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.

* * *

A celebration of Kitsch.

Kitsch - from Sakalakala Vallavan to Quick Gun Murugun (why MuruGUN
instead of MuruGAN?), Indian cinema has slowly but snugly covered
itself in this one description - Kitsch, and seems fairly proud of it.

It is as derogatory as Mumbai cinema calling itself Bollywood and
feeling proud of its failure to rise above third rate glitz, spiced
with fizz, sizzle and a burst of shitz. But it is uniquely Indian.
Post independence India (the only India, really) has found its final
sense of belonging! In Kitsch. Our biggest expressions in the world
of art are still very Kitsch.

We're proud of it because we can afford to be lazy under this umbrella
called Kitsch. It is a warm, fuzzy feeling, when a billion of us can
agree to stay mediocre! Well, shitz, we can even go lower! Thank God
the true artists of this country can still stay out of this mess.
They're not in the news, for the news is also mostly ten pages of page
three, and they're not on TV because TV journalism in India is still
very much about decibels and cheap tricks. No wonder there are so
many shrill women thriving in this media culture and not finding
anything of substance to bring to us.

When Kitsch comes about through a work of art skidding on incongruency
and stumbling over paradoxes, finally landing on the inexplicable that
nobody noticed until that moment, it can be very fun, rewarding and a
nice little dose of low brow. It might even start a new subculture if
the subtleties are handled well, and the perspective is fresh. Then
it has the potential to be substantial, even hope to become art at
some level.

With a starting point marinated in the kind of disconnect Mumbai
cinema is famous for, it can take the best aim at creating Kitsch.
German or not, the word has been adopted by India to define itself.
It's a mess. Whether it is cinema, or signboards, or seats in a bus,
elegance please excuse thyself! This is India.

The stench of urine that hits us as soon as our train enters Chennai
Central, the number of times our cinema viewing experience is marred
by idiots letting their cellphones ring in theatres, the confusing
signs that lead to defunct facilities, the phones that don't work, and
people giving advice when not asked - each of this is our celebration
of Kitsch. Why do we take this attack on our senses so quietly?
Because we have been muted by the enormity of Kitsch around us!

A billion people subscribing to nothing but shit will ensure nothing
but shit gets delivered to us, even if a few of us want to be spared
the landslide. People cannot be inflicted with good taste. But if
there is any way the few of us who want to buy insulation from the
"cattle class", we would gladly do so.

Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for External Affairs got into a bit
of trouble for saying he would travel "cattle class to show solidarity
with our holy cows". The humour in it actually highlights the
experience of being in India. We are a bloody herd. To have a human
experience, in dignity and quiet, it takes some doing in public spaces
in India.

The paradoxes that Paul Merton might find fascinating about India, and
the inspiration that Baz Luhrman might have got from "Bollywood" for
his film Moulin Rouge are nothing but slices others can tolerate from
us. Our Kitschy behaviour is hardly bearable beyond the early points.
It is beginning to wear real thin. It isn't what we should be
subjecting ourselves to, and it certainly isn't something to be proud
of.

Let's stop the parade that "This is India". The middle class is right
now turning snooty with new found wealth, the power to buy, and
doesn't care. The upper class has long since bought the insulation
they need. The lower class in India is striving hard to come up to
the middle class. but they still don't have the means to rise above
their squalor. When they reach the middle class, they won't care
either. Because they are OUR people!

It may be too much for any of us to question another Indian's "right"
to contribute to the filth in the neighbourhood, to drive like a
lunatic, to spread rumours, to disrespect the law, and to be loud and
despicable in every way. Not all of us have the energy to stand up
against all the ills that we are putting up with. If that were the
case, we wouldn't be such a Kitsch society. But we definitely must
get this notion out of our heads that we cannot really change. We are
cattle, (no doubt about that Shashi Tharoor), but we certainly can
express our disapproval and we can certainly behave better. Maybe in
the sheer numbers we have contributed to the Kitsch, we can begin to
dismantle some of it. Kschitz!

Controversy's children

It was only a matter of time before it happened - Deepa Mehta and
Salman Rushdie coming together for the mother of all controversies
designed from scratch - a movie called "Midnight's Children".

Salman Rushdie didn't do the world of literature any great favour by
writing "The Satanic Verses", but the silly narrative gained a lot of
traction by courting the unmistakable ally of poor art - controversy!
It was no masterpiece, but it got plenty of publicity, by getting
banned, criticized, and by managing to get the author a fatwa from the
Islamic world!

