tucked within your elbow. It was your pose after hitting the winning runs. It was like seeing a ‘Predator’ Arnold Schwarzenegger posing with his AK-47.

This is precisely why the Dhoni cult is so peculiar to us.We still cannot divorce that old unforgettable image of yours from what you symbolize today.But there is a question, has India not witnessed a bigger cult formation before?Is Dhoni a bigger star than Sachin Tendulkar?

Sachin Tendulkar, many may recount, was a legend even before people of my age, had learned that an ‘over’ in cricket consisted of six deliveries. Sachin, to us was born with the halo around him. For you,we built it.Sachin was the cricket equivalent of the Superstar Rajnikanth. Mr Dhoni, you don’t have a cinema equivalent yet.

Inspite of all this, I still have serious reservations against you. I would have anyday rooted for your promotion up the batting order, to shepherd the team in difficult circumstances ,atleast when the Indian team was trying to regroup as a unit post the retirement of its ‘Fab Four’.I would still go to great lengths in defending my stand that you were the worst test captain India ever produced.Is it really unfair, to expect from a captain who has 3 ICC limited over trophies in his kitty, to reproduce atleast half of his virtuosity in the longer format of the game, especially in overseas conditions when it is all the more needed? People forget test debacles and try to defend you with your fabulous exploits in the ODIs which is precisely the act of burying the fully grown pumpkin under a small mound of rice. You were not interested in test cricket, just like these people are and were glad to retire when you felt you had a replacement. Isn’t test cricket, as my Dravid says, life source of cricket? You were a Basha in ODIs and a Lingaa in test cricket. Let me stop here, sensing my susceptibility to become interminable whenever I am asked to accuse you.And more importantly, what I have already said against you so far, is too much, for this occasion by any standard.

As a fan of cricket, (not a fan of Indian cricket, because my patriotism steadily declined to nought post the retirements of Rahul and Sachin), I am nobody to pass a judgement on India’s show in the CWC 2015, as absolutely clinical and uncharacteristically sublime, given the pathetic overall form of the team in recent months.

And personally, I felt that your hand in India’s stellar showing was all there for us to see. I genuinely admit, that there were moments in this World Cup, where I felt, my long dead patriotism was showing signs of resurrection before being overpowered by the Semi final disaster.

But, Mr Dhoni, none can deny your admission to the canon of Indian greats and there will be so much hate for all the love you will manage to win in the future as well. We will remain haters and we will have a reason to defend.

Now, as a captain, it will be really agonising to have lost a hard-won trophy, inspite of having outdone yourselves to retain it. But as you may see, you have so far, succeeded in building a team for the future,which is no less a marvellous and an equally thankless task. We need you to lead the team in the next edition of the WC as well.Let us hope that my next letter to you, after four years, at the end of the 2019 WC be less cold and more patriotic.

With hate,

Jeeva P.

The Fourth Class

From the little of what I have been able to understand about our educated, well paid middle class citizenry , I could split them into four broad classes evaluating them based on their political consciousness. These classes are unfortunately , not so distinct and may overlap here and there on various parameters.

The first class shall constitute the set of people who are not interested in politics or economics or even any discipline that does not help them earn an extra rupee. I express my admiration for this class ,the reason being that when you throw a political question to them , they in response, take out and brandish their ignorance proudly as a badge of honor. The second class involves people who are genuinely interested in politics and make very occasional,  desperate attempts to learn something . They are too time-constrained  to venture into these affairs since there is no contingent need for them to know .

The third class is an admirable section of people , who may be called as public intellectuals ,who have no qualms in stepping out of their domains and indulge into deep political learning to evolve a remarkable political consciousness.

The fourth class shall comprise of the set of pseudo intellectuals who theoretically belong to the first and second classes in terms of political knowledge, but succeed in masquerading as the first and only politically enlightened class of this country. It is this class which is special, that I shall talk about in this article.

THE FOURTH CLASS: WHAT ARE THEY TO ME ?

Let me begin generalization of the characteristics of this class even though there is not much diversity in them to work them into a clear hierarchy.

