The Convenient Absence of Quality

Vinnaithandi Varuvaya, a film by Gautham Vasudev Menon, is being hailed as a work of "class" in The Hindu by an ostensibly reputed reviewer. Karan Johar's My Name is Khan received 5 out of 5 stars in the Times of India.

What stands out is that both are mediocre films but have been released in an ocean of trash, making the ordinary seem exaggeratedly noteworthy. Thankfully, some of us have reference points that are wider than the collection of movies infesting our A city theatres at this given time, we are exposed to better fare than the reviewers that reputed newspapers seem to be able to get these days, and we can continue to have our honest opinions about mediocrity that comes packed in glitz - from pictures to pizza, literature to music. We don't have to be fooled. But "we" are in the minority and getting smaller.

This is the age of the salesperson, the consummate professional who can lie through her teeth, in complete ignorance or in complete shamelessness, and make it sound like a million bucks. There is a whole generation of consumers out there who can't tell the difference, and even worse, don't want to make the effort to see the difference. All they know is trash. But they can tell glitzy trash from dull trash. The marketing machine is here to add glitz to anything we want to sell, so if you can afford the glitz, you can produce trash and absolutely hope to get away with it.

An extended vaccuum in quality can actually lower standards, push down expectations, and finally result in a worse quality of life. Reviewers can be bought by the dozen today, a few crores of money spent in bending opinions doesn't seem to be money badly spent. Every advantage is to be had commercially by dumbing us down, homogenizing our viewpoints, and reducing the average level of knowledge and questioning of what we see, hear and are willing to be sold. The number one sellable after sex is "Freedom"! As soon as we're ready to measure our freedom in what we can afford to buy, we are suckers by the million. And we're being had royally.

Look at the number of times AR Rahman has done something ostensibly "patriotic" and it is easy to see why some wise men have opined that patriotism is the refuge of scoundrels. Even a lousily rendered "Vande Mataram" cannot be questioned for quality, because it is about something that is supposedly above reproach - his patriotism! Holy cow, YOUR patriotism! It is just like our inability to tell a lousy singer in a temple to stop torturing our devotion with the snarling effort of religious hysteria. We don't have a smoking chance against the power of stupidity, noise, and overwhelming ignorance. Patriotism takes advantage of all of these. All reason can be drowned by anything patriotic, especially if it sounds like an iceberg humping a mountain full of tin boxes.

India is headed towards a quality oblivion, quite simply because we are becoming a culture of reducing effort. We want to strive less, ignore more and be blissfully happy. The traps are all here - we truly belong in our own illusion of a great country when we obey, and only when we obey the machine that tells us so. After all, when all of your friends tell you My Name is Khan is a great movie, isn't it just cool to go along? Maybe they are right! Of course, this line of thinking is easy when you know only as much as they do, and all of you collectively know very little anyway. Our mob mentality is geared perfectly for dumbing down. Win over a part of the mob, and the whole mob will be yours! This is how the British took over the whole country! In any case, we're proud to belong to the Indian mob waving the same flag that some other rather original people held aloft not that long ago.

Access to information has not translated to access to knowledge as far as India is concerned. Our youngsters live in a deluge of information, dished out by other youngsters working for mindless media outlets that man the stations sending out SMS messages, advertisements, promotions, and a whole host of hideous, tasteless, unchallenged overtures of nonsense, juvenile sexuality, and sheer lies. We are also sold this constant message that India is on the "march forward" and our young clowns need only hear that they are as good as any in the world! It is a turnout of gargantuan amounts of ignorance.

We have the USA to look up to, for any reference we need on the level of dumbing down we are happy to subscribe to. If something is good enough for the Americans, we're okay with reaching anywhere near that. Why else would Vinnaithandi Varuvaya have whites and blacks dancing together behind our hero? This is our director not wanting to be politically inferior to any American film maker, as if anybody would notice this fool's film in a world panorama! But still Gautham Menon wouldn't want to hurt Tarantino's feelings, would he?! This disease is so deep rooted, he wouldn't even know if it was pointed out to him.

Coming from the new age Indian upper middle class family is the bane of all originality - it is not encouraged at all. Parents who have "set up" their children for the future have no chance of producing any offspring that are capable of any truly original thought processes. Protection from all the insecurities of life can only lead to dead emotional intelligence. That is where most of our mediocre crap comes from. But then, that is where the reviewers of that crap come from as well - get a good school education, get a good college education, get a half decent hold of your English language presentation, and guess what!? YOU decide what everybody like you should be watching! The market is full of fools like you, so who can question your abject ignorance?! When we're adding forty million people to our middle class each year, and are being taken aim at as one of the most reliable "growth" markets, we are ripe for this sort of dumbing down.

