My wife tried to hand me a plate of double omlette… (Mourya Rey...) But try as I did, my stretched hand simply couldn’t reach out… (Bappa Bappa…!!) Agonizingly close yet out of reach… Meanwhile Rafisaab consoled me for not being able to have my omlette and eat it too. With deep sympathy, he offered to sing ‘Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye To Kya Hai’ merely to (…Pudhyavarshi Laukarya) cheer me up… But I sullenly stepped out into Chandni Chowk and walked into Peaco’s where Seva had already ordered an English Breakfast … (…Ganpati Ka JayJaykaar)… Hungry and angry, I was just about to take my first spoon of kesari bath when a horrible sounding Indian wild ass, straight from the Rann of Kutch, barked into my ear… Garbhavati Ganeshotsav!
…and I jumped up, wide awake, bewildered. In a few moments, realising that I had a long day ahead, I sighed, even as something somewhere in me distinctly said, “Oh no, not again.”
It takes a lot for an average Mumbaikar to get annoyed. The level of tolerance we have for the otherwise intolerable is, I believe, considerably higher than the citizens of any other city.
We are okay with people, even those who ought to have better sense, peeing on the roadside in that peculiar position that pretends to not let an imagined gallery of onlookers to size them up.
We wouldn’t give the pan-chewing jerk more than a glare when he bends over us to spray his disgusting venom out of the local train window with practiced perfection.
We have never really thought much about the grey fumes emanating out of exhausts on our way to work or back home – it’s hardly on our radar.
All perhaps because everytime something annoying crosses our way, we tell ourselves, “A little more and we are home and it's bedtime.”
The soft and inviting 6”X5” corner of bedrooms is the typical Mumbaikar’s ultimate landing pad. By the end of the day we would kill (rhetorically speaking, of course) to slump into it, leaving worldly ‘pleasures’ (?!) far behind.
But it so often happens during this time of the year that our daytime battles loyally follow us into the other world, blurring the lines between the real and surreal. When that happens, you know the famed tolerance of the Mumbaikar (some funnily call it the ‘spirit of Mumbai’) is flirting with the limits. Mosquito coil-makers perhaps make a living out of keeping Mumbaikar’s patience from snapping.
The Ganesh Utsav is an annual test to verify the current irritability levels of the megalopolis’s citizenry – and if found to be amply high, to heighten it even more, whichever way possible.
Mumbaikars being Mumbaikars, one could pardon us for overdoing the circus as an antidote to the otherwise miserable lives we live. But you know the city has lost it when authorities take it upon themselves to join the madness.
As if the constant braying of loudspeakers and thumping of singularly tasteless drumbeats is not enough, the city transport service, BEST, has found an innovative way to drill the message of ‘look how annoying we can get’ into commuters’ heads. Their WMD is something called BEST TV.
Supposed to be an audio-visual medium to reach out to travelers with pious civic messages, tacky advertisements and Bollywood promos, BEST TV joined the ‘Ganpati’ celebrations this year with a programme of its own – a contest of the elephant god idols.
And the torment was let loose.
While the programme is called ‘Gharghuti Ganeshotsav 2010’, thanks to the state-of-the-art sound systems, the announcement virtually ends up saying ‘Gharbhavati Ganeshotsav – 2010’ every 15 annoying minutes, whether you like it or not. The genius who manufactured the bus (pssst… the Chinkis) or the sound system (possibly someone as technologically challenged as me) forgot to install a volume control device. But we have more. The same genius somehow managed to connect the sound system to the buses’ electronic route indicator. You dare to put off put off the audio, the indicator goes off too.
In short, the tragedy unfolds every day as I enter the bus, and plays out throughout my journey of 2 hours (one way) at the same insane volume. The excruciating exercise is interspersed with ear-blasting festival music, sloppy sloganeering and godforsaken balladry.
While I escape the visual impact by jumping into the seat facing the opposite direction, my ears and brains get drilled and chewed respectively. Actually, my ordeal with the inanities associated with Ganeshotsav began much earlier, some seven years back in Pune where I was a PG student. At that time the favourite recurring leitmotifs were a crappy bhangra number (Kala Kavva Kaat Khayega Sach Bol) and raunchy ‘item’ songs (Gur Ki Kali and Babuji Zara Dheere Chalo).