• ·         This class spends not more than one hour on news channels and papers and dedicate the rest of their leisure to social media.
• ·         This class has little or no knowledge on the very Indian concepts of caste, caste based reservation, license raj, strikes, secularism, Non- Alignment movement, feminism, National Freedom Movement, the Indian Partition theory but is equipped to speak for hours about them.
• ·         Since most of the aforementioned concepts have in one or the other way been ‘Indianised’ by M.K.Gandhi or Jawaharlal Nehru, they have a deep abhorrence and against these leaders and love fantasizing on conspiracy theories concocted about them by Hindu right wing groups.
• ·         This class firmly believes that India is poor because it is overpopulated and that Indian farmers have created large, unmaintainable  families for themselves and as a result commit suicide ,succumbing to their insatiable need to procreate.
• ·         This class believes that India languishes at the bottom of the table of developing countries only because of a lack of a well –built, dynamic Prime Minister who is not fettered by the compulsions of coalition politics.
• ·         This class has a sub-section of people who believe that the Muslim rulers of India were basically foreign plunderers who exploited our country and were transferring all the wealth of India to Persia and Arabia for more than five hundred years. They also equally believe that the British were no less than genuine evangelists of science, modernity and human progress who wanted to distribute the fruits of their prosperity to the barbaric, backward people of the Afro-Asian continents.
• ·         The class, as a whole believes that anyone who abstains from exercising his vote can be accused as a national traitor and that the present democratic system will help India reach unfathomable heights in the future.

MY COUNTERPOINT

I deem it utterly a purposeless exercise, in this space, to contradict or dispute the beliefs of the ‘fourth’ class and to establish through proper enquiry and analysis, an alternative outlook challenging their ideological foundations. In fact, during various casual ,verbal political discussions with these people , I have attempted to do so and failed grossly, and that was not precisely due to their overpowering erudition. These people , as I have mentioned earlier , speak passionately on the need for a utopian, rapidly modernized world without any social or economic divisions characterized by a very egalitarian distribution of wealth and prosperity. But behind this façade, there is a horrifying self-centredness that determines their political choices and beliefs. These people cannot be overcome through informed political discourse because their curtain of self-centredness shall  preclude any attempt to look beyond their spuriously formed beliefs.

A few years back, when UPA was in power, I was talking with my friend (whose upper caste origin I never related to his political belief till that very day),whom I genuinely believed to have a strong anti-Congress, anti-establishment leaning ,very similar to mine. He was so vehement in his opposition to the crony capitalism fostered by the Congress post liberalization and went on to add that , to obliterate the roots of Congress from the society , a well organised , spirited armed rebellion was necessary. I was nodding all the time in acquiescence till  he suddenly mentioned that a Narendra Modi can lead that rebellion and subvert the hegemony of Congress. I was surprised but I was able to establish with some facts that a BJP alternative to Congress was no less harmful to the country as the previous NDA regime had proved to be. I also added the tags ‘sectarian’, ‘communal’ tags to BJP during the conversation.  I was , meanwhile , apprehending the arrival of a counter-argument from him that would show the BJP in good light with the help of facts and events that characterized its seven year stint in the opposition. But the reply I received,  was shocking.  “The Congress have been running a government for Muslims for more than fifty years. The Hindu population in India has been waning ever since Independence. They brought reservation and stopped all upper-caste people from occupying Government positions and brought India to ruin. The Muslims ruled India for more than 500 years and now this Congress runs the government on behalf of them . How can India prosper ? Why you people are against ‘us’ ruling the country?”

The argument which was initially dwelling on economics and systemic failures threatened to veer into the territory of xenophobia and racism. I could not argue after that. That day marked a watershed in my understanding of public political opinion. I was able to find similar trends on various occasions with different sets of people. There were scenarios  when I had beaten some people with my argument that their beloved political dispensation was essentially pro-corporate and fascist, passing off as an egalitarian, welfare state. Their response suddenly , after so many hours of defending the system, used to be like “Yes. It may be bad. What about socialism then? Has it brought growth and development? Will it save India? Do the Russians and Chinese bathe in milk and honey? Didn’t millions of Russians die due to the Government’s policies??”

My point here is that the last question should have originated from the whole hearted acceptance of my contention that the system which they have been defending for so long, has been proving to be deeply ineffectual and socially deleterious and from a sincere eagerness to know whether a new form of government(not  a party) can change things for the better.  But it used to come out of their sudden frantic desperation to fill the holes of their darling system with the inadequacies of its supposed alternative. Walking out of the hall , everytime after a discussion, I used to get the feeling that they have not changed one bit and their “Yes.It may be bad” admission was just a passing lie . Their shattered drops of their conviction that the system is fair and just , would have regrouped and coagulated into its old firm solidity. When you meet them the next time and happen to talk about some other political development, you find that they are the same people with no noticeable change in what they think.

