The Tiger in the Woods.

The image of a phenomenal shot by Tiger Woods, followed by the claim
of consulting firm Accenture - "High Performance, Delivered", won't
leave us for some time. Because it is high performance and Tiger
Woods has almost always delivered it. But now, Accenture is pulling
out of all endorsements of the golfing legend, because he "no longer
represents" the image they want to portray.

Question is - did they hire him for being a phenomenal golfer who can
personify high performance, of did they use him to make Accenture look
like a saintly company? I tend to think his golfing abilities were of
paramount importance and I have no reason to believe he is any less of
a golfer now after these scandals have broken out about his
extramarital affairs. In other words, his "high performance" could
very easily remain unaffected, but for some reason, his image as a
squeaky clean "person" is more important to a company that wanted to
associate with him when the going was good, and has readily dumped him
for reasons having nothing to do with their business with him. That
sounds like pure betrayal to me.

How come we don't care about squeaky clean people who can't perform
like Tiger Woods? There are never any prizes for being morally in the
best league, are there? So, what's the big deal when a high performer
in one area doesn't hold the same standards elsewhere? This is by no
means an endorsement of Tiger Woods' behaviour, but why is it that we
find it hard to accept the disruption of this image of sainthood that
we the world conferred upon him? Why're we so deeply invested in our
own stupidity, in an assumption that worked for such a long time for
everyone? Because we hate being told we are wrong. Much like the
flat earthers must have felt centuries ago.

The media is as much of an infidel when it comes to scandals. Not one
media outlet that has so far ooohed and aahed every Tiger Woods
achievement has thrown out the other perspective - "So what if Tiger
Woods had affairs outside of his marriage? He continues to be a
golfing legend we can continue to celebrate. We hope he comes out of
his problems and his self imposed exile and starts thrilling us on the
golf course again".

I'll tell you why this won't happen. The biggest
consumers of popular American media are white people, and they are all
feeling bad that a white woman, namely Mrs. Woods, has been "wronged".
How can they lose the entire population of white women from their
viewership by taking this perspective? Especially when Tiger Woods is
kind of black. The "See, we told you they're all bad" perspective,
even while unspoken, is the easiest nonsense to sell.

So, instead of being faithful to the phenomenal athlete for his
abilities and the number of times he has helped sell television time,
the media has shamelessly now jumped on the scandal bandwagaon to make
a mockery of him and get more of what they have got from him up until
now - popular viewership! That is what this pimping business is all
about. It doesn't matter who gets fucked as long as we can promise
more mindless sex.

There is nothing worse than an "average" mindset. The people who are
all outraged by Tiger Woods aren't by any means the people who will
ever belong in his high performance bracket. Tiger has simply
demonstrated that yes, one can have it all - a secure marriage, a lot
of money and goodwill, and affairs on the side! A lot of men would
love to have all of this, but would hate the consequences in case it
turned out like this. The big difference is, Tiger went for it. The
rest of us didn't.

None of us ever heard any of those damsels he had affairs with
complain until this scandal "broke out" did we? Now, why are they all
coming out of the woodwork? Because now, they can make money out of
the scandal! The frenzy is on, and the media is here to fuel their
fire. One of those paragons of virtue even said she feels really
sorry for Mrs. Woods. Oh, yes, we totally believe you my dear Mother
Teresa. I bet you never knew who you were being divinely uplifted by.
This nonsense is endless. I wonder how in her poetic conscience it
never occured to her that she could pick up the phone and called Mrs.
Woods to apologize to her quietly. Indiscretions are as common as
discretions. Get that, people.

Tiger Woods never claimed not to be anything he is being found out to
be. All of us slapped that clean image on him, because we wanted him
to be that way for our own limited minds to have something like that
to look up to, because we stupidly believe that being "good" brings us
all the good things in life! Sure, it can make us feel good, but
Tiger Woods wouldn't have a billion dollars if he hit the golf ball
into the ditch and went to church every Sunday.

Other people's fidelity, their sexuality, their choices should all be
strictly in their personal domain. None of us have any moral
authority to judge what other people do in their personal lives. We
have public figures for one reason only - to take the risks we would
like to take, without us having to bear the consequences. We're
willing to make them rich and famous to put up with this incredible
demand from us, but we forget to allow them one thing - flaws.

It is clear what a high performer can achieve. Tiger had it all. He
still has it all, and can have most of it all. That's what the world
cannot stand. That's what the media can never sell to the masses.
Tiger's highest performance is being able to keep a straight face to
his wife after having all these affairs. Kudos, Tiger! Now, the
reason she couldn't find out what kind of a man she was marrying was
because she is clearly not a high performer - she couldn't see beyond
the image. In other words, she is stupid like most of the fools
lapping up all the media sleaze.

Oh yes, she is a victim of marital infidelity, but she has always been
a victim of her own inability to tell what kind of a man Tiger Woods
really was. She still has a life much better than 99% of the women in
the world. How many women in the world would give an arm to be in her
place with the kind of wealth she has enjoyed without having to work
for a cent of it! Oh, tell me now, that she is shattered, and that
wealth doesn't mean much to someone who has to undergo the kind of
pain she is undergoing now, and I'll bet she doesn't ask for anything
less than a hundred million dollars in her divorce settlement.

