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!

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!?

Terrified into Stupidity!

Through the last 40 hours, the drama of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai have occupied Indian media focus, but have also served to highlight a dangerous trend - pandering to America's way of doing things, starting with a full subscription to thoughtlessness.

According to Ravi Shankar Prasad, National Spokesperson, BJP, "As you (Barkha Dutt) rightly pointed out this is a replica of Nine Eleven in India". http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/video/video.aspx?id=45516. According to this fool, "It is time that India responded in the same way as America responded"! America responded by attacking the wrong country, pissing away its economic well being, and stands empty handed seven years later, with Osama Bin Laden roaming free and Americans mad about phone tapping and torture that led nowhere. America's image took a beating worldwide and is now on the precipice of a massive economic downturn. Is this the example we want to follow, you bloody jerk? Why can't you set higher standards, and why can't these standards be our own?

Barkha Dutt started this nonsense, despite being a Padma Shri, asking if this is India's Nine Eleven! What a mockery she is making of this prestigious award by being so cluelessly glued to the way America does things! I had enough of this looney bin when she was brimming with emotion for Barack Obama and never got beyond the dumbed down versions of everything she saw and reported on from the east cost of the USA. Now, she is here, canvassing the emotion of the situation instead of presenting the facts in a clear light and causing a mature debate.

Just this afternoon, she asked a gentleman who was tensely waiting for news about a relative stuck inside one of the hotels under siege, "How are you feeling? You probably have no words to describe it"! and immediately stuck a microphone to his face! What a tinhead!

I have been hearing the word "hostages" over and over again on all the news channels, and frankly, how can so many people be hostages if most of them didn't even see the attackers? They were just trapped guests who floundered out somehow. The word "hostage" is defined in the dictionary as "a person seized or held as security for the fulfillment of a condition". Clearly this was never a hostage crisis anymore than a snake dance. But what does it do to the image of India, when we take pride in rescuing 100 or more "hostages" but build this picture in people's minds that security is so lax that 100 or more hostages can be taken in one sweeping move over public exposed areas!? The FACT is that none of the people who came out were hostages but our media loves the sexiness of that term. Multiples of morons.

Now, onto the dance of the diplomats - "We stand strongly behind the people of India" - clearly means we are the ones taking the bullets, while everybody else hides behind us. Can we really see Bush running into the building shooting at terrorists? Can we hear any nation offering to offset the compensation being paid to the victims' families? This has reached a point where the same stupid, meaningless noises are made by leaders of every nation exactly like the noises others made when their assets were attacked. Only the Israelis had the sense to say something truthful like "We have full faith in India's security operations".

"We strongly condemn..." is another one that has done its rounds for a long time and obviously the stupidity tank never runs dry. Where is the condemnation? I wonder if I would have listened to my parents if they had said, "We strongly scold you for your mischief" instead of "Come here you little rascal. You're grounded for a week! Now, apologize!" Oh, this one's richer than a single criticism. If a condemnation wasn't a strong one, wouldn't it automatically be downgraded to a criticism? So, what's up with a strong condemnation? Can we hear something like "These f@#$ing terrorist motherf@#$ers should be roasted on a slow fire!"? Please, so the terrorists may actually get the message their minds can comprehend?

Clearly, terrorism unleashes a lot of people's stupidity. It is amazing how there is still a player who can set a higher standard. BBC. The BBC report has all about going deeper, unemotionally, and finding information that nobody else has paid attention to, like talking about a person who was arrested in London with a connection to an earlier attack in Mumbai and how he is being held by the authorities in London to question about this one. None of the heavy breathing emotional nonsense here. How do they do it? By actually doing it, I would say. Can we stoop a little less and copy them instead of stupid Americans? That might be really hard, yes? Maybe one of these days I will take Barkha Dutt hostage to teach her the ropes or whip her with one.