Film Review: Mausam

Nothing is more difficult for a writer than to write a review of a bad movie. It is so difficult to recall all the rubbish that’s there in the film to write one!

            Pankaj Kapoor’s ability as an actor does not need any vouching. He has been in Hindi cinema and TV for decades and has enthralled his audiences with some stellar performances. But he has failed miserably in his directorial début- Mausam. He has clearly overdone things with this one.

The movie starts on a promising note, and the plot seems set to burgeon into an exciting tale but alas, it fails to keep its grip on the audience. There are just too many twists and turns, most of them unnecessary and almost all of them too circumstantial to be believable. The writer has tried to encompass important events of the decade between 1992 and 2002 with the Ayodhya tragedy, the 1993 Bombay blast, the Kargil war of 1999, the 9/11 event of 2001, to finally the Gujarat riots. And during these ten years, the hero and the heroine, amidst everything, meet and separate n number of times, with confusions galore about each other and their families. And because all of the above events were to be included, none of them could be portrayed to satisfaction.

The film starts with the issue of terrorism in Kashmir, where the Kashmiri pundits are being driven out of the valley by the separatists. Aayat’s (Sonam Kapoor) father sends her to a village in Punjab from Kashmir to live with his sister (Supriya Pathak) to escape the situation in Kashmir, and also help his Kashmiri pundit friend Maharaj Singh (Anupam Kher) escape the terrorists. Shahid Kapoor (Harry) lives in this village, and when Aayat arrives, he is shown waiting for an important letter from the Govt of India. And while he is waiting, he just hangs out with his gang of friends, playing pranks on the village folk. Sonam and he see each other and they fall in love (obviously). While their courtship is just taking off, suddenly, Sonam departs from the village early one morning, on the beck and call of her father in Bombay. She is unable to inform Shahid who feels left out high and dry. In the meanwhile, the important letter arrives, which is the confirmation to his posting with the Indian Air force.

Cut to Scotland seven years later.. Shahid is there as a part of ‘Air-force’ exchange programme (God knows what that is), and Sonam is there too, as a part of a music group. How and when Sonam’s family reach Scotland from Bombay remains a mystery. They bump into each other (what a co-incidence) and find out that they still have the fire in them. And when they are set to get engaged / married, Shahid has to leave immediately for India as Kargil war has broken out. This time, Sonam is left high and dry. I wont bore you with any more of this, because the rest of the movie is full of such twists and turns where Shahid and Sonam are unable to even talk to each other for months together (Strange in the era of mobile phones), with they changing their locations from the village in Punjab, to Mumbai, to the USA, Switzeralnd, Scotland, and finally Ahmedabad.  Obviously, when one of the two is at a particular location, the other is not. Or, if they are in the same location, they fail to meet up, and if they do, there is confusion about Sonam’s martial status (Confusion, confusion!). Then there is a girl in the village who loves Shahid by herself (one way), and there is a distant cousin of Sonam, who she was once engaged to, in her childhood, that add to the misunderstandings. Further, to add to the drama, Shahid is shown to sustain a brachial plexus injury to his left arm following a crash landing of his bomber jet when he is returning from a successful bombing of enemy targets on Tiger hill. The arm is left fully paralyzed for some time, which is shown to recover in bits and pieces through the second half of the film. This is shown as one reason why Shahid avoids meeting Sonam for several months, as in how could he present his ‘incomplete self’ to his beloved (Drama, drama!). To top it all, and to rub salt on the audience’s wounds, his arm is shown to recover fully in an instant when he is trying to save a stranded child from atop an abandoned merry-go-round at a fair in Ahmedabad, which is now engulfed in riots. Can anything be more clichéd?!

In the end, finally, after many more of the kind of ‘filler sequences’ described above, they do marry each other. They have a girl child, whom Shahid is shown so predictably rushing gleefully from his bomber jet to hug (thank God it is not in slow motion), while Sonam watches happily pregnant with another one.

            The theme of the movie is good but Pankaj Kapoor and his writer failed to capitalize on it. Though they seem to rush through the important events of the decade in question, the movie is painfully slow and appears dragged. We actually waited for the interval.  

