Jo – Page 8 – Just Jo

Nim, nim, nim!

Ryan with Chhota Bheem

I didn’t know what makes the kids fancy “Chhota Bheem”. I have heard a couple of friends mentioning the character when they spoke of their kids and now I see my son Ryan being glued to him on TV too. I did watch a couple of episodes with Ryan on Pogo and it got me nostalgic of the old Amar Chitrakatha days but been still wondering what attracts the new generation to it. Bheem has got no fancy weapons, vehicles or attire. He doesn’t even appear strong physically and is just a kiddo. But then I saw Ryan saying “nim, nim, nim”, eating three virtual laddoos from the air and then saying “I’ve got the power! I’m cchota bheem!”, and there I’ve got my answer. It must be the idea that you get extra ordinary powers by just eating a few sweet laddoos. You don’t have to have a spider biting you, or being rocketed to earth from another planet or wear your undies on top of your super-suit. All you got to do is to eat your laddoos, “nim nim nim” and you get the power. How sweet is that!

Meanwhile in Delhi…

The writer was searching for ideas to write a new book. By the time he had already used the themes he knew best – the upper/middle-class, elite educational institutions and middle-class romance – and didn’t know what to write next. He had no idea that Writer’s Block would be such a big deal. Happens to all great minds, he told himself. Yet, the pain was unbearable to him. ‘Help me god’, he prayed. ‘ Please do something like you did in my novel’. There was no answer. But just as he moved to grab a cup of coffee to serve the late night internet time, the phone rang.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello Ketan’, said the Dolby 5.1 voice on the other end.

‘OH.MY.GOD! Is this really happening? I never thought that something like this could really happen!’

‘What’s happening?’

‘Nothing. I’m just stuck with ideas. I’ve run out of topics to write. Tell me please, what can I do? What can I do?’. The writer was on the verge of breaking into tears.

‘Stop being a sizzy, Johnny Fontane.’

‘Who?‘

‘Nevermind. Open your eyes Ketan, and look around. What do you see?’

‘I see Arnab Goswami on TV!‘

‘You’re so hopeless, Ketan. Look around again.’

‘I see Arundhati Roy!‘

‘Bingo! Tell me now, what do you think you should do when you have nothing to write?’

‘Write about politics! Oh my god, I’ve never been clearer!‘

‘I know that part, but what do you plan to write about politics?’

‘Liberalism, Maoism, India-China friendship?‘

‘You’re being hopeless again, Ketan. That territory is already occupied’.

‘Hmm… How about going just the opposite side? Towards the right of the politics?‘

‘Well thought. But your fanboys are from urban India and they don’t know yet if they are on right, center or left.’

‘Now I’m confused!‘

‘Just like thy fans Ketan baby, but that’s okay. I will give you an idea. Write about something that is political yet you won’t be straight political, something so populist and appealing to the middle and elite class yet you will touch an emotional note with the rest, while ensuring you poke nose into someone more famous than you for a bit of TV time and in the effort you also get in the company of powerful people’.

‘Wow, that’s a lot to do, god! Is that even possible?‘

‘Like I said, look around you, boy. What do you see? Now don’t tell me the name of that Arnab fellow again or am gonna put you straight in an interview with him!’

‘Fair enough. Okay, I see Narendra Modi.‘

‘And?’

‘I see Amartya Sen and he is saying something about Modi.‘

‘And?’

‘If I write against Sen and support Modi, I will be even more popular and mine and Modi bhai’s target audience is almost the same!‘

‘Dumb, dumb boy. How do you then relate to the other class?’

‘Hmm… so should I speak on behalf of young Indians in general than myself?‘

‘Just because you have put an old photo of yours in that blue T everywhere from your book covers to Twitter background, doesn’t make you look young or the youngsters’ representative (get that T changed, BTW. You have Photoshop these days, you know).’

‘Then I will probably write against Sen saying he doesn’t know what the poor India wants.‘

‘Poor, of what kind?’

‘The ones who can’t attend a decent college or get a decent job?‘

‘And you know them because… you’ve spent your academics in IIT/IIM and then you got a job as an investment banker in Hong Kong and you stayed there for 11 years?’

‘But who’s going to think about all that? This is young urban India that we are talking about!‘

‘Super cool. You’re smarter than me.’

‘Kai Po Che! Gotta hang up now. Twitter time!‘

And so the writer began to tweet.

Of puppies and the Men-behind-the-drivers

The puppy is silly. He makes his passage not knowing that the next car on the road might just hit him. He may not have realized that the next car could be ‘the’ car. The car comes and it hits him hard and crushes him under the wheels. There is a driver. And there is a man behind the driver. He is asked by someone, “do you regret what happened”? Plain question. The answer could be a Yes, or No. But the man opts to draw an analogy instead. He does not say that ‘I should have hit the brakes before it happened, but I couldn’t’ or ‘I wish I could save the puppy’s life but was unable to do so’. He also does not say that it was the puppy’s problem altogether which could have revealed what he thought of the puppy’s action. Rather, he puts the analogy of another puppy.

