The Iran protests

From my MIS Asia blog:

If the Iraq war was about blogging (remember the Baghdad blogger?), the ongoing post-election protests in Iran are about Twitter.

If this is the moment of democracy, then this is also the moment of Twitter.

In the Teheran demonstrations against the contested re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Twitter has emerged as the tool to voice civil unrest. Iranian youth have been relaying their anguish through this popular micro-blogging site.

Twitter has become the opposition’s (led by Mir Hussein Moussavi, the moderate reform candidate who contends that the 12 June election was stolen from him) major tool for organising and sharing information with Iranians and the outside world.

“Some ask if the impact of technology (on the Iranian situation) is exaggerated,” writes Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal (22 June 2009). “No. Twittering and Youtubing made the story take hold and take off. But did the technology create the rebellion? No, it encouraged what was there…”

So, there you are.

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Unverified video

NYT today notes: A video posted on several Web sites that showed a young woman, called Neda, her face covered in blood. Text posted with the video said she had been shot. It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the video.

Reminds me of many earlier unverified but viral videos. Remember the video featuring flogging of a woman in Swat Valley in Pakistan? The woman in question later denied it. Or before the Iraq attack, remember the fake video of a diplomat's daughter in Kuwait who alleged about the atrocities committed by Iraqi soldiers? Why should we accept everything blindly?

BBC Caught In Mass Public Deception With Iran Propaganda

(Also here)

Tribute to the Bard of Bhopal

Shama Zaidi pays her tribute to late Habib Tanvir:

Like many of his generation of students of AMU, Habib was influenced by leftist politics and this marked his political stance from then onwards, though he threw away his party card very soon after he acquired it. Just before Habib arrived in Bombay, the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) had just been founded. He immediately began to take part in its activities. They rehearsed in a hall near Opera House and Habib acted in plays directed by Balraj Sahni and Dina Pathak. I remember him telling us how they used to stage street plays by pretending to be a pickpocket and a policeman quarrelling. The crowd which collected had no idea that this was just a play and by the time they found out and the real police arrived, the actors melted away. When the Communist Party of India was banned many IPTA members were jailed or went underground. From 1948-50, Habib was left with the responsibility of running the organization. After which the doctrinaire Ranadive line made it impossible to do anything worthwhile in theatre and the group became almost defunct.

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SUDHANVA DESHPANDE's tribute to the the Bard of Bhopal:

In September-October 2003, on the eve of the State Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, Habib sa’ab toured these two states extensively with his plays. The Chhattisgarh shows, a majority of them in villages, went off without a hitch. But when the troupe started performing in Madhya Pradesh, they came under attack from the Hindu Right. The play that evoked their ire was that little jewel of the Nacha tradition, a play neither written nor directed by Habib sa’ab, but simply inherited by him via his actors, Ponga Pandit, a rip roaring farce against untouchability.

It was all meticulously planned. In town after town, gangs of saffron activists would land up at the performance venue, and make enough noise to make the district administration jittery about law and order. But Habib sa’ab was considerably more crafty than his imbecile attackers. At Bhopal, they performed his classic Charandas Chor. After the performance, the organisers asked him to introduce his actors. He said, “We are kalakars (artistes); our introduction is our art. Would you like to listen to some songs?” “Yes,” chorused the audience. The actors started singing, and, without anyone realising, seamlessly segued into a performance of Ponga Pandit. By the time the Hindutva zealots realised what was happening, the play was over.

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The tale of a story-teller

Imagine for a moment.

You are a hotshot editor of India’s biggest news magazine. You write fabulous journalistic stories. Captains of industry know you. You blueprint and organize global conferences, inviting the world’s most powerful and the most glamorous.

At work, your colleagues, accomplished journalists in their own right, envy you. You have a corner office. A chauffer drives you to your office everyday and a retinue of assistants, secretaries and peons is always at your disposal.

Then you become the consulting editor to one of India’s topmost dailies. You keep hobnobbing with the rich and the powerful. You keep organizing big brand conferences and conclaves.

Can you chuck all that to live a life of literary “sanyasi”, in far off Goa?

But journalist and writer Sudeep Chakravarti did.

This is how it happened (based on what he told us at the Indian Writers’ Festival in Singapore on June 6)

Tin Drum, Tin Fish

One day Sudeep had a tiff in the office. In anger, he wrote a piece. A piece of heartfelt fiction--5,000 words, dripping with humour and insight but wrapped in darkness. Then he sent it across to the most powerful publisher in the country—David Davidar of Penguin India.

“Do you like it? If you do, I will go on. Else, I will forget about it.”

David said he liked it. Sudeep got drunk that night.

Then a writing frenzy overtook him. For six weeks, he wrote and wrote, whenever and wherever he could—in the car, at the airport, in the toilet, during lunch break, morning, day, night. For six weeks. A novel was born. It was called Tin Fish. He was hailed as India’s J D Salinger! That was in 2005.

Delhi-Goa-New World

How could Sudeep do it? What is so special about him?

“We are all story-tellers,” he emphasizes. “I am very fond of saying this. We are all story-tellers. Don’t hold writers in too much esteem. We (writers) are not much different from you (readers). Only some of us get lucky to get published.”

But to get there, Sudeep left everything behind, all big brands—Mayo, St. Stephens, Asian Wall Street Journal, India Today, The Hindustan Times. To be a writer. To see his name on the spine of a pink paperback. To fill his soul with joy. And it took him 42 years to get there. 42 years of life.

How does he feel post-transplantation, in his new home in Goa? He wrote in a piece in The Outlook magazine:

Work is good these days. I’ve had friends tell me I’m nuts to walk from a job and profile in Delhi and traipse to Goa and lessness. Then I’ve had them say they would kill to do it. Funny, I’ve felt similar ambivalence.

After 25 years in the NCR, 14 months ago I put my family on a plane and drove from our condominium in Gurgaon to a hillside place in Panjim overlooking the Mandovi River. We had checked out for the foreseeable future: A decade, I figured. Visits? Once a year, kicking and screaming.

If I can do it at the age of 42, so can you, he sort of hinted to all participants. There were many—probably more than fifty. Most of them were young—in their 20s and 30s. Some parents had brought their precocious boys and girls (school kids) to get them coached to be the next Arundhati Roys and Aravind Adigas.

For some time, he dwelled on the question why do we write. He narrated an incident about O V Vijyan. Vijyan said that we write because writing refines us. That’s a great line, I agree.

Sudeep is fond of reading the opening sentences of novels. I also read the first paragraph of a novel to decide whether it interests me. Great technique! He read the opening lines from authors such Ray Bradbury, Amitav Ghosh, J G Ballard, Hemigway, and Jung Chang, among others. Personally, I did not like them all. I love how Naipaul opens his books. Sudeep was very critical of Amitav’s opening lines in the novel, A Glass Palace.

Mr. Naipaul’s Cat

Many participants had anguished stories to share during the workshop. One journalist complained that she could not write—‘I keep worrying about my sentences’, she said. Another complained that she got stuck while writing her stories, didn’t know how to move on, where to end, etc. Sudeep handled them with his trade mark humour.

During the workshop, Sudeep avoided talking about the basics of literature. This workshop is not Literature 101, he warned us all. We will try to deconstruct the process of writing, he promised us.

