Aamir Khan is the Indian Oprah Winfrey

I saw Satyamev Jayate. Everyone was doing it; I HAD to know what Twitter would be outraging about for the next one week. I incidentally missed the 11:00 a.m. telecast for a very well deserved viewing of Vicky Donor. Juhi Chatervedi has written one of the sharpest B’wood scripts of the year. Also I have a Lady Boner for Vicky Donor Ayushman Khurana. I feel no shame in admitting it.

One thing that first struck me was the 11:00 a.m. Sunday slot of Satyamev Jayate. For me, it harkens the lazy Sunday mornings in boarding school, the one time of the week that all of us gathered to watch Chaayageet, Duck Tales, Tales Spin ( — the Hindi title tracks for which were sung by Amit Kumar who sang “Bade Acche Lagte Hain” in the film (wait for it) Balika Badhu.) Satyamev Jayate chose Sunday morning–when it was T.V watching time for the whole family.

The inclusivity of it all is evident. Even in one of the promos he mentions that he wants everyone from the maalkin to the maid to be able to see and identify with the show. That has been well achieved.

And let’s face it Aamir Khan has barely ever given us a bad product. (Except for Mela. Apart from the cult “Dekho 2000 zamaana aa gaya,” that movie sucked.)  But he’s been one Khan who has managed to remain mainstream without selling out. In a country where the urban tastes are so diverse from the centers, he has managed to produce quality content for both audiences throughout his career. Internal issues notwithstanding, I trust this guy. I want to hear what he’s got to say.

Satyamev Jayate was an educational module–barely any show-sha that we’re used to when the stars of silver screen step into the confines of a television screen. The subject of the first episode was female foeticide.  The show followed a simple, almost academic “statement of problem-examples of problem in different strata-consequences-research so far- ACTION” rule while Aamir Khan, the Indian Oprah brought out stories, tears and some very valid points of view that left all of us slightly uncomfortable in our seats. Over a span of 1.5 hours, I had my sinuses cleared. But the most admirable part came when he spurred us into action. Satyamev Jayate means to empower us, that WE are the ones who are the change. And as fashionable as it is to be conveniently cynical, I find myself looking forward to watching the second episode. You’ve got me by the heart-strings Aamir Khan, let’s hear some beautiful melodies now.

Come to bed with me tonight?

Come to bed with me tonight?

Lie with me, on the hard mattress, just the way I like it. Put your head down on the hard pillow that resists my cheeks every time I put my head down.  Let the covers slide over your bare legs. Now close your eye and let sleep take your mind hostage.

Jerk awake from the dream where you are falling. Something was following you, but you didn’t see what it was. Turn over on your side to face the door. The silhouette of the little boy is there against the darkness of the light flooding from the street. The cracked moan escaping from his dry throat is your lullaby. Turn and lie on your back, you don’t want to stare at him. That would be impolite.

In the corner of the ceiling, see the nest weighed down with millions of little spiders, swarming over each other, threatening to explode all over the paintings and posters that line the walls.

Feel the fur on your feet, one could assume it belongs to the two eyes that are suspended in a pool of black at the foot of your bed. Hear the dull knocking coming from inside the closed writing desk at the other end of the room. Something needs to be let out.

Realise that the effect of the sleeping pill was confined to falling asleep, it won’t help you stay asleep. Step out of bed gingerly, towards the little boy at the door near the light switches.  Watch the tube light flicker on and light apprehensively flood the room.

Turn to the window to see the small hand prints on the outside of the glass. Slide it open, and look down the length of the building 6 stories up. Then come back to bed, and slide under the covers next to my cold body.

So, will you come to bed with me tonight?

Image via Scerakor on flickr

Fear, anger and “What will people think”?

This might be more emotional than I would like it to be.

I followed the Keenan-Reuben case as it broke in The Mumbai Mirror.

It happened very close to my house, outside a restaurant I have visited several times with family. Every time I bring it up with someone, I end up meeting a friend of a friend of a friend of Kennan’s or Reuben’s or one of the girls who was present at the time.

