ANOTHER NEW YEAR, SO?

BY BISWADEEP GHOSH

What's new about the new year? Except the calendar, that is? Why the hell do we meet up, party hard, come back home fatigued late in the night and go to work late the following day, faking illness that isn't real?

You could call it cynicism. But this year in particular, I am feeling absolutely miserable while knowing that I might have to meet up with my friends, and not-so-friendly acquaintances lest I am called anti-or-un-social depending on who is using the phrase to explain my disappearance.

Is disillusionment a part of mental growth? Am I turning into Upamanyu Chatterjee's Agastya Sen because of what I have seen, experienced or simply heard? Why am I talking sainthood when I should be living it up because, as they say, we have just one life?

Am thinking of the rains that mauled Mumbai, leading to a phase of transient Communism in the city. Everybody was struggling. Everybody was thinking: who next? We? Am thinking of Katrina, of tsunami, of those millions of families that got devastated. Many, for eternity.

Saw a Santa Claus yesterday. Not Santa himself, but a Santa, smiling away on the streets, a portrait of optimism. What was going on in his mind while he grinned from ear to ear at the passers by? The fellow was thinking of the cheque he would get from his employers in a day or two.

Thousands of people will be out on the streets soon. Balloons, cakes, cards will invade lots of houses. Free e-cards will find their way into the mailboxes. Gifts, and return gifts, will be the flavour of the season.

But I will stay away from any such celebration. Because of some mysterious something, am not feeling up to it. Have lost nobody I know. Haven't had much trouble in life either. Am comfortable with what life has to offer. Am responsible for my decisions, so have no regrets.

But I will stay away. For sure. And while I write this, I guess I know why. Many people wanted to celebrate 1st January, 2006. But they cannot. For, they died this year.

My new year will be a tribute to the memories of people I never knew. That, since they were like you or me. Each working hard, celebrating moments, till nature's omnipotent arms engulfed and hurled them towards death.

If you are a believer in God, you might pause to think what made the Almighty so indignant. If an atheist, you might try to rationalise in diverse ways. Yes, you can explain death whichever way you want to and, if not, just call it a mortal inevitability. But, isn't 2005 a really tragic thought for many who continue to live and think of all that they lost?

I know none of them. But, like the ones who lost their lives, they are also like you or me.

FINGER-ATIVELY SPEAKING

BY BISWADEEP GHOSH

Has anyone bothered to remember the 'No Kapil, no test' call in Kolkata when Kapil Dev Nikhanj, a Jat from Haryana, was dropped from the Indian team because he had played an irresponsible shot in the previous test? Sunny Gavaskar, the captain, was pelted with oranges while fielding and the crowd was openly hostile towards him when he went out to bat.

I am not defending this moment at all. But all I am trying to say if the crowd in Kolkata can be so passionate when it concerned Kapil, who is as Bengali as Sherlock Holmes is Greek, can there be any reason why they will not cry out Sourav's name and jeer Dravid? That might be unsporting, but that is the way many Kolkatan fans are.

What Chappell should not done is stick a finger out of the bus later. He is the coach after all. But then, Chappell's methods have been ungentlemanly in a gentleman's game earlier as well. How can anyone forget why he made his younger brother Trevor bowl underarm in an act of 'experimentation' I suppose?

The media has been ridiculously biased when it came to reporting against things that have gone wrong even otherwise. Sourav has been the media's scapegoat for a while. Imagine what would have happened if we had lost our previous encounter against the Proteas, and Sourav had kept the best bowler RP Singh out of the attack after the latter had conceded just 18 runs in his seven overs? Abuses would have been hurled by one and all. But in this case, no one made a hue and cry about it.

The most comical of them all was the decision to send Irfan Pathan to bat as an opener. Had we been playing against Bangladesh, one would have understood why that had been done. But against the Proteas? That is out and out idiotic. As I say so, just think what would have happened if Ganguly had sent Pathan as the opener! I am not even saying it.

In an era of experimentation, and under an Australian coach-cum-non-playing captain who sticks a finger out of the bus that the board defends, what should we expect now? As I round this off, I can see Rahul Dravid bowling underarm and Chappell sticking a finger out from the dressing room when a Kallis or a Pollock spanks the cherry for a six!

CONVERSATION WITH A CRICKET JOURNO

BY BISWADEEP GHOSH

The Rahul Dravid-Greg Chappell duo are winning matches for India, a senior cricket journo told me just after Ganguly made a comeback to the team. Needless to say, he was hassled. So, what are his allegations against Sourav?
He: He has not been performing with the bat.
I: Everybody goes through a low. Ganguly was dropped because he did not perform. Now he has given enough evidence that he wants to make a comeback. So, big deal!
He: Ganguly has turned into a conniving politician of late.
I: Evidence?
He: I know the inside story.
I: What is the inside story? If you journos know it, you should spill the beans right? That is what you are paid for.
Briefly, evidence!
He: The majority who are talking about Ganguly are Bengalis. Shame on you.
I: Big deal! Have you forgotten the days when Bombay used to decide the choice of players in the Indian cricket team? Didn't one person from the Bombay lobby back another? He is an icon in Bengal. So, Bengalis would worship him just as nobody from Bombay wants to believe that Sachin is not at his best any longer.
He: He has been a bad influence on the team because of his insecurities.
I: He created the team you are talking about. So, evidence!
He: I cannot tell you for you to blog it.
I: I won't tell who you are but certainly blog it. Why? Like every cricket lover, I want to how much shit is flying around if it is.
In other words, I want evidence against the guy, written by journos whose job is to break stories and not sit over them.

QUESTIONS, HAZAAR QUESTIONS!

BY BISWADEEP GHOSH

Sourav Ganguly is back in the team. The fighter in him is trying hard to make an impact as was evident from his performance with the ball against Maharashtra today. A spell of five wickets for 64 runs, including four top order players, from a player under so much stress cannot be a bad performance by any yardstick of judgement. But then that is the way Sourav is. After being dropped from the team, he, instead of sulking away, just went out and hammered a century against North Zone.

India's most successful captain, Sourav gave Steve Waugh's Australians the treatment they deserved. That, to my mind, is the most glorious chapter of his career as a captain. But the questions that need to be answered are many.

* Ganguly is known to be a 'man with the golden arm', but he is basically a batsman who, at his best, can be ruthlessly destructive. So, how did our selection committee choose him as a batting all-rounder?

* There is little doubt that Chappell is to Dravid what Dalmiya was to Ganguly for a long time. Given the fact that he is in the team for not just his batting but his bowling abilities too, isn't it possible that Ganguly might be asked to roll his arm over when our frontline bowlers are failing? Batting all-rounder: that phrase jars. It is really very mysterious.

* How will Ganguly get along with Chappell? The exchange between the two was the worst in recent cricketing history. Chappell might choose to forget, because he will be acutely aware that Ganguly is back in the team because of serious pressure. But, after the awful e-mail episode, will Chappell 'allow' Ganguly to be his normal self when he is not out on the field? Indian cricket has had a history of wicked coaches, the best example being Sandeep Patil who had sent Ganguly out to bat after Anil Kumble once. Patil was thrown out. But will Chappell suffer a similar consequence if he chooses to be dogmatic?

* It is good to say that Dravid is the good boy of Indian cricket. But 'is' the good boy so good that he will vacate the post of captaincy without trying to hijack it for as long as possible? Despite Ganguly's currently precarious position, a few good knocks from him in a few Indian losses is what that is required to generate public opinion that Ganguly should be back. People will go back to history; the same lot who are commenting against Ganguly's inclusion.
Dravid has waited for a long time. Today, he has found an ally in Chappell who is Ganguly's enemy. Will he take a chance?

Too many questions, which only time can answer. Meanwhile, all Ganguly must do is go out and deliver. He can because he has.

STARDUST PAPA KEHTE HAIN!

