OLD IS GOLD-II

My mantra to enjoy an old classical movie

1. Well sit down first of all accept the truth that it is not these movies which were complete copy-cats but the movies of todays.


2. If you find funny the dressing style be sure that 10 years down the line what you wear will be considered as funny, so learn that it’s a part of the game, ever changing. Remember, Michael Jackson?


3. If you think the music is too slow to be partied, well most of today’s music is remix from these songs only. And slow they are but if you really care for meaning and some soul-searching songs then your search ends here.


4. Last but not the least don’t be judgmental give each movie some chance before pasting a label on it by just looking at the label on the CD. You might hit upon a different kind of beauty which so long you either didn’t bother to discover or were too young to realize it when they had been in the making, after all people still read Devdas and watch Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam, don’t they?

Well here is a list of some of the old classics that I watched last month- Sahib, Biwi Aur Ghulam, Anand, Guide, Awara (Raj Kapoor), Mera Naam Joker, Mughal-e-Azam, Tere Ghar ke Saamne, Saaransh. After watching them I will say I was not disappointed by any of them and at least there were a couple of scenes which moved me deeply so there was always some (positive) memories to take from each movie.

If what I am writing sounds to be a Martian theory pick up Sahib Biwi aur Ghulam and watch out for naughtiness of Waheeda and the crazy innocent devotion of the tragedy queen Meena Kumari. The poignancy of the plots are unmatched with a special reference to the scene in Mera Naam Joker where Raju’s mother dies just immediately before his awaited performance in the circus and he goes on to show to the world the larger-than-life heart of a joker with the scene so immaculate and moving that it left me with a wish to have had met these legends at least once.

Finally, watch such movies to at least form on opinion of your own if at all Raj Kapoor deserves to be called the “showman of the millennium”, if Meena Kumari was really such a moving actress to be called a tragedy queen and whether these people did a justice to the cause they chose for themselves and whether when others praise the olden age cinema are they talking sense!

OLD IS GOLD

My friends know me as an unforgiving critic of Bollywood movies-someone who brands a movie as worthy of piracy if it is found that it had been copied in a shameless manner from some Hollywood flick. Just to give you an idea, I had never watched any English movie before my college days and after only 4 years of movie watching I can easily name the Hollywood movie which has been plagiarized in a hindi movie, and it really pained me to see so much of good music (now I am not a good judge of that so sometimes I forgive them for copying music) wasted on copied stories. Even you will realize that after 5 or 6 years most of the movies are remembered for its music and not plot et al.
Well we have been through a time which has little witnessed the talent of the showmen of millennium like Raj Kapoor, Satyajit Ray, and Gurudutt - the pioneers of Indian cinema. So I thought of going back to classics to at least appreciate what these gentlemen created and what has been dragged endlessly into today’s cinema. Recently while watching some of the classics I observed some comparisons b/w the classics and today’s movies:

• The classics are more poignant than most of the modern movies which are an absurd mélange of 2 or 3 Hollywood flicks. (obviously with certain exception in the movies of both the era’s)


• The acting in the classical movies might seem very mechanical, in short to say not much refined acting and directing skills but then they were the ones who were creating original and different from Hollywood, as even they knew that a complete aping of Hollywood in Indian context would be absolutely absurd.


• The actresses in these movies (like Waheeda and especially Nargis in Awara) had more of an aura of grace, something which makes them look sexier than their modern day counterparts who prefer to leave less to imagination and more to description.


• The story line seems to be too boring and cliché but then that’s one disadvantage an old classical movie or old classical thriller novel have. So oft they have been told through different “inspired” sources that the very original source starts to sound/appear cliché and out of the place.

Lastly it’s these movies which I feel are the gems of the Indian cinema and are worth a try before being branded as outdated or not worthy of watching. Move over to the next blog to see what my mantra to enjoy an old classic movie is.

POOR JOKE!!

Well this post is dedicated to the plethora of poor jokes which when cracked draw boo’s from crowd and are looked down upon as indicative of poor sense of humour. Well I was thinking about all the poor jokes that I have heard till now and had some interesting observations about the types of poor jokes.

1. I prefer to call these open-ended PJ’s. Well here you actually have a situation, may sound real/hypothetical, but then you have to hit upon a particular proverb/name/movie/ song lyrics that may satisfy the situation. It’s like searching a pin in a haystack. Some of the typical situations are below.

a) Most often the PJ’s are a variation/twisting of the song lyrics or movie names. To guess the real meaning you have to decode the situation and then fit it in a known song/movie name/proverb. A teaser:

The Maratha Regiment was fighting hard on the border against theenemies....They had to cross the border to capture the enemybase....but no one was able to cross the border and go across. fearing death .Just then Hawaldar Pawan Kumar Jhonke ...got up and crossed the border and nothing happened to him. Why??
Kyon ki Panchi Nadiya PAWAN K JHONKE... Koi sarhad na inhe roke..



b) Sometimes the PJs are based on real tangible common things around you and can be so open-ended that you have to run your mind wild before settling on something. Sometimes you may not be even impressed with the answers. A teaser (this is one of the original by a friend of mine):