Deepa Mehta made a lousy film called "Water". It should have been
called "Drain" for what it did to the viewers, but it picked up
plenty of controversy along the way, and it is really only poor art
that CAN pick up this kind of controversy, because people who react
quickly and take to the streets by perceiving an attack on their
culture aren't going to fall for sophisticated points of view that can
actually be thought provoking.

So, it is perfectly expectable that terribly overrated artists would
provide enough ammunition to start the next controversy, and please
don't be surprised that such controversy is easier to kick up in the
Muslim world either.

If you are a fairly neutral consumer of books, you will see no great
literary value in The Satanic Verses. So, the best way to sell the
book to you is to get you really curious through controversy. Deepa
Mehta is a perfect ally to Salman Rusdie now with Midnight's Children.
For an author who is reasonably good at best and a film maker who
can't tell a story to save her life, a venture of this nature was
inevitable.

Don't show them any sympathy, but know that a paucity of creativity
can be exploited and substituted by an abundance of controversy - as
far as the marketplace is concerned. It is one thing when a work of
art aims to debunk theories humanity has subscribed to, asks questions
that make us examine our convictions, and provides perspectives that
shock us out of our stupor - that is the power of art. The
controversies that follow such works are a fallout of the effort and
merely a part of the journey.

It is entirely another to NEED a controversy in order to bring some
sort of recognition to an effort at art. Those are the props true
artists should never have to have. Whether it is a Danish cartoonist
or a pretensive Indian painter, their expressions are not richer for
having controversy carry them to recognition. Know the difference!

Here is the prediction - clear as day. The moment this film goes on
the floor, and you bet it will do that in India - there will be a
protest against it. And from then on, Deepa Mehta will continue to
roll the dice exactly as terrible artists are prone to - focus on
everything except on her lousy film making ability. In Water, I still
remember with disdain the scene where the long yearning lovers finally
come together before their flight into the promise of the unknown -
the birds being released from the cage. And they came together like
two dead bodies, bereft of all emotion, and made me wonder what
unfeeling, soulless creature would create a mess like this!

The same creature is about to unleash another rotten stink upon the
world of cinema, and it is called Midnight's Children. She should not
be stopped, definitely not for any fear of her great art influencing
anybody's thought process or culture. She is nowehere near capable of
that. That dopey Salman Rushdie should not be stopped either, for he
is, just like her, a child of controversies, and nothing more.

And the Oscar goes to ... our heads?

At last it is official!

A R Rahman has won two Oscars! What a moment of joy!

Now, finally, there is every chance that we won't be inflicted with his overrated music as much as we have been. Has India been saved? I hope he gets abducted, seduced and entrapped by Hollywood studios and kept there for as long as he is alive.

So, a bunch of Indians got work on a British film. A foreign director came with a foreign script, and a foreign cameraman, shot something in India, and it made it to the Oscars - exactly like GANDHI. Great work cannot be slighted, so here is a hearty congratulations to the entire Slumdog Millionaire team! You are fantastic! For a little known film to climb so high is incredible and deserves more accolades than a film like Gandhi. So, let's all clap and cheer.

But let's not suddenly imagine that Indian cinema has come of age in some way. Completely the opposite, this is a left handed slap across the face of Mumbai cinema, which for the amount of money being spent there, hasn't produced one great film in a long, long time. The half decent films show up, but somewhere, in some way, Mumbai falls apart.

Now, on TV, it is being mentioned that India hasn't won an Oscar in 27 years! How many Indian films have we sent in to compete for the mainstream categories, in this period? NONE! Well, duh! More importantly, when did India start needing Oscars? We'd be more affected by Mumbai losing power for 27 minutes than not getting an Oscar for the next 27 years.

So, who the bloody hell cares? International acclaim! How can you not know the value of that? I can hear the screams already. So? Hitler was Time Magazine's "Man of the Year" and Mahatma Gandhi was never nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee is under scrutiny for accepting favours from potential winners, and we should know by now that the Miss World and Miss Universe affairs are total shams for selling shampoo to new markets. So, will I be dancing on the roof with an Oscar or eight for Slumdog Millionaire? Hardly.

We Indians are great slaves. We have proved it time and again. We do good work under capable masters, but terrible when left to ourselves. Look at any country where Indians have done well and it is clear that the collective is controlled by somebody else and we Indians willingly function to the best of our abilities under those conditions. We will gladly slave for somebody else but won't do our best for ourselves!

