Last night, outside a friend’s house, an owl was stuck in a tree.
The boys playing volleyball on the street called the fire engine. The fire officers parked the engine outside the gate just as we drove in, and marched in purposefully ahead of us.
The owl hung like a bedraggled sepia tinted kite by the tip of its wing, a remnant from Uttarayana.
We did not stop to watch the rescue, certain the officers would accomplish it in a few minutes. The boys went back to their game of volleyball.
Later that night, as we drove back home, the owl was not there. I assume it took its rescue in a matter-of-fact manner, and without thanking the boys or the fire officers, or regretting those minutes of distress, went its way.
Ullus, on the other hand, take much pleasure in entanglement.
Boys playing volleyball would be rudely dismissed to mind their own business, shouted at for playing on the street. Fire officers would be treated with stony silence, disapproved of for not taking care of more important disasters. Curious passersby would get a taste of spit, venom or deadly smiles. A few may find some unbidden tears fall on their shoulders.
“How dare you rescue me?”, ullus say. “I am happy, I am fine, stuck in this tree.”
All my life, I have resisted advice. Teja on the other hand, asks too many people for their opinions. This used to irritate me. “Why do you give the impression to others that you don’t know anything?” Teja would answer mischievously, knowing I would be annoyed, “Research.”
That conversation is over now. The next time, I am stuck, you are welcome to come and untangle me.
If there’s something that can completely unhinge me, it is a tin of rasgullas. I might crave for khichda, or saat-handli-pav, or patveliya-kheema, foods of my childhood, which are almost completely unavailable to me now, but sit me down in front of a plate full of the said foods, and I’ll tuck in only as much, or just a little bit more than I would my maid’s gavari-aloo-chapati. There may be times where I turn into Ms. Congeniality on beer, but for the better part of the year, I can look at an array of liquor bottles with complete indifference. I could have chocolates in the fridge for months, and never go beyond eating a piece at a time. I love hot jalebis like anyone else, but a couple can sate me.
And then, there are rasgullas. It must be the tins my father brought back from his business trips to Calcutta with stories of trams. My parents had travelled in trams in Bombay, but they had been discontinued a year before I was born, just another one of those things I thought I had missed by not being born earlier, like the chocolates Mummy ate when she was a child and which melted as soon as you put them on your tongue, or the handful of sweets you could buy for 1 paisa, or the bicycle rides my parents took when they were engaged from Khadki to Khadakvasla and the picnics they went for.
Tins were anyway, novelties. The only other tin we got at home contained baked beans with a sweet tomato sauce. And the rasgullas were unlike any sweet I had eaten. No ghee congealing in one’s mouth, not extremely sweet, not vilely colored, they were pristine white, round, chewy.
My father must have made one or two trips to Calcutta, and I think I did not taste any rasgullas for a few more years after that. Not from the tin, that is. We would be able to order a plate of rasgullas at a restaurant, but where was the pleasure of several, ‘uncountable’ rasgullas bobbing around in their sugary syrup in a staid plate of 2?
One day, a maid came to our house with a familiar looking tin. Another employer had given her the tin as a gift. She was confused about how to open it, and about what was in it. My mother opened the tin for her, while my sister and I looked on excitedly, for the beloved sight of those white, sweet balls. ‘What are these?’, she asked suspiciously. ‘Rasgullas’, we piped up. She did not seem enamored of them, and asked us to keep them if we liked. My mother politely refused, while I writhed in silent protest. The maid insisted, so my mother kept a few rasgullas for us, and returned the tin to the maid. A couple of days later the maid told us that she had thrown the sweets away, no one in her house had liked them. I was aghast. To this day, when I eat rasgullas, I think of the ones that were thrown away. And I feel compelled to finish all the ones before me.
As far as rasgullas are concerned, I’ll start decorously with 2. Then another 2 because I love them. Then another 2, because heck, why not, I love them so much. And then, someone who loves me, will say, go on have another. And I shyly, will.
On my one and only, very short visit to Calcutta, I found the time to eat rasgullas in the evening at a small corner shop. The hot rasgullas disconcerted me, and unfortunately I did not stay long enough, to get used to them.
