Chandni Chowk Diaries

Endhiran/Robot

The much awaited movie of this century is here finally and guess what it is a total damp squib for the film critic within me. The lead up to the movie had been loaded with aggressive marketing strategies that led the people to make a beeline at the movie halls.

I was really interested in checking out the movie after all the hoopla on television and the scenes of people celebrating the movie's release. The post release period also had great reviews from some very respected journos and critics which prompted me to check out the rage myself. I went for the movie (tamil version) and I was disappointed (The 'critic' me). I was at the PVR plaza in Delhi where the audience was predominantly local Delhi Tamils.

The film did open up to loud cheers from the audience but it all died down as time passed. The cheers were largely due to the comic acts from the two comedy actors, Santhanam and karunas and little because of Rajni himself.

The film is about a scientist Vaseegaran (Carnegie Mellon Phd) who invests 10 yrs of his life in designing a Robot which he intended to give for service in the Indian Army. The villain in the movie is Dr.Bora, Vaseegaran's mentor in Robotics who is frustrated with his own failed intentions to be the subject leader in Robotics. He boils in disappointment when the scientific community cheer for his protege in a conference.

Vaseegaran's love interest is Sana ( Aishwarya Rai Bachan) , a medical student who is quite fed up with her boyfriend for spending too much in his lab working on his robot. She lives with her widowed mother in a Home set up for kargil widows.

The story revolves around the Robot 'Chitti' who is programed by Vaseegaran to have human emotions. When the Robot falls in love with Sana, Vaseegaran dismantles and disowns the innocent robot which is only programmed to work constructively and not destruct. The now disowned robot is adopted by Dr. Bora who programs chitti for destructive work and sells it to scrpulous foreigners who want to use the model for terrorist activities. This new robot instead escapes and decides ro pursue Sana and live with her in his own world. The way in which Vaseegaran retorts and gets back his lady love and restores sanity in the world is the rest of the story.

Although this movie has been classified as a Sci-Fi, I remember only watching sci-fi Rajni movies. Rajni movies typically defy logic of any kind and only talk about the good defeating the bad, both typically fictional to scientific standards. He has romanced a 20 yr old Shreya Saran last year in 'Shivaji' which set a record that will be difficult to break as far a logic defying pairing is concerned. The names of the characters are too non-tamil for me to accept (I haven't come across a Vaseegaran and a Sana yet in my small world). I also havent come across a scientist in India who drives a Merc, S-class convertible. I havent seen 112 missed calls of any one on any phone. This movie is just another Rajni movie albeit a bad over hyped one.

In the second half, Rajni had failed miserably in recreating the magic that he once created in villainous roles. remember the 70s? The blame must fall totally on the Director for this botch up. The action sequences could be best compared with a masala Vijay movie and not the so-told Hollywood standards. They lacked perspective and fitted badly in the scenarios.

There are indeed a few things that money can't buy. Money can buy Aishwarya Rai to dance in sexy attire to leave her previous best 'Dhoom 2' as a distant second. She has indeed worked up some heat. Money can even make Aishwarya Rai kiss Rajni on his cheeks 512 times (Gross scene). A little more money could have made her kiss on his lips. Such scenes should be tested with monkeys as audience before getting tried on humans. Money can make Aishwarya Rai speak in tamil during interviews. Money can make Amitabh Bachan call Rajni a 'King' and heap praises. Money can bring foreign technicians to work up a lot of graphics and serve it hot. Money can make an audio release function in Malaysia happen.

You will be missing a point if you believe that Rajni's fame is bought with money.

Moeny can't buy people to come and watch a film a maniac number of times. Money can't make people que up in early morning to grab that elusive ticket. Money can't force people to watch non sensical movies.

Endhiran will be big success story defying all these odds. How?

Money couldn't buy a hair transplant for Rajni. Money couldn't buy Rajni a makeup during public appearances. Money couldn't make Rajni act in a commercial endorsement despite having the most devoted fan following in India. Money couldn't buy starry behaviour for Rajni. Money couldn't buy humility for Amitabh Bachan, SRK and Aamir Khan.

Being a Tamilan myself, I can easily say that we are the most emotionally blinded people in India. Our passions run high on matters close to our heart. The thirkural education and the impetus on a good living breeds young colts to belive in a fairy tale world where only good exists. When this belief is thwarted by the actual exposure to evil in the society comes the hero who defeats all evil. Every human being yearns for a hero when he faces a evil situation.

