MENTORING IN BOLLYWOOD

Mentoring is the in-thing in Bollywood. Stars are rubbing off their gold dust on the chosen few. Aamir is mentoring Jackie Shroff's son Tiger. Hritik has under his wings Varun Dhawan, Siddarth Malhotra and Arjun Kapoor; and John Abraham is training Shakti Kapoor's son Siddhant Kapoor.

What triggers off this passion of mentoring ? In a dog eat dog world of Bollywood , mentoring sure sounds quirky, sassy and altruistic.

Well, the godfather culture was always there in Bollywood. It also has  favourites and camps. All these nurture, protect and promote the individual. In such an informal work culture professionalism and kinship goes hand in hand. Trust is the unwritten norm, and personal ties are still thought to be stronger than legal contracts. Emotional bonds rule.

In Bollywood, the individual is the industry. The star is the power. The ideology, the dogma , the style and the substance. Personal charisma and skills are earned through a period of `struggle,' so much a part of the Bollywood lore. The Star then finally becomes the School.

It is here that finally the urgings of mentoring rears it head. The Star wants continuity. Continuity of his star-complex. It doesn't matter if it changes its form. Dons a different personality. He wants to give what he has struggled and earned. On the sets, in the gym and in relationship lessons. So he mentors.

ANNA REINVENTED

Anna Hazare is on a pan-India whirlwind tour. But his motives are clouded. In his last uprising he had targeted Delhi. He lay siege of the Capital. Believing, maybe rightly that Delhi is India. His message got telegraphed via a symapthetic media. But the government of the day failed him. The power elite stymied his ideological coup.

This time around he chose to touch the lives of people directly. This time around he is a new Anna. All brimstone and fire spewing Moral Man who is baring his wounds and voicing his hurts as never before.

He has branded his erstwhile comrades Kejriwal and Baba Ramdev as traitors to his cause. Those are strong words. This signals the birth of a new Anna. This one is not innocence personified. This Anna Avtaar is a man of ego. Packaged within the layers of his ideological concerns and social comments, are his diatribe against a tribe gone awary. His own people who stabbed him.

In this sense this is mission personal and much mission impersonal.

Luv Shuv..Hai Rabba, at the Box Office

Two movies have done well at the BO after a dry spell.
 Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana and 1920 : Evil Returns have jingled the cash registers.
 Both these movies are of controlled medium budget and come from the stable of acclaimed filmmakers. Luv...is co-produced by maverick Anurag Kashyap while 1920 is directed by edgy Vikram Bhatt.

Where as Luv ...tries to push the envelope of the comic genre and test the audience taste for the unpredictable and commonplace quips, 1920...is a sequel of  Bhatt's 1920 film and plays with horror and haunts.

At a time when big ticket films and cut-out stars jostle with each other to garner audience eyeballs and greens, small budget films are cunningly edging into the competition and raking in the moolah.

Big producers are mixing  small and big films in their production portfolios to minimize risks.
70s onward small was always safe and beautiful in Btown. Remember Basu Chatterjee and Hrishikesh Mukherjee - the doyens of popular small cinema. They stood their own during the height of Bacchan mania and multistarrer wave.

70s also saw the middle-of-the-road cinema. Benegal-Nilhani brigade crafted Ankur, Manthan and Ardh Satya and held sway for a decade or so. 
It is another matter that commerce and changing tastes broke the back of the movement and the filmmakers entered the mainstream with some regret , some wisdom and fierce vengence (Zubeida, Well Done Abba, Takshak, Dev...).

Today, the scene is no different. Majority of committed filmmakers don't have the werewithal to make big films. They have chosen a better option. Strong script, new treatment and newer and able actors.  Result is immensely lovable , close-to-the-heart movies. Movies which earn well at the box office as well.

Aamir Khan's show Satyamev Jayate has brought the malpractices of the Indian medical fraternity to the fore. Not that the problem was not addressed before by anyone on some public forum or another.
But this time the celebrity quotient has made the difference.