Recently a friend has started making frequent trips to Calcutta. He says, the tins are bakwaas, you must get the rasgullas fresh from a shop, in a bottle. So he brought me a bottle last week. Should I call him a friend? He has undone a month’s diet.
I thought I’d have one a day, then reasoned it would mean cheating on my diet for a month, which would be extremely bad for my morale. Anyway, if the contents of the bottle were going into my stomach by the end of one month, why not by the end of the week? Might as well get the evil over with sooner, and get back to my diet.
Whatever.
The bottle is empty now.
There is one rasgulla waiting for Teja, however, who was away for 2 weeks.
He doesn’t even like rasgullas much, though he loves watching me eat them. But I thought it only fair to leave one for him. This could only be love.
You click on a link and move on.
In the next few minutes, you get a sales call based on that click.
The sales representative lures you with an offer.
You, hardened, say you were only surfing.
Later you give in and join up for a 6 month scheme.
The customer representative says if you take an upgrade you will get ‘x’ discount and ‘x’ gift.
You agree since there can never be enough DVDs in your life.
All this takes half-an-hour.
Your DVDs come in regularly for 2 weeks.
You are happy.
The 3rd week, the delivery guy disappears for 4-5 days.
You complain.
You get an apologetic mail from the support team.
The ‘x’ gift meanwhile has not showed up even after almost 6 weeks and 3 reminders.
The 6th week, the delivery guy disappears again.
The customer care representative says that your movies have been dispatched, they are on the way, you will receive them in the evening.
The next day has arrived. Your movies have not arrived.
This is SeventyMM.com.
Then there is BigFlix.
It cheats customers in a Bigger Way.
One day you renew your membership.
The next week, the company announces they have stopped home deliveries.
Viewing will now only be online.
They have not seen fit to give notice of their plans on their website.
You are stuck with a membership for 6 months. Even though you don’t want to watch movies online. And the selection of online movies is not large.
In the two months before they shut down home delivery operations, you have been having trouble with deliveries.
The customer care representatives do not tell you, of course, that they are in the process of shutting down the next month, the next week, the next day.
They send you 50 used DVDs as compensation for the inconvenience caused to you.
The DVDs don’t reflect a single choice in your rental queue.
Someone has just picked them haphazardly from the nearest godown and delivered them to you.
You complain.
You get a standard formatted answer in reply.
Meanwhile, the neighborhood video rental shops have shut down.
Unable to compete with the cut-throat prices and the larger stocks of the bigger companies.
Unable to pay exorbitant rents on shop space.
I’m not happy with the synopsis. Why, oh, why, the sad story of a happy film?
I guess I won’t be able to crib about Shemaroo anymore.Though the good news is they haven’t mastered this, Reliance has. Shemaroo is only distributing it. Several friends from FTII were involved in checking the technical quality of the DVD mastering, so I’m hoping it won’t disappoint.
A friend saw it at Crossword.
You can also buy it at Flipkart here. You get 2 bonus movies with it.
It comes with Tamil, Kannada and Bengali subtitles. Need to confirm whether it has English subtitles or not.
[Edited to add: Yes, it does have English subtitles. The Flipkart page makes it seem as if it doesn't.]
Please ignore the synopsis, and write your own reviews.
[Edited to add: The DVD also has some great archival footage of Chacha Nehru at the inception of CFSI with lots of kids.]
A DIY husband, however talented he may be, can be mortifying and exasperating.
He can also teach you a thing or two about stoicism.
Any job around the house, even if it is replacing a flush tank, involves not only research, but contemplation, discussion, designing, argument and deep contemplation again.
A sofa in the study can take over a year to materialize. Even so, fate must reconcile with Teja’s mood at the time.
Measurements of the space available to us are taken several times. Our requirements are enlisted several times, do we need to lounge on the sofa, do we need storage space under it, how will we open the drawer next to it, so on and so forth. The designs are then put into a drawer, we forget all about the sofa for several days, and after a month or so, the discussion begins again.
One day, when he feels specially indulgent towards me, particularly after I have nagged and nagged for 2 days, and added some tears, we go to our favorite store and look at the designs. I say, “We may just find a sofa we like, which fits into our space, and we can buy right away.” He nods.