If Tiger is the predator on the prowl and feels good about that, then
the mistake he has made is not having affairs, it is getting married!
He should divorce this woman he is married to, stop meowing like a stupid felis domestica and completely embrace being the Tiger in the Woods. It would make the world a much more interesting place, and leave a lot of people wondering why they lead such dishonest lives! Now that would be high performance, delivered.

BSK.

The Bollywoodization of India.

It's been a few months since the UPA government was voted to power once again. It's been more than a few months since Home Minister Chidambaram became a recognizable face as the Home Minister of India, if we can forgive him for merely being the Finance Minister in his earlier position. Around five years in national prominence. By now, you'd think our so called top news channels would have got around to pronouncing his name correctly. BBC and CNN have got his name right, but for some reason, to CNN-IBN, Times Now, and NDTV he is still Chi-daah-mbaram.

It was important enough for us hear from Shah Rukh Khan as soon as he showed up on Indian soil, live, about his experience with US Immigration officials, but we still haven't had any Big Fight on why NCERT history text books do not contain any information on entire kingdoms of South India.

Whether covertly ignored, or overtly sidelined, in a backhanded way, it is perhaps a blessing to be untouched by the incompetent. How many more South Indian names can we have mercilessly mauled on TV? It could get embarrassing.

In a world of massive multiple media penetration, access, symbols, and intermingling loyalties, perception plays an exaggeratedly important role, and the perception of India painted by the expanded reach of Mumbai cinema and its convenient and almost exclusive cohesion with a powerful but myopic “national” media, needs to be carefully monitored.

For a moment, let's ignore the organizations trumpeting their intent to promote “Indian Cinema” without any meaningful representation from four South Indian industries! Let's try to deal with the fact that Mumbai cinema, unwittingly or under the dictates of a big conspiracy, has a corrosive influence on the perception of Indian cinema that needs to be questioned and corrected, clarified and articulated, for the well being of both.

Amongst the various film industries in India, Mumbai rightfully has the numbers to buy some bragging rights for say, Shah Rukh Khan to be hailed as India's biggest movie star, but the rest of India really should say “No Thanks”. This isn't an argument against the market value of the sizzling Khan, but indeed against the rest of truly Indian cinema that is slowly being sidelined or getting swept under the big “Bollywood” rug.

Since Mumbai cinema gets exported more than the rest of Indian cinema, it gets more attention, and it doesn't take much for the convenience store consumerist laziness of the West to swallow the most simplistic understanding of Indian cinema as being essentially contained in “Bollywood”. This word works great to market any Mumbai cinema product abroad, but the best of the rest of India, which usually is qualitatively superior pure cinema, and culturally distinct, doesn't have a chance against this perceptional juggernaut.

If and when Indian cinema reaches a place where it genuinely competes against cinema from all over the world, South Indian cinema would have done its prospects serious harm if we allowed Mumbai cinema to continue its ubiquitous and deliriously incompetent representation of Indian cinema.

There was a time when Amitabh Bachchan brooded his way into the hearts of teeming millions – he was larger than life, could carry dialogue like a king, could be flawed and noble at the same time, and heartbreakingly selfless. It was fun watching his movies with people who couldn't understand a word he was saying, but enjoying the show all the same.

Today's Mumbai cinema no longer appeals to this audience. Mumbai cinema has made the shift from a partially culturally rooted cinema to a bizarre, noisy, colourful, culturally amorphous, constantly dancing animal that has so much momentum it doesn't care whether it appears as a damsel or a monster anymore. It has the numbers where it doesn't have to worry about identity.

This is not to hint Mumbai is suddenly producing universally appealing cinema. Far from that, it is producing cinema that currently appeals to the new breed of upwardly mobile mostly young Indians – global in ambition, citizenship and buying power, fluid and malleable in cultural identity. In other words, they are rich and don't give a sh** where they belong. They want a bit of fun, and can hardly be bothered to tax their intellect or demand something of substance – they seem to be satisfied as long as it gives them something to cheer as “Indian”. They will buy silly, they will buy over the top, they will buy rubbish if it looks glamorous but most importantly there are enough of them around. This number has attracted all the Hollywood studios to Mumbai. Without a cultural foothold, however, they are bound to continue on the path of glitz, occasionally managing to stumble into a story that sticks.

The rest of Indian cinema, however, for most part, really has to care about the identity of each film. The majority of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam and other regional cinema audiences do not live in the fantasy world of stories woven for these global Indians. It isn't uncommon to see the occasional “Nayagan” being remade to “Khalnayak”, but it would be very hard to envisage “Blue” being released as “Neelam” in Tamil.

Mumbai cinema in the world of art, is a strange creature. The vibrant, buzzing city itself is the heartbeat of India's economy and with so much energy and scale, you can almost start believing that the rest of the country is simply Mumbai multiplied. Its film industry is clearly not a stranger to this energy, but it is unfortunately apparent there isn't much else it seems to tap into. The promos sizzle but the films fizzle out. Glitzy mediocrity oozes out of its veins, and it is giddy for more.

Not without choice, but without a clue, a lot of Mumbai cinema has been trying to ape Hollywood cinema for a while, without making any investments in developing true artists. The moment Mumbai cinema allowed itself to be re-christened "Bollywood", it publicly accepted its decay and its defeat, but it had the numbers to run with the branding advantages. By breeding a whole generation of Hollywood wannabes, Mumbai cinema has willingly or unwittingly lost its chance to be true to any cultural anchor, or to be original. (May the exceptions that are few and far between be excused from this generalization – they do not define the rule).

