heartattack

The music CD of Delhi-6 has a mirror on the cover. The director wants to send a message, obviously. You succeed Mr Mehra because Delhi-6 the movie is a mirror of our society, especially a mirror of our relationship with God. Go watch it friends! You’ll certainly be bored by some parts, but watch it. You’ll certainly take a few things back home with you if you have even an iota of compassion or love for India.

There is a scene in Delhi-6 where an actor playing Lord Shiva on stage is dancing to entertain the chief guest of the act, the local MLA. Watching this, Abhishek Bachchan comments that ‘Even the Gods know the power of the seat’. My reaction was – I wish!

The reality, I feel, is the exact opposite. In India, religion is always above law. Here anything goes in the name of religion. Religion is the opposite of HIV. It gives you immunity against anything and everything. You can go out and rape nuns, just because they participated in the conversion of a few Hindus into Christians. You can demolish a place of worship (also a national monument) just because some dickhead said that there used to be a temple there. You can set people on fire because some members of their community tore down your place of worship a decade ago. You can block railway tracks for hours because someone allegedly said something against your Guru.

Has there been one person put behind bars for these heinous crimes? Ermm.. NO!

Let’s bring it down a notch lower – things that happen in our daily lives. How many times have you had to wait for an hour in the traffic just because some sonovabitch thinks that it is his right to go to his wedding location riding a horse with a battalion of guests high on marijuana, dancing in the middle of the road. The government imposes a fine if I don’t wear seat belts. But what about these people? Why don’t they get a fine? A fine for blocking the streets? A fine for carrying a naked electrical generator to power the atrocious lighting? A fine for dancing in the middle of a crowded road? A fine for noise pollution, thanks to the inevitably horrible singer who sounds like he’s singing from his anus. Why so? Why no fine? Just because their religion says this is how the wedding should be held? Bullshit, right?

And what about the jagrans in the middle of the road? Why the f*** are these douche-bags allowed to encroach upon the whole road just to conduct an all night prayer? What happens if there is a fire somewhere? How would the fire-engine and the ambulance pass? What about the residents of the area who DO NOT WANT to F***ING PRAY ALL NIGHT and just want to sleep?

Why are helmets not compulsory for the Sikhs? The turban is their problem – they need to figure out how to accommodate the two. It’s not the government’s job to relax rules to accommodate religion.

The season of Ramadan is one another frustrating time, especially if you are out in the evening. Why are these people praying on the road? If the mosque is packed, go home and pray you freak. Again, what if an ambulance needs to pass?

Why do we still have the Islamic law? Why should a religion specific law be allowed to exist in this country? Why can a Muslim man marry 4 times when our constitution forbids polygamy?

Why do we allow places of worship that say “Hindus only” or “Muslims only”? Why do we allow religion specific quotas in certain universities?

Ironically, our symbol of Law is Themis - the ancient Greek Goddess of Justice

In the court of law, why am I asked to swear against the Bible, the Quran, the Gita, or the Guru Granth Sahib at the witness box? What does religion have to do with the judicial system, or even truth? Is lying in court only a crime if the oath of was made against a religious text?

Guys and gals, I’m not an iconoclast. I do dislike organized religions, but I have no problem with the people following them as long as they stay in the limits of common sense. E.g, I have no problems with people praying all night in a stadium. That doesn’t harm anyone. But I have a problem with people praying in the middle of the road. It is a safety hazard. If people do that, they should be jailed/fined.

The foundation of a modern democratic society is an insurmountable rule of law that is common and equal for everyone. Unfortunately, our country has not been able to get that right. Religion is still paramount here. Nobody questions, and nobody complains. Why? Why don’t we question this?  Maybe we like it this this way – following religion over following the law. And why shouldn’t we? The consequences of erring are insignificant, it gives us a false sense of righteousness, and gives us a metric to prove that we are better than others – all of which an equal society with a common rule of law does not allow.

Dear Mr Muthalik

On behalf of all Indians who are proud of their culture, I hereby offer you my heartfelt thanks for preserving the dignity of our culture that has slowly but surely been erorded by the pollution of western ideas.

Valentine’s day is a poison that mustn’t be allowed to kill the morals of our society. People believe you are being an orthodox extremist pig by opposing the day. I am a youth of the contemporary Indian society and I tell you sir that you’re not an orthodox extremist. I myself find Valentine’s day highly vulgar – roses, teddies, and heart shaped balloons are the epitome of sleaze. God save our souls from such bad influence.

