Last night, as I plunked myself on my bed after dinner and cut a swath trying to find the remote, I was surprised to find a dinosaur egg on my bed. Geet, who was gargling standing near the bathroom door, almost sprayed the fine blue Listerine all over me. The egg had a sparkling display on it which read –

This is a Time capsule.

From – Amit Sharma

Dated – 23 Sept, 2042

Please bang your head on the top to open it.

“Bang it. What are you waiting for?” Geet said.

“Are you crazy? There might be a baby Godzilla inside it!”

She caught hold of my neck and banged my head on the egg. It neatly split into two, displaying a letter inside. I took it out and opened it, half expecting it to burst in my hand. The capsule vanished. This is what the letter said.

Dear Amit,

If you are reading this letter, it probably means that the time capsule worked, although I am not sure if it has landed in the correct past or in an alternate one, but never mind. I got my first time capsule yesterday and decided to send it thirty years back. If you are mulling over who I am, I am you, thirty years older, with a lot of wrinkles and a lot of white hair. Yeah, they did not fall, as you suspected.

I really do not know what to tell you. I do not want to tell you about your future as it is the worse I can do to my past. Also, it will change the future for me, as you may decide not to do certain things, and I don’t want that to happen. So, I will tell you about general stuff, which does not concern you after a point.

You must be wondering how much the world will change in the next thirty years. Well, it will change but not as much as you would like it to. We do not use a lot of physical things now. Our mobiles, televisions and laptops are projections in the air. They are just small devices, as large as a ring on your finger which could produce the projection when you require. Our cars now run on water and garbage. Scientists have revealed that the first water car was created thirty years back, but putting it in the market meant making a lot of countries bankrupt, so they kept milking the people, till there was no more to milk. Ditto for quantum computers. Petrol went up to 3000 Rs a litre before it was put to sleep. Now we have a bottle of it in the Science Museum.

We had flying cars too. A lot of nations still use them as they are fast and yes, they run on water. They tried to introduce them in India too, but the way we drive on the roads, imagine the chaos in the sky where there were no solid roads. They banned them after the sky turned into a scene out of Star wars. You must be finding it amusing, but technology was never a problem, was it?

India beat China in population a few days back. It’s so crowded everywhere now a day. We are like ants, brimming over everything. A kind soul invented air-conditioned clothes a few years back. Thankfully, the heat and cold are not a worry anymore, at least for the people above poverty line. Yes, there are still poor people in India. What were you expecting?

Oh! Something funny happened yesterday. Kasab died in his sleep in the jail. The trial is still going on. And Rahul never became the Prime Minister, if you would like to know. He is old now, like Advani old. Sons of SRK and Hrithik are huge stars, so is Aishwarya’s daughter. Salman never married. The only good thing that has happened in the last few years is that our movies are a bit sensible now. Anil Kapoor recently acted in Transformers 18. It was fun to see him turn into a car. Anyways, he gets blown off after five minutes into the movie. Abhishek turned director. Now he is directing flops.

You must be wondering what happened to the Lokpal Bill? Well, it got through but it had its own flaws. It was quite a mess for a few years before things ironed out. We are not in deep shit as we were in your time but there is still so much to do and so much to change. Indians still honk, in case you were pondering. Men still pee on walls and spit on roads. Sigh! Delhi is still the rape capital. That was another reason flying cars were banned.

Sometimes when you look into the future, you are all positive. But then you start realising that you will not reach the other end of the spectrum in your lifetime. Utopia is always like a mirage. You will see what I mean.

You will be happy. It will be a good life. It is all a state of mind and you know that.

I hope this letter reached the right dimension in my past. I hope I haven’t disappointed you in any way. I know our movies give us a very wrong impression of the future, but we are getting there. The pace is slower than the human imagination though.

Best of luck

Amit

p.s. We made contact with aliens. They were nowhere like what they show in the movies. And no, they did not land in America. More in my next letter.

Geet and I looked at each other as I folded the letter. There was silence for a moment.

“Abhishek turned director?” both of us said simultaneously.

I really do not have anything against fairness products. Its how they are marketed is what I find detrimental.