We do find a sofa we both like. I also find a small coffee table with four pullout stools that fits into the study perfectly. I reach for my credit card. Teja says, “We’ll go back home and take the measurements of the space.” I know it is futile to argue.
In the car, Teja says, “I could make a better sofa for you at half the price. Forget the money, but we could make it exactly as we want. Of course, if you like the sofa, let’s buy it. I’d like you to be happy. It’s just that I like making furniture, you know.”
The man has learned feminine guile.
I say, “But I want a wooden one like the one we saw. Not a ply box.”
He says, “Of course. Look I have found a wood cutting mill near Valsad. They have all the machines I require. I can take the exact measurements, mark the cuts for the joints and have them give me the finished pieces of wood. Then all I have to do is nail them together at home.”
I say, “Really?” No sawdust flying around, no instruments lying around, no general mess around the house, for weeks.
He continues, “If you like that coffee table, you buy it. It’s really nice, and I couldn’t make anything like that, at that cost.”
I say, “Really? You mean that?”
He says, “Yes, I like it too.”
I test him out, “Should we turn back and get it right now?”
He says, “Now?”
I say, “Yes, why not? We are still close by.”
He says, “OK.”
I cannot believe my luck. This means he really likes the coffee table. I’m already planning the room around the coffee table, on our way back to the store.
I look at the coffee table proprietarily and tell the attendant, “I want that.”
He looks confused. He makes calls. “The Set-of-5 is discontinued, Madam. And this piece is sold. The website is down, so I can’t check the stocks in other stores for a week. But maybe, after that …”
I leave my name and number and sulk all the way home.
Teja says, “If they don’t get it for you, I’ll make it for you.”
Then, we stop to look yet again at TV sets. Teja cannot put together a TV even if he would like to. So, for a year, we have stared at TVs every time we have passed an electronics store. For hours, Teja has researched various TVs, brands, costs, technical specifications on the Internet. Dhanno and I can now answer all his questions on the differences between Plasma, LED and LCD TVs. We finally deserve to buy one. Teja makes the calls, books a deal. We wait a day, 2 days. The day our TV is meant to be delivered, is an all-India bandh.
Teja says, “It will come in a day or two. Maybe, we should re-paint the study before we get the new TV. Plus we need to get that wall water-proofed. And we will need a new DVD player cabinet. Let me make the designs. I should also check out the options for wall mounts.”
‘Hum Hindustani‘ was made in 1960, and it strikes me that this was the year my parents married. My father was 27, my mother 20. The film reflects the still-upbeat Nehruvian philosophy of the time, the concept of a new industrial India, that would conquer all the problems besetting the country until then, the faith in a youth that was charged with idealism and hope.
The film begins with a montage of ‘Incredible New India’ stock shots, including Nehru at a public gathering and construction work at the Bhakra-Nangal dam, over the famous song, ‘Chhodo kal ki baatein, kal ki baat puraani, ..’
Sadly however, the film seems to come together in flashes. The movie is a bit of a ramble, not leading up to anything much.
Sukhen (Sunil Dutt) and Satyen (Joy Mukherjee)
are the two older brothers of a large family, with a younger sister, and two other very young siblings and a mother (Leela Chitnis) in full red lipsticked-glory
and a father, Amarnath (Mubarak) in a wheelchair, in a huge house falling to pieces.
It does have a lovely Saraswati on stained glass across its stairway though.
The family is embroiled in a court case which Amarnath refuses to give up on, even if he has to lose his wealth, because he believes he is right. Sukhen and Satyen are both engaged, the first to Sudha (Asha Parekh) and the second to Kalpana (Helen). Sudha has been studying abroad, and her father breaks the engagement while she is away once Amarnath loses the court case and his wealth. Of course, Sukhen and Sudha have never seen each other.
Sudha comes back from abroad, and subjects her family friends to a dance.
The abstract stained glass backdrop on the stairway of her home helps her performance.
Soon after her dance, she befriends Sukhen by pretending to be a poor girl. He runs a bookstore
which is across the office of the Mafatlal Group, a big textile group at the time.
and an employment agency for mill workers from an office with a view of the Municipal Corporation building,
He also writes books in his spare time. A bestseller called ‘Hum Hindustani’ which gives him 10,000 rupees in royalty after selling 500 or 600 copies. Aspiring writers, make a note!