The glee on its actors' faces when they show up at some international film events like Cannes and the Oscars really glosses over how empty they are, even when they don't have a single piece of work worthy of any kind of artistic attention on a global level. But it does highlight how Aishwarya Rai's cleavage has done more for popularising Mumbai cinema abroad than the best of Amitabh Bachchan's work. It should necessarily irk the rest of India if this business of “show” that Mumbai is now notoriously good at, ends up being the umbrella ambassador for a “Kanjeevaram” or a “Dweepa”.

It isn't about whether Indian cinema is being represented – it is whether it is being correctly represented. There is absolutely nothing from a quality standpoint to support Mumbai cinema as an ambassador of Indian cinema. It can't simply be about numbers. Our national bird is the peacock, not the crow.

Notwithstanding the central government's thrust to make India a Hindi country, including BSNL in Erode, Tamilnadu, having a sign encouraging everyone to learn a word in Hindi every day, to the suddenly declared Hindi Diwas that will be celebrated on Sept 14th every year, there are obvious signs everywhere that the Hindi siege is on. What better way to carry out this agenda than by Bollywoodizing India? The devil couldn't have come up with something better than this! Homogeneity would mean a bigger market for Hindi products, less effort needed from Hindi speakers, and indeed, a bigger market for Hindi cinema, more bragging rights for Shah Rukh Khan, (which most of us wouldn't grudge him for), but at what cost?

The number of advertising messages that bombard us with Hindi words written in English letters should get us thinking, but they irritate to say the least. Why would I have to read something in English to understand it in Hindi, if this were not a really slimy way of getting me to learn Hindi sounds? Or are non-South Indian advertising briefs so myopic in their creativity that they think it is cool to mix two languages, one of which a lot of people would never understand? Either situation is below par for intelligence and below the belt in application. It would be a little more bearable if some people actually realized we do not have a culture of saying “Take care” in any language in India and it sounds really awful in Tamil when it comes out sounding like “lock your house” and feels like “protect your belongings”.

Conspiracies apart, and stereotyping forgiven for the moment, what exactly does Mumbai cinema represent? Russel Peters was right when he said Mumbai cinema (he used the B word) is all about looks. Mumbai's leading ladies have a way of presenting themselves very much like their Hollywood counterparts. They can all do their interviews, their glam shows, and their flirting with the public rather well.

But on screen, all of the liberated modern woman is gone. They still have to pout, cavort, be shrill and barbie sexy for the men, but wait a minute! It's no longer OUR men! Heck, they've even lost their curves and most of them don't even look healthy any more! Blindly follow the white man and the crazy notions of beauty that the multinational cosmetic and fashion industries have oversold. God bless them for the money they make, but can we expect an “Arth” shattering performance from any of them? Clearly, they do not represent any cross section of India, but they're influencing the wannabe Fair and Lovely crowd, with misleading messages and marketing muscle. It's not their fault, but without them, this mirage wouldn't exist.

The men? The six pack seems to be in fashion, so everybody seems to be getting one. The Mumbai cinema hero of today is hip and cool, he can run and fly, and dance and flirt and look and walk and talk with style, but for some reason, he can't inspire. The rascal just isn't real enough, and he isn't even rascal enough! Isn't anybody noticing? The metrosexual ant has killed the awesome masculinity of the Hero. Big B didn't need a six pack to be convincing, and his romance was meatier and juicier than anything today's over-managed clowns can pull off.

The story? What story? There isn't one script out of fifty that gets made in Mumbai that has a recognizable head or a tail, leave alone a spine. And people wonder why movies flop? Well, duh! There simply seems to be next to nobody in Mumbai who can take an Indian story and give it the full, evolved, cinematic treatment, which will end up making it a universal story in any case. With more corporate structures coming up, and the inevitable college educated freaks with nothing but rat race life experience taking over story development duties, Mumbai is set to make even more fluffy, cute, chocolate filled rubbish with cosmetic companies in tow. Yet, these are people who won't waste anytime telling the world that “Indian cinema” has its own identity!

Aha! Identity! That is where the rest of Indian cinema, particularly culturally strong cinema like what comes out of Tamilnadu and Kerala, can and must do everything they can to never be seen under the "Bollywood" umbrella. Singeetham Sreenivasa Rao's "Michael Madana Kama Rajan" is brilliant in its own right, in its own space, to its own audiences. The movie is a riot, and no wonder it was a hit. No white man will ever understand head or tail of that movie in the way a South Indian can. And from the same director, we have "Pushpak" which the whole world will always follow and applaud in its own identity.

What identity does Mumbai have in world cinema today that the rest of Indian cinema needs to associate with? Zilch. What cultural identity does Mumbai cinema have in India today that Indian audiences can identify with? Zilch. And that is the bankruptcy that the rest of India does not have to be a part of. The rest of India simply does not have to associate with an animal that has no root or standing, culturally or artistically. They don't even have the same markets!

People who study the market for signs of a new product may argue that being recognized as part of a phenomenon may have some advantages, but this new "phenomenon" is only in whitey's head! The B word may be the buzzword, but again, we have B-wood cleavage to thank for that. (if one may be forgiven for not sufficiently applauding the rare brilliance of a “Lagaan”).

