IITians...

20070017
Originally uploaded by amathad.

Taken after the photography workshop conducted by SM and photography club...

Flickr

This is a cool photo sharing site, and the communities are also very exciting. You can browse my "photostream" using the linked pics I have posted below.

Try it out!

[Goa trip] Ferry boat

20080019
Originally uploaded by amathad.

This is the ferry-boat that people use to cross straits and rivers in Goa. It is free of charge! Also, it offers a great view of the ocean...

[Movie review] Million Dollar Crap!

I went to see Million Dollar Baby on the basis of its oscar winning feat and also because of the controversies it has stirred up. One one side it has been praised very highly as an excellent movie and on the other it has been at the receiving end of handicapped activists who do not agree with the film's ultimate ending.
The trailers promised a well-directed movie but there were a lot of issues that turned up even in the trailers. Glorification of boxing on screen is not new. The Rockys of the 80s and 90s have done that for some time now. People enjoy brutality and like to see people going at eachother with animal ferocity. A film that glorifies a brutal sport such as boxing cannot be expected to be about peace, can it? (Unless you are talking about Ali!)
The second thing I noticed about the trailers was that the movie seemed to be of the opinion that for a woman to be anything other than trash, she needs to be a masculine, brutal, single-minded competitor and her femininity is a barrier to success. "girlie, tough aint enough"?
The third thing I noticed in the trailers was the emphasis on the christian way of life. The images of Eastwood kneeling in prayer near his bed and "the only person who comes to mass that long is one who cannot forgive himself for some reason." While, I do not mind religious elements on screen, Hollywood movies with such stress on Christianity tend to be tailored for their "Jesusland" viewers and thus, in general, conservative and anti-liberal.

I still went to watch this movie as I really did not want to miss an oscar-winning movie. Plus, I loved Hillary Swank in Boys Don't Cry which I think was one of the best pieces of acting on screen ever. Another major reason for seeing this movie was that I had nothing to do on a saturday afternoon!
I found this movie problematic on many counts. One of the major issur I have always had with Clint Eastwood movies is the treatment of his female characters. In all his movies, females have always played a secondary, dependent and dummy-like roles. In this one, we see a repeat of this all over again.
"Wait, isn't the main character a female?"
Oh, yes, she is in the sense that she is a woman by sex. But feminine, she is not. right from the start to finish, she is masculine. Whether it is in embarassing someone in the gym for teasing her for being female or her ruthless mannerisms in the ring, there is a lack of feminine characteristics that give the message that for a woman to be anything other than trash, she needs to be masculine. All the rest of the female characters are shown to be insensitive and downright leaches on society. Whether it is the daughter of Frankie (Eastwood) who returns all the letters her father sends her or Maggie's (Swank) mother who is more worried about losing about her welfare and who tries to get Maggie to sign over her assets to herself after she is bedridden or Maggie's knocked up sister whose boyfriend is in jail and is apathic to Maggie's success, they are all shown as despicable characters who cannot be sympathised with. Katie, Frankie's daughter, is completely silenced as she is never shown on screen or given space for her views on her father. Maggie's sister is also silent in words but her actions speak of her selfish and leachish nature. I suppose it was to be expected in an Eastwood movie, Eastwood being symbolic of masculinity immortalised by the 'Dollar' movies.
The film glorifies boxing in such a deluge of views of opinions from Frankie and Eddie (Morgan Freeman), who is also the narrator of the film.
"If there's magic in boxing is the magic of fighting battles beyond endurance, beyond cracked ribs, ruptured kidneys and detached retinas. It's the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but you. "
" everything in boxing is backwards"
I can never accept boxing as a sport. It is brutal, inhuman and designed to suit the needs of a bloodthirsty, sadistic audience that craves for more and more punches to be thrown, noses to be broken and tooths knocked out. The fighters are modern gladiators, except now they do not beat eachother to death but give them such disabilities as Pugilistic Parkinson's disease. It feeds on the human innate tendency towards violence. Society frowns on violence as being bestial but it legitimizes and deitifies violence in the boxing ring...
The depiction of Maggie's mom is very telling of the political situation in the US. At a time when Bush is cutting spending on social welfare and cutting taxes for the rich, this film's depiction of Americans dependent on Welfare as leaches makes me suspect its intentions. Well, I suppose it is true that there are people who remain unemployed so as to get free lunches through the welfare system and a representation of such a character could be accepted but it looks quite suspect amidst all the conservative stereotypes that the movie reinforces and promotes.
Amidst all these conservative ideas of the movie, how could the issue of God be left? There is a strong religious flavour to the movie that you cannot miss even with eyes closed and a dormant mind. There are scenes with Frankie praying to God, chatting with the local priest about God along with religious advise. "If you do this, you will be lost for ever."
The final twist in the movie is when Frankie helps Maggie to commit euthanasia. The reasoning being that "I think I did alright!" and that there is nothing left to live for. There has been a lot of protests over this ending of the movie which has been pointed out as promoting murder of disabled people. I think the criticism is a little harsh in this respect. I suppose one must respect the wishes of a person who wants to end his/her life rather than living as a vegetable. I can live with this ending. But peeves me is the amount of "pro-life" noise being made about the Terri Schiavo case (she has been living as a vegetable for a decade and recently, her husband got a court order approving taking her off life-support) in the same country where this movie, which seemingly approves euthanasia, garners box-office success and critical acclaim along with a bunch of pretty little men!
In spite of all its faults, the film makes for good viewing. Reasons? Great acting, good direction, and some good dialogues. The socks conversation between Eddie and Frankie is one of the best exchanges I have seen on screen for some time. Hillary Swank is amazing as a determined female boxer whose fervent wish is to alleviate her "trash" status.
I suppose you should watch this movie but do it with a pinch of salt and a clear mind.