I’m angry. What gives those goondas with their unbridled libido and tempers the right to steal our sense of security? What sort of lawless land are we living in where a man feels no fear when stabbing someone in public? The politicians who are harboring and nurturing these men will run for election in the coming months and win, and things will go back to the way they were.  Hand over the bastards to the public, I think. In 10 minutes, you’ll be lucky if you have more than a puddle of blood and a couple of torn rags where they once stood. With the same brutality let us make it clear to these uncivilized hooligans who the boss is.  Will it achieve anything, stooping to their level?  No, because we will have become the very thing that we are fighting.

I’m scared. The accused are still at large, some arrested and claiming that they’re going to be out in a few months. Some are still roaming the streets, claiming no knowledge of the incident.  In a street full of people not one person is willing to testify against the killers. It’s depressing. But then I put myself in the shoes of someone who stood there that night while the horrific incident unfolded. What would I have done? I don’t know and for everything that I can spout enthusiastically, it means nothing.  When I’m the only witness in 300 for a situation like this, no amount of idealism and justice will come to my rescue when they show up at my doorstep and attack my family with sickles and lathis.

It’s with sickening ambiguity that we live in a world where we’re being constantly reminded “What will people think?” every time we do something awry- why should we care, when no one will spare us a second thought when we’re being attacked in public?

The outrage has begun.  A Facebook group is seeking help from anyone who can give it, corporates, lawyers any institutions that might come forward. The news channels are in full swing. For all the rubbish that we have come to expect from the media, it is heartening to see them take up this cause with the same fervor as we are feeling.

Today, the two smiling faces of Keenan and Reuben bring tears to my eyes. I am proud to belong to the same city as these boys and in spite of the fear and the anger, I want to make sure that this sacrifice does not go unheeded.

A running head start from the vampires- 30 days of Night.

30 Days of Night is brutal. No seriously, simply opening the cover of the book will land you a roundhouse kick to the face and a punch in the stomach. I want to call it the Chuck Norris of Vampire graphic novels but that would be doing Vampires a serious disservice.

Steve Niles’ comic book series starts with the titular 30 Days of Night. Set in the windswept Barrow, the northernmost town of Alaska where the sun does not rise for 30 days, it details the  survival of the town people against a horde of vampires.

Somewhere in their journey from 1922′s Nosferatu, vampires went from bone-chilling creatures to teenage brooding angst (or angsty brood-yness, depending on the day) that has inspired the irritating “He He He, it Twinkles” tagline. I’m surprised Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri or DeBeers has not signed on Edward Cullen as an ambassador yet.  Diamonds and vampires are forever after all.

But the vampires that descend on Barrow the moment the sun sets are merciless and relentless. Armed with a mouth full of shark-like teeth, black eyes and super-human powers, they know only one thing- hunger. Today they live among us, an unusually reticent neighbor, the nasty night shift manager at the 7/11. “Do you know,” as one of the vampires asks “, how many years it has taken us to convince humans that we are a myth?”

Ben Templesmith’s art work, based in water and pencil supplements the dizzying pace of the story, pages and pages of blood spattered snow and decapitated heads, it seems like he keeps daring the reader to turn to the next page. And turn we do, becasue along with the rich world of the vampires, he also creates an equally complete world of human characters that keeps us rooted in reality.

Eben and Stella Olemaun are the sheriff-couple of Barrow that manage to survive the 30 days of darkness. The speed, poetry and cruelty with which characters are introduced and destroyed (within panels sometimes), makes you lament the transience of the reality that Templesmith and Niles have created. We are reminded that the war of human vs. vampires shall be rife with casualties. At the end of the book, I found myself desperately looking for plot holes, trying to reconcile the fact that it’s just a comic book and I didn’t need to panic. There were some minor ones no doubt, but nothing glaring enough to take you away from the narrative of the story.

The second installment of the series labelled “Dark Days” follows Stella Olemaun as she tours L.A, trying to convince the world of theexistence of vampires. The female protagonist and antagonist add a psychological and emotional element to the story that’s normally missing in bad-ass, punch-to-the-face, get-up-inspite-of-being-shot-in-the-chest-10-times kind of hero. The unnerving calm hides a conflicted woman trying to come to terms with her loss and desire for revenge. It’s this quality that makes the story so unpredictable, because the pivot is not situational, but emotional. The line between humans and vampires blurs as she makes her way deeper into their world.

The third installment “Return to Barrow”  takes us back to the scene of the original massacre. I’m ready with my truck full of ammo to take a wild ride on this one!