God bless the material wealth, fame, noise, and notoriety that comes with getting international attention, but it is harder to copy the work of a whole team of people making "Monster" than to copy the red carpet swagger of the actress on the awards night and be done with it. After all, we have a whole culture of people who love to watch how good one looks at the finish line. A whole generation of NRIs is still somehow feeling second class, and what better for them than to see one of "their own" on the same stage as the white skinned pixies who are considered so hot? "Look, today we are equal to whitey!".

It isn't as if Mumbai cinema has suddenly found itself mimicking the West. From the black and white era, we have seen umpteen instances in the movie stories where the lead actor plays the piano while men in suits and women in saris and a variety of clothes dance to the tune which thankfully is very much Indian. But the salutations to the white man's culture are there for all to see. It would be a good subject for a research student to get a Ph.D. on - why Mumbai cinema ever needed to ape the west – even when its market was primarily culturally Indian and continues to be! Not that MGR never appeared in a ridiculously western suit in a Tamil film, but regional cinema, particularly South Indian cinema, never sold out on its cultural flavour.

Mumbai isn't making any better cinema today than it was ten years ago, and it doesn't have to, because its market dynamics do not demand that it make anything good in terms of pure cinematic merit. But it knows how to sell itself, and god bless the millions it brings in. But once the romance is over, then what? Isn't it already looking pretty hollow?

Mumbai cinema must take a deep breath and find its own voice – again, and again. It cannot afford to alienate itself from its core audiences in the long term, and it must not try to become the Hollywood of the east. The rest of Indian cinema, however, and particularly South Indian cinema has everything to gain from evolving itself separate from the caricatured and untruthful, very “Bollywood” propagated homogeneity of “Indian cinema” projected by organizations like the IIFA. Indian cinema doesn't need to be Bollywoodized any more than Mumbai cinema needs to be Hollywoodized.

Mumbai cinema can do the rest of India a favour, a big one at that. It can state at every available forum that "Bollywood" is not a representative of any complete image of Indian cinema, it is merely Mumbai cinema. Indian cinema minus Mumbai cinema has several very good identities, and they are all true and real, worth maintaining, no matter how small, as much as any of our languages. If we pride our unity in diversity, we should bloody well make sure we have our diversity intact in order to contribute to that unity.

India, as a culture, as a country, most certainly must resist being Bollywoodized.

* * *

The fate of being Indian.

I just returned from a death ceremony. A senior cousin of mine died
this morning. Five people involved in a head-on collision with a bus.
All dead. None of them had a chance.

It was sad seeing the community having to come together to support the
family after the loss. A father had lost one of his two sons, a son
had lost his father, and a village had lost one of its political
voices, apart from a community of chartered accountants having lost
one of their own. This is all just my cousin, mind you, and I can
only imagine what the loss of the other four lives could add up to. I
just don't know the others well enough at this point, apart from that
they were all precious in some way or the other.

It is consistently the same feeling - life is precious. Only on the
rarest occasions have I heard people actually celebrating the fact
that someone could pass on without suffering, and after having lived a
great, full, fun life. Blessed are those who get to do that, and
blessed are the ones who come to enjoy their company.

The majority of us live with health risks, physical danger, terrible
lifestyles not withstanding. These are just facts of life, and we
just don't need to add to the list. Terrible drivers are a fact of
life too. And they stand a very good chance of getting us killed.

I found a few conversations discussing fate, the inevitability of
death, and the philosophical perspectives were all well worn ones.
What frustrated me was that there were no rational conversations about
how the accident could have been avoided, so I had to investigate. I
asked the question straight - what exactly happened?

As it turns out, the Scorpio was driven by a 19 year old with a
reputation for rash driving. He tried to overtake a bus at speed,
thought he could muscle his way before the bus from the opposite
direction could come through, and all five on board paid the ultimate
price. It also turns out the 19 year old did not have a driver's
licence.

There you go, I pointed out - no fate, no inevitability of death, and
no God's wish. Just plain stupidity, bad driving, bad judgment, plain
old Indian incompetence. I wonder why people have to be so
incompetent even while having an argument, so much so that they cannot
differentiate between someone trying to get a point across, and
someone showing disrespect. It just doesn't matter, they said, it was
fate that made them let the kid drive!

It is interesting that everyone in the Scorpio had gone to send off a
political figure and were all active members of the AIADMK. To me, it
doesn't matter what party, but I could not help but think our
politicians are not even capable of being responsible about their own
safety and behaviour, so what the heck are they going to do about the
nation.

People, it is time to move away from dogma. It is time to rudely
shake people out of their stupor, for the time is gone when other
people's stupidity affects only them. It affects us all. It is fate,
I am willing to concede, that we are Indian. It is impossible to
choose where we are born. That is simply not in our control, so it
just could be fate.

What we do have control over is the Indian trait of blaming fate for
all our follies and failures. It wasn't fate that hundreds of people
lost their lives in Mumbai on the 26th of November last year. It
isn't fate that thousands of us die in road accidents every year. By
no means is it fate that our children are malnourished, badly
educated, and many of us are living below the poverty line. We need
to get this act of being Indian together, before we lose all semblance
of a rational existence. At the very least, those of us who are
rational deserve our chances of surviving against this dogmatic
incompetence that is uniquely Indian.