I do not have a problem with people like them if they openly declare that they vote for a political party only because it benefits them and there is no harm in doing so , in my opinion. But that’s the highlight of the ‘fourth’ class . They are no different from whom they vote for. They are a significant majority with whom I have long stopped talking politics. But I would be really glad to write more for them if they are willing to open themselves up for a mutual trade of ideas. You cannot speak high of capitalism all the time and remain protectionist , when it comes to ideas.

THE DELHI VERDICT: A vote against neo-liberalism?

It was a pleasant surprise anti-fascists like me and even for the AAP leaders such as Yogendra Yadav . There were many celebratory or congratulatory messages all over the social network for the AAP which swept 67 of the 70 seats in the Delhi Assembly. In parallel , I came across some BJP leaders reacting by claiming that this time,their vote share acquired in the 2013 assembly elections has been kept intact at 32 percent and that the AAP has only eaten into the vote bank of the Congress. This contention did look convincing to me for a moment.

Still , I wanted to find out what had led to the meteoric rise of the Aam Aadmi within a span of 15 months from the last assembly elections.  Some newspapers categorically stated that Arvind Kejriwal's positive and spirited campaign highlighting local issues such as water, electricity and his meticulous efforts at changing his 'anarchist' image had been very successful among the Delhiites. Some other reports unanimously stated that Narendra Modi's approach of targeting Kejriwal's politics during his campaign rather than discussing Delhi's issues , the BJP's rejection of the 'benevolent' Harsha Vardhan's candidature for Chief Minister in favour of Kiran Bedi , the Sangh's attempts at reconversion through Ghar Wapsi campaign had proved counter productive for the BJP juggernaut. The above factors , to me looked like reasonably explaining the public acceptance of AAP as a fresh viable alternative to the banal ,desperate politics of the BJP-Congress legacy.

Why the 'neo liberal' angle ??

Soon , I could not but help comparing the present Assembly verdict with that of the Lok Sabha polls held in May 2014. I was surprised to find that the BJP had won 46 Percent of the Delhi votes in comparison with 32 percent accumulated by the AAP. That signifies a 14 Percent drop in the vote share of BJP in the current polls. This fact almost nullified the BJP's claims that the AAP had grown only on the fallow lands of the Congress and not on theirs.

Now I have a question  as to why did the BJP lose 14 percent within a short span of 9 months since the formation of the new government at the Centre ? Narendra Modi , as predicted has been continuing to live up to the expectations of a strong Prime Minister , single minded in implementing economic reforms unbending to the whims and fancies of his allies and the opposition. He has been perceived as being very dynamic in dealing with the international powers of the West , in beckoning the Indian diaspora to invest in their homeland , in speaking boldly on issues of sanitation and in cleaning India to Godliness through his 'revolutionary' Swachh Bharat campaign. Some sections of Indian middle class believes that the Modi- led BJP is a complete antithesis to the corrupt , ineffective and bureaucratic Singh- led UPA government. So why was the BJP trampled down in the Delhi polls ??

Let me look at the performance of the NDA from another perspective.  First,the NDA was instrumental in clearing the UPA's plans of increasing FDI in the insurance sector , a move which was opposed by them when they were in the opposition. Second, the Cabinet has been pressing its Environment Ministry hard to dilute the Forest protection laws so as to remove all legal and bureaucratic procedures hindering faster acquisition of mineral and forest wealth for private purposes. This was also a continuation of the policy of the erstwhile government. In the diesel price deregulation issue , the present Government gleefully accepted the baton from the outgoing one and completed the UPA's  run. Very recently the Modi Government accepted a weak Nuclear Liability agreement with the U.S which exempts the foreign nuclear suppliers of all liabilities in the event of a nuclear catastrophe. This was another UPA initiative that met with vehement resistance from  the BJP when it was in the opposition. Modi 's celebrated Smart Cities programme inevitably hinges upon the ordinance on LARR that amends the act by dismissing the need for Social Impact Assessment before acquiring land for any purpose thereby trashing the need to obtain consent from the affected families occupying the land. The NDA government well aware of the pathetic condition of Indian agricultural sector that has witnessed  the suicide of 2.5 lakh farmers over the last 20 years , has instructed the state to set a cap on Minimum Support Prices on agricultural products and to reduce state procurement of food grains.

Have the educated urban intelligentsia of Delhi taken note of the fact that the new government is faithfully following the path laid out by the previous disgraced Government and sometimes for carrying out unpopular decisions,  is exploring newer ways of circumventing the democratic procedures to favour corporate oligarchs imperiling the interests of the common people? Have they understood that the aforementioned actions of the Government comply fully with the prescriptions of neoliberalism ?  Does the 14 percent drop in vote share of the BJP reflect that ?