Pick up a matrimonial column in a newspaper and it will be splashed with black ink asking for fair brides. How a fair bride will be more intelligent, loving and supportive than a dark-skinned bride is beyond me, but somehow Indians have stood their ground since decades – the whiter the bride, the bigger the trophy. Add to this, the humiliating portrayal of dark-skinned women by fairness products advertisements. In a society which has left no stone unturned to humiliate women – whether by female feticide, rapes, molestation and dowry deaths, do the fairness product companies realize the harm they are doing by portraying dark-skinned women as undesirable? Do they realize the mental trauma and pressure some of the women go through so that they could be suitable and enviable? Add the sword of fairness to their social conditioning, and we have a perfect recipe of disaster for an average Indian woman whose idea of being broad-minded is to wear jeans. Of course there are women in India, who are liberal enough to see through the farce, but they are a very tiny minority. To capitalize on the confidence demolishing activity, talcum powders have joined the circus too. There is an advert on television now-a-days where a woman starts glowing like radium after touching her face with talcum powder!

To add to the pain, the fairness product companies have regrettably upped their own bar of the mockery of the average Indian. A white face glowing like a neon signboard is not enough to make your man interested in you. The women should have underarms and vagina glowing like tube lights. If you have dark underarms, people are going to shun you. You will have a massive inferiority complex. Apply the deodorant and you can tie your arms above your head so that everyone can see the bright flashes emancipating from your underarms. Apply the magic cream around your vagina and your man will return to you.

And it’s not just women. Upping the bar includes adding men to the charade. There are rippling effects. In a revealing article in Times of India, there are a lot of men now who are going for expensive underarm surgeries which basically paralyze the sweat glands. In fact the ratio of men going for such surgeries is more than the women. We have men’s fairness creams in the market now endorsed by superstars. I will not be surprised if soon we are ushered into the era of fairer buttocks and whiter balls.

Another aspect of such negative and demoralizing advertizing is the portrayal of men as animals filled with lust for white skin. We are shown as someone who is shallow, who gives more importance to outer beauty and who thinks white is superior. We are shown wagging our tails after woman who glows. No, we are not that dumb. Well, a lot of us aren’t. Love is not a subset of skin color. We like gifted women, who have a mind of their own. Believe me, if a woman would ever try to attract us by showing us her milky white underarms, we would die laughing. We might also take a picture of her, title it “EPIC FAIL” and post it on Facebook. Let me state that a lot of us laugh at the disturbingly vivid imagination of the creators of such adverts.

It’s not only women who are tormented by such advertisements. Numerous deodorants are projected as aphrodisiac. A man need to spray a deodorant and women from far-flung countries, planets (!) and even angels would descend in hoards to sleep with him. And so we have women falling over each other to get a bite of the poor guy, who will be scared shitless with so many women hovering above him. Excuse me, but isn’t a deodorant somehow related to removing body odour? Here again the advertisements show women in poor light. They are so dense, that all you need is a deodorant costing Rs 150 to get them in your bed. Chivalry anyone?

Sometimes I wonder whether such companies ever think about the damage they are doing while selling their products. Do they ever think that they are pushing a lot of men and women towards depression and low self-esteem, thriving on their insecurities like a virus? They are signifying that you are not good enough without our products; you will end up a loser if you do not polish your underarms, if you do not use our deodorants. They are asking everyone to applause the surface.

It is not as if there is no other go. Responsible advertising is always an option. Being sensitive to your target population is definitely not out of fashion. But then, the companies have to decide the level to which they are willing to lower themselves.

And to make someone feel bad about herself to sell your product is the lowest you can stoop.

[image from 1]

If you are wondering what Phuddu means, let me enlighten you. It means a coward, spineless douche bag.

Sometimes I wonder what grave necessity threw you into the act of marriage. Was it your parents? Was it some sort of inferiority complex because people around you were getting married? Or was it just a robotic impulse imbibed inside you since you were born? Or you just needed a woman to fu*k?

You do not deserve this woman you have married. Remember the day when you came back from a holiday in Singapore with your wife and your mother opened all your suitcases as soon as you entered the house, to dig in all the things you might have bought without her knowledge? How dare you allow her to do that? Yes, you whimpered like a scared puppy, vomited out something inaudible but when your mother explained that this is how things have been in this house, you went to a corner and sulked. Yes, that was the best you could come up with in front of the woman whom you have married. Could you have got any more phuddu-er?

