Anything to be proud of?

I am not proud of my country. I am not proud of being male, or tall, or any of the things I do not have any control over. Being an Indian is something I didn't choose, and in the event of having to belong to some country by default, I really didn't have any say. So, why even think about it? Besides, if I took up the luxury of being proud of my country, I would definitely like to think the obligation of hanging my head in shame comes with it when my country chooses to stand for something shameful.

Is there anything I am proud about? Probably not. I don't necessarily give any thought to the saying that pride can bring about one's downfall. I am just not bothered about being proud, that's all. It just isn't important to me to belong in any collective, and while there are sides I take in a sporting event, there aren't sides I wish to take at a level where my sense of belonging as a person comes under my own scrutiny.

Now, it is largely fashionable to be patriotic, just as it is largely fashionable to be idiotic. In a country of over a billion people, intelligent consensus is often impossible, and just looking at the diverse mix that India is, any sort of consensus is nothing short of a miracle. I would think we do fairly all right as a country in some respects, but there really is nothing in the collective effort of us all being Indians that I would necessarily be enthused by enough to be proud of.

The idea of a nation state is an essentially flawed one, and deserves to be questioned in its essence. The boundaries that define a nation are mostly geographic, and are drawn not by considerations of ideologies, and certainly not by asking its constituents if they like what they will eventually end up representing and belonging with. Most of us are just humans who happen to belong to some nationality and we should never have to carry the guilt, responsibility or pride that is imposed upon us. This isn't a choice we should have to make and a world without a nation state concept isn't a new concept either.

Being a nation, however, isn't without its advantages. It is hard for each of us to maintain defences strong enough to protect everything we would like to protect. So, we all pool in our resources, create the opportunity for people to serve in the army, navy or air force, and prop up enough equipment to deter, threaten, or unmotivate an enemy from attacking us. This is smart collective thinking, but again our sense of belonging under the flag of a "nation" is just brilliantly convenient for this purpose. It is perhaps just as well that fighting for the country is more likely to motivate our brave soldiers a bit better than fighting for a more nebulously defined collective, no matter how much more truthful.

How about the whole world getting together under ONE collective and ignoring all boundaries between us as humans - geographical, ideological, even spiritual? The more we share resources and the more we fight for some, we are being inevitably pushed towards this ideal, but more and more, our leaders are falling short of calling the bluff of the last few centuries and are buying even more strongly into new states and countries! Yes, we elected those leaders in many cases, but then again, that is not something I am proud of. Why is it that we still vote for people instead of voting for ideas? Shouldn't we be allowed to merely vote for - "spending money on education" against "spending money on the military" and forcing whoever is elected to simply obey what we have chosen?

Democracy - the least lousy system we humans have come up with in order to govern ourselves, is the most benign way of the weak keeping the strong down. In a system of natural selection, about a tenth of the population of the world today would have survived and would have the intelligence to live a good life without endangering any of the resources of this planet. But we somehow conspired to subscribe to a system that lets the unfit thrive because of compassionate considerations, however dishonest those may be. As a result, we have an overburdened planet, fools with the ability to slow down life for the really smart ones amongst us, and hence retarding the highest levels we can aspire for as a race.

My race! Again something I am not proud of. But I am reasonably happy to belong to the human race. It has potential. It has a remarkable ability to survive and improve, and build upon the improvements of others in the race. That is a huge plus. I definitely do not want to invent all the things I would love to have! For my fellow beings, I am willing to give myself. For another human being, I am willing to batter and bruise myself. I am willing to yell myself hoarse so something I have found may reach that one ear that might be able to use that information. But perhaps this is also something instinctive, something so primal that I have no control over? It doesn't matter. Somewhere, somehow, some human beings seem worth the trouble of caring for!

India Irrational 1 - Vaasthu

If you have been living in India for a while now, you would undoubtedly have heard about "Vaasthu" - the "wisdom" of building design and construction. If you have been living in a fool's paradise, you are likely to have bought into this notion that Vaasthu is indeed a science of some sort, and if you are an absolute idiot, you would have spent money to conform to some of Vaasthu's conditions.

If you have indeed spent money on Vaasthu conformation, you don't deserve even an iota of pity for you have in the age of the internet and rampant communication, chosen to be an ignorant fool fit for the dark ages. For every step forward that science, reason, and rationale have taken, it is fools like you who pull human progress back ten steps.

If I were to argue against Vaasthu, I would first have to give it some credibility in order to merit such an argument. However, as it stands, it does not deserve any rational argument because it is already as irrational as believing the earth is flat, no matter how much proof we have that the earth is rather spherical. Vaasthu stands on ambiguous principles, not "laws". Physics is based on "laws". The "laws" of physics hold true, and form the basis of all engineering that has brought about the progress of humanity.

The design of a building and the engineering codes laid down for development should more than take care of all our requirements of fire safety, ventilation, and all other concerns that Vaasthu is supposed to address in some arbitrary fashion, through rather simplistic and often awkwardly unrealistic mathematical considerations that can make a mockery of a good design.