BY BISWADEEP GHOSH

More than a year ago, a story in Stardust magazine had featured Jessica Hines, a lady who had come down to India and was alleged to be pregnant with Aamir Khan’s child. It made news nationwide. Every newspaper made sure it splashed some bit of the interview in which Jessica did not come out in the open. Instead, what she said came close to suggesting that the baby was a technological miracle, in her words, “a computer-generated hologram.”
Cut to The Hindustan Times, whose Mumbai edition was launched very recently. Day one of the newspaper featured a scoop that revealed excerpts from a conversation between Salman Khan and Aishwarya Rai. This conversation in which Salman allegedly spoke about everything right from his bedtime stories with heroines to his association with the underworld had been buried for four long years. Nobody had spoken of it, including Ash even after she went to town with her statements against Salman after the twosome broke up. But the day the newspaper set its feet in Mumbai, the interview emerged out of nowhere, making HT a serious rival of The TOI overnight.
Now, think of The Rising. Think of Aamir Khan with the Mangal Pandey moustache that he used for both playing Mangal Pandey and selling Titan watches. The Rising may be utter crap – it indeed is – but there is little doubt that curiosity about Aamir is at an all-time high. Because of the hype surrounding the film well before it was released all over the world on August 12, people are ready to devour any thing and every thing about Aamir. Right now, it won’t be wrong to say that Aamir is India’s number one star, which is also because of the fact that he hasn’t had a release for four long years. Film lovers want to see the guy because he has successfully tested their patience by remaining in hibernation for far too long.
So, at a time when Aamir mania has gripped the nation, comes another Stardust story saying that the son of Jessica – the hologram in her belly once – is two years old now. Jessica who had kept mum about the dad’s identity earlier, suggesting that a Pentium 2.6 could be the culprit, now says that Aamir who is alleged to be the dad of the child named Jaan actually asked to abort the child.
A couple of questions. Why did Jessica talk about Aamir’s fatherhood so late in the day when she had attributed the child’s origin to a computer once? Why did we get to know that a love child named Jaan existed exactly when The Rising was released? These questions cannot be answered very easily but, somehow, Aamir for once reminds of Salman Khan. And, Stardust seems rather similar to The Hindustan Times of the day it was launched in Mumbai.

WAR OF THE TITANS

BY ASHRAF ENGINEER

I’ve been watching the newspaper war in Mumbai for some time now. The market obviously had the space for more players, and The Times of India must have known for a while that sooner rather than later the ways of virtual monopoly would end.
But what’s exciting is to watch is what the new players do with the media space they’ve occupied.
TOI has responded by upping quality, adding pages, many of them for city coverage, and marketing itself more aggressively. Hindustan Times chose the silent, strong approach by not making a huge hoopla about is launch, letting its Salman Khan ‘scoop’ do the talking. It’s superior design kicked in to attract the eyeballs and it generally seems to have made a favourable impression as a credible rival to the Old Lady of Boribunder.
But it was DNA which I had been waiting for. A virtual star cast of an editorial team had been put together and crores had been spent on an advertising campaign that soon turned controversial. But I did feel slightly disappointed with the initial editions. Given the marketing, financial and editorial muscle of the Dainik Bhaskar and Zee groups, the product was as good or bad as the rest in the market. You didn’t need some of the biggest guns in the industry to come out with a paper that merely match up. I expected more.
Maybe they initially confused more pages with a bigger bang for the subscriber’s buck. I don’t know whether that’s a completely correct assumption. Yes, many do feel that they’re getting value for what they’ve paid. But as a reader of this particular paper you expected greater editorial quality and innovations in content. DNA disappointed not because it was bad, but because it was only as good as everyone else.
Having said all this, I must confess DNA is improving by the day and where it will eventually settle on the subscription charts will be interesting to watch.
The churn in the Mumbai print industry, I believe, is very good. The cut-throat competition will not only keep standards high for the consumer, but will also allow journalists options which never existed before. Salaries are just one measure of the rising stock of the journalist. Media companies will now have to go that extra mile to take care of them to ensure that much-needed talent is not eroded.
I was asked whether I thought all these players will survive in the long run. My own take is yes, though I think we will see, eventually, a dip in the circulation numbers. Right now there is great curiosity about the new products and many households have signed up for all the three big ones. In the long run, consumers will choose merely one or two of the four or five players in the market. That will lead to a plateauing of the numbers and a stabilisation of the market.
I wonder whether the smaller players like Indian Express and Mid Day will land up getting burned in the crossfire.

Bee Gee's note: Best known for reading books on the office staircase, my colleague Ashraf Engineer is optimistic about DNA. Even I think similarly, since the paper has changed quite a bit since the day it was launched. Sitting in Pune, one can see that the changes are for the better.

RETURN OF SOURAV

BY BISWADEEP GHOSH

Most in the media have problems with Sourav Ganguly. The very attitude that enabled him to build a cohesive unit out of a bunch of individuals – aggression should be his middle name, not Chandidas – has made him the media’s favourite whipping boy. Arrogant, presumptuous, egoistic: these are the adjectives senior cricket journalists use while talking about Sourav in personal conversations. But when they write for the print media, they seek refuge in what is politically correct, which is say stuff like he cannot play the short delivery or that he has been woefully out of form of late.

But now, Ganguly is back to where he belonged, which is as the captain of the squad he had led so successfully. I am sure his critics must be raving and ranting by now, snubbed as they might have been by a guy who knows how to steer the ship of a team but doesn’t give a damn to unfriendly press. Ganguly has built a team that the selectors know and value. The guy, in other words, commands the respect of his team which no other Indian player does: or can.

Besides, when Dravid got an opportunity to make a mark in Sri Lanka in Ganguly’s absence, he came across as a silent, aloof sort who was barely visible on the field. The Yuvrajs and Sehwags and Harbhajans whom Ganguly had identified and backed so well ‘need’ a flamboyant skipper to start with. This, they are used to when Ganguly is around. They don’t mind getting rubbished by the guy even if he himself might not have played well because of an innate confidence stemming from their awareness that Ganguly knows how gifted they are, and that he will support them when the chips are down. History explains why they think so.

Now that he is back as the captain, we will see a bunch of individuals play as Team India again. As for the argument that John Wright had said that he would continue to coach the Indian team if Ganguly stepped down, the fact remains that it was the latter who led the team on the field, not Wright. As for the theory that he cannot play the short ball, while it is true that he is vulnerable to such deliveries like most Indians, he has been able to score 10,000 plus runs in one-dayers at a slightly slower pace than Sachin Tendulkar. As for the affirmation that Dravid has a stable head on his shoulders but Ganguly is moody and tempestuous and god-knows-what-else, nobody needs to take it seriously as long as Ganguly continues to deliver. Remember he is the most successful captain India has ever had?

HISTORY IS A COMIC STRIP!

BY BISWADEEP GHOSH

I admire Rudrangshu Mukherjee's scholarship of history, and firmly believe what he has to say about the existence of Mangal Pandey and his actual significance in the the first Indian war of Independence in his book 'Mangal Pandey: Brave Martyr or the Accidental Hero?': "The reason for the attention given to Mangal Pandey lies not in the significance of his own actions but in the actions of the sepoys of north India who took to arms in the summer of 1857. Historians have assumed a link between Mangal Pandey and the uprising of 1857 and thus a legend has been created around his name."

To prove his point, Mukherjee talks of the mutiny in Barrackpore some 33 years ago in which 200 Indian soldiers died. But that was not written about till 2003 and here, I might add, because there wasn’t a single protagonist who started it all, and also since the reason possibly wasn’t as dramatic as greased cartridge with fat of animals that both Hindus and Muslims weren’t supposed to touch. Desecration that would have been, and it indeed was, leading to an uprising triggered off by a man (Mangal)about whose act and life hardly anything is known.

But today, all we can hear is ‘Mangala, Mangala, Mangala, Mangala….” All we can see is a short and well-built guy striding across the screen in a moment that glorifies his death as sacrifice which it was. We have been told about Heera, a sex worker Mangal is supposed to have been in love with. We have heard of Jwala, a woman Mangal’s friend who is a British officer falls in love with.

All of this, and so much more, has happened because of Ketan Mehta’s 'The Rising', the most hyped film in the history of Indian cinema. Now, we know that Mehta’s material is the life story of Mangal although what we do not know is where the story came from. I mean, the film could have been called anything right from Jangal to Dangal Pandey since reality is not the basis anyway, so why Mangal? Simply because Mangal is box-office material, misled as we have been since 1857 that a single sepoy decided the course in which the nation thought and acted.

