On Bollywood

My relationship with Bollywood's been fairly interesting, I think. 

When I was growing up, Bollywood consisted of this blur of imagery and drama that would happen for a few hours in a week, maybe a Friday evening movie or a bunch of songs in Eastmancolor on a flickering, crackling, bulbous little CRT... but most of all, it was music. Music everywhere, on taxi cassette players, mikes on the corner, brassy, disjointed bands, and everywhere, radio. Single-channel MW bands on battery-powered transistors sitting in faraway corners, singing away in the background. Somehow, always associated with travelling, with holidays and memories, the comfort food of music. 

It's probably the nostalgia factor, but I guess also because I was most of the time too young to really get what was happening. 

Then sometime around Chunky Pandey, I got old enough to understand the stories... and hated them. And the music - however good it might be - was forever tainted from then on with shallow, selfish, misogynistic, boorish, and embarrassing behavior. 

But all that had come before - I think it's pretty much set the tone for what music should be, as far as I'm concerned. There has to be melody. Imagery. Erudition. The ability to paint a lifetime in a few charcoal strokes, just abstract enough to let you fill in the blanks with what you wanted the story to be. Soothing. Distantly on the edge of hearing, yet constantly there. Familiar enough so you can sing along. 

You don't know who's singing, who's composing, who did the music or what film it's from. It's like reading a comic from the middle of a series you found in a box of junk on a vacation afternoon when you had nothing to do. You don't know why they're singing. You don't have any visuals to go with them. 

All you know is - this is awesome. 

And I guess that's why there's always going to be that genre that exists only in my head - the soundtrack to those drives in the dark, the walks in dusty golden winter sunlight, browsing through second-hand bookstores... and sometime between KL Saigal and Baba Sehgal, a little golden RD-Rafi period that's can only be labelled 'the most awesome childhood ever'. 

Looking at the other side

Note - this post is likely to depress you

A few days back, a friend of mine posted a (probably by now a much-shared) link to a series of photos a Chinese tourist took in Varanasi, of corpses abandoned in the river and washed up on the shore. His tone was one of (in my opinion, slightly gleeful) horror at what looks like the rejected props from a Walking Dead episode coexisting with daily life, which goes on like it's nothing out of the ordinary. 

Other than the tone taken, I don't really disagree. Yes, these are corpses, the decaying remains of what was once human beings, abandoned and left to rot like refuse in a public river, with nobody to lay them properly to rest, to clean up, to even bat an eyelid. 

Nobody's disturbed because this is daily life. This is how things are. The only people who get disturbed and upset are the people coming from places where their society has the time, the resources, and the inclination to handle corpse disposal properly. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, but in a similar way, we get shocked when we go to a first-world country and find we can drink the water coming directly from the taps, no filter, no UV, no boiling. 

The truth is, there is no regard for human life here. nobody cares when you're alive, why would they care about your corpse? 

Think about poor Varanasi's history. For centuries, the city has lived under the plague-ridden burden of perception that it is somehow spiritually elevated, that a death here is different, more meaningful in some way for the one dying. Freedom from reincarnation? Spiritual upliftment and enlightenment? Privations in this life rewarded in the next? 

It's meant a flood of people with nothing left but death, a flood of people hungry for soul-cleansing, a flood of people trying to understand something of what's happening. The tourist money keeps the economy running briskly, but the concept of a just reward in an afterlife has left little motivation to improve this one. 

There is no enlightenment here, no spiritual reward. It's something we make up, desperately, to somehow justify the appalling conditions we see, the misery, poverty, deprivation. People don't choose to be poor for a spiritual reward, they are poor because they had no choice, and every waking moment they fight it. There is no alternative. 

Be, or die. 

That's why the tourists flock here, too. They cannot imagine a life that is so bad, yet continues to be lived. They're convinced there's some great secret behind it all, something that we know and they don't, something that justifies this horror. Some mysterious philosophy of rebirth, reincarnation cycles, karma, an understanding of the nature of reality that they haven't got yet. Some knowledge that lets us continue to live in this place, walk these streets, where corpses wash up on the banks and lie putrefying in the sun. 

Chill, guys, there's no great secret. Step back and look at the big picture. We live because the alternative is to die. We live here because there are a thousand million little threads that tie us here, because there is nowhere else to go. 

The native will keep the farce going. The yogis and godmen will speak about this great secret in hints and allusions, translated into the guides' commentaries, the documentaries, the book and the stories. 

We live, and we die. There is nothing after, but as long as people believe there is, the money keeps coming, the stories keep perpetuating, the society keeps functioning. 

We make the tools we need to survive, and faith and hope are just some of those tools. 

chaddi-buddies

And while we're on the subject of morals, values, freedom of speech, bully boys and monkey men -
The media talks about what's in the news and advertises what's currently hot.
inadvertently creating - dare I say it? - chaddi-buddies of the two most unlikely partners.

Pramod Mutalik shares screenspace with his greatest enemy, and it's not design or conspiracy; just hot news and ad sales, coming together in beautiful harmony...

First, an unintentional endorsement from cupid...

then begins the search for the life partner...

then the inscription of the initials...

and finally, the happy ending.

Don't it jus' wanna make you cwyyyy??

