Bomb(aye)!

This is neither the first nor the last, 62 hrs of constant bombardment of news channels was probably what was needed to push us Indians to raise up and say “Enough is enough”! A great feat I should admit, neither could Kalam’s “Ignited minds” nor Nandan Nilakeni’s “Imagining India” could achieve the awakening effect this disruptive incident brought about.

My heart goes out to all those who lost their lives for nothing. Yes, nothing! If you have observed, in the human , we always have no reason to create anything, but definitely have one for destroying, at the least we destroy things and then come up with a cause. In the history of mankind, for every life that was lost for a cause, we ended up creating something worthwhile.

However, in the recent past any incident where lives are lost on either side (good and evil) there is no cause – The perpetrators want to create a sense of fear. Even the cause for retaliation has transformed into just creating “Shock and awe” instead of arriving at a closure or creating something worthwhile.

Few things crossed my mind as I witnessed the carnage… First and foremost, this incident ignited a sense of responsibility amongst us commoners, we became more vigilant, we have become bold enough to show our angst against the system and people whom we were always agnostic about, it did not matter if you are a coffee vending boy or the CEO, all of us witnessed what happened and have more or less the same information, we all voiced our opinions in any which way we could, we are now more polarized, we are OK being looked up as someone with strong opinion which might not be populist and finally we don’t want to play into the “resilient mumbaikar” gimmicks of establishment (politicians and beaurocrats) which has been lackadaisical in delivering their duties.

After this incident Kiran Mazumdar Shah (CEO of an Indian bio-medical company) clarified with a security guard if he knew what he was checking / looking out for in the car whilst entering a 5 star hotel. The security guard in my office, while leaving for the day, ensured that he got his bag checked just to set a precedence of non-exclusivity. Both were gestures that proved that we at all levels have grown a little more vigilant.

During these 62 hours, the perspectives that emerged from the media across the border were also interesting. They said, “We in Pakistan, were told that Indian intelligence was behind every bomb that ever went up, we have been brought up with the notion that anything evil that happens is because of India, so it is quite natural that you are also reacting in a similar way”.

This statement, as outrageously outlandish it might sound, is in fact true. Earlier, it was always easy for the establishments on either side to blame the “forces across the border” as it helped assuage public anger against their incapacity. Same thing is happening with regards to world economic crisis where developed nations are blaming the developing ones for being consumerist and raising oil/food prices.

Now that we commoners are armed with advanced communications and knowledge sharing mechanisms are gaining rich perspectives and are able to make appropriate choices and informed decisions. We are demanding action, non-partisan approach, economic growth plans, and justice irrespective of which colour, cast or creed or ideology an establishment belongs to. Barrack Obama being elected to the white house is a substantial indicator in this direction from a nation of 305 million people who are leading the planet today. We the people of India moved from elitist politics to common man politics by electing the “Jan Sangh” to power in the 70’s – and made a difference to thousands of villages in this country. Proved that, we could get someone like Laloo a commoner elected to the parliament not once but every time since then.

I believe this the start of a new era in political activism from the common man in India and am sure, that we will change the course of Indian politics from a divisive one to constructive one which is focused on results!

- Jai Hind

I leave the interpretation of the sign off to the reader.

Pragoti*

* progress [As translated from Bengali]: It is a struggle, the issue of contending with protests and protestors is quite critical to make progress and build a successful and prosperous nation! Title is an inspiration from a website dedicated to communist idealogies.

It was not a team outing exercise! It was neither a team building exercise as it was made out to be. It was a karmic trip, at least for me! I recently moved to this new company where they had planned for an outing – of a group of “thought” leaders of the organization. Well, it was my first time in the “thought” leadership club and I was excited.

We as a group were one of the most domesticated bunch; We came from a school of thought where good clear water always come bottled, safe air, meant curtains down and A/C on; fire could only be generated via a gas stove. We sincerely believed that all the elements, just like any other service could be availed on paying a prescribed fee. Cognizant of this background, our boss, who had already been to this place, wanted to ensure that he set the expectations. He forewarned us not to expect “5 star” facilities. Given that it was a briefing session, it was really brief without much scope for questions and clarification and much was left to our imagination and so did we!