And he kept the promise. By the end of the workshop, many had their own version of a story titled Mr. Naipaul’s Cat. At the end of the workshop, Sudeep proposed to bring out a souvenir of contributions by workshop participants. It might sound insensitive, but by the way people imagined Mr Naipaul’s Cat, it would seem the souvenir would not be a sexy read. Sorry to say that but that's just my personal opinion.

Name dropping, agents and advice

Sudeep has a great talent for name dropping but he does it with a self-deprecating humour. What can you say to that?

He also said that his agent, from a boutique UK agency, has been affected by the recession. So, this talented writer is looking for an agent now. Any agents reading this?

Here’s Sudeep’s advice for wannabe writers, in distilled brevity:

• We are all story-tellers
• A story won’t happen unless you are full of the story
• Be absolutely brutal about your work
• Respect good editing counsel
• Know the mechanics of publishing
• Write, write and write


‘The East India Writing Company’

Here’s more on Sudeep’s past and upcoming work:

Penguin published his best-selling first novel, Tin Fish, in 2005, which was described by some critics as India’s Catcher in the Rye. In late 2008 Penguin published his second novel, Once Upon a Time in Aparanta, a darkly satirical work that questions assumptions of a self-professed paradise. The work is set in Goa.

In January 2008 Penguin/Viking published his Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country, a best-selling, critically fêted work of narrative non-fiction about India’s proliferating but little-understood Maoist rebellion. It was published in the US by Viking in December 2008, and was selected by amazon.com as a Top-10 pick in Politics & History. The updated paperback edition was issued in April 2009.

His works have been published in anthologies (The Fiction Collection, Penguin, 2007; Recess, Penguin 2008) and literary magazines such as Wespennest.

Sudeep is at present researching two works of non-fiction. One continues to explore the world of leftwing extremism in India. The other, Highway 39, is set in Northeastern India, a volatile region. As with Red Sun, both works will explore issues of alienation and resentment in the churn of an aspiring India, a range that extends from conflict arising out of issues of identity, to social and economic displacement.

Alongside, Sudeep is engaged in completing a novel, The Avenue of Kings, the second in the Tin Fish trilogy; a collection of short stories; and a travelogue.

A former career journalist, Sudeep has worked at major global and Indian publication houses, including The Asian Wall Street Journal; the India Today Group, where he was Executive Editor, and Director of the India Today Conclave; and Hindustan Times, as Consultant Editor. He was most recently Editor-at-large for Rolling Stone, and helped to launch the magazine’s India edition. He continues to write for major print and online publications, and think-tanks.

He has edited numerous special volumes (among them, a 3-volume India Today Millennium Series); a book, The Other India (Books Today, 2000); and co-edited The Peace Dividend: Progress for India and South Asia (Lotus Roli, 2004).

Sudeep is a professional member of the World Future Society, Washington D.C., and alumnus of the BMW-Herbert Quandt Foundation’s Indo-German Leaders’ Forum. He is a trustee of ‘Save Our Seas—Goa’, a not-for-profit he helped co-found with fellow scuba diving enthusiasts. Sudeep also plans to support literary work and literary engagement in India and South Asia through a recently-formed initiative, ‘The East India Writing Company’.

Want to be a Bollywood script writer?

Everyone wants to write that ‘hit’ Hindi film. But do you have it in you? And what is required of you to make it in Bollywood as a scriptwriter?

To find out, I attended a workshop on scriptwriting for Bollywood on Saturday (6 June)—organized as part of the Indian Writers’ Festival. The workshop was conducted by Venita Coehlo and Loveleen Tandon (co-director of the Oscar winning film, Slumdog Millionaire). I have already written about Loveleen Tandon in one of my previous posts, so I will focus on Venita here.

Venita has been writing scripts for film and television for many years. She has worked with Cinevistaas and Sony Entertainment Television (VP, New Product development) in the past. Now she lives in Goa and writes scripts full time. She also paints and writes columns for newspapers.

I went to the workshop with a few questions in mind—and came out with more than I had expected. Are small films working for Bollywood? Do producers ask you to write scripts based on Hollywood DVDs? What remains of your script in the transition from the page to the screen, from what you wrote to what you saw on the big silver screen? And do you get paid on time? And how much?

My friend has written a script and wants to sell it for Rupees one crore. Is he daydreaming? Or it is very much possible in a “new” rich Bollywood?

As I said, I returned from the workshop with much more information and insight. I even learnt why there are item numbers in Hindi films. Of course, we discussed script structures, plot points, Syd Field’s narrative techniques, the concept of a hero’s journey and so on, but far more interesting were Venita’s personal experiences.

Venita’s story itself is so Bollywood-like.

The Influence of Sholay

“I grew up in Calcutta,” she said. “My house was above a cinema hall—Jyoti cinema. “Sholay” ran for five years in that theatre. Songs and dialogues of Sholay would vibrate through the walls and floors of the building and reach up to our house. I grew up with that movie.”

When the film stars of Sholay came to the theatre to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the film, Venita saw the whole street jampacked with people. “That’s when I realized the power of the medium of cinema,” she said. “I wanted to be a part of it.”



In Bollywood

Venita’s journey in Bollywood so far has not been smooth. Out of 17 scripts that she has written, only two got produced and saw theatrical release, including Sanjay Gupta’s Musafir. When she saw the other one in a theatre (she does not want to name the film) she was horrified to see that only one scene written by her was retained in the film. But the film’s credits had her name as the screenplay writer! “I wanted to go and hide somewhere,” she confessed.

According to Venita, Bollywood still follows the 1970s rates and laws for scriptwriters. Once you sell your script for a promised amount (you get payment in parts and full payment is hardly ever made), you part with all rights to your script. Even if the film is shelved, your script does not belong to you anymore. Payments range from Rupees 3 lacs (near S$12K) to Rs10 lacs, and you will be lucky to see any money after getting the signing amount.

“To work in Bollywood, you must supplement your income by other means,” she said, “unless you become a writer who has written hit movies.” She means Jaideep Sahni.

Writing for television is more strenuous but money is good in TV, she said. One month of income from TV can equal 2 years worth of toiling in Bollywood (as a writer).

Copying is rampant in Bollywood and ideas are stolen shamelessly. One has to learn to live with it. If you fight the powerful filmmakers, she said, you can kiss your future goodbye.

Things are changing

But despair not, she adds. Things are changing in Bollywood. A new breed of writers has taken charge of the writers’ association. New rates for scripts are being fixed and optioning of scripts (like Hollywood) will be legalized.

She acknowledged that the quality of scripts in Bombay is poor. There are no training institutes for scriptwriters. She did not seem to be impressed with Subhash Ghai’s Whistling Woods school. She mentioned how even workshops like this one (the one I attended) were not common in Bombay.

Anurag Kashyap and Anjum Rajabali held a workshop in Bombay sometime back but the results were far from desirable. Kamal Hasan also held a workshop in the South recently. We need more training opportunities to groom new writing talent, she said.

Here are some guidelines if you want to break into Bollywood as a scriptwriter:

1. Go with a bound script. Every filmmaker/actor these days wants a bound script—though no one reads it.
2. Be a raconteur: You have to narrate your script in front of stars and so you better be a raconteur
3. Get a star: The best way to get your script produced is to find a star and get him interested in the project
4. If a star likes your script and is ready to back you by starring in it, everything will fall into place—and you might even get to direct the film, no matter what you background is (It's ok even if you were selling chickpeas on a cart!)