 Aamir has made his point forcefully.
The problem boils down to the doctor-drug manufacturer nexus. It's a question of cheap generic drugs versus expensive branded drugs. It's a question of life and death of the patient. The poor patient.

United States has recently passed a legislation to break this doctor-drug manufacturer nexus. Nothing of this sort seem to happen in India.

The Medical Council Of  India has put into place some rules to break this nexus but the problem is implementation of these measures in the absence of a watchdog.

Indian Medical Association has also laid down guidelines to prevent doctors hobnobbing with the drugmakers. But no avail. Both parties continue thier merrymaking and the patients are the sufferers.

Drug business is a lucrative business. It has strong lobby in the government. Policies are guided by these lobbies and interests. It is only when the public pressure is built on the government that the government will shape laws to stem the rot and protect patient-consumer interets.

Aamir Khan has done just that. His show has kickstarted a debate which should be taken up by citizen groups and social activits and build pressure on the government to change the law of the land in favour of the suffering patient.

SIN CITY GURGAON

Millenium City Gurgaon has turned into a sin city. It is sinster to read the morning newspaper splashed with a fresh gangrape headline almost everyday. For Gurgaon has indeed turned into a rape city.

With women being bundled everynight in a moving car, raped and dumped like used tissue paper is sickening. It is frightening for the womenfolk who have to stay out late to earn their daily bread.

Social groups have started campaigns for a safer Gurgaon. Candle-light vigils are the order of the evening. All to wake up a somonolent administration.

In the last one year Gurgaon has witnessed around 50 case of rape and molestation. The city has suddenly turned unsafe.

Urbanization has been forced upon Gurgaon. The population with the maximum purchasing power is either migrant techie or neo-rich. With real estate prices zooming skyward the rural populace has suddenly come into money. Lots of money. A breed of rich, namely the real estate agent has surfaced. This land-laced money is splurged sinfully in pubs and fast cars. Reckless living often gets translated into a sinful lifestyle.

There is no inner city in Gurgaon. The rural-urban divide is illusory. Pockets of village lie strewn across chunks of skyscrapers and malls. The rural populace is force into a close encounter with a damn-care urban rich and young. There is a culture clash. Signs and signals are misread. Then sex crime happens. The culprits of two the most recent gangrapes had a rural profile and many of them were unemployed.

There is high density of malls in Gurgaon. Pubs and discotheques abound here. Liquor flows unhampered. Sahara mall, the site of most crimes in recent times, has the maximum number of liquor dens. Escort girls are easily available. So it doesn't take much to take that step which leads to rape.

Liquor is most easily available across the street corner in Gurgaon. From country made stuff being sold in small kiosks to branded ones in bigger , glittering shops, it is the same story the city over. Easy liquor availabilty translates into unrestrained behaviour.

With its pubs and discotheques, Gurgaon has become the most desirable nightspot. People from Faridabad and even Delhi come to swill liquor and shake a leg in night. This fun-loving mobile population is often a catalyst to the sinmongers.

So it this volatile mix of money, booze, youth and unbridled fun that has been taking its toll on the women of Gurgaon.

Bhaag Tomar Bhaag...

I first met Tigmanshu Dhulia way back in 1998-99 in Mumbai. He had completed his project
with Shekhar Kapur, Bandit Queen. He was the casting director of the film. Now
he was trying to get a foothold in Bollywood. I met him at the Essel Studios. My
actor friends used to call him Tishu Bhai....

Tigmanshu was directing a TV serial then. His briefing of the actors was minute. The soap opera culture had not rubbed on him then, I guess. For that matter it never did. For Tagmanshu was a perfectionist. A writer at heart, he knew his characters inside out. This got reflected in his films. His actors seamlessly merged with the screen characters.

