Posts
Bandwidth Limit Exceeded
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.
Apache/1.3.41 Server at www.venkatprabhu.com Port 80
I agree. I thought this site owner actually far exceeded his bandwidth limit when he made this sorrowful movie called "Saroja", which is neither story driven, nor character driven. In fact, it is like it is not driven at all! I just couldn't bring myself to care about anything in this overrated movie. To top it all, it is a copy of another movie! How bad could you be as a copycat that this one ends up in the miserable bottom of the heap?
To write a review would be to somehow give credit to a piece of work that attempts to be some kind of artistic endeavour. Saroja is not. So, if you are expecting this to be a kind write up about a movie that has its plus points, please excuse yourself.
For all the hype surrounding how "different" and "cute" this movie is, the latest tributes coming from someone as cerebral as Suhasini herself on Jaya TV, it is a miserable and highly forgettable piece of directionless, artless, tasteless garbage unleashed on hapless masses done in by a marketing machine.
Make no mistake - Saroja has no personality, no identity, and indeed no idea what it is trying to be. A thriller? A comedy? A caper? It is none of the above. In fact, it is an attempt at all the above in pieces, made by a pretentious, over confident, jackass-of-all-things-cinematic director who has not studied the basics of the art form, has no respect for any of the norms of storytelling, and has had the audacity to hit us with computer graphics that go far enough to tell us who is a "driver" and who is a "servant"! There should have been one pointing to the director telling us in no uncertain terms who the "idiot" is.
This is clearly not a director who has had to come up the hard way. His earlier debut movie was a runaway success and he apparently comes from a lineage that reeks of quality involvement in Tamil cinema. This movie is the one where the monkey came out of the sack and showed its true colours. If this is what this fool is about, I don't want to see any more of his movies.
This is the kind of movie that would result from picking up a camcorder, rounding up a bunch of your friends and neighbours and going on a trigger happy "shooting spree" around the neighbourhood, and then getting to an editing table to see how much more fun you could have with it. This is the kind of movie that should be released on cell phones and You Tube, not in theatres where people spend precious time and money.
When a movie wants to be a "thriller" it should have something to thrill us with. If it wants to be a comedy, it needs to have better than mediocre comedic situations and actors, and it cannot be begging for the audience to forgive mediocrity all the time, especially when it wants to repeat things that didn't work the first time. The writing was terrible to start with, and no good movie ever came out of a bad script. This guy is no writer. It is as simple as that. That apart, you cannot have a jackass directing a movie that would take a genius to get right. Even copying another film takes some talent!
By no means am I suggesting that this movie could somehow have been rescued from the bowels of abject negligence of script, and an outrageous disrespect of audience sensibilities. It just winds its way tortuously through terrible scenes, half baked sequences, unconvincing events, utterly crappy music, all the way to an end that was a relief and escape from this unforgivable mess.
There are too many lows to list but one should sum up the quality of this movie experience I had - there were a total of nine people in the balcony section of the theatre before the intermission, and only five after! A lady walked in during the second half and made sure she switched off the fans below which there were nothing but empty seats!
If there is any way we could cut off the resources that flow to empty heads like the clown who made this stupid movie, that would be a huge service to humanity.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Friday, September 26, 2008
India's Future with Priyanka Chopra
NDTV. Earlier tonight. Priyanka Chopra? Actress? Actor? Whatever. Not me, not normally interested. So, no thanks. But wait a minute! This is India's Future! How can I give this a miss? Especially when she is a former Miss to the whole World?
To my surprise the lass was fairly coherent, didn't flick her hair too much, and could put more than five words into a sentence! I was pleasantly surprised, so I stayed on. For some reason the show was conducted in an odd, deserted looking place, with young people sitting in odd formations facing the stage at odd angles. Lack of creativity doesn't surprise me any more, but creativity going in some crazy direction really bothers me - that's where a lot of serial killers come from.
Back to topic. This Chopra girl is quite lively, and can look good once in a while on screen if her own self confessed metabolism wasn't so high. I loved it when she commented that Indian women are naturally voluptuous, and she did not approve of dieting. Wow, she is cool I thought, till in the very next breath she said she had found a way of eating low fat Punjabi food! All good, how savvy can a twenty five year old actress in Mumbai be, I asked myself and since there wasn't much else on other channels I was hoping this woman wouldn't hang herself shortly, like all Mumbai actresses are famously capable of. Not often that I am this forgiving of people called upon to represent India's Future.
Then came all the politically attractive views about how great India's soldiers were, and how she has come to take criticism, and then I was woken up - did she say she had to work hard on Love Story 2050? Okay, this is one of my big grouse points with people in the entertainment business? Whoever told them that life was easy? I wouldn't really be complaining about any "hard work" if I was getting paid several lakhs more than a teacher or a police officer. And where does all the hard work go if the movie is all crap? People don't go to theatres to count the calories burnt in the name of making a film. They want to enjoy themselves, and if you have to work harder at doing that, please do. It isn't as if the money people pay at the box office grew on trees!
I was beginning to get bored when the classic twist came - audience questions! There was a bright young man who thought movies were not environmentally friendly because they printed scripts on paper! What paper? And what script in a Hindi film? Never mind my sarcasm! Chopra was ready with an answer saying in all her productions they are always very careful towards the environment. They switch off all lights between takes and were indeed "saving" something! How about killing the actors who needed more than two takes to deliver a simple scene? That would be easy when the lights were off! Bump! Off you go! No! That would be too harsh! So, why not shoot the whole film in daylight?
Who is this girl fooling? Most film productions trash locations, and that is why there is such a thing as a location fee for shooting on public property! The temporary nature of every film production gives very little leeway to think about anything beyond finishing the film on time and under budget - that's the bloody truth. It isn't as if our actors' don't know it, they just don't want to look like global villagers when they have to project something they don't have!
Before I could bring myself to laugh out loud, she said something even more alarming - that actors' clothes were recycled! No way, I thought, before she blurted out that in many films of the same producer, you could see the lead actors' clothes of one film being worn by extras in the next film! Well, that's definitely environmentally friendly, considering many of the song sequences are wasted on us in the first place! Why not just make shorter films? Or fewer of them? It would be good on the environment, our senses, and on the world of art!
While we wait for India's Future, could we ensure we put on a much better show for India's Present? It isn't like quality can kill us just because we aren't exposed to much of it.
To my surprise the lass was fairly coherent, didn't flick her hair too much, and could put more than five words into a sentence! I was pleasantly surprised, so I stayed on. For some reason the show was conducted in an odd, deserted looking place, with young people sitting in odd formations facing the stage at odd angles. Lack of creativity doesn't surprise me any more, but creativity going in some crazy direction really bothers me - that's where a lot of serial killers come from.
Back to topic. This Chopra girl is quite lively, and can look good once in a while on screen if her own self confessed metabolism wasn't so high. I loved it when she commented that Indian women are naturally voluptuous, and she did not approve of dieting. Wow, she is cool I thought, till in the very next breath she said she had found a way of eating low fat Punjabi food! All good, how savvy can a twenty five year old actress in Mumbai be, I asked myself and since there wasn't much else on other channels I was hoping this woman wouldn't hang herself shortly, like all Mumbai actresses are famously capable of. Not often that I am this forgiving of people called upon to represent India's Future.
Then came all the politically attractive views about how great India's soldiers were, and how she has come to take criticism, and then I was woken up - did she say she had to work hard on Love Story 2050? Okay, this is one of my big grouse points with people in the entertainment business? Whoever told them that life was easy? I wouldn't really be complaining about any "hard work" if I was getting paid several lakhs more than a teacher or a police officer. And where does all the hard work go if the movie is all crap? People don't go to theatres to count the calories burnt in the name of making a film. They want to enjoy themselves, and if you have to work harder at doing that, please do. It isn't as if the money people pay at the box office grew on trees!
I was beginning to get bored when the classic twist came - audience questions! There was a bright young man who thought movies were not environmentally friendly because they printed scripts on paper! What paper? And what script in a Hindi film? Never mind my sarcasm! Chopra was ready with an answer saying in all her productions they are always very careful towards the environment. They switch off all lights between takes and were indeed "saving" something! How about killing the actors who needed more than two takes to deliver a simple scene? That would be easy when the lights were off! Bump! Off you go! No! That would be too harsh! So, why not shoot the whole film in daylight?
Who is this girl fooling? Most film productions trash locations, and that is why there is such a thing as a location fee for shooting on public property! The temporary nature of every film production gives very little leeway to think about anything beyond finishing the film on time and under budget - that's the bloody truth. It isn't as if our actors' don't know it, they just don't want to look like global villagers when they have to project something they don't have!
Before I could bring myself to laugh out loud, she said something even more alarming - that actors' clothes were recycled! No way, I thought, before she blurted out that in many films of the same producer, you could see the lead actors' clothes of one film being worn by extras in the next film! Well, that's definitely environmentally friendly, considering many of the song sequences are wasted on us in the first place! Why not just make shorter films? Or fewer of them? It would be good on the environment, our senses, and on the world of art!
While we wait for India's Future, could we ensure we put on a much better show for India's Present? It isn't like quality can kill us just because we aren't exposed to much of it.
Labels:
actors,
cinema,
crap,
environment,
future,
india,
pretentious,
song sequences
Gay Sex Immoral? Says who?
Says the Central Government of India, no less!
http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20080066818
The Centre does not want homosexuality decriminalized! I wonder who the geniuses are who criminalized it in the first place! And now the Centre is showing its reverence to another archaic law.
{{"It (decriminalising homosexuality) may create breach of peace. If it were allowed, then evils of AIDS and HIV would further spread and harm the people. It would lead to big health hazard. It would degrade moral values of the society," Additional Solicitor General P P Malhotra contended.}}
Breach of peace? Oh, yes, this must be it! All the bombs going off must be due to our homosexual people really getting it on these days!
Big health hazard? To "the people"? It isn't as if homosexuals suddenly became "people", right? So, who exactly are we talking about here? Whose health? I would like to ask this moron if he considered urinating and defecating on streets very hygienic and uplifting to the moral fibre of our society. Surely those are not criminal acts?! Degrade the moral values of the society? - Why does this sound like it came right out of an essay competition in a government school? This is precisely the kind of sentence that would get kudos from incompetent slobs allowed to infest the mechanisms of institutions set up to reach idealistic goals without a thought for applicable truths.
This is precisely the kind of carpet under which the essence of India can get swept under, to be forever suppressed by moral policing that doesn't fool anybody but can hurt everybody. This calls for an outrage among all Indians who respect the Indian constitution and our fundamental rights. If we have freedom of expression, then this is an attack on our freedom of expression, no less.
Just because two people of the same gender express their feelings for each other through their physical act, how in heaven's name can it "harm the people"? Is it even conceivable that I look at two homos making out and I suddenly decide to pounce upon the nearest member of my own gender? What morals are we talking about here?
We have an Additional Solicitor General, no less, applying his value system to keep a law that already violates fundamental human rights? Doesn't this fool know India is a signatory to all the Human Rights Declarations in the world? Just because homosexuals are in a minority doesn't mean the rest of us have a right to make them criminals. Moreover, even if it was what is being claimed here, would criminalizing homosexual acts deter the birth of people who are oriented towards homosexuality? This is plain old interference and must not be tolerated at any level.
In fact, this is no different from criminalizing being handicapped! "Hey, look at that guy limping in public! Jail him!" People don't choose to be handicapped, you idiot! And they don't choose to be homosexuals or heterosexuals either. It is just the way we are who we are! Other people's sexual orientation, and indeed preference, if there were such a thing, should not become our business or the business of the government or any kind of collective.
This is not a matter that should be legislated, leave alone enforced. Just because it may be embarrassing to some of the old fashioned coots in government, we cannot stop our country from embracing reality and moving on towards a just and equitable society. We just cannot get into these archaic and barbaric notions of good moral behaviour. We cannot be standing in the sidelines watching the rights of our countrymen and woman get trampled.
After all, we are a country that quietly practices dowry, bride burning, untouchability, casteism, cronyism, corruption, bribery, and various other forms of absolutely illegal, anti-national acts. Which act of homosexuality ever hampered another person's existence like any of these do?
{{Countering the contentions of the gay right activists, the government said that such behaviour is not a natural trait but a reflection of a perverse mind.}}
A perverse mind! I wonder how this guy knows! - How is the Additional Solicitor General even qualified to make a comment like this, leave alone a counter argument? Not a natural trait? If you say so, God! Who is this idiot in this position? A reflection of a perverse mind? Let's see whose mind is perverse here. People who want to go about their business without needless persecution or those who want them to lead secretive lives just to preserve their human rights?
The funny part is, I have never seen or heard of homosexual people anywhere in the world ever arguing for equality's sake that heterosexuality must also be criminalized! As far as I can see, they are not bothered by heterosexuality. So, they must have perverse minds! If they had normal, argumentative, politically sharp minds, they should be asking for this, shouldn't they?