Happy New Year!

Once upon a time there was a New Year. Now we bloody have it once a year. So, what's new?

Resolutions, hope, joy, cheer, drunken delirium, relief, and this time, by golly - anger! Anger about how lousy 2008 was! Well, well... are we becoming honest about things like this? Now come on, it is just another date on the calendar, surely. But there is an energy of consciousness, of our eagerness to forget all that is bad, and somehow sum it into that year called 2008.

Everything went wrong for sure, but it isn't as if all the seeds that caused the misery of the year gone by were sown in the same year. It isn't as if Wall Street crashed because of some numerological error. It was a gargantuan error of numbers that a lot of people bought into. But for sheer fear of feeling even smaller than we should feel, we haven't called ourselves really stupid, just yet. The worst part is - It isn't as if the ringing in of the New Year will make us, the human collective, smarter overnight.

But... let's keep hope, for when we're broke, that is all we have. But then, that is the popular belief being propagated with the hope, once again, of keeping us all shackled to our stupidity. The smart ones have moved on, and they never really bought into the mockery of trends. The trend of the IT industry booming, the trend of the stock markets soaring, and the trend of making money without creating any real value to anyone that the Americans thought would last forever!

The smart ones know to stay under the radar, collecting their chips quietly and efficiently, and simply keeping note of how much stupidity can infest the rest. They are not going to come out and offer advice on how to avoid this the next time. This is natural selection, and there is nothing to suggest 2009 will be an unnatural selection that will pardon stupidity.

Don't believe the myth of the connected world. It isn't a myth anymore. It is a horrible reality that has plenty of promise but the seduction is greater than the reward. I see no reason for our farmers suffering low costs of their produce just because people in some other country started eating less beef. There is no mystery waiting to be unlocked in an inextricably connected world, where a forest fire in California can affect your bank's lending rate to build your house in Chennai.

See, there is something romantic about things like "One World", "The Human Collective" and so on, but we love to hear things like that. It makes us feel coccooned in our lazy existence, and relatively safe. That is the feeling we cannot keep when we have incidents like the Mumbai massacre. That annoys us more than the act of being attacked. That is why we slip into comfort zone with the passage of time. The truly aware amongst us would never let the anger drop, until revenge is complete.

We're in competition, all the time. Not with a lousy non-state country like Pakistan, but with the rest of the developed world. Truth is, we'd be lousy without competition from our own kind, and intense competition from other countries. If there is any practical value in having a connected world, it is for the people who need a bigger market to sell their stuff to. It is all about selling. It is all about being able to buy more by selling more.

We can either evolve beyond this idea completely, and support a vision for the whole of humanity to live together in harmony, but that is not in our nature! It is in our nature to prove who is bigger, better, faster, richer! That is why we see a connected world as an opportunity, no matter what price we pay.

We haven't yet paid the full price for our actions of the past few years. Lack of imagination is a criminal shortcoming. Lack of intellect is a doomsday scenario. Lack of knowledge and insight shall not be pardoned. People who ran towards "careers" that seemed like guaranteeing great lives are standing shortchanged and a little mystified.

The noose has been around our necks for a long time, and some of us weren't smart enough to escape when it was still loose. Now, it is tightening and tightening rapidly. It isn't as if some promises were broken! The promise was never there, and many were too stupid to see it. They loved the illusion and the ringing in of the New Year as the harbinger of something new, is the newest of them all. Happy New Year!

The Good Vs. the Fit

Why is it that there is no movie with a smarter villain, capable of outdoing the hero at every turn? What if the story of the hero ends in despair, while the villain lives to conquer more? Isn't that closer to the truth of what transpires, particularly in India? Isn't it true that most crimes go unpunished, including corruption and rape?

So, why do we keep faith in the "forces" of "good" that might one day, possibly turn things around for us? The simple answer is that we do that instead of accepting that we don't have the strength in ourselves to fight all that is wrong. Our weakness finds solace in the feeling that we are on the "good" side. This way, we don't have to feel ashamed of who we are, even while we should. We have every reason to be appalled and enraged by the decay of moral standards, but we are perfectly all right expecting God to do the work we should be doing.

The morality cloud, with its labyrinth of philosphical perspectives, hides many layers of grey, and provides a nebulous sanctuary to avoid having to face the clearest of questions - are we willing to fight against evil even if it means having to kill? If answering to the dark side in us is the only way to sustain a victory of good over evil, are we ready to go there? Are we really on the good side, when we don't take pains to fight the smallest of crimes?

Good guys can win, but only when they are fit to win. Being good has absolutely nothing to do with winning, except that it might serve to give the individual an assumed sense of righteousness, strength and positive energy. Being perceived as "good" can in India, save you from the perhaps more honest perception of being "unfit". It is just the way we have twisted ourselves to believe that good and fit for us to trust are the same thing.

On a treacherous road to a religious destination, it is more important for a driver to have skill rather than belief in God, but our pilgrims winding through those roads will be happier if the car gets a timely pooja over a timely oil change. This is just who we are - fiendishly superstitious, and outrageously stuck to the idea of the good and the godly over the fit and the practical!