Got it? Still want to try your luck in Bollywood as a scriptwriter?

PS: After reading this post, novelist Samit Basu commented that it always does not work like this. He shared his views via Twitter: "It really doesn't work like that. It's actually easier to sell a script to a producer than even meet a star. I know Venita and really admire her. But this advice only works for people who are already IN the Bombay entertainment industry."

Guerrillas vs Novelists

A thought:

"When everybody wants to fight
there's nothing to fight for.
Everybody wants to fight his own little war,
everybody is a guerrilla."

--James Ahmed

(From V S Naipaul's Guerrillas)

"When everybody wants to write
there's nothing to write for.
Everybody wants to write his own little novel,
everybody is a novelist."

Laugh. Don't take it seriously.

A few moments with Loveleen Tandon

Post-inauguration at the Indian Writers’ Festival on Friday evening, everybody wanted to have a few moments with Loveleen Tandon (the ‘lovely’ Lovleen Tandon, as the evening’s host put it).

People went — "The co-director of Slumdog Millionaire (SM) is 'so hot'"!

“She looks more beautiful than her picture!”

“She looks better than Freida Pinto!”

“Why didn’t you act as the heroine of Slumdog Millionaire?” someone said protesting.

“Why don’t you take yourself as the heroine in your next film, the one you are directing?” someone ventured with a suggestion.

“So that it bombs even before it is made,” said Loveleen jokingly.

When she smiles, she radiates a genuine warmth.

Lovleen was courteous throughout, making small talk with people, answering their questions on Slumdog, posing for their pictures. She was a picture of humility and confidence.

In a brief chit chat, she explained why Anil Kapoor was cast as the host of the KBC show in the film. She said that director Danny Boyle wanted someone for the part who had actually hosted the show. Shah Rukh Khan would not do it because he would look for the main part—not suitable at all. Amitabh is over 60—they wanted someone who could feel threatened by Dev’s character, and anyone above 60 would not feel that way. So Anil Kapoor.

Though Dev Patel was not cast by her, she also explained Dev’s ‘jarring’ accent in an otherwise believable ‘masala’ film. She was all praise for the Brit boy—sees in him great talent. He tape-recorded accents of various crew members (including Loveleen's) and each one turned out to be different. So there was no single Indian accent! “I advised Dev to be natural, without being fake,” she said. And that worked for the film. Only the Indian audiences could tell about the accent, otherwise it went down without much problem with the foreign viewers.

The money came from UK, so the film was primarily for UK (by extension, Western) audiences. I remembered reading an editorial in the UK film magazine, Sight & Sound, which described how the success of SM could save the Channel 4 (its funding was about to be cut down--revenue squeeze due to the downturn).

Casting for Slumdog Millionaire

Loveleen was casting for Mira Nair’s Shantaram (headlined by Johnny Depp) and the project was stalled due to some reason. Earlier, she had done casting for Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding and The Namesake. Then she got the job of casting for SM.

She went to numerous schools in various parts of the country looking for kids to play the roles of slum children. The middle class school kids could not act the parts of slum kids without looking and acting fake, she said—because they had never seen that kind of life. Finally, Loveleen suggested Danny that they should cast actual slum kids. She got hold of some and made a scratch tape for Danny. Danny and the producers liked the stuff and gave her the go ahead.

Language became another issue—the slum kids followed Hindi and Loveleen had established a great rapport with the kids. When Danny tried to direct them, said Loveleen, it didn’t work. So, Loveleen was asked to step in as a co-director. “It was a big stroke of luck,” she said.

Loveleen also revealed that in the original script, Jamal's (Dev's) interrogation was to be done by a police commissioner. She said that in India a police commissioner would not have the time to interrogate a quiz show freak. Danny and others finally saw her point and that's how Irfan Khan came in as the interrogating police officer (inspector).

These days she is working on the script of a film. She will direct the film when it is ready to be shot.

Noted playwright Habib Tanvir dead

Just a few days ago writer Kamala Suraiyya aka Kamala Das passed away. Today I read that theatre personality Habib Tanvir is dead. I have not seen his plays but I have seen him act in some films. I was always fascinated by his slim, pipe-smoking persona. Somehow, I placed him in a group of artists such as Kaifi Azmi and A K Hangal.

Veteran theatre personality Habib Tanvir died in Bhopal early on Monday after prolonged illness, family sources said. He was 85.

Tanvir died at about 0630 hrs IST at the National Hospital, where he had been admitted about 20 days ago after developing respiratory problems.

Hospital sources said Tanvir later suffered kidney failure and his condition worsened.

The playwright's funeral will be held in Bhopal on Tuesday, family sources said.

Tanvir was a popular Hindi playwright, theatre director, poet and actor. He had written plays like Agra Bazar (1954) and Charandas Chor (1975). In 1959, he founded a theatre company called the Naya Theatre here.

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Mishra on Mishra

I had read this Pankaj Mishra interview sometime back. But I chanced upon it again today. Loved some of his observations, which seem more relevant than ever--especially after attending a workshop on novel writing.

The Life of a Writer

Initially, I saw the life of the writer as a life of reading, which for me was really an extension of the life of idleness that I’d been living as an undergraduate at university. Reading gave me so much pleasure that I felt that maybe I could continue that life indefinitely.

Writing on Terrorism

People who write about issues like poverty or terrorism are a part of the elite, and the distance between the elite and nonelite is growing very fast. You can move around the world but meet only people who speak your language, who share the same ideas, the same beliefs, and in doing so you can lose sight of the fact that the vast majority of the world does not think or believe in or speak the everyday discourse of the elite. Yet their lives are being shaped by these elites, by people like us. I don’t mean this in a pompous way, but we have a responsibility to articulate their sense of suffering.

Writing as vanity

But so much of writing is fed by vanity and the feeling that what you are doing is the most important thing in the world and it has not been done before and only you can do it. Without these feelings, many writers would not be able to write anything at all. If you think that what you’re doing is not all that important in the larger scheme of things and that you’re just an insignificant creature in the whole wide world, which is full of six billion people, and that people are born and die every day and it makes no difference to future generations what you write, and that writing and reading are increasingly irrelevant activities, you’d probably never get out of bed. You need to work yourself up into some kind of a state every morning and believe that you are doing something terribly important upon which the future of literature, if not the world, depends. Buddhism tells you that this is just a foolish fantasy. So, I try not to think too much about Buddhism early in the morning. From noon on, I think about it.


On literary communities

But I’ve never really felt that being part of a literary community is all that important. It can be extremely detrimental to a writer. It can damage successful writers by giving them an exalted sense of what they’ve done, and it can crush less successful writers by infecting them with envy and malice at an early stage in their careers.

Feeling inadequate

I wrote for many years without showing my writing to anyone, because I was constantly comparing it to what I was reading. You have to compare yourself to the best and feel totally inadequate.


On reading outside your experience

Some of my students seem to want to be able to write without actually reading, which seems utterly bizarre. When I assign certain readings, they often say, “I can’t relate to this,” which means whatever story we’re reading is so far outside of their experience—which tends to be limited—that they will not make the effort to understand what it is about. I find this a crippling attitude to have toward literature, toward history, toward all sorts of things.