{{"Homosexuality is a social vice and the state has the power to contain it," the government contended.}} A social vice? You mean like smoking and drinking and beating up the wife and gambling and all those silly things people do socially? So, it's no big deal, right? A social vice? Aha! All along I thought this was a moral issue! Sorry Solicitor General, I got all mixed up! For a moment, I thought you were being serious. Phew! Good one!
http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20080066818
The Centre does not want homosexuality decriminalized! I wonder who the geniuses are who criminalized it in the first place! And now the Centre is showing its reverence to another archaic law.
{{"It (decriminalising homosexuality) may create breach of peace. If it were allowed, then evils of AIDS and HIV would further spread and harm the people. It would lead to big health hazard. It would degrade moral values of the society," Additional Solicitor General P P Malhotra contended.}}
Breach of peace? Oh, yes, this must be it! All the bombs going off must be due to our homosexual people really getting it on these days!
Big health hazard? To "the people"? It isn't as if homosexuals suddenly became "people", right? So, who exactly are we talking about here? Whose health? I would like to ask this moron if he considered urinating and defecating on streets very hygienic and uplifting to the moral fibre of our society. Surely those are not criminal acts?! Degrade the moral values of the society? - Why does this sound like it came right out of an essay competition in a government school? This is precisely the kind of sentence that would get kudos from incompetent slobs allowed to infest the mechanisms of institutions set up to reach idealistic goals without a thought for applicable truths.
This is precisely the kind of carpet under which the essence of India can get swept under, to be forever suppressed by moral policing that doesn't fool anybody but can hurt everybody. This calls for an outrage among all Indians who respect the Indian constitution and our fundamental rights. If we have freedom of expression, then this is an attack on our freedom of expression, no less.
Just because two people of the same gender express their feelings for each other through their physical act, how in heaven's name can it "harm the people"? Is it even conceivable that I look at two homos making out and I suddenly decide to pounce upon the nearest member of my own gender? What morals are we talking about here?
We have an Additional Solicitor General, no less, applying his value system to keep a law that already violates fundamental human rights? Doesn't this fool know India is a signatory to all the Human Rights Declarations in the world? Just because homosexuals are in a minority doesn't mean the rest of us have a right to make them criminals. Moreover, even if it was what is being claimed here, would criminalizing homosexual acts deter the birth of people who are oriented towards homosexuality? This is plain old interference and must not be tolerated at any level.
In fact, this is no different from criminalizing being handicapped! "Hey, look at that guy limping in public! Jail him!" People don't choose to be handicapped, you idiot! And they don't choose to be homosexuals or heterosexuals either. It is just the way we are who we are! Other people's sexual orientation, and indeed preference, if there were such a thing, should not become our business or the business of the government or any kind of collective.
This is not a matter that should be legislated, leave alone enforced. Just because it may be embarrassing to some of the old fashioned coots in government, we cannot stop our country from embracing reality and moving on towards a just and equitable society. We just cannot get into these archaic and barbaric notions of good moral behaviour. We cannot be standing in the sidelines watching the rights of our countrymen and woman get trampled.
After all, we are a country that quietly practices dowry, bride burning, untouchability, casteism, cronyism, corruption, bribery, and various other forms of absolutely illegal, anti-national acts. Which act of homosexuality ever hampered another person's existence like any of these do?
{{Countering the contentions of the gay right activists, the government said that such behaviour is not a natural trait but a reflection of a perverse mind.}}
A perverse mind! I wonder how this guy knows! - How is the Additional Solicitor General even qualified to make a comment like this, leave alone a counter argument? Not a natural trait? If you say so, God! Who is this idiot in this position? A reflection of a perverse mind? Let's see whose mind is perverse here. People who want to go about their business without needless persecution or those who want them to lead secretive lives just to preserve their human rights?
The funny part is, I have never seen or heard of homosexual people anywhere in the world ever arguing for equality's sake that heterosexuality must also be criminalized! As far as I can see, they are not bothered by heterosexuality. So, they must have perverse minds! If they had normal, argumentative, politically sharp minds, they should be asking for this, shouldn't they?
{{"Homosexuality is a social vice and the state has the power to contain it," the government contended.}} A social vice? You mean like smoking and drinking and beating up the wife and gambling and all those silly things people do socially? So, it's no big deal, right? A social vice? Aha! All along I thought this was a moral issue! Sorry Solicitor General, I got all mixed up! For a moment, I thought you were being serious. Phew! Good one!
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Bewitched by Sarah Palin?
I've been watching this woman - Sarah Palin. She's definitely conservative, definitely manipulative, definitely confident, definitely a bit retarded, and definitively the perfect Republican candidate to follow in the rich tradition of GW Bush. She looks better than Bush, but she's by no means as capable of making us laugh. In fact, she gives me the shivers.
Just when I was wondering where I should start about this creature that the Republicans have unearthed and unleashed on the American people as their probable next Vice President, this article came today on Yahoo! news.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080925/ap_on_el_ge/palin_witchcraft_blessing
According to this article, Sarah Palin is receiving some kind of holy protection from witchcraft! I have always believed that religion is a personal thing, but if people are using their religious beliefs to ask for votes, I don't think they can hope to be immune to their faith being questioned in more ways than one. But to believe in the power of witchcraft is simply... priceless!
Can you imagine if you were one of the geniuses on the cutting edge of America's science and technology and you are about to join hands with ten other countries in sending a manned mission to one of the moons of Jupiter and your Vice President comes running in with her witch hunter and wants you to form a ring around the launch pad to pray for the mission to ward off a curse? Now, maybe hanging the head of a moose on the windshield (facing outward of course) of the spacecraft would help scare away some of the evil spirits on the way!?
This is who the Republicans have signed on to represent you, America! I haven't even got to the scary thoughts yet. So, what's the big deal - believing in God, believing in witchcraft, what's all the noise about? True, it all comes down to some things we believe in that scientific reasoning cannot agree with. Like creationism that Sarah Palin wants included in school curriculae. That can be argued against and any rational mind will tell you that you cannot "educate" someone in something that has to be "accepted" at face value. The counter argument will always be that since you cannot conclusively prove that there is no God, you cannot say creationism is invalid. This is not even the cycle of debate I am about to engage in.
The most important characteristics of leadership are the ability to understand information, process it efficiently, and be able to take decisions based on the merits of "knowledge" not "belief". So, when you have a leadership that is more based in belief than in knowledge, you are bound to have an inability to assimilate information, an inability to process it without dogma, and the decisions and actions that result from these inabilities are bound to be ineffective. Sarah Palin is a candidate for precisely those kinds of misjudgements, decisions and actions.
The biggest danger of belief systems is that it provides the framework to shift responsibility on elements beyond human control. If an oil tanker hits a rocky reef and leaks thousands of gallons of oil and causes an awful amount of environmental damage, it would be very hard to assure the insurance company that witchcraft could be one of the reasons for the mishap. Sarah Palin must believe that every oil tanker that makes it safely to port is because of some prayer that warded off "all sorts of witchcraft"!
America, please don't slide to such low levels. The laugh has lasted long enough. When we hear about your private entrepreneurs making it to space on their own, it makes us happy. When we hear of one of you in a San Francisco garage making a plug in hybrid car go 200 miles in one charge - That is the America that we'd like to see more of. If that's what you want, what witchcraft can possibly stand in the way?
Just when I was wondering where I should start about this creature that the Republicans have unearthed and unleashed on the American people as their probable next Vice President, this article came today on Yahoo! news.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080925/ap_on_el_ge/palin_witchcraft_blessing
According to this article, Sarah Palin is receiving some kind of holy protection from witchcraft! I have always believed that religion is a personal thing, but if people are using their religious beliefs to ask for votes, I don't think they can hope to be immune to their faith being questioned in more ways than one. But to believe in the power of witchcraft is simply... priceless!
Can you imagine if you were one of the geniuses on the cutting edge of America's science and technology and you are about to join hands with ten other countries in sending a manned mission to one of the moons of Jupiter and your Vice President comes running in with her witch hunter and wants you to form a ring around the launch pad to pray for the mission to ward off a curse? Now, maybe hanging the head of a moose on the windshield (facing outward of course) of the spacecraft would help scare away some of the evil spirits on the way!?
This is who the Republicans have signed on to represent you, America! I haven't even got to the scary thoughts yet. So, what's the big deal - believing in God, believing in witchcraft, what's all the noise about? True, it all comes down to some things we believe in that scientific reasoning cannot agree with. Like creationism that Sarah Palin wants included in school curriculae. That can be argued against and any rational mind will tell you that you cannot "educate" someone in something that has to be "accepted" at face value. The counter argument will always be that since you cannot conclusively prove that there is no God, you cannot say creationism is invalid. This is not even the cycle of debate I am about to engage in.
The most important characteristics of leadership are the ability to understand information, process it efficiently, and be able to take decisions based on the merits of "knowledge" not "belief". So, when you have a leadership that is more based in belief than in knowledge, you are bound to have an inability to assimilate information, an inability to process it without dogma, and the decisions and actions that result from these inabilities are bound to be ineffective. Sarah Palin is a candidate for precisely those kinds of misjudgements, decisions and actions.
The biggest danger of belief systems is that it provides the framework to shift responsibility on elements beyond human control. If an oil tanker hits a rocky reef and leaks thousands of gallons of oil and causes an awful amount of environmental damage, it would be very hard to assure the insurance company that witchcraft could be one of the reasons for the mishap. Sarah Palin must believe that every oil tanker that makes it safely to port is because of some prayer that warded off "all sorts of witchcraft"!
America, please don't slide to such low levels. The laugh has lasted long enough. When we hear about your private entrepreneurs making it to space on their own, it makes us happy. When we hear of one of you in a San Francisco garage making a plug in hybrid car go 200 miles in one charge - That is the America that we'd like to see more of. If that's what you want, what witchcraft can possibly stand in the way?
Labels:
amerian,
conservative,
dumb,
hopeless,
politics,
sarah palin,
stupid,
witchcraft
Mumbai, Western India - indeed!
The ad. for "Khatron Ki Khiladi" on the new channel - Colors (notice the missing U?), warns that all the stunts are being performed under expert supervision in South Africa according to applicable regulations (Sounding very much like the Americans who love to write "This is not a toy" on plastic bags), and extends itself, huffing and puffing, to say "Viewers shouldn't try these stunts, especially children".
Now, either that means the stunts are really child's play and even children will want to try them, or our children would really listen to their parents yelling "Pinky! Leave the helicopter alone. You really shouldn't be following Akshay! No Chotu, you can't take the speedboat either!"
Are we hapless masses in India supposed to enjoy something being performed in South Africa with an American idea? How about talking in Polish with Korean subtitles, idiots? Oh, you want this to be a Hindi show? So, why isn't the show's name ever written in Hindi? Could it be because the people who can read Hindi would never watch this show? Or could it be you couldn't really come up with another name for "Fear Factor" that isn't equally dumb?
So, this is supposed to impress those of us who read in English, hear in Hindi, relate to American culture, and are willing to put up with South African regulations? Why not just show us the original show if we are this international in our taste?
It takes a bevy of beauties to go on some dangerous missions with Akshay Kumar? Fair enough. Television courting titillation is nothing new, but I would rather watch no TV at all than being forced to watch these unathletic acting career dropouts trying to hitch a ride to South Africa under some idea of "cool" invented last night. And these chicks telling us who they are - why? Who cares? To me, they all look the same, sound the same, and act the same. There is a serious business opportunity for a company that can invent and sell new types of giggles. And it can be called "Giggles for Dummies".
The show promises lizards and snakes licking these desirable nubiles - are we supposed to be scared of these creatures? We are still a nation where a large number of people are bitten by snakes on a regular basis, and yet, we do have any mortal fear of the creatures. We even have seven year old girls chasing away leopards with sticks and winning bravery awards from the President. Sweep all this under the carpet while watching another Whitey show ranking snakes for how deadly they are, and you are the perfect candidate to welcome the new White invasion of our culture, this time the mindsets.
Right on the heels of this one, we have BIG BOSS! A bunch of people in a house. So? The ads make this out to be some sort of macabre, extremely menacing proposition and we are supposed to be interested in who survives the rest of the loonybins in the house? Are we supposed to wait in trepidation to see where this next experiment in social engineering will take us? Or will we be spared the end of the season and have some actress cry foul and make news for herself while the show tops every toilet in viewerland?
Sixty years after independence, we're still very dependent on many things foreign. The most pathetic of them is dependence on foreign thought. What kind of Mumbai morons come up with these ideas to copy shows that are boring to start with? What kind of braindead, drugged out dopes are getting paid to come up with these ideas, and what kind of mediocrity marinated lunatic bosses okay these ideas?
We as Indians, have a long tradition of notions, as long as our history itself. These notions are complex and sophisticated, and we have never cared to explain or analyze any of these, because... we don't really care! It takes a lot to dumb us down, and while we might buy into a bit of dumbness once in a while, Mumbai trying to sell us the whole whale is out of the question.
Bottomline - we are not American, and none of the doped out foreign culture sucking assholes in Mumbai, from the uncreative bowels of their below mediocre television culture needs to tell us what we should like and what is cool. We're already cool and we don't really care about that either.