            Performances are just about ok, Shahid looks dashing in and out of the Air-force uniform (I mean in plain clothes, you silly), but Sonam disappoints with her looks. She looks emaciated, as if inflicted with tuberculosis. She looks ugly at places and since we know what make-up can do to women, I dare not catch Sonam without one! If Kareena was once upon a time size zero, Sonam in this movie is size minus 10. Her acting too has lots to desire. There are some new faces in the rest of the cast and they are nothing to write home about, either. Anupam Kher did not have long enough role to do justice to, and Supriya Pathak was as usual in the role of Sonam’s aunt.

The songs, done by Pritam, are the few bright spots. I liked ‘Rabba main to mar gaya oye..’ and ‘Poore se zara sa kum hain hum..’ sung very well by Rashid Khan.

My rating: 1.5 on 5 

Narendra Modi for PM?

When a politician starts becoming sure of the permanency of his position in the society he represents, he ceases to be a politician, and starts becoming a statesman. At least, he affords to project himself as a statesman. These days, Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, is doing exactly that. There are a plethora of other factors, and not just his popularity as a CM that has kept BJP in power in Gujarat for so long now, and that would continue to do so for a long time in the foreseeable future. After witnessing Anna Hazare’s stupendous success with the old but amazingly effective weapon, Narendra Modi was quick to adopt the concept of fasting in order to garner public attention towards his actions and words. Boosted by the recent Supreme court’s decision to refer to the trial court Zakia Jafri’s plea for having a fresh look into her allegations of deliberate inaction by the chief minister causing the death of her husband Ehsaan Jafri along with dozens of other people on 28 February 2002, Narendra Modi promptly announced a three-day ‘Sadbhavna’ fast with an aim to kill two birds with a single stone. Interestingly, the dates of his fast coincide with his 61^st birthday. It is a different matter that the Supreme Court’s ruling is being incorrectly assumed by BJP and Narendra Modi as a victory of sorts. One must realize that the apex court has not set aside Zakia Jafri’s plea; it has only referred it to a lower court. It has not permanently closed its door to Zakia’s plea. However, this little flicker of hope towards exoneration for Modi, if we can call it that, was magnified by his party and supporters into a bonfire of celebrations, bringing the people in general to believe that there indeed was good news for Modi’s supporters. How many would, after all, actually care to look into the details of the ruling?

Though the 2014 general elections cannot yet be said to be round the corner, it is never too early, or too late in politics. The most important thing is to recognize an opportunity when it is there for grabs, and LK Advani’s announcement of a pan-India ‘anti-corruption’ rath yatra (Oh God, not another one!) and Narendra Modi’s antics with the five-star fast (His three-day fast is being held in the state-of-the-art Gujarat university convention centre in Ahmedabad with a seating capacity of 7000, enhanced further by a couple of thousand seats with help of tents) can be seen as the first steps towards mission 2014. Elections 2014 is one bird that I said Narendra Modi is trying to kill with his ‘fast’ stone. It was very conspicuous that this time round, instead of addressing the people as ‘six-crore Gujaratis’, Narendra Modi referred to the masses as ‘My dear country-men’ in his open letter just before the fast. Obviously, he has started visualizing himself beyond Gujarat. As a Prime Minister? Some people do fancy him in that position. And he himself does, too. After AB Vajpayee, who is out of active politics because of a multitude of ailments, BJP currently has no true national leader. In private, LK Advani believes himself to be one, but after the fiasco of 2004, and again in 2009, not many in the BJP are willing to place their bets on the aging patriarch. And the luke-warm response by his own party-men to his latest rath-yatra intentions is testimony to that sentiment. That leaves younger leaders in the BJP like Sushma Swaraj, and Arun Jaitley, who hardly have a pan-India appeal. So, some people, including most of the six-crore Gujaratis, some in the national BJP, most in the RSS, and most importantly, Modi himself, believe that he has a pan-India appeal. There is no doubt that he has been singularly responsible for the industrial growth of the state, and for that, he has been acclaimed by one and all; most recently, and most significantly by the US congress. The positive change in USA’s stand with regards to Modi, as against refusing him a diplomatic status in the past was a shot in the arm for him. This, coupled by the recent SC ruling, prompted Narendra Modi to suddenly start seeing himself as a possible candidate for the top post in the event of the NDA forming a government in the next Lok Sabha. For this to become a reality, he needs, with utmost urgency, to wash himself clean of the taint of 2002 Gujarat riots, and thereby increase his ‘pan-India’ mass appeal, as well as convince the NDA allies, most of whom might be averse to Modi’s candidature because of the aforesaid reasons, most importantly JDU, whose Nitish Kumar infamously refused to allow Narendra Modi to campaign for BJP in Bihar during the last assembly elections for the fear of losing the Muslim votes that form a large chunk of the state’s electorate. So here comes into play the second bird that Modi is attempting to kill with his Sadbhavana fast. He has carefully chosen his audience to include prominent Muslims of Gujarat to attend his three day fast, and he made sure that the news of a Muslim Gujarati businessman settled in south Africa  donating 30 lacs rupees to his pet ‘Kanya kelavani’ project made headlines in the recent newspapers. And the fact that his Sadbhavna fast was inaugurated with chants of ‘Allah-u-Akbar’ and Shlokas, is clear proof of his intentions in this direction. Will he succeed in realizing his ambitions? Only time will tell.