There is some MTV style choreography in the film too, but never mind! Creative license means anything right from fabricating intelligently and distorting stupidly. Mostly, it is the latter. The film’s hero Aamir has been selling watches with the Mangal look for a while, but so what? If a modern-day Mangal had been able to defeat his rulers in 2005, so many corporates would have requested him to be their brand ambassador isn't it? The life of Mangal has been concocted with the protagonist’s name being the only real thing about it, but should that matter? Not at all, because some will go to see the film without knowing that the story has been cooked up. A few abroad will see it because they will view it as a grand Bollywood musical.

Many will watch it because they are Aamir Khan fans, and very few will give a damn to the fact that fooling around with characters from history and creating their lives when facts do not exist is a very bad thing to do. After all, Mehta and company have tried to make the most of the man’s name. That being the case, shouldn’t they have looked for facts if at all they existed, or gone ahead and worked with material and people about whom enough is known, giving some sort of scope for understanding the situations and interpreting them accordingly?

'The Rising', in short, is a lie. But there is little reason why Ketan Mehta and Aamir Khan will feel sorry about it if this fictionalised story of a martyr with songs and dances doesn’t capsise at the box-office.

YUCKCETERA!

BY BISWADEEP GHOSH

Why is Kyaa Kool Hai Hum’s sequel being planned already? According to a sexually frustrated acquaintance who went to watch the film, this one isn’t anything less than a Woody Allen flick in which the script could have written by a P G Wodehouse! There is so much humour in the film that the viewers keep on falling off their chairs, I am told by the same guy.

So, did I watch the film? Yes, I did because I must. It is an occupational hazard, you see. Did I like the film? No, I did not. I found the dialogues unacceptably risqué; I found the body language abominably provocative; I felt that the whole film just rubbished all notions of good film-making as had been defined by the one and only David Dhawan in his legendary Number One series which turned Govinda into a darling of the masses even as an Indian writer born and brought up in India made a complete ass of himself by pretending not to know who Govinda was when the actor was at his peak. This writer (rather well-known) went to watch a Govinda film and, strangely enough, reviewed the movie in a revered book reviews journal (till today, don’t know why) in which he said that he mistook Govinda for an extra till his friend pointed out who the actor was! Knowing what nobody else does but now knowing what everyone should defines the average intellectual, you see. I have been saying that since I was a kid. I will say that even when I dance inside my grave because I am certain to hear voices go past me that will enunciate similar thoughts while walking by.

But Kyaa Kool Hai Hum cannot evoke any such need for pretentious indifference. Why? Since its actors are too damn insignificant. But what it does generate – in the minds of sane people at least – is a thought. What has gone wrong with us? At a time when we were all set to applaud ourselves by turning Black into a huge hit, why did we have to make a fool of ourselves by making KKHH a success?

After all, what does the film have? Lovely dialogues that tell us that a psychologist who is an expert in tracking down serial killers has three balls (made of plastic) which he uses to understand a man’s mind? That this doctor has a wife who assures him that she has been taking care of his balls all her life? That one of the heroes asks a girl whether or not she has Viagra and quickly changes it to ‘vagyarah’ that, in Urdu, means what etcetera in English does? That the second hero cuddles a cat while sitting on a bench with his fly left open which is mistaken by the cop for the hero’s act of having sex with the animal? That a burning cigarette slips into the same guy’s trousers, and the fellow jumps frantically while holding his vital parts in public that is again viewed as sexual perversity by the cops?

Sad. Dismal. Dismissible. But then, we went, we applauded and we turned this lump of drivel into a hit. By doing so, what we have ensured is that more shall follow. Kya fool hai hum!

B***S FOR EYEBALLS!

BY BISWADEEP GHOSH

Salman Rushdie needs a Gabriel Garcia Marquez for an inspiration. But then, he is a great writer. Writers such as yours truly whose claim to shame lies in some insignificant books are inspired by lesser beings naturally. Risking a digression, I had informed many of you that smallbigworld shall restart from June 1. But destiny decided otherwise. The site has taken off today, all due to an impulsive reaction to Mallika Sherawat’s presence. She wasn’t with me – I do not wish to be so lucky – but with the martial arts star Jackie Chan who must have had a ball playing the lust action hero alongside the Haryanvi sherni in his forthcoming film The Myth. (While shooting for it, I am sure all the myths about Indian conservatism would have gone bust!)

Coming to the point, Mallika’s dress sensation in Cannes just drove me nuts. Did she need to wear the top that she was wearing to begin with? Blame it on my prudish sensibility, feel free to rip apart my inability to appreciate the aesthetics of semi-dressedness. But how much did she have to show to the world to tell everyone that India had ‘arrived’ because, if people were to equate her outfit with what Indian women wear in their day-to-day lives, the assumption could very well be that our ladies wear hardly anything at all! If that sounds fatuous which it actually is – one of the advantages of writing in a personal site – if a foreigner were to believe that Mallika’s outfit defined the parameters of glamorous dressing up in India, wouldn’t that be utterly, gutterly shameful?

Look at the other two Indian women in Cannes. Nandita Das isn’t pretty in the conventional sense, but she has carried herself most gracefully all through. Aishwarya Rai is breathtakingly beautiful but, while her badly made outfits received a lot of flak last year, she has more than made up by wearing classy dresses this time. As for Mallika whose pictures will be all over by the time you read this, I feel like writing an email to her right away. Just one sentence, which will go thus: “Dear Mallika, titillation need not be interpreted so literally.”

NO TIME FOR ANYTHING!

BY BISWADEEP GHOSH

I am not very different from Indian passenger trains that chug-chug their way through the small towns of India, stopping here, there, just about anywhere, because I firmly believe that life is basically about unscheduled stops. Roald Dahl’s theory about briskness being the most common characteristic among successful individuals can go to hell, and mainly because while I have been mistaken for being talented very often, I am anything but successful. Besides, the only inevitability about life is death, but when that is going to take anyone of us away to some unknown realm nobody can prognosticate. So, why care about timing every thing in life? (I had bumped into the story of a really successful idiot who times his diurnal journey to the loo. After hearing that, I had exclaimed by using the most common metaphor of the new millennium: shit!”)

But then, I happen to occupy a peculiar slot which many people would not like to share: in other words, I respect my Thomas Pynchon, find time for my music and working on a second book which doesn’t belong to the club of biographies which I had unleashed upon many star-struck readers very recently. I manage to make telephone calls, file reports, make pages, meet people, attend press conferences, without any respect for time management. Why? Because I believe that lethargy is a disease that cripples you, but slowness a virtue that allows you to internalise the finer nuances of life that you overlook should you be in a rush forever.

Having been in the business of book reviewing, I also know of a lot of people who masquerade as ‘intellectuals’, a word with a comic implication often. For, these people have an uncanny knack of knowing what nobody does, but not knowing what everybody must. Married to their wrist-watches all through the day, they constantly crib about running short of time which is why they can’t ‘study’ a Kurosawa film ‘more’ thoroughly. Yet, should you see through them which is easy, you will know they possess just two things. A passion for bull-most-common-metaphor-ting, and lots of time!

Run, man, run. That seems to be the mantra motivating the actions of many who hate walking a couple of kilometres in full public view, cannot use the public transport system, do not do any thing that needs patience because they cannot afford some serious expenditure of time. Run, just, run. Run, sprint, flee from any thing, just about anything that is meaningful, wearing hats of hypocrisy concealing unimaginative brains that have just one strong point. While their collective affirmation of not having time is a lie, they at least do not have intellectual pretence that can assault any unsuspecting conversationalist and drive him nuts!

Courtesy their passion for time management, however, twenty-four hour days get over in sixteen hours. That leaves them with eight hours that they spend very happily, sitting on beanbags, making love to mobile phones.

PAK'S INDIA TOUR: CAN WE MATCH PAK'S HOSPITALITY?

