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.

Anna's Victory: Whose defeat?

So Anna Hazare has won the battle, leaving his supporters jubilant. Quite understandable. My congratulations to team Anna and its brigade all over the country. The government is left red-faced. Each one of them, from Kapil Sibal to Pranav Mukerjee to PC to the Prime Minister, is looking like a fool of the first order. Every Tom, Dick and Harry can be seen vulgarly joking about the ministers on social networking sites. Sonia Gandhi must probably be the only person in the world happy to be recuperating from cancer at this point in time. I have, however, I few questions to ask to anyone who’d be worried about the future of this country.

1. The supporters of Anna Hazare movement seem to have been under the impression that their army was fighting against something foreign to our nation, a clandestine force from the outside that was hell-bent upon bringing nothing but disaster to the country. They seem to have forgotten that the government they were fighting against comprises of the very people they sent to the parliament as recently as 2007. So do they think they had voted for all the wrong people? If yes, who are the right people? By ridiculing their own choice, they are ridiculing themselves.
2. Anna is being touted as the second Gandhi to the nation. Hardly, I think. Consider this: The resolution was passed unanimously in both houses on Saturday evening (27 Aug). Anna Hazare, who was on water-only fast for the last 12 days, chose a time 14 hours later to break his fast! Why? All Muslims fast through the day during the month of Ramadan, starting from just before sunrise to just after the sunset. Ask any Muslim (ask me, I’m a Muslim) and he’ll tell you how difficult it is to stay hungry even for a minute after the legal fast-breaking time. It is almost impossible to do so. So why did Anna, hungry for not one, but 12 days, choose Sunday 10 am to break his fast? (Feel free to read between the lines here) Because he wanted the whole world to know that he was going to do so; he wanted all arrangements for all the fanfare to be there- the media and the paparazzi. Two children were selected to feed him juice, as, through the cameras, indeed the whole nation watch with awe and admiration. Later, he chose a five-star hospital to get admitted to and the cavalcade of vehicles that carried him from the Ramlila maidan to the Medanta hospital in Gurgaon, would’ve paled the US president’s cavalcade in comparison. Why all this? Would Mahatma Gandhi have done all this?
3. And as things looked like settling down eventually, Anna, perhaps already starting to miss the media attention, publicly announced that it was not over as yet and only postponed. He announced that the next fight would be on electoral reforms, so please don’t take away those cameras as yet. His electoral reforms would include right to reject and right to recall (an elected candidate). So with a lokpal already over their heads with a naked sword, and no power worth its name, certainly no means of making money, and no surety of being in the office for five full years, I think willing candidates for the next elections would be impossible to find for the political parties! Then, perhaps, Annaji wont have any option but to be the MLA, the MP, the cabinet minister AND the prime-minister. Why be just a lokpal?  Be a Deshpal.

Janalokpal- The Ceaser's wife?

In my last blog post I had put down my views on the on-going debate on the
lokpal issue. As the days have gone by, some more thoughts have crossed my
mind and I’m putting them here. Suppose the government, finally bowing to
public pressure, gives in and accepts Anna team’s version of the Lokpal and
a Janlokpal bill is passed in the parliament, what would be the scenario?
People like Anna, Kejriwal, and Kiran Bedi would perhaps man the Janlokpal
committe, and have supreme control over practically everything- from the
bureaucracy to the judiciary, right up to the Prime minister. Sounds very
powerful indeed. Powerful enough to corrupt mere mortals? Ah, but Anna and
 others in his team are not mere mortals, you would say. But literally speaking they are, aren't they? What would happen after them? What would be the procedure of choosing
people to chair this Janlokpal committee? What is the guarantee that all
those people who’d be in the committee would be as fair, impartial and
dedicated as the present Anna team? Mahatma Gandhi was charismatic as long
as he lived. Now there is no trace of that Gandhian philosophy. Could not
the same happen with the Janlokpal? Why are we assuming that a janlokpal
would not be corrupt? Would it be the Ceaser’s wife, so as to be above
suspicion?

Anna Hazare, Manmohan Bechare?

I will start by saying that I am as much concerned about corruption prevalent in India, as is everyone else. Also, I have utmost respect for shri Anna Hazare, for he is doing something that was needed to be done years ago. Having said that, I will now list four things that I firmly believe in:

1. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown;

2.  Telling others how things should be done is entirely different from doing it oneself;

3. Power corrupts;

4. Be the change you want to see in the society.

Our Nation is a nation of mass hysterias. A few weeks ago, there was a mass hysteria about Baba Ramdev, and the entire nation seemed to be behind him on the issue of black money. The media worked without pressure; they did not need to hunt for news in deep borewells in small towns. That hysteria died down sooner than expected, and now it has been replaced by the Anna hysteria. Again, the media is having a bonanza. One witnessed a similar hysteria early in this year when India first beat Pakistan in WC semifinals and again when India beat SL in the finals. Thousands poured out on the streets in the middle of the night to celebrate. A few days later everything was forgotten and IPL fever took over. I’m afraid of a similar fate for the Anna hysteria.