Which one of those dickheads is running Star TV in India? Somebody tell that knucklehead that we don't need to be told what is coming in the "Sizzling Summer" like the Asia Cup and Wimbledon, when it is pouring cats and dogs. Maybe these people are snorting dope all day long and don't even notice that summer is long gone for the 16 percent of the world's population that is keeping one of these sports alive!
That idiot on AXN who's been pronouncing Maruti as "Muhroodee" for ages - can someone other than the RSS tell this fool to get names right(especially those of Hindu Gods!), before letting his voice travel over the airwaves? I really wouldn't mind slitting the throat of the fool who approved this idiot's work, just for the incompetence it shows, or the indifference to Indian viewers who are being subjected to this nonsense.
It isn't as if a foreign culture has never made it to the shores of India. For thousand of years, we have been bombarded by things foreign. But this new phenomenon, of Indians telling other Indians how we must ape others, is new. And it is being fostered in Mumbai, squarely.
It neither begins nor ends with this arbid fiction film world called Bollywood (oh, what a coincidence it has taken to this name with love!). It spreads rather unceremoniously to news channels as well. The 11th of July bombings in Mumbai were shamelessly referred to as the "Seven Eleven" bombings, just so it rhymes with the white man's violent castration of sorts caused on "Nine eleven". When in India did we ever use the month before the day in mentioning a date?
And then, we have monkeys in Hyderabad, who celebrate Halloween! Halloween, for heavens' sake! What does India have to do with Halloween? One can understand Valentine's day as an opportune moment to woo someone who has already fallen for that one, but Halloween!? I can only say to those who celebrate Halloween in India - to borrow from Mumbai cinema - that they really mustn't have drunk their mother's milk!
The number of advertisements in India, especially for high end clothing, that carry white faces - yet another disgusting low. Why ever should we wear something made here because a white man is ready to wear it? The number of Indian corporate websites that have pictures of very unproductive but cute looking white faces will give you an idea where India really doesn't want to let go of imperialism, even if we were not the imperialists to start with.
Just so we are not perceived as being racist in our blindness, look at how many avatars Abhishek Bachchan has taken up where he wears clothes like black rappers and moves his hands like he was a tattooed, just released from jail black man expressing himself on the streets of Chicago? I wonder if he would love to get sodomized in an all black jail in the USA, just so he can boast of having "been there, done that".
It isn't as if all copies are incapable of merit and success in our own context. Kaun Banega Crorepati is a much better show than its original, rather dull American version, but it was Big B that made the wonderful warm difference. Indian Idol is indeed a good opportunity for young talent to get picked up to good futures in the entertainment industry although I wonder how many people would recognize Prashant Tamang here than they would in Nepal!
The question to ask is - why doesn't Mumbai copy the best of others' work? The master film makers today, in unabashed open view and in the greatest truth of the marketplace, are mostly white and from Hollywood. India has no Clint Eastwood, no Spielberg, no Terrence Malick, and no Scorsese. Mumbai doesn't have a Leonardo DiCaprio, and we most certainly don't have a Denzel Washington. (India has a Kamal Haasan, but he doesn't work in Mumbai)
The answer is - it's hard work being good. So, if you're not willing to work hard to create something original, and if you have no cultural roots to give you a sense of who you really are, if you are willing to take little crumbs of copied semi-original material and leave it to the marketing machine to make you, then you would do well in Mumbai. But if you are one of these, keep your shit to yourself and don't unleash it on the rest of us who can still tell the difference.
There are many actors and actor wannabes in Mumbai who can swear by the amazing actors Hollywood produces. Great actors come from great material. No screenwriters since the days of Salim-Javed have produced tight screenplays in commercial Mumbai. We will forgive the exceptions like Govind Nihalani for now. There simply is no respect for great writing, and indeed no demand for it. Some of the scripts that get approved for production have absolutely no potential to be "great" in any context, except maybe as recycled paper. All that Mumbai cares about now is "packaging" and as long as that sort of "packaging" has worked in the West, it is happy to ape, rape, and expect us to gape.
Deserving mention are the actress wannabes that show up in Mumbai, dressing and making themselves up like Western women, slimming themselves down, and throwing themselves about just like the women they watch on TV. The same mannerisms, the same attitudes, and the same level of fake confidence. All good, till they come to pronounce "sandvich" or having to understand the interviewer who asks a question longer than five words. Then, in one instance, all the glam falls away, and the villager is exposed. God bless them for their dreams, but what animal are they trying to ape?
Here's some feedback for you Mumbai ladies trying to glam us - You're not turning us on any more. That era of sexiness seems to be over. Most you look like miserable, empty, attitude throwing bimbos who don't know their place in the world. There are a few amongst you we still love for your inherent Indianness (which in itself is incredibly sexy) and beauty that appeals to our sensibilities. But for most part, you skinny bitches just don't cut it. It isn't as if we don't have enough white women to stare at if we wanted that kind of glam.
Salma Hayek doesn't hide her native English accent, and no European stars really worry about their identities while having to operate in a foreign language like English. So, what is wrong with Mumbai showbiz? A really deep inferiority complex? Just hate being Indian? Just plain clueless? All of the above? Pathetic.
Now, either that means the stunts are really child's play and even children will want to try them, or our children would really listen to their parents yelling "Pinky! Leave the helicopter alone. You really shouldn't be following Akshay! No Chotu, you can't take the speedboat either!"
Are we hapless masses in India supposed to enjoy something being performed in South Africa with an American idea? How about talking in Polish with Korean subtitles, idiots? Oh, you want this to be a Hindi show? So, why isn't the show's name ever written in Hindi? Could it be because the people who can read Hindi would never watch this show? Or could it be you couldn't really come up with another name for "Fear Factor" that isn't equally dumb?
So, this is supposed to impress those of us who read in English, hear in Hindi, relate to American culture, and are willing to put up with South African regulations? Why not just show us the original show if we are this international in our taste?
It takes a bevy of beauties to go on some dangerous missions with Akshay Kumar? Fair enough. Television courting titillation is nothing new, but I would rather watch no TV at all than being forced to watch these unathletic acting career dropouts trying to hitch a ride to South Africa under some idea of "cool" invented last night. And these chicks telling us who they are - why? Who cares? To me, they all look the same, sound the same, and act the same. There is a serious business opportunity for a company that can invent and sell new types of giggles. And it can be called "Giggles for Dummies".
The show promises lizards and snakes licking these desirable nubiles - are we supposed to be scared of these creatures? We are still a nation where a large number of people are bitten by snakes on a regular basis, and yet, we do have any mortal fear of the creatures. We even have seven year old girls chasing away leopards with sticks and winning bravery awards from the President. Sweep all this under the carpet while watching another Whitey show ranking snakes for how deadly they are, and you are the perfect candidate to welcome the new White invasion of our culture, this time the mindsets.
Right on the heels of this one, we have BIG BOSS! A bunch of people in a house. So? The ads make this out to be some sort of macabre, extremely menacing proposition and we are supposed to be interested in who survives the rest of the loonybins in the house? Are we supposed to wait in trepidation to see where this next experiment in social engineering will take us? Or will we be spared the end of the season and have some actress cry foul and make news for herself while the show tops every toilet in viewerland?
Sixty years after independence, we're still very dependent on many things foreign. The most pathetic of them is dependence on foreign thought. What kind of Mumbai morons come up with these ideas to copy shows that are boring to start with? What kind of braindead, drugged out dopes are getting paid to come up with these ideas, and what kind of mediocrity marinated lunatic bosses okay these ideas?
We as Indians, have a long tradition of notions, as long as our history itself. These notions are complex and sophisticated, and we have never cared to explain or analyze any of these, because... we don't really care! It takes a lot to dumb us down, and while we might buy into a bit of dumbness once in a while, Mumbai trying to sell us the whole whale is out of the question.
Bottomline - we are not American, and none of the doped out foreign culture sucking assholes in Mumbai, from the uncreative bowels of their below mediocre television culture needs to tell us what we should like and what is cool. We're already cool and we don't really care about that either.
Which one of those dickheads is running Star TV in India? Somebody tell that knucklehead that we don't need to be told what is coming in the "Sizzling Summer" like the Asia Cup and Wimbledon, when it is pouring cats and dogs. Maybe these people are snorting dope all day long and don't even notice that summer is long gone for the 16 percent of the world's population that is keeping one of these sports alive!
That idiot on AXN who's been pronouncing Maruti as "Muhroodee" for ages - can someone other than the RSS tell this fool to get names right(especially those of Hindu Gods!), before letting his voice travel over the airwaves? I really wouldn't mind slitting the throat of the fool who approved this idiot's work, just for the incompetence it shows, or the indifference to Indian viewers who are being subjected to this nonsense.
It isn't as if a foreign culture has never made it to the shores of India. For thousand of years, we have been bombarded by things foreign. But this new phenomenon, of Indians telling other Indians how we must ape others, is new. And it is being fostered in Mumbai, squarely.
It neither begins nor ends with this arbid fiction film world called Bollywood (oh, what a coincidence it has taken to this name with love!). It spreads rather unceremoniously to news channels as well. The 11th of July bombings in Mumbai were shamelessly referred to as the "Seven Eleven" bombings, just so it rhymes with the white man's violent castration of sorts caused on "Nine eleven". When in India did we ever use the month before the day in mentioning a date?
And then, we have monkeys in Hyderabad, who celebrate Halloween! Halloween, for heavens' sake! What does India have to do with Halloween? One can understand Valentine's day as an opportune moment to woo someone who has already fallen for that one, but Halloween!? I can only say to those who celebrate Halloween in India - to borrow from Mumbai cinema - that they really mustn't have drunk their mother's milk!
The number of advertisements in India, especially for high end clothing, that carry white faces - yet another disgusting low. Why ever should we wear something made here because a white man is ready to wear it? The number of Indian corporate websites that have pictures of very unproductive but cute looking white faces will give you an idea where India really doesn't want to let go of imperialism, even if we were not the imperialists to start with.
Just so we are not perceived as being racist in our blindness, look at how many avatars Abhishek Bachchan has taken up where he wears clothes like black rappers and moves his hands like he was a tattooed, just released from jail black man expressing himself on the streets of Chicago? I wonder if he would love to get sodomized in an all black jail in the USA, just so he can boast of having "been there, done that".
It isn't as if all copies are incapable of merit and success in our own context. Kaun Banega Crorepati is a much better show than its original, rather dull American version, but it was Big B that made the wonderful warm difference. Indian Idol is indeed a good opportunity for young talent to get picked up to good futures in the entertainment industry although I wonder how many people would recognize Prashant Tamang here than they would in Nepal!
The question to ask is - why doesn't Mumbai copy the best of others' work? The master film makers today, in unabashed open view and in the greatest truth of the marketplace, are mostly white and from Hollywood. India has no Clint Eastwood, no Spielberg, no Terrence Malick, and no Scorsese. Mumbai doesn't have a Leonardo DiCaprio, and we most certainly don't have a Denzel Washington. (India has a Kamal Haasan, but he doesn't work in Mumbai)
The answer is - it's hard work being good. So, if you're not willing to work hard to create something original, and if you have no cultural roots to give you a sense of who you really are, if you are willing to take little crumbs of copied semi-original material and leave it to the marketing machine to make you, then you would do well in Mumbai. But if you are one of these, keep your shit to yourself and don't unleash it on the rest of us who can still tell the difference.
There are many actors and actor wannabes in Mumbai who can swear by the amazing actors Hollywood produces. Great actors come from great material. No screenwriters since the days of Salim-Javed have produced tight screenplays in commercial Mumbai. We will forgive the exceptions like Govind Nihalani for now. There simply is no respect for great writing, and indeed no demand for it. Some of the scripts that get approved for production have absolutely no potential to be "great" in any context, except maybe as recycled paper. All that Mumbai cares about now is "packaging" and as long as that sort of "packaging" has worked in the West, it is happy to ape, rape, and expect us to gape.
Deserving mention are the actress wannabes that show up in Mumbai, dressing and making themselves up like Western women, slimming themselves down, and throwing themselves about just like the women they watch on TV. The same mannerisms, the same attitudes, and the same level of fake confidence. All good, till they come to pronounce "sandvich" or having to understand the interviewer who asks a question longer than five words. Then, in one instance, all the glam falls away, and the villager is exposed. God bless them for their dreams, but what animal are they trying to ape?
Here's some feedback for you Mumbai ladies trying to glam us - You're not turning us on any more. That era of sexiness seems to be over. Most you look like miserable, empty, attitude throwing bimbos who don't know their place in the world. There are a few amongst you we still love for your inherent Indianness (which in itself is incredibly sexy) and beauty that appeals to our sensibilities. But for most part, you skinny bitches just don't cut it. It isn't as if we don't have enough white women to stare at if we wanted that kind of glam.
Salma Hayek doesn't hide her native English accent, and no European stars really worry about their identities while having to operate in a foreign language like English. So, what is wrong with Mumbai showbiz? A really deep inferiority complex? Just hate being Indian? Just plain clueless? All of the above? Pathetic.
Indian animation - the hype and the hope.