The overnight flight from Singapore had left your wife very tired. She went to the office the next day and by the time she came back in the evening; she could hardly stand due to exhaustion. Your mother asked her to prepare dinner for 12 guests in three hours. Your wife made the dinner while you stood like a complete loser and let that happen. And then your mother had the nerve to come in your room at midnight and lectured you on respecting the elders! Of course, you listened respectfully, while your wife cried.

Dear Phuddu,

You are a software engineer, well-educated, born and brought up in a city. Do you even understand what the institution of marriage stands for? Do you understand that when a woman leaves her house after marriage, she blindly relies on her husband to sail her through. She is scared. The only person who could share her anxiety and who could support her is you. And what did you do Phuddu? You let your parents dictate whether you need a maid in your house or not, even though they live in a separate house? And to prove to your wife that she could not have found a phuddu-er life partner, you agree with your mother that your wife should do all the household chores in addition to her job.

Phuddu,

You are an adult. You do not wear diapers anymore. You don’t have to take permission from your parents every time you go to toilet. You do not have to piss in your pants every time your mother raises an eyebrow. Which part of this are you not able to understand? You are married for fuc* sake! Have you ever bothered what your wife is thinking about you when you pout and brood instead of setting things straight, when you are too afraid to speak in front of your parents, when you are unable to make simple decisions?

And, what kind of person takes money from his wife’s parents? Do you know what a big loser you project yourself while indulging in this act? You are not even capable of taking care of your finances, beg for money from your in-laws as if it’s your birth right and then have the nerve to mistreat your wife. Really! You take Phuddu-ism to an entirely new level.

You don’t like a girl as your child, do you Phuddu? Reality check – You married a girl assho*e! You would have ended up as a nondescript, pathetic loner if not for this girl who did the biggest mistake of her life by marrying you. And your mother was a girl once too. Now come to think of it, imagine a scenario where your mother was killed in her mother’s womb; the world would have been a happier place without a phuddu like you born years later.

I know you have indulged in taking dowry, raping your wife, beating her mercilessly and burning her alive and Phuddu is a very small word for such a man. I know the law is very lenient on you. Thousands of you roam the streets. The only punishment worthy of you is to cut off your pen*s and hang it on a chord around your neck in a bottle of preservative. And then tattoo “Phuddu” on your forehead and let the world see what you really are. Yes, that is what you deserve.

Phuddu,

You are a disgrace to married men. We are ashamed that you are a part of our community. Given a chance, we would love to throw you off in the Gobi desert with a  Gobhi shoved up your ass.

Really, grow some balls and a brain while you are at it.

Yours truly,

A Sensible Married Man.

p.s. The incidents narrated in the post are true.

At that time if anyone would have suggested that one day internet will be available on mobiles, he would have ended up like Galileo.

Sometimes, the leap which technology has taken in the last twenty years boggles me. From a time when mobiles and internet connection were unheard of, we have reached a point where a street vendor has a better mobile than me, where my maid talks to her boyfriend all the time while doing the dishes. My mind still does not comprehend the fact that I can browse internet on my mobile. Was it another life when I visited an internet cafe to browse for twenty rupees an hour on a rickety 56 kbps connection? Was it another life when I had tears of joy in my eyes when I heard the mechanical sound of a dial-up connection in my house for the first time? It is amazing that I once had the capability to derive joy from such minuscule things.

I also belong to the generation who has lost a lot of friends to distance. Leave aside internet, telephone connection was a distant dream for my family when I was in school. The only way I could keep in touch with my school friends was by calling them from a local PCO (which I did religiously) but then soon gave in to my college studies. When we finally got a telephone, it was a necessity not a luxury.

It is being argued that internet has killed real-time conversations. I do not think internet has anything to do with it. Our life is not similar to that of the previous generation. My friend circle is spread over continents. We do not meet in years. In India too, we are spread over various cities. I haven’t seen so many of my friends in flesh since ages. So, it’s not internet that is responsible for the changing equations, it’s our work culture, it’s our lifestyle that has changed. Sitting with friends over a cup of tea in the evening has turned into a privilege only a few could enjoy, just like an internet connection two decades back. The irony is palpable.

Time flies!