 For me, Narendra Modi has been an outstanding administrator, someone who has really worked hard for the development of his state. Does this qualify him for the prime minister’s post? Perhaps yes. But would his success in Gujarat be a guarantee of his success at national level? Perhaps no. One must remember that Narendra Modi has not only been able to garner overwhelming majority in the past two elections he has faced in the state, proving that he has the masses on his side, he has had complete and unhindered control over the government’s functioning. The opposition offered by the congressmen in the state is so meager that I sometimes wonder if they go and sit on the ruling party’s side during the assembly sessions in the state! This has enabled Narendra Modi to function unhampered, almost as an autocrat, as a dictator. So, the power that Narendra Modi enjoys in Gujarat, along with the surety he has in his mind of not losing out his seat of power to anyone else in at least a few coming assembly terms, has made him to work for the state with a free mind, as against someone who would need to spend a lot of his time and energy just to retain his position. All these factors would disappear as soon as he steps out of Gujarat into the national arena. At national level, he would have to face internal party bickering, a stiff opposition, and he’d have to function, at times, in accordance to the demands of the ally parties. And anyone who knows the Gujarat chief minister would know that he cannot function without absolute control over the situation. And certainly not with anyone dictating terms to him. Further, to function as the CM of a state, with a readily available shoulder of the centre, either to rest the gun on and shoot from, or to put the blame on for the things that go awry, is a different ball game altogether from running a central government where one has to get used to the fact there is no one else above you to pass the buck on, or to ask help from.

Now coming to the most important factor that would determine his ascent to the post of prime-minister, if ever- the M factor, or the Muslim factor. Despite the fact that there has been an apparent ‘communal harmony’ in Gujarat since 2002, Narendra Modi can be hardly said to be at peace with the Muslims of his state. The rich Muslim businessman who donated 30 lacs, and those chanting Allah-hu-Akbar at the inauguration of his fasting notwithstanding, the Muslims in Gujarat are far from happy with Narendra Modi. The Muslims who are with him only appear to be with him. It is true that the Hindus and the Muslims have not fought each other since 2002. But, if there is no apparent animosity, there is no friendship, either. The Muslims don’t dare to fight the Hindus; and the Hindus don’t need to fight the Muslims. The deep societal divide under the calm surface is too tangible for those who are open to perceiving it. But unfortunately, most people are only too happy to play the ostrich. The two communities are co-existing, but they are not living together. The festivals in either community are celebrated strictly within the community; Diwali and Holi are celebrated by the Hindus with the Muslims withdrawn into their cocoons; while the Eid and Ramadan is celebrated by the Muslims all by themselves. The cross-community wishes, if any, are strictly business transactions. In fact, such festivals in the past few years have generated a sense of unknown fear among the masses, fear of communal tensions surfacing once again, prompting them to wish that the day got over as soon as possible without any skirmishes. Muslims and Hindus in Gujarat continue to live in separate localities, not only in towns and cities, in small villages as well. A Hindu would not need to buy a property in a Muslim locality (there are so many choices for them), and a Muslim would not be allowed to buy one in a Hindu area. Can this be called communal harmony? Technically yes, but practically no. Absence of animosity is not friendship. And I am blaming both communities for this sorry state of affairs, more so the Muslims. The Muslims in Gujarat must realize that the majority Hindu community right now under the able leadership of Narendra Modi is self-sufficient by itself, and it does not need the Muslim community in any way for their own prosperity. And they can continue to prosper by simply ignoring the Muslims, forever. Thus, any loss is for the Muslim community in not patching up this divide. And the patching up of this divide cannot happen by itself, but by being proactive in regaining the confidence and friendship of the majority community. I am sure that for every step taken by the Muslim community, two will be taken by the majority community members. Even they cannot afford to have a permanent soured-up relationship with the minorities in the state.
However, by saying this, I do not mean to say that Muslims in the state must necessarily forget the pogrom of 2002, but they must have full faith in the judiciary for punishing the real perpetrators of the shame of 2002.   