I totally agree with your stand that dating is not in our culture. I fully support your move to marry off any couple found cozying up on Valentine’s Day. The youth of today needs to look at the love stories of our culture and mythology and not the west. The greatest love story of our culture is that of Lord Krishna and Radha. They should use that as an example. Lord Krishna and Radhaji never dated, did they? They never held hands in a garden or sang love songs! I’m 100% sure Radhaji and Lord Krishna married the moment they fell in love, which was when they just got out of their strollers. Look at the kids of today – want to date, sing love songs, sigh!

Some people have accused your people of hippocrisy and simple sexual frustration. They say your Ram Sene members care little about the Indian culture and want to disrupt Valentine’s day just because they cannot get a girlfriend themselves. I disagree sir. Your guys may have missed the last stage of human evolution, but I can see the passion for Indian culture in their eyes. So what if they smoke and throw bidi/cigarette butts on the road or destroy the country’s property. They never claimed they loved India, did they? They are simply preserving the culture. Manners and respect for public property is definitely not a part of culture.

I’m going to keep this letter short sir. English is a western language and so I guess you won’t be able to understand a long letter. I’ll end with just a simple request on behalf of all the well wishers of Indian culture.

Valentine’s Day is just one of the many western products that have influenced our culture. Hitting it alone is not enough sir. We need to campaign against other products too. You seem to be my only hope.

I request you to campaign against cricket, cinema, english, computers, phones, electricity, automobiles, non-ayurvedic treatments like smallpox vaccine, and even democracy. All these western influences have totally messed up our people and diluted the Indian culture. 

Sir, we need to take the fight to the next level and remove ALL, I repeat, ALL the western influences from our culture. Then we can live our dream of an ideal India – an India ruled by a king with a well organized caste system; an India where women have to burn themselves alive on the funeral pyre of her husband, her rightful end; an India where there is no electricity; an India where people ride bullocks and horses only; an India where millions of people die of infections, smallpox, and polio.

Together we can make it happen sir. Let me know how I can help.

With love regards

Nitesh

Image source: The Hindu (link)

Every now and then there comes a movie that is so much more than moving images on a sheet of fabric – it’s a phenomenon. It’s a work of art that breaks all barriers and sets new standards of filmmaking. Its dialogs adorn the lexicons of the language of its times. It’s plot, characters jump out of the screen and reside in the memories of its audience like real incidents, real people. It can bring about change – in people’s beliefs, lifestyle, ambitions, imaginations, and in fact shape culture. It becomes a relic of our times.

When I look back at the 20 odd years of my life, The Matrix comes across as the foremost contender for such a phenomenon. Closer to home, it’s definitely DDLJ (before you throw bricks at me for saying this, try to see how DDLJ, more than any other film of our generation, has affected us).

Two days back, I came face to face with another such phenomenon – DESHDROHI. A magnum opus par excellence by Kamaal R Khan (KRK).

The bias media has done it’s best to ensure that the film is ridiculed by our people because the media makes its money from the SRKs  and Aamirs and Kareenas. I’m sure that most of you, influenced by the bias media, decided to give the film a miss and are probably laughing at me for calling this film a phenomenon. But I have my reasons to call it so:

It’s a work of art that breaks all barriers and sets new standards of filmmaking

• Deshdrohi, first of all, is an environment friendly film. It accomplishes its green mission by recycling 30 year old, largely defunct cameras to shoot the film, instead of using new ones. This is a first of its kind initiative and a lesson for all other filmmakers who ignore the environment. Tech garbage is fast becoming an environmental hazard.
• Deshdrohi was made with complete safety of the crew in mind, something that has been often compromised in our industry. If any of you have seen any behind the scenes shoots, you must have seen those tracks and cranes for panning and zooming shots. Now they are extremely dangerous – the camera trolly may derail, or the cameraman may fall off the crane. To ensure the crew’s safety, the Deshdrohi team decided to forgo these risky setups, as evident from a scene where it’s clear from the shaking picture that the cameraman is on foot.
• Deshdrohi cared about grooming our country’s future rather than relying on experts for everything. The random split second shots appearing out of nowhere and broken, incomplete scenes indicate that editing was done by a 5 year old playing with scissors for the first time. This is a welcome change for an industry that believes in just hiring the best people to make films. Hats off.
• Deshdrohi dares to show reality. This reality is most glaring in the choreography. Instead of having unrealistic dance-steps no common man would ever do, the choreographers have chosen real life dance-steps straight out of the books of the lads who dance in front of a hindu baraat. To his credit, KRK dances to these steps exceedingly well, a complete natural. Watch out Roshan boy!
• Deshdrohi sets new benchmarks in acting and appropriate casting. KRK, not only looks the part of a 20 something college boy, he delivers a consistent performance throughout. His performance is consistent in that he handles a gamut of emotions – love, anger, friendship, disgust, guilt with the same expressionless face and monotonic delivery. Such a consistency is rare in today’s hype driven actors. He is more than ably supported by a stellar cast that includes Gracy Singh, Zulfikar Sayed, Hrishita Bhatt (marry me), and the Bhojpuri superstar Manoj Tiwari. Gracy Singh as the bike driving local goon; Zulfi as the hard-as-concrete, no-nonsense cop; Hrishita as the girl falling head over heals for KRK; and Manoj Tiwari as the city’s most feared sharpshooter fit their parts to the T and deliver a knock-out performance.
• Deshdrohi takes action to a whole new level. I am sure it’ll do what The Matrix did for action in Hollywood. Manoj Tiwari’s athleticism deserves special mention. Watch him in that scene where he jumps in that pool to beat up a goon. The amount of water that splashes out of the pool is a testimony to the guy’s action skills. Even Gracy Singh surprises with some never-seen-before action sequences. Take her entry scene for example. Baddies are tormenting a pan-wala. Gracy Singh enters riding a motorbike, stops about 100 feat from the baddies, and throws her helmet at the baddy leader, pushing him about 10 feet back. Whoa! Real star, however, is KRK. Imagine this – KRK is hounded by baddies and one such baddy is at a distance, holding a gun. What does KRK do? Slide up to the baddy on his knees and puch him in the crotch. Breathtaking stuff!!
• Deshdrohi, lastly, is a milestone in VFX technology. Two scenes deserve special mention. One is where Hrishita Bhatt confesses to KRK that she is truly madly deeply in love with him. Another one is where Gracy Singh’s aunt tells KRK that he is exactly like the prince charming she had been imagining for her dear niece. These scenes were, beyond doubt, filmed with Hrishita and the aunt in front of a green screen with KRK added in through VFX. It’s impossible to enact such a scene with seriousness otherwise.

Its dialogs would adorn the lexicons of the language of our time

If you’ve watched the trailers of Deshdrohi, you would have seen a glimpse of the pen magic at work in the film. Here are some dialogs from the film that are sure to make you stand up and applaud the wordsmiths responsible:

• KRK, to a politician he is about to shoot – “Nathu Ram Godse ki kya majboori thi ki usne Gandhi ko maara? Koi nahin.. lekin main majboor hoon. Mujhe aapko maarna padega!”
• KRK, introducing Gracy to a politician – “Yeh meri premika hai!”
• Zulfi, insulting KRK upon the later’s request to free Gracy – “Tu Raja se bikhari ban gaya?” (KRK’s character’s name is Raja)
• KRK, in response to the above – “Hey inspector, mera naam Raj Kumar Yadav hai, aur Yadav hamesha Raja hota hai, kabhi bikhari nahin hota!” (with all the reservation going on, the man has a point)
• KRK, regretting killing a goon in self defence – “Main use maarne se pehle mar kyon nahin gaya?” (Erm, well you did have the choice!)
• KRK returns home late after spending the night with friends at an item song. His grand-dad, Avtar Gill is wide awake. When KRK asks him why he hadn’t slept yet, Gill says  – “Neend to aankhon ko aati hai beta. Jis ghar ka jawaan ladka raat raat bhar ghar na aaye, wahan aankhen to ghar ke bahar raah dekhti hain. Unme need kaise aayegi?”
• Mukesh Tiwari has held Gracy hostage and has promised to release her if KRK kills the food minister. When KRK suspects that Tiwari may not keep his side of the promise, Tiwari assures KRK – “Main use jis kamre mein band karoonga, uski chaabi tumhare paas rahegi!” (Erm.. ok!)

Now these are just some of the gems that I remember. Trust me, there are many more. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself using them in real life.