There is the contention that if this Vaasthu were to have some hidden but potentially beneficial value, there is no harm in adhering to some of its principles. Now, if you are one of these people who sit on the fence with this nonsense in your head, you should know you are also impeding the progress of rational thinking, and hence slowing yourself down. There are many people who perform pujas to their vehicles before going on a pilgrimage tour. If you have a driver whose judgement is not quite sharp, it won't matter how many pujas you have performed on the vehicle, you are at a greater risk of having a mishap. It is that simple.

Your building will be sound and safe if you build it according to engineering specifications. There is no value addition of any sort in extending one corner to be higher than the other, or putting a window in a certain place so that wealth can flow into your life! In fact, by spending more money on getting your building up to these specifications, you have verily proved that Vaasthu is in fact making you poorer not richer. Invest in knowledge and you will benefit. Invest in ignorance and someone else is making a fool out of you.

The next time anybody tries to sell you some nonsense about Vaasthu, ask if you can get your money back if things don't work out the way they are supposed to, and in fact, some portion of the promised "prosperity" that this phenomenon is supposed to bring you. Structural engineers will guarantee the safety of your building, so why can't Vaasthu specialists who make money out of their trade that involves your money and promised returns of some sort? Do not worry if this challenge chases away your Vaasthu expert, for he is no expert. He is a scammer and if he believes in this nonsense completely, it means he has been scammed totally too!

Here's another side of your own coin for you now. What if Vaasthu is indeed capable of some kind of power and the guy who is advising you gets it wrong? Our satellites reach their orbits because of our scientists getting their calculations right. When something goes wrong, they are able to put their fingers on it and correct that for the next launch. Ultimately, we have knowledge guiding us, and that will not fail. If Vaasthu fails you, it is because you are lucky enough to come out of believing in it! Maybe it is no coincidence that "auspicious" is only one letter away from "suspicious"!

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.

Money Back Movies

Do you remember the last time you went to a movie and felt thoroughly disgruntled within no time, but somehow grit your teeth and took it quietly? Seriously, does it have to be like this?

So, what is it with movies, that you lose money by taking a risk, while you have no minimum guarantee of satisfaction with what you paid for? After all you're the paying customer and the movie is the product you are buying, so if you are not satisfied with the value you are getting for your money, you should be entitled to a refund, right?

There is only one stupid impediment to this simple logic being carried to the just and fair next step of implementation. You can REturn a coconut that was rotten on the inside. You can REturn a stereo that doesn't work, but you cannot UNexperience a movie, and more often than not, you cannot prove in measurable ways, beyond doubt, that you didn't quite get what you were promised. So, "no contract"! It is the "nature of the business" gleeful producers will tell you.

However, if you didn't already know about this, you can actually walk out of a movie theatre before the intermission and get a full refund of the ticket. This is a right that not many people obviously exercise. It is a simple procedure that should be encouraged to the maximum.

When the moneybags hurt is when we will get better cinema. Up until now, the first week's movie goers are the ones taking the hit, taking the risk of being subjected to the damage our films can inflict upon our senses, our sensibilities, and upon our minds. The insult of watching a "typical" Mumbai movie is far too intense to be ignored. And yet, a lot of people are brave enough, and compassionate enough to our film producers and film makers to make a beeline to the box office.

Is there a single producer out there who can put a simple "Money Back Guarantee" on his product? I bet you not. But just because it is not the norm doesn't mean this nonsense has to continue, where the paying public pays in full before they know what they are getting into.

If you are at an art exhibition, you can definitely experience the beauty or the ugliness of every piece of painting or sculpture before you want to cough up the money to own it. Now, cinema cannot be exclusively owned like other pieces of art, but then moviegoers are not interested in exclusive torture either!

If you bought a medicine for headache and it gave you a bad stomach as a side effect, you can sue the pharmaceutical company for not warning you. And the warning better be on the product wrapper, right where the consumer can see it. How often have you and I been to a movie hall, where a Statutory Warning greeted us with - "This movie makes no claim of great entertainment value. Audiences are warned that boredom, disappointment, and in some cases, watching this movie may result in undesirable physical consequences like nausea and headache" or atleast a really humble, "Amateur cinema. Patrons are warned not to expect cinematic greatness"?

In some cases, especially in movies with big stars involved, the promos are abject LIES, and there is absolutely nobody to question the validity of some of those outrageous claims of good art. Ah, art! Now that is a big illusion to hide behind, isn't it? Yes, as long as your art doesn't need my money for its survival.

All it takes is a few hundred people demanding their money back from movie halls, and the ripple effect will hit where it matters - at the pockets of producers who don't know a rat's arse about cinema, and at the careers of pretenders who call themselves film makers! After all, it isn't as if an enormously successful movie and huge profits encourage producers to give discounts to audiences that come in for second viewings. So, let us as consumers punish a lousy product no matter what industry it comes from.

We would create a whole new generation of films that advertise a "money back policy", and we would be treated to a minimum of effort in understanding that we, the audiences, don't appreciate being treated like cattle, when we pay AND give our time to something that is supposed to be fun.

India deserves this, our cinema begs for this, and in all fairness, we deserve to keep our money intact until a good movie shows up.