Finally, regarding the chief minister himself, the Gujarat Muslims have never been an electoral problem for Narendra Modi. He would never need Muslim votes to get elected, or for getting the BJP to power in Gujarat. But his callous attitude towards Gujarat Muslims can go against him at national level. Therefore, if not for power at state level, Narendra Modi must make peace with the Muslims of his state in order to succeed politically at national level. And he can make peace with the Muslims of his state by ensuring justice for the 2002 riot victims by bringing the guilty to book, and with an apology for what happened at that time. I’m sure this small gesture would go a long way in ensuring support of the Muslim electorate from all over India, and not just Gujarat, possibly helping him to secure the Prime minister’s post.   

Corruption in Medicine

Corruption in the field of medicine is real, rampant, pernicious and beyond redemption. Before I write any further, I must say that though I am writing about corruption in the field of medicine, almost every field of human life is corrupt. I can write about the field of medicine only because I am a part of this field, and I have seen things from close quarters. Even then, I have penned down my own perceptions- the perceptions of a small-town practitioner, and I strongly believe that whatever I have seen or heard of is probably only the tip of the actual proverbial iceberg. There is probably much more filth than I show here.

 For long, the medical fraternity has pretended to believe that no one in the outside world is aware of this little fact, but the truth is that the outside world assumes every piece of the medical machinery to be corrupt unless proved otherwise, and most of the time they don’t even bother to find out the truth. They simply submit to the medical industry in their hour of need, hoping for it to last for as short a time as possible.

Now, as I say this, I will emphasize that corruption as a way of life has become ingrained in humans all over the world, perhaps more so in India. There are two ways of conducting oneself. One is by being corrupt- easier, profitable, keeps you at par with your peers, and no one cares two hoots about it. Second, by being non-corrupt- difficult, loss-making, relegating and no one cares two hoots about it either. There was a time when most people chose the latter and were happy to keep their conscience clear. More recently, the conscience has become redundant, and most people choose the former way of life, and are happy to simply hoard wealth.

Medical education

Corruption in medicine begins from medical education. When we studied medicine, there were hardly any self-financed medical colleges, and I’m talking mid-eighties. As the country’s economy improved and people stared having enough money to buy careers for their children, the high-profile businessmen and politicians began this new lucrative business of medical education (Other fields of education as well but I’ll talk of medicine here). The first big corruption comes in at this point in the chain. It would have been alright, not just alright, it would have been a big favor for the country if these self-financed colleges offered quality education. But, alas, businessmen and politicians can only be themselves. The governing body responsible for overseeing medical education in the country, the Medical council of India, was dissolved in its former form in 2010, following serious graft charges on its president Dr. Ketan Desai. Therefore, I cannot accuse the present MCI in its changed format of any misdoings as yet, but this is what used to summarily happen in those days: Many such self-financed colleges were practically dummy colleges. There was no infrastructure worth its name, no required patient inflow for hands-on training, and no quality teachers. Some colleges were deft in arranging teaching staff overnight just for the inspection by the Medical council of India, which by no means was blind to such irregularities. In fact, for the corrupt people in the MCI, the worse the irregularities, the better- they would then manage to exhort maximum bribe for granting permission. These stop-gap teachers were made out of doctors from the surrounding cities, and they were paid heftily for their ‘act’ and then after the inspection was over, everything went back to the usual pathetic state. Some of such ‘once-in-a-year’ assistant professors and professors in medical colleges are personally known to me, so I don’t need any further proof to such a criminal act. Ambitious students and parents used to fall for such spurious colleges and ended up paying hefty amounts as fees and capitation only to finally spoil their lives, sometimes because these colleges never went on to get recognized by the MCI (perhaps by the way of the ‘deal’ falling apart), and sometimes by becoming worthless professionals owing to below-par training. Such professionals, when they come out into the society, armed with a qualification but not necessarily the skill, pounce upon the society to vent out their many frustrations, and more often than not, end up indulging in corrupt practices to recover their capital, if not their self-esteem.