That is why I think internet is a blessing. I can pick up my mobile, login into a social networking website and share a moment with my friends. I can see them going for further studies and enjoying their new friend circle, I can see them getting engaged, getting married, going for honeymoon, having babies, celebrating birthdays of their children, enjoying their holidays. I do not need a PCO to hear their voices, I can have a video chat with them. For someone who once tried desperately to keep his friends from dwindling, you cannot begin to imagine the joy all this brings.

Time is a running Cheetah and we are sitting on its back. But then all of us need our moments of sanity and who else can give them if not our family and friends?

My mobile is like a window in each of my friend’s life and internet is the latch. I can open the latch any time and be a part of their lives and make them part of mine. It’s amazing how our lives are shared virtually by zeroes and ones. Who knows, a few more decades down the line, we might be sharing pictures of our children getting married. And who knows humans might have discovered teleportation by then and our children will laugh at how we used internet to connect. But, till then, I have realised that I still have the capability to derive joy from minuscule things. I have my mobile and my internet connection and I can see my friends.

Yes, I can see them.

[This is my entry to Indiblogger's Internet is fun contest]

www.vodafone.in/fun

[images from 1,2,3]

Cucumber face

Forrest Gump once said – “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

I beg to differ. There are no horrors in a box of chocolates.

“Life is like a men’s beauty parlour. You never know what unimaginable activity is going to hurt your eyes.”

Now there is drama in this. A box of chocolates is all too sugary, just like rose-tinted glasses.

Here is the secret. I have been to one of those….places. But I swear on my virgin eyebrows that it was the first and the last time, largely because of the eye-popping climax.

*Flashback. Misty eyed. Looking at the distant past with Aamir’s Satyamev Jayate look*

I was about to get married in five days. My mom, in a sudden urge, captured my face with her fingers and looked intensely at it. I felt like a fish, spluttering helplessly in an eagle’s claw.

“Too many whiteheads! You have to go to the parlour. I want you to shine.”

“Over my dead body”, I said.

If I have not clarified this before, let me pause and take this opportunity to clear out a few things. I am a guy. Guys do not go to beauty parlours. Period.

My sister joined the chorus basically because she was having fun on my expense. So, I was pushed into having a five day course at a nearby Men’s parlour with a completely forgettable name and an ugly owner who could have used some of the parlour’s services.

One of the activities

Everyday someone would drop me there and then pick me up in an hour. What I witnessed in those five days was a revelation. I told the guy who was attending me to do whatever he wanted because I was least interested and was about to close my eyes for an hour. He smiled and bombarded my face with one cream after another. Packs and massages rained down, sometimes followed by a lot of steam from what looked like a spare part from an alien spaceship. For five days, there were cold and hot sensations, stinging, steams, sprays and god knows what. I behaved like a patient in coma. The only time my eyes popped out of their sockets was when he applied a green cream which looked like fluorescent poop and felt like needles. I asked him to immediately remove it before he turns me into carrot and himself into a pulpy mass of flesh and broken bones. His fingers revolving on my cheeks was bad enough.

What really got my goat was that the parlour was chock-a-block with boys and men. To be honest, I did peek around to satisfy my urge to understand the need of existence of such a place. There were men discussing face packs and hair colours, waxing their arms and legs, getting their eyebrows done, replacing eyeballs with cucumber and getting a haircut which took hours to finish and hard to spot. Sometimes, I felt like sitting at one of those unmentionable places with red bulbs where people do inexplicable stuff. This was way off my radar of comprehension. This was a really bad dream. My eyes hurt.

Oh! The climax! I almost forgot. On the day of my marriage, when my face was finally revealed in the unnecessarily huge mirror shimmering with the shiny teeth of my attendant at the background, I could hardly make out any difference, except that I was a bit whiter. I guess, that was the whole idea of clogging me with all the creams. I sighed and gave him the remaining amount from my pocket. He asked me to wait and picked up a glittering tube-ish thing from his stuff and started applying it on my lips.

“Err..what is this?”, I asked a bit alarmed and looked all around to make sure no one saw what was happening.

“This will make your lips look red.”

The first thing I did after paying him and coming out of the parlour was to spit and hastily rub my lips with a handkerchief before anyone saw me and start rolling on the ground laughing his head off. Then I inhaled deeply. I felt like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, finally free after digging a long, painful tunnel and swimming in a glittering, red sludgy liquid.