The pampered writer

...The American writer right now is a very pampered figure—by foundations, by fellowships, by publishing advances. Even though I am not American, I have been pampered enough myself to know how it can make your life too frictionless.

On the culture of prizes

It’s a kind of madness. And the culture of prize-giving is so corrupt. To think of what someone like Flaubert would have made of it, what kind of utter disgust and scorn it would have aroused in figures like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. What would they say if they were told they all had to compete for these little trinkets that were given out? Yet the longing for a very garish kind of success seems as widespread among writers as among investment bankers.

Read the complete interview here.

First Indian Writers' Festival 2009 in Singapore‏ inaugurated

The first Indian Writers' Festival 2009 in Singapore‏ kicked off today at the Pod, National Library, Singapore. More than 50 people, invited by the organisers India Se magazine and India Club, attended the inaugural ceremony.

Dr. Balaji Sadasivan, Singapore's Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, declared the festival open. His opening remarks, so witty and smooth, made the audience laugh. At the rate at which India was giving birth to writers in English, English has become an Indian language, he said. Soon, a billion people in India will speak English--outnumbering the few million British in the UK, he said.

Dr. Balaji's favourite writer is Vikram Seth. In the characters of the novel A Suitable Boy, he said he could recognize many of his relatives. His favourite novel is V S Naipaul's The Suffrage of Elvira. He remembered an episode from the novel and admitted how he had learnt a few political lessons from that novel.

He made an interesting observation: women writers being more adept at expressing human emotions explains why there are more successful women writers (esp in the crime genre--Agatha Christie, P D James, Ruth Rendell). Male and female brains are wired differently, Dr. Sadasivan explained. There lies the difference! He gave the example of a journey. While the male brain thinks of a journey in the form of a grid, a woman's brain thinks of a journey in terms of points--from point A to B, and so on.

After the inaugural speech, all the participating writers were introduced. They were Shobha De, Loveleen Tandon (Slumdog Millionaire), Venita Coehlo (she has written for Karan Johar), Sudeep Charkravarti, Anita Jain (Marrying Anita: A Quest for Love in the New India') and Poonam Surie (author of China: A search for its soul).

Shobha De said that she was an obsessive compulsive writer--everyday she needs to write at least 2000 words or else she starts feeling withdrawal symptoms. I don't write drafts, she said. But I wonder, she admitted, if my quality of writing would be different if I wrote drafts.

Later, replying to her, novelist Sudeep Charkravarti said that he wrote in (multiple) drafts because he wanted to continue experiencing the material and the pleasure of the writing process. Sudeep also said something which I really liked--it also shows his humility. He said that there is no difference between you and me, between a reader and a writer. We all have stories to tell--as friends, as children, as parents, and so on. It's only that some are fortunate enough to get published. That is the only difference.

Shobha De and Poonam Surie held an interesting discussion on India and China. Poonam said that people in China are happy about their material progress and want to forget their past (including the Tienanmen Square tragedy). They see Indians through the prism of Bollywood (a nation of singers and dancers) and Information Technology (the country's prowess in IT). Answering to a question, she said that the Chinese consider themselves more practical and Indians as more spiritual. She said that Indians and Chinese have many commonalities and we need to know more about each other.

Anita Jain read from her book, Marrying Anita, which left the audiences in stitches. She is a sharp, intelligent and charming writer. I wrote my book as a memoir, a non-fiction, because I did not want to hide behind a novel (as most Indians do), she said. America has a strong tradition of memoir writing and I am following that, she said (India has vacuum in that space, as everyone tries to write novels only). Currently, she has taken a break from writing--until the cup runneth over again, she said. She is a writer to watch out for! Shobha De profusely praised her work (the passages she read from) and I agree.

More on Loveleen Tandon, Sudeep Chakravarti and others tomorrow

More details here: http://www.indiaseonline.com

Tash Aw on the 'Map of the Invisible World'

Tash Aw was in Singapore to launch his second novel, Map of the Invisible World. The launch took place at the National Library Singapore on 1 June. Deepika Shetty of The Straits Times moderated a discussion with the Malaysian novelist. Here are audio excerpts from that discussion (sorry the audio quality is not that great as the recording happened in a big hall):

Film review: Traitor

Film review: The International

News from Writer's Side

Kanishka Gupta of the Writer's Side, India's first manuscript assessment and book editing service, sends some good news from India:

In less than an year, Writer's Side has done wonders for some of its clients. Ravinder Pal Singh's autobiographical love story has already become a national bestseller. Husein Taherbhai's collection of short stories has been taken up by an independent US publisher. Bhavna Chauhan's debut novel has been accepted for publication by Penguin Books India while Sukant Ratnakar's book on innovation has just been accepted for publication by Hay House India.

Congrats to all the new writers!

Video: Satyajit Ray on his life and works

Shyam Benegal's famous documentary on Satyajit Ray is now available on Youtube. You can't miss it if you love Ray movies.

Why shutdown a lit fest?

Israeli soldiers tried to shut down a Palestinian literary festival, reports Matthew Rothschild in The progressive. The festival was supported by British Council and UNESCO, among others:

The Israeli government sent in troops on May 23 to try to break up the opening of the second annual Palestine Festival of Literature in East Jerusalem.

Stephanie Saldana, an American writer living in Jerusalem, went to the Palestinian National Theater for what she thought was going to be the opening of the festival.

“We arrived and the place was swarming with the Israeli army, with trucks and huge guns,” she wrote in an e-mail to a friend. “I am still in shock. To ban literature? To ban reading? How is this possible?”

Here is another report from The Guardian:

"We're so taken aback. It's is completely, completely independent," Egyptian novelist Soueif, who is chairing the Palestine Festival of Literature, said.

"I think it's very telling," she told the crowd at the French centre. "Our motto, which is taken from the late Edward Said, is to pit the power of culture against the culture of power."

For more videos, go here.

Ingmar Bergman on filming

As I have been reading the autobiography of Ingmar Bergman, The Magic Lantern, I have been taking notes from it. For many purposes, my blog is also my diary. Short but interesting snippets from the book are also being posted on my Twitter account (www.twitter.com/zafaranjum).

I also want to say, at least for me, this is one of the best autobiographies that I have read, ranking with those of David Ogilvy's (Confessions of an Advertising Man) and Urdu poet Josh Malihabadi's (Yadoon Ki Baraat).

In chapter 6, Bergman talks about his learning the craft of film making. Here he goes:

"He (Oscar Rosander) also initiated me into the secrets of editing, among other things a fundamental truth --that editing occurs during filming itself, the rhythm created in the script. I know many directors hold the opposite view. For me, Oscar Rosander's teaching has been fundamental."

"The rhythm in film is conceived in the script, at the desk, and is then given birth in front of the camera. All forms of improvisation are alien to me. If I am ever forced into hasty decisions, I grow sweaty and rigid with terror. Filming for me is an illusion planned in detail, the reflection of a reality which the longer I live seems to me more and more illusory."

"When film is not a document, it is a dream. That is why Tarkovsky is the greatest of them all. He moves with such naturalness in the room of dreams. He does not explain. What should he explain anyhow? ...All my life I have hammered on the doors of the rooms in which he moves so naturally. Only a few times have I managed to creep inside. Most of my conscious efforts have ended in embarrassing failure--The Serpent's Egg, The Touch, Face to Face and so on.