BY SAMBIT BAL

During a casual conversation a couple of weeks ago, a senior member of the Indian team revealed his worst fears about Pakistan's upcoming tour of India. It wasn't a rib-cracking and toe-crunching spell from Shoaib Akhtar, a purple patch from Inzamam-ul-Haq, or India's indifferent form this season. "I just hope," he said, "we, as a nation, are able to reciprocate in kind to the manner Indians were treated in Pakistan when they toured last year."

It's a fear palpably felt by every Indian who set his or her foot in Pakistan during those magical days. Like us, he had seen doors and hearts open, he had felt the warmth and goodwill which was too spontaneous to have been a put-on, he had seen the Indian flags flying proudly in the stands, seen pictures of Indian revellers on the streets of Lahore, and like us, he too is left wondering if India can match the grace and the hospitality. Will we see Pakistani flags fluttering in our grounds? Will we see a procession of Pakistani bikers on our streets? Will we able to celebrate the event of cricket, irrespective of who wins?

Perhaps we are expecting the impossible. To expect anything to match the spirit of last February is a tall order. The red carpet from the state and the cricket administration was expected, but the surge of goodwill on the streets, in the shops, at homes, in taxis and restaurants wasn't part of a grand design. It just happened. One thing led to the other. A better explanation of this can be found in Malcolm Gladwell's acclaimed book Tipping Point, which explores the phenomenon of little things making a big difference.

It perhaps took small things ­ a boy painting himself in the national colours of India and Pakistan, someone stitching two flags together, the first few despatches filed by Indian journalists ­ that got the emotions stirring and in no time a spirit of brotherhood had spread across on both sides of the border. It was special, perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime experience. To expect a repeat might be a sure recipe for disappointment. But still, we have a right to expect, for what happened then was wonderful.

What can we read from the signs? A few vandals have tried to damage the pitch at Mohali; the Shiv Sena, the party which was responsible for getting a tour by Pakistan cancelled once, has been making unwelcome noises, and Narendra Modi, the man singularly responsible for giving the state of Gujarat a bad name, has been, expectedly, his usual intemperate self.

Worse, the BCCI, which has the highest stake in the forthcoming series, has taken a strangely blasé approach to scheduling. That Ahmedabad would be a sticking point everyone knew for months. Yet instead of taking a common-sense approach, the BCCI chose the precipitatory option of putting Ahmedabad in the itinerary. It was an amazingly short-sighted move, prompted by immediate expedience. By rotation, it was Ahmedabad's turn, but instead of trying to settle the matter internally, the BCCI chose the softer option. Even now, it is hoping a decision will be forced by the government. That's a strange attitude from a body which misses no opportunity to proclaim its autonomy.

When India toured Pakistan, the BCCI ensured that it got everything it asked for, including a highly contentious clause that empowered it to call off the tour at the first instance of slightest of crowd trouble. Karachi and Peshawar were kept off the Test schedule, and the Indian cricketers received a security cover reserved for heads of state. It is a cynic's argument that the Pakistani cricket authorities allowed themselves to be arm-twisted because the board's solvency depended on that tour. Grace and mutual consideration demanded the BCCI be sensitive to the internal compulsions of the PCB. It is not a time to debate if Ahmedabad is as dangerous a place as Karachi, it is a question of accommodating perceptions and honouring sentiments. By its obtuse handling of the issue, the BCCI has only ended up creating an ugly political controversy.

How does it bode for the series? Has India slipped even before it could get moving? That's a bleak view that does not take into account the power of the human heart. What happened in Pakistan last year wasn't expected. It wasn't planned. It wasn't powered by propaganda. What is needed is a few little lights to kindle a giant flame. Let's invest in hope. It's a better feeling than dread.

Bee Gee's note: Sambit and I have known each other for more than a decade now. For me, cricket is a passion; but for him, an obsession. So, it is hardly surprising that he works as the Editor, Wisden Asia Cricket and Cricinfo India

THE TRUTH IS THAT I LIE!

BY PRIYANKA SINHA

Not tonight, darling, I have a headache.

When it comes to high life, dahlings, I promise you it just won’t work. It’s well, uh, so plebian. It was an accidental discovery of course. In bed with a runny nose and running high temperature, I made the big blunder of citing the real reasons for missing a la-de-dah caviar and champagne sit-down affair. The pause at the receiving end was long enough to imagine that the gracious hostess had swooned. It was, I figured, not so much the anguish my absence might have caused but the oh so LS alibi put forth.

It was an enlightening moment. I wasn’t in a lotus position under the Bodhi tree but I swear, I saw light. The truth dawned upon me. It is important sometimes to tell people what they want to hear. And I haven’t looked back ever since. Killing off frail old relatives to skip a gala event is a strict no-no. I’ve graduated to far more sophisticated excuses. “Oh dear, what a pity. I’d have loved to come but for this sudden visit to Delhi. There’s a dinner you know and they really do want me to come. A crashing bore if you ask me but a girl must do what she must.” For the more adventurous, the world is your oyster—take your pick—you could be in Paris, Bahamas, Monaco, Athens, Milan or wherever you choose to be. If not much of a traveler, a meeting with somebody frightfully important strikes just the right note particularly if it’s Frangipani or Indigo. However, having said that let me warn you -- this twist-the-truth game can be dangerous. Particularly if you have a tendency to get carried away by your own falsities. Trouble with excess grandstanding is that the lie can be spotted. And then you have to do it a certain way to lend credence to the lie.

The con job didn’t come easy to me there were the initial hiccups but once you crack the code, it’s smooth sailing. Salient rules include speaking with confidence even when uttering the most outrageous falsehood. Most people usually turn stone deaf once you have declined an invitation. Reasons, particularly genuine ones don’t count, writing about it does. While realism is all very fine, don’t go about telling people that you’d have been at the midnight jamboree if not for an ailing parent, child or dog. It’s all the same for them. Instead a clever “Honey, I am just on the way back from Alibaug and am so totally exhausted. Can’t turn up looking anything less than splendid for your big day, hmm? This is really unfortunate and I so love your parties but I’ll send across the photographer.” The trick is to assure people that they are going to be written about. As for the reasons, frankly speaking my dear, nobody gives a damn.

Bee Gee’s Note: The editor of Society, Priyanka is good with what her name shortens to: which is, pranks. An even bigger gift she possesses is her extra-ordinary ability to crack sad jokes.
Briefly, she loves to laugh at her own wisecracks while the world around her cries non-stop.

GOD, MAKE ME YAWNA, COINA, VAGUENA!

BY BISWADEEP GHOSH

Have been slogging hard like Animal Farm’s Boxer for a long time. Have had eight-day weeks, 25-hour days, five-six-seven sleepless days on the trot…all those wonderful experiences that are oh-so inevitable when you belong to the tribe of scribes. Have survived on stale vada pao when the belly has been assailed by pangs of hunger in the middle of the night. Have drunk litres of badly made tea, smoked countless cancer sticks, created cacophony with the keyboards for hours and hours just to see a story emerge, slowly, steadily, coherently, right in front of me on the screen the way it is happening now. Have made some money also, making me a hazaarpati for all those hours of manual if not mental labour.

But then, today I realise that what happens to you is decided the day you are born. Any mutiny against destiny – like my contemplating a sex change operation while being so ugly and on the wrong side of 30 – is sheer stupidity. Since I have started viewing life like a philosopher clown would, I have also started believing (somewhat desperately) that the entire notion of rebirth is true. So, if I don’t cause harm to others even at the cost of subverting my professional fortunes during my present term on earth, I could well be reborn as a beautiful girl in my next life.

What will I do should that happen, and which I sincerely hope does? Even if I am born in Honolulu – don’t know whether or not rebirth takes geographical boundaries into consideration, therefore – I will take a flight and come to Mumbai straightway. I will meet all the producers in town with a beautifully shot portfolio and, if one of them happens to have signed a director like Steven Spielberg, I will even ride the back of a dinosaur instead of just a buffalo in an item song. Dance, dance, just dance my way into the hearts of everyone: that is what I shall do, even if I have to partner a man who is thrice my size and doesn’t look good at all. How does it matter anyway? The masses will pay to ogle at me and, for letting them do so, the producer will give me a cheque that is as substantial as the man I would have danced with!