[Movie Review] My Brother... Nikhil

I am not really a great fan of Hindi movies but I do watch some selected few now and then. So why did go to watch My Brother.. Nikhil? There are some reasons for that...

• It is a low budget movie by a debutant director and it is not a commercial Bollywood movie, a genre I despise from the bottom of my heart.
  
• It has Victor Bannerjee and apparently, he agreed to do the film based on the script (hmm.. that must mean that at least script showed promise)
  
• It talks about social problems that accompanies a disease like AIDS in India. Looks inspired by Philadelphia, which I liked.

So, thats it. Thats all is required by a movie to attract me to it. All it needs to do is show promise. Of course, in this age where media is for sale, it is extremely difficult to judge which movie or book is good. An example of this is Tokyo Cancelled; one review compared the author to Salman Rushdie! and I fell for it; in my opinion, it is not worth the money I paid for it.

The movie did not disappoint me at all. I am one who notices the technical details of any movie but for a movie to be good, it does not need to be technically excellent; it needs to be made with a large heart. The film is low-budget and it shows throughout the movie but you will hardly notice it as it is a good movie and worth watching at least once. In fact, it is one of the few recent Hindi movies that I would suggest you to watch (remember, I would not recommend Black).
It is a story about a young man who contracts the dreaded virus - HIV and how the society responds to this revelation. It shows how people respond irrationally to things that they have little knowledge about and how even your parents who doted on you would throw you out of the house and find it very difficult to come to terms with the situation.
People are, in general, insensitive and selfish. But the movie does not chastise people for being so. All it says that people respond in this manner because they do not have all the facts before them. One of the best scenes in the movie is when Nikhil goes back to his former job and his manager asks him to resign citing people's fear that they might contract the disease from him. Nikhil responds by saying that it is he how who should be afraid of people around him as he could die by contracting a disease like common cold from any one of them. By pointing out the irony of the situation, the director has effectively communicated the lack of information available at that time (and today?).

Nikhil's story is told in the form of flashbacks by people who have known and loved him. But the real heros of the story are Nikhil's sister, who stands by him through thick and thin, and Nikhil's gay partner, who loves him in spite of the fact that Nikhil put him in danger (though he does not contract the disease).
It is shocking to see that, at one point of time, AIDS victims could be forcibly isolated and locked up by law! The story is set in the late eighties and pours into the early nineties and it is at a time when the campaign to educate people about AIDS was gathering momentum. But even now, people respond with the same kind of fear to AIDS patients and in spite of knowing about the way AIDS spread, they distance themselves from the victims. One of the main reasons for this is the isolation of AIDS patients from mainstream life. I could perhaps put the problem in one statement. If HIV positive people were allowed to live a normal life in society without gossips and finger-pointing, perhaps the gossips and finger-pointing would disappear.
The best way to combat the social problems that HIV positive people face is by educating people and letting them mingle. The movie stresses on this fact when Anju, Sam, and Nigel go on a public awareness campaign to free Nikhil from his confinement. They go out on the streets, meeting people and telling them about HIV and AIDS, and how cruel and unnecessary it is to keep HIV positive people under lock and key.
The rest of the movie shows how Nikhil manages to carve a niche for himself in society and suffers the repercussions of the HIV virus. It takes two years for his parents to finally accept him as a victim of a dreaded disease.

There are so many things I liked about this movie. One of them is Victor Banerjee. Victor, Victor Bannerjee; what an amazing, amazing actor! He plays the role of a stern father, who is a task-master and has high ambitions for his son, to perfection. He is the best act in the movie. His acting is natural and he lends the movie the much needed intensity that other actors fail to bring about in their roles. And he does not over-do it. It is just right! What can I say? I enjoyed watching him on screen.
The other aspect of the movie that I liked is the directing. It is a very tightly written script and the direction is good. He uses light effectively. He uses the darkness of the night to depict a dark mood in one of his characters. He uses the morning light for reminisces and positive thoughts. His framings are simple and uncluttered with needless extravagances. There is a lot of thinking that has gone behind the scenes and that shows on screen.
Another aspect of the movie that I liked that is that it is unapolegetic about gay relationships. Nikhil and Nigel are partners who are in love with eachother and the director shows their relationship with sensitivity. It is interesting to see this in a country where gay relationships are illegal and punishable by law! Another arachiac law, you say?
The film is set in Goa, place that I recently visited for a short visit. During the trip, I felt that, in spite of being a commecialized tourist spot, Goa has a small town feeling; where everyone knows everybody. The real Goans are hidden from the tourists and their culture is hardly seen by outsiders. The film reaffirms my belief in my observation. But I might be wrong as I stayed there for only three days.
Finally, let me say a word about Juhi. How can I not say anything about her? She is her usual optimistic self in this movie and she is the bright spot in a movie that is grim from start to finish. Her smile lights up the screen at the appropriate instances and helps in lightening the mood a little. I hope she will keep appearing in such good movies, for the selfish wish to see her on screen...

This week.....

I had a crazy week. First I arrived a little late on Monday to office because the Bus I took from Goa to Bangalore came at 8AM (My training begins at 9.30 am and I needed a minimum of two hours to reach my place, unpack, change and hurry to my office (no bath :( ) ). In all this rush, I did remember to get my rolls from Goa (one of them is still in my camera) and some old ones (one was two years old!).
After the day in office ended (at 8.30 pm :( - I had to stay back to do some real project related work), I walked around looking for a photo studio. I found one on Brigade road. It was a Pro lab and consequently (in my opinion), expensive. They charged 40rs for developing a colour roll and 100rs for scanning a roll in "low" resolution. I thought that let me just try out this shop once as I had B/W rolls to be developed too and I did not trust some arbit studio to do a good job and this was a pro lab, so... I tok my chance and gave all my rolls (five in all) to be developed, printed and scanned! Yeah, I have them all in digital format and the resolution is not bad either! Some of them are here -
Adi
IITK in the night
SPIC MACAY Pics
Teejan Bai in IIT Kanpur

After this, I ran out of space in Yahoo photos :(
I will make another id (it is free, right!) and share the rest...