For about ten years running, especially since the .com boom, we've been hearing and reading about the next big thing - the boom of the Indian animation industry. We've seen innumerous conferences, birth of new companies, announcements, and rosy projections. Advertisements for courses in animation scream at us even in small towns. So, what's the deal?
A little bit of study of the numbers, starting from India's "commendable" 2nd place in the global entertainment marketplace, will tell you the real story - we don't even have 5% of the market share, while the first place holder, the USA, has 87%. Then go on into what percentage of our entertainment business is animation and you will have made a good start in understanding what the hype is really not about. We will let some sharp business magazine do the math and tell you what exactly the numbers indicate.
But, what is the hype really based on? It is usually about how much the Indian animation industry has "grown". Never will you hear mentioned that this growth rate from infancy is hardly sustainable, and that many players will inevitably be pushed to extinction, and you will hardly hear it mentioned in any seriousness that most Indian animation companies don't have a basic understanding of what it takes to be a commendable name in this very global business environment.
We have thousands of engineers coming out of our institutions every year. We have respect for "technical" education. Where have we made that kind of investment on artists? The simple answer is - we haven't! And in all probability, we won't. India doesn't take "art" as serious business. Our belief is that we should study something that can to secure a "job" and have the best options for a safe life. So, we push and shove our children towards engineering, and medicine, and to some extent towards law and other sciences, but you will hardly ever see anybody pushing their child towards being an "artist" of any kind, unless of course one of the parents happens to be an artist.
Through this powerful filter, some of us do survive, and the animation industry would be very lucky if it picks up some of this talent. The film industry on the other hand, thankfully, is its own animal, and has enough steam to constantly put out the numbers if not the quality. It too suffers from lack of true artists, but it is able to survive because of a consumer base that is still largely forgiving of lousy cinema in the face of lack of alternative entertainment.
Animation, on the other hand, has enormously longer shelf life compared to live action. Years after geniuses at MGM produced Tom and Jerry, later generations continue to enjoy the show. So, our animation companies are not only in competition with the best the rest of the world is producing, it is in competition with everything that has ever been produced! In other words, if we don't produce path breaking animation content, we are not going to do very well.
In order to produce path breaking content, we need true artists. When we look for true artists, we have engineers coming to our animation schools, with an "interest" in animation, because somewhere we have told them that it takes some kind of "technical" skill to work in computer animation. Some institutions go far enough to "train" this pool of technical talent to be artists! It takes years and years of intense training to understand some of the fundamentals of art in any form. And we have 1 year courses that claim to put our animators on par with the best in the world!!!??
The arrogance of such claims must be questioned at all levels, especially when some of them are blatant lies - for example, "Work in studios like Pixar and Disney!" Hello? There aren't any such studios in India, and you sure won't get a job in any such studio just because you did a course! Indian Animation schools for most part, simply mislead people. They are all tool schools, not craft schools. The problem starts much earlier. Our children cannot even sketch half as well as American children can. It is true that our children are better at mathematics and spelling and science, but when it comes to drawing the simplest expressive character, the American child excels, while the Indian child is seriously crippled. This is how basic our problem is. The talent pool that comes out of American art schools is tremendous. They are not tool users like our engineers who have done their one year "Post Graduate" diplomas in computer animation! They are artists who can learn any tool to create their art.
Then, the marriage of cinema and animation - a very necessary marriage but heavily overlooked in India. Indian animation companies seem to have the blind arrogance to think they can make animated movies without any cinematic training being imparted to their artists. That is why you can see really tacky cinema sense in the Indian animation content, made by clueless tool users who are neither artists nor trained in the very basics of cinema. They just have no idea! (Not that their counterparts in the live action world are blessed with comprehensive knowledge)
Into this potent mix of ignorance, you can throw in lack of quality leadership. There is not even one Indian animation company that is headed by an artist of any repute. Standing in the way is our exaggerated reverence for formal education. Senior management in animation companies are wasting their time and their company's resources if they have no fundamental understanding of art. Art has several components that are not measurable using the same scales used to measure other mathematically representable talents. No matter what you believe as a leader and manager, you cannot manage what you do not have!
Most of the time you will hear this completely unnecessary comparison with the IT industry and somehow we are supposed to imagine that just because a few lines of code writing can be outsourced to India, so can art? Why does an organization like NASSCOM even allow the animation industry to be under its purview at all? This is animation, it is art, and artists use computer software to bring about imagery. How is this process that of a software industry player at all? This stupidity must end or the cinema industry must also be included under NASSCOM if software is software and the cinema industry also uses computers for various purposes! See how ridiculous this gets?
It is because of this fundamental mix up that we don't have our attitude set right about growing the animation industry. This is not a BPO, this is not the IT industry that can outsource donkey's work to others who have similar donkeys! How likely is an Indian temple to commission a Filipino sculptor because he is willing to work at a cheaper rate? The same level of mistrust is bound to find ground when it comes to great IPs being trusted in the hands of Indian animation companies. Right now, the average Indian animation company just doesn't cut it anywhere above the tool user level.
American cinema dominates the world marketplace not because of its formidable marketing machinery as popularly believed, but because it is able to answer a global story consumption need. Even mindless action appeals at a human level. Sex, even more so. Get beyond these cliched exports of the US and you will see that great stories are always invaluable for their human appeal. There are any number of theories on story development for a universal audience, but the work begs to be done before telling a story in the medium of cinema. Animation is cinema. It is not IT.
This is all about IP - Intellectual Property. If your IP is lousy, you will die. Indian animation companies are still stuck with mythology, and we treat our stories like the world is full of Indians who bow in reverence to lousy animation and abominable storytelling just because their parents worship the characters! We need to get out of our heads that we own all the patents on culture. We need to learn storytelling. If we don't do justice to this great art form, we will perish. There is no shortcut to knowledge, but stupidity is a definite shortcut to failure.
Have a conversation with someone in the Indian animation industry who is running on blind optimism and you are more than likely to hear the obtuse argument that we can train people and overcome hurdles. These hurdles will not be overcome by will power and the ability to stay in the race. They can only be tackled by understanding what it takes to create great art and investing in it substantially. Without this understanding, Indian animation will never be a knowledge based industry. And then we have to contend with other countries that have a much better investment in artistic talent, that are able to produce quality animation, even make unique contributions in style.
It has taken us 60 years since independence to get an individual Olympic gold medal. We just didn't even know Abhinav Bindra was that good. In the Indian animation business, the question of spotting genius is out before it even starts, because it would take an artist to spot another. So, the ability to spot any real genius is highly unlikely to flow down from the top because the top has clueless non-artists! The geniuses we do produce and those that are lucky to escape the destructive forces of our socially imposed ban on life in the arts, would rather work for an American company because they would feel fulfilled.
If the universe is kind to us and we somehow work out a law of averages where just because we have a billion people, we might be able to put together a few lucky marriages of the right people with the right ideas, we may be able to come up with a handful of Indian Animation companies capable of surviving. We might even have a shot or two at producing great content, not imagined by us, but by some American genius with a great "universal" idea. We're trying hard to reap what we haven't sown.
India becoming a forerunner in the world of animated content anytime soon - forget it. It is just not going to happen in the next forty years - two full generations. That's usually the time for enormous paradigm shifts as well. Till then we will continue to be the "next big thing" - whatever that means! Till then we can argue the virtue of Indian culture - animatedly.
A little bit of study of the numbers, starting from India's "commendable" 2nd place in the global entertainment marketplace, will tell you the real story - we don't even have 5% of the market share, while the first place holder, the USA, has 87%. Then go on into what percentage of our entertainment business is animation and you will have made a good start in understanding what the hype is really not about. We will let some sharp business magazine do the math and tell you what exactly the numbers indicate.
But, what is the hype really based on? It is usually about how much the Indian animation industry has "grown". Never will you hear mentioned that this growth rate from infancy is hardly sustainable, and that many players will inevitably be pushed to extinction, and you will hardly hear it mentioned in any seriousness that most Indian animation companies don't have a basic understanding of what it takes to be a commendable name in this very global business environment.
We have thousands of engineers coming out of our institutions every year. We have respect for "technical" education. Where have we made that kind of investment on artists? The simple answer is - we haven't! And in all probability, we won't. India doesn't take "art" as serious business. Our belief is that we should study something that can to secure a "job" and have the best options for a safe life. So, we push and shove our children towards engineering, and medicine, and to some extent towards law and other sciences, but you will hardly ever see anybody pushing their child towards being an "artist" of any kind, unless of course one of the parents happens to be an artist.
Through this powerful filter, some of us do survive, and the animation industry would be very lucky if it picks up some of this talent. The film industry on the other hand, thankfully, is its own animal, and has enough steam to constantly put out the numbers if not the quality. It too suffers from lack of true artists, but it is able to survive because of a consumer base that is still largely forgiving of lousy cinema in the face of lack of alternative entertainment.
Animation, on the other hand, has enormously longer shelf life compared to live action. Years after geniuses at MGM produced Tom and Jerry, later generations continue to enjoy the show. So, our animation companies are not only in competition with the best the rest of the world is producing, it is in competition with everything that has ever been produced! In other words, if we don't produce path breaking animation content, we are not going to do very well.
In order to produce path breaking content, we need true artists. When we look for true artists, we have engineers coming to our animation schools, with an "interest" in animation, because somewhere we have told them that it takes some kind of "technical" skill to work in computer animation. Some institutions go far enough to "train" this pool of technical talent to be artists! It takes years and years of intense training to understand some of the fundamentals of art in any form. And we have 1 year courses that claim to put our animators on par with the best in the world!!!??
The arrogance of such claims must be questioned at all levels, especially when some of them are blatant lies - for example, "Work in studios like Pixar and Disney!" Hello? There aren't any such studios in India, and you sure won't get a job in any such studio just because you did a course! Indian Animation schools for most part, simply mislead people. They are all tool schools, not craft schools. The problem starts much earlier. Our children cannot even sketch half as well as American children can. It is true that our children are better at mathematics and spelling and science, but when it comes to drawing the simplest expressive character, the American child excels, while the Indian child is seriously crippled. This is how basic our problem is. The talent pool that comes out of American art schools is tremendous. They are not tool users like our engineers who have done their one year "Post Graduate" diplomas in computer animation! They are artists who can learn any tool to create their art.
Then, the marriage of cinema and animation - a very necessary marriage but heavily overlooked in India. Indian animation companies seem to have the blind arrogance to think they can make animated movies without any cinematic training being imparted to their artists. That is why you can see really tacky cinema sense in the Indian animation content, made by clueless tool users who are neither artists nor trained in the very basics of cinema. They just have no idea! (Not that their counterparts in the live action world are blessed with comprehensive knowledge)
Into this potent mix of ignorance, you can throw in lack of quality leadership. There is not even one Indian animation company that is headed by an artist of any repute. Standing in the way is our exaggerated reverence for formal education. Senior management in animation companies are wasting their time and their company's resources if they have no fundamental understanding of art. Art has several components that are not measurable using the same scales used to measure other mathematically representable talents. No matter what you believe as a leader and manager, you cannot manage what you do not have!
Most of the time you will hear this completely unnecessary comparison with the IT industry and somehow we are supposed to imagine that just because a few lines of code writing can be outsourced to India, so can art? Why does an organization like NASSCOM even allow the animation industry to be under its purview at all? This is animation, it is art, and artists use computer software to bring about imagery. How is this process that of a software industry player at all? This stupidity must end or the cinema industry must also be included under NASSCOM if software is software and the cinema industry also uses computers for various purposes! See how ridiculous this gets?
It is because of this fundamental mix up that we don't have our attitude set right about growing the animation industry. This is not a BPO, this is not the IT industry that can outsource donkey's work to others who have similar donkeys! How likely is an Indian temple to commission a Filipino sculptor because he is willing to work at a cheaper rate? The same level of mistrust is bound to find ground when it comes to great IPs being trusted in the hands of Indian animation companies. Right now, the average Indian animation company just doesn't cut it anywhere above the tool user level.
American cinema dominates the world marketplace not because of its formidable marketing machinery as popularly believed, but because it is able to answer a global story consumption need. Even mindless action appeals at a human level. Sex, even more so. Get beyond these cliched exports of the US and you will see that great stories are always invaluable for their human appeal. There are any number of theories on story development for a universal audience, but the work begs to be done before telling a story in the medium of cinema. Animation is cinema. It is not IT.
This is all about IP - Intellectual Property. If your IP is lousy, you will die. Indian animation companies are still stuck with mythology, and we treat our stories like the world is full of Indians who bow in reverence to lousy animation and abominable storytelling just because their parents worship the characters! We need to get out of our heads that we own all the patents on culture. We need to learn storytelling. If we don't do justice to this great art form, we will perish. There is no shortcut to knowledge, but stupidity is a definite shortcut to failure.
Have a conversation with someone in the Indian animation industry who is running on blind optimism and you are more than likely to hear the obtuse argument that we can train people and overcome hurdles. These hurdles will not be overcome by will power and the ability to stay in the race. They can only be tackled by understanding what it takes to create great art and investing in it substantially. Without this understanding, Indian animation will never be a knowledge based industry. And then we have to contend with other countries that have a much better investment in artistic talent, that are able to produce quality animation, even make unique contributions in style.