Or have the Indians traditionally for the last 20 years been changing governments fully cognizant of the merits and demerits of neoliberalism and its socio economic impact ? Have they realized that there is no politics without economics? Have they been aware of the fact that a few months ago ,Kejriwal had stated in a CII meeting that ' The government should have no business in business'?

Movie Review : The Straight Story (1999)

Try asking someone at random , what life means to him? He would probably say, in short, a struggle. The struggle could be to make his ends meet. Or  to come to terms with its vicissitudes and imposing realities. Call someone else and pose the same question. He might reply , life is trust. Trust in someone or something. Trust that things will start working for him or trust that he will get better to brave problems. But I believe, that there is another word that shall subsume all the aforementioned propositions about life. Journey. Is there anything else  that a ‘journey’ cannot encompass in its broad meaning or anything that a journey cannot teach man?

David Lynch , as many might have known, is an American film-maker who is known for his surrealist movies. For the only time in his career , in 1999, he was hired by Walt Disney studios to merely ‘direct’ an already completed script based on a quirky old man , whose resoluteness transcended human understanding . It was about a man who was able to cross 310 miles of his country to reunite with his estranged old brother, with the help of a, lawn mower. The movie was ‘The Straight Story’ starring a 79 year old part-time actor Richard Farnsworth. The movie speaks not only about man’s doggedness in the face of adversity but also about another unmistakable fact. The intangible potential that a journey possesses to transform man even after age has rendered him impenetrable to learning and insensitive to experience.

David Lynch seems to have taken the time tested route taught by the Japanese film maker Yasujiro Ozu, who was the master when it came to handling lives of aged people in movies. The film is laden with Ozu’s pillow shots of magnificent landscapes embedding vast farmlands and thin roads that pierce through their interminable length and breadth.  Even the old man’s conversations that border on moralizing  ,those that recount both the happy and doleful experiences of youth and the diverse yet benevolent characters that help him accomplish his challenging journey,  all remind of Ozu’s memorable fables.

The old man has sinned , in his youth , against his brother and has been separated for a long time .The old man has only one aim , in his last few years of his life- to meet his invalid brother after ten long years and relive his childhood with him. The journey spans a horrendous five weeks in all to complete. There are occasions when people whom he meets, offer to take the burden of transporting him safely to his destination. The old man declines each time with different , totally untrue reasons. But the fact is ,that he feels that it is his burden, his ‘cross’ and his alone.  He probably assumes that the carrying of his burden shall relieve him of his any past sins or of any hauntingly distressful memories he may have had with his brother.  He deeply wishes that when he meets his brother , he must be a clean man, a man who is as guileless as a child, as he was probably once.  It is in a sense, a return to his childhood. A virtual time travel. The journey , he believes, is a catharsis.

The film , no doubt relies on the masterful act of Richard Farnsworth , whose sunken eyes and overgrown beard adds to the melancholy that shrouds the life of Alvyn Straight.

The film has plenty of metaphors which are easy to recognize.  Alvyn’s route in the long highway is always on the margin of the road that probably denotes the place , we have assigned to our seniors in our ever impatient society.  The mini-chamber and the baggage which Alvyn carries behind, denotes his past that continues to influence , undermine and dictate the progress towards his future. However the most striking of Lynch’s symbols is the accompaniment of the Divine, signified by the pillow shots which keep hovering  over  the old man throughout his solitary sojourn, overseeing him , shepherding  him with help and succor whenever needed and taking him to his destination  with safety, finally ,vanishing into the stars.

Lynch tempers the poignance of the mood with very fine sprinklings of ironical humor during the course of the journey. The old man witnesses a car in front of him colliding against a crossing stag ultimately killing it. The motorist gets out of the car and begins to bewail her ill-fated daily trips to work that had been killing plenty of similar stags over the last few weeks. The scene beautifully segues  into the old man appropriating the unclaimed stag for his dinner purpose, only to find that he is surrounded by many more stags staring at his ‘ruthless’ act with helpless indignation.  The pre-climactic sequence is also special where , the old man finds his motor going dead suddenly , leading him to brood over the unexpected predicament .  We begin to anticipate the old man , deciding to cover the rest of the distance by walk, but soon , he takes the advice of a passing tractor-man , to try restarting his engine. He tries once and the engine comes alive to our surprise. Absurdity!!

The Straight Story is one of David Lynch’s lesser known works. Lynch infuses so much poetry into the narrative as much as he impregnates with strong messages , all the more reason to consider the movie as a very important work in modern American cinema.