"Fellini, Kurosawa and Bunuel move in the same fields as Tarkovsky. Antonioni was on his way, but expired, suffocated by his own tediousness. Melies was always there without having to think about it. He was a magician by profession."

"Film as a dream, film as nusic. No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul. A little twitch in our optic nerve, a shock effect: twenty-four illuminated frames a second, darkness in between, the optic nerve incapable of registering darkness..."

Eerily, I came across this news item in NYT: Ingmar Bergman’s Island Muse for Sale! My heart skipped a beat.

Swine flur or hog-wash?

Indian environmentalist and editor of the magazine, Down To Earth, has penned an effectively argued editorial on the pandemic-in-the-making swine flu, which is currently spreading very fast in Japan, as well as in many other places. Sunita asks, "But what are the origins of this virus, winging across our air-travel interdependent world? Why is this question never asked?"

True. The corporate media will not discuss it in great detail. There are reasons behind it. But to be fair, I saw an article in Today (Singapore), just a few days after the flu's outbreak, how it all started from a village in Mexico. But the story, as far as I remember, did not discuss the pig farm next to the village in Mexico. What was the secret? What was the connection? Sunita takes the lid off:

The influenza A(H1N1) virus is not transmitted to humans by eating pork, that much is now known and said. But what are the origins of this virus, winging across our air-travel interdependent world? Why is this question never asked? Why are the big doctors of our world looking for a vaccine for all kinds of influenza without checking on what makes us so susceptible to pandemics, year after year? Is there something more to the current contagion?

Yes. The current pandemic is linked to the way we produce food—in factory farms, via vertically integrated business. Experts say the global food industry, like the global banking industry, is too big and out of control. It needs to be fixed.

Take swine flu—now renamed. We know it started in La Gloria, a little town in Mexico. We know a young boy suffering from fever in March became the first confirmed victim of the current outbreak, which, even as I write, has claimed some 42 people and affected 2,371 in 24 countries. What is not said is this ill-fated town is right next to one of Mexico’s biggest hog factories, owned by the world’s largest pig processor, Smithfield Foods. What is also not said is people in this town have repeatedly protested about water pollution, terrible stench and waste against the food giant.

Nothing happened then. Nothing is happening now. Smithfield has done what all biggies do when nearly caught: deny any wrong-doing and claim ‘their science’ and ‘their tests’ show their herds, always kept in pristine conditions, are just fine. Interestingly, when The Guardian’s special correspondent, Felicity Lawrence, wrote to Smithfield asking for test results, she got no data, only the usual corporate response: “These are unfounded opinions and unrestrained internet rumours”. Simultaneously, all the food giants have ganged up to ensure the World Health Organization changes the name of the contagion and exhorts people to eat more pork, manufactured in their mega-swine factories. Business as usual.

(Letters in bold done by me)
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Analyzing the 2009 Indian Elections and its Impact on India

These are my personal views on Indian elections. Please let me know yours.

Domestication/Fiction vs Nonfiction

Should a writer allow himself to be domesticated? What are the consequences? Better to ask other writers. It is a tough choice: to be a normal human being or to be a writer. A writer has to stay on the margins of society to observe what goes on in the centre.

David Foster Wallace warned his wife, Green, that if he killed himself she'd be "the Yoko Ono of the literary world, the woman with all the hair who domesticated you and look what happened."

David Foster Wallace to Don DeLillo: "I do not know why the comparative ease and pleasure of writing non-fiction always confirms my intuition that fiction is really What I'm Supposed to Do..." (The New Yorker, March 9, 2009)

On Ramin Bahrani/Goodbye, Solo

Thus writes Aravid Adiga on his filmmaker friend Ramin Bahrani (whose latest film is Goodbye, Solo)...

I’ve known Bahrani since the mid-1990s, when we were undergraduates at Columbia University in New York. Tall and thin, owl-like in his gaze, deeply knowledgeable about Dostoyevsky and Kokoschka, and full of tremendous plans to write and direct movies, he was so far ahead of everyone else at college that he seemed to us a creature beamed in from Mars to accelerate human civilization. Then we discovered that he had come from some place even stranger than that: North Carolina. The idea that the South had become cool and multicultural wasn’t really bought by anyone in New York back then, and his classmates settled scores with Bahrani by teasing him for his Southern twang. He has lost it now—but he remains, in many ways, a creature of the American South: in his easy-going manner, his ironic humor, but above all, in his ingrained resistance to the idea that America is defined by what its powerful or successful citizens do. America is central to Bahrani’s vision of his work, but this country, for him, lives (as it did for Faulkner, one of his literary heroes) at its margins; taxi drivers, old men without families, street-side vendors, prostitutes, and petty thieves challenge, expand, and enrich America in his films. The idea of an America defined at its fringe is again at the heart of the new script he is working on—called Ship of Fools—which promises to give birth to his best film yet.

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I'm in office now but after reading this piece, I wish I could be transported to a theater and watch Goodbye, Solo.

Billu Barber/Delhi 6

Billu Barber

I look for something remarkable in every movie that I see. Something novel or something different. I don’t always succeed. However, if I do, I am happy with the filmmaker, even if the movie in entirety is a big let down. That little thing can compensate for the overall disappointment with the film.

In Billu Barber, for example, apart from the last scene where Shah Rukh Khan gives his speech in school (very emotional, like Al Pacino’s in The Scent of A Woman), there is this scene in the beginning of the movie when Billu applies for a government grant to refurbish his barber shop. Great way to introduce and reveal the main character. Of course, the government grant is never made. Billu has no money to grease the palm of the bureaucrats to get his loan sanctioned. Later on, we learn from an angry Om Puri (the rich moneylender in Billu's town) that Billu was the only one who had refused a loan from him and hence his shop was in a bad shape.

This is a micro level example of the debt trap that Billu perhaps was aware of. This brings me to the subject of debt-led growth model. India was not growing at a blazing rate before the economy's liberalization in 1990. Reason? Capital was not available for borrowing. Then everyone got access to easy credit. Since fiat money is created out of thin air, there is no dearth of it. But is this model of growth sustainable? Even before the Wall Street crisis and global recession that we are witnessing today, I knew something was wrong with this model. At that time, I didn't know about finance, fiat money, the inverse pyramid model of debt-based growth.

Will the whole of humanity be enslaved by the financial institutions (Master/Visa/bank mortgages for individuals and WB/IMF for countries)? That's what Billu's little act of defiance reminds me. Any way, in the old Hindi movies, the villains were the village moneylenders.

Delhi 6

God is you…he lives in your heart. Tujh me rab basta hai. I think that was one of the messages of the film, Delhi 6. And it was made brilliantly obvious by the shots in the closing credits. In the temple, there is a mirror. All characters (actors) come to the temple and see their image reflected in the mirror, in the temple’s sanctum sanctorum. Great message!

I think the film did not work because of the principal character. There was not much background provided on him, nor was there a transformation in him--creating less empathy with him. We never see how his childhood was. What formed his thoughts and beliefs? The film did not convey that.

When I discussed the film with scriptwriting guru Syd Field, who had advised Rakyesh Omprakash Mehra on the script, he said that the main character was passive. Too many cooks (three writers in this case) spoil the broth and despite good intentions, this is what happened with Delhi 6.

First Indian Writers' Festival 2009 in Singapore‏

This was in the making for sometime! India Se magazine has announced the First Indian Writers' Festival 2009 in Singapore‏.