We have enough arrogance to think this sheer game of numbers actually gives us a right to feel powerful in some way. We are, but we are not empowered. We're simply "available" to dumbing down and being sold stuff to. The easiest thing to sell to us is the absolute right to be lazy, in thought and action, or thought and inaction! Everything is justified since we have collectively registered some undeniable "progress" on some global scale. But how have we grown when we have managed to put agriculture out of whack as a self sustaining industry, but are happy that we can call Dominos Pizza any time of the week in any Indian city? Dominos isn't even the best pizza we can make for half the money we pay those monkeys, and the lunatics they hire to deliver their crap ride their bikes on the wrong side of the street! What investment would the franchise owner make in the quality of work they put in, as long as they can ring their numbers in. This is India for us. And we're proud of this?

It is HARD to build a quality country, so we're doing what we know very well - build a quantity country. It is all about quantity. From our population to the measure of accomplishment. 99% of the money we have made through software development for the computer industry is about slave labour - doing other people's grunge work. Our creative content industry is busy making copies of movies made by other film makers in other countries - and not high concept action films either, but family drama! This is supposed to be our strength, our family system and our values and what not., but we don't have one thing any more - sincerity! We don't have a quest for truth that is at the core of all art! We are liars and thieves and crooks in the world of art and we won't be coming out any time soon, especially in cinema.

The absence of quality is pronounced and upon us, but it is not going to go away anytime soon. No producer is going to bet his balls or his money on a film that asks us to be intelligent, sophisticated, or even remotely thoughtful. We all have no chance but to actively contribute to more dumbing down. After all, when stupidity is conveniently available to everyone and it can be sold and made money from, why shouldn't we celebrate the convenient absence of quality!?

A call to entertain

The quintessential purpose of an entertainer is to entertain, which means, we love being around that person, we enjoy the actions and words, and are willing to forget ourselves when the show is on.

Great entertainers have a quality, no matter what their medium - emotional connect with audiences. No surprise at all here that almost every great entertainer has grown up with and in the midst of a lot of organic, unexplained chaos, disappointment, dysfunctionality, and the ability to pick oneself up after each blow.

To those that know, life is a comedy, and to those yet to figure it out, it is a tragedy. Nothing could ring truer in the case of entertainers. No technique, no training, no structure, no practice and no teacher can substitute for life experience and the entertainer who has had a vast variety of life experiences will invariably hold greater interest for audiences than one who hasn't.

The entertainer, whether it be a stand up comedian, an actor, a musician, a director, or the host of a television show, does not choose to impress as much as connect. It's empathy, a global understanding of the human race, our condition, and an observation usually quite acute as is unique and unafraid. It can be very unsettling for a few people who lead guarded lives to be confronted by such an individual. So be it, so be it!

There are two distinct worlds - that of the entertainers and that of worker ants. The world of entertainers is inherently uncertain yet full of promise, throbbing with energy that mostly won't yield measurable or desirable results. The world of the worker ant doesn't hold much by way of promise but calls for diligence over brilliance. It guarantees three square meals and the occasional banquet for those who care to save up.

The world of entertainers works very hard to understand the world of worker ants, for it is the worker ants that feed the box office. Entertainers are used to hearing NO a whole lot more for their efforts than any worker ant can imagine. But, they cannot afford to drop face or appear negative, for the value of their positive energy sometimes is the only selling point. If an entertainer loses his penchant for risk, he automatically becomes a boring worker ant.

No worker ant can aspire to be an entertainer. A flashy worker ant might imagine so, but there is nothing more pathetic to watch than a worker ant trying to become what he is not. He simply doesn't understand how to let go of all things secure and nice, including, yes, those three square meals. The entertainer does not work for those three square meals. He works for appreciation, adulation, applause, and the ascent to greatness in art, but most of all, just acceptance. It's very hard to be accepted when you're trying to entertain, but then, that's why entertainers are special!

Slowly, but surely, the worker ants have got around to subscribing to and then spreading the perception that one can work towards being an entertainer, through training, through practice and the most insulting of all, through process! There is nothing more amusing to an entertainer than to meet a worker ant who asks him about the process he underwent. But the worker ant can never emulate the life of an entertainer. He just doesn't get it.

But the worker ants haven't given up - they have started businesses that teach the craft of entertaining, of acting, of writing, of looking good, of presenting yourself well, and indeed, of managing your professional life. None of them are however, honest enough to tell you that if you aren't inherently an entertainer, you will probably bore others to death. They won't tell you that the quintessential entertainer's quality of taking maximum risk involves going hungry if you have to, spending the last ounce of energy in one more performance, one more shot at lady luck!