It has taken us 60 years since independence to get an individual Olympic gold medal. We just didn't even know Abhinav Bindra was that good. In the Indian animation business, the question of spotting genius is out before it even starts, because it would take an artist to spot another. So, the ability to spot any real genius is highly unlikely to flow down from the top because the top has clueless non-artists! The geniuses we do produce and those that are lucky to escape the destructive forces of our socially imposed ban on life in the arts, would rather work for an American company because they would feel fulfilled.
If the universe is kind to us and we somehow work out a law of averages where just because we have a billion people, we might be able to put together a few lucky marriages of the right people with the right ideas, we may be able to come up with a handful of Indian Animation companies capable of surviving. We might even have a shot or two at producing great content, not imagined by us, but by some American genius with a great "universal" idea. We're trying hard to reap what we haven't sown.
India becoming a forerunner in the world of animated content anytime soon - forget it. It is just not going to happen in the next forty years - two full generations. That's usually the time for enormous paradigm shifts as well. Till then we will continue to be the "next big thing" - whatever that means! Till then we can argue the virtue of Indian culture - animatedly.
Labels:
animation,
art,
competition,
hope,
hype,
india,
outsourcing,
quality,
talent
Friday, September 19, 2008
India's incredible shot makers.
Looking at the latest "Jeetey Raho" ad. for ICICI, if you don't notice anything wrong with it, you could be forgiven for not being a student of cinema. But if you noticed what is awfully wrong with it, with a pesky little issue called screen direction, and the violation of the screen axis, then you'd be laughing at the way the idiot who directed it is clueless to one of the most basic rules of cinema grammar.
If the fool were to defend his work saying he voluntarily violated one of the most basic norms of film making, then he should be lined up and violated over a slow fire. Not because his freedom to experiment should be threatened, but because the commercial doesn't work visually. It is poorer for the lack of attention to detail, and crippled by one of the detestable breeds that have infested Indian cinema for some time now - "shotmakers".
Shotmakers are people who have no clue how to put a film together, and all they're bothered about is the "shot". Not that their shots are poetry all the time, and they don't have to be, but the reason not everybody attains mastery in cinema is because it takes a lot to understand what works and what doesn't work. Once in a while even the masters create something that doesn't quite work, but shotmaking in lieu of filmmaking is never going to work.
The obsession with the "shot" is a disease in Indian cinema. This is a reflection of Indian cinema's cavalier attitude towards depth - of knowledge, of substance, of merit. You can actually get away with making mediocre crap! In fact, if you can't make something mediocre, you probably wouldn't be able to convince anybody of your understanding of what is required!
Where does this obsession with the "shot" come from? It must come from an enormous famine of creativity. It must come as a rescue from abject ignorance of cinema, and it must come from habit - listening to others waxing eloquent over shots, while missing the integrity of the movie. It must come from fear, for in India we are afraid of looking bad by venturing into territories we don't really have much knowledge in. We wait for the gurus to show the way so that we can all follow by copying if not by learning.
There are tons of grammatical flaws in cinema that comes out of India in all forms - commercial theatrical features, advertisements, and short format television. Not that the rest of the work flow from script to screen is flawless! But the shotmakers are calling the shots and leaving the film to the dogs. It doesn't take any talent to put a bunch of shots together and "jazz" it up with CG and music and really inflict the audiences with volume! The sad part is, it doesn't work. If you can't tell a story in cinema, if you're cluless about the various art forms and conventions that need to come together to make a film, I'd suggest you don't try. It is the greatest contribution you can make to art. And if I may add, to the sanity of Indians who have precious little other than cinema that we can be economically entertained by.
In Indian cinema there is still an opportunity for those who aren't creative. Many retards survive because of opportunity created by the sheer volume of our consumption and the favourable equations of numbers currently allowing for a fair amount of mediocre fare and a childlike, forgiving audience. This won't last long, though, given the influence of excellent fare on television, which Indian product would find very hard to match in terms of quality.
We hear every now and then about "technical" aspects of cinema and how good Indian "technicians" are. SO? If you can pull focus as well as your Hollywood counterpart, it doesn't mean your film is as good as the best from the rest of the world. Cinema is essentially "art" and although there are enough and more technical components that support it, it must work at a basic art level or it is not going to work. Nobody comes to the theatres to see your bloody shots. They come there to see the movie, for an experience that goes far beyond what you intend when setting up lights all day long for one shot that shows up in a song sequence.
It is no secret that we respect cinematographers more than we do scriptwriters, and it should surprise nobody that we respect directors only when they are commercially successful, not because they have abundant talent. We have no way of seeing great new directorial talent, with the precious little that comes up on view! We are stuck! Slowly, this is bound to change. Until then, god bless the editors who rescue most of our films from the bowels of uncreative garbage and elevate them to the level of processable crap.
Music, thankfully, is much more of a subconscious, and therefore mathematically representable art form. There are scales and notes and tons of rules in making music. If you don't follow these rules, you will make noise not music. Noise sounds horrible and you don't have a future if you don't learn the basics properly. Cinema, with its current level of audience maturity, is much more forgiving. But let's not make that an excuse to put up with shotmakers pretending to be film makers.
If the fool were to defend his work saying he voluntarily violated one of the most basic norms of film making, then he should be lined up and violated over a slow fire. Not because his freedom to experiment should be threatened, but because the commercial doesn't work visually. It is poorer for the lack of attention to detail, and crippled by one of the detestable breeds that have infested Indian cinema for some time now - "shotmakers".
Shotmakers are people who have no clue how to put a film together, and all they're bothered about is the "shot". Not that their shots are poetry all the time, and they don't have to be, but the reason not everybody attains mastery in cinema is because it takes a lot to understand what works and what doesn't work. Once in a while even the masters create something that doesn't quite work, but shotmaking in lieu of filmmaking is never going to work.
The obsession with the "shot" is a disease in Indian cinema. This is a reflection of Indian cinema's cavalier attitude towards depth - of knowledge, of substance, of merit. You can actually get away with making mediocre crap! In fact, if you can't make something mediocre, you probably wouldn't be able to convince anybody of your understanding of what is required!
Where does this obsession with the "shot" come from? It must come from an enormous famine of creativity. It must come as a rescue from abject ignorance of cinema, and it must come from habit - listening to others waxing eloquent over shots, while missing the integrity of the movie. It must come from fear, for in India we are afraid of looking bad by venturing into territories we don't really have much knowledge in. We wait for the gurus to show the way so that we can all follow by copying if not by learning.
There are tons of grammatical flaws in cinema that comes out of India in all forms - commercial theatrical features, advertisements, and short format television. Not that the rest of the work flow from script to screen is flawless! But the shotmakers are calling the shots and leaving the film to the dogs. It doesn't take any talent to put a bunch of shots together and "jazz" it up with CG and music and really inflict the audiences with volume! The sad part is, it doesn't work. If you can't tell a story in cinema, if you're cluless about the various art forms and conventions that need to come together to make a film, I'd suggest you don't try. It is the greatest contribution you can make to art. And if I may add, to the sanity of Indians who have precious little other than cinema that we can be economically entertained by.
In Indian cinema there is still an opportunity for those who aren't creative. Many retards survive because of opportunity created by the sheer volume of our consumption and the favourable equations of numbers currently allowing for a fair amount of mediocre fare and a childlike, forgiving audience. This won't last long, though, given the influence of excellent fare on television, which Indian product would find very hard to match in terms of quality.
We hear every now and then about "technical" aspects of cinema and how good Indian "technicians" are. SO? If you can pull focus as well as your Hollywood counterpart, it doesn't mean your film is as good as the best from the rest of the world. Cinema is essentially "art" and although there are enough and more technical components that support it, it must work at a basic art level or it is not going to work. Nobody comes to the theatres to see your bloody shots. They come there to see the movie, for an experience that goes far beyond what you intend when setting up lights all day long for one shot that shows up in a song sequence.
It is no secret that we respect cinematographers more than we do scriptwriters, and it should surprise nobody that we respect directors only when they are commercially successful, not because they have abundant talent. We have no way of seeing great new directorial talent, with the precious little that comes up on view! We are stuck! Slowly, this is bound to change. Until then, god bless the editors who rescue most of our films from the bowels of uncreative garbage and elevate them to the level of processable crap.
Music, thankfully, is much more of a subconscious, and therefore mathematically representable art form. There are scales and notes and tons of rules in making music. If you don't follow these rules, you will make noise not music. Noise sounds horrible and you don't have a future if you don't learn the basics properly. Cinema, with its current level of audience maturity, is much more forgiving. But let's not make that an excuse to put up with shotmakers pretending to be film makers.
Labels:
art,
cinema,
commercial,
film,
filmmakers,
india,
shotmakers
It's blackmail, your lowness!
My mother tries it once in a while, for something silly, like trying to get me to dress rather well for a sombre occasion. I'd choose to wear simple clothes, perhaps too pedestrian but not untidy, and she would like me to be "neat". My mom will try, "Why don't you use any of those really nice shirts you have?" before "Well, I'd definitely like to see you dressed neatly in a big gathering", before the inevitable, "I wish I had brought you up to understand this culture some more"!
It's the tone of blackmail, of somehow hoping that I wouldn't want her to feel bad, that irks me, much more than her refusal to accept defeat with grace. Luckily, I don't give in to blackmail ever, and my Mom behaves better. See, even elders need training.
A friend of mine is going through a terrible situation in a relationship, where the other person is blackmailing him by refusing to eat. The blackmail is aimed at getting him back in a relationship that is over, for whatever reason. I hope he won't give in, more than knowing him to be strong enough to not give in. If the other person dies, it will be an awful event, but as far as I am concerned, no more ugly than getting into a relationship by being blackmailed to do so. That would be lifelong slavery. Much worse compared to the freedom of death - bye bye blackmailer. You want to starve yourself to death? Go right ahead! I'm not about to go down for your stupidity!
The thing about blackmail is that it is low, demeaning, and outright disrespectful. It should be treated with disdain, wherever it is employed. From the traffic cop who threatens you with a huge ticket if you don't pay the bribe, to the loan shark who threatens to yell so your neighbours will hear, blackmailers should be given nothing. There is no healthy level to this menace when it starts so low.
Many a time, we don't quite realize we're being blackmailed. Even beggars use it very well by touching you - knowing fully well that you hate being touched by those filthy fingers, and you will pay to have them go away! When transvestites walk into your shop and put on a vulgar dance, they bloody well know you want them out of sight hence you will pay! Flatly refuse and what are they going to do? Stay put at your shop the whole day? Absolutely not.
Sometimes we imagine we can afford the monetary loss in silly blackmail plots going right for the blackmailers. But what we are setting up is a system of blackmailers who will without a doubt grow in scale and range of operations. In a spectacular incident, it was awful to see India come to its knees because of a bunch of hijackers who threatened to blow up an Indian Airlines plane full of passengers in Khandahar. Without a question of a doubt, I would have ordered the Indian Air Force to bomb the stranded plane and its environs to smithereens and faced the fallout later. I would have publicly exterminated every one of the criminals the hijackers wanted released. And we would have won, instead of saving a few lives and hanging the entire nation's head in shame.
The immature question to ask would be - "Would you have ordered that bombing if one of your relatives was on board?" My answer - "I'd definitely not back off my plan to victory just because one of my relatives' lives stood in the way". No, it isn't ego. It is an answer, plain and simple. Pushed to the extreme, we can't be changing who we are. Blackmail with the threat of death and destruction should be answered with death and destruction. It is a low scrap we are being pulled into, and if we want to keep our high standards, we should be strong enough to step out of our sterilized lives once in a while and use everything within our power to fend off the low challenger.
Blackmail doesn't give us any respectable options, so what honour can there be in giving in to it?
It's the tone of blackmail, of somehow hoping that I wouldn't want her to feel bad, that irks me, much more than her refusal to accept defeat with grace. Luckily, I don't give in to blackmail ever, and my Mom behaves better. See, even elders need training.
A friend of mine is going through a terrible situation in a relationship, where the other person is blackmailing him by refusing to eat. The blackmail is aimed at getting him back in a relationship that is over, for whatever reason. I hope he won't give in, more than knowing him to be strong enough to not give in. If the other person dies, it will be an awful event, but as far as I am concerned, no more ugly than getting into a relationship by being blackmailed to do so. That would be lifelong slavery. Much worse compared to the freedom of death - bye bye blackmailer. You want to starve yourself to death? Go right ahead! I'm not about to go down for your stupidity!
The thing about blackmail is that it is low, demeaning, and outright disrespectful. It should be treated with disdain, wherever it is employed. From the traffic cop who threatens you with a huge ticket if you don't pay the bribe, to the loan shark who threatens to yell so your neighbours will hear, blackmailers should be given nothing. There is no healthy level to this menace when it starts so low.
Many a time, we don't quite realize we're being blackmailed. Even beggars use it very well by touching you - knowing fully well that you hate being touched by those filthy fingers, and you will pay to have them go away! When transvestites walk into your shop and put on a vulgar dance, they bloody well know you want them out of sight hence you will pay! Flatly refuse and what are they going to do? Stay put at your shop the whole day? Absolutely not.