The question of whether the driver or the man-behind-the-driver regrets what happened still hangs in the air. Even the person who asked the question doesn’t seem to have noticed that.

Ref: http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2013/07/12/interview-with-bjp-leader-narendra-modi/

The spiritual expeditions

morguefile

As I was reading about little Pi’s experiments with different religions in the book ‘Life of Pi‘, it brought back memories of my own spiritual expedition in the childhood. I think as children we were all curious about God and the different ways which religions choose to reach him. I have heard a couple of my Hindu friends telling me how they liked to go to and pray in a church and I guess it is the curiosity and adventure of breaking out of the norms and experiencing something anew that makes them do so (though some Hindus who may have gone to a church or some Christians who may have gone to a temple would later in their life quote the experience as an example of their secular credentials which may not always stand testimony). Likewise, I was fascinated by the interiors of the temples, the monks and the poojas.

I wanted to do a pooja of my own but that wasn’t easy. I had to find a nilaviLakku, the traditional lamp, and though you could spot one in the churches it wasn’t a regular household item in a catholic home. So I had to make do with an unused plastic incense stick holder that I got from somewhere. I took a piece of a dried palm leaf and fit it into the plastic holder and lit it with a matchstick. Right in front of the ‘lamp’ was a picture of a monk that I tore up from a textbook (whom I would later identify as Adi Shankara). All these had to be done in discreet, so I did this in a small portion of a tiny room in my house one evening while everyone else in the family were assembled in the main hall. Then I prayed, did whatever I could to imitate a pooja that was seen in the movies while ensuring that no one else was watching. In those days, I wanted to be a monk in an ashram somewhere in a remote hill area.

One of the biggest revelations in my childhood Christian spiritual life came from a lady in the neighborhood. She was poor, but a devout catholic. I was so caught up to the idea of a heaven and hell by then through the religious teachings. A heaven where it’s all green and beautiful and the hell with eternal fire. The idea of a furious god was frightening in a way. This lady once told me, “I will tell you a secret. Do not be afraid of hell, because there is none”. I was surprised. It was so against the catholic teaching yet it was so comforting to know that I don’t have to be ‘afraid’ of a god and no hell is waiting for me to fry me up above the clouds. She continued to spoke of a god full of love than a fearsome judge.

In the school, we used to make fun of each others god and religion. To claim superiority over the other but not in an adult manner. It was more like children arguing ‘my pen is better than yours’ or something. I think as children, religion and god were seen more as possessions. But then we grew up only to make those private possessions an obsession which eventually lead to violence.

Motivationals or Biographies?

The truth is that I am not much in favor of motivational books or how-to books anymore. Not completely shut myself to them, but. I used to like them because I thought that it could really help. Because the root cause of the problems that they laid out were what I could identify with and the solutions seemed plausible. It is mostly about ‘pushing the limits’ in the direction that the author has set in but at most of the times, in a general case, there is a limit to the limit that one can push (or so we hardly believe). Obviously the author can’t identify this borderline because he knows only his own and asks us to push, push, push. ‘You will succeed if you push further like I say’, they would tell you. So we read the book, happy that the author rightly identified the problems, assured that we would succeed if we followed as he/she had said, close the book and comment “what a great, useful book” and get on with our lives without using any of the techniques that the author explained about. In the end, it becomes useless, though it ‘inspires’ you, or you think it’s great and practical.

I would rather go for biographies. They draw a different problem in each of them. Sometimes, the same problem but different solutions that fit each individual towards working out that same problem. How ordinary people got into it and came out as extra-ordinary people. How they pushed their limits within their limits. The examples that other ordinary people could follow.

On Jiah Khan’s suicide

Happened to read Mahesh Murthy’s comments on Jiah Khan suicide episode in Facebook and got to say that it is insensitive and ignorant in most parts. Ignorant because he writes off the accusation on Suraj Pancholi totally and insensitive because he blames the bereaved mother of Jiah for the ‘massive cover-up of her guilt’. Murthy says that he doesn’t care about either party but after reading his note, one can clearly see whose side he is on but it is unclear why.