The date for the one day festival is June 6, 2009.

According to India Se, Loveleen Tandon (Slumdog Millionaire) and Venita Coehlo (she has written for Karan Johar) will conduct a screenplay writing workshop. Sudeep Charkravarti of Tin Fish fame will conduct a fiction writing workshop.

The gala dinner is with Shobha De, Loveleen Tandon, Anita Jain and Poonam Surie at the Tanglin Club.

The combined package for workshops and gala dinner is S$160.

For details, email roopali@indiase.com.sg/indiase@singnet.com.sg or call (65) 6377 2838.

More details here: http://www.indiaseonline.com

Aravind Adiga on Sri Lanka's own war on terror

"The world has issued the Sri Lankan government a blank check in its fight against the LTTE, and it is time now to tear up that check," says journalist and novelist Aravind Adiga, the bestselling author of The White Tiger, which won the 2008 Man Booker Prize.

In a powerful essay in The Daily Beast (theirs is the only general daily e-newsletter I subscribe to), Aravind takes the Sri Lankan govt to task for its war on terror (against LTTE) and the butchery of innocent Tamil civilians in the process:

One of the world's oldest, best-organized, and nastiest terrorist groups is about to be wiped out in Sri Lanka. This sounds like good news, but the world may soon discover that the elimination of this particular terrorist group came at a terrible price. Indeed, in so many ways, what is happening in Sri Lanka—this small, sunny, and incredibly beautiful nation—seems like a perfect libertarian's nightmare of what can go wrong in a war on terror.

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Indian Muslims condemn "jizya" tax on Pakistan's Sikhs‏

Got this one from my friend and activist Yusuf Saeed. Jizya is one of the most misunderstood concepts (remember the Mughal history and Aurangzeb!) and the Talibans, amongst the many horrible things that they do in the name of Islam, are also misusing it in Afghanistan/Pakistan.

Here is the copy of the statement from Indian Muslim leaders:

Joint Statement of Indian Muslim leaders

Pakistani Taliban’s treatment of Sikhs in tribal areas is illegal and barbaric

We, religious, political and community leaders of the Indian Muslims, are alarmed at the reports coming out of Pakistan’s tribal areas about the Pakistani Taliban’s kidnapping, extortion of huge amounts of money from their Sikh compatriots as “Jizya” and demolition of the houses and shops of those who fail to pay the demanded sums.

We would like to say that Jizya is a tax paid in an Islamic state for exemption from military service by healthy non-Muslim adults who are free to follow their vocations without restriction or fear, and that there is no other tax payable by them after paying this tax, unlike Muslims who have to pay various taxes including Zakat and have to perform military service as well.

Jizya was payable by non-Muslims only in lands conquered by Muslims like Egypt, Syria and Iraq but not in unconquered areas like Madina where during the time of the Holy Prophet no Jizya was ever imposed on non-Muslim citizens who enjoyed equal rights and duties under the Constitution of Madina. For many centuries Jizya has not been levied by Muslim states and today even the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Islamic Republic of Iran do not levy Jizya on non-Muslims for the simple reason that non-Muslims in these states pay all taxes payable by others. Prominent Islamic scholars of the modern times like Shaikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi are of the view that Jizya should not be imposed now as non-Muslims are equal citizens of Muslim states and pay all taxes paid by other citizens and shoulder all the duties.

We wish to make it clear that the imposition of the so-called Jizya is nothing more than extortion by an armed and lawless gang which does not constitute a sovereign government or state or even an organ thereof. Moreover, Pakistan’s tribal areas are not “conquered lands” as their non-Muslim population has been living there for centuries. These areas were part of the British India and became part of the new
State of Pakistan as a result of peaceful transfer of power on Partition.

As regards the huge amounts in millions reported to be demanded, these are arbitrary and exorbitant as the amount of annual Jizya paid by non-Muslims in early Islam was merely one to one and a half dinar, which is 4.24 gram to 6.36 grams of gold. Moreover, this tax was payable only at the end of the year and not in advance.

We regard this as an act of injustice incompatible with the letter and spirit of Islam and the international covenants accepted by all Muslim states.

We demand that the Pakistani authorities must take earliest steps to retrieve the extorted sums and pay them back to their affected non-Muslim citizens and facilitate their peaceful return to their homes and properties in their traditional homelands and give them all due protection.

Maulana Mufti Mukarram Ahmad
Shahi Imam, Jama Masjid Fatehpuri, Delhi

Hafiz Muhammad Yahya
President, All India Jamiat Ahl-e Hadees

Maulana Abdul Hameed Nomani
Secretary, Jamiat Ulama-e Hind

Syed Shahabuddin
Former PM & ex-President, All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat

Prof Tahir Mahmood
Member Law Commission of India

Mujtaba Farooq
Secretary, Jamaat-e Islami Hind

Maulana Ataur Rahman Qasmi
President, Shah Waliullah Institute, Delhi

Maulana Waris Mazhari
Editor, Monthly Tarjuman, Delhi

Dr Zafar Mahmood
President, Zakat Foundation of India

Dr SQR Ilyas
Member, Muslim Personal Law Board

Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan
President, All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat

Mirza Yawar Baig
President of Yawar Baig & Associates

Shahnawaz Ali Raihan
Secretary, Students Islamic Organisation

Issued at New Delhi on 2 May 2009

Issued by the All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat, Delhi

For media comments only please contact zik@zik.in or phone 09811142151

Firaaq (2008)

I want to applaud Nandita Das to have chosen a complex theme—the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat riots—for her directorial debut, Firaaq (2008). As a (co)writer-director, her heart is certainly in the right place but the film as a narrative (structurally) does not work for me.

The four or five story tracks, all dealing with one or other aspect of the Gujarat riots, muddle the flow of the narrative. The problem is not with the editing or how the sequences segue into each other but with the choice of the stories and their episodic nature. Each story seems to be a stand alone piece. As the narrative progresses, they all hurtle towards climaxes of their own, frittering away the combined tension (and its resolution) that could have resulted had they all converged into a confluence. Would that be too tricky or clichéd (a la Priyadarshan)? That is certainly debatable.

The tracks themselves are fascinating on their own. I loved the Naseeruddin Shah/Raghuvir Yadav track. Naseer plays the Muslim musician’s character with so much depth and dignity. The portrayal was so poignant (especially the conclusion where Naseer finally admits: Music does not have the power to transcend such great communal hatred). To which Yadav’s character, the ever so scared and paranoid Muslim assistant, says: If you start thinking like this, what hope is there for people like me?

While watching the film, I was as aghast as Naseer’s character was when we found out that Wali Dakhni’s grave had been razed and a road had been built on that ground by the government of Gujarat. If Wali, a part of our history and heritage, is not important in India, then what place is there (in modern India) for insignificant souls like me?

The Deepti Naval/Paresh Rawal track is saved by the small boy whose haunting eyes ask all viewers at the end of the movie: what wrong did I do? Why is my present pathetic and future bleak? Why am I in a ghetto? Gosh, who can stand those innocent searching eyes?

The Tisca Chopra/Sanjay suri track (the use of a neutral name Samir in a communally charged city, Hindu Muslim marriage) was interesting. What Samir does at the end really required a lot of balls. In real life, as a Muslim, it would be hard for me to admit what he admitted. The autodriver and his wife’s track is perhaps the most muddled one. So many things happen to them on screen and yet their characters are not that well developed. The director also shows a little weakness in executing some scenes in this episode.