One can only hope that the MCI in the new format will bring a curb to this blatantly felonious practice that has a potential of playing adversely with the lives of people.

Kickbacks from referrals

Now we come to the second type of corruption in medical practice- kickbacks from referrals. More colloquially, it is called ‘cut-practice’. This form of corruption is perhaps the most rampant of all kinds- affects the patients monetarily, is extremely easy to indulge into, for even the straightest of the doctors, and extremely difficult to say no to. There is no need for me to elaborate on this variety of corruption, and is easily understood that the referring doctor gets a cut from the fees received by the treating doctor. The referral could be from a GP to a specialist, a specialist to a super-specialist, and from any one of them to a diagnostic centre. Not that such ‘transactions between doctors is in any way respectable, but this practice came down to being downright filthy when referral fees were begun to be doled out to class-IV employees of government hospitals, and to the ambulance and auto-rickshaw drivers for diverting patients to target hospitals/diagnostic centers. Many doctors claim that such a practice is technically not corruption. They say that the kickback is paid out of their own fees, which the patient would have paid in any case. True, but it is still a blatantly corrupt practice, because it encourages unnecessary referrals, investigations, unnecessary procedures and even surgeries. Such is the audacity of the entities involved in this sort of corruption that these kickbacks are now blatantly paid through cheques, and duly reflected upon the balance sheets as ‘professional fees’ or ‘referral fees’. In other words, this practice has now come to be accepted among medical practitioners as almost legal- nothing to be ashamed of. Where cash is not involved, gifts of equivalent value are passed on, often of the choice of the recipient.  

Pharmaceutical company-Doctor nexus  

The third type of corruption involves the Pharmaceutical companies. Of late, pharmaceutical companies have started cropping up in India like mushrooms in a rainforest. Anyone can start a pharmaceutical company without much ado. The modus operandi is quite simple- think of a good sounding name for your company, purchase drugs of your choice from the bulk drug manufacturers, have them packed with your label and presto, you have a drug company of your own! All you may need to do is put a small disclaimer on your label saying manufactured by xyz and marketed by you!  Thus, we have the multinational companies that have invested millions of dollars into their state-of-the-art manufacturing units, their R&D, and marketing, AND we also have companies like the ones mentioned above, that run at best from dingy, two-room apartments in small towns. And both of them sell the same drugs, obviously with a huge difference in quality, and therefore, the price. Now, both have to sell their products in the market. The lesser company sells at a lower price because its investment is less, and quality is suspect. The MNC sells at a higher price for the opposite of the above reasons. But BOTH go on to offer freebies to the doctors and clinicians in order to make sure they prescribe their products. These freebies can be anything according to the clinician’s ability to sell the products- from a simple two-rupee pen to foreign tours; from candies to LED TVs. Anything; the choice is sometimes the doctor’s. The lesser companies do it because they have to survive the competition. The MNCs do it because they have surplus money, and they have to survive the competition as well. Corruption of this kind encourages over-prescription, and spurious/low quality drugs. The sufferer, here too, is the patient. And by the way, kickbacks are not limited only to drugs. Transactions of all medical consumables, including orthopedic implants, angioplasty stents, etc. are conducted in a similar fashion.

Insurance company-Doctor-Patient nexus

Then there are the insurance companies for everyone to loot. These companies have, of late, started enforcing strict rules to prevent pilferage, but connivance of an errant employee is sometimes all that is required, at a nominal cost, to make all the rules fall flat on their faces. I must say that this variety of corruption involves the ‘patient’ as well. For e.g., someone who is resentful about the fact that despite paying premium for a health policy for three years in a row, he has not had a chance to get a reimbursement (like why am I not meeting an accident?), would simply approach a doctor to prepare a fake case, complete with all required formalities, and the amount thus claimed from the insurance company would be gleefully divided between the doctor, ‘patient’, and the insurance officer, leaving everyone happy, except of course the insurance company, which would not get to know about it in any case! 