Who is the most wella (one who has no work at all) man in the world?
You may think and argue that it’s a software engineer, politicians but here is something smarter- The man sitting outside McDonalds!!!



c) Sometimes the PJ’s are variations (either pronunciation or spelling or may be even additions) of something that has been previously said and are again debated for funny rating. A teaser (again a real one from my friend. The answer was given by me although in a slightly different context):

Q. What do you call someone who is drunk and has been made fool of ?
A. P. K. Kataria
Q. His wife is fooled when she’s not drunk. What’s her name?
A. Beena. That way her full name is Mrs. Beena P. K. Kataria




2. I somehow find in case of open-ended PJ’s, there can be too many answers to these, smart or stupid, might depending on the person to person but some are closed-ended ones where you might have a situation and you may be typically asked, why, how. They may be mathematical or scientific principles twisted to a joke. I have seen very less of these jokes. A teaser:

Q. What is PJ?
A. Poor Joke
Q. What is P+iJ?
A. Complex Poor Joke
Q. But it does not funny and always demonstrates that there is still poverty despite governments’ claims.
A. Because joke is the imaginary part and poor is the real part.



3. The real poor jokes as I would like to call them are the ones totally unrelated stuff or like those thriller movies like Bluffmaster, been there and done that and then ended with a I-am-smart-enough-to-plot-that kind of note. It’s these PJs which are real turn-offs. A teaser:
What is RED and goes TRING TRING TRING ????
A TOMATO....... AND THE TRING TRING TRING WAS TO CONFUSE YOU......

Well sometimes the PJs might fall in more than one of the above categories. For example, what would Dharmendra say to Hema Malini if he wants to tell her to call him up? Well, Ring De Basanti. It’s a mixture you can say of the two categories 1 and 3. A particular reaction to a PJ is purely individualistic, that is understandable, but I think they deserve more recognition than what they currently receive.
Well I was saying that most often they don’t draw cheers from the crowd but I really think that they are a kind of witty jokes somewhat “thinking out of the box”. Isn’t that a good part of the joke. Very often I have seen these PJs come back as brain teasers (and sometimes as Sardar Jokes too!!) which is actually a better part of PJs. For example: explain in one sentence this representation:
0
B.Tech.
Ph.D.

You will really appreciate the answer and although you may argue against it, it has slight element of brain teasing element in it. Well the answer is: 2 degrees below zero. And if you think you’ve got the hang of it try these:
1) /r/e/a/d/i/n/g/
2) TE (EXAM) RM
3) R A E G
The motive is not to give some brain teasers here but to draw an analogy between brain teasers and PJ’s (those which are not from category 5). In normal social friendly conversation one can’t be discussing a brain teaser all the time so why not PJ’s. And if you still didn’t get the answers to above, first learn to appreciate PJ’s ( and secondly here are the answers.
1) Reading between the lines
2) Mid Term Exam
3) Reverse Gear

And to see how these brain teasers can be used in normal conversations, well have a look at the picture here to see what it really means. I leave it on you to decide which category this PJ falls in!

THE NEW FACE OF THE TELEVISION

Well this January I was home and relaxing. At Mysore I don’t have a TV at my home out of consensus with room-mates. Somehow I find there are better things to do than watch a TV. But at home there was nothing else to do except go through the worst part of watching a TV, surfing channels. But I realized that I was seeing a new face of television, good or bad I don’t know but new it was. The last face that I saw was full of all the saas-bahu soaps on any channel that you see. Then came a flurry of game shows starting with KBC and then failed attempts at other channels too. But now’s face was an entirely different extension of game shows or if I see it correctly, money-affair. These are now called the talent shows. Sony channel proudly hosts Indian Idol, Zee hosts Sa Re Ga Ma Pa…challenge and Star One too hosts then there are some other shows like Bluffmaster. This is even to the extent where in Star has decided to let KBC-2 rest for a while again and start another talent show.

As far I remember these talent shows were earlier started by Channel V or MTV calling all the enthusiastic and talented singers. They had called all the biggies of the industries from Adnan Sami to Farah Khan, the choreo. They had started what we call as behind-the-stage shootages showing how one or one’s family reacted after getting accepted for the next round or getting rejected and all that. But this time it was even more. Now these shows are more of behind-the-stage experiences than the stage performances. They will show how they took the whole troupe to dance with army folks or how they are cooking something to impress a fellow girl to ask for date and then all the drama, they order from a hotel and the delivery chap stepping right in when the girl starts getting impressed.

In another show where the polling was done via SMS (thanks to Siddhartha Basu for the very original idea!! He may be a bread earner for so many poeple). They host will try to create such an aura of interest as if he is the detective Sam Desilva and he is going to announce the name of the culprit. If one is to be turned out of the 10 contestants then he first announces the name of the 4 candidates who have got very less votes and then he will ask them and their families what they are feeling right now. Mind you he doesn’t say this in a flash. He will take his own time, take a very long musical pause (when the music in the pause is really intended to accentuate the interest) and then he will declare one of the 4 as a safe candidate and then ask the one one’s feeling and this goes on as infinitum until he really announces someone as a looser. And then begins a long recap of this candidate, interview of his/her family members. It never seems to end.