No screenshots were harmed in the making of this blogpost; what you see is what I got. Photoshop not involved. :)

And now I sign off with another hilarious take...

The Indian Politician

Let's take a deep breath for a moment, and hard as it is, think dispassionately.
We - the Indian People - are in deep shit. The machinery and infrastructure that is supposed to care for us is, at best, ineffective. There's a lot of anger, frustration, and disgust in us - and most of all, everyone is asking - what can we do?

I am trying to create an answer.
It may not be the right one. A lot of you may disagree with some of what you will read. And I admit I'm not either qualified or in any way, or have any special access or information, that entitles me to do this, save for one reason - I'm just one more person on the street, one more passenger in the train, one more tourist in Kashmir, one more traveller in an airport... and every time something like this happens, the first thing that comes to my mind is - it could be me. It could be someone I know.
I've been lucky so far - but you and I both know that if things continue, it's just a matter of time.

The reason why these things keep happening - in my opinion - is because the infrastructure isn't sufficiently equipped to deal with management of porous borders, a billion plus population, understaffed, underpaid, under-trained and underequipped police, and specialist agencies too caught up in political games to be allowed to function effectively.
But that's not really the reason.
The political class - our so-called 'masters' and trust me, even saying that word brings the bile to my throat - is not doing it's job.
A politician enters the system with a clear objective. Power.
Power equals money, status, assets, previliges.
But NOT duty, responsibility, accountability.

So the real question we need to think about is, how do we force our MLAs, MPs, and Ministers to start doing the job they are supposed to, instead of creating private empires and fortunes and hijacking the state machinery - that we pay for, by the way - for their own perks.
The next time you're stopped to let a 20-car convoy with the flashing red lights pass, remember your salary is 33% less because of that petrol. Because they're on their way to some international event with family and press and shopping, sorry, 'expenses'. Because they need to stock up and furnish that 3000-square foot house in that 2-acre plot for which, unsurprisingly, the paperwork is proving... elusive.

Yet, we are a democracy. We voted. We put these ______'s where they are.
We thought, choosing the lesser of two evils will make it a little less unbearable. But it won't, because it's not the people, but the system that's ineffective. Apart from the fact that the power without responsibility it offers acts as a magnet for every criminal, low-life, unqualified, and plain wrong person for the job... in the ensuing dirty fight the good people get sidelined.
If you want to win, you have to play the game, and playing the game makes us all the same.

So - and this is where the ideas begin - can we do something to make the filtration better? Make sure the right people reach the right positions?

1. Make a mandatory requirement for standing for elections - a blood relative in the armed forces. On active duty. The minute he gets a desk job, or retires, you're out.
What will this achieve? A little more responsibility towards those people and that institution that keeps the country safe. A budget cut that cancels snow boots for the Siachen troops will be more debatable when it's your son's toes that are amputated because of frostbite.

2. Minimal security. Let the ministers and functionaries be moved to quarters attached to the offices and government centers. Let them even bring their families. But Keep it basic, minimal, and only what's necessary. It's the center and the position that is to be protected, not the man occupying it. If he has to leave the proemises, privately, give him a two-man civilian security detail.
What will this achieve? Fewer unpopular decisions. Ignore an illegal slum for years, and someone will throw rotten eggs at you. Renege on your promises, and the man in the street will walk up to you and spit in your face.
What's that? Criminal elements have it so much easier to kill you now? Well, you should have thought of that when you were drawing up the police training and equipping bill, shouldn't you?

Let 'Serving the Public Trust' actually have some 'serving' in it. And for someone looking to make a fast buck - shouldn't you be thinking of something safer?

3. Link their salaries to the sensex.
What will this achieve? If the country does well, you make money. If the economy falters, so does your own direct take-home.

4. Delink the police from political control. Make them independent. Increase their salaries to the point you're comfortable that they won't take a bribe from Dawood to kill you. Increase their training and equipment to the point that they can protect you if someone decides to pick up an AK56. Let the military handle recruiting and training - but they have got to be a separate, independent entity.

5. Get back the RTI, but in a much more effective way. The Right To Information Act currently allows anyone to request information from the government. But how many know what to ask for, and if they do get it, what it means? Set up a specialist media team that reads, interprets and reports on existing policies and policies under debate. Let them talk about it in a language that the average man-on-the-street can understand. Set up centers that can liase between the government and the citizen to give what information is needed.

6. e-nable EVERYTHING. Every bill, petition, paper, file, request, order, document has to be online, and not just as a scan; the world's largest democratic machinery will need the mother of all SAP systems. But every single document must be traceable, at any time, by any person.


That's it for now. I do not know HOW this can be done. The people in power right now are the ones who have everything to lose if they change the status quo; we can't expect any help from them.

This is a call to anyone reading this - if you have ideas, suggestions, advice, or even if you just agree - think about it. Think of what we can do. Some of us will know, will figure out how to make it happen.
A candlelight vigil, a facebook page, an email forward, a petition, a satyagraha, a peace march - these are good things. These are necessary things. But don't let them remain just that.
Think.
Think of how we can make these ideas work.

And many of you will have brilliant, revolutionary, and most of all, workable ideas. Make them public. Make them known. If you know what should be done, someone else can tell you how. Just make sure they know.

Update 03/12/08: Facebook group is up.