I visited my sister at her hospital on Wednesday night (she was doing night duty that night) and I gave her the engagement pics which was one of the B/W rolls I developed this week.

I read a review on My brother... Nikhil and I got interested in the movie. It was on Rex (Brigade rd) till thursday. So I caught the last show on thursday night. It was a good movie and I think the director shows a lot of promise. Hope he does not go the Bansali way... Keep watching this blog for a detailed review of this movie.

I had not planned to see any movie on Friday night but we (me and my team) worked rather late that night and my boss (batch '99, IITK) suggested we go to a movie. At first it was Million Dollar Baby (which I wanted to see anyway) but at the last moment we stopped at Symphony and bought tickets for Be Cool, a sequel to Get Shorty with the same character Chilly Palmer. It was a very silly movie and had some nice laughable moments but frankly, not worth your time. So dont expect a review of this movie from me!

Yesterday, I thought I might as well catch Million Dollar Baby, the movie that has been making a lot of noise (and not just in the Box-Office). I went to Rex again to catch the 3.30 Pm show. I did not like this movie. Apart from some really good acting, this movie represents what I hate about the movie industry. Read more in my review of this movie.

Today, I have planned nothing more than write these reviews and alsoe finish the first draft of a story that I have been writing. I have been writing the second draft simultaneously and I have planned to finish that by Tuesday. I think the third draft will be ready by next weekend and then, I will publish it on my blog...

Ok, let me stop all this nonsense on how I spent my week and go on to my reviews...

Goa trip

Went to Goa and had fun for three days as I got an extended weekend due to Good Friday. It is a wonderful place if you can ignore the blatant commericalization of the place. The cheap T-shirts, the hawkers and their consistent perstering may get on your nerves. But the beaches are great and there are some lovely views that makes you forget all the ugliness of a tourist spot.

We started off on thursday afternoon on a KSRTC bus that left at 3.40 PM. After a long and arduos journey, we managed to get to Panjim on Friday morning at around 8 AM. I was a little surprised by the bus station where the bus stopped. It was unlike most stands I have seen. We did not stay there long as we needed a hotel and a guy approached us and convinced us to follow him for a hotel room. We were three guys with two more were coming from Mumbai and that made it a total of five.

I was there with my camera which had been unused for sometime now. I decided to go on a photographic mission and leave the guys to their beach. As impulsive as I am, I did not manage to stick to my resolution. I follwed them to Miramar beach, which was empty at that time in the morning. So, we decided to go to calungute beach. To get to that beach, we had to use a ferry and then a taxi on the other side of the creek. Calungute beach is the best beach of Goa (or so it is touted). It is the most crowded and has the most beach shacks (where the sinful-drink flows thicker than water). It also has a lot of foreigners, which might explain the high density of restuarants around that place. it is also a lovely place to be when the sun falls below the horizon and the era of the moon begins. Sitting on chairs by a condle-lit table by the ocean that roars away under the starry sky and smiling moon, it was a lovely experience... The next time I go there, I am going to spend atleast a week and stay every night on that beach.

I took a lot of pictures on the beach but was largely handicapped by the lack of a zoom lens and thus most of my subjects have come out tiny framed in a huge oceanic background. Some of them are nice but most would have been better if I had an zoom lens... :(

The next I decided to take a bus tour of South Goa. They took me to another place called "Dona Paula" where adventure sports is the primary attraction plus a great panaromic view. Then came the churches. The first is the Basilica of Bom Jesus which contains the preserved body of St Francis Xavier and is dedicated the figure of baby Jesus. It is a nice church but pales in front of the Se Cathedral which is across the Bangalore-Panjim highway. The Se Cathedral is the biggest chirch in India and I was struck by the size and the height of its ceilings.

The bus tour took us to two temples and Colva beach, the second largest beach in India. This beach is huuuuuuuuuuge! and I did not get to see much of it. Finally the bus left me back at my hotel. I went to Miramar beach which was nearby and had a look at a wonderful sunset! I took some pictures of the sunset.

The next day we could nto see much of Goa as we had to leave the hotel and catch our bus at 4.30 pm.

Frankly, three days was too little for a vacation in Goa. You need at least a week to enjoy the sights and sounds of Goa.
I will put up the pictures shortly after I get them scanned....

International Woman's Day

Yes, it was yesterday! I spent the day working on bugs in the project I am working on, checking the scores of the first test match and reading articles written on this contemplative day. They do not paint a pretty picture...
In the Shadow of violence
"Kerala may be the most literate state in the country but it's going to the dogs. And let me tell you the women of Kerala are equally to blame. All they want is gold ornaments, a posh house, good food and rich boys for their daughters. Let us not have any pretence about it."
...
Is this because of the consumerist culture that has taken over Kerala since the Gulf boom and attained obscene levels now? Why else would educated women allow themselves to be paraded before prospective grooms wearing ostentatious silks and adorned with heavy jewellery, which would be considered hideously vulgar in more discriminating circles?
...
Why do women of Kerala who are literate, who produce the most number of doctors and engineers in the country, put up with this outrageous set up? Yet they do and nothing changes.
...
Can't women's groups campaign to end "eve teasing"? It's a term I loathe because it trivialises the stronger and more appropriate "sexual harassment". The change will be difficult but not impossible.
...
We need to change the way our films portray women
...


Victims of abuse

The issue is not only of gender abuse, it is to recognise the right of every individual to exist as a human being and not live as `subordinate sex'. Violence against women is the most persuasive human rights violation in the world today.
...
Where there should be outrage, there is denial and largely passive acceptance. A recent survey by the International Institute of Population Studies showed that 56 per cent of Indian women believed that wife beating was justified in certain circumstances like neglecting the house or the children, or going out of the house without permission.
...
Men's brutal behaviour stems from their warped understanding of masculinity.
...
"Manliness" is equated with the need to control in the existing dictatorial patriarchal system. This has been proved by the cross-border studies conducted by the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW), in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Kerala, emphasising that domestic violence cuts through caste, class, religion, age and education.