Sometimes we imagine we can afford the monetary loss in silly blackmail plots going right for the blackmailers. But what we are setting up is a system of blackmailers who will without a doubt grow in scale and range of operations. In a spectacular incident, it was awful to see India come to its knees because of a bunch of hijackers who threatened to blow up an Indian Airlines plane full of passengers in Khandahar. Without a question of a doubt, I would have ordered the Indian Air Force to bomb the stranded plane and its environs to smithereens and faced the fallout later. I would have publicly exterminated every one of the criminals the hijackers wanted released. And we would have won, instead of saving a few lives and hanging the entire nation's head in shame.
The immature question to ask would be - "Would you have ordered that bombing if one of your relatives was on board?" My answer - "I'd definitely not back off my plan to victory just because one of my relatives' lives stood in the way". No, it isn't ego. It is an answer, plain and simple. Pushed to the extreme, we can't be changing who we are. Blackmail with the threat of death and destruction should be answered with death and destruction. It is a low scrap we are being pulled into, and if we want to keep our high standards, we should be strong enough to step out of our sterilized lives once in a while and use everything within our power to fend off the low challenger.
Blackmail doesn't give us any respectable options, so what honour can there be in giving in to it?
Labels:
blackmail,
emotional,
honour,
relationship,
respectful
Abhinav Bindra Ungrateful? Why not?
LOL! Almost exactly as if in response to my earlier post on Abhinav Bindra....
Abhinav Bindra accused of being ungrateful to the system!!!
After winning India's first individual gold in the Olympics, Abhinav Bindra apparently gave credit to his father for his success. He is supposed to have said that his victory was more in spite of the system than because of it. This comment has now infuriated Digvijay Singh, the president of the Shooting Federation of India who is now saying that shooters like Abhinav Bindra and Jaspal Rana were being ungrateful by saying things like this.
Abhinav Bindra has now responded by saying it is not true that he is ungrateful and that as soon as he won the Gold medal, he thanked everybody concerned and to comment further on this would be a waste of time!!!
We Indians love to harvest sour grapes, don't we? It isn't enough if a guy wins us an Olympic Gold. We need to squeeze every little bit out of every little association he has. I bet the neighbourhood banana seller has a stake in supplying Bindra with the potassium needed for his steady hands, and every bus driver in Delhi has a stake in this achievement by not killing him prematurely on the way to practice!
I wonder how we would react if a guy who came in at 54th place said he is really grateful to the "system", since he got a lot of encouragement and help and resources from the Shooting Federation of India, and without that kind of support he would only have managed the 66th place! If you're laughing, you agree with me. Thank you.
So, Abhinav Bindra thanked his Dad for providing him with all he ever needed. Fair enough, and quite nice of the young man, I should say. The Shooting Federation wants him to be grateful since they sent him abroad, apparently for training. So, what else is the Shooting Federation supposed to do - clean his underwear? Why do we have to torture Bindra after he has done his job?
What is it that we want from our sportspersons? Winners or just good guys who are always being grateful? Thankfully our cricketers are cocky enough to script their own lives and successful and smart enough to know what it takes. M S Dhoni always parties hard after a win, knowing fully well that the kids in his team need to let off steam and hang loose and bond more than anything else. They give their lives for him on the field and they can beat anyone. That is a fact. Cricket thrives because it respects individual brilliance.
Above and beyond the full import of having ungrateful sportspersons, it is the WINNERS that inspire greatness in others, not the nice guys. I personally feel that being a "good person" finds rather nebulous and overrated importance in our culture. We do not breed winners as much as we try to breed good people, and for most part, we seem to fail on both counts!
What is wrong with a cocky, arrogant and brash winner who can thrash everybody in the world, spit on his opponents with disdain and walk away like a king? I bet we'd enjoy it even more than the good guy who loses! No call to add any of these qualities to any of our winners in the making, but we don't win medals for being good guys, do we? Long live the ungrateful winners. The world has leaped forward in every field because of people who know what they want and go get it. I am grateful to them, and damn whoever they are not grateful to.
Facts are - the Shooting Federation never produced an Olympic Gold medalist before Abhinav Bindra and Abhinav Bindra chose to thank his Dad. I see no problem with the latter, but a huge hole in the former. It is time the "system" got its act together and looked forward instead of trying to piggyback on one success they may have played some part in.
Most impressively the young man added today that it is time to "Forget about him, and help the others"! Looking forward! That's why I love this kid!
http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/showsports.aspx?id=SPOEN20080065865
Abhinav Bindra accused of being ungrateful to the system!!!
After winning India's first individual gold in the Olympics, Abhinav Bindra apparently gave credit to his father for his success. He is supposed to have said that his victory was more in spite of the system than because of it. This comment has now infuriated Digvijay Singh, the president of the Shooting Federation of India who is now saying that shooters like Abhinav Bindra and Jaspal Rana were being ungrateful by saying things like this.
Abhinav Bindra has now responded by saying it is not true that he is ungrateful and that as soon as he won the Gold medal, he thanked everybody concerned and to comment further on this would be a waste of time!!!
We Indians love to harvest sour grapes, don't we? It isn't enough if a guy wins us an Olympic Gold. We need to squeeze every little bit out of every little association he has. I bet the neighbourhood banana seller has a stake in supplying Bindra with the potassium needed for his steady hands, and every bus driver in Delhi has a stake in this achievement by not killing him prematurely on the way to practice!
I wonder how we would react if a guy who came in at 54th place said he is really grateful to the "system", since he got a lot of encouragement and help and resources from the Shooting Federation of India, and without that kind of support he would only have managed the 66th place! If you're laughing, you agree with me. Thank you.
So, Abhinav Bindra thanked his Dad for providing him with all he ever needed. Fair enough, and quite nice of the young man, I should say. The Shooting Federation wants him to be grateful since they sent him abroad, apparently for training. So, what else is the Shooting Federation supposed to do - clean his underwear? Why do we have to torture Bindra after he has done his job?
What is it that we want from our sportspersons? Winners or just good guys who are always being grateful? Thankfully our cricketers are cocky enough to script their own lives and successful and smart enough to know what it takes. M S Dhoni always parties hard after a win, knowing fully well that the kids in his team need to let off steam and hang loose and bond more than anything else. They give their lives for him on the field and they can beat anyone. That is a fact. Cricket thrives because it respects individual brilliance.
Above and beyond the full import of having ungrateful sportspersons, it is the WINNERS that inspire greatness in others, not the nice guys. I personally feel that being a "good person" finds rather nebulous and overrated importance in our culture. We do not breed winners as much as we try to breed good people, and for most part, we seem to fail on both counts!
What is wrong with a cocky, arrogant and brash winner who can thrash everybody in the world, spit on his opponents with disdain and walk away like a king? I bet we'd enjoy it even more than the good guy who loses! No call to add any of these qualities to any of our winners in the making, but we don't win medals for being good guys, do we? Long live the ungrateful winners. The world has leaped forward in every field because of people who know what they want and go get it. I am grateful to them, and damn whoever they are not grateful to.
Facts are - the Shooting Federation never produced an Olympic Gold medalist before Abhinav Bindra and Abhinav Bindra chose to thank his Dad. I see no problem with the latter, but a huge hole in the former. It is time the "system" got its act together and looked forward instead of trying to piggyback on one success they may have played some part in.
Most impressively the young man added today that it is time to "Forget about him, and help the others"! Looking forward! That's why I love this kid!
http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/showsports.aspx?id=SPOEN20080065865
Labels:
abhinav bindra,
attitude,
dhoni,
indian,
overrated,
sports,
ungrateful,
winners
Thursday, September 18, 2008
India's Dumbest Media mindsets!
Why does the media even report "Nine Eleven" in India? Shouldn't it be "Eleven Nine" at worst? And then, to add insult to injury, we have "Seven Eleven" referring to the 11th of July bombings in Mumbai? How much of this sort of insult do we have to take from our monkeys in media? What is so appealing about white man's media that we have to lose all sense of who we are?
Why is it that Karan Thapar is always in a hurry to ask a question before the guest finishes answering the previous one? Hard Talk is hard but for most part it is respectable. Karan Thapar's Devil's Advocate is a poor imitation if that is what he is trying to imitate, and is a lousy original if he is that ambitious. Is being intimidating the ONLY quality available to Thapar for an inquisitive interview? By forcing people to be defensive all the time, the idiot just stamps himself all over, not getting anything out of his guests but flabbergasted sighs of resignation!
There are the second and third rungs of Indian television news channels like Times Now! Most of the time, they have no clue how to get precise, unemotional responses out of anybody being interviewed. The "live reporting" is usually brave enough to stand where stones are being pelted, but not awake enough to go beyond commenting on what we can already see in the background.
On CNN-IBN today there was an accidentally brilliant juxtaposition. Finance Minister Mr. Chidambaram just finished addressing the media to assure us that there is nothing to panic about in the Indian banking sector due to the failure of some American financial institutions, and the immediate next news item was a man, his wife and son committing suicide by burning themselves in Hyderabad, due to losses in the stock market! This is the sort of stuff that makes us weigh what we see and hear. Our media works very hard not to make this kind of thing happen.
It is always funny to me how the mentally challenged monkeys in our media, particularly television, jump to the tunes of the equally incompetent monkeys in the West. Each time I hear the term "nuclear capable", I cannot help but notice this habit highlighted. It is one of the most ignorantly used terms in reporting, and adds to no purpose beyond sensationalism. It is shameful and dumb, and needs to be questioned at every opportunity.
"Nuclear capable" simply stands for "capable of carrying a nuclear bomb". What isn't capable of carrying a nuclear bomb? A missile doesn't know what it is carrying, any more than a mule. A nuclear bomb is simply a payload for a missile, and this exact same payload can be strapped onto the back of a mule, so all mules in the world are "nuclear capable" indeed. The car you drive is most definitely "nuclear capable" and schoolbuses, very much so! Indian bullock carts? Now, those are definitely weapons of mass destruction! Let the frivolous use of this term not scare you any more than the fools hammering us with it.
To make a nuclear bomb takes some expertise, particularly the trigger mechanism that can set off the nuclear reaction that releases a great amount of energy. That is the explosion itself, and then the radiation coming out of the fallout creates more damage. But a nuclear explosion is not easy to trigger. It isn't the same as putting a stick of dynamite into a bottle full of uranium and blowing it up. That would just cause some radioactive material to fly around and this is what constitutes a "dirty bomb". Why anybody would waste expensive nuclear material to cause such minimal damage is beyond me, but the West salivates over the possibility of such an event.
The worst insult is the expectation that somehow we will react exactly the way people in the West would react. Hence the polls, which always have the dumbest questions that people will easily be able to send SMS messages for or against! "Are reservations good?" "Is the government doing enough?". How about, "Would you approve of an assassination attempt against a corrupt politician?" ? Now, that would be too challenging for our fashionably new, dumbed down (m)asses, wouldn't it?
Why is it that Karan Thapar is always in a hurry to ask a question before the guest finishes answering the previous one? Hard Talk is hard but for most part it is respectable. Karan Thapar's Devil's Advocate is a poor imitation if that is what he is trying to imitate, and is a lousy original if he is that ambitious. Is being intimidating the ONLY quality available to Thapar for an inquisitive interview? By forcing people to be defensive all the time, the idiot just stamps himself all over, not getting anything out of his guests but flabbergasted sighs of resignation!
There are the second and third rungs of Indian television news channels like Times Now! Most of the time, they have no clue how to get precise, unemotional responses out of anybody being interviewed. The "live reporting" is usually brave enough to stand where stones are being pelted, but not awake enough to go beyond commenting on what we can already see in the background.
On CNN-IBN today there was an accidentally brilliant juxtaposition. Finance Minister Mr. Chidambaram just finished addressing the media to assure us that there is nothing to panic about in the Indian banking sector due to the failure of some American financial institutions, and the immediate next news item was a man, his wife and son committing suicide by burning themselves in Hyderabad, due to losses in the stock market! This is the sort of stuff that makes us weigh what we see and hear. Our media works very hard not to make this kind of thing happen.
It is always funny to me how the mentally challenged monkeys in our media, particularly television, jump to the tunes of the equally incompetent monkeys in the West. Each time I hear the term "nuclear capable", I cannot help but notice this habit highlighted. It is one of the most ignorantly used terms in reporting, and adds to no purpose beyond sensationalism. It is shameful and dumb, and needs to be questioned at every opportunity.
"Nuclear capable" simply stands for "capable of carrying a nuclear bomb". What isn't capable of carrying a nuclear bomb? A missile doesn't know what it is carrying, any more than a mule. A nuclear bomb is simply a payload for a missile, and this exact same payload can be strapped onto the back of a mule, so all mules in the world are "nuclear capable" indeed. The car you drive is most definitely "nuclear capable" and schoolbuses, very much so! Indian bullock carts? Now, those are definitely weapons of mass destruction! Let the frivolous use of this term not scare you any more than the fools hammering us with it.
