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.