Empower Women

In our society, whether they belong to the majority or the minority group, what is apparent is that there exists a great disparity in the matter of economic resourcefulness between a man and a woman. Our society is male dominated both economically and socially and women are assigned, invariably, a dependant role, irrespective of the class of society to which she belongs. A woman on her marriage very often, though highly educated, gives up her all other avocations and entirely devotes herself to the welfare of the family, in particular she shares with her husband, her emotions, sentiments, mind and body, and her investment in the marriage is her entire life a sacramental sacrifice of her individual self and is far too enormous to be measured in terms of money. This sacrifice is mischievously embodied and engraved into the mindset of the society as the natural destiny of women by misinterpreting the benign mandates of various religions.


When we talk of equality, we are talking about equality in status, equality in opportunities, and equality of rights. It is wrong to misinterpret this quest for equality as equality of abilities. Nobody denies that men, in general, are more brawnier than women as we wont deny that women, in general, mature faster than men and are more emotionally stable.

Weird Referral URLs

Ok, I put in this sitemeter for monitoring the traffic on this blog. Was just curious as to how many people read my blog as I never seem to get any comments :(
Sitemeter has other fringe benefits like referral urls and a nice graph representation of the traffic and also, a traffic prediction functionality! it is a nice service and one of the few things that has emerged is that I am getting a lot of traffic thanks to Jaya. In fact, I get almost all my traffic from her readers! Thanks, Jaya!
But there are other referrals that have started emerging, thanks to google/yahoo(which is powered by google). Check these out -
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=does%20shah%20rukh%20khan%20have%20liver%20cancer&meta=
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=If%20you%20watch%20one%20movie%20this%20year%2C%20let%20that%20movie%20be%20Black.%20Sanjay%20Leela%20Bhansali%E2%80%99s%20Bl
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=film%20review%20of%20black%20%28bansali%29&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t&fl=0&x=wrt
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=common%20%20words%20used%20by%20indians%20as%20well%20as%20americans%20in%20day%20to%20day%20life&fr=FP-tab-web-t-211&toggl
http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&q=bus%20routes%20between%20itpl%20and%20majestic%20bangalore&meta=
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=violent%20chimpanzee&ei=UTF-8&xargs=0&pstart=1&fr=slv1-&b=31
http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&q=sanjay%20leela%20bansali%20is%20a%20crap&meta=

Well, I suppose some are understandable but some of them are just ridiculous like the one with "common words used by americans and indians..." as its search string!

Anyway, it definitely is interesting to analyse the traffic...

Weekend in Bangalore

It was a fun weekend for me this time. I decided to find out all the bookstores in the vicinity of my office and check them out after my office ended on Friday (work finished early on friday and I got to leave the office at 7 pm).
The first thing I did was to get a list of bookstores from the net and get a printout of that. I looked at the list and marked the places that are nearby and they were...

• Higginbothams - I liked this one as I have fond memories of Higginbothams of Madras


• Gangaram's


• Book Cellar


• Premier - quite well known


• Crossword

On friday night, I went walking all the way down MG road to the first three bookstores in the list above. I found Higginbotham's collection to be very disorganised and it also seemed to have a very limited collection. I looked around and when I got out of there, I realized that I had not stayed there for long. Next I went to Gangaram's. Now this is a quaint old bookstore with a really old lift, you know the ones we used to see being used in old Amitabh Bachchan movies. The general section was on the second floor and I took the opportunity to ride in the lift. You had to manually open and close the doors when they reached the destination. Seems incongruous in the modern world, doesnt it? But it did not in Bangalore. I will explain in another post. Anyway, the store turned out to be great; well, after the disappointment in Higginbothams, I suppose I was happy to be in a store that had kept the books in a organised manner. I liked the collection too and I ended up buying three books there - James Joyce's Dubliners and the portrait of the artist as a young man, and *Oh crap! I have forgotten the third one!*. I think it will come back to me. Let me think about it for a while. I really wanted to buy Joyce's Ulysses but it was not available in Gangaram's. I am actualy in the middle of many books now. One of them is Ulysses. I got the book from easylib.com (an online library that delivers books anywhere in Bangalore (thanks, adi!)). I really found it to be a hard read as there were a lot of words that I did not know and a lot of european language words interspersed in between. Plus, the author puts in a lot of christian references that I have no idea about. There were some portions that I was able to understand and there were brilliant! I was also looking for a non-fiction book titled Gender, Politics, and Islam. Actually, I read a review in The Hindu and I thought the book sounded promising. But I was disappointed in this respect too as Gangaram's did not have this book either. Well, they said that I could order the book for Rs. 1150 (apparently, it is a foreign edtion). I refused saying that I want the Indian edition that I know cost around Rs 350.
Book Cellar was right next door to Gangaram's and I went in asking for the couple of books I did not get in Gangaram's. While I got Ulysses, I did not get the other book. That was when I decided that I had seen enough books for one day and as it was quite late, I decided to head for a bite and back to my room.
On Saturday, I visited a relative and I did not get a chance to visit the other book stores on the list. On sunday, I woke up a little late and washed my clothes (well, it costs Rs. 10 for a pair which I think is preposterous but I suppose I am influenced by the fact that I used to pay Rs. 75 to the dhobi in IITK for washing and ironing my clothes for a month!). After that, I sat down to continue reading Contact (another easylib book). I have developed a distaste for the standard sci-fi and Contact jarred me inspite of the physics in it! At around lunchtime , I decided to chuck the book and go see a movie and visit some other book stores. It turned out to be a great decision. Plus, it pays to stay close to MG road. I found out that Plaza was showing Ray at 12.30 pm and I had missed it :( But it was showing The fockers at 3.30 pm, which I could catch. Since I still had about 1.5 hours to kill, I decided to check out Premier bookstore on church street. I did not find/get to Premiers but I got to Blossom Bookstore, a store full of second hand books. As I entered the store, the shelves were full of romance novels or "woman's literature" (easylib seems to classify these books as woman's literature which I found to be offensive...)! I thought that I had come to wrong store but I decided not to be hasty and check out the entire store. As I walked past these shelves, I came to neatly labeled and categorised sections. There was a Crime/Mystery Section where all the authors were arranged alphabetically. Then there was Indian fiction and here for the first time in the store I was happy. I found Pather Panchali and it was priced Rs 100! It was then I began a systematic search of the shelves. Then there was Sci-fi and fantasy. Then, I came upon Classics and what a wonderful classics section too. Then there was humour and I came upon tons of Terry Pratchet. I ended up buying three books there - Pather Panchali, Feminism - From pressure to Politics and The hunchback of Notre-Dame.
Then I went to see The Fockers. After that, I went to Crossword, which is a big store with a lot of variety in books and music but expensive. I came out buying nothing.
So, If you are in Bangalore, check out Blossom Book store! A book lover would like the store.