Slumdog Millionaire is exactly that - Indian slaves working hard for a British master. A R Rahman is by no means India's best music composer, definitely a copycat, and is left miles behind in the originality race by someone like Ilayaraja. Ilayaraja thankfully, will perhaps never vie for an Oscar. But what is true is that his music from Annakkili sounds great more than thirty years later, while Rahman hasn't done any work yet that can truly be termed "timeless" and indeed quite a bit that can be called "crap" (Example: Karuthamma).

Indians who don't know a rat's fart from music will now actually believe Rahman is among the best of Indian music composers - because the white masters have spoken! What was Indian about Rahman's Jay Ho show at the Oscars? This is the kind of pandering that we Indians should feel insulted by. If someone of true genius had got this Oscar, I'd be worried that he might leave our shores and we get to enjoy less of him. For Rahman, I have nothing but hearty congratulations!

What I'm trying to understand is this - the whole of last year, I haven't seen very many Indian films worth the hundred rupees I paid to get in. This year hasn't started off very well either. Now I see a British producer and a British director come in with a script written by Simon Beaufoy (could this be a Tamil name?), albeit an adaptation of a book written by Vikas Swarup, make a film called Slumdog Millionaire, and it wins Oscars and we're celebrating this as an Indian win of some kind? Even the slumdog kid himself is "Indian" only in ethnicity! What is wrong with this picture?

Let's celebrate good cinema, and Slumdog Millionaire is definitely good cinema, but the part that Indian cinema played in the creative process that created this motion picture is not by any means big enough for us to take credit for as Indians.

The last "Indian" film I remember that was nominated for a mainstream Oscar was Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay, which also was set in the slums and in Mumbai. So, it behoves us to maintain our slums years exactly as they are till atleast 2036? Jai Ho Indian cinema! Who wants to be a millionaire when you can be a slumdog and be so happy!?

India's Future with Priyanka Chopra

NDTV. Earlier tonight. Priyanka Chopra? Actress? Actor? Whatever. Not me, not normally interested. So, no thanks. But wait a minute! This is India's Future! How can I give this a miss? Especially when she is a former Miss to the whole World?

To my surprise the lass was fairly coherent, didn't flick her hair too much, and could put more than five words into a sentence! I was pleasantly surprised, so I stayed on. For some reason the show was conducted in an odd, deserted looking place, with young people sitting in odd formations facing the stage at odd angles. Lack of creativity doesn't surprise me any more, but creativity going in some crazy direction really bothers me - that's where a lot of serial killers come from.

Back to topic. This Chopra girl is quite lively, and can look good once in a while on screen if her own self confessed metabolism wasn't so high. I loved it when she commented that Indian women are naturally voluptuous, and she did not approve of dieting. Wow, she is cool I thought, till in the very next breath she said she had found a way of eating low fat Punjabi food! All good, how savvy can a twenty five year old actress in Mumbai be, I asked myself and since there wasn't much else on other channels I was hoping this woman wouldn't hang herself shortly, like all Mumbai actresses are famously capable of. Not often that I am this forgiving of people called upon to represent India's Future.

Then came all the politically attractive views about how great India's soldiers were, and how she has come to take criticism, and then I was woken up - did she say she had to work hard on Love Story 2050? Okay, this is one of my big grouse points with people in the entertainment business? Whoever told them that life was easy? I wouldn't really be complaining about any "hard work" if I was getting paid several lakhs more than a teacher or a police officer. And where does all the hard work go if the movie is all crap? People don't go to theatres to count the calories burnt in the name of making a film. They want to enjoy themselves, and if you have to work harder at doing that, please do. It isn't as if the money people pay at the box office grew on trees!

I was beginning to get bored when the classic twist came - audience questions! There was a bright young man who thought movies were not environmentally friendly because they printed scripts on paper! What paper? And what script in a Hindi film? Never mind my sarcasm! Chopra was ready with an answer saying in all her productions they are always very careful towards the environment. They switch off all lights between takes and were indeed "saving" something! How about killing the actors who needed more than two takes to deliver a simple scene? That would be easy when the lights were off! Bump! Off you go! No! That would be too harsh! So, why not shoot the whole film in daylight?