The outing was to a place called Honnemaradu, which was about 9 miles from the breath taking Jog falls, which is the highest waterfall in India. A couple who had bought 4-8 acres of land in that area was running a facility that facilitated an adventurous outing with special focus on conservation especially for the corporate. Usually anything entrepreneurial, especially of social entrepreneurship nature is viewed through a magnifying glass in this part of the world. I am not an exception to this.

We got off our bus, with our newly purchased adventure tour kit, the backpack and set off to the “resort”. The approach was quite messy and we were taking every step of our way cautiously so that we don’t dirty our clothes and sneakers… suddenly the troupe stopped. I could see a lady walking out of a bush in the wilderness, with an unusual attire [round neck t-shirt, a khakhi Patiala pyjama], bespectacled, with an air of confidence around herself and addressing us fluently in English and the local language. She looked like a member of the typical Medha Patkar clan.

She had a small orientation session planned for us all to sensitize us to the surroundings, rules of engagement with nature and finally the facilities at our disposal. The day started at 08:00 AM with a quick briefing session [Famously/infamously referred to as ‘Circle’ by our team], sumptuous but austere breakfast. Couple of interesting activities i.e. swimming in 50 ft water with life jackets and then some trekking was lined up for the day. Lunch was arranged in between these sessions. It was basic lunch with 1 sambhar, 1 popadum and 1 curry and pickle, but we were famished to such an extent that we went running to form the queue to get the food [This practice would continue till the end of the trip]. This was the same lot which, as a ritual, complained to the food committee back at our office to change the caterer because he doesn’t give that extra popadum or ice cream. After the lunch we headed for a small trek. During the trek we stories we heard and the sights I saw shook me up and provided me with a new perspective about Green Peace, Baba Amte, Medha Patkar, Menaka Gandhi and their agitations – basically protests and protestors!

Honnemaradu – was a village which was situated 300 meters from our room where we were put up. It was once a habitat for diverse flora and fauna along with human settlement was now submerged and eliminated from the map of India. Now, there is no village by the name Honnemaradu, just that these couple had named their resort to revive the memories of people in the surrounding areas. A dam was built in the 1950’s to cater to the electricity requirements of the state of Karnataka and this village fell in the purview of its catchment area. In that water source there were big tree trunks, branches and tips still standing, but lifeless. It would have made great photo op for P.C.Sriram [Top Cameraman in Indian movie world] or Mani Ratnam [India's Spielberg], and we trained our cameras as well.

Later on, during the day we realized that the place had a sad personal story attached to it… That night at camp fire, we listened to an elderly person reliving his childhood memories. He had a story to tell especially about a ceremony attached to the dead in his village. Whenever someone died in Honnemaradu, the villagers used to plant a tree and put the ashes as the fertilizer. Sometimes it would be too much for the plant to take and wouldn’t grow, so they used to plant another tree and shower some of the ashes to it. This way he said the village had grown the adjoining forest. The villagers had named each tree in that forest after the name of the person whose ashes was used to grow it. I went to sleep with a heavy heart.

But for the tiring day, I would not have slept peacefully that night! Again, no mattress, no mosquito coils, no windows or doors to the room and some parts of the roof opened up to the starry night! We were fuming from within but put an undaunted face so that others could also pull themselves along!

In my Dream – there was a court scene and random thoughts crossed my mind: That old man was able to communicate with me, so I was moved by the story and was willing to take a re-look at my opinion on Medha Patkar clan. (Sorry, I am not taking a personal dig at anyone) But, the same project had cut off the communication channel for the elephants from Maharashtra through to Kerala [States in India]. Hence, for centuries those elephants which have been moving all along the Western Ghats freely, cannot cross the dam and hence have been cut off from each other for ever.

How can we help in such situations, when it is only our friends from the animal kingdom who get affected and there is no old man to tell us a moving story? WHO will help us realize the significance of such human interventions and especially WHEN? Will it be too late? Or what if someone forgets / does not take this as a full time job unlike Medha Patkar? What will happen to the humanity?

I am not a great fan of Medha Patkar but I now understood the world / issue from her perspective! Especially, the “Narmada Bachao Aandolan” [Save Narmada river] movement. Now, I do really understand what impact a dam could cause to its environs. Especially after listening to that old man, I realize that the issues like construction of a dam, an industrial complex like Tata Nano or projects that qualify for the “Extreme Engineering” series in Discovery channel are much deeper. Such projects need critical assessment as they throw the whole ecosystem out of gear.