Firaaq means separation in Urdu. The film shows the separation of the two communities—Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat. Where are the villains who are creating this communal rift, who control the mechanics of the flow of hatred in the birthplace of Gandhi? The film does not ask this question and that perhaps has enfeebled this entire project. But, honestly, I can’t even blame Nandita for not taking this route to tell her story. Till today, even after the Tehelka expose, the Godhra incident remains an unsolved mystery and many of the perpetrators of the Gujarat communal carnage still remain unpunished. Nandita Das , through the depiction of the human condition in her film, reminds us of the injustice of Gujarat, a witness to her moral strength, courage, sense of justice and noble-mindedness.

The unraveling of Budapest as a metaphor...

In an interesting feature on the unraveling of Budapest, MARCUS MABRY reminds us of the dangers of globalization, and how everything can all come undone.

In the years since China, then Russia and its satellites, joined the world economy, confidence has become the currency of this globalized world. One of our era’s dominant features had been a swaggering self-assurance, a sometimes smug pride in our modernity. Until it all started to come apart last year, a sense of optimism and possibility infected a border-hopping elite and, to some extent, the middle and working classes from Budapest to Bangalore.

Global trade rose as economic barriers fell, and prosperity grew and spread. More than a billion people were lifted out of poverty in the last four decades, most of them in Asia. And in much of Eastern Europe, prosperity and personal freedom arrived together.

We took that world for granted. We behaved as if it were perfectly natural to be able to travel freely from one side of Europe to the other, to withdraw money from our home checking accounts at A.T.M.’s in Africa.

An entire industry grew up around globalization, with its cheerleaders and critics, its Thomas Friedmans and Fareed Zakarias on one side, and Joseph Stiglitzes and Samuel Huntingtons on the other.

Now, the globalized world faces its greatest challenge: an economic contraction the likes of which it has never seen. As many economies shrink under the burden of bank bailouts and consumers and creditors tighten their grips on their wallets, unemployment will rise most everywhere.

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Akshay, Katrina and Singapore's Billu Barber

Ever since ST Life! correspondent Deepika Shetty wrote about Bollywood film director Priyadarshan's shooting schedule in Singapore, she says that her life has become miserable.

"Since last week, my mail box has been filled with requests, my cell phone has buzzed so many times that I've been forced to switch it to a perpetually silent mode. Random folks call my office line pretending to pitch stories, when all they want is a brush with the stars" she writes in her ST blog. "Acquaintances have re-surfaced almost as dramatically as they had exited from my life. I have open-ended invites to lunches, to dinners, to drinks, even to salons to get my hair done."

Well, perhaps Deepika did not realise that there is price one has to pay for being able to be up, close and personal with celebs! I was not surprised at all at the reaction she got. "People are generally star-struck and the reaction you are getting is bound to happen when it comes to Indians and Bollywood stars" I told her.

Given the topic, I have two points to make here:

1. In the age of YouTube, when theoretically every one could be a star, why are people still so star-struck? Stars used to be demigods but in the age of Blogs and Twitter, they come across as savvy businessmen plying their trade. Let them be, folks--that's what I want to tell people! Let the stars do their job. Watch their craft, if you have to, but with a distance, and let the journalist do his or her job in peace. What's the point of basking in reflected glory by being photographed with actors?

Many actors and filmmakers now connect with their fans through blogs and other social networking sites. You can connect with Shah Rukh Khan, for example, on Twitter. Why not do that? You can even send him a direct message!

And since so many Indians are so web savvy, can't anyone do what Natalie Portman is doing for Hollywood with her social networking venture, MakingOf!

2. I have seen that some newspapers (even in Singapore) have their journalists pictured with stars (Hollywood/Hong Kong/ Musicians) and these stories (with the star struck journo standing by the side of the stars) getting published with a clear regularity. Their writings are also so fan-like. I believe that when a journalist is interviewing someone, for that moment, he or she is on par with the interviewee. The job needs certain seriousness--if you are not serious (in purpose) you are not being fair with the interviewee who is giving you his/her time. Displaying the behaviour of a fan does not suit a journalist. In private life, yes, (in a blog, yes) but not as a journalist of a serious newspaper.

Is my opinion too old school?

Rubina@Slumdog Millionaire for sale/Tehelka hacked

I completely share the angst and anger of director Shekhar Kapur on the sting operation on Rubina, that little girl from the Bombay slums who acted in the award-winning Slumdog Millionaire.

"I was aghast though at the sting operation done by that British Tabloid, which instead of being condemned world wide is being heralded as a great piece of journalism !" says Kapur on his blog.

What has happened to our sense of morality? Newspapers should direct their resources and investigative skills at unearthing corruption in government and military and not on poor folks. India's Tehelka has shown it time and again, hasn't it?

Shekhar goes on:

Not a single thought was given to the trauma that the little girl would go through with world wide publicity that her own father was trying to sell her. And what was the tabloid trying to do ? Trying to push a father to name a price for his daughter's adoption ? To go to a poor man in a slum who has spent his life not knowing where the next meal is going to come from, and then dangle a few hundred thousand pounds in front of him to entice and entangle him into a negotiation for the adoption of his daughter ? By enticing him to say those words that would make headlines all over the world ? How dare they judge and manipulate other people and their moral predicaments from their comfortable colonial point of view. I would rather have them arrested for obscene suggestions and offers than the father for coming to the negotiating table.

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On a separate note, looks like investigative newspaper website Tehelka has been hacked! Does anyone have any clue?

W./Road to Guantanamo

It has been a while now since I wanted to talk about Oliver Stone’s W. and Mat Whitecross and Michael Winterbottom’s Road to Guantanamoo. Stone recently screened the film in Singapore. As I had suspected, he told the audience that he had found it difficult to raise money for the 25 million dollars film (Why would mainstream Hollywood want to bankroll a project like W.?). Help came from various quarters, most importantly, from Hong Kong. Josh Brolin walked in when Christian Bale walked out at the last moment as he thought the make up was not working for him. Brolin is good in the film. Difficult to say it is the same guy who was in No Country for Old Men (2007).

What I loved about the movie was its straightforward narrative—a crooked man’s tale simply told still remains a crooked man’s tale. The bookending of the narrative with stadium scenes works amazingly. The film starts with a confident though wayward Bush and through the movie his character is transformed—he is “born again”. By the end of the movie, he leaves the scene confused and jaded.

Loved the way Richard Dreyfuss plays the wily Dick Cheney. If you see the war room meetings, you will know why Iraq was attacked. For vendetta and oil. Cheney’s character actually says there is no exit strategy from Iraq as there will be no exit. Permanent occupation. Is that the Neocon’s big plan—permanent occupation from Afpak to Iran?

Mat Whitecross and Michael Winterbottom’s Road to Guantanamo is a different ballgame. It is as searing and intense as it could get. And yet it is playful when it deals with a group of innocent guys from UK visiting Pakistan and Afghanistan. The bombing scenes are so real that you feel that you yourself are getting bombed—you feel dazed after watching those scenes. Some scenes (dehumanized Afghan prisoners, hungry, weak, over packed in little spaces) are so powerful, they seem like the perpetration of another holocaust—the only difference this time is that the victims are Muslims.