Is God truly on the side of all that is good? Oooh, big question! Honestly, I don't think God cares one way or the other, and a lot of weak rascals who are scared to talk about the need to be strong simply claimed God on their side in the name of being "good". So, how does all powerful God put up with villainy, deceit, untruth, and millions of other vices? Maybe God is on the other side, enjoying the joke? Personally, I'd leave God out of this equation, and do what we need to do.

It is hard to be good, no doubt. It is hard to be kind hearted, righteous, soft spoken, honest and caring. But it would be a lot harder if everyone was angry, cruel, loud, demanding, dishonest and uncaring towards us! So, we come up with this construct called civil society that all but ignores the natural "survival of the fittest" instincts we are born with. We have put in place every system where the sharpest of us can be kept down through the dullest in the collective, through a devious mechanism of rules and regulations. The dullest have subscribed to the idea of goodness and Godliness, so there is no way we will give leadership to the sharpest because they don't care much to look like God! See, we don't want leadership that challenges us. We want leaders that we can trash fairly quickly, which means they can't be that much ahead of us.

Thankfully, we do have the beginnings of a meritocracy when it comes to education and employment, however much of a farce both of these turn out to be for the average Indian. But when it comes to our cricket players, nothing but the best will do. If everyone in the country performs as well as our cricket team, we'd be a phenomenally advanced country. We ignore this fact, and give birth to icons, who must be "good" guys beyond all else. Abhinav Bhindra can never be as much of a "good" guy as Sachin Tendulkar, because SRT is an iconic influence who keeps it simple for the masses, but the gold medalist Bhindra is a more complex kettle of fish, capable of a sophisticated thought process, and some of his most insightful comments have been brought under the anti-national microscope! There aren't that many Indians who truly see Bhindra as being bigger than Tendulkar, even though his achievement clearly suggests unquestionable mastery. Bhindra will never be the icon the "little master" is, simply because he doesn't care so much about the patriotic tag while Tendulkar lives by it, much like Kapil Dev.

No matter what brings out our best and worst reactions, our politicians see through it all! That is how they maintain themselves above all law - after all, what kind of weakling would challenge a politician and his muscle power? If we really cared that much, we'd become a mob, raid the homes of our corrupt politicians, beat the crap out of them, and lynch a few. The security cordons that our leaders maintain have very little to do with any real danger from terrorists, but everything to do with the people they should and are scared of - us!

If we could shed our notions of being good, and simply took it upon us to become unabashedly strong in our support of what is right, we would be able to weed out the useless chaff fairly quickly, and make this country unpretentious and strong, clear in its ideologies as in its direction. That's an India all our Gods would be proud of.

FLICK CHICKS

A few days ago, I came across a young girl, no more than fourteen
years old, with a piece of paper in her hand. I took a closer look,
only to find that it was an appeal for help - she was from a village
that had run out of all resources and all its people had been
displaced and looking for help, just like this little girl who held
this piece of paper before me.

There were a few signatures below, with names of people and amounts of money they had ostensibly donated. The girl wouldn't speak, for some reason, and wouldn't answer any questions, and for some reason, the premise looked really fake, and I wasn't willing to fall for the ruse, if there was one. Now, I wouldn't buy into an appeal written in bad
English, with no basis, no strength of purpose, and not even an
attempt to be grammatically accurate enough to communicate with the
reader with any degree of credibility, and maybe there was my problem.
I couldn't buy into this at any level.

My mind moved back to a movie called "Water" which made a similar
appeal to me some time ago, The posters boasted of "critical
acclaim", and some reviews used words generally associated with good
storytelling on the screen. I was willing to fall for it, so I bought
myself a ticket to watch WATER. I like good stories, and sometimes I
expect the movie to live up to the hype atleast to some extent.

For most part I wondered why the film was called "Water". It could
have been called "Drain", for it drained a number of things like my
patience and time. I couldn't escape the feeling of watching
something really fake and contrived, and the longer I endured the
torture of Water dripping all over me, the stronger this feeling
became. Still, I sat through it, watching for some redeeming twist.
It never came.

The one disbelief I wanted to suspend was how I had been suckered into
watching this movie. And then, there was this pesky issue of
believability - if widows could sneak out to whore themselves with
older men living a fair distance away, surely, they could escape just
as easily!? And if they could come back unnoticed to the squalor of
their "normal" lives, and chose to do so, what exactly is the problem?

Lisa Ray was eye candy - but seriously, she didn't look one bit like
an Indian widow in a life of depression. Who are the morons who
couldn't see the stark difference between Lisa Ray and the others she
is living with? They were on different planets - different
everything! Lisa Ray looks like a goddess and the rest look like
women who have had a hard life.

When the lovers were finally united on the banks of the river, just
before their big getaway to a new life - they came together like two
dead bodies accidentally brought together by the current they were
drifting on! And they looked about as ready to run away together as a
mouse would want to run into a snake's open mouth! Lousy film making!

Unentertaining, devoid of all cinematic logic, stripped of every ounce
of believability, but expected to appeal to my sensitivity to the
"issue"? My only issue is that I came to a movie and there was no
bloody movie! Why the ^%$#! should a movie have an issue to deal
with? Oh, let us not even get into discussions on what a good movie
should or shouldn't have. A movie has to have some amount of honesty
before it is even worthy of that discussion.

