Experiences

I am saying this from the perspective of having watched 13 movies from around the world in the MAMI festival, in addition to all the movies that were released until November this year - Raju Hirani is a genius. His ability to let the light of positivity and hope shine through in even the darkest of material is probably unmatched. He spins fairy tales out of our frustrations and helplessness and make us believe that redemption is just one attitude adjustment away. His gift is doubly precious because it is so rare in this world of strife, violence and “artistic” art. Not that he isn’t a great storyteller. Remember that thug with a heart of gold and a naive faith in fellow human beings? You were so busy being charmed by him and his irrepressible side kick, laughing, and wiping the occasional tear that you almost didn’t notice the oxymoronish nature of the protagonist. Neither did one have any quarrels with the simplistic plot. 3 Idiots is artistically a greater film than the Mun

One word of advice about Julie and Julia: don’t! Meryl Streep of course is fantastic. Doesn’t she look much taller than she looked in Mamma Mia? How does she manage it? She is delightful to watch. But Amy Adams is disappointing as the single-minded young woman who cooks 524 recipes in 365 days. Roger Ebert wonders when the couple had time to eat. I wonder how come they did not die of atherosclerosis. My God, so much butter! I also wonder why the movie got made. I mean, wow, Julie made all those dishes over a year and even wrote about it. But what was the compelling reason to make a movie, which might as well have been a documentary on Julia Child and her obsessive fan? The movie left me cold. No, to be honest, it left me peck-ish. After seeing dish after dish, I most certainly wanted to eat something, although I had supped earlier in the evening. We tried to assuage it in Costa at Juhu. As coffee shops go, I like only two of them. There is this place in Hiranandani called Aromas. It is

Over the Gandhi Jayanti weekend, I visited my sister in Bangalore. My nephew, our baby, wanted to “hang out” with me and tell me everything that has been happening in his life. As I listened to him talk about college, cinema, art, summer internship that he found for himself, screenplay workshop conducted by Kamal Hassan that he attended, and a certain sense of alienation that he felt among his peers, it hit me forcibly that he has grown up tremendously in just a year. From an indulged, cosseted boy, he has transformed into this enterprising young man capable of taking care of himself. There was a minor celebration between my sister, my mother and I over the very creditable driving skills he demonstrated when he drove us to Nandi Hills and back. I was almost choked up when the boy sat through Naseer’s Ismat Aapa ke Naam patiently and without complaining, although he didn’t understand a word of it. It is truly a privilege to witness the coming of age of someone near and dear to o

Have you watched a good Tamil “mass” movie in the last 15 years? If not, here’s your chance. Go and watch “Wanted”. Directed by Prabhudeva, it has everything that we have come to expect as de rigueur in Tamil movies (and which hitherto hasn’t quite come together for Hindi movie makers): Slick direction, breathtaking cinematography, flawless editing, toe-tapping music, complex dance choreography, stunt choreography that looks almost like dance choreography in its detailing and nuances, and delightful performances all around -- in short, technical perfection. Story? Oh well, it’s like the Mahabharatha - you know where it is going, you know whose side the hero is on, you know that the villains may pull the heroine’s vastra, but her savior will always arrive in the nick of time, sometimes running faster than a speeding train, and you know the bad men are going to die. This comfortable familiarity means that you don’t have any anxiety or fear while watching the movie. You need not deal

We were standing on the sticky sands temporarily abandoned by the low tide on Juhu beach. It was a pink twilight. The sea was a placid lake, lapping at the edges of our toes. The roar of the city was subdued, far behind us. We could see the graceful white lines of the Sea Link to our far left. And a building blazing like a torch at its top to our far right. Amidst these and before us, an eternal quietness – old, all-knowing, and all encompassing. Life seemed suspended. Is this how holding “infinity in the palm of your hand” felt like? It seemed apposite to ask philosophical questions: about the meaning of life; about the grand design. It felt like the answers were just out there, tantalizingly close. And suddenly, the pink twilight darkened into dusk. The water rose quietly, quickly, inexorably. We walked back to the beach, exchanging bemused glances. It was an unusually quiet evening at the beach with very few people around. The nairyal pani-wallah had a surreal patio arrangemen

Suppuni thatha— I heard that when you died of cancer in 1961, all you had in your possession was a small trunk containing a few clothes. What then of the 75 acres of land, houses in three towns, and three-lakh rupees in cash that you seem to have had inherited in your 16th year? I know your dissipation has the romance of a Bimal Mitra-esque cliché. You were one among the rich landed gentry in the Tanjore district, loyal to the British Raj, who were caught unprepared in the maelstrom of a social revolution accompanying the nationalist movement. But why did you abandon everybody in your life? Why did you live alone in Tanjore, while your widowed mother waited for you interminably at your ancestral village and your family at Pudukkottai? What was that demonic hunger that made you whittle generations’ worth of wealth in 40 short years, leaving your children practically destitute and saddled with the loans you had taken? I hear that 10 generations ago, our ancestor Nana Iyer came riding thr

I just started reading Maximum city by Suketu Mehta. I am sure the “brilliant”, “lyrical” and “the best bit of journalism to come out of the country” parts will reveal themselves to me eventually. At this point, I am mulling my way through his “Country of No” and “fucking city”. It is not that I am bristling at these epithets. I am sure if a shit-laden diaper flew into my house, I would also be forced to find succor in the four-lettered word. The thing is, Mr. Mehta’s Mumbai seems to extend only up to the Mahim creek. However, as an “aspirational middle-class immigrant” to the city, the area that the author defines as Mumbai is well nigh inaccessible to me. I am a child of the suburbs. Hell, when I came here first, I got down at the Kurla station—not even the famed Mumbai Central or VT. I am proud to claim that I landed in Mumbai like the millions of immigrants do—with one suitcase full of personal belongings, 2000 rupees in hand, no job, and no prospect of one either. I am also proud

“How do you love Mumbai?” I asked Vinay, native Mumbaikar and walk ing-talking Encyclopaedia Mumbaia. He looked out of our car window, considering my question. Dadar East was bustling all around us. Perhaps it was a tough question to ask anyone. How does one love this mad, madding metropolis? Sometimes it feels as though, like the concept of infinity, it is difficult to gather it in the words known to us. Our car was moving inexorably into the mill country. Old apartments and tenements loomed on to us from both sides, remnants of the most significant era of Mumbai’s history, now struggling for survival. “The Mumbai I knew is dying,” he said finally. “It’s become unlivable and ugly.” We both silently looked at the crowded alleys, crumbling mills, and lines of clothes hanging from every conceivable dusty balcony and window. Grand Central Hotel did look a little incongruous in the midst of this all. “Show me your Mumbai,” I said, feeling a crazy sense of urgency. What could’ve been a more

Rohan suggested that we should go to the Smokies over Christmas. It had three great things to recommend it—the most visited national park in the US, part of the “American South”, and a range of the Appalachians, which had been giving me siren calls for a long time. I was thrilled. My “am going to visit all the honky tonk bars I can,” made headline news at work, as it was discussed in a staff meeting with great amusement. But two days before Christmas, Rohan gave me the bad news. “I need to work on the 26th, so Smokies is off,” he said. I was bitterly disappointed. “Come over, we’ll find something else to do,” he tried to be reasonable. “I’d rather go somewhere warm!” I huffed. The month had been unseasonably cold. “But wouldn’t you lose money on your tickets?” he asked, forever the practical man. “Doesn’t matter—what would I do in Cincinnati?” I said with ill grace. But 24 hours of trawling the net and bugging my cousin in Santa Clara made it abundantly clear that the travel Gods didn