Nothing so dramatic!

Everyone at my home recognised me. I was not expecting to do a Jassi on them anyways.

*Flashback over. Eyes closed after the painful remembrance*

Well, that was then. I have never felt the need to dwell near any such establishment. The taste of that glitter still haunts me. Forrest Gump was wrong. None of the chocolates would have tasted this bitter.

Life is definitely like a Men’s beauty parlour – sometimes like the pain of seeing a man waxing his arms and sometimes like a cool facemask outlining a moustache.

[images from 1,2,3]

I feel disgusted by these questions!

Here is one person who is trying his bit to bring a change of heart, who is trying to give hope and courage to millions of people out there and all we could do is to come up with these filthy questions? All we can move our sorry ass is to question his motives?

He is not trying to be a messiah. He is not foolish to make such a claim in this country. We always question our stars and consider them to be money minded, never standing up for social causes. We are perfectly fine with them coming in various shows to sell their movies. We are perfectly fine with them selling hundreds of products to us. But we feel completely uncomfortable when one of them picks up a mirror and shows the reality of our society to us. Tell me, does this cynicism stem from the abhorrence you feel on seeing the perfect image of our society crumble in the mirror? Does the fact that it tarnishes the false “India shining” image makes you angry?

I was watching a debate on Star news yesterday where this gentleman was trying to point out that Aamir has commercialised the issue. So, basically this guy would have been ok if Aamir would have erected a stage near India Gate and given a speech from there and showed everything on a projector and would not have earned anything in return. The fact that Aamir’s production house earned money from the commercials during the programme was what irked this guy. He could not see beyond the money. He could not see the almost red map of India which showed how badly female foeticide has seeped in our society. He could not see the research, the data and the honest effort that went into driving the point home. He could not see the sting operation against 140 doctors which happened seven years back and which resulted in none of the doctors being prosecuted.

In India, actors and cricketers have a huge following. People listen when they speak. Amitabh Bachchan changed the polio drive by his presence. In a survey done later, the women told that they came because Mr. Bachchan asked them to. This is the power of a star – the power to bring change, the power to change mindsets. People argue that what can a 90 minute show change? The accused will never feel guilty. Yes, they won’t but what if this programme gives determination to a mother to stand up and say no to kill her daughter in her womb? If Satyamev Jayate gives even an iota of resolution to a few, then no one has the right to question the motives of its creator.

No, India is not shining. Far from it. So, let’s not fool ourselves. And if we are not capable of doing something, then lets bloody stop belittling someone who is making an effort.

That is all you will get to see after 57 cuts.

The opening scene of The Dirty Picture shows a rustic Silk Smitha moaning in her room trying to distract a couple who is having sex in the next room. As I settled comfortably on my seat in the cinema hall enjoying the moaning overlapping with my wife’s laughter, I heard another voice – a crying child. At first I thought it’s a woman screaming at her husband but then a second later, a pair of toddlers swooshed past me playing on the stairs of the cinema hall. Considering the fact that the movie had an Adult only certificate, there were a lot of children in the theatre. It seems that Indian parents have taken up sex education very seriously and the cinema owners were fully supporting them by royally flaunting the rules.

That is why, when I&B ministry decided to stop the prime time telecast of the movie, it was unscrambling scrambled eggs. If the I&B ministry wanted to save the parents from embarrassment, maybe stopping the news channels from using the word “Porn” while telecasting the sham that happened in the Karnataka assembly would have been the right step.

Another point to moan in the whole episode is that the movie won three National Awards and still was banned to be shown in prime time. It’s like the French draping the statue of Venus with a cloth in the Louvre and justifying it with the following statement – “We know it’s a masterpiece but we can’t show her naked breasts to children.”

How dare you call me a naked woman? I am a masterpiece!

I am not completely blaming I&B ministry for this. The ministry apparently received a lot of calls from concerned parents about the effect the movie will have on their children. Haven’t the parents heard of a remote control? And how much of the objectionable content of the movie will be left after 59 cuts? Did the parents understand the meaning of a UA certificate and the fact that the Censor Board approved the movie after the cuts? Maybe instead of sexually oppressing their children, such parents should talk to them about the topic. They will be surprised to know that their children can teach them a thing or two.