None of this goes anywhere, there is a rather ineffective villain Shankar, Sanjeev Kumar makes his first screen appearance here as a police inspector,
there is Dog Caesar who is called Tiger,
there is the mandatory accusation of stealing and court cases, there is a huge fire in the mill.
There are moments, but not a real cohesive narrative.
There is a scene when Sukhen hits Satyen in anger, furious that he could have believed that Sukhen has stolen money from Satyen’s boss. Leela Chitnis comes in, stops him, and holds Satyen. The father comes in at the back and sits there, looking. Sukhen calms down, but still feels helpless. There is hardly any dialogue but the scene is so powerful.
There is also an exchange between Sukhen and Sudha. He tells her that he can help her find a job, and she mocks him, “What job, a teacher, nurse, secretary, earning a few hundred rupees? All the good jobs, important jobs are taken by men.”
There is some serious color-co-ordinated ragging by Sudha’s friends of Sukhen and Sudha at a picnic.
There is moneylender’s office and the BEST bus
and the fire engine.
Joy Mukherjee and Helen walk in the rain on Marine Drive
and near the Gateway of India, singing.
I imagine my newly-wed parents walking around the Gateway on Sundays, though not singing, of course. Sadly.
There is a large vacant stretch between the road and the Gateway which is as I remember it from childhood, not the barricades, and cars, armoured trucks and security personnel of today.
There is a Victoria ride, which is what the horse carriages were called then.
But I am sure that even then, you couldn’t eat ice-cream at a roadside cafe near the Taj.
There are boats
And Asha Parekh singing on a boat.
And there is the mill, packed with machines that work
and bales of cotton.
There was a time when the mills in the films worked as they did in real life and films told stories about workers
and their capitalist owners,
the rich and the poor. Even the fantasies, the light-hearted comedies seemed rooted in the real world. Films were made for the crores of people who made up the working population.
I grew up in Agripada. My father for a time, had a small factory manufacturing tins for biscuits. My uncle worked as a clerk in another factory. My aunt was married to a factory worker. My younger uncle owned a small garage. My friend lived in a mill-worker chawl because her father worked in a textile mill. Her house was little bigger than a big cupboard, and I remember 8 or 9 of them lived there.
All around us were the movie halls. Maratha Mandir, Ganga Jamuna (wonder of wonders, 2 twin theaters in one complex), Minerva, Naaz, Novelty, Apsara, Edward, Albert, Shree Vijay, and so many whose names I cannot remember. Some of the movie halls were beautiful, and grand, with lovely, sweeping stairways, chandeliers, carpets, murals on the walls, some were bare with wooden seats and rickety fans. It did not matter to us as my mother was crazy about going to the movies and so were we.
Usually, we walked to one theater or the other, with my mother and one or the other of her friends, or aunts, or cousins. We watched movies incessantly, sometimes in the balcony, sometimes in the lower stalls, we hung around movie halls an hour before the movie was about to begin, dreading the idea that we may not get tickets, that the show would be houseful. It never occurred to my mother who dragged us everywhere that we were watching movies with mill-workers or cab drivers, or hand cart pullers. We just took the tickets we got. I don’t remember her ever being teased or stared at, even though she was a very beautiful woman. Bombay even then, was no-nonsense. People came to see a film, and they didn’t care who sat with them.
It was movie-theatre land, a theatre every few meters. Much later I also learned that this is where most of the film distributors had their offices as did some production houses. It was also the land of the dancing girls, the red-light area, the horse stables, and the bridge clubs. Now I know that it was also the land of the background dancers and the choreographers.
Is it any wonder then, that the movies seemed so real to us? Even Kashmir, which appeared in several films and as different from Bombay as it was, seemed familiar and our own.
Soon the mills became empty hulls, useable as shooting locations only for the climax fights.
Now even the last remnants of the mills have disappeared, most of them have been transformed into malls and entertainment complexes.
Our films too seem to have followed the trajectory of the mills. Films mostly are now products, bits of stimulation offered up to the consumer.