Death of the character

All I’ve seen of television in the last few weeks has been from hoardings while I wait around in traffic. Every red light means the opportunity to stare into the eyes of another woman with an ambiguous expression gazing into the horizon of a 9 p.m. prime-time spot on Colors.

What is the secret behind The Mary Celeste? Do fruit flies come from fruit eggs? Did I remember to switch the geyser off while leaving the house this morning?

I come home nearly every night to find dad tuned into “Entertainment ke liye Dance India Sa-re-Ga Couples Kids X got talent Idol” with some permutation of the Paula-Randy-Simon combination of judges. Sometimes he’s moved enough to send in an SMS vote, after which I’ll make a joke about democracy and he’ll stare me down till I slink into my room. And how talent abounds- sometimes acrobatic feats so impressive and sometimes songs so sweetly sung that you’re spell bound for a second till the camera zooms in on Farah Khan and thankfully we cut to commercial break.

Reality T.V, as has been said numerous times before, is the sewer pipe where the self-respect of our race goes to die. This is specifically in reference to anyone who has ever been on Channel V’s piece de resistance Dare to Date. Wait no, it’s Dare 2 Date.  Apparently the word “to” was one letter to many.

And with the combination of the two today taking up most air time, I realized- I miss characters. I miss running in from the morning session of “dabba ice-spice” (It was “Dabba I spy.” I spy with an old dabba. We could dream up a game with old strings and bits of glass if we had to, no X-boxes for us.), to watch the portrait of Anand Mathur’s wife (played by Priya Tendulkar), tease him from the walls while Sweety ( Rakhee Tandon) and Babli cooked up another hare-brained scheme and Kajal bhai (Bhairavi Raichura) summoned the forces of the Mumbai underworld to help them out. My lunch might have gone cold, but not one morsel would enter my mouth till Hum Paanch started in its 1:00 p.m. slot.

The Tagore quoting Byomkesh Babu, in the series Byomkesh Bakshi -the modern day, one-man version of CID, dragged us out of bed on Sunday mornings and many-a-lunch break was spent imitating the accents of the characters in Zubaan Sambhalke.

For me, it’s always been the character that I’ve felt a connection with. The reason I looked forward to next episode of Dekh Bhai Dekh was because I genuinely wanted to know how Sanjay (Vishal Singh) and Shilpa (played by a young Urvashi Dholakia) were going to sort out the next melodramatic tragedy in their teenage relationship. I cared.

Today, nothing drags me out of my room to the T.V set in the living room anymore. A singing contest is that, a singing contest. And even though they are singularly responsible for keeping the karaoke version of “Kal Ho Na Ho” in circulation in the tear-jerking elimination montage of every contestant, I find myself disconnected. The appeal of reality television people was: “OMG, look they’re real people, just like us.” But that novelty too has worn off.  Becasue like the characters of yester-years they were not representations, they were themselves.

Urvashi Dholakia is not Kaumalika, though people will never forget her giant bindi and the intense patch of v-shaped sindoor that she sported for years on prime time television. They loved to hate her. It was easy, she represented everything evil and conniving. I see the real Dolly Bindra get possessed and unpossessed on air and then her website where she can be contacted for more work, I get disgruntled. She’s crazy, a part of me insists, and then the other realises that she too, just like any of us, is looking for her next job, her next project. I can’t decide whether to hate her for her T.V antics, or to feel sad. And that’s why I don’t venture to the television today. The sickening ambiguity that comes out of not knowing how to feel towards something real and unreal at the same time.

Today on reality shows, writers don’t need to stress about the creation of characters because the person/character is already present, it’s just putting them in different situations and pushing them to bring out the ugliest, saddest in them. Even Pamela Anderson came down to bust-thrusting on Bigg Boss, robbing many men of the adolescent fantasies of her giving them mouth-to-mouth in that glorious red swimsuit.

Today we won’t judge Shweta Tiwari the actor, but Shweta Tiwari the person. Our celebrity coverage has gotten meaner and more desperate because we’re attacking people. Now you can get them at their most vulnerable and kick them while they’re down.

Veena Malik, who is making her way into Bollywood now, is only known for her affair with sleaze ball Ashmit Patel. Not for the fact that she is one of the first women in Pakistan to coherently answer to the various fatwas being issued against her and the resulting exposure of the hypocrisy between our portrayal of women on T.V and real life.