They will systematically destroy your charisma, make you conform, and make you do things unnatural to you, your being, your soul, your system, your mind and body. When you go insane, they will blame you for not being able to take it. But alas, if you are stupid enough to let a worker ant tell you how to be an entertainer, you are insane already! Worker ants find security in effort, a warmth in sweat. Entertainers put in their hard work, but that is not the goal. It is finding that streak of inspiration that will make their work truly special, a standout, and give them that push ahead, into the rarefied atmosphere of greatness captured.

Don't ever let a worker ant fill up the blanks, and there will be many, with talks of diligence and discipline and due respect for tradition. Break all the rules, you rowdy entertainer, and that is what all of us want! All of us want to see you reach for the stars even if you are going to fall. The essential quality of the hero is not preparing for the leap into the unknown, but actually leaping when faced with the unknown. That is what we want from our entertainers, not dogged marches to insignificant victories over trivial obstacles.

If there is one thing that still hangs in commonality between the truly great entertainers of the bygone eras and those of today, it is individual charisma. But, there are fewer and fewer free spirited expressions in the business of entertainment than there used to be. The age of innocence is gone, and the age of over managed delirium is here. The inability to entertain has spawned several new uncreative "captivities" in lieu of engaging entertainment.

We don't need reality shows, we don't need "Moments of truth", and stupid, uninteresting people selling their souls on camera to voyeuristic audiences who're getting the fake deal and loving unprotected rape. We don't need the torture of watching worker ants imagining they are entertainers. We want purity of heart, we want to laugh our guts off, we want to cry unabashedly, and we want to be emotionally drained and then lifted.

We want to hear truths about us that we hate but have to accept. We want to see the world from your eyes for ours haven't seen that much. We want to be reminded that there is a life outside of our petty concerns, and that no matter how much we achieve, there is someone who has achieved more, and no matter how we have fallen, there's someone who's fallen harder.

Only real entertainers can lead us to the planes of joy, of promise, of hope, and of clarity. If you have set your heart on being an entertainer, don't listen to reason, and don't ever listen to worker ants telling you what to do. They just don't know. Use your intellect, but only to inform your actions, not to dictate them. Leap and we will leap with you. Even if you perish, you will rise again. If you hold back you have already perished.

Entertain us, please.

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!?

Indian animation - the hype and the hope.

For about ten years running, especially since the .com boom, we've been hearing and reading about the next big thing - the boom of the Indian animation industry. We've seen innumerous conferences, birth of new companies, announcements, and rosy projections. Advertisements for courses in animation scream at us even in small towns. So, what's the deal?

A little bit of study of the numbers, starting from India's "commendable" 2nd place in the global entertainment marketplace, will tell you the real story - we don't even have 5% of the market share, while the first place holder, the USA, has 87%. Then go on into what percentage of our entertainment business is animation and you will have made a good start in understanding what the hype is really not about. We will let some sharp business magazine do the math and tell you what exactly the numbers indicate.

But, what is the hype really based on? It is usually about how much the Indian animation industry has "grown". Never will you hear mentioned that this growth rate from infancy is hardly sustainable, and that many players will inevitably be pushed to extinction, and you will hardly hear it mentioned in any seriousness that most Indian animation companies don't have a basic understanding of what it takes to be a commendable name in this very global business environment.

We have thousands of engineers coming out of our institutions every year. We have respect for "technical" education. Where have we made that kind of investment on artists? The simple answer is - we haven't! And in all probability, we won't. India doesn't take "art" as serious business. Our belief is that we should study something that can to secure a "job" and have the best options for a safe life. So, we push and shove our children towards engineering, and medicine, and to some extent towards law and other sciences, but you will hardly ever see anybody pushing their child towards being an "artist" of any kind, unless of course one of the parents happens to be an artist.

Through this powerful filter, some of us do survive, and the animation industry would be very lucky if it picks up some of this talent. The film industry on the other hand, thankfully, is its own animal, and has enough steam to constantly put out the numbers if not the quality. It too suffers from lack of true artists, but it is able to survive because of a consumer base that is still largely forgiving of lousy cinema in the face of lack of alternative entertainment.

Animation, on the other hand, has enormously longer shelf life compared to live action. Years after geniuses at MGM produced Tom and Jerry, later generations continue to enjoy the show. So, our animation companies are not only in competition with the best the rest of the world is producing, it is in competition with everything that has ever been produced! In other words, if we don't produce path breaking animation content, we are not going to do very well.

In order to produce path breaking content, we need true artists. When we look for true artists, we have engineers coming to our animation schools, with an "interest" in animation, because somewhere we have told them that it takes some kind of "technical" skill to work in computer animation. Some institutions go far enough to "train" this pool of technical talent to be artists! It takes years and years of intense training to understand some of the fundamentals of art in any form. And we have 1 year courses that claim to put our animators on par with the best in the world!!!??