When I woke up next day morning, I felt fresh, my heart was light! When I felt the whiff of fresh air and smell of leaves and deep forest, I was reminded of the story the old man told us. The court scene from my dream popped up and I continued to walk around in a daze!!! I have had strong opinion against protestors and protests which are anti-industrialization. I cannot be blamed for it as I have spent more than half of my life in liberalized India and know and understand the importance of industrialization. When agriculture contributes to around 2-3 percent of India’s total GDP growth rate, why should more than 70% of our population work in that segment? Why shouldn’t they take up alternate career in industries?

With all these thoughts rummaging through my mind, I got out of the room to find some of my team ranting away about the toilets. I surveyed the toilets and certainly was annoyed as well. It was such pathetic that we had to carry water to the toilets as there were no pipes/taps inside. The lady and her husband who maintained the facility just walked up and started babbling about “conservation”! I snapped! I asked the question which everyone wanted to ask! Does conservation mean less convenience?

I have had my own thoughts about conservation, charity, praying, confessions, dieting, working hard etc. If you carefully observe we humans have a habitual urge to balance out every act of ours. When we earn a lot, we are forced into doing charity. When we party more, next day it would be followed by a church visit and typically before and after a vacation, long hours at work!!! Similarly, whenever we feel that we have used up considerable amount of resources, we get into a conservation mode! So if you really see this is more habitual than something sporadic! It is a natural instinct. Hence, when someone talks about austerity and conservation in the same lines and act as if it is only their responsibility to save the planet, I feel - Well mmmmm… Best of Luck!!

The whole day passed off peacefully as we were in water all along and had learnt to swim effectively and also to coracle. We decided to leave in the afternoon so that we could catch a glimpse of Jog falls on our way back! We had belted the afternoon lunch [same, 1 sambhar, 1 pickle, 1 curry, and rice] and gathered in a circle for de-brief! The “Odd couple” – who by the way are great people [irrespective of their intolerance to outside worlds urge to consume at any cost!] with their single minded approach to closely guard the sanctity of the ecosystem around them were definitely a great motivation and they brought out some interesting insights about our behavior and conservation, environment and things which we took for granted.

The trip came to an end in one and half days, we as a team had put up a brave face when we were subjected to an extreme transition from civilization to wilderness! We are an organization undergoing rapid transition and transformation and no other place could have provided the necessary physical duress, mental stress [with change in surroundings] and fodder for thought which made us believe that we are much more capable than what we think we are!

On our way back, in the bus, I did some introspection, and wondered if my problem was only with the protestors or the protests themselves. I agree with the agitation in principle but not with the protestors and their timing, methods and interests! I realized that, I had a problem with only the protestors. Protest is just a ramification of people’s feelings and they are capitalized by various outfits for various reasons. People were relocated and compensated but the issue does not end there. It is a matter of sentiment, feelings, and love for land / place where you belong. The subjectivity around this issue cannot be compensated. That is why most of the conflicts around the globe are related to ethnicity and uprising against an aggressor. So, protests are fine and necessary, for, anybody to critically analyze a given situation!

So, how about the protestors? The protestors usually are not the ones who are really affected by a particular incident. They are from various walks of life, with different motivations and when they protest in their own way, life gets difficult for rest of the folks around. They also, end up diluting the protest or change the context of the protest itself! Like for instance, the focus on Singur – Tata Nano project has shifted from unlawful land grabbing and dislocation of people to a bitter battle between Mamata and Buddhadeb! Amar Singh being involved only made it look like a Bollywood movie, and finally with the elder Ambani issuing a statement in support of Tatas it’s all come to a gloomy end for the poor farmers! From here on it’s only the Tata way or the high way! Either way it’s a lost battle for the farmers! During Vietnam war protests in the US, protestors used the context to build the hippie culture, smoke up grass, and promote rock band culture!

So who should have fought the battle? We humans are usually collectivist in nature and need the support and patronage of family and friends for even our personal decisions like wedding / education! We seek help and opinion from un-necessary quarters in an urge of not becoming the bad boy. That is where the failure is – when some one picks up our battles, we do not have much control over the spoils!