‘Hum Hindustani’ ends with a montage of fairy-lit Mumbai monuments, the Victoria Terminus, Gateway of India, the Municipal Corporation building. It confirms my memory of being taken to see the lights as a child, on Independence Day or Republic Day. I remember the streets being very, very crowded, people in trucks coming to see the sights, food on the streets, fireworks. But like all my memories, I have held this one a little suspect, unsure of whether anything like this ever happened.
Most of the years Dhanno was growing up, I snoozed in bed, while Teja prepared her breakfast, packed her tiffin, sent her off to school. He is the one who waited with her for the school bus, then a few years later, drove her to her new school in the next block, and then later, said bye to her at the door as she walked off to school on her own.
Long break tiffins were usually leftover pasta, rajma-chawal, or pau-bhaji from dinner, potato-cheese-chutney sandwiches, jam and roti rolls, or the occasional ‘get a vada pav from the canteen’. Small break tiffins were unimaginatively biscuits or dry fruit or a fruit or sometimes a slice of cake.
For years, Teja and I spoke, while we perambulated one or the other of the gardens near our house, “Once Dhanno is 18, we will….” We would travel, we would be free, we would do what we liked, we would be bored, we would cry our hearts out.
When Dhanno did turn 18, for one, she reared her heels in, and refused to leave for a hostel like any self-respecting, fed-up-of-my-parents teenager should. She likes her orange room too much.
After a considerable amount of stress, she did get into a good college in Bumm-Bumm-Bhole-Land and we were jumping around to “Yahoo!”
Then what do you know, but in a week’s time, she began falling ill. And ill. And ill. And ill. She lost a lot of weight, she fainted a couple of times, she had no strength even to get out of bed at times.
Now, we have a regime. Four tiffins, big bottle of water with electrolyte salts, extra juice or chaas in her bag.
Finally, she goes to a college where there are no text books or note books. She has a locker for her instruments. But she still has a huge haversack for all the food she needs to carry.
Evenings are spent in preparing meals large enough for dinner and a mini-lunch tiffin and a big-lunch tiffin for the next day. Then there is the tiffin she has to sneakily consume in the middle of a classroom lecture. And the tiffin she has to eat after college, before she heads back home. After dinner, we rest for a while before we begin the task of packing all the tiffins. In the morning, we wake up to make her breakfast. During the day, we check the fridge and the shelves to see what we are running out of, and what we need to load up on for the next few days.
A long, long time ago, when Dhanno was very little, and life was a round of feeding her and cleaning her poo, I said to a friend of mine, “This too shall pass.” 18 years later, I am a feeding machine once again.
Not to mention the fact, that I feel guilty-Mom all over again, for all the tiffins I did not pack while she was in school.
While hopping across the highway may not be conducive to living long, it does make you feel all youthful and agile. Particularly if you are like me, at the tricky age, taking a breath after the scramble up the stairs, standing on the ledge, looking down, your bottom anticipating the scrape of the metal slide and the soft thump in the mud down below. The scramble back towards the steps, pushing other children aside, may or may not be possible, depending on your particular beliefs.
Oh OK, I’m not that old. Fatuousness aside, I did manage to avoid a car turning left and leap into a rickshaw just before the signal turned green. I mumbled my address and thought about dinner. A babbling evening with Pu and little Tee makes one hungry.
A few minutes later, I shrilled, “No, no, bhaiya, under the bridge.”
The rickshaw-wala swerved. I said, “Take a right at the signal.”
He said, “I know the way. I was just preoccupied, so I missed the fly-over.” I grunted.
He continued, “I’m just so worried. I’m not thinking properly.”
I thought, “He’s going to ask me for money now.” I was surprised. I’ve never had a rickshaw-wala giving me a sob story in Bumm-Bumm-Bhole-Land, for money before.
I thought of Dubious Moves, who has managed to remain unidentified, at least by me, even on FaceBook, but who shares some stories intermittently with me, and decided, “Well, if he asks me for money, I’ll give him what I can. It’s not as if I don’t have enough.”