I grew up watching Baywatch and Santa Barbara with my grandparents and came out all right.  I do not eve tease; I am not a rapist and have a comfortable job. Although my parents did not want me to see Pamela running on the beach wobbling her assets and reprimanded my grandparents for making me sexually active well before my age (which is not true I think), all they could elicit was an amusing tsk-tsk from my grandma. She found my parents very old fashioned. It’s just a bloody kissing scene, she would say at times.

Sometimes I wonder if there is an entire spectrum of parents in India. The liberal who take their children to watch Delhi Belly, The Dirty Picture and Vicky Donor and the conservatives who have loads of time on their hand to file a PIL against Dirty Picture being shown on prime time after 59 cuts. I am sure the latter group would turn a beetroot red every time they view an advert for sanitary napkins and condoms in front of their children.

The point being that the more a child is hushed into not watching something, the more curious he gets. If you do not give him any answers, he will find them from somewhere else, sometimes contorted ones. I am not asking the parents to send their children to strip clubs but running towards your child with a blanket to cover him up every time you see Imran Hashmi on screen will not help either. You will end up with a lot of holes in your blanket.

And please do not talk about culture and values. I am sure parents will instill more values in their children if they do not spit on roads, do not litter and do not jump signals in front of their children. Installing values is making the children aware of the various evil practices rampant in our great nation. And culture is nothing but a controlling stick. The brittle it gets, the better.

And, yes, The Dirty Picture is available for 20 Rs in a lot of markets in India. I am quite sure most of the children can afford it.

[images from 1,2,3]

Katrina – I don’t care which award function this is. I just have to move my hips.

In the last decade, the number of award functions for honoring shoddy Bollywood movies and catering to star fantasies of holding any inane trophy has reached an alarming crescendo. You flip one channel and there is an award function going on where SRK is doing a gig. Flip again and lo! There he is again. So much that we have stopped caring which award function we are watching. Some actress is moving her hips wildly (dancing) with a hundred sweaty half-naked men around her. Someone is getting a weird looking trophy shaped like a sex toy and is misty eyed. If you sum it up, everyone in the industry gets at least one award each year. Everyone is happy. The supply in unfortunately and alarmingly greater than the deservers.

I don’t have a problem with all the needless awards. It gives the actors a relief from the obtuse films they are doing. It’s a mammoth PR activity for all the Toms, Dicks and Harrys who are organizing them. The nation gets to see stars making fun of each other and achieve nirvana in the process. And we all get the proof of how good an actor Amitabh Bachchan is by seeing his expressionless face every time Rekha appears on the stage. Again and again and again.

But I have a problem with a perticular award which regrettably is also the oldest one. Filmfare.

Back in the 90s when I started getting a beard and getting interested in Bollywood at the same time, Filmfare was the only award functioning in all its glory. All the actors would fall over each other every year to get one trophy. It was considered an achievement. No wonder they were called the Indian Oscars. And it was during the 90s, when the problem started. Suddenly mediocrity was in. Sometimes the nominations were baffling.

Sample this:

• 1984 Naseeruddin Shah – Masoom as D. K. Malhotra
  • Kamal Haasan – Sadma as K. Somprakash ‘Somu’
  • Om Puri – Ardh Satya as Sub-inspector Anant Velankar
  • Rajesh Khanna – Avtaar as Avtaar Krishen
  • Sunny Deol – Betaab as Sunny Kapoor

And then this:

• 1996 Shahrukh Khan – Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge as Raj Malhotra
  • Aamir Khan – Rangeela as Munna
  • Ajay Devgn – Naajayaz as Jay Bakshi
  • Govinda – Coolie No. 1 as Raju
  • Salman Khan – Karan Arjun as Karan Singh

• 2012 Ranbir Kapoor – Rockstaras Janardan Jhakhar / Jordan
  • Ajay Devgn – Singham as Bajirao Singham
  • Amitabh Bachchan – Aarakshan as Prabhakar Anand
  • Hrithik Roshan – Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara as Arjun
  • Salman Khan – Bodyguard as Lovely Singh
  • Shahrukh Khan – Don 2 as Don

Vyajanthimala – after she heard that Katrina was nominated for Filmfare award for Best actress.