The arrogance of such claims must be questioned at all levels, especially when some of them are blatant lies - for example, "Work in studios like Pixar and Disney!" Hello? There aren't any such studios in India, and you sure won't get a job in any such studio just because you did a course! Indian Animation schools for most part, simply mislead people. They are all tool schools, not craft schools. The problem starts much earlier. Our children cannot even sketch half as well as American children can. It is true that our children are better at mathematics and spelling and science, but when it comes to drawing the simplest expressive character, the American child excels, while the Indian child is seriously crippled. This is how basic our problem is. The talent pool that comes out of American art schools is tremendous. They are not tool users like our engineers who have done their one year "Post Graduate" diplomas in computer animation! They are artists who can learn any tool to create their art.

Then, the marriage of cinema and animation - a very necessary marriage but heavily overlooked in India. Indian animation companies seem to have the blind arrogance to think they can make animated movies without any cinematic training being imparted to their artists. That is why you can see really tacky cinema sense in the Indian animation content, made by clueless tool users who are neither artists nor trained in the very basics of cinema. They just have no idea! (Not that their counterparts in the live action world are blessed with comprehensive knowledge)

Into this potent mix of ignorance, you can throw in lack of quality leadership. There is not even one Indian animation company that is headed by an artist of any repute. Standing in the way is our exaggerated reverence for formal education. Senior management in animation companies are wasting their time and their company's resources if they have no fundamental understanding of art. Art has several components that are not measurable using the same scales used to measure other mathematically representable talents. No matter what you believe as a leader and manager, you cannot manage what you do not have!

Most of the time you will hear this completely unnecessary comparison with the IT industry and somehow we are supposed to imagine that just because a few lines of code writing can be outsourced to India, so can art? Why does an organization like NASSCOM even allow the animation industry to be under its purview at all? This is animation, it is art, and artists use computer software to bring about imagery. How is this process that of a software industry player at all? This stupidity must end or the cinema industry must also be included under NASSCOM if software is software and the cinema industry also uses computers for various purposes! See how ridiculous this gets?

It is because of this fundamental mix up that we don't have our attitude set right about growing the animation industry. This is not a BPO, this is not the IT industry that can outsource donkey's work to others who have similar donkeys! How likely is an Indian temple to commission a Filipino sculptor because he is willing to work at a cheaper rate? The same level of mistrust is bound to find ground when it comes to great IPs being trusted in the hands of Indian animation companies. Right now, the average Indian animation company just doesn't cut it anywhere above the tool user level.

American cinema dominates the world marketplace not because of its formidable marketing machinery as popularly believed, but because it is able to answer a global story consumption need. Even mindless action appeals at a human level. Sex, even more so. Get beyond these cliched exports of the US and you will see that great stories are always invaluable for their human appeal. There are any number of theories on story development for a universal audience, but the work begs to be done before telling a story in the medium of cinema. Animation is cinema. It is not IT.

This is all about IP - Intellectual Property. If your IP is lousy, you will die. Indian animation companies are still stuck with mythology, and we treat our stories like the world is full of Indians who bow in reverence to lousy animation and abominable storytelling just because their parents worship the characters! We need to get out of our heads that we own all the patents on culture. We need to learn storytelling. If we don't do justice to this great art form, we will perish. There is no shortcut to knowledge, but stupidity is a definite shortcut to failure.

Have a conversation with someone in the Indian animation industry who is running on blind optimism and you are more than likely to hear the obtuse argument that we can train people and overcome hurdles. These hurdles will not be overcome by will power and the ability to stay in the race. They can only be tackled by understanding what it takes to create great art and investing in it substantially. Without this understanding, Indian animation will never be a knowledge based industry. And then we have to contend with other countries that have a much better investment in artistic talent, that are able to produce quality animation, even make unique contributions in style.

It has taken us 60 years since independence to get an individual Olympic gold medal. We just didn't even know Abhinav Bindra was that good. In the Indian animation business, the question of spotting genius is out before it even starts, because it would take an artist to spot another. So, the ability to spot any real genius is highly unlikely to flow down from the top because the top has clueless non-artists! The geniuses we do produce and those that are lucky to escape the destructive forces of our socially imposed ban on life in the arts, would rather work for an American company because they would feel fulfilled.

If the universe is kind to us and we somehow work out a law of averages where just because we have a billion people, we might be able to put together a few lucky marriages of the right people with the right ideas, we may be able to come up with a handful of Indian Animation companies capable of surviving. We might even have a shot or two at producing great content, not imagined by us, but by some American genius with a great "universal" idea. We're trying hard to reap what we haven't sown.

India becoming a forerunner in the world of animated content anytime soon - forget it. It is just not going to happen in the next forty years - two full generations. That's usually the time for enormous paradigm shifts as well. Till then we will continue to be the "next big thing" - whatever that means! Till then we can argue the virtue of Indian culture - animatedly.

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.