Who is this girl fooling? Most film productions trash locations, and that is why there is such a thing as a location fee for shooting on public property! The temporary nature of every film production gives very little leeway to think about anything beyond finishing the film on time and under budget - that's the bloody truth. It isn't as if our actors' don't know it, they just don't want to look like global villagers when they have to project something they don't have!

Before I could bring myself to laugh out loud, she said something even more alarming - that actors' clothes were recycled! No way, I thought, before she blurted out that in many films of the same producer, you could see the lead actors' clothes of one film being worn by extras in the next film! Well, that's definitely environmentally friendly, considering many of the song sequences are wasted on us in the first place! Why not just make shorter films? Or fewer of them? It would be good on the environment, our senses, and on the world of art!

While we wait for India's Future, could we ensure we put on a much better show for India's Present? It isn't like quality can kill us just because we aren't exposed to much of it.

Mumbai, Western India - indeed!

The ad. for "Khatron Ki Khiladi" on the new channel - Colors (notice the missing U?), warns that all the stunts are being performed under expert supervision in South Africa according to applicable regulations (Sounding very much like the Americans who love to write "This is not a toy" on plastic bags), and extends itself, huffing and puffing, to say "Viewers shouldn't try these stunts, especially children".

Now, either that means the stunts are really child's play and even children will want to try them, or our children would really listen to their parents yelling "Pinky! Leave the helicopter alone. You really shouldn't be following Akshay! No Chotu, you can't take the speedboat either!"

Are we hapless masses in India supposed to enjoy something being performed in South Africa with an American idea? How about talking in Polish with Korean subtitles, idiots? Oh, you want this to be a Hindi show? So, why isn't the show's name ever written in Hindi? Could it be because the people who can read Hindi would never watch this show? Or could it be you couldn't really come up with another name for "Fear Factor" that isn't equally dumb?

So, this is supposed to impress those of us who read in English, hear in Hindi, relate to American culture, and are willing to put up with South African regulations? Why not just show us the original show if we are this international in our taste?

It takes a bevy of beauties to go on some dangerous missions with Akshay Kumar? Fair enough. Television courting titillation is nothing new, but I would rather watch no TV at all than being forced to watch these unathletic acting career dropouts trying to hitch a ride to South Africa under some idea of "cool" invented last night. And these chicks telling us who they are - why? Who cares? To me, they all look the same, sound the same, and act the same. There is a serious business opportunity for a company that can invent and sell new types of giggles. And it can be called "Giggles for Dummies".

The show promises lizards and snakes licking these desirable nubiles - are we supposed to be scared of these creatures? We are still a nation where a large number of people are bitten by snakes on a regular basis, and yet, we do have any mortal fear of the creatures. We even have seven year old girls chasing away leopards with sticks and winning bravery awards from the President. Sweep all this under the carpet while watching another Whitey show ranking snakes for how deadly they are, and you are the perfect candidate to welcome the new White invasion of our culture, this time the mindsets.

Right on the heels of this one, we have BIG BOSS! A bunch of people in a house. So? The ads make this out to be some sort of macabre, extremely menacing proposition and we are supposed to be interested in who survives the rest of the loonybins in the house? Are we supposed to wait in trepidation to see where this next experiment in social engineering will take us? Or will we be spared the end of the season and have some actress cry foul and make news for herself while the show tops every toilet in viewerland?

Sixty years after independence, we're still very dependent on many things foreign. The most pathetic of them is dependence on foreign thought. What kind of Mumbai morons come up with these ideas to copy shows that are boring to start with? What kind of braindead, drugged out dopes are getting paid to come up with these ideas, and what kind of mediocrity marinated lunatic bosses okay these ideas?

We as Indians, have a long tradition of notions, as long as our history itself. These notions are complex and sophisticated, and we have never cared to explain or analyze any of these, because... we don't really care! It takes a lot to dumb us down, and while we might buy into a bit of dumbness once in a while, Mumbai trying to sell us the whole whale is out of the question.

Bottomline - we are not American, and none of the doped out foreign culture sucking assholes in Mumbai, from the uncreative bowels of their below mediocre television culture needs to tell us what we should like and what is cool. We're already cool and we don't really care about that either.

Which one of those dickheads is running Star TV in India? Somebody tell that knucklehead that we don't need to be told what is coming in the "Sizzling Summer" like the Asia Cup and Wimbledon, when it is pouring cats and dogs. Maybe these people are snorting dope all day long and don't even notice that summer is long gone for the 16 percent of the world's population that is keeping one of these sports alive!