Then in another game show where they again poll through the same way, there is this guy from North East and he gets the highest votes (80% of his votes are from North East). So what do you expect happens? Well not that the host gets to announce the name of the looser. Instead the remaining three candidates walk in and they say that they quitting the seat and as they announce the thing, there is music in the background that doesn’t sound so confused as the hosts, audience and the judges. Mind you these are not ordinary judges but judges like Adesh Srivastava, Ismail Darbaar, Himmesh Reshammiya and hosts like Shaan. The participants are asked to explain their rationale for quitting at this point but they only mutter something as foolish as, “we just want this.” Then one judge suggest that this is because one from NE has got highest votes from NE and he feels there is some catch in this. And Lo! As is he said some code word. The whole audience section is divided into people shouting fouls, some shouting one India, some shouting NE. And as if this is not enough the director of the show who is busy watching all this on the stage (his reaction too is highlighted…throwing hands and rubbing forehead) walks in and enrages and thrashes all controversies apart. The participants later confess that they were silly in doing or saying the same.

So I definitely felt that this is an entirely new face of TV where in you will be really interested because you know that one of the 20 odd chaps on TV is going to get a crore and for that you are willing to see if anyone of them cooks too good or if anyone is too good at sketching. Ultimate “celebritization” I will say. But atleast its good in one way I was spared the torture of the Saas- bahu stuff at home this vacation.

BUDDHA- THE REVELATION

Moon-Buddha: Moon Buddha represents the three faces of Buddha, Old Man, Young Man and Child (Source:www.papaha.com)

I don’t remember anything else about the day. Initially while beginning this post I thought let’s add some narration to the post and may be some message but then I felt it would take the light off the main thing. So it is what I remember about the true incident of my life which I think has added to my sensitive side. At that time I was residing in Varanasi. I was in class ninth and had joined a coaching center. The classes used to be held in the evenings and by the time the classes ended it used to be fairly dark. Since the coaching was nearby to my house I didn’t have a vehicle to commute instead used to come back on foot.
The road that I used to take to my house was one of the most silent and empty roads to my house. My mother had often told me to take a longer route to home than that road but in order to avoid walking long I still walked the same road. It was also one of the darkest roads with only one street lamp at a bend in the stretch of 100m that branched off the main road and that too was placed closer to the main road so as soon as one had passed the lamp one could only see the dim light of the next lamp. It was a wintry December night. I had attended some class but don’t remember which, I couldn’t have after I had witnessed that incident.
I was wearing a sweater and a jacket but could still feel the cold. It was one of the times of the night when people will prefer to be in the cozy beds inside the thick quilts waiting for the some night movie. It was absolutely mute and except the typical sounds of the crickets at night nothing could be heard. I was walking briskly as I normally do. As I approached the lamp post I looked at the figures beneath the lamp. It was a couple- beggar by appearance. The female was dressed in just one thin sari, torn at places. The light shone on her sari which was as dusty as could be. She was sitting on the ground with her legs crossed and her left leg was shaking some packet on her lap. The packet was wrapped tight with lot of cloth which was dirty again. I realized it would have been her child. She was sitting with her shoulder touching the male. The male had a grim face, with a very much overgrown beard and hair on the head. One might easily mistake such appearance for some miscreants’. But not him!
I noticed them only when I had come closer. He was muttering something but it was inaudible and I could only make out, “ae..ae..ae..” and he was repeatedly shaking his hand with palms open and drawn out. I have seen a lot of beggars but may be he had caught me by surprise or it was poignancy because of my age but I was dumbstruck seeing that. 5 or 6 people passed me by but I didn’t notice them. I didn’t stop but slowed down with my head turning towards them as I walked past the bend. When I was a little into the dark portion of the road I paused for sometime and looked at the couple. The man was still shaking his hand and the woman her leg but the bundle didn’t move at all-their shadow on the ground all the more terrifying. The scene got etched on my mind. When I returned home I couldn’t enjoy watching the TV, I couldn’t even sleep properly. That night in the nightmare (it couldn’t be called a dream) I saw them again and woke in bed with a heavy heart beat and lot of perspiration. I didn’t discuss this with anyone at my home but I at least quit the road the next day. I wanted to do something for the couple. The least that I could do was help with my pocket money. I don’t remember what I decided. But then the next day I was on the same road and hoping to meet the same couple. But they were not there, same with the next evening and other countless evenings until I lost hope. Who knows what happened to them and who knows at all if the child was alive when I saw him, who knows at all if the parents of the child knew he was alive. Even if I was going on that road I would look at the spot. It was as if for some time my whole life had stopped.
It has been 10 years since that experience but sometimes still when it comes back to me I have sort of goose bumps on me. Somehow I find some similarity in the nature of my experience and Gautam Buddha’s. It came through different means but it did move me to slightly change my life. The difference was that it took me couple of incidents to finally “realize” it. I had seen beggars in even more poor state earlier. It’s just the whole scene, my being isolated that day, left to think on my own which made the difference. But difference it is, for times that have past and times to come.