I think we need to separate characters from people. The talent, as is evidenced by so many shows is there. Now if only someone would use it and maybe give us an interesting story, and most importantly characters that we can invest in without feeling torn between sensibilities.

“The Sound of Music” by ACE Productions, Mumbai

I have loved Sound of Music for very long now, and have fond memories of kneeling outside class, thrown out for attempting a yodel in the middle of History period. (You can’t not want to yodel after you learn the “Lonely Goatherd” in Singing period just before that). The night I saw the film, I prayed desperately that The Von Trapp family had reached safely across the mountains to Switzerland.

The Mumbai musical theatre scene is not huge. In the past, Man from LaMancha, Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar have found space on our stages to much acclaim but the names and players of the game have essentially been the same.  This version of the Rogers and Hammerstein classic, produced by Raell Padamsee’s ACE Productions is playing at St. Andrew’s College Auditorium on weekends.

Dilip Tahil as Captian Von Trapp is superb. He looks absolutely dashing in his long-tailed coat when he teaches Delna Modi’s Maria how to dance. And who knew that Shahrukh Khan’s father-in-law from Baazigar could sing? His rendition of “Edelwiess” is genuinely touching.

(By the way,  Dilip Tahil’s resume also includes 100 films, shows for Indian television and the BBC, and the productions of Evita and Bombay Dreams in London’s West End. But he was also Shahrukh Khan’s father-in-law in Baazigar.)

Delna Modi’s Maria is the centrepiece of this show. She is no doubt one of the finest vocalists in Mumbai theatre today and this show only clinched that belief. Her Maria, however, is one-dimensional played too childishly, making Tahil’s Captain Von Trapp oddly unsuited for her.

Lucky Morani’s Elsa was every bit the saccharine manipulator as expected of her, though she did get vocally lost in a cast of very strong and talented singers.

But ACE Production’s Sound of Music falls into the same trap that Hindi movies fall as far as songs are concerned.

Songs, in Hindi  movies, for a very long time, have served as a pause in the action of the film, when the guy behind you stops talking on his phone to ask his friend what the story so far is and everyone on-screen suddenly seems to be able to follow every step the guys on his left is doing without needing further provocation or direction .(It was in later films like Dil Chahta hai that music receded into the background and allowed the narrative to continue over it.) In musicals however, the song IS the narrative. It is when new revelations are made, themes are established, characters and relationships are deepened. But ACE Productions’s Sound of Music suffers from the malaise of lulls in the story-telling because choreographing everything to tee, but not saying anything did not hold my attention for too long.

Director Advait Hazare could have used the classic numbers of Sound of Music to further acquaint us with the 7 Von Trapp children in the 2.5-hour run time of the show. They remained a general mass of cuteness with little room to be individual characters. Even the escape of the Von Trapp family from Austria was a messy affair on stage with no one heading in any direction in particular for about 5 minutes.

Fali Unwala’s sets were imaginative, weaving the Austria from the 1940’s seamlessly, from one facade to the other. A rap on the knuckles for St. Andrew Auditorium and the choppy sound system that cut out several times during ‘Climb Every Mountain.’

ACE’s Sound of Music, is a production that you definitely don’t want to miss. In spite of it’s drawbacks, it is rare to find the mix of powerhouse performers that one does on this stage and an honest-to-goodness production that will leave you with a smile on your face.

And of course to watch the kids of Seva Sadan and Happy Home and School for the blind was touching. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. It is this cohabitation of art and social cause that attracted me to the Mumbai Theater in the first place and it is a relationship that I hope lives on in the theatre tradition of Mumbai for a long time to come.

A love letter to the Monsoon.

Three months ago I sat in the open air section of Candies, when the first drop fell on my arm I didn’t even bother looking up- a leaky AC in the building above, an over enthusiastically pronounced word from someone’s lips- it could be anything.  Casually wiping it off my arm I continued the deeply engrossing conversation I was having with someone about something that was obviously deeply engrossing.

“You might want to move your laptop, it’s going to rain.”

It was the first time that day that I saw the sky. I lifted in my head and an extra large drop of water on my keypad splattered on my keyboard.