Actually, these songs are not bad if played in a disc or a college party. But in a Ganesh pandal? Well well...
The idea of public celebrations is itself unpalatable to me. But I abhor it when it spills over into the streets, intrudes your private space, makes sleep an improbable activity and all the time carrying absolutely no semblance of decorum associated with a religious festival.
Tilak’s intentions were noble when he sought to popularize the community celebration of Ganesh Chaturthi. He wanted to bring in a community feeling among Indians this way. Pity he didn’t prescribe an exit clause, because the community celebration of the Ganesh Chaturthi festival long seems to have lost its utility.
In today’s outrageously extravagant editions, the Ganeshotsav comes across as a gargantuan horror of sorts.
Besides eating up tonnes of money, resources and man-hours, the fortnight long celebrations are also single-handedly responsible for boosting air, water, noise and mind-space pollution levels.
As for me, this past fortnight has made me fleetingly miss the boisterous railway stations of Mumbai. Besides my double-omlettes of course.
“…Pudhyavarshi don’t Laukarya”! Please!
Friday, September 24, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Obituary: Venu Nagavally, The Eternal Devdas, Sleeps
In a way, Venu Nagavally is happy now. He has finally met death, his object of affection and one of the two central characters of most of his movies. The other being destiny.
Nagavally’s persona was best portrayed perhaps by Lalettan, the lead character of Sarvakalashaala, arguably Nagavlly’s best movie. Lalettan, played by the then fantastic Mohan Lal, spends close to seven years in that one college, going through his under-graduation, graduation and post graduation.
It’s not that the lonely orphan loves studies or is ambitious about his academics. It’s just that he doesn’t want to leave his venerable alma mater -- his only support system.
Like Lalettan, Nagavally never passed out of his college days. He survived on sheer nostalgia; nostalgia for his own days of youth, when Castro and Marx were his gods and an ever expanding flock of friends his family. In the process, he kindled our memories. And how!
As an actor, he was not great. His morose and lifeless characters were almost always depressing -- the typical self-destructive devdas. He was perhaps the quintessential art-house actor.
But behind the camera Nagavally let his hair down. He loved to portray the camaraderie among friends and neighbours (and no one could beat him at that). Be it Swagatham, Ayitham, Sukhamo Devi, Kalippattam, Sarvakalashala or Hey! Auto, youthful banter and frolicking of the main characters were the high points of his movies.
Nagavally was the typical “thinking moviemaker” of the 1980s Kerala. Yet, he also was intellectually honest. We get an indication of this in one scene in Sarvakalashala.
The otherwise chirpy, impish and affable “Chakkara” — a sidekick played by Manianpilla Raju -- one fine day turns (pseudo-) serious, complete with a jubba, oiled hair, a side-bag and a thoughtful look.
When asked what the problem was, he says he wants to get serious in life. “Oru Venu Nagavally mood!” (I’m in a Venu Nagavally mood) he says. Rarely has any moviemaker made fun of himself in such a fashion and yet come out unscathed.
No single character took centre stage in Nagavally’s movies. They all played their parts. Yet they beautifully complemented the plot itself.
But wait. Of course there were central characters. Unmistakably yes. And they were destiny and death. Nagavalli’s movies were the visual manifestation of “man proposes, god/fate/destiny disposes”.
He charmed us with his witty dialogues (which he lent to other moviemakers too, like Priyadarshan) that were more or less directly lifted from the lay Malayalee’s routine conversations. But after he had lulled us this way, he would unleash the tormenting twists and turns in the plot, that left a lump in our collective throat.
Be it the accidental death of the character played by Ashokan in Swagatham or the passing away of Lal’s character in Sukhamo Devi, or the shooting of Siddhan -- the eccentric vagabound poet played by Nedumudi Venu -- in Sarvakalashaala. The dying character usually left behind so many incomplete tasks and profound thoughts that they changed almost everybody’s life overnight. Talk about vacuum.
Death indeed was the harbinger of unimaginable changes in Nagavally movies. It was the point of deflection in most of his narratives, or the culmination of the storm kicked up his other muse, destiny.
Consider the shock the mortuary van gives us when it passes by her gate just as Urvashi sets out to elope. The very person who was supposed to help her elope is lying in the van, cold dead.