Do you see the corruption, the decay that has seeped in? I do not have a problem with Ranbir Kapoor winning the award. He deserved it but the nominations were truly WTF! Ajay Devgan, Salman Khan and SRK had no business being in the 2012 list. The movies for which they were nominated were big blockbuster craps and their acting in them was equally garish. Similarly for 1996, I could not understand what Govinda and Salman were doing in the nominations. How could India’s oldest award fall to such apathy? How could Filmfare, which nominated Om Puri for Ardha Satya could possibly nominate Salman Khan for Bodyguard? If this is not playing to the tunes of stardom, then I don’t know what is!

Looking at the nomination list might give you a feeling that most of them are just fillers because nothing better is available. Nothing can be far from the truth. Dhobi Ghat, Yeh Saali Zindagi, Memories in March, Shor in the City, I Am, Shaitan, I Am Kalam, That Girl in Yellow Boots, Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster were the movies which deserved a wider appreciation but were royally mistreated. Some of them were given a few nominations here and there but a majority of them were sidelined.

Being the oldest and the most respected award comes with a responsibility – to promote talent, to promote directors who dare to be different and do not turn into money making machines. Filmfare would have taken up this responsibility. Instead they use “Critics” award category so that the stars could be kept happy. And that is how Dabangg got the best movie award in 2011 instead of Udaan which was given the “Critics” awards. It was like saying – Look! We know Udaan is much superior but sorry we prefer giving awards to movies in which the hero rips off his shirt by expanding his muscles. So, better luck next time! There are numerous examples from the last decade where mediocre and puke-worthy films and performances have been nominated.

Yes, common man votes for these awards. Its 50% people’s choice and 50% Jury’s choice and that is how it has been since the 1950s. But the whole idea of a movie award is to give recognition to the best movies of the year, movies which had some substance in them, movies which were created for the love of the art and not just for churning cash. If the votes coming in each year are not at par and are actually a threat to good cinema, would it not be a good idea to abolish the practice and let only the jury decide?

I stopped watching telecast of Filmfare awards ten years back. I want to see Filmfare Awards honour movies that matter, to recognise performances instead of stars, to recognise art instead of commercial success.

I hope one day I will be able to watch the ceremony without flinching.

[images from 1,2,3]

A few days back I posted this on my Facebook wall – “How is one supposed to leave his brain behind while watching a movie? This is one art I have tried to master numerous times and failed miserably.”

Everyone thought I might have seen Housefull 2.

Well, I am glad that I went to see Vicky Donor despite all my apprehensions because I laughed, not because I had paid 200 bucks for the ticket and had no other option. And the feeling was running throughout the crowd sitting with me. Everyone was enjoying the movie as if they were thankful that they were not forcing themselves to laugh. I heard a lot of claps and whistles too which are quite rare nowadays.

The movie tells the story of an unemployed youth Vicky (played by Ayushmann Khurrana) who is chased by doctor Baldev Chaddha (played by Annu Kapoor) who has a fertility clinic and is desperately in need of a super good sperm donor. He accidentally meets Vicky and convinces him to donate his sperms. What happens next and how ironical Vicky’s own life turns out to be is the story.

I have always underlined the fact that the most important actor in a movie is its story. The issues raised in this movie was a serious one. It was about how our society looks down upon sperm donors. How people have misconception about the whole process and what it entails. Even though the topic was a serious one, at no point the movie turns into a documentary. It never misses its funny undertone. Of course there are a few glitches but you won’t get much time to think over them.

There are so many small nuances in a movie which elevates the whole product and this movie is filled with them. The scenes between Vicky’s mother and grandmother are the soul of this movie and extremely hilarious. Annu Kapoor is perfect as Baldev Chaddha and I especially liked the sperm hanging in his car (I am still laughing when I am writing this). Vicky’s love angle played by Yami Gautam brings with her the side-splitting clashes between her Bong family and Vicky’s loud Punjabi family. It’s not only the actors who bring life to the movie but the dialogues too, which set the impeccable mood of the movie.

The movie turns a bit serious in the second half but it doesn’t drag and the climax will touch your heart. Ayushmann and Yami Gautam are consummate performers and are really good, well supported by the rest of the cast.