The rickshaw-wala however sped along the highway with his story, not waiting for my thoughts to catch up. He said, “The thing is my mother is ill in the village. I have to bring her here. I earn enough, I can earn 20-25000 rupees a month if I work hard, but I don’t have a house of my own, I live on rent. So I went to my uncle and aunt who live here. I said I will give you whatever money it takes for her medicine, her food, 10000, 15000. I can earn it. I’ll do everything. Just let her stay with you. But my aunt refused. I am so upset.”
I made a sympathetic noise. He said, “I was so sure my uncle would refuse the money. He would say, just pay for her medicine. He would keep her. But my aunt refused.” Sympathetic noise, yet again from me.
He said, “I used to work at a stationery store in Jogeshwari. My uncle’s children, from KG to Xth, I never let them buy note books, compass box, pencils, pens. I said to my aunt, they look on me as a big brother, if I give them some stationery worth 500, 600 rupees, what does it matter? My store earned something, I got some discount, it was fine. Now she said no. My mind refuses to believe that. Someone I thought was mine, they did this to me.”
I said, “Yes, you feel hurt.”
He said, “I feel hurt. But I thought I am not going to feel hurt. Anyone else in my place would have told her, I’ll never see your face again. I said, thanks, ok, let me know if you need anything and left. I’m not going to stop seeing them. I thought if I did not have money, maybe they would have felt, he is saying he will pay, but will not pay. But I work hard. I have managed to buy my own rickshaw. Now they say something like this to me, I think I’ll find a way, God will find a way.”
I say, “I am sure you will.”
He says, “It was not worth working for someone else, give 20000, 25000 deposit, it’s better to have your own rickshaw.”
I said, “Turn into that gate. How much?”
He said, “20 rupees.”
I handed the money to him, and said, “May everything go well with you.”
He said, “Thank you, ok then, I’ll leave.”
In the lift I thought, “I didn’t get to try out my baby step towards generosity. Another time, Extraordinary Gentleman.”
So while I have just about unpacked my bags from my long trip to Bengalaru, I get ready to pack them again for Goa.
So while I am not looking forward to staying in a hotel room for another 10 days, I am sure I can live on scrumptious fried fish at the Ritz without complaint.
So while I pack my laptop and camera, determined that this time round I will blog every day about the festival, I think I will just vanish into the cinema hall every screening and emerge for light and food and sleep and do nothing more.
Though I’m always secretly hoping that one day someone will invite me to write officially about the festival, and I will have a press card, and say bye-bye to queues and frisking and getting laptop and camera expounded from my bag before every screening, the same with food and water, and get invited to all the big parties, even if I don’t want to go to them.
But that hasn’t happened yet.
So while I will walk by the river on my way to the festival from the hotel, I will rarely catch a sunset there, because I will be watching yet another film.
So while I will smile at friends and festival regulars, I will steer away from invitations to meet up, go to the flea market in Anjuna, and do the various interesting things people do in Goa, because I would rather be watching yet another film.
I have been called ‘Party-Pooper’ by the higher-ups.
In the meanwhile, in my beloved Bumm-Bumm-Bhole-Land, I’ve managed to get my video rental queue working again after my informal arrangement at Bangalore, where a voice on the phone took pity on my exile in Attibele and kindly sent me 7 DVDs at a time to get over the ‘outside delivery area’ loophole.
‘Jhuk Gaya Aasmaan‘ was largely forgettable except for a very pretty Saira Banu in delectable Bhanu Athaiya costumes, and a plot that centers around Sanjay-Rajendra Kumar dying because of the mistake of a newbie Yamdoot, going to heaven and being sent back to occupy another Rajendra Kumar body conveniently vacated by the evil TK.
Apparently, the skies have to bow down before Sanjay’s love for Priya, who meanwhile sings romantic songs for him in Calcutta, unaware that he is dead. Teja and I have missed the moments when Priya falls in love with Sanjay who has until then been harassing her, so we find their heaven-touching love a little inexplicable.
David plays an upper level Swamiji who manages heaven, and Sanjay’s descent to Earth after his heavenly sojourn. Needless to say, heaven is made up of lots of smoke machines. Sanjay and Swamiji come down to earth, with one hand raised and pointing up and the other pointing down, like vertical Supermen. Since the journey is made in a jiffy, I do not understand their aerodynamic poses.