To make a nuclear bomb takes some expertise, particularly the trigger mechanism that can set off the nuclear reaction that releases a great amount of energy. That is the explosion itself, and then the radiation coming out of the fallout creates more damage. But a nuclear explosion is not easy to trigger. It isn't the same as putting a stick of dynamite into a bottle full of uranium and blowing it up. That would just cause some radioactive material to fly around and this is what constitutes a "dirty bomb". Why anybody would waste expensive nuclear material to cause such minimal damage is beyond me, but the West salivates over the possibility of such an event.
The worst insult is the expectation that somehow we will react exactly the way people in the West would react. Hence the polls, which always have the dumbest questions that people will easily be able to send SMS messages for or against! "Are reservations good?" "Is the government doing enough?". How about, "Would you approve of an assassination attempt against a corrupt politician?" ? Now, that would be too challenging for our fashionably new, dumbed down (m)asses, wouldn't it?
Labels:
devil's advocate,
imitation,
india,
journalism,
karan thapar,
news,
television. culture,
unimaginative
What's the deal with our "Nuclear Deal"?
Mr. L.K. Advani looks perennially irritated. I have no idea how to please the man. For a guy who followed the genial Vajpayee, this guy always has a bee in his bonnet. He was exactly the same when he recently attacked the UPA government for allegedly betraying the nation with the "nuclear deal". He alleges that our PM. Mr. Manmohan Singh misled the nation and the Left goes far enough to say we are getting into some kind of slavery arrangement with the USA. What nonsense!
Thankfully the UPA government called the bluff of its "allies" and a major change of government was averted. Mayawati showed her glee at a backdoor opportunity to become PM, and there was enough drama in New Delhi, before the air went out of the balloon. But the trumpeting of the old war horse Advani has not slowed down. He continues to bash Mr. Singh for being "pro-American".
I wonder how pro American we are when we welcome Dell and Microsoft and a host of other software companies to set up shop in India. See, we love prosperity and we don't really care about where the money rolls in from. We do not refuse money! The only time we put national pride ahead of our agenda is when money is not part of the equation.
The same with other countries. Nobody has a real interest in India becoming a huge nuclear power producer any more than they want to make money by selling us fuel, technology and a host of other services. By letting India into the club, the club just got richer. That is all there is to it.
There is always an aura surrounding anything "nuclear". Fission, fusion, fissile material, treaties, proliferation, regulations, safeguards - it can all be a bit of intimidating noise for some of us. I for one, have always been a big fan of nuclear power generation and I think we are years behind in embracing this reality - nuclear power is the only reliable option going forward.
Since I am known to speak out rather vociferously on this front, I invite all sorts of reactions, from bewilderment to flat out argument, ranging from the bizarre to the most articulate, averaging somewhere in the unclear. So for all the people who want this matter elucidated in simple English, here is the "deal":
India needs electrical power. For various reasons we cannot afford to build more hydro-electric or thermal power plants, and we are not sure about solar and wind options. So, the only option for virtually limitless expansion in power production is nuclear. We need to build nuclear reactors. In order to build nuclear reactors, we need nuclear fuel, like uranium for instance. We don't have enough of it, so we have to buy it. The Nuclear Suppliers Group is much like the OPEC - The members of the OPEC supply oil, the members of the NSG supply nuclear fuel, knowhow, and technologies needed for peaceful exploitation of nuclear science, most critically for building nuclear reactors. We have built our own nuclear reactors, but we'd like to build better ones, perhaps more modern, but the ability to buy fuel freely is critical to us.
Unlike oil, which the OPEC countries sell to anyone, in order to be able to trade with the NSG, we needed to get clearances and permissions and lay to rest all concerns about us being able to to use this nuclear material and know how in a responsible manner. In other words, the NSG does not want to feel guilty about giving us uranium today and see us build nuclear weapons tomorrow and start selling them. India is not a signatory to the Non Proliferation Treaty or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (the NPT and the CTBT). So we needed a waiver from them, basically allaying fears that a non signatory to these treaties can also actually behave rather responsibly.
The reason we didn't sign any of these treaties - We have for a long time believed that we would like to see a real time frame for dismantling huge armouries of nuclear weapons that countries like the USA and Russia have, and that there is simply no justice in entering into these treaties without a framework for a world with fewer nuclear weapons. A stand that is very principled, and uncompromising.
No amount of arm twisting by any other country has forced us to sign these and for the foreseeable future, we will not sign any of these treaties. Now, after the last nuclear bombs we tested in Pokharan, which of course forced Pakistan to get a bomb from China to explode on Pakistani soil just to prove they are no worse than their neighbours, sanctions were imposed on India which didn't exactly make us starve and sanctions were imposed on Pakistan which didn't exactly make them starve. Later, India unilaterally declared a moratorium on testing. This we did, after we weaponized and got enough data for building more weapons if and when needed.
After a solid record of not leaking nuclear technology, material or weapons to any other country, India generally has a good name with everyone in the world. Also, being who we are economically, no country in the world would like to needlessly piss us off for any reason. Our cousins across the border aren't so well received, after their rather shady record in these areas.
So, now we asked for being specially waived of the requirement of being an NPT and a CTBT signatory in order to be allowed entry into the NSG so that we can trade in nuclear materials, mainly the fuel, which we badly need for our nuclear power ambitions. To put things in perspective, France's electrical production is over 80% nuclear, while India's is less than 5%. Nuclear power production is a very prudent and necessary long term investment. So, we are going into a future where we will have abundance of electrical power, and not have to depend on thermal power projects, which pollute, and hydro electrical projects which are expensive and not so reliable with the dependence on our monsoons.
In order to secure this future, we needed this "waiver" so that we can trade openly and transparently, like a genuine member of the world's nuclear club and not like some shady fly by night operator. The biggest concern we had was that our strategic (military) programme could be hurt by signing this deal. So, we made it clear right at the beginning of negotiations that these were two separate programs and we will not have one interfering with the other. The USA, believe it or not, was the country that slapped sanctions on us soon after the Pokhran test, but in this case, has been our supporter for obtaining this waiver.
Read nothing more into this than business sense. America has not built a nuclear reactor for over thirty years and Somalia is unlikely to build one anytime soon. China is happy to burn Australian coal to generate all the thermal power they want, and pollute all the way to the high heavens. So, India is the only new customer available for sale of nuclear fuel to! So, by supporting this waiver, American companies can in theory open up a new revenue stream for their sagging business. That's all there is to it, and so Bush loves us for the time being.
Manmohan Singh's government made an excellent case for being granted this "waiver" and with timely pressure from Bush and the USA, we have got this waiver, with absolutely no strings attached! This is a brilliant coup! So good that the BJP and the Left had no choice but to attack it, while making no attempt to even mention once what exactly it is that they are opposed to! Go ahead, read up all the old newspapers and the articles in every magazine. They are nothing but hot air, with not ONE specific opposition to the details of the deal. Misleading India, my foot, Advani and the Left are trying to hoodwink us!
Now let's address these "concerns" we should be aware of. The biggest concern of course would be losing any sovereign rights - we have kept all of them. We can test another nuclear weapon anytime we want. Of course each country will have the freedom to react in any way it chooses to. But, if we have plenty of room to explain why we needed to conduct the test and so on. In other words, there are no iron clad conditions that will cripple our nuclear investments.
The second biggest concern would of course be whether we will be subject to any kind of monitoring by international agencies - yes, our new facilities will be for various reasons like safety and accounting of where the fuel is being used and how much of it etc., but the military programme is strictly off limits to these agencies. Nobody has a problem with this.
Then the issue of the letter Bush wrote to the American congress, which was apparently leaked - why we should be concerned about America's internal communications AFTER we secured the waiver we sought is beyond me, but the BJP sees a conspiracy somewhere. There are FORTY FIVE countries to buy nuclear fuel from. France and Russia were waiting in the wings to give this to us, and we have 10 nuclear reactors coming up, without an atom coming from the USA as of yet. So, why the heck we should even bother about what Bush writes to his Congress should be beyond any sensible person. Let the US congress takes its time and go through due process.
Each country will have its own checks and balances while selling us the fuel or technology we need. But with the waiver from the big treaties, we have crossed the biggest of hurdles. The rest is all business. People want to sell to India. We are going to be buying big time, whether it is high technology items, or defence hardware. Everybody in the world knows it. That's all there is to it - business. This "nuclear deal" is one of the many we will be signing in the years to come when we integrate our position in the world, and be an important player in some of the new equations that will invariably get established. This is hardly the time to play lousy local politics but that man with the perennial grouse is upto it. He depends on your ignorance. Bless him. Ignore him.
Thankfully the UPA government called the bluff of its "allies" and a major change of government was averted. Mayawati showed her glee at a backdoor opportunity to become PM, and there was enough drama in New Delhi, before the air went out of the balloon. But the trumpeting of the old war horse Advani has not slowed down. He continues to bash Mr. Singh for being "pro-American".
I wonder how pro American we are when we welcome Dell and Microsoft and a host of other software companies to set up shop in India. See, we love prosperity and we don't really care about where the money rolls in from. We do not refuse money! The only time we put national pride ahead of our agenda is when money is not part of the equation.
The same with other countries. Nobody has a real interest in India becoming a huge nuclear power producer any more than they want to make money by selling us fuel, technology and a host of other services. By letting India into the club, the club just got richer. That is all there is to it.
There is always an aura surrounding anything "nuclear". Fission, fusion, fissile material, treaties, proliferation, regulations, safeguards - it can all be a bit of intimidating noise for some of us. I for one, have always been a big fan of nuclear power generation and I think we are years behind in embracing this reality - nuclear power is the only reliable option going forward.
Since I am known to speak out rather vociferously on this front, I invite all sorts of reactions, from bewilderment to flat out argument, ranging from the bizarre to the most articulate, averaging somewhere in the unclear. So for all the people who want this matter elucidated in simple English, here is the "deal":
India needs electrical power. For various reasons we cannot afford to build more hydro-electric or thermal power plants, and we are not sure about solar and wind options. So, the only option for virtually limitless expansion in power production is nuclear. We need to build nuclear reactors. In order to build nuclear reactors, we need nuclear fuel, like uranium for instance. We don't have enough of it, so we have to buy it. The Nuclear Suppliers Group is much like the OPEC - The members of the OPEC supply oil, the members of the NSG supply nuclear fuel, knowhow, and technologies needed for peaceful exploitation of nuclear science, most critically for building nuclear reactors. We have built our own nuclear reactors, but we'd like to build better ones, perhaps more modern, but the ability to buy fuel freely is critical to us.
Unlike oil, which the OPEC countries sell to anyone, in order to be able to trade with the NSG, we needed to get clearances and permissions and lay to rest all concerns about us being able to to use this nuclear material and know how in a responsible manner. In other words, the NSG does not want to feel guilty about giving us uranium today and see us build nuclear weapons tomorrow and start selling them. India is not a signatory to the Non Proliferation Treaty or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (the NPT and the CTBT). So we needed a waiver from them, basically allaying fears that a non signatory to these treaties can also actually behave rather responsibly.
The reason we didn't sign any of these treaties - We have for a long time believed that we would like to see a real time frame for dismantling huge armouries of nuclear weapons that countries like the USA and Russia have, and that there is simply no justice in entering into these treaties without a framework for a world with fewer nuclear weapons. A stand that is very principled, and uncompromising.
No amount of arm twisting by any other country has forced us to sign these and for the foreseeable future, we will not sign any of these treaties. Now, after the last nuclear bombs we tested in Pokharan, which of course forced Pakistan to get a bomb from China to explode on Pakistani soil just to prove they are no worse than their neighbours, sanctions were imposed on India which didn't exactly make us starve and sanctions were imposed on Pakistan which didn't exactly make them starve. Later, India unilaterally declared a moratorium on testing. This we did, after we weaponized and got enough data for building more weapons if and when needed.
After a solid record of not leaking nuclear technology, material or weapons to any other country, India generally has a good name with everyone in the world. Also, being who we are economically, no country in the world would like to needlessly piss us off for any reason. Our cousins across the border aren't so well received, after their rather shady record in these areas.
So, now we asked for being specially waived of the requirement of being an NPT and a CTBT signatory in order to be allowed entry into the NSG so that we can trade in nuclear materials, mainly the fuel, which we badly need for our nuclear power ambitions. To put things in perspective, France's electrical production is over 80% nuclear, while India's is less than 5%. Nuclear power production is a very prudent and necessary long term investment. So, we are going into a future where we will have abundance of electrical power, and not have to depend on thermal power projects, which pollute, and hydro electrical projects which are expensive and not so reliable with the dependence on our monsoons.
In order to secure this future, we needed this "waiver" so that we can trade openly and transparently, like a genuine member of the world's nuclear club and not like some shady fly by night operator. The biggest concern we had was that our strategic (military) programme could be hurt by signing this deal. So, we made it clear right at the beginning of negotiations that these were two separate programs and we will not have one interfering with the other. The USA, believe it or not, was the country that slapped sanctions on us soon after the Pokhran test, but in this case, has been our supporter for obtaining this waiver.