Hope for a better world

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0227-21.htm

Black revisited

Ok, I saw Black a few weeks ago. I tried to write a review once and just when I thought I had nailed it, Firefox crashed and I lost all that I wrote :(
This sunday, I was reading Deccan Herald and happened by this article -
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/feb272005/ac2.asp
I must say that this article conveys a lot of my feelings about this movie.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Black is brave, passionate and well-crafted- a film that should be applauded for raising the bar for Bollywood films.
Yes, definitely it looks like a brave movie. At a time when Bollywood is still rehashing the same old stories and creating movies that are better classified as soft porn, this movie is a refreshing to see. It is good that a mainstream director whose last two movies were re-written love stories making a movie that has a different agenda than romance on the movie. It talks about the problems faced by the handicapped. The loneliness felt by the blind is their own and we could never be able to understand what it does to them. Psychologists say that sensory deprivation is very harmful to our mental health. It is for this reason that "terror" suspects are being treated like this. Anyway, back to movie, we see the struggles of Bachchan's character trying to teach the uncouth girl some manners and the relationship between words and what those words represent. It is heartening to see Bachchan in fabulous form, as he plays the character of the eccentric, devoted teacher fabulously. He is very convincing as that character.

But it is highly derivative, laden with excesses and at the core, somewhat dishonest and manipulative.
I agree with the reviewer here too. I think that the director does not hold any bars for the amount of emotions displayed on screen. While I could accept the dramatic nature of Bachchan's character, at times I felt that he was doing too much. And I felt that there was no reason for everyone in the movie to act in the same manner as Bachchan. The melodrama factor was far too great in quantity and there were scenes that seemed to have been created for the sole reason of manipulating the audience's emotions. The sibling rivalry thing looked very out of place and the entire portion of Bachchan's deteioration is added in but frankly, is needless if the movie was focussed on the problems of the deaf and blind.
The director seems to be fascinated with the colonial times. The setting of the movie is very colonial with colonial buildings and anglicanized main characters. By setting his characters in a period and setting alien to the audience, he has effectively isolated them by creating an unbridgeable gap between the audience and his central character. Thus, he has destroyed a good reason for making the movie - that of showing how the deaf and blind live amongst us and the difficulties they face due to the insentiveness of the physically normal people. Plus, the movie seems to suggest that handicapped people need to be the heirs of the wealthy to have any chance of getting a good education and that they would be dependent on their parents for a looooong time. So, in a sense, it rules out the possibility that the poor blind and deaf being able to live a life.
I also had trouble with the way he tried to depict the difficulties they face. For example, he uses the repeated failures in the exams as an example of the problems suggesting that handicapped people are so hindered by their handicaps that they could never be able to pass a BA in normal time. She takes 12 years in the movie to complete the course! wonder why he does not explore the possibility of oral exams like the interview for the admission to the college because as far as I know exams are a means of testing knowledge and not whether you can write so many words in a minute.

The scene where Michelle asks her teacher for a kiss may have been tackled with restraint but is designed ultimately to evoke pity for Michelle. Why does she have to think that no one is going to treat her like a woman and beg for a kiss?
This was something I hadn't thought of when I saw the movie. It think the reviewer is right here too. It is very sad that the depiction of the deaf and blind should be so. The movie seems to suggest that Michelle would never get the love of a man, not just in words (through her sister) but also in the duration of the movie. So, inspite of the fact that I would not have liked a stupid romantic angle, it would perhaps have been better to have shown a love interest. The scene mentioned above has been included for extracting audience pity, something that a dignified representation of the deaf and blind would have strived to avoid.

Bansali's direction is very flaky. It is sometimes exceptional but very often slips into unforgivable mediocricity. Unforgivable because it seems that he has not put enough thought process into the scene. The editing is sad but perhaps that is the best the editor could do given the shots that Bansali seems to have taken without any forethought.
The scene with the ball bouncing into the light is a great metaphor signifying the acceptance of the teacher by the child. But that is an isolated instance where Bansali does not seek to explain it. Very often, he uses a symbol and blatantly explains it to the audience in words, suggesting that the audience is incapable of understanding his "superior" ideas. It gets irritating at the very start of the movie.
Then there is the scene when Michelle's mother is told that her daughter is deaf and blind. The spartan set and the shot with the different images highlighted behind looked something out of a stage show. It was an effective shot as it was a very dramatic moment. I thought that Bansali could have used the same technique as a motif for other dramatic moments in the movie. There is a reappearance of the spartan set in the scene where Bachchan's character isolates the girl in a room so as to introduce her to a new thing everyday. But the scene is not shot in the same manner and the opportunity is lost. The spartan set again reappears in the form of the hospital room where Bachchan is chained to the bed. So, it seems that Bansali has tried to do something with these scenes (perhaps, connect them together) but the purpose is lost on me as he does not use the same technique in all the scenes. One does not get the feeling of a stage in these other scenes, so the connection is lost!