I have listed above the major areas of corruption in medical practice. There are, of course, many other errant practices that I have not listed here like the Chemist-doctor liaison, the local drug inspector-chemist liaison etc. If I go on to elaborate all of them, this piece would become endless.

You must be wondering as to why, being into the profession, I must expose all this? Why expose, you all are perhaps aware of all this already. So, why I must write about all this?  I have simply enlisted the areas of corruption in my field to ask you as to how will a Lokpal, a Janalokpla, or a lokayukta bring a curb to such malpractices? Except, perhaps, the issue of spurious and below par medical colleges, all other varieties of corruption mentioned above could well continue to stay beyond the reach of any law. A punitive action, if any, can be taken only in the event of a complaint. In all types of corruption, all parties involved are happy in the end, so who’ll be the complainant?  The point I want to stress here is that unless there is a lokpal in every man’s heart, corruption has no chance of losing it out to any law.

Disclaimer: Despite the sorry state of affairs as stated by me, there are still a handful of medical personnel who continue to be honest and dedicated to their field of work. My sincere apologies to such personnel. Secondly, though I have tried to remain untouched by corruption of any kind in my medical career, I cannot, in any way, claim to have remained completely unaffected by it.  

Movie review- Bodyguard

Saturday night I had only reluctantly agreed to watch Bodyguard, and since I couldn’t bring myself to anticipate anything better than how Sallu movies have been in the past, I took pains to convince some friends to accompany us so that there could be some respite for me in the event of the movie turning intolerable- I could then at least discuss cricket in hushed voices. Off hand I can remember only a couple of Salman Khan Movies that were good: Hum aapke hain kaun, and Hum dil de chuke sanam, and I dare say both of the aforesaid movies were good in spite of Salman Khan. I know I’m not going to go down well with die-hard Sallu fans, specially the female brigade. My wife blatantly claims that I’m simply jealous of him. Why would I be jealous of an extremely good looking hunk who would rip-off of his shirt just to scratch his tummy? Why would I be jealous of a caring lover who would also bare-handedly knock out fifty-odd gun-totting enemies in a way that would put Rajnikanth to shame?  Yes, why would I be jealous of him? He isn’t a better orthopedic surgeon than I am!

Save for the last half an hour or so of the movie, Bodyguard was going the way Salman Khan movies usually do. Utterly humbug, with an apparently unpalatable story-line and just about ok songs. The last half hour the movie brings about such pleasantly dramatic turn to the story that I had to sit up and actually watch the rest of the film. Very innovative, I must say, the twist brought on in the end. One can go and watch this flick only for this much.

Salman khan is a familial bodyguard (this is the first instance where a bodyguard father passes on his job to his son as if it were a family business) working for a security agency, and he is entrusted with the job of being a bodyguard to Kareena Kapoor, who happens to be the daughter of an influential landlord (played by Raj Babbar) of an imaginary province of Jesinghpur. Now, Raj Babbar has done a big favor to Sallu in the past by saving the life of his mother when she was pregnant with him. So Sallu miyan naturally feels indebted to him and thus his daughter Kareena becomes untouchable for him in romantic sense. Sallu addresses Raj Babbar as ‘Maalik’, so one can imagine. Now Sallu is supposed to protect Kareena from some goons, and it is never made clear in the movie as to why there is such profound animosity between Raj Babbar’s family, and the group of goons, and why should they just be targeting the daughter and not the landlord father himself. Anyway, if one were to apply so much of mind in Sallu movies, one would want a refund each time. Now Sallu has to shadow Kareena everywhere she goes, and thus there are some funny scenes in the college where Kareena and her friend study. Now these girls apparently don’t like to be shadowed like this (I can’t fathom why any girl would refuse to be shadowed by Sallu miyan). So they hatch out a plan to divert his attention: Kareena starts making cozy phone calls from a cell phone that has a sim that does not display its number to the recipient, posing as an imaginary girl called Chhaya. Salman Khan falls in love with Chhaya, much to Kareena’s bewilderment, who herself falls in love with him apparently when she sees how he bravely fights bare-handedly with group of heavily armed toughies. So clichéd, na?  Now Kareena has this dilemma: She can’t reveal her love for Sallu fearing that both, his father and Sallu himself would reject her because of their respective positions: Sallu an indebted servant, and Kareena a daughter of a proud landlord. If I describe the rest of the story, it would give off hints to what happens in the last half hour. So, can’t help it, if you must have the thrill of the ending of this movie, you’ll have to tolerate the first three-quarters as well. And if you’re a Sallu fan, you’ll like the whole movie. So go and watch it, and remember me when you sit up to a jaw-dropping end.