Stand up, speak up for yourselves, there by getting to address the original root cause, which will in turn be beneficial to the ecosystem and hence aid conservation and better life for the future!

Chaotic theory makes absolute sense!

- Ciao

Crow - barred!

Usually, a post-card image of a park has children playing, swings, couples in love, a family picnic, destitute old people, job-less youth, the homeless, people feeding birds and reading books etc., Yesterday, I was sitting in a park expecting to catch this image live. As I was observing, I had a strong feeling that something was amiss. After some serious thought I realized that the omni present bird, “Crow” was missing!

Have you noticed this? What stuck me the most was, I had not spotted a sparrow either! (The frequency of the mobile communication was the same as that of the sparrow and hence it has seen its tragic end). The very thought of us killing someone when we speak hurts me. The last time I saw a crow was in the movie “Resident Evil: Extinction”. It comes out as a surprise for the protagonists when they notice a raven and more so when it attacks in large numbers. In the last decade I have come to notice that sparrow is extinct and its poor cousin, the crow, is also headed in that direction and, it is already, in some parts of the globe. I recently came across an article about “Hawaiian Crow” becoming extinct and that it is already extinct in big cities like LA, London etc., where it is legal to hunt them because of their menace! Huh! Is the menace more than what the teens do in those parts of the world? I don’t know!

During my childhood days, not long ago, I used to have a couple of sparrows as pet! I was more concerned during those days that the “nari kuravas” (a gypsy mountain tribe in India) would steal/hunt those sparrows and hence used to be very protective of them. We as children have grown up listening to the fable of an intelligent crow. Yes, I am referring to “The Crow and the Pitcher” a fable ascribed to Aesop. In the fable, a thirsty crow comes upon a pitcher with water at the bottom, beyond the reach of its beak. After failing to push over the pitcher, the crow devises a clever plan: it drops in pebbles, one by one, until the water rises to the top of the pitcher, allowing the crow to drink. This story traces its history to 2nd century Greek and Latin era. But, I noticed that this story is now not even a part of children’s curriculum. They don’t even know the concept of scare crows. May be the story of crow would be covered as a part of the museum visit!!! Crow was something which was integral to our way life as Brahmins (a caste in India). We used to set aside a small portion of the food as soon as it was prepared to the crow on the kitchen window sill and then proceed with our meal for the day. This is a ritual which is followed even today, just that we clean up the previous day’s food instead of a crow feasting on it.

Ruminating this, I reached home and was watching the news. I came across a news item which was about the Animal Welfare Board (AWB) threatening to sue a major telecom company for making a dog run behind a school bus in one of its commercials, for, it believed that the pug would have been put under duress. I was shocked at the publicity stunt!

Where was the AWB when the coming of mobile revolution in India just rendered an entire species (sparrow) extinct? Where is it now, regarding the crow? The likes of Menaka Gandhi, Medha Patkar, and AWB are busy making headlines, page 3 appearances and publicity stunts that they fail to look at these small things which eventually end up causing ecological imbalances and big catastrophes.

I think its time WE start “cawing” about stuff which we strongly feel about!

- Ciao

Every dog has its day!

Ok, the way I have scripted this story is by starting with a story of a dog, and how I used it to satiate my ego and also bring out the underlying theme of value system.

It was a cloudy day with nice breeze and no signs of an imminent rain! Basically a nice weather and no one was in a mood to work. Since the set up was a small unit, we could sense the mood in the organization right from the CEO to the office security. Everybody wanted to have some fun and was in no mood to work. So, people took to some activity other than core work in which ever possible way! My CEO started off for a campus visit to the new office campus which was getting constructed near by our old campus. I too joined the entourage. During the visit, we noticed an event, which, I think brought out the real qualities of many of my associates and the company values could easily be showcased with that single event.

A stray puppy entered the construction area of our new campus. It was a beautiful, small, spot less black mongrel puppy. The security on duty, in a strong display of his sense of duty, threw a stick which hit the puppy’s leg and rendered it immobile instantly. He had a sense of pride in his smile that he had accomplished his duty of prosecuting the trespasser. My CEO and rest of the staff from admin department were shocked to see that and immediately one of our admin officers stepped into action. He took the puppy to a vet, got its leg fixed and brought it back to our yet to be constructed office campus. Over a period of time the puppy grew up into a beautiful and fit dog called “Rani”. One of the values that my organization’s has is, “Treat people the way like to be treated” and this was a terrific example / motivator for a new joiner to experience the values being lived in day to day life!