It’s plot, characters jump out of the screen and reside in the memories of its audience like real incidents, real people

• Deshdrohi is about a man Raja (played by KRK) from UP/Bihar who comes to Bombay accidently and is a subject of much humiliation at the hands of the Mumbaiites. He decides to take them on and later becomes a pawn at the hands of the corrupt politicians and the underworld, who are essentially the same thing. Eventually though, he cleans them up better than Lizol floor cleaner. He changes clothes at whim, even though he arrived in Mumbai sans luggage, money. He can walk into the food minister’s office with a gun under his plastered hand and he can breach high level security of the Vice Chief Minister of the state with a gun held in hand. He can get a whole police force to put their guns down and make a politician confess his crimes on national TV by threatening to blow everyone up by detonating a plastic bomb he is wearing on his belt. Now, how can these characters and situations not be real? How can Raja be fictitious?

It can bring about change – in people’s beliefs, lifestyle, ambitions, imaginations, and in fact shape culture

I don’t know about others but the film definitely changed me

• KRK as the lead actor showed me that no dream is too small. If he can be a lead hero in a bollywood film, then I can become the captain of the Indian cricket team too – someday, someday. I had totally given up on this ambition of mine, but now I feel I can do it.
• Hrishita Bhatt (again, I repeat, marry me) falling head over heals for KRK changed my belief that I cannot get a good looking, sane girl to ever love me. It also strengthened my belief that most good looking girls are retarded.
• A couple of scenes in the film changed my belief that the brother-sister relationship is forever. I no longer see my sisters in the same light as before. Consider this – early in the film Gracy Singh’s brother gets shot in the chest. She leaves him for dead after some sob comments about sacrifice and runs away with KRK. Later in the film KRK gets shot, twice in the chest. Gracy somehow manages to find a pull-cart and carries KRK to the hospital. There he is saved by the doctors. Whoa.. sisters..!! My eves have been opened. This Rakhi wow for protection is a strictly one way affair.
• Lastly, the film changed me at a philosophical level. For the last few days, I had been wasting a lot of time, spending away precious moments that I am going to regret on my deathbed. But I wasn’t realizing my mistake. After sitting through this film for two and a half hours, I realized that I was wasting time on absolutely trashy things. I now want to spend my time wisely. I can’t say exactly which part of the film gave me this realization. It was more like an epiphany after the film as I was riding back home.

—

So well, my friends, I hope I need no more arguments to prove that Deshdrohi is indeed a phenomenon. It has every characteristic that makes films phenomenons. If you have not seen the film just because you are influenced by others, or because it is banned in your place, do the world a favor – go watch the film and be a part of this phenomenon. Years later, your children, grandchildren would envy us for having lived in a time this film was released, just like we envy those who lived when Elvis was alive or when Star Wars was made. You don’t want to be regreting then. You don’t want to tell them you did not see this film!! They’ll laugh at you, just like you were laughing at me earlier.

Well, if you consume any form of media, you’ll know by now that Barack Obama is the new president of the US of A. To repeat the oft-used adjective – this is HISTORIC. He is the first Afro-American to be the president of the United States (I’m certain Indian-Americans have already started dreaming of their turn.. politics is like hemoglobin for us).

Obama has been the darling of the media and the darling of most people I have had the pleasure of interacting with. He promises to be the change that America, they say, desperately needs. Most “experts” (read morons who think they know too much) believe he’s better for the world and the United States.

Now honestly, I don’t trust pre-election promises and emphatic speeches too much. Bill Clinton was as charming and as good a speaker as America has ever had. He was supposed to be a Listerine powered breath of fresh air, like Obama is supposed to be today. But then who knew that Clinton had trouble keeping his pants on and smoked marijuana (oh, correction – he never ‘inhaled’). JFK, a person who Obama is often compared with, was again a pop celebrity like Obama is today. But then, probably under the influence of a gazillion kilos of medication he took everyday, he increased the US involvement in the Vietnam war by 20 folds.

So yes, I refuse to go by the hype, the promises. I hope Obama can walk the talk. My personal favorite was Sarah Palin. That woman is hot! And everytime I look at her I imagine Tina Fey, the woman most eligible to be my significant other. So that gives Sarah Palin extra brownie points. Before she came into picture, I was an Obama supporter just because Michelle Obama is much more attractive than Cindy McCain. But Sarah Palin made me switch.

Apart from her looks, Sarah Palin and John McCain would have been good for my health, if the old adage – “laughter is the best medicine” is anything to go by. I’ll surely miss George Bush and Dick Cheney once they leave. Not a week passed without getting a video/email forward/news report of their douch-baggery – like shooting a friend while on a hunting trip, or spitting in public when no one’s looking, or being unable to define sovereign. Bummer.. with Obama as the president, what’ll happen to the jokes?