I have always loved the rains for the same reason that I love the early morning, because the streets are empty. As your feet pound the pavement for an early morning run or you slosh through the puddles to find a rickshaw, the world is devoid of the trappings of human existence. Suddenly you are an intruder, listening to nature and city as they greet one another, catching up like old friends who hate and love each other at the same time.

Many face book groups support the 3-year-old me, who used to run out into the garden to shovel handfuls of the wet, delicious smelling mud in my mouth only to picked up kicking and screaming, back into the house. I remember standing at the edge of the muddy sports field in school after a particularly rainy afternoon and being stunned into stillness by the aroma. Like the smell of petrol or a freshly washed shirt , it’s one of those strange smells that triggers your brain into lifting your nose and taking a deep breath.

The monsoons are the pause button to the city. When you wake up to work or school being cancelled, awake and alert and the whole day stretches before you, a world of things to do opening up in your home. When suddenly in the middle of your day, you have to stand under the ledge of a panwala and wait for the monsoon’s temper to subside before you’re back on your way. When cell phones get soaked and the bottom of your jeans tears into jagged patterns. When you arrive 20 minutes late for a meeting and your hair stuck to your head and a sheepish grin is excuse enough.

Monsoons are hot  of khichdi bubbling in the kitchen, monsoons are the cover under which lovers share first kisses, monsoons are conversations with absolute strangers about the rain, and to me, monsoons are permission to sit holed up in your room by the window at night to watch nature do her laundry.

Because cleaning my cupboard would mean I’m actually getting work done.

Another morning when I should have been trying to sort out the mess that is my cupboard, has been spent watching bits of “I am Legend.” (Justification: I abandoned the project only after I was done with the second shelf, so I did get some work done.)

Loosely based on Richard Matheson’s novel “I am Legend” the film has the one of Will Smith’s most sincere performances to date. As someone with a lot of screen time Smith’s role evokes Tom Hank’s island life in Castaway, with Wilson (the friendly basketball?) replaced by a doe- eyed German Shepard called Samantha.

Matheson’s version of “I am Legend, a twist on the classic “Last man on earth” formula (placed in a urban landscape, elimination of humanity by humans and the looming danger of an enemy that needs help) is considered one of the foundation stones for the zombie sub-culture as we know it today.

From a cancer cure gone awry, a scientist tirelessly working for a solution to deafening silences,  the world of “I am Legend” (the film) is obviously larger, more cinematic in it’s retelling.  Scenes shot at New York’s Times Square and Brooklyn Bridge were at that point some of the most expensive ones in the history of film making.  Eerily reminiscent of “A World without us,” it’s disorienting to see the streets we know so well covered in moss with a herd of deer racing through them.  (15 seconds of fame begin now: One scene has will Smith driving down an over-run and abandoned  Lexington Avenue around 27th street where I have inhaled many a Bisibele Bhaath at “Saravnaas”: 15 seconds of fame over)

The montage of Smith going about his day is heart-rending and made me wonder, if you are the last man on Earth, what do you have left to live for? In the case of Smith, it is the need to find a cure, but wouldn’t it be much simpler to go with the tide and end it? What can one single man do in the face of a disaster that has brought the most powerful race on this planet to its collective knees? The construction of the human mind with our animal instincts wired in always amazes me. We are survivors, no matter what. (Except for these guys, if that’s not proof of natural selection, I’m not sure what is.)

Samantha, Smith’s dog seems to be a personification of his will to live. The moment Samantha is hurt, Smith’s resolve seems to crumble, and he attempts to end it.  First off, that dog is beautiful. My personal experience with German Shepards has not been pleasant (I have a giant scar on my nose to prove it), but I have yet to see a dog with more soulful eyes than Sam. Much like with Frasier’s Eddy, I am in puppy love.  In my mind, Sam served as a perfect foil to the vicious creatures that humanity had turned into, something so pure and unquestioning in her love and devotion- qualities that make us human. (While watching the video, you will ask yourself if you’re really watching a video of a dog in a movie and nearly tearing up. To that I will say, yes.)

And of course, one of my favourite scenes in the film is when Will Smith talks about Bob Marley.