Agreed that Suraj cannot be blamed for not wanting to marry Jiah or deciding to breakup with her. Whether he was a womanizer or not is immaterial. Even whether her suicide was a result of just a relationship breakup shouldn’t put him on trial I believe. But with the same information that is available to all of us including Murthy in the public domain (he claims that he has no other information on the case than what is already there on the public domain), he should have also read about her mother’s accusation that Jiah was physically abused and that they were living together (domestic violence, anyone?). Read that along with Jiah’s mention of Suraj wanting to abuse her or threatening to hit her. Still no conclusion there, at least not until the police finding comes out, but these are reasons for the police to question Pancholi Jr. But what does Mahesh Murthy say? Suraj was only ‘wanting to’ or ‘threatening to’. If we are to pick up words, then we should pick this up too, from Jiah’s letter – “you kicked me in the face”. Why skip that Mr. Murthy? It should also be noted that though Mr. Murthy had no qualms in finding Jiah ‘vain / foolish / crazy / vulnerable’, he doesn’t have any of those words for Suraj.

What is more outrageous is that Mahesh Murthy puts all the blame on the girl’s mother ‘for not doing her duty’, along with her friends and family for not helping her. Some individuals choose not to share what they go through in their life, even with their most loved ones. They keep it all to themselves. To frame it as irresponsibility of a parent or to accuse their friends for not being supportive in all cases is totally insensitive, particularly in a situation like this. I had a friend who was very close to me and to whom I spoke to just 3 days before he hung himself in another city but I never knew that he was going to do it. He had responsible parents and supportive friends too.

So it’s just a little early to jump to conclusions, particularly when the only information Mr. Murthy has is the information available on the public domain. Or if he is giving Suraj Pancholi a benefit of doubt or support, why not extend that to Jiah and her mother too?

Update: Suraj Pancholi admits to beating Jiah Khan

Malayali House – more ‘reality’ in the house!

Malayali House

It is a ‘reality show’ everywhere. In sports, music, on stage, television and many a times in life too. People initially had thought that many of these shows would be for real but later some of them have realized that it could be all cooked-up. But that did not turn them away from watching the made-up reality of the reality shows.

Many of my friends who were mad about cricket had told me that they lost interest in watching the game when the match-fixing controversy erupted. But they kept on watching and enjoying the game even though they were unsure that they could be watching a pre-fixed game. Look at the reality music shows scene in television. The drama that was inherent in these shows have made people doubt the reality element in it, but they still loved it for the entertainment it provided. Even many of the music stage shows are just a ‘show’. Lip-syncing is a common practice and even the popular singers do it and that too after being caught by audience on several stages.

So basically people love reality shows. Although, they often ridicule it, blame it or anything. They love the entertainment and the gossip material that these shows give them (particularly the television reality shows). And they celebrate it – those who know and don’t know if it is cooked-up. But it wouldn’t be exciting to them if you told them beforehand that it was made-up. Then the gossip element, the talk that could be built around the show would be missing. That would make a serious effect on the entertainment element of the show and the TRP. The television channels know it, so they keep boasting on how ‘real’ their show is and we happily accept it.

But you can’t stretch these shows beyond it’s limits. People would get bored after some time. That is why new ways of reality television have been invented. So when people of Keralam got bored of music reality shows, television channels brought out comedy reality shows. When the audience got bored of that, they now bring the regional copy of Big Brother or Big Boss. And thus was born “Malayali House”, a reality show in Surya TV.

This is probably Surya TV’s best attempt to claim the first place off Asianet in Malayalam television scene and they have brought in all the right people to do it. The line-up of participants include some people who were fading out in the public and some who are publicity-hungry. It is a mixture of people who could not make it big consistently and others who want to make it big and some who just want to keep being in the limelight. The controversies, debates and discussions have already begun in the social media about the show which should make Surya TV and the participants happy. The audience should be happy too, as they are already fed up with the reality music/comedy shows in Malayalam television channel and needs some more drama from a ‘reality’ show. And now the show is adding up more spice to the episodes.

It is wholesome entertainment. And to think of it as an opportunity to watch the everyday life of some people adds more spice to it. And Surya TV markets it promptly that way with their tagline – “your license to ogle”. Long live reality television!

A song that traveled places

Way back in 2008, I had posted a song in my old blog. It was a prayer song that I used to sing in my school everyday during the morning assembly. The song is very special to me because it was written and composed by two teachers of my school and I used to sing it with my good friend from the school days. The lyrics and composition of this song is so simple yet beautiful. So whenever someone asked me to sing a prayer song, I would sing this one.

Who would have thought that it would inspire many more people! I came to know from the comments to the blog post that the song was rendered in many Malayali events and appreciated by many people. And just the last week, I got a message from a person saying that her daughter would be singing this song at an inaugural event of a charitable trust which was formed in memory of her nephew. It is amazing how a song transcends the places and appreciated by people. And I wish those teachers knew about it.

Here goes the song again…

Thrissur Pooram 2013

This year Thrissur Pooram was on a Sunday so I set out to click some pics as usual. The heat did not seem to have stopped people from coming to Thrissur Pooram. It was as alive as any other year. Here are some pics.

The colorful morning of Thrissur Pooram 2013