The only saving grace is the “gaffe-machine” Joe Biden who has the knack of blurting out something stupid at regular intervals. Biden reminds me of Nibbles, the diaper wearing grey mouse in Tom and Jerry, who gets into trouble frequently and has to be monitored by Jerry (Obama in this case) all the time. I’m hopeful Biden will keep us all entertained.

So yes, McCain – Palin would have been a better choice from the entertainment point-of-view. Sad it wasn’t to be. Though I have to admit I am happy that Martin Luther King’s dream has come true and a black man as indeed reached the pinnacle of, if I may say, world leadership.

They say “no man is an island” and sometimes being in India I wish this was untrue. I wish I could do everything myself – make my own electricity, have my own oil, own satellite into space for mobile connectivity, and own bank. The reason being – any kind of external interaction in this country brings me only frustration and headache. By external interaction, I mean, for example, opening a bank account, buying insurance, getting a haircut, buying a SIM etc etc.

In the last 3-4 months, I have, unfortunately, had the need to use these services and I am astonished at the lack of respect the companies offering these services have for their customers. My experiences have been so bad and so many that I’m forced to write a series of articles on them calling them the “Shame on you” series. I start with a probably unexpected contender – Standard Chartered (Stanchart) Bank.

Here is what happened:

I opened a savings account with Stanchart about 3 months back. Like most modern bank accounts I was entitled to a debit card with my account for which the bloody bank was charging me close to Rs 250 (USD 5) per annum. A month passed and no signs of the card. I called phone banking to register my complaint. After truckloads of promises and apologies, I was assured of a card in a week’s time. I didn’t get the card.

I called once more and again the same thing – apologies and promises. Still no card. I called a third time. Same thing. It was like a TV soap – same thing again and again. As luck would have it I got a call from some random female from the Stanchart survey department asking me about the extent of awesomeness of my banking experience. My guess is my call would be her last for the day.

So after a total of 4 complaints, still no sign of the card. Without a card these days, a bank account is as good as my personal piggy bank, minus the interest which is anyway offset by bank fines and fees (like fee for counting money for cash deposits – you are a bank, you f***ing morons, what else are you expected to do). In fact, Stanchart’s customer service number is not toll free so I spent like a 100 bucks on customer service calls.

Having had enough, I headed over to the bank to close my account. The reason I opened a Stanchart account was to avoid the headaches normally associated with public banks like SBI, and to avoid the evil of blood suckers like ICICI. Bravo, Stanchart has the worst of both – the inconvenience and evil both packaged in one. If this was SBI, I would have relented. Not here.

Of course, as Murphy said it, there was an ultra pretty looking chick at the counter (ok, I have to give it to the Stanchart HR if not their customer support). She was new and she requested that I give her a chance to fix the problem (and probably a chance for her to win like a gold star or something from the manager). In a rare case of brains above balls testosterone, I declined the offer and categorically asked for an account closure.

Here is the funny irritating thing – Stanchart wasn’t too sorry about what they did. In fact the crackheads asked me why I did not come to the bank brach straight instead of calling phone banking. I had 3 things to say:

• F*** you
• Why on earth do you have phone banking then if I need to come over to the branch for stuff like this? My guess is Stanchart runs a call-girl service under the pretext of phone banking.
• I had already been to the bank a week after I opened my account to fix my personal profile. The illiterate retards handling the admin stuff got my email, telephone number, address all wrong, rendering me incapable of even using e-banking. It took them like 2 weeks to fix that. Bank lobbies are not my idea of a lounge and so I don’t like to come over every week for some bloody fault of YOURS.

Ah well, like it happens with most institutions here (and even people), they choose arrogance over dignity and simply charge me 500 bucks for premature closure of account (less than 6 months). My ballsTestosterone overpowered my brain this time and not wanting to create a scene in front of the pretty chick, I simply paid it (I regret it now, honestly, damn women!).

So there it is – my banking experience with Stanchart. 3 months of headache, waste of time, money, and energy – precisely the things a bank is supposed to preserve with its services. Seriously, if you or anyone you know plans to bank with these shitheads at Stanchart please refrain. As I said, it’s probably more convenient to buy a piggy bank and keep money at home than to leave them with these incompetent jerks.

So, except for the pretty girl at the counter (muah!!), shame on you Stanchart, shame on you. All I hope this that you have shitloads of a certain kind of investment that has been in the news recently.