This was some time ago!

4 years since. It was a lazy Saturday afternoon and one of the boring training sessions had come to an end. The group that I attended training with was composed of some senior managers and power mongering, hot headed individuals. Their brash comments not withstanding, I wanted to prove a point that they were not the end of the world and that there could be someone/something which they were not aware of. We were having a cup of coffee and discussing about values and stuff. Just then I noticed a young lady patting Rani and feeding her with biscuits. People’s attention was obviously drawn towards the girl (not Rani for sure!) and the conversation took an ugly turn of belittling and gossips. I then realized it was time to unleash my gyan and hence started off.

I asked if anyone in the group knew anything about that little beautiful mongrel! There was a long silence. They were expecting a rude joke but what they got after that was something which even I was quite surprised and taken aback. I started telling the story of Rani and how it got there and how special it is to the company and many folks in the organization! I also explained how the values have eroded in our system that though the stray dog’s breed was mongrel, we in India call it pariah! Then I was rebuked as to how their comments were not a reflection of the value system they hold.

The way I see it is, “values” is something comparable to a person’s soul. Values give birth to beliefs, which form the foundation of our opinions and then finally gets rendered to the world as our reactions to day to day transactions. If our underlying value system is to trust and respect each other and treat people the way we like to be treated, we would believe that it is our duty to take care of our fellow creatures. This in turn will shape our opinion of an incident that we witness in our day to day life. These opinions result in our reaction to be of a positive nature.

In the case above, people had strong value system, which is why we have Rani in our campus in the very first place. We could feel the pain which the little Rani would have had to endure when it was badly hit. As the organization grew, we had to recruit at a maddening pace and it was not only getting difficult but became practically impossible to get people to practice the values.

The discussion was pretty useful as I had made half the crowd leave and the rest who were still around got an earful. The story and packaging was good enough to drive home the point in few people’s head the importance of the value of treat people the way you like to be treated and to trust and respect each other!

To get people to start reacting positively, it is essential that we get them incorporated into their value system and start believing it.

This is what many successful commercials aim at these days. They don’t just appeal to your senses. They are aimed at incorporating values into our system and changing our beliefs so that we react positively to an advertisement or a product promotion. For example, I am sure many of you would have seen the advertisement for Hamaam (very famous bathing soap brand in India). The advertisement is about young kid asking his/her mom as to what is being “honest”! The mom responds telling that being honest means “Hamaam”. The soap was also pretty good one, with no frills attached like for example, “germ/bacteria killing, “24x7 body odor preventing”. It was a pretty simple every day family soap with just basic ingredients that are healthy and gave you a nice refreshing bath. It was also packaged and priced appropriately. The advertisement appealed to the value system of the people and not to their senses. This is why its market share of 25% in a state and overall 10% market share and its existence over 70 years is vindicated.

This incident helped me to satisfy my ego component and prove that after all every dog has its day!

Unless you agree with the fact that our actions/reactions are a direct result of our innate value system, and get into the act yourself of educating ourselves, our generation and generation next with values, I think it would not be a bad idea to try and imbibe righteous values via commercials. After all, the advertising agencies seem to have got the essence of governing an act of purchase by appealing to the value system rather than their senses.

-Ciao

Lost & Found:

"You preserve only what you love, you love only what you understand, you understand what you are taught…" - Baba Pioum

I read this at an aquarium in Kuala Lumpur. Given that most of the creatures are facing extinction in the order of magnificence they exude, I felt aquarium was the probably the most appropriate place as the beauty and splendor of the aquatic life is just breath taking.

Recently I saw an advertisement in Doordarshan (National TV channel in India) which is about preserving national monuments. A kid walks up to a couple who scribble on the monument and reprimands them for doing so. Then the kid recites a small poem about greatness and national pride. It is heartening to see that Indian Government or at least some bureaucrat has understood the essence of preservation which is to teach it first.

Just an extrapolation into our day to day lives..... When people say simple things like they lost your gift, forgot to call you or forgot your phone number or address it leads to a myriad of questions – Do they want to preserve the relationship/friendship? Do they love/care about you? Do they understand you? Were they taught to understand you? Who should teach them by the way?