This was an extremely enjoyable movie for me. And I say this about Bollywood movies as much as you have seen Manmohan Singh open his mouth. Which is not very often. Go and enjoy yourself.

Rating – 4/5

Offering coal to rivers and feeling foolish

I had finished my Masters and had dropped for a year to study for IIT’s GATE exam. I failed that exam and was in a completely suicidal mode. There was darkness all around and no candle of hope was visible. My career was finished.

(Exaggeration alert)

It was then when my mom went to the astrologer with tears in her eyes, banging his door and asking for help.

He patiently saw my birth chart and did some quick calculations and conveniently conveyed to my mother that I was going through a very rough seven and a half years phase of my life called “Sade Sati”. My mom gasped, sucking in two tears by mistake which were racing down her cheeks.

“Don’t worry sister. The good news is that the seven and a half years are almost done. Only a few months left. But yes, there are ways to negate the remaining effects quickly,” the astrologer said.

Mom’s eyes sparkled with hope, her heart racing towards her mouth.

“Please! Please tell me how oh! great astrologer!” she said.

“Ask your son to go to a river for three Tuesdays and offer coal to the flowing water. Take around a kilo of coal every time. This bad phase will pass quickly.”

(de-exaggerating)

I laughed loudly when I heard of this. Mom threw ice spikes from her eyes which effectively closed my mouth. I could have said no and that would have been the end but then I wanted to do this mostly because it sounded fun. I didn’t really think of the implications.

So, there I was, standing at the banks of Hindon River dropping coal in it and feeling utterly foolish. It was bearable the first time. By the time I reached the count of three, I wanted to kill the astrologer.

I forgot about it as soon as it was done and went back to my life which was basically twirling my fingers everyday. Surprisingly, things started to iron out soon. I cleared my NET exam, cleared JNU Ph.D. written exam and interview (only ten students were selected from all over India) and was accepted for M.Tech in Kurukshetra University. Suddenly from nothing-to-look-forward-to, I had too much to handle.

Mom thought it was all due to the blessings of the astrologer. I had my doubts. Maybe things were meant to happen this way but how did that bloody astrologer used it to his advantage?

(6 years later)

Respect me!

Honoring Sun god with water mixed with chili seeds and feeling foolish again

I was in Chennai working for an IT firm. I was there from the last 2.5 years and desperately wanted to come back home to Delhi. My manager wanted me to go to USA for a project from Chennai. No matter how lucrative the offer looked, I was not very keen on it as it meant working in Chennai after I would have come back and I was longing to go back home (at least for a few months). I talked to mom and she had a brilliant idea.

(Exaggeration alert)

Mom was again back to the astrologer. She wanted her son back. She had determination in her eyes. She would find a way no matter what. Her will was steel.

“Sister, don’t worry! I have a very effective solution. Your son will be able to bend the will of Gods,” the astrologer chirruped.

“Is it true? Oh! Please do tell me greatest astrologer of all times!!”

(de-exaggerating)

“Ask him to buy a copper mug. Fill it with water and a few red chili seeds. Ask him to go to the balcony of his house for three days in the morning and raise the mug towards the sun with both hands and drop the water slowly on the ground. Ask him to ask the Sun god whatever he wishes to come true.”

The sheer amount of time I wasted to find a copper mug can fill an encyclopedia but I finally did the whole process out of curiosity. In my heart I wanted to prove him wrong but wanted my wishes to be granted as well. And so I made the following wish – “Dear Sun God! I don’t know why I am doing this but if you are listening, please send me home first and then onsite. I do not want it the other way round.”

Mysteriously, due to some reasons, my USA Visa developed a snag and I got a call from a project in Delhi. I got transferred here and eight months later I was off to Manchester.

Now whatever you may call it but the lucky bastard got lucky a second time. I still could not nail him. My mom’s faith trebled.

Looking back, everything I did was crazy but somehow it made mom happy and somehow it worked. I have realized that sometimes desperation makes you do funny stuff. Also, incidences like these spice up your past. You can look back and laugh, regale yourself, smile and scratch your head and be happy that thankfully your family is what it is – Weird.

p.s. And if you are wondering where my mom got the coal from, she asked the local Ironman (no, not from Avengers!! The one who uses a very very heavy iron filled with coal to press the clothes) to get it for her.

[images from 1,2,3]

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