India's famous flick chicks have a trait - they always need an issue
for their movies so that they can hide their bad art behind it. It is
like an ugly, ignored woman begging to be praised for her virtuous
character. Art really should never need to make excuses, and it
definitely should not need a sympathetic audience or shenanigans in
the media who are too bloody politically correct to give us a whiff of
honesty in their reviews of lousy films made on supposedly serious
issues.

Are we to believe then that the film makers really care about the
issues they base their movies on? If they did, they would be at the
forefront of social movements, not sucking up to studios to fund their
next issue based lousy movie!

Our flick chicks have another grouse - since they never get
appreciated by Indian audiences, they do their best to get Whitey's
accolades, as if to say - "Look, you guys don't have the taste for
what I produce"! I certainly don't have taste for bland, unartistic
shit, and god bless the white man for choosing to watch a lousy movie
instead of bombing another country!

Here is where Aamir Khan's Taare Zameen Par scores! Good story, great
acting, wonderful cast, and we cared about what was going on on the
screen. It was fun, and it was well made, and dealt with an issue
without crutching on it. Bottomline - people go to the movies to be
entertained, not to be hit with issues. I for one, cannot sit through
a lousy movie if it was made with the most burning issue at its core.
Both the issue and the movie become hard to put up with!

There are some commonalities you can find among artists that seek to
put their energies and efforts into the issues and controversies
surrounding the "attention" their work gets from the world at large,
and focus very little on their glaring weakness - the inability to
tell a story to save their miserable lives. One of the most common
ailments of these artists is to open the "whiner's window" - the big
cause that a lot of people will definitely find something to whine
about, leading the discussions on the work beyond the merit of the
work itself and take it to planes that are politically unfashionable
to argue against. The movie is just an attachment to the issue that
gets some traction!

Take M F Hussain's depiction of Goddess Saraswathi as a nude female
art figure. If he had called that woman "My Neighbour Nasreen", his
future would have become instantly bleak (and indeed in my opinion,
deservingly, much shorter).

I didn't see Saraswathi anywhere in his stupid depiction. And I don't
think he saw much Lakshmi through the experience either. But sure
enough, I saw Hussain - a load of it. This is an artist who once had
some artistic merit, but now has either run out of ideas, or has come
up with notoriously bad ones. His choice of subjects would suggest he
has nothing original to come up with any more than the next
controversy - again pouring his energy into the "attention" for his
work rather than paying attention to his work.

Then the Danish cartoonist who drew Prophet Mohammed like a bomb
waiting to explode - that was so crass that it couldn't have won
anything for artistic merit in any mix of talent. The idiotic
pretender even went on to include holy inscriptions in his "cartoon".
Now, that is asking for trouble, and I am thrilled to see the fatwa on
that moron's head. Bad artists need to be punished as much as good
ones need to be appreciated!

Usually, when there is an uproar against needlessly controversial
works of art, it is fashionable for most people and for the media to
talk about freedom of expression. Expressions are not only for
artists, so how about giving the same freedom to the expression of the
people who are subjected to art they don't quite react favourably to?
I am not in favour of killing everybody I disagree with, art or no
art, but I am certainly in favour of protecting the freedom of those
who feel enraged enough to want to kill someone for slander. (If in
the name of art, someone has the right to attack something that is
dear to me, then in the name of being enraged, I reserve my right to
defend myself. If art is the method chosen to attack me, I reserve my
freedom to choose whatever means I may have at my disposal for
retribution.)

I have some lousy memories of watching "Salaam Bombay", way back in
the 80s, wasting precious pocket money while in college. What a
bloody piece of depressing #@&^ that was! And where do these clowns
come from, who judge films like this and nominate them for big awards
like the Oscars, when a host of great movies have been around, and
have enthralled, captivated and thrilled audiences? Pure cinema for
cinema, "Apoorva Sagodharargal" was ten times the movie Salaam Bombay
will ever be.

The pattern is simple - make a depressing movie about your own
culture. Be sure to include an "issue" that is easily bigger than the
movie you can get yourself to make. Call in the white man's press and
be sure to talk about all things other than the lousy story you are
about to inflict people with. Do not put any statutory warnings in
the promos that the reviews were written by idiots from countries
where lynching based on race was legal not too long ago, and
governments have foreign policies that support the worst kinds of
oppression on mankind!

Do not mention that the rave reviews you received were also from
magazines that chose Hitler as "Man of the Year". Do not mention that
despite several boring sequences, we should listen to whitey who is
really sensitive about the kids in his country carrying guns to school
and shoot fellow students, but has no problem bombing other
civilizations to the stone age. Do not mention that the people who
found your "issue" very important also come from places where priests
are pedophiles and people keep their own children as sex slaves.

Our fake artists would love to get these fine folks to endorse a
"work" based on the condemning of a social wrong, that we are already
aware of and collectively discourage. It is easy to get very precise
and predictable reactions to "causes" that threaten to impinge on
freedom of expression, and a plethora of issues that have become very
easy to get subscriptions to and a lot of animated inaction from the
media.

So, our flick chicks find it easy to sell their lousy art in much the
same way as a postcard painted by a handicapped child that promises to
donate a portion of the profit to the upliftment of the
underprivileged. They make movies that fall in line with whitey's
imagined view of himself in paradise and the rest in hell, and focus
on creating a world view that India is indeed a backward country,
where we do all the things that whitey believes are wrong! This is a
sure way to sell lousy movies and indeed if there is an Indian
reaction against it, our flick chicks can claim persecution!!! What
can be better than a lousy movie that gets traction based on the
persecution of lousy artists?! Easy notoriety!

