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.

A Shout out to American women!

I have been following the American Democratic presidential candidate
nomination process closely and I predicted a long time ago (when I was
in Nepal last year) that Barack Obama would be the winner - putting
more into hope than into any intuitive process, but more than Obama
coming up ahead, I amnow glad Hillary is not going to be president.

Nothing do I have against a woman becoming president, but America
always seems to be picking women with a lot of male hormones for top
jobs. Be it Madeline Albright or Condi or Hillary, they are all women
who somehow want to walk in the corridors of male power, who want to
be in a playing field level with men, and hold no charm for me as
women in their own evolved selves.

On the other hand, I look at women who have held top jobs in India,
Pakistan, Sri Lanka and even Bangladesh, and I notice none of these
eastern women ever competed with their "woman" status and begged and
pleaded to "make history" as Hillary did. It was pathetic to watch
someone who at once proclaimed she would be ready on "day one" to be
"presidential" and yet, repeatedly played the "woman" card! Hello?
Does she want to be the president first or does she just want to be
the first woman president?

There was an article in Newsweek a year or so ago, that spared no
effort while mentioning that India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan
were all British colonies in the same breath as the one that informed
the reader that they have all had democratically elected women as
leaders. It of course forgot to mention that the Brits elected
Margaret Thatcher a long time after India elected Indira Gandhi and
way after Sri Lanka elected Bandaranaike!

Neither Thatcher nor Indira Gandhi ever played the "gender" card in
their politics. Bandaranaike never even came close to it. In fact,
these ladies seemed to care two hoots about it. They were all strong
willed, articulate and could hold their own on the stage of
leadership. Indira Gandhi was far sharper at criticism and by far the
more enigmatic of the lot, but in a country that is supposed to
suppress women culturally, Indira Gandhi simply did what she had to do
as a professional, and everybody quietly followed their leader.

Hillary owes a lot of her notoriety to her marriage to Bill Clinton
but more importantly, she stood to lose from it as much as she gained,
if not more. It isn't easy to measure up to Bill Clinton. Fair
enough. But she rode that distinctive Clinton advantage as much as
she could. Sure Bill Clinton would have done a lot for any other
Democratic candidate had Hillary not been in the fray, but where does
that leave Hillary as the capable strong woman?

Quite simply, she is no stateswoman (or statesman!). She is a shrill
and manipulative product of Washington politics who can gleam once in
a while like a shiny automobile from GM that doesn't have to show its
lousy gas mileage in the commercial. She manouvers more than she
manages, she presents more than she professes, and she certainly tries
to win more than she tries to convince. She played victim on so many
occasions during her campaign, I doubt if anybody would use their
sympathy to vote for someone who feels so victimized to a position of
immense implications.

Sadly, I doubt if Hillary ever truly felt victimized. I think she is
crooked enough to see that as an opportunity to mark up her appeal to
morons who would fall for that. I think she is enough of an
opportunist to take advantage of something like September 11th and
uncouth enough bring a great nation down to its lowest undignified
stance in the name of going to war, every bit as much as Bush. No
doubt she would be a better candidate than Dubya, but then, who
wouldn't?

Hillary would have done much better if she studied her support base a
little more carefully, even if she wanted to manipulate them as she is
capable of. Instead of mud slinging Obama, she could have simply
refused to play dirty, and stayed above it all - that would have
brought out the best in her voter base, and won her admirers from the
Obama camp. Hillary has never come out swinging against the lobby
culture. She must know, atleast in a cerebral kind of way, that the
new generation or two of voters are sick of all the things she has
been bred in! Why did she choose to give us all a taste of what we
already know and do not quite care about?

Where is that self made American woman politician? If Arianna
Huffington can have so much fun being who she is - a woman, an
immigrant, and with a hell of a funny accent, why is Washington so
full of men? There is no excuse except that American women haven't
wanted to be there as much as we would like to see.

It isn't as if no American woman has ever been head of state. Janet
Rosenberg who hailed from Chicago was prime minister and later
president of Guyana. >>Her political career started in 1950 and she
held many positions. In 1997 her husband, Dr. Cheddi Bharat Jagan,
died, and she was chosen to replace the Premier who succeeded Mr.
Jagan as President. Janet was chosen as her party's candidate in the
following Presidential elections, which she won. Afterwards she
re-appointed the former President to the post of Prime Minister after
being sworn in as President. She was born as Janet Rosenberg in
Chicago and mother of two children. (b. 1920-).<< class="nfakPe">Gandhi, the leader of the Congress Party in India, which is now in power, is of Italian origin. She married Rajiv Gandhi when he was a pilot for Air India. Later, after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, she
was quietly requested to assume party leadership and today she is
every bit Indian as anybody else. She is simply fondly referred to as
Soniaji.

I cannot believe there are so many countries in the third world that
have so easily ignored bias of gender, color and even national origin
while choosing their leaders. It is high time America got off its
high horse of presuming it is in some kind of position to advice the
rest of the world on freedom and civilized behaviour, while it can't
find one real woman to fill any post of real substance and example.

I cannot believe there are so many naive American men in positions of
tremendous power and influence. GW is a glaring example, which nobody
can deny, so we will leave him out as an exception. Look at the rest
of the stable and you will find a lot of asses, some mules, and a few
horses. Stallions, none at the moment. And this is an eight year
presidential term? All in the name of fighting against a bunch of
nincompoop terrorists?

My question is not - so the most powerful country in the world has a
bunch of idiot politicians. What's new in a democracy? My question
is - when the men have had such a long tradition of being in politics
and have trashed an illustrious past with the below mediocre present,
where are the American women to challenge their men and put them in
their right places?

There are any number of societies in the world where men are worthless
drunks and the women do all the work and manage everything. They
don't let their men boss over them, and don't take crap from anyone.
At the same time, they don't function like men. They are stalwarts of
dignity, and beautiful and feminine all the way. What is it that
American women seem to be so wary of?

I think American women are extremely beautiful beings, caught in the
stupid need to fight for their rights and be equal to American men.
Your men aren't such great examples, darlings! Why the hell would you
ever want to be equal to them!? Leave them to do their grunting macho
stuff, and simply take the quick path past them to tremendously
evolved planes. Leave it to them to catch up if they want to!

Seriously, if Hillary is the best you ladies can come up with, I'm
glad America is not ready for a woman president. I hope the roles
that you American women will choose to play in the century ahead will
have more to do with your own essential substance than having to play
within designs men put in place. America needs that, and the rest of
the world would love it.

Oh, by all means, vote for a woman, but please make sure she is woman enough.

Peace and love.

FLICK CHICKS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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