I guess the answer lies in “you”.

It’s high time we understand the concept of learning by experience and treating everybody with unconditional love and respect and teach the same to our fellow human beings. Otherwise, we will end up preserving everything for the posterity, be it trees, tigers, climate, friendships, relationships, or for that matter our very own selves. Interestingly even the deadliest and fastest of predators, the Cheetah, does not intend to hurt the Gazelle for the sake of it but only because, it has to! But we humans hurt and hunt, deprecate and destroy without much reason other than fun! Finally, when some one shows some alarming numbers (of falling tiger population or climate change) or when relationships / friendships become estranged or when someone whom we “used” to love/care for dies, we suddenly feel the need to preserve anything and everything related to them. I guess the failed children of deserted parents need special mention in this category of preservers.

Take this thought a little further and impersonal. Imagine this story; Boss of an organization had the worst day at office with a belligerent customer, he vents it all on his business head, who in turn passes it down the chain and finally a cab driver gets the worst end of the stick from an irate employee who gets dropped at night after a long days work trying to solve the issue reported by the very same customer. The driver feels humiliated. Now, he is at the bottom of the food chain. Where can he go? Whom can he shout at? He cannot shout at fellow motorist as it is late in the night and no self respecting woman will take domestic violence, so he decides to go to a prostitute. This is not something which I made up, but one of the discussion papers on AIDS has highlighted that it is prevalent amongst drivers who are affected by road rage and inept at fighting back for their self esteem. They take this route to sanguinity from their state of despondency. Today, we have potentially lead ourselves to a crisis called AIDS. If, one of them in the chain had been rational and reacted with patience, could we have potentially averted an impending disaster?

This might sound as an immoderate story and a haughty claim of saving the planet and humanity but, David A. Shiang, an extra-ordinary thinker of our times says that “the notion of ascertaining deep truths through the mind may sound far-fetched, but it is the revolutionary nature of the human experience that makes this kind of knowledge possible”. He also says that the human mind has the capacity to understand the fundamental reality and argues that many of our deepest insights are as a result of experience and not mathematics, measurement or experiment. Any stretch of imagination is permissible and the learning gained through this kind of thinking, insight and experience is the route to achieving higher-consciousness which a select few like Buddha, Jesus, and Prophet Mohamed have achieved.

I think I have shared some hard learnt experience on unconditional love in my own style or if I were to be a little pedagogic, have taught the importance of unconditional love. Now, think twice when you humble, hurt or hunt for, you never know what you would end up preserving!

- Ciao

Lights, Camera, Action!

Indian cinema has finally arrived on the international scene! With Om Shanti Om and Tare Zameen par heralding the same. After watching these movies, my thoughts wandered around Indian cinema as a whole and after a lot of clamor in my head; finally I have put some sagacity here and hope you like it!

We Indians have lot of stories to tell, some age old and some contemporary. In our part of the world, story telling and dramatization is an innate quality we all posses. Our bedtime stories and Dada dadi ki kahaaniyaan* are full of drama. The stories have a gripping script, lot of talking with strong dialogues, music, singing, dancing with a sprinkling of all varieties of emotions and sentiments. The reason is because that is the way we are, our food; our culture of combined large families, the religions and way of life practiced by millions are all varied. Our cinema is no different and is just a reflection of “our way of life”.

We have fostered the art of theater since the days when other civilizations were languishing in darkness. The makeup, sound, light and screen projections were in place even before electricity was invented. Though most of the times the story line was from Ramayana and Mahabharata the oldest stories ever known to mankind, the script was always different and that was the key differentiator among various groups/communities that practiced this art form. Kathakali**, Yaksha gaana** are a few examples that come to my mind straight away when I think of how old are we in show business.

Indian cinema similarly has come a long way since Raja Harishchandra the first full length movie and Alam ara the first sound film. From the days when the industry was dependent on few influential individuals, small time family run production houses to today where the industry is run professionally by corporate whose primary business is show business – it has been a remarkable journey. When I refer to Indian cinema, I am primarily talking about Kollywood and Bollywood, the two biggest contributors to world cinema just by the virtue of numbers and ticket sales.