Teja and I inform Dhanno that Rajendra Kumar was known as the ‘Golden Jubilee Star’ on account of the hits he delivered. He also had the nubile Saira Banu crazy about him.
Teja says, “Maybe 50 years later, people will wonder why Shahrukh Khan was such a huge craze. I mean, the way Dhanno and you like him so much, there must have been women who adored Rajendra Kumar.”
All of us stare with concentration at the screen trying to decipher the man’s secret with the ladies.
Cannot dance. Cannot smile. Cannot fight. Is not good looking. His Punjabi accent slips through every now and then. Cannot act.
Nope, don’t know why he was a big star.
I do catch a glimpse of his sincerity though, and say OK, maybe, that’s it.
Oh, I forgot the rosy-cheeked Prem Chopra who looks exceptionally handsome in this film. He plays TK’s ‘evil-ler’ brother.
In the last week of my stay here, Mukhtar has been re-assigned to the first floor. So now my friends Nam and Fake Nagraj have elephants and dogs in their rooms, but I don’t. I would not have minded so … Continue reading →
For a novel based on Gandhian philosophy, Munshi Premchand‘s ‘Premashram’ (1922) has several violent deaths. Rai Saheb (Gyanshanker’s father-in-law) escapes death by poisoning by his yogic skills, Gyanshanker’s two young cousins slice off their heads with a sword under the myth of Tantrik skills, Vidya (Gyanshanker’s wife) kills herself with poison, her sister Gayatri jumps off a cliff when faced with her father as a sadhu, Manohar (a villager) slits Gaus Khan’s (Gyanshanker’s clerk) throat with a sword.
While the protagonist of the novel, Premashanker, epitomizes the Gandhian precept that even great social changes can be brought about by self-sacrifice, Premchand the novelist seems to reject the possibility of human redemption beyond a certain point. It is as if there are some sins committed that cannot allow a human being, even when humbled and repentant, to carry on living.
There is a curious sense of self-honour which reminds me of Japanese hara-kiri.
But intrinsic in the narrative itself, is also a Gandhian self-questioning.
Premashanker, a zamindar, comes back from the United States, to realize that he is an outcaste in his society, and unwanted even within his own family. He decides to live in a village and gives up all his inherited earnings to live a life from what he can earn himself, and spend his life dedicated to the uplift of the village he has adopted and the village he has inherited.
By sheer example, he influences not only the villagers, but slowly even corrupt people like the magistrate, the lawyer, the doctor and the social worker, who under one garb or the other were out only to accumulate wealth for themselves.
Yet Premashanker himself is not entirely without ego. It is his ego and principles that will not allow him to do many things which he would like to do, for instance live with his wife, Shraddha who asks that he go through a rite of purification to be accepted back into society. Finally it is Shraddha herself after 14 years who gives up her own religious taboos and realizes that her husband has purified himself not through ritual but through his selfless action.
Premshanker has the Gandhian humility, the questioning of the minutest flaws within his thought, the realization that he is quick to judge people, whereas even the most hardened person like his cousin, Gaurishanker, a policeman has streaks of kindness towards his underlings.
This introspection is also that of the author’s, for no character is delineated in black or white. The poor are not necessarily good, the noble are not free from their egos, the weak and selfish are not without their redemptions.
The strongest character is Premashanker’s brother, Gyanshanker, who epitomizes the modern, selfish man, whose education gives him the values of self-worth, self-gain and self-improvement. There is no space left for sympathy or tolerance of those outside his world. Yet, Gyanshanker is clever, able, and also self-aware. He knows very well that he is bartering his soul for what he thinks is important, wealth and fame. He even goes to the extent of bartering his love. But life, or fate, or whatever you may call it, the inexorable movement of circumstances gives him failure even after the tasting of huge successes. It is Karma, if you could call it that. And in that moment of realization, there is no other way for him except to die, even though he does not want to.
The novel kept reminding me of Vikram Seth‘s ‘A Suitable Boy’ (1993).
‘Premashram’ questions the very basis of the zamindari system, the notion of a middle-man taxing the peasants for doing nothing. The zamindar is only an agent. Influenced by his uncle, Premashanker, Mayashanker, Dayashanker’s son is able to revert the system by giving up his zamindari rights voluntarily on the very day he is given them.