Five minutes of fame, resulting in five crore bucks because at least five event management companies would flock towards me and ask me to do that one number in five different shows for one crore each! Then, five more. Then, five more. Shows would multiply, so would the cheques, and I will go to town giving interviews about how life post-celebritydom feels. Big pictures splashed in newspapers, my face staring at people from hoardings, Lexus one day, Merc the next, being Bajaoed on a channel’s celebrity show the day when I choose to walk for a while. God, what a great life that is going to be! You find my approach towards life a little vague na? So be it. I have no desire but to be reborn as Vaguena and lead the life of an item number for the rest of my life.

Kaanta Laga? If so, acchha laga?

FOR 'ADOLTS' ONLY

BY DILIP RAOTE

WRITING ‘about’ sex is easy. Writing erotic stories is difficult. If there is sufficient funding and research infrastructure, it is possible to write a series of articles, or books, on the A to Z of sex – sex and art/architecture, sex and commerce, sex and politics, sex and technology, and so on right up to zoophilia. But it is difficult to write a good erotic story. It requires literary skills and imagination. I lack both. There’s a huge collection of sex jokes in my head; but it’s all borrowed stuff. I can’t create. So when the editor of an erotica magazine asked me to write for him, I was aghast.

Nevertheless, I took the request as a challenge. I decided to write a science fiction story about a couple honeymooning in an undersea hotel 20 km off Mumbai. I made technical sketches of the hotel – a giant ring 30 metres below the sea surface. After that, my imagination collapsed. I was incapable of thinking in terms of sighing, panting and ecstasy.

I showed the sketches to my Press Club friends and begged them to give me a passion-filled plot. There was derisive laughter and shouts of “Hey, this guy has gone senile! He’s forgotten about sex!” I did introspective meditation. I went back into my past to determine the period during which I had the most curiosity about sex. It turned out to be the age between 10 and 16. With this revelation, I was ready to take on the task.

I wrote several stories about sex from the viewpoint of irreverent children. One was about a precocious girl who has to monitor her class because the teacher is absent. She decides to teach her classmates three-dimensional geometry, or how to convert two dimensions into three. She draws two parallel lines on the blackboard and asks the mates how they would convert the lines into a 3D figure. The class is stumped; the children have been trained to think only in terms of flat triangles, rectangles and circles. The girl joins the two parallel lines with curved lines. The figure now represents a tube. The girl adds a large knob at one end of the tube. There’s a gasp of understanding; the boys laugh, and the girls giggle.

The girl draws two circles. How to convert them into 3D in a simple way? One boy steps forward and draws latitudes and longitudes on one circle and converts it into a globe. He is dismissed as a silly academic. With a flourish the girl draws a large dot at the centre of each circle. The two flat circles become 3D breasts. And thus the class progresses towards advanced geometry until the bell rings to end the period.

In another story the exasperated only daughter of fussy rich parents makes pinholes in the condoms she finds in her parents’ bedroom. The mother becomes pregnant and the girl is ecstatic in anticipation of her freedom. In another story, village kids coach a dispirited bridegroom on how to divert his anxiety, which caused his deflation, by doing mental maths in the conjugal bed. The groom tries it out, and it works. He and his bride lose their virginity, many tense nights after the wedding.

And that’s how I got to write children’s stories for an erotic magazine. The stories were presented as ‘For Adolts Only’, an ‘adolt’ being an adult who has forgotten his/her childhood and become a pompous moralising ass.

Bee Gee’s note: Well over a decade ago, Dilip was the books editor of The Economic Times. Githa Hariharan had just picked up the Commonwealth Prize, and Dilip asked me to review her next book called The Art Of Dying. As a young lad, I was to experience a special feeling soon when my review was excerpted on the cover of Githa’s book. The cover carried a second review: that by Michael Ondaatje who picked up the Booker prize for his book The English Patient around that time.
Because of that one moment, I turned into a serious reviewer…before I finally stopped!

WRITER’S BLOCK…IN THE PRINT MEDIA!

BY BISWADEEP GHOSH

Hi-ing. Helloing. Bye-ing. Sighing. But not saying. The heart says ‘come on buddy, go and tell her you are serious about her. She guesses it anyway, you moron.’ But when you find an excuse to meet her, you act all clumsy, speak in unintelligible language and…vamoose! The inability to say what you must is what I call a lover’s block.

Won’t be surprised if someone were to ‘hello’ me and ask why I was going on and on about some hopeless one-sided love in a piece on writer’s block. I think, no, am convinced that these two blocks are very similar as far as the print media is concerned. I remember a colleague of mine telling me a long time ago (an IIT-IIM guy blessed with a very sharp mind): “You know what? These guys who get into journalism, many of these fellows would not be able to do anything in any other field. They try every thing right from the civil services entrance exams to bank clerical exams, flunk everywhere, and then take up journalism. No wonder these fellows don’t come up with one decent sentence in one month!” In the last 18 years in which I have been associated with at least 18 organisations either as a freelancer or as a full-time employee, I have had enough reasons to believe that this fellow was absolutely right. In other words, the industry is full of journos who were typists once, and are punching machines (since they work on comps) today. They cannot write to save their lives, but pretend that they do, which is why they suffer from a ‘writer’s block’ every second day. I call them good actors.

One particular breed I find most amusing is the ‘won’t trouble the barber’ type because, for these guys, an unkempt look is synonymous with deep thinking. I remember this classic case who would come to work, sit in front of the comp for hours, get up at least thrice every hour to smoke, and eventually file a 250-word copy which started with gems like: “In the skies, there are dark clouds. On the earth, there is danger.” Some writing, that!

Some others make it a point to shave, but put up a great show by staring at the comp while chewing nails. Now, I am told that when someone is chewing nails, he is immersed in serious thought. But when these fellows do the same thing, you can be sure they either haven’t had breakfast or are gluttons who can feast on anything. As for their copies, let me tell you about this item number who walked up to me after half a day of thinking and gave me a fantastic cover story headline for a supplement on investment: “Boom Is Happening!” The story was about real estate boom (the most obvious real estate story in any supplement no matter where), but a headline like “Boom Is Happening”? Told you, he knew his job!

The third kind, and this is the one I find most bizarre, are those who believe in profligacy with words to camouflage their inability to make sense with the lucid melody of simply structured sentences. One such guy the society holds highly – but I think is pretty stupid, having seen him slip into spells of writer’s block many times – has given to Indian journalism wonderful sentences like: “The repercussion of leading a nomadic life for meticulous research has resulted in a panegyrical ode about a society suffering from a cultural void.” Pray, what does that mean? It means something for sure, for he actually found an editor who published the copy unedited. (Can’t blame the guy who edited the page. Those were the days when the publication of book reviews was taken very seriously, yet there were times when guys with no idea of book reviews would be asked to handle the books page because nobody else was in sight.)

By now, some of the readers might be thinking that yours truly is on some kind of a pompous ego trip. Not at all, because when some people say I am good as they do to many other people I am sure, they do so because they are really bad and mistake my mediocrity for brains. More importantly, I sincerely believe that the journalists of the writer’s block variety should learn the basics of simple English and write that at a reasonably fast pace because this profession is all about quick thinking and equally quick writing. Briefly, unproductiveness just because one pretends to think is unpardonable. And, they must learn to accept that none of them can ever be a Karl Marx or a Bertrand Russell since there are two kinds of people on earth: gods who happen once in a lifetime, and good mortals who are all over the place in the media from whom they can seek inspiration before getting on with the serious business of writing. Don’t mind being killed for saying that but really…

CHILD, THE MOTHER OF WOMAN!