Or this: Actor Sunny, Lal’s elder brother in Sukhamo Devi, reaches home on hearing of his younger brother’s death. After exchanging compulsive pleasantries with Lal’s buddies, with a quivering voice, he asks: “Enikku oru cigarette tharumo arenkilum?” (Someone give me a cigarette) And then his trembling hands cannot light the cigarette. Unmatched, till this day.
Lal Salaam, sakhavu Nagavally! May you have a good time with your beloved.
Note: Nagavally passed away in the wee hours of Thursday, September 9, 2010.
Nagavally’s persona was best portrayed perhaps by Lalettan, the lead character of Sarvakalashaala, arguably Nagavlly’s best movie. Lalettan, played by the then fantastic Mohan Lal, spends close to seven years in that one college, going through his under-graduation, graduation and post graduation.
It’s not that the lonely orphan loves studies or is ambitious about his academics. It’s just that he doesn’t want to leave his venerable alma mater -- his only support system.
Like Lalettan, Nagavally never passed out of his college days. He survived on sheer nostalgia; nostalgia for his own days of youth, when Castro and Marx were his gods and an ever expanding flock of friends his family. In the process, he kindled our memories. And how!
As an actor, he was not great. His morose and lifeless characters were almost always depressing -- the typical self-destructive devdas. He was perhaps the quintessential art-house actor.
But behind the camera Nagavally let his hair down. He loved to portray the camaraderie among friends and neighbours (and no one could beat him at that). Be it Swagatham, Ayitham, Sukhamo Devi, Kalippattam, Sarvakalashala or Hey! Auto, youthful banter and frolicking of the main characters were the high points of his movies.
Nagavally was the typical “thinking moviemaker” of the 1980s Kerala. Yet, he also was intellectually honest. We get an indication of this in one scene in Sarvakalashala.
The otherwise chirpy, impish and affable “Chakkara” — a sidekick played by Manianpilla Raju -- one fine day turns (pseudo-) serious, complete with a jubba, oiled hair, a side-bag and a thoughtful look.
When asked what the problem was, he says he wants to get serious in life. “Oru Venu Nagavally mood!” (I’m in a Venu Nagavally mood) he says. Rarely has any moviemaker made fun of himself in such a fashion and yet come out unscathed.
No single character took centre stage in Nagavally’s movies. They all played their parts. Yet they beautifully complemented the plot itself.
But wait. Of course there were central characters. Unmistakably yes. And they were destiny and death. Nagavalli’s movies were the visual manifestation of “man proposes, god/fate/destiny disposes”.
He charmed us with his witty dialogues (which he lent to other moviemakers too, like Priyadarshan) that were more or less directly lifted from the lay Malayalee’s routine conversations. But after he had lulled us this way, he would unleash the tormenting twists and turns in the plot, that left a lump in our collective throat.
Be it the accidental death of the character played by Ashokan in Swagatham or the passing away of Lal’s character in Sukhamo Devi, or the shooting of Siddhan -- the eccentric vagabound poet played by Nedumudi Venu -- in Sarvakalashaala. The dying character usually left behind so many incomplete tasks and profound thoughts that they changed almost everybody’s life overnight. Talk about vacuum.
Death indeed was the harbinger of unimaginable changes in Nagavally movies. It was the point of deflection in most of his narratives, or the culmination of the storm kicked up his other muse, destiny.
Consider the shock the mortuary van gives us when it passes by her gate just as Urvashi sets out to elope. The very person who was supposed to help her elope is lying in the van, cold dead.
Or this: Actor Sunny, Lal’s elder brother in Sukhamo Devi, reaches home on hearing of his younger brother’s death. After exchanging compulsive pleasantries with Lal’s buddies, with a quivering voice, he asks: “Enikku oru cigarette tharumo arenkilum?” (Someone give me a cigarette) And then his trembling hands cannot light the cigarette. Unmatched, till this day.
Lal Salaam, sakhavu Nagavally! May you have a good time with your beloved.
Note: Nagavally passed away in the wee hours of Thursday, September 9, 2010.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Ego, Ambition And The Genesis Of Partition
They ask, ‘What are the sacrifices of Mr Jinnah and the Muslim League?’ It is true I have not been to jail. Never mind. I am a bad person. But I ask you, ‘Who made sacrifices in 1921? Mr Gandhi ascends the gaddi (throne) of leadership on our skulls’.