‘A Suitable Boy’ revolves around the time that the zamindari system was abolished (the 1950s). This novel too has a vast array of characters and draws a detailed and complex portrait of life in India around the time, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, where ‘Premashram’ is also based.
The difference is that Premchand is writing about a time he was living in, and his novel is influenced by hope, fired by the new ideas propagated by Gandhi and other leaders of the freedom struggle. Premchand himself had just a year before writing this novel, resigned from his school-teacher’s job in answer to Gandhi’s call to quit government jobs. Vikram Seth’s novel is historical and he sees those times through a modern perspective, without the unabashed idealism of Premchand.
The internal voices in both novels is strong. The novels are not only about what happens, but what the characters think and feel, the transformations they undergo.
But while Vikram Seth is equally sympathetic with his characters and balanced in his portrayal of them, he does not allow them to get swayed by their emotions, he keeps their reins in his hand.
It is interesting to note that Vikram Seth chooses to tell his story through the marriage proposals of a young girl, Lata who is almost passive, very introverted in the middle of a vortex of circumstances and characters around her. Lata’s choice of bridegroom also seems to be the path of least resistance, which is quite contrary to the struggle that each of the characters in ‘Premashram’ go through, to overcome their own egos for what they see as a larger good.
Both books kept me company for a long time in Bangalore. I realized yet again the wonder of entering another world, another time, and the comfort of reading a long book, which allows you to become familiar with the lives of its characters at leisure. I realized why it is that people are addicted to watching soap operas. I felt bereft when the books had ended.
Of course, reading ‘A Suitable Boy’ was easier for me than to attune myself to the rhythm of Premchand’s writing. I have not read Hindi in a while, but now that Flipkart makes it easy for me to acquire Hindi books, without the long trek into town, I hope to make up for lost time.
Since Dhanno is here, Mukhtar decided to make 2 swans on the bed. His Diwali gift to us! Happy Diwali, everyone, may the new year bring lots of lovely swans in all our lives.
I grew up in a household, where goat’s brains were a delicacy, prepared for lunch at least 3 or 4 times a month. Mummy would soak the brains in a little water for a few minutes, and then pull out the membrane over the gyri sulci delicately. She would saute the brains in a little oil with the usual haldi, mirchi, dhaniya powder, salt combination, or if there were not enough to go around, add chopped onions and tomatoes to increase the quantity. A dry dish, delicious with chapatis, easily prepared in 10 minutes.
After I left my parents’ home though, I usually never cook brains at home, or get the opportunity to order brain masala in a restaurant. Teja is a vegetarian and while he does not raise an eyebrow at Dhanno and me eating indiscriminate pieces of meat or fish, he does feel queasy at the sight of a brain on a plate.
I have realized that even a lot of non-vegetarian people squirm at a brain dish. That makes me increasingly embarrassed about ordering brains when I am out with other people.
While seeing ‘Rascals‘ yesterday, I realized what it would feel like to have one’s brains soaked in water and then it’s membrane pulled out. The difference is that I was alive and conscious while the operation was being conducted on me, and not dead like the goat. The goat, if alive and in the movie hall, would have bleated for kind death.
Our own intrepidity in booking tickets for ‘Rascals’ was yet another effort to have fun while watching a film on a Sunday evening. We thought we would be together, 4 women, and laugh our way through.
But 40 minutes of Sanjay Dutt and Ajay Devgan leering at every woman in sight, Kangana Ranaut and Liza Haydon vying with each other for tinier and tinier bikinis and dresses, Bharati Achrekar and Arjun Rampal playing a demented mother and son, a lot of screeching and screaming out of dull, constipated lines which were as funny as a decapitated goat defeated our stoicism. We walked out.
The only good that this film will do, is that I will give up eating brains altogether. Let me tell you however, that goat brains look more appetizing than any single visual of ‘Rascals’ despite all the skin on show.
By the way, the ‘gyri sulci’ comes from Dhanno. Please don’t credit me with any scientific erudition.
I am going to go berserk with the screen caps once again. There is so much beauty in this film, if I had my way I would upload the entire film for your viewing pleasure. I have been trying so … Continue reading →