That idiot on AXN who's been pronouncing Maruti as "Muhroodee" for ages - can someone other than the RSS tell this fool to get names right(especially those of Hindu Gods!), before letting his voice travel over the airwaves? I really wouldn't mind slitting the throat of the fool who approved this idiot's work, just for the incompetence it shows, or the indifference to Indian viewers who are being subjected to this nonsense.

It isn't as if a foreign culture has never made it to the shores of India. For thousand of years, we have been bombarded by things foreign. But this new phenomenon, of Indians telling other Indians how we must ape others, is new. And it is being fostered in Mumbai, squarely.

It neither begins nor ends with this arbid fiction film world called Bollywood (oh, what a coincidence it has taken to this name with love!). It spreads rather unceremoniously to news channels as well. The 11th of July bombings in Mumbai were shamelessly referred to as the "Seven Eleven" bombings, just so it rhymes with the white man's violent castration of sorts caused on "Nine eleven". When in India did we ever use the month before the day in mentioning a date?

And then, we have monkeys in Hyderabad, who celebrate Halloween! Halloween, for heavens' sake! What does India have to do with Halloween? One can understand Valentine's day as an opportune moment to woo someone who has already fallen for that one, but Halloween!? I can only say to those who celebrate Halloween in India - to borrow from Mumbai cinema - that they really mustn't have drunk their mother's milk!

The number of advertisements in India, especially for high end clothing, that carry white faces - yet another disgusting low. Why ever should we wear something made here because a white man is ready to wear it? The number of Indian corporate websites that have pictures of very unproductive but cute looking white faces will give you an idea where India really doesn't want to let go of imperialism, even if we were not the imperialists to start with.

Just so we are not perceived as being racist in our blindness, look at how many avatars Abhishek Bachchan has taken up where he wears clothes like black rappers and moves his hands like he was a tattooed, just released from jail black man expressing himself on the streets of Chicago? I wonder if he would love to get sodomized in an all black jail in the USA, just so he can boast of having "been there, done that".

It isn't as if all copies are incapable of merit and success in our own context. Kaun Banega Crorepati is a much better show than its original, rather dull American version, but it was Big B that made the wonderful warm difference. Indian Idol is indeed a good opportunity for young talent to get picked up to good futures in the entertainment industry although I wonder how many people would recognize Prashant Tamang here than they would in Nepal!

The question to ask is - why doesn't Mumbai copy the best of others' work? The master film makers today, in unabashed open view and in the greatest truth of the marketplace, are mostly white and from Hollywood. India has no Clint Eastwood, no Spielberg, no Terrence Malick, and no Scorsese. Mumbai doesn't have a Leonardo DiCaprio, and we most certainly don't have a Denzel Washington. (India has a Kamal Haasan, but he doesn't work in Mumbai)

The answer is - it's hard work being good. So, if you're not willing to work hard to create something original, and if you have no cultural roots to give you a sense of who you really are, if you are willing to take little crumbs of copied semi-original material and leave it to the marketing machine to make you, then you would do well in Mumbai. But if you are one of these, keep your shit to yourself and don't unleash it on the rest of us who can still tell the difference.

There are many actors and actor wannabes in Mumbai who can swear by the amazing actors Hollywood produces. Great actors come from great material. No screenwriters since the days of Salim-Javed have produced tight screenplays in commercial Mumbai. We will forgive the exceptions like Govind Nihalani for now. There simply is no respect for great writing, and indeed no demand for it. Some of the scripts that get approved for production have absolutely no potential to be "great" in any context, except maybe as recycled paper. All that Mumbai cares about now is "packaging" and as long as that sort of "packaging" has worked in the West, it is happy to ape, rape, and expect us to gape.

Deserving mention are the actress wannabes that show up in Mumbai, dressing and making themselves up like Western women, slimming themselves down, and throwing themselves about just like the women they watch on TV. The same mannerisms, the same attitudes, and the same level of fake confidence. All good, till they come to pronounce "sandvich" or having to understand the interviewer who asks a question longer than five words. Then, in one instance, all the glam falls away, and the villager is exposed. God bless them for their dreams, but what animal are they trying to ape?

Here's some feedback for you Mumbai ladies trying to glam us - You're not turning us on any more. That era of sexiness seems to be over. Most you look like miserable, empty, attitude throwing bimbos who don't know their place in the world. There are a few amongst you we still love for your inherent Indianness (which in itself is incredibly sexy) and beauty that appeals to our sensibilities. But for most part, you skinny bitches just don't cut it. It isn't as if we don't have enough white women to stare at if we wanted that kind of glam.