I’d like to share a few points here:

1. Anna (and his team) is now doing exactly what our netas have been doing over the years: exploit popular support. Just as on the basis of the support of the electorate in their area, netas indulge in all kinds of excesses, including goodaism and hooliganism, Anna too has leant on the popular wave in his favor and has put a virtual gun on the government’s head and is dictating terms. He’s almost saying, ‘Accept our version of the bill or else I’ll unleash this crowd on you’. Not a good sign in democracy. Pick 8 out of 10 random people in any of the rallies in Anna’s favor and they’d not know the difference between the lokpal bill and a driver’s license. Agreed, everyone is out on the street on the issue of corruption, but there should be method to everything. Bills are not presented to the parliament at gun point.
2. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. Is this why Anna Hazare, despite being a popular figure for decades, hasn’t fought an election? ‘Be the change you want to see in the society’. In all probability, Anna Hazare knows that in India, it is practically impossible to be in the seat of power, howsoever miniscule, and not be corrupt. Why didn’t he take up this challenge and show to the world that it can be different? Why doesn’t he become a part of the government and bring the change that he wants by being on the inside? Is it because that it is easy to point fingers from the outside than being inside and have fingers pointed to you? He reminds me of the left-front parties that were a coalition partner to the UPA government in the previous Lok-sabha, by the way of their ‘support from the outside’. By doing this, they were neither in the government, nor in the opposition, and played the role of either, at their convenience!
3. The hullabaloo of the opposition parties notwithstanding at this stage, I’d be wholly surprised that if and when Anna’s version of the bill is presented in the parliament, these very parties would vote for the bill! For a simple reason: though they are in the opposition today, they have certainly not lost hope of being in the power some day. And going by the way the UPA has conducted itself in the past one year or so, this seems possible as early as 2 years from now! So, in such an event the present opposition parties would then in direct line of fire of the lokpal! Therefore, I doubt it very much that Anna’s version of the bill would ever see the light of the day as a law.
4. http://righttoinformation.info/ncpri-public-consultations-on-the-lok-pal-bill/public-consultations-on-collective-and-concurrent-lokpal-anti-corruption-and-grievance-redress-measures-by-the-ncpri-nehru-memorial-museum-and-library-and-inclusive-media-4-change-csds/

    The above link is a fine one to study the finer details of the proposed lokpal bill. The government, being what it is, has taken into consideration the fact that Anna’s version of the bill, if implemented in its totality, has a potential of unleashing a barrage of plaints, justified, and unjustified, against all and sundry in the central government. (Remember, the Lokpal would have jurisdiction only against the central government agencies, and not the state government ones. The state governments have the option of having a lok-Ayukta. It was a Lok Ayukta’s report against Yedurappa in Karnataka that made him resign his post as the CM. But some states, like Gujarat, don’t have a lok-Ayukta for several years, and nobody’s going up in their arms about that!) Of course, even the government’s version of the Lokpal bill is not wholly acceptable, but then a middle path should be devised by the way of talks, and not by the way of blackmailing. One hopes that some day, sanity would prevail on either side, and a plausible bill would be passed in the parliament.

Finally, a word about corruption. The truth is that corruption is so rife in India that the dream of removing it in totality is an unreal one. There is corruption at high places, like the 2G and CWG scams, and there is corruption in small offices, like the roadside traffic policeman demanding a tenner. The fact is that one should be concerned about both with the same fervour. It is only the unchecked corrupt traffic policemen that burgeon into Kalmadis. But alas, we are concerned only about the A Rajas thieving our nation of thousands of crores, and not about ourselves when we don’t think twice before paying up the BSNL lineman for a new set of wiring. My daily anger against corruption is against the people responsible for maintaining the roads of my small town. Monsoon has battered the roads beyond recognition, and this is an annual affair. Will the lokpal bill repair my roads?  

Movie Review- Aarakshan

I have seen Prakash Jha grow as a director from Gangajal to Aparhan to Rajneeti. And since Jha raised the bar himself, Aarakshan disappoints a bit. I must say that only two kinds of movies thrill me: the ones that make me laugh heartily; and the ones that make me cry. Aarakshan started on a very promising note, and could have burgeoned into an intelligent and intense debate on the matter of reservation. But alas, as soon as one felt that the film was going to be differently entertaining, it lost its grip on the primary subject, and by the time the movie was in the final stages, it had become a fight between expensive private coaching classes, where education is as much a business as oil is for Arab sheikhs, and selfless and dedicated teachers like the protagonist Dr. Prabhakar Anand, played by the unequalled veteran of Hindi cinema- Amitabh Bachchan.  

The film has tried to incorporate two subjects within its fold- One, the subject of highly debatable reservation in educational institutes, and two, the subject of commercialization of education, by the way of over-priced coaching classes, and by the way of ‘self-financed’ professional colleges. While the primary theme of the film seems to be the former (going by the title), somewhere in the course of the movie, this slowly but interestingly maturing subject suddenly loses its hold and gives into trivialities. This is where the movie disappoints. I won’t write the story of the film here because the gist is what matters. I’ll simply narrate the reasons why one can watch this one:

One can watch this one for the intense character of Dr Prabhakar Anand, played extremely well by Amitabh Bachchan;  for Prakash Jha’s near-perfect direction.; for the poignant love story between Saif and Deepika, depicted  to be extremely romantic without as much as a single truly romantic scene; for Manoj Bajpai’s justice to the villainous role he played; and finally for the cute Tanvi Azmi, who despite having aged over the years appeared so charming and fresh in her role as Amitabh’s wife. Deepika Padukone looks stunningly beautiful; Saif looks strange in his studious look, with ‘chappat’ hair and orthodox glasses. There are just two songs in the movie- the first one, ‘accha lagta hai’, is a sweet, melodious number appearing early on in the movie, perhaps to emphasize the relationship between Deepika and Saif, and the other one, ‘kaun si dor kheenchein, kaun si kaatein’, a superbly sung classical by Channulal Mishra and my favorite Shreya Ghoshal. Channulal belongs to the same family as the legendary siblings- Rajan and Sajan Mishra, and has a similar bass voice. Go and watch this one, and yes, there’s nothing in it that should have provoked some of the Indian states to ban its screening. Publicity stunt, I suppose.     My rating: 2-1/2 on 5
Pic credit: Indicine.com