By now, I suppose I must have become a candidate for "anti-feminism"
or "male chauvinism". Maybe I am both, but male storytellers all over
the world are telling far better stories than women, particularly in
cinema. That shouldn't give the women a backdoor entry with issues
bigger than their storytelling talents. I would love to see the
"female" viewpoint. Especially one that is powerful and fun, and not
needing an outer spine called an "issue". As long as women focus on
the periphery, they will remain peripheral. It is time women
directors told stories that are universal, fun and easy to relate to.
It is time they sharpened their craft and did some good work.

No sword is too sharp to shred to pieces a piece of garbage toted as
art. Pretenders there are many, and supporters to the pretenders come
in all shapes and sizes, colours and skins!

We have this term called "socially responsible cinema"! You've got to
be kidding me. Socially responsible cinema? What kind of society is
responsible for creating lousy film makers in the first place?! Why
would cinema ever be answerable to those very societies that make
cinema unwatchable, unenjoyable, and twist the mindsets of audiences
and artists to the extent where nobody has a good time at the movies
anymore?!

The character of a city

The last time I was in Bangalore, on a bus from Hebbal to Yeshwanthpur, all seats were taken and quite a few people were standing. At one of the stops, a few women boarded the bus, and of the several seats reserved for women, only one was vacated immediately by the man who was sitting in one.

He made it a point to ask other gents to vacate their seats to women, but to no avail. It just became awkward for these other men and then, after our gentleman really took up the case and began insulting them, as he should, it became a case of men defending their "territory".

You would never see this happen in Tamilnadu. The moment women board the bus, all men who might be sitting in the seats allocated for women just scamper out of the way, leaving no doubt as to their understanding of what is right and wrong. This is true of Chennai, Coimbatore, Trichy, Palladam, or any other place you happen to be in, as long as it is in Tamilnadu.

What is it with Karnataka, that forces its men to compete with women in this silly way? Is it the intrinsic character of the Kannadiga male?

The character of a people can be judged by how they treat the weaker ones. India as a whole may have a dismal record when it comes to defending the rights of the poor, the weak, and the ignorant. But that should serve as no excuse when it comes to how people in cities behave.

Bangalore, your time is up. It isn't enough if you changed your name to Bengaluru, it is time you changed your behaviouru to something more sensitivu.

India no laughing matter!

India in the eyes of many is a complex, organic, chaotic place, full of promise and yet brimming with so many qualities that make it confusing, and hard to define. We even take pride in this chaos, and consider it part of our lives in this romantic mess called India. It is almost as if some country in the world had to stand up to play the part of the chaotic idiot, and we chose it out of love for the depth of character it promised.

In the chaos, a lot of us see an order that is hard to recreate elsewhere, for this order is something that just comes to be, not one designed to be that way. The traffic on our roads is the prime example for this order within chaos. I have heard a friend define it as a "lyrical dance" of vehicles! Well the dance isn't that lyrical considering how many Indians die in road accidents every day, unless we are now willing to venture into being part of the cosmic whole and that those people were destined to die anyway.

I wonder how we would take it if the Indian Air Force refused to react to Pakistan invading India and just allowed an organic chaos to take over, of course completely convinced that we are part of a cosmic whole and that nothing is really real. I wonder how it would be if we stopped manufacturing medicines and our doctors went on permanent leave, since people were going to die at designated times anyway.

Truth is, we Indians love chaos until it becomes life threatening. Not just any life threatening, but OUR life threatening. We are that selfish. We are that callous about public behaviour. We are heartless, but love to live in our cocoon of suspended disbelief that we are a compassionate people, that really care about other people's lives. We do not. Perhaps we do not wish ill upon others, but we don't really care what happens to others, even though we are perfectly happy to subscribe to a system that causes needless chaos.

We are not torn between a rational today and a culture of very dense superstitions. We are torn between our laziness and a need to do our duty in a democratic set up. We are torn between the demands of civic responsibility and our dearly held and protected indifference to all things that do not immediately affect our well being.

Oh, we do take up moral policing quite regularly. Especially when policemen confront couples on bikes late at night, for example. There is nothing in the constitution that makes it illegal for a man and a woman to be taking a motorcycle ride late at night, and yet, all the questions from the police will usually be aimed at establishing the intent of the ride, not the legality of it. We love moral policing and we are particularly good at doing it when we have the safety of not being bitten by the person being questioned.

Is this a call for us to seek legal help to maintain our freedoms? Most certainly it is. It is time we became a litigious society where we fought for our rights to lead peaceful lives, where the chaos loving maniacs cannot threaten our lives with lousy driving habits, or the moral policing habits of mob-minded Indians drive us to lead invisible lives.

We are not a great country when we have to make adjustments for imperfections we do not subscribe to. We will never be a great country until EVERY single constitutional right and freedom of EVERY single citizen can be absolutely taken for granted, without question, without ambiguity and without exception.

There is nothing to be proud of this chaotic country we currently call our own. There is definitely nothing beautiful about a lack of a certain order that can prevent casualties, and there certainly is nothing to appreciate about traditions that are thousands of years old when we behave like we did a million years ago.