BY KAVITA KANE

I dreamt I heard a noise. But I wasn’t dreaming. In the still, cold night, I listened to the noise close to me. I forced my sleepy eyes open – a diaphanous figure was emerging, very close, a few inches away from my now-petrified face. Wild hair, white and …WET! The last realization made me react instinctively. My younger nine-month-old daughter had wet the bed, and the blankets. My maternal instinct quickly swamped the paralyzing fear of the previous few seconds and I could feel it ebbing away to leave behind a brisk mom, battling another night …

Five years later…

Over my lazy Sunday morning cuppa, I vaguely heard my daughters arguing. “Why do boys have such a funny center point?” demanded the Little One, looking at the newspaper I was glancing over.
“Center point?’” I asked stupidly.
“Yes! The one here! Her pudgy finger pointed at a place little below the waistband of her knickers. “That’s what we call it at school!” she giggled, nudging the Older One. “What’s it called? It is sort of cute!”
“Where did you see it?’ I squeaked in alarm.
“Rhea’s baby brother's, of course! But what’s it called?” the Older One sounded impatient.
The moment had arrived. I managed to croak the word somehow.
“Hmm…” she repeated, almost savoring the word! “Like peanut?” she asked, clearly referring to its pronunciation.
The Little One answered sagely, “Yes, yes!! All the boys and men have it. Papa has it, Azoba has it, Vikram Uncle has it, Ravi Uncle has it…” The Older One nodded on solemnly.
I fled.

Two years later…

“Aai, today was the worst day at school!” The Little One proclaimed with a huge grin. I immediately adopted the ‘oh, my poor little baby’ expression but she remained unimpressed. “Oh, what happened?” I asked politely.
“Rahul said ‘I love you’ to me today,” she replied.
“Oh! You’ve found yourself a good friend now,” I sounded weak and stunned, yet, trying desperately to sound wise and confident.
“That he is! In fact, I like him too! He’s the best of the lot!”
“Oh?” I said weakly.
“But he’s not romantic enough!” the Little One scowled.
‘Oh?” I echoed weakly.
“Varun actually wrote ‘I love you ‘ to Sia in her home work book,” the Little One sounded highly indignant, and a trifle miffed.
I almost blurted out that it requires more courage to confess one’s love to the face than furtively scribbling it on paper, but I quickly realized that the daughter facing me now was not a seventeen year old but had just turned seven!
“Oh,” I said weakly.
“Could be that Rahul doesn’t know how to spell ‘love’ or my name, “ muttered the Little One, reassuring herself. “He’s very weak with his spellings, you see.”
“Oh?”
But she had scampered off, looking considerably relieved, a happy smile starting on her freckled face.

Now…
Waiting for more to come!

Bee Gee's note: An assistant editor with Citadel, the Pune city magazine, Kavita is the mum of two pretty, naughty, daughters. If morning shows the day as they say it does, she will have a great time watching her kids grow up.

SOME SPECIAL MADNESS, THIS VALENTINE'S!

BY BISWADEEP GHOSH

Marriage is a book in which the first chapter is written in poetry, and the remaining in prose. Don’t know who said it – actually did, once upon a time – but whoever the person was had to be very intelligent. Guys who know me will surely pounce at me with a caustic rejoinder: how the hell do you subscribe to that view? You are a bachelor, aren’t you? Yes, and that is precisely why I know it, having seen countless marriages in which couples started out as buddies – the key thing – and ended up being boring husbands and wives not only for one another but also for their near and dear ones. Three years after marriage, with a toddler in the house as a permanent fixture, being predictable of the what-will-you-eat-and-when variety is the only thing they seem capable of. Strife or no strife, they cease to have a life, because one is just the husband and the other, just the wife!

But something I experienced today made me really glad, and convinced me once again that to keep a marriage interesting, one has to be a little mad! A colleague’s husband has given her a Valentine Day’s card which is absolutely crazy, and has thoughts and ideas that can drive one apples, papayas, bananas…whatever. The card is designed to masquerade as a magazine, and the cover has some highly illuminating headlines:

1. Time Management On Valentine: How to accommodate all those dates in just one day without arousing suspicions.
2. Sex And Yoga: An incredibly imaginative feature. Also special: “How to dial a doctor with your nose”.
3. Coping With Sore Lips: How to deal with the aftermath of passionate Valentine smooching.
4. Reversible Lingerie: Save time and money. Elegant and economical.
5. On Valentine: Five ways to look and feel younger. Never fails.
6. Just How Late Should You Be On Your Date: A look at the eternal question.

The insides of the card have equally profound tips on looking and feeling younger, one of them being: “Avoid driving completely. Just buy a pram and take to travelling in it. Keeps them guessing.” Guess how long these guys have been married for? For around a decade or so, which is what makes the idea of sending such a card really special.

So, why do you think I am writing this piece hurriedly for the site? This one is for those who got married recently, and actually sent flowers and I Love You cards to their hubbies or wives. Imaginativeness and inventiveness are the two things which keep a marriage going. At least that is what I believe in. And yes, if you are in love you don’t have to say it so boringly that your partner thinks that your intentions are noble but your approach sucks.

Should that happen, the second chapter will begin to write itself. On its own. In bad, tired prose.

FOOTILICIOUS!

BY RAJIB SARKAR

Australians are a great sporting nation. Their records are nothing short of outstanding in all forms of outdoor games. There are two notable exceptions though: track-and-field events in athletics and soccer. In my reckoning, Australia’s tepid show in both these sports has something to do with its obsession with its own brand of football, footy!
‘Australian Rules Football’ has a history of over a century and a half. Way back in 1858, Melbourne Football Club was formed. It was the first club of Australia’s only indigenous game. Since then, footy has grown so much in popularity that during AFL (Australian Football League) every day, life itself takes a backseat. Come evening, either you are screaming hoarse in giant stadia like Telstra Dome or you are glued to your TV with a Victoria Bitter in hand. Meetings, business deals, marriage ceremonies - everything, everything – make way to accommodate AFL.
While footy is loved and played all over the nation, the state of Victoria is its natural home. No city, I repeat, no city, in Australia can match Melbourne’s craze for this most masculine form of human diversions. Minor injuries to local footy stars make front-page newspaper headlines often. AFL times are crossroad times for Melbournians. It may take just one match to start or end a relationship. Anything can happen during a match. It all depends on where the footytalk with your ‘significant other’ is heading …Hawthorne Hawks are gutless zombies … Collingwood Magpies are savage criminals …Richmond Tigers are a bunch of cheats… I dare not go further. Aussie invectives are not music to anybody’s ears.
Surprisingly, footy is not that big in Sydney. It is rugby that rules Australia’s biggest city. By the way, Nicole Kidman is a big fan of Sydney Swans. Not that it has made any dent in North South Wales’ wall of indifference. Brisbane Lions of Queensland and Western Bulldogs of Western Australia are two powerhouse teams outside of Victoria.
Though on the face of it, footy looks similar to rugby, it is faster paced and more flexible than rugby. Footy may lack soccer’s compositional grace and the beauty of dribbling. But that is compensated by its unfettered aggression and brawny abandon. Muscled bodies in motion create their own poetry in space. Can’t blame Australian women for counting footy among the last male bastions. Those who bemoan Mandira Bedi commenting on cricket would do well to note that female commentators are de rigueur on AFL broadcast.
All ye cricket aficionados, you will be mortified to know that during the winter, a venerable cricket ground like MCG gets pounded by 44 pairs of strapping feet. And cricket news simply disappears from sports pages of all national dailies.
You may argue that had such fine athletes taken up soccer instead, the rank of Australian national soccer team would have been more respectable. But why should what the rest of the world think be such a big deal? Let the others play soccer. Or run 400m.Let them not know what they are missing out on.

Bee Gee’s note: After having known Rajib for many years, can’t claim to know much about him. Well, this is what I am aware of. A qualified Mechanical Engineer, he also has an MBA degree. He has worked as an engineer for Bajaj, been with ad agencies, is currently with a consultancy firm, and was the Publisher and Editor of Gentleman which is when I got to know him. He was in the University of Melbourne in the pursuit of some course recently. So you know how this article came into being.

WEEKEND SPECIAL!

JUST READ THE DEBATE OVER SANJAY LEELA BHANSALI'S BLACK AND LET US KNOW WHICH IS THE PERSPECTIVE YOU HAVE VOTED FOR.
THANK YOU.

A THIRD ANGLE (IN BLACK AND WHITE)

BY BISWADEEP GHOSH

However good, bad, inane, insane, everybody is entitled to an opinion. But in the case of Sanjay Bhansali’s Black, the situation is rather unique as far as our site is concerned. Why? Because the reactions it has evoked – one from Ashwin Varde, the other from Saibal Chatterjee – are as dissimilar as anything can be from anything else. So, is Black as ethereal as Saibal is convinced it is? Or is it as detestable as Ashwin asserts so emphatically? Mine is a third view. And, nothing more.