State of Play

State of Play is a new film by Kevin Macdonald, the director of The Last King of Scotland (which I loved). One of the themes is old vs new journalism, as pointed out by the this NYT review.

Social networking and the Indian elections

Are Indian elections boring? How Web-savvy are the Indian politicians and how some of them are using Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to connect with the electorate. From my MIS Asia blog:

The world isn’t concerned about Indian elections, complained an Indian TV channel.

The complaint is partly understandable. Starting April 16, the world’s largest democracy will be voting a new government to power. In a country of 1.1 billion people, about 700 million voters will decide the fate of more than 1,000 parties. These are humongous numbers by any standard.

Still, the world does not seem too keen to watch the Indian elections the same way that it was ardent about the recent American presidential elections that threw up Barack Obama as the celebrated winner.

Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria told CNN-IBN that the world is not paying much attention to the Indian elections but that is happening in a very positive sense because everyone believes that India is a matured democracy and there would be political stability after the polls.

No drama

Perhaps underlying the argument is the fact that Indian elections lack dramatic tension. Also, there are no charismatic leaders like Barack Obama in the fray to whip up an electoral hysteria for the world to watch and follow. Not just the world, even people in India are not that excited about the elections so much so that Bollywood stars such as Aamir Khan have to come out and ask people to cast their vote.

In fact, perhaps Rush Limbaugh calling Indian workers ‘slumdogs’ will interest more people than a news item on the Indian elections. As our publisher Andrew Smart likes to put it, sadly, the world is about clicks and ratings.

That brings us to the main point of discussion here: How Web-savvy are the Indian politicians and political parties? And how are they harnessing the power of the Web?

One would expect that India, the land of outsourcing, will have extremely Web-savvy politicians. The facts are otherwise.

In general, most politicians are not Web-savvy and only a select few care about communicating through their websites and blogs. One influential politician even suggested banning English and computers, arguing that they did not benefit India’s rural population. When the media harped on this subject, they did a volte-face.

How could there be drama when the two prime ministerial candidates, despite their wisdom and experience, are not exactly youth icons? They are unfortunately on the wrong side of 60 in a country where a large number of voters are below 30. Incumbent Congress’s Manmohan Singh, 77, (he had a heart surgery sometime ago) and opposition party BJP’s (Bharatiya Janata Party) L K Advani, 82, might show their verbal virility in public and display their muscular power by lifting dumbbells for press cameras, but they are not able to generate the Obama kind of magic in the electoral space.

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Gran Torino: A spiritual review

Walt Kowalski: [to Father Janovich] The thing that haunts a guy is the stuff he wasn't ordered to do.

Clint Eastwood plays Korean war veteran Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino (directed by Eastwood, 2008). Kowalski is a white old man (widowed at the beginning of the film) and lives in his property alone (away from his children--the lone ranger)--surrounded by immigrants (Koreans in this case). A Korean boy, under the influence of a neighbourhood gang, tries to steal Kowalski's 1972 Gran Torino. The rest of the film is about Kowalski's developing relationship with that boy and his family and how the Korean boy--an immigrant--becomes the heir to his prized possession.

After seeing Eastwood in so many Westerns, this movie too gives the feel of a western--as if the lawlessness of the frontiers has invaded the heart of America (this seems more believable given the regular reports of mass killings/shootings in America). And once again, the white man has to protect the 'right' weak against the 'immoral/criminal' strong. Also, at another level, the film shows the darkness that haunts America because of its wars on humanity--the Koreans and Viets coming to America with their war-ravaged souls (add to the list the Iraqis and Afghans and Pakistanis, among others, and remember, in the most recent shooting incident in Bennington, the victims of the unemployed Korean shooter were Iraqis and Pakistanis).

Kowalski's soul is riven with guilt because of his experience in the war. "The thing that haunts a guy is the stuff he wasn't ordered to do", he tells the father who is bent on making Kowalski confess. That confession, his wife's last wish, is Kowalski's dramatic need--his redemption. This spiritual aspect of the film makes the film rich in meaning.

Now why is this confession important? To understand this, one must understand the Christian concept of mortal sin. I am not an authority on this but let me quote author Karen Armstrong (Holy War): "A mortal sin is a major sin like murder or adultery. As its name suggests, it causes the death of grace in the soul, because it severs a Christian from God absolutely and can only be forgiven by means of the sacrament of penance, when a catholic confesses it to a priest and receives absolution from God. If a person dies with unconfessed mortal sin on his soul, he or she will go to hell for all eternity. To qualify as mortal sin, the sin must be a grave one and must be committed knowingly and deliberately and with a clear knowledge of the spiritual consequences."

That's why, before the denouement in Act 3, Kowalski's confesses and that foreshadows his death: because, if a person dies with unconfessed mortal sin on his soul, he or she will go to hell for all eternity. That turn around, from godlessness to a spiritual farewell, completes the character arc of Kowalski.

It is a terrific film and the screenplay by Nick Schenk is fantastic--keeps the story on an even keel. The young boy's (Bee Vang as Thao Vang Lor) character also fulfills his dramatic need by becoming aggressive (from a passive state in the beginning) and becoming an heir to Kowalski's Gran Torino. In a sense, Thao (the good immigrant) becomes the new inheritor of a multi-racial America (goes well with the Obama Presidency)-- acknowledging that the Asians are the most well-to-do group in the USA today. The other white characters shown in the film (family members, the white boy friend of Thao's sister) have either been shown as selfish or effeminate. However, to balance it out, there are other white characters in the film (the construction manager, the men in the bar, the barber)--all working class--who still have some machismo left in them.

The story structure is marvelous (beginning and ending with funerals) and all the three acts are well written. Eastwood's execution of the story is sound and masterful and thankfully avoids being overly sentimental.

Shekhar the philosopher

Went to Shekhar Kapur's blog after a gap of few weeks. Liked these nuggets of wisdom that he has shared with his readers:

On Courage

To me courage is the ability to live. Courage is the ability to be quite ordinary and yet be content, and not see life as a huge burden. Ambition or what we call drive is often driven by innate anger, which can turn completely negative.

But beyond all that true courage is the ability to be comfortable with the unknown and welcome it as the natural order of the universe. It is not just the acceptance of death, but also the acceptance of control as the great illusion. True courage is the ability live in the moment fearlessly and with immense love with no opposing force.

On passion, desire and attachment

Passion belongs to the moment and Attachment is addicted to the past or the future. Attachment is desire while Passion is pure acceptance. Desire brings with it the fear of non achievement, but Passion has no fear. Mira's passion for Krishna was not a desire for Krishna but a Pure Passion. It was not an attachment to Krishna but a love so pure and passionate that she was one with Krishna. Passion is universal and flows consistently and is limitless, the bhakti of Mira was never ending in it's force of expression.

Shakespeare wrote a great line for Juliet (Romeo and Juliet) " he is a beggar that can measure his worth". She was speaking about love. Passion is beyond measurement, it explodes through the clouds of contextualization. For it has no measure to compare it to.

Attachment and desire are contextualized and contained by measurement - they are reigned in by fear of non achievement - and by comparison, self loathing and envy. Passion is not only selfless but the letting go of the self. Passion is action not addicted to a defined result. Pure Passion leads to pure action. Attachment leads to reaction, not action".