The best example of this I saw in his latest offering, Paan Singh Tomar. The characters
breath life. They seem to be handpicked from the village and the small-town setting. And that is good casting. You never seem to know that the actors have been directed to act. It is natural.
Irrfan seems to have thoroughly internalized the body-language of a sprinter. He has properly toned his body to match that of an athlete. His loose-limbed gait and effortless sprint give an intuitive feel of the character. Tomar’s character-graph is ably sketched.

There is no techno-wizardary of camera or that of editing. Everything is copybook and that dosen’t detract from the narration. The powerful story is riveting enough to not demand the crutches of snazzy edits or camerawork.

The rustic dialogues complete that ‘feel’ of that Chambal ‘look.’ I guess the Bandit Queenesque texture somehow has permeated the film. You wait for the edgy characters to slip into blasphemy, which they don’t. The producers have their agenda neatly cut-out for hemselves. It’s the family audience that they want to bring in. And they have quite succeded in their job

The sports back-story and the rural mileu will go long way in making the film touch the hearts of both the multiplex and the mofussil gentry. You never notice the lack of songs. But you do notice the lack of strong vocal backgrounds like the absence of a few alaaps (आलाप) at the correct places.

The narrative is strong. It goes from scene to scene. And the director ends the
movie when he finishes his storytelling, at the two hour mark. That’s a feat. Proves that Dhulia is a writer at heart. Afterall he has the screenplay of Ratnam’s Dil Se to his credit.

Tomar…proves a point. The age of biopics in Bollywood has arrived. Directors are
experimenting with the right mix of ingredients.

The audience is becoming receptive enough. The next stop for this genre of movie is going to be Rakeysh Om Prakash’s Bhaag Milkha Bhaag.

Iran Goes For The Jugular

The messages emanating from Iran is ominous.

In a strategic manoeuvre Iran has started to get its hold on the Strait of Hormuz. This has send alarm bells in the Western world and the Gulf region.

During its current naval exercise in the strait Iran has has fired Qader, a surface-to-air missile designed to avoid radars. This is clearly cocking a snook at the United States which has warned it against blocking the waterway.

The strait is a narrow strip of waterway from which 80% of Gulf region's oil transported to the outside world. The strait is the life-line of Iran's economy as much of its oil exports pass through it. Also other OPEC nations seabound oil traffic depends on it.

Already Iran is under sanctions from the US. By choking the strait it will invite sanctions from the European Union as well.

However, ambitions of Iran is on boil. And muscle-flexing is part of its gambit to mark its presence as a dominant regional power. The Saudi Arabia-Iran conflict for the crown of middle east Muslim leadership is a long-simmering broil. The latest addition to this mish mash is the Iranian testing of domestically made nuclear fuel rod.

This nuclear rite-de-passage of Iran has made the United States sit up and spit-and-polish its warwares.

The undercurrent of all this bluff and buster by both the parties is that the oil trading is under jeopardy and any war, embargo or tightening of the strait sluice can play havoc with the fragile economy of the West and that of Iran.

Iran knows this well, and is using this threat of bullet to the economic underbelly of the West, as an ace-up-its sleeve to further its regional interests.

Mahabharat on Bhagwat Gita

The Gita has been recently the very centre of a new-age Mahabharat, fought in the distant land of Russia. An appeal had sought to ban the holy text on the premise that it enshrines a militant ideology. Though the appeal has been set aside by the Russian court, the issue has highlighted the enigma that is Gita.

Like all other religious texts, the Bhagwat Gita is allegorical and lends itself to dual interpretation.

On one level it is a very mundane historical drama which graphs the interplay of the righteous Pandavas and the devious Kauravas. Read from this reference point the exhortation of Lord Krishna to Arjun to take up arms against his very own kinsmen to gain back lost land and prestige is seen as realpolitik at its very worst. Or sheer wordly-wisdom of life's battlefield.

Dharma or duty inherent in life-circumstance of a person is what Krishna holds as the supreme arbiter of morality. Hence a soldier has to fight and kill if enemy attacks his motherland. Right has to be acquired with might, if need be.

It is such a world-view which leaves Gita open to charges of extremism. A world-view which justifies violence as a means to fulfill one's dharma.