I am left with the conclusion that Bansali is a sloppy director who does not concentrate on all aspects of filmmaking. He would use beautiful sets but would forget that by doing so he creates a world of fantasy cut off from reality and thus, would further distance the audience from his characters. He would use lovely cinematography but would not concentrate on structuring his scenes properly.

All in all, the film is not an honest, sensitive portrayal of the handicapped. It goes further and is irresponsible! At the core, it is a commercial film. Bansali saw the subject could be milked for audience sympathy and that is what he has tried to do with this movie.

Bansali, you have lost a viewer!

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Bangalore and its traffic

Man, what a city. Well, it is more of a collection of villages. This view is given credence by the fact that there are a lot of places in bangalore that end with the suffix halli which in kanndada means village. The raods in this city remind me of the village roads of my hometown and if you get off the main roads and penetrate any area just a little bit, you will see why they are hallis.
I have been looking for a house for rent and my main concern has been connectivity by bus to the place I work, M G road. There was this one house that was beside a 4 meter wide road. I asked the fellow how far the main road was from the house. He replies that I am standing on it!! I was astonished. And despite my sceptism, it was true! The city has really grown tremendously due to the IT boom. It is overflowing with immigrants like myself who have come here for a slice of the IT cake. The city planners have been napping for so long and they are still napping. In delhi, I have seen construction of flyovers within a year. Here, there is a flyover whose construction has been goin on for several years and everyday, there is a major traffic jam there. I suppose the reason for the delay in the construction is the incredible traffic that flows though the streets. But that does not explain the fact that there is evidently little done to alleviate teh traffic condition. Yes, they have made a lot of "one ways" but that have just added to the problems than solved them. These days the IT industry seems to be headed a little out of Bangalore with ITPL in Whitefield. It is well outside the city and I suppose it will take some time for that area to be habitated.
I have had several tensions in this city so far. One of my main concerns have been the buses in this place. Unlike Delhi, where every second person owns some vehicle, the citizens of this place is heavily dependent on the bus network. There are a variety of buses, some old, some new, some standard size, and some high-capacity big-assed ones too, but they all seem somehow too little. Everyday travelling by bus is a havoc to my nervous system. I have to catch a bus to Majestic (the place where all the buses congregate for a cup of tea) and then to MG road. Both routes are heavily rushed and I have to become a lizard on the bus. It would be so cramped that I would be suffocated and tired by the time I reach my office. Plus the buses do not stop at the proper places and even when they stop, they do not halt for more than 10 seconds during which there is a mad rush to get into the bus. It is the most dangerous means of transportation here... I am getting a Scooty!!!

Job tensions

Well,
Here I am in Bangalore! Here to begin a new phase in life, I suppose. I am a "working man" now, though I have not done any work in the past 10 days!!! All I have done is learn a lot of jargon. It is not so bad now but my first day was full of abbreviations and ideas that I had never been introduced to before. imagine that on your first day, you are given an ebook that lists these abbreviations - JMI, JAT, JTI, JSP, J2EE, JNDI, RMI-IIOP, JAXP, JCA, JAVA IDL, JavaMail, JAAS (Of course, most of these are based on fundamentals taught to me during my years at K, so it was not all that hard to pick it up). Whew! my mind was whirling that day. All of these make your life easy if you know how to use them but till then they are like monoliths standing in my path to be a software engineer. But then that is just one aspect of software engineering, isnt it? Making web applications and deploying them in a application server is not all that great! In fact, it is downright boring. :(

The job as such is ok, I suppose. It pays well for a relatively easy task. Everyone (read, my relatives) say that I have done something great and I should be happy. Particularly my sister's mother-in-law said that there are some things that are very hard in life - getting a good education, a good job, and a good wife. "Good" is a relative term and what is good for me may not be good for you. But she was using this term in a generic, society-defined way and I felt that there is some truth to that. After all, illiteracy and unemployment are some of the major problems in India. So, I suppose I am better off than quite a lot of people my age (though I dont feel like that; because "good" IS a relative term).
I do not know about doing something great but I definitely feel that there is more to life than being happy with a software job. I have done some things that have helped me reach this state. Getting that "IIT" chaap has helped many of us get high-paying jobs so easily. We were discussing this in IIT and we had felt that IIT had become a much-hyped polytechnic institute that churned out software engineers. People get into the IITs because it is very easy to get a job after getting a degree there and the purpose of higher education is lost when that happens. But thats a different discussion.
After a long time, I am having black coffee regularly mainly because it is available to me in the cafeteria! Nothing like unadulterated caffiene to perk up your concentration. My father warns me of its harmful effects but today I read an article about how caffiene could prevent the occurence of a very common varient of liver cancer! "Everything has its pluses and minuses."

Why I am excited about Black!