This SLB offering has its share of pluses that take it to a plane not matched by any filmmaker from Bollywood for quite sometime. That Bhansali has been able to make a film of a decently high quality is indeed really surprising because many had started viewing the man most cynically after he had made a lavish satire of Devdas and served it on a platter, appalling many movie-goers nationwide. With Black, the maker has been able to show what he is capable of. He has given it his heart, his soul, his everything. And no, it is not fair to say that he is eyeing the overseas market because it is highly unlikely that such a film will do well abroad in commercial terms anyway. After all, the flick does not have Gujjus and Punjabis, it does not have SRK, it does not have an NRI element, it has not come from the stable of Karan Johar and Aditya Chopra. Bhansali has made a sincere effort. And that has worked, at least partially.

Two, the performances. Some of our readers might be familiar with the play called Zoo Story written by Edward Albee, one of the founding fathers of the Theatre of the Absurd. The Albee play has just two characters, one named Peter, the other Jerry, and why the play is so memorable is because there is palpable tension between the two characters that mesmerises the watcher. In Black, the two protagonists are Michelle McNally (a deaf and blind girl played by Rani Mukherji) and Debraj Sahai (an eccentric teacher who comes to change Michelle’s life played by Amitabh Bachchan). When the twosome share the screen, the moments are indeed quite special if not out and out extra-ordinary. Remember the scene in which the girl wishes to kiss her teacher because he has found his way into her heart like no one else? Never mind if he is too old. Never mind if he is not her lover. Never mind if she cannot see. She relates to him in a way she has never ever related to a man in her entire life. That is one of the several scenes during which SLB got everything right.

Everyone has been raving about the film’s cinematography. Indeed, it is exceptional. So is the fact that Shernaz Patel is brilliant as Michelle’s mum and, by casting her, Bhansali has given a fine option to many filmmakers who had forgotten about her very existence. Nandana Sen looks the perfect second daughter of Shernaz because their facial similarities are unbelievable. And just when many had started believing that Bollywood has not had a single quality performance from a child after Jugal Hansraj in Masoom many years ago, Ayesha Kapur as the younger Michelle has proved the theory wrong. In fact, in Masoom, all director Shekhar Kapur needed was a boy with a cute face and a lost faraway sort of look. Hansraj fitted the bill perfectly. But in Black, what Ayesha does is pure acting. As a deaf and blind kid who is hopelessly undisciplined – almost like a wild animal – she comes up with an authentic and authoritative performance.

Now, the shortcomings. While the Helen Keller-Annie Sullivan real life story had to inspire someone, someday, Bhansali isn’t the first. The credit for adapting this story goes to a film called The Miracle Worker in which Patty Duke came up with an Oscar-winning performance by playing Keller. Bachchan’s character is a take on the character of Sullivan played by Anne Bancroft. Briefly, all hopes of coming close to an Oscar die right here.

A couple of minor players have been very badly developed. Known best to most non-Bengali film watchers for his performance in 36 Chowringhee Lane, Dhritiman Chatterjee who plays the girl’s father has been wasted. Ditto Nandana Sen who, to make things worse, actually speaks in wrong Hindi during a dining table conversation in the film. (If somebody were to justify that the McNallys are Christians and, therefore, are not expected to speak in correct Hindi, why did she take off in the language in the first place?)

In the film, the Big B is shown as the miracle man. But since SLB got carried away by the idea of showing the untamed child for far too long, some of the subtle steps which ‘should’ have led to Michelle’s recovery are missing. That is a huge hole in the script, and one fails to understand why it was not looked into while the film was being made. Perhaps, the fact that Ayesha performed so brilliantly was the reason. But that cannot justify the flaw which, to be honest, is the most obvious weakness of the film.

Having said all that, one must add that Bhansali has manifested an intrepid mind by making a film in which there is so much of English in the script. How one wishes he had not missed out on the shortcomings so that Black would have been a really brilliant, and not just a very good, film!

Bee Gee’s Note: No more of Black, although surprises are in store!

BLACK’S LIKE AISHWARYA: ALL LOOKS, NO SOUL!

BY ASHWIN VARDE

Classics happen. They are never created. That is one golden fact every filmmaker in the Hindi film industry needs to come to terms with. Let us take a look at some of the most talked-about and acclaimed films: Guide, Pyaasa, Shri 420, Mother India, Mughal-E-Azam, Sholay, Deewar, Amar Akbar Anthony, Satya and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge to name a few. They became legends because they were made straight from the heart. But anyone who has tried to ‘create’ a classic has always fallen flat on his face. K. Asif tried to recapture the magic of Mother India with his forgettable sequel, Son Of India, which I’m sure not many have even heard about. Or Kamal Amrohi who tried to create history with Razia Sultan. Even Ramesh Sippy could not repeat the same magic of Sholay with Shaan, and this despite the fact that the latter was a far better film in purely technical terms.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Black is a skillfully crafted movie. The casting, technical aspects, production values – almost everything about the film is perfect. And that’s exactly what makes it look so plastic. It’s like Aishwarya Rai – she’s flawless in every respect and yet has a tough time connecting with the audience.

A subject as vulnerable as Black should ideally have had a moving or endearing moment once every fifteen minutes. But it doesn’t. Not once does the film choke you with emotion or even succeed in bringing a solitary tear to your eyes. But at the same time, the finesse of the film, the power of the lead performers and the overall impact overwhelm you. It is a work of art, but one of those which does not have a soul and hence, does not appeal to the human heart.

It’s clear that Bhansali has made this film keeping in mind the international market – he and Rani have been saying in interviews that this is truly India’s first universal film. But I really doubt that. A subject like this may have something new for the Indian audience but, abroad, there are countless films that have dealt with similar themes: and in an infinitely better manner.

Firstly, the one factor that everything’s going gaga about – the look of the film – will be thoroughly ignored by the West. Well, even some of their most mediocre films are just as good- looking. Secondly, the performances will be a huge drawback, particularly Amitabh Bachchan’s. Bhansali, at times, has left the man on his own and the actor does go overboard with his histrionics more than once. Hollywood is not used to such loud drama.

Thirdly and most importantly, as I said earlier, films based on subjects like this (relationships between teacher-student, father-son, mother-daughter, etc.) have been far too many. How can Black even compare with the might of movies like Life Is Beautiful or Cinema Paradiso?

Somehow, Bhansali has succumbed to the same syndrome he suffered during Devdas. Grand sets, great cinematography, phenomenal production values were all there but the end result was a film that looked good. And, just that. Compared to Black, I would rate films like Sai Paranjpe’s Sparsh (where Naseeruddin Shah played the role of a blind teacher) or Gulzar’s Koshish (where Sanjeev Kumar and Jaya Bhaduri were a deaf-mute couple) far, far higher. They didn’t have the grandeur of Black but the films were so delicately crafted that we carry their memories within us even today.

Bee Gee’s Note: Ashwin Varde, the Editorial Director of Magna Publishing, just hated Black. This is his reaction to the article written by Saibal Chatterjee that follows right after this sentence.

BLACK MAGIC!

BY SAIBAL CHATTERJEE

It is rather strange that some Indian critics use the word “flawed” so frequently. Aren’t the run-of-the-mill Hindi films that they review day in and day out filled with flaws, flaws and more flaws? Weaned on muck, these reviewers are unable to spot perfection when it comes their way out of the blue. That is perhaps why one worthy has actually described Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Black as flawed. Give me a break!

Black is a dazzling cinematic achievement. Both in terms of the scale of its technical virtuosity and of the enormity of its dramatic impact, Bhansali’s meticulous labour of love is blocks, streets and localities ahead of any Bollywood film that we have ever seen. Black is a film that pleases the eye, activates the tear-ducts, excites the mind, warms the heart and touches the soul in one grand sweep.

Finally, Bollywood has found a worthy successor to the mantle left behind by the likes of Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt and Raj Kapoor. Bhansali has taken a while in coming, but better late than never. Finally, we have a truly world-class film and not just another Oscar winner wannabe.