--Mohammed Ali Jinnah at a Muslim League meet in Peshawar on November 24, 1945.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I guess it has got something to do with being an Indian. The logic behind the subcontinent’s partition in 1947 has always flummoxed me. For anyone who has a reasonable understanding of Pakistan’s founding, the main argument that fuelled it comes across as merely an exercise in rabble rousing. What is more, by now even respected sections of the Pakistani media and civil society have completely trashed the bogus ‘two-nation theory’, and instead are looking for a wholly new basis of nationhood.
So, it has been my endeavour for a while now to identify that one point in time that marked the fertilisation of the idea of Pakistan. And here it is.
Simply put, there would have been no Pakistan without Jinnah. But my search for that one vital event that led Pakistan’s founder astray from mainstream India, led me to a slightly different conclusion: Without Pakistan, there would have been no Jinnah.
Though this was known in an abstract way, a comment that Jinnah made, perhaps in an unguarded moment, condensed the whole issue into that one all-important point.
Addressing a charged Muslim League crowd, he said: “They ask, ‘What are the sacrifices of Mr Jinnah and the Muslim League?’ It is true I have not been to jail. Never mind. I am a bad person. But I ask you, ‘Who made sacrifices in 1921? Mr. Gandhi ascends the gaddi (throne) of leadership on our skulls’.
In a nut shell, Jinnah had spelt out his primary grouse.
The story goes back a long time though, to the 1910s and 20s -- an era when the Congress’s most popular leaders, the Bombay triumvirate of Pherozeshah Mehta, Dadabhai Naoroji and Gopalkrishna Gokhle, were fading. The Congress itself was still a party of the elite and with membership largely confined to the urban centres of Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai and Pune.
Gandhi was, of course, reasonably well-known world over by then. Besides he had also maintained working relations with the Congress. But he was not really in the Indian picture, let alone dominating it, till his return from South Africa in 1915.
Being a trusted lieutenant of Gokhale and heir to the Mehta-Naoroji-Gokhale line of thought, it seemed only a matter of time before the dashing Mohammed Ali Jinnah took over the reins of the Congress’s national leadership. With a thriving legal practice, stunning looks, a sophisticated mind and an inescapable elitist aura, Jinnah was popular among the who’s who of the Congress. Also, he was an ardent believer in his predecessor’s constitutional methods of negotiations and litigation to seek an increased role for Indians in governance.
In short, he was the next national leader. Or at least Jinnah believed so and was preparing for the formal ascent. Then, December 28, 1920 hit him. And hit him hard.
On that day, at the Congress’s Nagpur plenary session, Gandhi moved the historic non-cooperation resolution -- a new and revolutionary brand of protest. Jinnah, an out and out believer in maintaining the British connection, was loath to do anything unconstitutional or mass-based.
But he didn’t realise the extent to which Gandhi, in the five years since his arrival, had touched India’s grassroots. His unconventional message, put in simple language, had stirred the masses.
At Nagpur, when Jinnah arose to speak against the resolution, he began his address with “Mr. Gandhi…” Instantly, the conferences erupted into catcalls, hoots and angry “No. Mahatma Gandhi”! While he stood his ground and continued with “Mr. Gandhi”, an utterly humiliated Jinnah painfully realised that Gandhi had stolen a march over him – ‘stepping on his skull’.
Unwanted, his dream of national leadership in ruins, Jinnah left Nagpur by the very next train. Soon, the hopeless barrister quit Congress forever. In early 1921 he withdrew completely from the political stage, which till the other day he thought naturally belonged to him, to concentrate on his flourishing legal practice.
However, he had his pound of flesh 27 years later – in Pakistan.
It is tragic that despite being an ardent believer in Hindu-Muslim unity, a secular patriot and a brilliant tactician, his ego and ambition led Jinnah, in his desire for revenge and power, to trick an entire people.
It shows why, till his very end, Jinnah was not sure what exactly Pakistan meant or stood for. He just needed his turf. There is evidence that till as late as April 1947 he was ready to compromise on Pakistan and agree to a united India -- as long he was given that turf and acknowledged as a leader of consequence.
Jinnah was first blinded by his inability to gauge the national mood in 1920 and then, most importantly, by his ambition. For the latter, Pakistan was the sole balm, and posterity’s bane.