Let me start by saying that I loathe the Bollywood fare; particularly, the Shah Rukh Khan films. That man has made it his agenda to create crap in the name of entertainment. Sad, considering that he showed considerable promise in Circus. I had the misfortune of watching some of his recent movies – Kal Ho Na Ho and one other whose name I have forgotten.
Sanjay Leela Bansali has created three movies so far - Khamoshi, Hum Dil..., and Devdas. Of these, I thought Khamoshi had promise and was an indicator of better films ahead. But it bombed at the box-office, which seems to be the fate all good movies in India. I think the failure of the film made him re-think his movie-making style and then he produced one of the worst films created. It was bad because of its script, actors, the stereotypes and all that stupidity that Salman Khan is capable of producing. But it did have good songs and was beautifully cinematographed. Interestingly and predictably, this movie was a huge success. He continued the same style when he created Devdas, which had in its lead role the actor that I have come to despise. I avoided the film like the plague and even when everybody praised it and was nominated to be the Indian entry to the Oscars, I did not watch it. But I could not avoid catching glimpses of it on TV. I had to admit that it looked technically brilliant.
So why am I excited about Black??? Because of three things –
1. It has two genuine actors, Rani Mukerjeee and Amitabh Bachchan, who have the potential to give a good performance.
2. The trailers suggest exceptional cinematography. It also seems to be a bleak movie, devoid of the gaudy multi-color imagery of his last two movies and thus, closer to his first movie which I liked. Plus, the name suggests something dark.
3. Well, he has established himself, hasn't he? Now he does not need to make formula movies for box-office success. So, he might make a movie that does not jar my sensibilities.
4. It does not have any songs, which is an essential part of a Bollywood movie. So, this movie might just be zara hatke (different).

But it just might turn to be a modern version of a V.Shantaram movie (well, you could his movies once but you should be a real masochist if you see them again). I certainly do not want to endure that but it is a risk that I am willing to take. After all, I will definitely enjoy the technical aspects of the movie. If the script takes that kind of a turn, I will just stop paying attention to the story and start thinking about the camerawork.

I think I will see it in Bangalore. I keep my fingers crossed...

Violence and man

Every day we hear about murders, bombing, beating, etc in the news but it is still only a very small percentage of the amount of violence that occurs all over the world daily. Whether it is a street fight, or a terrorist bombing, or a Falluja, violence stares right into eyes out of newspapers and TV. Violence rocks our world there is hardly any society in the world which is completely devoid of violence.
Is violence inherent in us? Well, it looks like it, doesn't it? If you believe in the theory of evolution given by Darwin, then violence is the struggle for existence which is the basic requirement for the struggle for existence. Herbivores eat plants, carnivores eat herbivores and scavengers feed on dead plants and animals. The acting of eating is an unavoidable requirement and is therefore not considered violent. But the act of procuring the food can be violent. For example, a lion hunts down a deer and eats it. It commits a murder so as to feed itself. Human beings eat animals too but killing them in an act of violence. Thus, violence is unavoidable!
So why do we talk about non-violence and peace? Well, though we have to kill other living beings to survive, there is a lot of violence in this world that is unnecessary. Like the Iraq war which was lobbied for with blatant lies and deception for the sole purpose of procuring the "black gold" and to make certain American companies richer. Why do we have to kill animals for their fur or leather in the name of fashion or for their tusks of ivory? Why are we compelled to kill each other in the name of God and moral justice? Why do we create boundaries and protect them with men armed with guns? Why do we have to deplete the earth of its resources for our own insatiable comfort requirements?
Sometimes I think that we need violence to sustain ourselves and we would die if we did not get our daily quota of violence. We have been brought up not to be violent but isn't it true that children in general are very cruel? Don't they catch fireflies and keep them bottles, cut off the wings of butterflies because it catches their fancy, or roast ants alive using a magnifying lens? As kids, we would get into fights and enjoy professional wrestling. Yes, violence entertains us. Don't we watch action movies for the thrills of the action sequences? In fact there is a channel dedicated to action! An indication of the popularity of violence is the number of shows that are aired on cable tv that show graphic footage of violent behaviour. Cops, Extreme Exposure, police chases, The most shocking moments caught on tape... the list is endless.

http://www.fightingarts.com/forums/ubb/Forum1/HTML/003147.html
A nice discussion...

"Violence And Disruption In Society: A Study Of The Early Buddhist Texts"
http://www.quangduc.com/English/psychology/02violence.html
Paticca samuppada opposes the human tendency to generalize and encourages analysis on the basis of empirical data and moral values applied to these. [27] It criticizes standpoints which use inappropriate categories through insufficient observation and dogmatic statements about right and wrong which do not take empirically observed facts into account.
To understand Early Buddhism's analysis of violence, this conditionality is important. When the Buddha speaks about the causes and the remedies of violence, his approach is dependent on the conditions prevalent in a particular situation.

I really like this page which discusses Buddha's teachings. It makes me want to research more on Buddhism. I love the fact that he understood the discrepancies in society. For example, "In another sermon handed down to us, two men are pointed out while the Buddha is talking to a headman, Pataliya. One of them is garlanded and well-groomed; the other is tightly bound, about to lose his head. We are told that the same deed has been committed by both. The difference is that the former has killed the foe of the king and has been rewarded for it, whilst the latter was the king's enemy. [8] Hence it is stressed that the laws of the state are not impartial: they can mete out punishment or patronage according to the wish of the king and his cravings for revenge or security."
He was definitely light years ahead of his time.

http://www.sirc.org/publik/foxviolence5.html
The real "causal" question here then is not why so many young males act so violently. This is digestion; it just happens as long as the appropriate stimuli (the analogs of food) are fed in (females, other males, resources).
.....
My only final words of advice – not probably very helpful to this audience – are to treat violent episodes as natural events: not to seek their elimination, but to observe carefully the escalation sequences that seem natural to them, and learn to control these by effective de-escalation through the sequence, or the circuit breakers.

I think the conclusion of this article is important because it is something that is true. Violence is not abnormal behaviour but quite normal going by the nature of things. Buddha recommends cleansing the mind of violence while the writer of this article says that what is really necessary is knowledge of de-escalation techniques as it is natural for violent incidents to happen.

Now the article makes another important observation. It is young males who act violently and that it is natural for them, almost suggesting that it is genetic. More support for this - http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/features/325chimp1.shtml
... Demonic Male Hypothesis, and it suggests that human and chimpanzee males share a capacity for violence because our common ancestor also had a genetic predisposition for violence.