Regarding performances, Sallu is as usual. Kareena is ok as well, and she doesn’t look her usual stunning self either. There is an obese comic added in the movie who brings on some laughs with his antics and funny one-liners on his T-shirts like ‘Coming soon: Six packs’. Raj Babbar looks painfully aged now with funnily tinted hair and moustache.

Some actors I saw for the first time in this movie, including the fat comedian, but then I was later informed that this movie is a remake of a south-Indian hit, and perhaps they picked up those actors verbatim from the original flick. 
My Rating: 2 on 5
Pic credit: Planetradio.com, cinebasti.com

Pages from my childhood- Eid celebrations

For children anywhere in the world, a religious festival is hardly a religious issue. It is about having fun with family and friends, and reluctantly participating in boring domestic spiritual rituals. I was indeed lucky to have been brought up in an extremely cosmopolitan residential colony, and my dad’s company, the ONGC, had people from all over the country as employees. As a result, we had in our circle of friends people from Assam to Gujarat; and from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. Needless to say, every now and then we were either busy preparing for, or participating in one or the other festival. Holi, Diwali, Eid, Pongal, Lohri, and Christmas were celebrated with the same fervor.

The enthusiasm of Eid for us children started right from the commencement of the holy month of Ramadan, and despite the fact that we didn’t fast because children are exempt from fasting, we did enjoy the daily Iftaar spread, the fast-breaking feast. Throughout the day we savored the aroma of the delicacies that mom prepared for the Iftaar, and though she mockingly prevented us from picking on the eatables right from the stove, we exploited the fact that she had only us children as tasters of her preparations (she herself would be fasting). And our tasting sometimes extended into mini meals of sorts! The whole month used to be littered with Iftaar parties here and there, and Muslim families strived to take special care of the non-Muslim friends during such get-togethers. The second half of the month of Ramadan brought us yet another chance to be happy. Eid requires all Muslims to don new clothes for the Eid prayers, and since middle-class economic conditions prevented us from frequently buying new sets of clothes through the year, we really looked forward to carefully choosing trouser and shirt pieces, and taking time to instruct the tailor to style them according to the latest bollywood trends. Same for the footwear and sometimes even the undergarments!

The Eid festivities started with the sighting of the moon, and since those days had telephones only in rare homes, we children rushed from home to home as beaming harbingers of the good news. Mothers used to happily get busy once again in the kitchen preparing delicacies for the great festival. Early on the Eid day we used to bathe early and put on the new set of clothes, and it wasn’t very infrequent for any one of us four brothers to be slightly unhappy with either his own choice of the shirt color, or with the tailor for not giving a wide enough bottom for his bell-bottoms. Dad used to abundantly garnish us with itr, the indigenous perfume. Eid prayers by themselves did not have any charm for us children, as they were preceded by boring sermons by stern looking maulvis, and followed by prolonged lectures in Arabic that we did not understand. However, the Eidgaah (Special prayer grounds for the Eid prayers) used to be thronged by vendors of toys and goodies for the children, converting the place into a fair of sorts, and after the prayers, our dad gladly heeded our demands to buy toys, toffees and balloons. At home, we wished family and friends, and received generous ‘Eidi’(a sum of money as gift) from elders. The rest of the day was spent in receiving friends at home and visiting theirs in return. The staple Eid delicacy ‘Sevai’ was enjoyed by one and all, and by the time the day was over, we still had appetite for some more.

Over the years, perhaps by the way of becoming adults, and by having more than enough hassles of life on hand to dampen the festive spirits, I feel the enthusiasm for Eid has come down considerably since our childhood days, and all we can do now is reminiscence those wonderful years with great fondness. 

The HANGING verdict!