But Gita is an esoteric text. It is esstentially a handbook of self-realization. The characters of Mahabharat are both at once, historical and allegorical.

Sudied from this point of view, Gita depicts the eternal battle between the good and the evil tendencies which goes on within each one of us.

If Kauravas symbolically represent our innumerable evil habits and tendencies then Pandavs are symbols of our few good and strong 'samsakaras.'

When Krishna tells Arjun to take up arms against the enemy and kill it, it refers to the 'fight-to-finish' battle which each person must undertake in his journey to self-realization, or mere better life.

This dual philosophy is what makes Bhagwat Gita an enigma. A text which is open to multifarious interpretation. The Gita has been variously positioned as a religious ritual text, as a handbook of vedantic philosophy, as a textbook of devotion, as a manual of yoga, as a book of modern management, among other things.

Now it has been anointed as a textbook of extremist philosophy. Not bad for a 5000 year old manuscript.

Pakistani Subcontinental Broadway Show

Pakistan Premier Gilani has gone where no Pakistani prime minister has gone before. He has vocalized his concern about the belligerence of the Army and the ISI. Few days earlier Gilani has voiced his concern about the insubordination of these two Domestic Mavericks; their lack
of accountability to the Pakistani Parliament. He was concerened about a coup by the Army.

This is not something new. The specter of a military coup has haunted the subconscious
of successive elected Pakistani premier. Even President Asif Ali Zardari was allegedly haunted by the banshee of an imminent coup. Hence an impassioned plea to the US for intervention in the
post-Laden domestic scenario.
Or that’s what the Memogate purportedly brings to the fore.

The octopus-like grip which the Army has on the state of the nation is a reality
which every government in Pakistan has to live with. It has existed prior to
Gilani. It will exist well after him. So why the hue and cry now??

The reason may well lie with realpolitik pressures from the United States and the world at large. Post-Laden pressure has been building on Pakistan to prove its ‘honest credentials’ vis-à-vis state sponsored terrorism.

The Pakistani ruling elite has been ill-placed between an increasingly aggressive US and a very defensive and sentimental domestic populace. Situation is such that there is almost a cold-war between the two countries and diplomacy is operating inconclusively from such sub-zero milieu.

Before the two nations ‘came to blows,’ so to speak, or attracted punitive sanctions and put into utterly defensive and submissive postion, it was imperative that Pakistan acted.

Hence the masterstroke by Premier Gilani. By condemning the belligerence and insubordination of the Army and the ISI it has washed its hand off any and all misdeeds of the army.

So sanctuary to Laden, sanctuary to Al Qaida and other terror misdeeds springing from a deviant army/ISI has been shrugged off by the Prime Minister as nefarious activities of the Dread Duo… which is not reporting to the elected power elite anyway.

It now remains to be seen how United States takes up this gambit to normalize relationship with one of its most important ally in the region. Pakistan has done its part to give the dialogue cue to
America to act its next scene in the ensuing subcontinental Broadway show.

Reality Shows on Indian Television.

Hoopla of Formula One

Formula One has taken the country by storm. No one wants to remain untouched by the glitz and glamour of the game. In India, a large chunk of sports following is by the glamour quotient of the game. Cricket and Tennis has made totally ignorant people ardent devotees and and sports gurus.

The `me too' factor seems to be working for Formula One too. The organizers know this well.
Thus Lady Gaga and Heavy Metal Bands are thrown in good measure to give hype to hysteria.
The venue of the sport is Greater Noida. The target audience is the yuppie. And the aim is to sell high-priced tickets by the hundreds to swell the racing coffer.

Business stories are tagged almost congentially to the racing sport India entry. Projections of earnings of Rs. 10, 000 crore per year to Rs. 90,000 crore in the coming years are getting spalshed in the media. No stone is left unturned to make the sport a mass hysteria. Buntings, hoardings, events, press conferences, celebrities.....In the coming time India is all set to get brain-washed into sports car racing mania.