Interestingly, there is a certain sect of feminists who believe that the world would be a peaceful place if it was handed over to them. Perhaps, it is true...

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Why I hate dogs...

Dogs are universally acclaimed to be 'man's best friend'. They are loyal and friendly, and are always there for your company. You provide them food, shelter and love, and they love you back, isn’t that true? They are great with children and are their best playmates. They are great watchdogs and keep your house safe from intruders. They can be trained to do a lot of tricks, much to the amusements of their owners and their friends. Overall, they can be a great pet and almost every 'ideal' family needs to have one! Who would not love these creatures?

I hate them. It is not so much as a hated towards an animal but it is a hatred of what they represent. They represent something that was abolished by Abraham Lincoln. Slavery is not a very difficult concept. You "rope in" some people, give them the barest of necessities, exploit them by making them work harder than they physically can, under-pay them, and kill them off when they protest because those ungrateful bastards deserve to be punished for their insolence. Isn’t that simple? The "white man's burden" was a very "noble" concept indeed. In Victorian novels, the ideal slave was very grateful to be in the service of the white man and yearned to be civilized by learning the language, manners, customs, clothing, religion, etc of the white man. Perhaps, one of the best example of this picture is in the book (and also in the movie) Gone with the Wind. The book and the movie have been criticized for this aspect for a long time.

For me, the concept of the dog as a pet has the same implications. In fact, a pet dog has an 'owner' to whom it is supposed to be loyal to. It is a 'dependant' much like the slave. Well, some might argue they are not human and therefore they cannot be equated to slave system of the 18th century (in the US, the discrimination did not end till the late 1960s). But then that was the beauty of the slave system, the black people were not regarded and hence, not treated as equals but as something sub-human and who could never be equals. A dog's relationship with a human being is never on the same level, no matter how well that person treats the dog as there is an inherent misbalance in the relationship between them as one of them is the "master" and the other is the "slave". They might be your "best friend" but they are unlike any other human best friends you might have had. It is quite interesting if you look at how dogs are treated. They are put on a leash when taken for a walk or to be tied to a post. They have extremely small dog houses/beds that are barely sufficient and sometimes all they get is a doormat to sleep on. They are castrated to prevent them from becoming aggressive due to high testosterone levels (I wonder what the dog's opinion on this would be).

In spite of all this hatred towards dogs in general, one of my pleasant childhood memories was that of a street dog named 'Johnny' by the neighbourhood. He was a free-spirited guy who roamed the streets of the place where I lived. He would be the first to notice a stranger in the area and would create a ruckus on spotting such a person. A watchdog who was loved by all. It was tragic the way he died though. He was hunted by a group of gypsies one day and it pained all who heard that our dear Johnny was dead. Of course, these are memories of a very young me and are highly likely to be exaggerated.

Do I hate all animals that are man's slaves? No. That is because most enslaved animals are represented as indifferent, mute labourers who do not show any loyalty to their owners. It is only the dog that is extremely glad to have an owner. It seems to conform to the perspective that man is the master of the world and all other beings should be grateful if man is nice to them! I think it is the Bible that says that God created man as the head of the planet. Noah, the guy who saved all those animals in his ark as ordained by God, is looked at as a great man.

The cat is a pet I like as it is its won master. A cat might have several names given to it by different people who live under the delusion that they "own" it. It is quite capable of foraging for itself - how many times have our moms cursed the stray cat that stealthily entered the kitchen to get a drink. And it is one animal that is a living proof of the fact that you do not have to big and strong to survive in this world nor do you have to be someone's slave just because you are weak. An apt example of the cat as a pet is the cartoon strip Garfield.

So, what are you? A cat lover or a dog lover?

Another one of the unanswerables

In our ancestral home, they have servants who do most of the work. Cooking, cleaning, washing and all other chores are done by a few pairs of hands. Most of them have their own homes and come thrice a week to earn their pay. But there is one who stays in the house permanently. She does most of the daily work including cooking the food for the residents. She was hired a few years when my grandfather became very sick and had great difficulty moving around the house. She comes from a small village near the town where my grandfather used to live and where he is buried now. She works hard and does most of her job quite well albeit a bit slowly. She is taciturn and rarely displays any emotion. Seems like a normal maid servant, doesn’t she? Well, not actually. She is mentally retarded. Now that doesn’t mean that she is crazy or anything. She behaves perfectly normally but has the mental capacity of a child and a well-mannered child at that too.
I always wondered about her life. What must it be like? She does not get paid, at least not in kind. For her services, she is given a home to live in and food to eat. She is not over-worked and she is treated humanely. She has a perfectly comfortable life. But is she really treated or perceived to be a human? I thought that she was. But I was wrong. The last time I visited the place, I happened to eavesdrop on a conversation about her between two of my elderly relatives. I heard them repeatedly refer to her as 'it'. That made me realize that she was may not be mistreated but she was being looked as something sub-human, like a pet dog at best. She does not deserve to be treated like that. She might be ok now but what about tomorrow when she gets older and unable to handle the job that she is given. Would they treat her like an old dog that is past its prime? People generally dismiss servants from their jobs once they have outlived their utility. People can be very cruel when they deal with their servants. Most servants are over-worked and under-paid. Most of them are abused and quite a few are beaten, especially children. It pains me to see old people working in dabaas or begging for their living. But what would she do if she is forced onto the streets in her old age?
She does not have any savings nor has she ever handled any money. If someone gives her money, she is sure to lose them to some fraud. There would be no one to look after her as she comes from a poor family and nobody would want her to be a dependent. Can there be anything done for her? When the time comes, I hope I would be able to help her.
Sometimes I think that there is a different aspect to her. Perhaps she is very intelligent and observant but prefers to keep everything to herself. Maybe she lives in a whole different world and does not really need anybody's help to live in this world as she is smart enough to do anything she wants. But who am I kidding...