Rajni fits the bill perfectly. Rajni has historically played roles where he relates to the common man by being one of him facing the kind of issues that we all face. However he is a hero and he takes on the problems and overcomes them, thereby giving hope. Hope is a precious commodity and every human being needs a dose of it frequently. Rajini does just that. He gives tamilians hope to live life overcoming all the odds.

As a race that has been seriously wounded by others recently (Srilankan brutality) and historically, we need hope and strength. We needed a force that could unite us and Rajini does that. Although it may be disputed, the fact that he does that more than any other human being is a fact that cannot be argued.

The rest of India may smirk at the thought of Rajinikanth, the superstar. This phenomenonal man is unfortunately not a product that can be sold by ad gurus. He is a process that has grown with every Tamilan over a few decades and I told you we are emotionally blinded people. We are loyal no matter what.

Endhiran is a Super, Duper Hit!!

All hail Thalaivar!!!

Reflections on India By Sean Paul Kelley

Sean Paul Kelley is a travel writer, former radio host, and before that an asset manager for a Wall Street investment bank that is still (barely) alive. He recently left a fantastic job in Singapore working for Solar Winds, a software company based out of Austin to travel around the world for a year (or two). He founded The Agonist, in 2002, which is still considered the top international affairs, culture and news destination for progressives. He is also the Global Correspondent for The Young Turks, on satellite radio and Air America.

 

If you are Indian, or of Indian descent, I must preface this post with a clear warning: you are not going to like what I have to say. My criticisms may be very hard to stomach. But consider them as the hard words and loving advice of a good friend. Someone who’s being honest with you and wants nothing from you.  

These criticisms apply to all of India except Kerala and the places I didn’t visit, except that I have a feeling it applies to all of India, except as I mentioned before, Kerala.

 Lastly, before anyone accuses me of Western Cultural Imperialism, let me say this: if this is what India and Indians want, then hey, who am I to tell them differently. Take what you like and leave the rest. In the end it doesn’t really matter, as I get the sense that Indians, at least many upper class Indians, don’t seem to care and the lower classes just don’t know any better, what with Indian culture being so intense and pervasive on the sub-continent. But here goes, nonetheless.

 India is a mess. It’s that simple, but it’s also quite complicated. I’ll start with what I think are India’s four major problems–the four most preventing India from becoming a developing nation–and then move to some of the ancillary ones.

First, pollution. In my opinion the filth, squalor and all around pollution indicates a marked lack of respect for India by Indians. I don’t know how cultural the filth is, but it’s really beyond anything I have ever encountered.  At times the smells, trash, refuse and excrement are like a garbage dump.

Right next door to the Taj Mahal was a pile of trash that smelled so bad, was so foul as to almost ruin the entire Taj experience. Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai to a lesser degree were so very polluted as to make me physically ill. Sinus infections, ear infection, bowels churning was an all to common experience in India. Dung, be it goat, cow or human fecal matter was common on the streets. In major tourist areas filth was everywhere, littering the sidewalks, the roadways, you name it. Toilets in the middle of the road, men urinating and defecating anywhere, in broad daylight.

Whole villages are plastic bag wastelands. Roadsides are choked by it. Air quality that can hardly be called quality. Far too much coal and far to few unleaded vehicles on the road. The measure should be how dangerous the air is for one’s health, not how good it is. People casually throw trash in the streets, on the roads.

The only two cities that could be considered sanitary in my journey were Trivandrum–the capital of Kerala–and Calicut. I don’t know why this is. But I can assure you that at some point this pollution will cut into India’s productivity, if it already hasn’t. The pollution will hobble India’s growth path, if that indeed is what the country wants. (Which I personally doubt, as India is far too conservative a country, in the small ‘c’ sense.)

More after the jump..

The second issue, infrastructure, can be divided into four subcategories: roads, rails and ports and the electrical grid. The electrical grid is a joke. Load shedding is all too common, everywhere in India. Wide swaths of the country spend much of the day without the electricity they actually pay for. Without regular electricity, productivity, again, falls.

The ports are a joke. Antiquated, out of date, hardly even appropriate for the mechanized world of container ports, more in line with the days of longshoremen and the like. Roads are an equal disaster. I only saw one elevated highway that would be considered decent in Thailand, much less Western Europe or America. And I covered fully two thirds of the country during my visit.