Indeed, Black has the potential of doing to Mumbai films what Satyajit Ray’s epochal Pather Panchali did to Indian cinema five decades ago – yank it away from its mediocre moorings and teach it how to soar above the mundane. But are we, easy-to-please souls weaned on fluffy romances and run-of-the-mill action flicks, really ready for the revolution?

Having been witness to some authentic Black magic, I am willing to put that question on hold. Let us just savour the moment – in fact, the multiplicity of enchanting moments that makes Black such a treat. Black is a marvellous amalgam of high-quality technique, wonderful storytelling and top-notch acting.

This intense drama of a tremulous human life wrapped in complete darkness is endowed with an ennobling and uplifting quality that helps it break free from the ersatz emotions that are usually peddled by popular Hindi cinema.

Bhansali pushes his actors to the limits of their abilities and endurance, and both Amitabh and Rani respond with an amazing degree of expertise and flexibility. Rani Mukherjee is Michelle McNally, a deaf, mute and blind girl who is led into the penumbra of light and hope by an alcoholic, temperamental teacher of special children, Debraj Sahay, played with awesome dexterity and authority by Amitabh Bachchan.

By giving Mumbai cinema its first deaf and blind screen character, Bhansali’s film actually represents a return to the roots of cinema as a medium, where meanings and emotions were conveyed through facial expressions, body language and universal human situations, rather than through words, songs, dance and spectacle. Rani’s character is consciously given Charlie Chaplin’s gait – a point reinforced by the posters of films like The Kid and Gold Rush that are visible on the walls of the recreated Gaiety Theatre, Shimla as Michelle’s ambles past. Way to go, SLB!

Bee Gee's note: Saibal Chatterjee is a New Delhi-based writer on movies who has worked in publications like The Times of India, The Telegraph and Outlook. He is currently working on a biography of Gulzar, and has also been part of the jury for the National Awards. The guy has done quite a bit actually, considering he will be 50 in another decade or so.

THE LOST WORLD

BY ANANT NARAYAN MAHADEVAN

Last night the phone rang. The ring tone was indication enough of an overseas call. The caller introduced himself as Steven Spielberg that surprised me completely.
"Cut the spiel, Steve," I said, "There are more important names in the Screenworld Directory. Why call me?"
"If you hang up, you lose the role of a lifetime," said the person with a pronounced Yankee accent. If it wasn’t Steven, then somebody was being a mighty good mimic. So I decided to respect the talent and play along.
"I have drawn up the scenario for Jurassic Park 6," he said
" Really?," I inquired. "Whatever happened to 4 and 5?"
"4 and 5 never happened?," said Steve, sounding surprised, "Well, that’s for the audiences to take note of. As for me, I always lose count of sequels which brings me to this Jurrasic Park. It is called JURASSICK PARK…EK THA TV...Indian TV!"
"A movie about TV?," I cried, "What am I in it, the idiot in some kind of a box?"
"Well, Jurassic Park has to be about dinosaurs. So, this one too will feature a dinosaur."
"Great Steve, so what does that leave me with? A walk-on part? Sorry, I can’t compete with Naseer, Om and company!"
"No, mate, you play the main role, that of the dinosaur," remarked Steve with complete confidence.
"Have you seen Dino the Dinosaur? Watch him play the lead in a movie called Raaz and you have the expressionless wonder you are looking for," I said, trying to be the helpful casting director.
"Well, I am looking for a dinosaur from your television world and my research tells me, that’s you Anant," exclaimed the voice in an even more excited tone.
"Search me," I replied.
"Well, here’s what the reports say," continued Steve."You took off in commercial Indian television network in circa 1984 and are still alive and kicking."
"But, I have quit TV," I protested.
He ignored and continued, "I have further learnt that there hasn’t been a single year in which you didn’t feature either as an actor or a director on Indian television in the past twenty years, with some years showcasing as many as three or four of your works. That is some kind of a world record, man."
"Ah, that’s why the rest of the world knows, but not India," I lamented.
"So, you are the last of the surviving dinosaurs and fit my part to a D. Before even you become extinct, I want to capture you for posterity."
I didn’t know how to react to the meticulously researched truth.
After waiting for a while, I said: "Well, you see it isn’t entirely my fault. When we started off in 1984, we had this new and fresh approach to television. Sai Paranjpe, Sridhar Kshirsagar, Kundan Shah, Aziz Mirza, Saeed Mirza, Aanand Mahendroo, Ramesh Sippy, all made serials [now deemed as classics] and created television stars. Now no one bothers to remember them. You are right. They are extinct far as the TV is concerned. They are even threatening to make recent makers like Lekh Tandon and Ravi Rai extinct. You are right. I am going to be extinct soon."
"But not before you, as the dinosaur of television expose the new age villains and take revenge for the extinction of your contemporaries," declared Steve, "JURASSICK PARK [don’t miss the lucky K in the title] will create a serious tehelka."
"Look, it really isn’t the fault of those stupid people who smoke cigarettes, whack from foreign shows and make sure that the bahu’s bindi and saree falls don’t go haywire when she gets up from bed. After all, these guys are not even aware of a Basu Chatterji or a Hrishikesh Mukherjee just like I don’t know too much about dinosaurs," I explained.
"My sequel will feature these guys as the enfant terribles," barked Steve,"and they will come after you to finish you. The story will feature rejections, untold favours to kith and kin, parrots who memorise reams of dialogue and pass off as actors, the complete corruption of television executive producers and the emergence of regressive sagas as weapons to destroy you and your sensibilities."
"And who wins?" I inquired frantically. "Do I die or do I survive?"
"I will have two endings,” he said. “One will be for the audience where you die fighting to uphold the tradition of the names you just mentioned. That will be a realistic end. The other end will have you finish the idiots and bring back the lost glory of the television. Only one print will have this ending. That I will send you, so that you can live with it in your dream world."

JURRASICK PARK…EK THA TELEVISION…COMING SOON!

Bee Gee's Note: Anant Mahadevan is an actor-director who has left the television to concentrate on making movies. His latest film Dil Maange More starred the current teen sensation Shahid Kapoor. And yeah, he is not at all keen to go back to the world of Indian television.

THE BEGINNING

BY BISWADEEP GHOSH

A lively, not-so-wild animal. That was me, a long time ago, when the earth seemed young, charming, blessed with the ability to offer so much beyond the fatiguing mundanities of a cliched existence.
But I have turned into a silkworm of late. A silkworm who retreats into the cocoon of his seventh floor office room first thing in the morning, and journeys his way back in a rickety and congested train to reach a second cocoon, a tiny flat of a Mumbai suburb whose face hasn't been subverted by the maniacal lunacy of the city's traffic. In this house, I cook, sing, pray, read, work on my novel from time to time. Still, many are inclined to believe that I have a life. Thank you guys.
Yet, solitude brings with it a package of boons that I would never ever refute. As of now, it has allowed me to create a blog and call it 'smallbigworld'. Why so? Because the two spaces that I mostly inhabit -- my office room and the flat -- are both quite small. But, courtesy the Internet, I swim in the endless ocean of hard facts, fun stories, great photographs...and so much more. The experience is matchless, more so because cyberspace is the only ocean where one can swim with one's clothes on!
So you know why I have named this place 'smallbigworld'. If not, it is because my two worlds -- one of hiding in a tiny space, the other of accessing the world of info --are seldom separate. Writers of tired prose (in India, that is) can easily say these two features of my life "are united through holy matrimony." Dismal English, that, because I haven't yet figured out how matrimony can ever be unholy! (But then, the founding fathers of the language have accepted a bizarre concoction like pre-planned which is actually inane because any thing that is planned has an element of 'pre-ness' to it really.)
By now, you surely know that apart from being a sceptic, I am also pretty lazy. Or else, why would I be indulging in pseudo-Joycean gimmickry when I should be having a good nap after lunch during office hours which is what good workers do? I am told it is called a power nap, that it energizes and revitalizes a person. Instead of shutting my eyelids, I am typing away (oh, they call it keying in post-comp revolution) to create a blog: with a lot of help from people I know once they get to know it exists.
Welcome to smallbigworld.blogspot.com. This is my third world which is not mine alone.