I have never been a proponent of the death penalty, and when Dhanonjoy Chatterjee was condemned to death after president Kalam rejected the mercy petition of this rapist and murderer of a minor girl in West Bengal, I wrote several letters against the death penalty to the editor of the Indian Express, participating in the letter-to-editor debate on the issue at that time. The debate notwithstanding, Dhananjoy was hanged in August 2004. The debate on capital punishment heats up every time someone is condemned to death by the courts of law. However, when the condemned person is a ‘commoner’ like Dhananjoy Chatterjee, the debate is usually confined on TV between the proponent and the opponent groups of the corporal punishment. Such debates hardly have any effect on the final decision by the courts. However, when the condemned convict happens to be an accused in utterly heinous but politically sensitive crime, the final outcome is not only liable to be delayed by the way of political interference, it is at times, without any inhibitions, attempted to be changed against even the supreme court’s judgment and the president’s rejection of the mercy plea. The same has happened when the TN high court temporarily set aside the Supreme Court’s orders as well as president’s rejection of the mercy plea, and granted a two-month stay to the execution of the three men convicted in Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. The stay has been granted following the defense counsel Ram Jethmalani's argument that there was an inordinate delay of 11 years in carrying out the Supreme Court’s orders of the death sentence. The defense has requested the court to commute the sentence altogether owning to this ‘lapse’.  Whether or not this qualifies for a reason for the judgment to be changed is a matter of law, but I’m appalled by the fact that the president’s office sat on the mercy plea for 11 long years! I’m saying president’s office, because the office had two different presidents, along with two rival alliances ruling at the centre in these 11 years. Now, it’ll surprise many of you, but Dhanonjoy’s mercy plea was rejected in a matter of few weeks! As soon as the TN HC granted a two month stay, there were ostentatiously jubilant celebrations across TN, even as the TN assembly unanimously passed a resolution to approach the president of India for reconsidering the death sentence!! MDMK chief Vaiko went on to say that if Rajiv’s killers are hanged, TN would secede from the republic of India!!! Now, if there ever was a seditious / blasphemous statement made, it is this. Now, I consider social networking site like Facebook a good measure of the public sentiment. There was NO furore, whatsoever, on this issue. As if matters concerning TN and Rajiv Gandhi’s killers were foreign to us in this part of the country. And J&K CM Omar Abdullah dropped a virtual bomb yesterday by tweeting the unthinkable. He showed the audacity of comparing Murugan’s case (One of Rajiv’s killers. There are three on the death row, but I’ll use this name only for simplicity) with Afzal Guru’s. The opposition parties were immediately up in arms and started accusing Omar of playing ‘vote bank’ politics. True, but he had only tweeted, not acted. But why not similar accusations for the politicians of TN, who are not only openly seen defending the cause of Murugan, they have made the ‘struggle’ as they put it, official by passing that resolution in the assembly? Viako was on national TV shouting hoarse favoring the dead prime minister’s killers. All this makes me ask a few questions. But before I do so, I reiterate, for the fear of being labeled unpatriotic, that if Afzal and Kasab were to be hanged and they are not able to find a hangman, I’ll be happy to tie the noose around their necks and pull the lever. Now the questions:

1. Why anyone displaying sympathy for Afzal Guru is quickly accused of being unpatriotic, and pro-Pakistan, while there are no such sentiments against hordes of Tamils sympathizing with Murugan? Remember, for a patriot, being labeled ‘unpatriotic’ is the worst nightmare.

2. Why is there so much of public fury for the delay in hanging Afzal guru, and there was/is none for the delay in Murugan’s case? (There was in fact absolute silence on the issue and I came to know about the 11 year delay in Murugan’s case only through newspapers a week ago).

3. Why is the central government accused of being partial, allegedly for Muslim votes, when a procedural delay is seen in Afzal’s case? Why is no one accusing the government of being partial to the Tamils in Murugan’s case?
4. Why is the country tolerating Tamilnadu assembly's official stance on Murugan's case while the J&K assembly is not allowed to even think on these lines?

It is quite simple to see that in both cases, it is petty vote bank politics that has caused the delay in carrying out the sentence. It is the Tamil votes in Murugan’s case, and Muslim votes in Afzal’s case. But if public fury is directed against only one of the two cases, I’m sorry I’m living in such times.