There are so few dual carriage way roads as to be laughable. There are no traffic laws to speak of, and if there are, they are rarely obeyed, much less enforced. A drive that should take an hour takes three. A drive that should take three takes nine. The buses are at least thirty years old, if not older.

Everyone in India, or who travels in India raves about the railway system. Rubbish. It’s awful. Now, when I was there in 2003 and then late 2004 it was decent. But in the last five years the traffic on the rails has grown so quickly that once again, it is threatening productivity. Waiting in line just to ask a question now takes thirty minutes. Routes are routinely sold out three and four days in advance now, leaving travelers stranded with little option except to take the decrepit and dangerous buses.

At least fifty million people use the trains a day in India. 50 million people! Not surprising that waitlists of 500 or more people are common now.

The rails are affordable and comprehensive but they are overcrowded and what with budget airlines popping up in India like Sadhus in an ashram the middle and lowers classes are left to deal with the over utilized rails and quality suffers. No one seems to give a shit.

Seriously, I just never have the impression that the Indian government really cares. Too interested in buying weapons from Russia, Israel and the US I guess.

The last major problem in India is an old problem and can be divided into two parts that’ve been two sides of the same coin since government was invented: bureaucracy and corruption.

It take triplicates to register into a hotel. To get a SIM card for one’s phone is like wading into a jungle of red-tape and photocopies one is not likely to emerge from in a good mood, much less satisfied with customer service.

Getting train tickets is a terrible ordeal, first you have to find the train number, which takes 30 minutes, then you have to fill in the form, which is far from easy, then you have to wait in line to try and make a reservation, which takes 30 minutes at least and if you made a single mistake on the form back you go to the end of the queue, or what passes for a queue in India.

The government is notoriously uninterested in the problems of the commoners, too busy fleecing the rich, or trying to get rich themselves in some way shape or form. Take the trash for example, civil rubbish collection authorities are too busy taking kickbacks from the wealthy to keep their areas clean that they don’t have the time, manpower, money or interest in doing their job.

Rural hospitals are perennially understaffed as doctors pocket the fees the government pays them, never show up at the rural hospitals and practice in the cities instead.

I could go on for quite some time about my perception of India and its problems, but in all seriousness, I don’t think anyone in India really cares. And that, to me, is the biggest problem. India is too conservative a society to want to change in any way.

Mumbai, India’s financial capital is about as filthy, polluted and poor as the worst city imaginable in Vietnam, or Indonesia–and being more polluted than Medan, in Sumatra is no easy task. The biggest rats I have ever seen were in Medan!

One would expect a certain amount of, yes, I am going to use this word, backwardness, in a country that hasn’t produced so many Nobel Laureates, nuclear physicists, imminent economists and entrepreneurs. But India has all these things and what have they brought back to India with them? Nothing.

The rich still have their servants, the lower castes are still there to do the dirty work and so the country remains in status. It’s a shame. Indians and India have many wonderful things to offer the world, but I’m far from sanguine that India will amount to much in my lifetime.

Now, have at it, call me a cultural imperialist, a spoiled child of the West and all that.  But remember, I’ve been there. I’ve done it. And I’ve seen 50 other countries on this planet and none, not even Ethiopia, have as long and gargantuan a laundry list of problems as India does.

And the bottom line is, I don’t think India really cares. Too complacent and too conservative.

The enchanting Houri -Kahlil Gibran

Where are you leading me, Oh enchanting
Houri, and how long shall I follow you
Upon this hispid road, planted with
Thorns? How long shall our souls ascend
And descend painfully on  this twisting
And rocky path?

Like a child following his mother I am
Following you, holding the extreme end
Of your garment, forgetting my dreams
And staring at your beauty, blinding
My eyes under your spell to the
Procession of spectres hovering above
Me, and attracted to you by an inner
force within me which I cannot deny.

Halt for a moment and let me see your
Countenance; and look upon me for a
Moment; perhaps I will learn your
hearts secrets through your strange
Eyes. stop and rest, for I am weary,
And my soul is trembling with fear
Upon this terrible trail. Halt, for
We have reached that terrible crossword
Where death embraces life.

Oh Houri, listen to me! I was as free
As the birds, probing the valleys and
the forests, and flying in the spacious
Sky. At eventide I rested upon the
Branches of the trees, meditating the
Temples and palaces in  the city of the
Colorful clouds which the sun builds
In the morning and destroys before
Twilight.

I was like a thought, walking alone
And at peace to the East and West of
The universe, rejoicing with the
Beauty and joy of life, and inquiring
Into the magnificent mystery of
Existence.