During our early days we had great visionaries like Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Bimal Roy who made movies which had great story line, it was about the common man, socially responsible and reflected the time and spirit of the nation at that time. As time progressed we started to get carried away with the money involved and did not really bother about story, sensitivity of the audience and society as a whole. The likes of Manmohan Desai were making blockbusters because they appealed to the masses. Their movies were again in sync with the time, had a strong script and did their job of entertaining, though however illogical some scenes might have been.

In the late 80’s and early 90’s Indian cine industry suffered a huge set back and it was not worthwhile making movies any more. Mind you, it was not because there was dearth of talent in the industry, but, it was because people were not interested in fundamentals any more, and it was just about making money. If you follow the Indian stock market, by now, you would, understand how important it is to bet on the fundamentals rather than speculate and copy. (Sensex fell close to 1000 points on the day when this article was written). This was when, the underworld used to run our cine industry; the money came from the slush funds of drug cartels and mafia. Actors, directors, music directors were all appointed on whims and fancies of mafia dons. Casting couch was the order of the day. You would probably remember a time when you would see, “Direction, screenplay, dialogues and music - <<Name>>” in the credits section. The nation was swamped with sordid movies awash with soft porn masala songs and extreme violence. The average Indian family which spent 5-10% of its gross monthly income on family entertainment (read movies) in a month was craving for value for money.

As always there was some amount of calm in the midst of chaos. Bengali and Malayalam movies were low on budget but high on quality. They were bagging the National awards most of the time and satiating the audience pallet as well. The dyslexic child in Taare Zamin par, and the subject reminds me of the trendsetter Mr. Mani Rathnam and one of his master piece, Anjali in which he portrays the challenges faced by an above average middle income group family in rearing a kid that has Down’s syndrome/autism. Otherwise, there were far and few quality movies during the 90’s. There were a few experiments as well, with movies like Kuruthippunal which did not have a single song but had a good off beat story line with a gripping script and realistic action sequences. To draw a parallel to stock market, this is a typical scenario of companies which have strong fundamentals but not so popular and trading at undervalued prices…

The baby boomers and economic liberalization brought into existence a new target audience. Circa 2000 reputed production houses and individuals in the industry decided to lead from the front. The emphasis was on story line and hence, good clean story was back in business. Big budget movie does not necessarily make big money. Indian cine industry is now treated just like any other industry (say like IT), it has become very professional. Indian movie companies have started to get listed on the stock exchange, finally, taking responsibility on their shoulders and promise to deliver value for money, family entertainers with typical mix of Indian masala which could satisfy the NRI population and also foreigners.

Today we are at a stage where, Indian cinema is planning to go global or has gone already (according to some optimists). “Seven out of the top ten global entertainment companies are active in India”. “The Hollywood studio congloms now expect their Indian movies to earn the majority of their revenues from the India market”. Statements like this definitely augur well for the future of Indian cinema.

We are now proud of our song and dance sequences, unlike the days when we were embarrassed by scenes of half naked women and men dancing around trees. Today we take pride in announcing to the whole world that song and dance sequence is the USP (unique selling proposition) of Indian cinema. In those lines, Om Shanthi Om is a perfect packaging of Indian cinema. It has all the necessary elements (a musical playing out the whole movie, reasonable action sequences, comedy, colourful etc.,) and it in fact renders the story of Indian filmography over a period of time and it is a true representation of who we are to a global audience. Taare Zamin par, is another classic. This is a movie which has proved to the world that we can make movies without typical hero, heroine and a love affair and as glamourous and colourful as any other. (Though there were some “serious” movies made in the past, but, they were of the documentary class; not feature film). They were produced by professionals, they have media partners, PR partners, a professional team for the specific areas (like music, dance, cinematography etc.,) and finally they were backed by big fund houses with deep pockets. With the coming of Jodha Akbar – the team is planning to release the movie with subtitles in couple of foreign languages, thus making it truly global.

Last but not the least, these movies, though contrast in nature, did a great job at box office and have proven, as always, that the Indian audience has the discretion to appreciate good global cinema!

- Ciao

Dada dadi ki kahaaniyaan* - Transliterates to Grand pa / grand ma stories.
Kathakali**, Yaksha gaana** - Indian Folk theater forms from ancient times.