--Mohammed Ali Jinnah at a Muslim League meet in Peshawar on November 24, 1945.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I guess it has got something to do with being an Indian. The logic behind the subcontinent’s partition in 1947 has always flummoxed me. For anyone who has a reasonable understanding of Pakistan’s founding, the main argument that fuelled it comes across as merely an exercise in rabble rousing. What is more, by now even respected sections of the Pakistani media and civil society have completely trashed the bogus ‘two-nation theory’, and instead are looking for a wholly new basis of nationhood.
So, it has been my endeavour for a while now to identify that one point in time that marked the fertilisation of the idea of Pakistan. And here it is.
Simply put, there would have been no Pakistan without Jinnah. But my search for that one vital event that led Pakistan’s founder astray from mainstream India, led me to a slightly different conclusion: Without Pakistan, there would have been no Jinnah.
Though this was known in an abstract way, a comment that Jinnah made, perhaps in an unguarded moment, condensed the whole issue into that one all-important point.
Addressing a charged Muslim League crowd, he said: “They ask, ‘What are the sacrifices of Mr Jinnah and the Muslim League?’ It is true I have not been to jail. Never mind. I am a bad person. But I ask you, ‘Who made sacrifices in 1921? Mr. Gandhi ascends the gaddi (throne) of leadership on our skulls’.
In a nut shell, Jinnah had spelt out his primary grouse.
The story goes back a long time though, to the 1910s and 20s -- an era when the Congress’s most popular leaders, the Bombay triumvirate of Pherozeshah Mehta, Dadabhai Naoroji and Gopalkrishna Gokhle, were fading. The Congress itself was still a party of the elite and with membership largely confined to the urban centres of Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai and Pune.
Gandhi was, of course, reasonably well-known world over by then. Besides he had also maintained working relations with the Congress. But he was not really in the Indian picture, let alone dominating it, till his return from South Africa in 1915.
Being a trusted lieutenant of Gokhale and heir to the Mehta-Naoroji-Gokhale line of thought, it seemed only a matter of time before the dashing Mohammed Ali Jinnah took over the reins of the Congress’s national leadership. With a thriving legal practice, stunning looks, a sophisticated mind and an inescapable elitist aura, Jinnah was popular among the who’s who of the Congress. Also, he was an ardent believer in his predecessor’s constitutional methods of negotiations and litigation to seek an increased role for Indians in governance.
In short, he was the next national leader. Or at least Jinnah believed so and was preparing for the formal ascent. Then, December 28, 1920 hit him. And hit him hard.
On that day, at the Congress’s Nagpur plenary session, Gandhi moved the historic non-cooperation resolution -- a new and revolutionary brand of protest. Jinnah, an out and out believer in maintaining the British connection, was loath to do anything unconstitutional or mass-based.
But he didn’t realise the extent to which Gandhi, in the five years since his arrival, had touched India’s grassroots. His unconventional message, put in simple language, had stirred the masses.
At Nagpur, when Jinnah arose to speak against the resolution, he began his address with “Mr. Gandhi…” Instantly, the conferences erupted into catcalls, hoots and angry “No. Mahatma Gandhi”! While he stood his ground and continued with “Mr. Gandhi”, an utterly humiliated Jinnah painfully realised that Gandhi had stolen a march over him – ‘stepping on his skull’.
Unwanted, his dream of national leadership in ruins, Jinnah left Nagpur by the very next train. Soon, the hopeless barrister quit Congress forever. In early 1921 he withdrew completely from the political stage, which till the other day he thought naturally belonged to him, to concentrate on his flourishing legal practice.
However, he had his pound of flesh 27 years later – in Pakistan.
It is tragic that despite being an ardent believer in Hindu-Muslim unity, a secular patriot and a brilliant tactician, his ego and ambition led Jinnah, in his desire for revenge and power, to trick an entire people.
It shows why, till his very end, Jinnah was not sure what exactly Pakistan meant or stood for. He just needed his turf. There is evidence that till as late as April 1947 he was ready to compromise on Pakistan and agree to a united India -- as long he was given that turf and acknowledged as a leader of consequence.
Jinnah was first blinded by his inability to gauge the national mood in 1920 and then, most importantly, by his ambition. For the latter, Pakistan was the sole balm, and posterity’s bane.
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