I was like a dream, stealing out under
The friendly wings of the night,
Entering through the closed windows
Into the maidens' chambers, frolicking
and awakening their hopes...Then I
sat by the youths and agitated their
Desires...then I probed the elders'
Quarters and penetrated their thoughts
of serene contentment

Then you captured my fancy and since
That hypnotic moment I felt like a
Prisoner dragging his shackles and
Impelled into an unknown place...
I became intoxicated with your soul's eyes the
crushing ouf my heart? halt for a
Moment : I am regaining my strength
and untying my weary feet from the
Heavy chains. I have crushed the
Cup from which I have drunk your
Tasty venom ..but now I am in
A strange land, and bewildered ;
Which road shall I follow?

My freedom has been restored;will
You now accept me as a willing
Companion, who looks at the sun
with glazed eyes and grasps the
Fire with untrembling fingers?

I have unbound my wings and I am
Ready to ascend ;will you accompany
A youth who spends his days roaming
The mountains like the lone eagle, and
Wastes his nights wandering in the deserts like the restless lion?

Will you content yourself with the
Affection of one, who looks upon
Love as but an entertainer and declines
To accept her as his master?

Will you accept a heart that loves ,
but never yields? will you be at ease,
with a soul that quivers before the tempest ,
But never surrenders to it?
Will you accept one as a companion
Who makes not slaves, nor will become
One? will you own me but not possess
Me, by taking my body and not my heart?

Then here is my hand-grasp it with
Your beautiful hand; and here is my
Body-embrace it with your loving
Arms; and here are my lips-bestow
Upon them a deep and dizzying kiss.

Ruminations: sometimes, somewhere.

 

There is no glitter that doesn't fade away into nothingness.

Ruminations: sometimes, somewhere.

I am cos' He is

Ruminations: sometime, somewhere

We must dream beautiful.God carries out stringent quality control before he turns our dreamy canvases into REALITY

This post is dedicated to my friend AS and her lovely venture, www.hummingwords.in

M.U.S.E

Doorways to Love and Life.

Image: An abstract piece by me for the story.

She lay there lifeless, inundated with everlasting goodness.

The remains of this draconian raven called Life.

The grey side of human passion,

Her lifeless body.

Her heartbreak with the man had led her to this extreme step of cutting her cord from her milieu followed by this not so engaging world.

Keeping her company in life earlier were a Norfolk Island, an ivory pineapple and an oilcloth plant that were initiated into her life by her love, the man. She nurtured them with a silken approach expecting them to thrive in comfort just like her relationship with the man.

When with them, she narrated fairy tales, explained morals and taught them to dream.

She shared her secrets and let them see her truly in all fullness.

They witnessed her romantic expositions with him and her vulnerabilities during the good times.

They grew up healthy under the aegis of her love and scaled summits with the affection that was nobly meant.

In the days that went by when her mood changed along with her fortune, her inclination to them was extravagant, wishful for similarities.

Her proposition of similar goodness between her man and her friends were apparently miscalculated.

Her black and white variables of life were lying in a quagmire of dreams and their broken pieces.

Tears rolled down her beauty. Her bawls of agony were heard by her friends and echoed with nonchalance.

Yet she nurtured them during the hours of darkness.

Up above in the horizon, she lay, cosily watching the world beneath. She had been gone now for 4 days and her lifeless body was begging to be seen by her milieu.

Her friends seemed lost and sad. They looked like doting shadows trying to be obsequious to their lover and friend. They were wasted and dying.

She shed a tear for her wailing friends. She expected them to come up and join her to reclaim the past.

Her lifeless remains were soon identified and her friends were soon moved from their location.

The undertaker took them away with abundant pity.

They were nourished.

The friends looked up and smiled. The undertaker was charmed by their exuberance and liveliness. He nurtured them.

They thrived.

She saw them forget their past and flourish in their present.

She was shocked in disbelief.

“If only my friends taught me this lesson earlier”.

She had been stupid to end her sojourn so quick. She should have remained on earth and spread life and love to all the other people who loved her.

She should have spread her wings and flown over life if only she correctly saw her priorities.

She could have been a fulsome creation of God if only she realised that her love was not privy to a few brittle humans but many more brittle humans.

Dear Friends,


Let’s Kiss Good Bye to 2009,
It shall be remembered fondly.


Let us now paint 2010 with Love and Life,
Wish you


HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!