Salma Hayek doesn't hide her native English accent, and no European stars really worry about their identities while having to operate in a foreign language like English. So, what is wrong with Mumbai showbiz? A really deep inferiority complex? Just hate being Indian? Just plain clueless? All of the above? Pathetic.

India's incredible shot makers.

Looking at the latest "Jeetey Raho" ad. for ICICI, if you don't notice anything wrong with it, you could be forgiven for not being a student of cinema. But if you noticed what is awfully wrong with it, with a pesky little issue called screen direction, and the violation of the screen axis, then you'd be laughing at the way the idiot who directed it is clueless to one of the most basic rules of cinema grammar.

If the fool were to defend his work saying he voluntarily violated one of the most basic norms of film making, then he should be lined up and violated over a slow fire. Not because his freedom to experiment should be threatened, but because the commercial doesn't work visually. It is poorer for the lack of attention to detail, and crippled by one of the detestable breeds that have infested Indian cinema for some time now - "shotmakers".

Shotmakers are people who have no clue how to put a film together, and all they're bothered about is the "shot". Not that their shots are poetry all the time, and they don't have to be, but the reason not everybody attains mastery in cinema is because it takes a lot to understand what works and what doesn't work. Once in a while even the masters create something that doesn't quite work, but shotmaking in lieu of filmmaking is never going to work.

The obsession with the "shot" is a disease in Indian cinema. This is a reflection of Indian cinema's cavalier attitude towards depth - of knowledge, of substance, of merit. You can actually get away with making mediocre crap! In fact, if you can't make something mediocre, you probably wouldn't be able to convince anybody of your understanding of what is required!

Where does this obsession with the "shot" come from? It must come from an enormous famine of creativity. It must come as a rescue from abject ignorance of cinema, and it must come from habit - listening to others waxing eloquent over shots, while missing the integrity of the movie. It must come from fear, for in India we are afraid of looking bad by venturing into territories we don't really have much knowledge in. We wait for the gurus to show the way so that we can all follow by copying if not by learning.

There are tons of grammatical flaws in cinema that comes out of India in all forms - commercial theatrical features, advertisements, and short format television. Not that the rest of the work flow from script to screen is flawless! But the shotmakers are calling the shots and leaving the film to the dogs. It doesn't take any talent to put a bunch of shots together and "jazz" it up with CG and music and really inflict the audiences with volume! The sad part is, it doesn't work. If you can't tell a story in cinema, if you're cluless about the various art forms and conventions that need to come together to make a film, I'd suggest you don't try. It is the greatest contribution you can make to art. And if I may add, to the sanity of Indians who have precious little other than cinema that we can be economically entertained by.

In Indian cinema there is still an opportunity for those who aren't creative. Many retards survive because of opportunity created by the sheer volume of our consumption and the favourable equations of numbers currently allowing for a fair amount of mediocre fare and a childlike, forgiving audience. This won't last long, though, given the influence of excellent fare on television, which Indian product would find very hard to match in terms of quality.

We hear every now and then about "technical" aspects of cinema and how good Indian "technicians" are. SO? If you can pull focus as well as your Hollywood counterpart, it doesn't mean your film is as good as the best from the rest of the world. Cinema is essentially "art" and although there are enough and more technical components that support it, it must work at a basic art level or it is not going to work. Nobody comes to the theatres to see your bloody shots. They come there to see the movie, for an experience that goes far beyond what you intend when setting up lights all day long for one shot that shows up in a song sequence.

It is no secret that we respect cinematographers more than we do scriptwriters, and it should surprise nobody that we respect directors only when they are commercially successful, not because they have abundant talent. We have no way of seeing great new directorial talent, with the precious little that comes up on view! We are stuck! Slowly, this is bound to change. Until then, god bless the editors who rescue most of our films from the bowels of uncreative garbage and elevate them to the level of processable crap.

Music, thankfully, is much more of a subconscious, and therefore mathematically representable art form. There are scales and notes and tons of rules in making music. If you don't follow these rules, you will make noise not music. Noise sounds horrible and you don't have a future if you don't learn the basics properly. Cinema, with its current level of audience maturity, is much more forgiving. But let's not make that an excuse to put up with shotmakers pretending to be film makers.