“He had this idea. It was kind of a virologist idea. He believed that you could cure racism and hate — literally cure it, by injecting music and love into people’s lives. One day he was scheduled to perform at a peace rally, gunmen came to his house and shot him down. Two days later, he walked out on that stage and sang. Somebody asked him “why” he said: “The people that are trying to make this world worse are not taking a day off — how can I? “

With renewed vigour I turn my attention back to my cupboard. I’d like very much to be a part of Bob Marley’s gang. I don’t need a messy room distracting me while the bad guys aren’t even taking a day off.

The Walking Dead: The graphic novel (Vol 1 and 2)

Having watched AMC’s The Walking Dead combined with a healthy appetite for my undead friends led me to sign up with Leaping Windows, India’s first online graphic novel library (only operational in Mumbai for now) within minutes of finding out about it. I had to get my grimy paws on the graphic novel that served as the inspiration for the series.

Cover Art: Volume 1

Side Note: Leaping Windows is awesome. I signed up for the ‘Quick Fix’ deal, for three months. They came home, collected a cheque and delivered the first novel I had on my wish list, within 24 hours.  As we speak I am, I’m holding Volume 2 of The Walking Dead, and sending a blood chilling moan of thanks into the heavens for this library.

Volume 1 sees Rick Grimes, waking up to an empty hospital, presumably after being in a coma. The first 5 pages are alarming- a rotting corpse in the elevator, a lunch room full of creatures that look human, a garden with grass that has not been cut for what seems like weeks. The art work in Volume One is clean, crisp, and almost cinematic in its rendering.  Maybe it’s because I’ve already seen the scenes played out in the T.V show, the word “cinematic” comes to mind, but not enough can be said about Tony Moore’s inking and grays that seem to create multiple worlds within a single panel.

Walking Dead starts where every zombie movie ends.  This time you will find out what happens after the first bite, and experience the grief of someone who has to leave a wife or a sister in a sea of boiling ghouls because they cannot be helped. We follow Rick in his journey to find his wife and son. The subsequent discovery of a camp site with a band of survivors that includes his family and best friend forms the crux of the first book in the series.

In Volume 2, Tony Moore is replaced by Charlie Adlard (though the cover is still very obviously a Moore) whose lines are rougher, more urgent and reach a feverish pitch in a panel that an attack was being depicted. The space between the attacking zombie and its human victim is reduced to a an angry black patch, perhaps indicating that there is really no difference between the two. The group of survivers, now under the leadership of Rick Grimes, decides to go on the road. Friends made in Volume 1 are lost, new friends are made. The introduction of Tyreese, a single father  and his teen age daughter and Hershel, the farmer, who has a barn full of zombies on his land continue to add dimensions to this story.

Cover Art: Vol 2

Lest you accuse me of being unnecessarily obsessed with zombies (you might as well actually, I have no defense. See also: Post before this one), the story of The Walking Dead is really not about The Walking Dead.  Zombies, in this story can be replaced by any other catastrophe or threat. The focus really, is on the human beings. It’s times like these when the difference between the words ‘survival’ and ‘living’ makes itself very clear. It’s only under times of great duress that a man’s true character and intentions come out.  And this zombie apocalypse serves as the perfect back ground for some postulation. Jab jaan ke vaande hote hai, bhai, toh then who do you turn into?

By the window.

I hated going up to the bathroom in boarding school.

In the night, during study hour, when I was done with whatever Tinkle or Enid Blyton that was hidden in my text book,  I would wander up there.  There was an open window at the end of a long corridor, lined on the sides with indian-style toilets and bathrooms.  I would stand there sometimes, waiting for the silence to slowly cloak my ears till I could  hear a dull static. I spent a long time there sometimes, with the night staring back into my face, the cold Poona air numbing my nose.

I was 9, standing at the window one night when I suddenly felt paralyzed. My thoughts were flying but my mind was not allowing my body to move. Because I had a feeling that I would turn around and discover that everyone was gone. The world, as I knew it, was not there anymore.  The window over looked the swimming pool and the moon shone on the moving slabs of water.

I don’t think I have ever been so scared in my life.

Tripping over my own feet, busting open my upper lip on the banister and tearing down the stairs till I saw the concerned faces of some of the other girls, I howled like a baby that night. I stopped making the bathrooms a part of my nightly jaunts from that day onwards. I might even have got some studying done in those allotted hours on some nights.