Read nothing more into this than business sense. America has not built a nuclear reactor for over thirty years and Somalia is unlikely to build one anytime soon. China is happy to burn Australian coal to generate all the thermal power they want, and pollute all the way to the high heavens. So, India is the only new customer available for sale of nuclear fuel to! So, by supporting this waiver, American companies can in theory open up a new revenue stream for their sagging business. That's all there is to it, and so Bush loves us for the time being.
Manmohan Singh's government made an excellent case for being granted this "waiver" and with timely pressure from Bush and the USA, we have got this waiver, with absolutely no strings attached! This is a brilliant coup! So good that the BJP and the Left had no choice but to attack it, while making no attempt to even mention once what exactly it is that they are opposed to! Go ahead, read up all the old newspapers and the articles in every magazine. They are nothing but hot air, with not ONE specific opposition to the details of the deal. Misleading India, my foot, Advani and the Left are trying to hoodwink us!
Now let's address these "concerns" we should be aware of. The biggest concern of course would be losing any sovereign rights - we have kept all of them. We can test another nuclear weapon anytime we want. Of course each country will have the freedom to react in any way it chooses to. But, if we have plenty of room to explain why we needed to conduct the test and so on. In other words, there are no iron clad conditions that will cripple our nuclear investments.
The second biggest concern would of course be whether we will be subject to any kind of monitoring by international agencies - yes, our new facilities will be for various reasons like safety and accounting of where the fuel is being used and how much of it etc., but the military programme is strictly off limits to these agencies. Nobody has a problem with this.
Then the issue of the letter Bush wrote to the American congress, which was apparently leaked - why we should be concerned about America's internal communications AFTER we secured the waiver we sought is beyond me, but the BJP sees a conspiracy somewhere. There are FORTY FIVE countries to buy nuclear fuel from. France and Russia were waiting in the wings to give this to us, and we have 10 nuclear reactors coming up, without an atom coming from the USA as of yet. So, why the heck we should even bother about what Bush writes to his Congress should be beyond any sensible person. Let the US congress takes its time and go through due process.
Each country will have its own checks and balances while selling us the fuel or technology we need. But with the waiver from the big treaties, we have crossed the biggest of hurdles. The rest is all business. People want to sell to India. We are going to be buying big time, whether it is high technology items, or defence hardware. Everybody in the world knows it. That's all there is to it - business. This "nuclear deal" is one of the many we will be signing in the years to come when we integrate our position in the world, and be an important player in some of the new equations that will invariably get established. This is hardly the time to play lousy local politics but that man with the perennial grouse is upto it. He depends on your ignorance. Bless him. Ignore him.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Trying to terrorize India? Who's doing it?
So terrorists struck again. What's new? More people died. Yes, so? Political parties are screaming at each other, playing the blame game. What the heck's new with that either?
In the middle of this rather repetitive chaos, now we have the media really taking up the cause of us being TERRORIZED. Frankly, I am not terrorized by some lunatic group bombing our cities. I am yet to come across anyone in India so terrified of "terrorists" that they are willing to change one thing about the way they lead their lives.
If there is a bomb blast and people die, it irritates us, it angers us, and it hurts us to some extent, but it hardly terrorizes. Even the victims themselves, who talk to us often on TV, with bloody wounds and some even screaming in pain aren't terrorized. They want justice and they are sad, really sad and broken by what happened to them or their loved ones, but they're hardly terrorized.
In other words, terror simply doesn't work against us.
The great United States of America on the other hand, went limp after Sept 11th. It was as if the end of the earth had descended upon them. There was panic and uneasiness. A war was declared! People started examining who they were. The government started a new Department of Homeland Security, and gave sweeping powers to a lot of people who had never seen an "act of terror" before.
To this day, American people talk about a post 9/11 "world"! The poor ignorant arrogance of it all! The event occupied their consciousness in one shot (well, two, actually), and nothing has been "back to normal" since! It fundamentally changed the way they live. In my opinion, that's precisely how you let terrorists win! And Americans are such sore losers - this, we all know too well.
India will never allow any terrorist or his stupid organization such a victory. For a variety of reasons, this is just so, but mostly because we just cannot afford to. From the lunch box carrier in Mumbai to the cobbler in Chennai, we have not the luxury of changing the way we live just because there was a loud bang somewhere and people died. It just doesn't scare us, because we don't live in mortal fear of change like the Americans do. To the Americans, there is the great, big "American Dream" that they cannot afford to wake up from. To us there is only Incredible India! and she is always wide awake, staring us in the face.
Our media is suddenly agog with feverish energy about this new "wave of terror". Where is the terror? When we don't see terror, it's hard to see the wave. But more and more we see our TV channels aping the American media, trumpeting every single thing as something really "big". This is not the Indian way of doing things, but we can put up with it to some extent. The part that makes me real mad is when the 11th of July bombings in Mumbai were referred to as the Seven Eleven bombings, just so it rhymes with Nine Eleven. Now, if you have lived in the USA, there would be other connotations that jump to your mind, but even otherwise, putting the month before the day is what makes me real mad. To ape someone that much is akin to suddenly start using miles and pounds and fahrenheit! We don't have to turn into "brownies" just to please the American taste! Enough.
Quietly, this is all becoming a test of character for us. We will quietly approve and disapprove of things around us, and we will find out what we are made of, individually and collectively. We will evolve, not merely change. That is the Indian way. We will adapt, not just fight. This is what we are good at. We won't stop every bombing, and we won't kill every "terrorist", but we will emerge victorious by outlasting them, and there won't be anything to declare. When we have crawled out of thousands of years of history, we know this is all part of a cycle and nothing more.
But there is this itch now, in a globalized world, of having to DO something all the time, or suffer the insecurity of being seen as incapable. Bombing the wrong country is not something to choose because of this itch. The Americans did. And they are paying a high price for their stupidity. Nothing against poor Iraqi people, but I hope this quagmire lasts a couple of generations, so that Americans constantly feel like they are doing something, lest they start something freshly stupid.
Aha! But they have started on something freshly brilliant, and it is about seven years late. It's quite amazing how India offered all assistance to the USA immediately after Sept 11th, to join forces with us and to strike inside Afghanistan and Pakistan on the way. We had information and imagery to provide the Americans with rich, high value targets. But, America politely refused, joined hands with our neighbourhood thug in uniform, Mushy, and won our everlasting mistrust. GW and his bunch of republican idiots are worth less than a lump of manure when it comes to tackling a crisis of these proportions.
Now, it just so happens that Musharraf is not that bright of a guy and he often mistakes his cunning for his intelligence. Clearly he doesn't have enough of either resource and America's patience has worn thin. This is good, for now the American military has orders to attack ground targets inside Pakistan, Pakistan's military has orders to shoot at the American military, and the rag tag militants essentially hate the American military and mistrust the Pakistani military! Brilliant! How much more fun can this be strategically for India? Let's not miss the irony of the militants trained to attack targets inside India suddenly finding lots of targets in their own backyard!
Truly the two retards in this game - Mushy's Pakistan and Dubya's America, deserve each other. They are going to drag others in with them, but whoever goes down on that quadrant, it isn't India. We are busy needling Pakistan even more by becoming closer to Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai is cool and has a brain, too. We should definitely go through with the nuclear future for our power generation and leave Pakistan behind economically. All good and sweet and economical and rich revenge for screwing with us. If "terror" can be so rewarding, why would we want to wage a war against it?
On a serious note, these bombings and killings are something we should snuff out. But it won't happen through any trigger happy reactions. We have professionals working on it, and we will get there. We once had a food crisis in India. Then came Mr. C. Subramaniam and his "Green Revolution". Today we have a food surplus. We didn't copy anybody else's "war on hunger". But, we overcame a problem that threatened to wipe out most of India. We have overcome a lot in the last sixty years, and there's nothing to indicate we won't do that in the years to come. But, let's do this our way.
In the middle of this rather repetitive chaos, now we have the media really taking up the cause of us being TERRORIZED. Frankly, I am not terrorized by some lunatic group bombing our cities. I am yet to come across anyone in India so terrified of "terrorists" that they are willing to change one thing about the way they lead their lives.
If there is a bomb blast and people die, it irritates us, it angers us, and it hurts us to some extent, but it hardly terrorizes. Even the victims themselves, who talk to us often on TV, with bloody wounds and some even screaming in pain aren't terrorized. They want justice and they are sad, really sad and broken by what happened to them or their loved ones, but they're hardly terrorized.
In other words, terror simply doesn't work against us.
The great United States of America on the other hand, went limp after Sept 11th. It was as if the end of the earth had descended upon them. There was panic and uneasiness. A war was declared! People started examining who they were. The government started a new Department of Homeland Security, and gave sweeping powers to a lot of people who had never seen an "act of terror" before.
To this day, American people talk about a post 9/11 "world"! The poor ignorant arrogance of it all! The event occupied their consciousness in one shot (well, two, actually), and nothing has been "back to normal" since! It fundamentally changed the way they live. In my opinion, that's precisely how you let terrorists win! And Americans are such sore losers - this, we all know too well.
India will never allow any terrorist or his stupid organization such a victory. For a variety of reasons, this is just so, but mostly because we just cannot afford to. From the lunch box carrier in Mumbai to the cobbler in Chennai, we have not the luxury of changing the way we live just because there was a loud bang somewhere and people died. It just doesn't scare us, because we don't live in mortal fear of change like the Americans do. To the Americans, there is the great, big "American Dream" that they cannot afford to wake up from. To us there is only Incredible India! and she is always wide awake, staring us in the face.
Our media is suddenly agog with feverish energy about this new "wave of terror". Where is the terror? When we don't see terror, it's hard to see the wave. But more and more we see our TV channels aping the American media, trumpeting every single thing as something really "big". This is not the Indian way of doing things, but we can put up with it to some extent. The part that makes me real mad is when the 11th of July bombings in Mumbai were referred to as the Seven Eleven bombings, just so it rhymes with Nine Eleven. Now, if you have lived in the USA, there would be other connotations that jump to your mind, but even otherwise, putting the month before the day is what makes me real mad. To ape someone that much is akin to suddenly start using miles and pounds and fahrenheit! We don't have to turn into "brownies" just to please the American taste! Enough.
Quietly, this is all becoming a test of character for us. We will quietly approve and disapprove of things around us, and we will find out what we are made of, individually and collectively. We will evolve, not merely change. That is the Indian way. We will adapt, not just fight. This is what we are good at. We won't stop every bombing, and we won't kill every "terrorist", but we will emerge victorious by outlasting them, and there won't be anything to declare. When we have crawled out of thousands of years of history, we know this is all part of a cycle and nothing more.
But there is this itch now, in a globalized world, of having to DO something all the time, or suffer the insecurity of being seen as incapable. Bombing the wrong country is not something to choose because of this itch. The Americans did. And they are paying a high price for their stupidity. Nothing against poor Iraqi people, but I hope this quagmire lasts a couple of generations, so that Americans constantly feel like they are doing something, lest they start something freshly stupid.
Aha! But they have started on something freshly brilliant, and it is about seven years late. It's quite amazing how India offered all assistance to the USA immediately after Sept 11th, to join forces with us and to strike inside Afghanistan and Pakistan on the way. We had information and imagery to provide the Americans with rich, high value targets. But, America politely refused, joined hands with our neighbourhood thug in uniform, Mushy, and won our everlasting mistrust. GW and his bunch of republican idiots are worth less than a lump of manure when it comes to tackling a crisis of these proportions.
Now, it just so happens that Musharraf is not that bright of a guy and he often mistakes his cunning for his intelligence. Clearly he doesn't have enough of either resource and America's patience has worn thin. This is good, for now the American military has orders to attack ground targets inside Pakistan, Pakistan's military has orders to shoot at the American military, and the rag tag militants essentially hate the American military and mistrust the Pakistani military! Brilliant! How much more fun can this be strategically for India? Let's not miss the irony of the militants trained to attack targets inside India suddenly finding lots of targets in their own backyard!
Truly the two retards in this game - Mushy's Pakistan and Dubya's America, deserve each other. They are going to drag others in with them, but whoever goes down on that quadrant, it isn't India. We are busy needling Pakistan even more by becoming closer to Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai is cool and has a brain, too. We should definitely go through with the nuclear future for our power generation and leave Pakistan behind economically. All good and sweet and economical and rich revenge for screwing with us. If "terror" can be so rewarding, why would we want to wage a war against it?
On a serious note, these bombings and killings are something we should snuff out. But it won't happen through any trigger happy reactions. We have professionals working on it, and we will get there. We once had a food crisis in India. Then came Mr. C. Subramaniam and his "Green Revolution". Today we have a food surplus. We didn't copy anybody else's "war on hunger". But, we overcame a problem that threatened to wipe out most of India. We have overcome a lot in the last sixty years, and there's nothing to indicate we won't do that in the years to come. But, let's do this our way.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Can't India have terror laws like UK & US?
http://timesnow.tv/Newsdtls.aspx?NewsID=16170
This stupid question was asked by that bumbling idiot Arnab on Times Now a short while ago. Since he appeared to be looking at me on TV, I suppose an answer is expected of me. So, here we go.
The biggest of bumbling idiots, GW Bush declared "War on Terror" that our home grown bumbling idiot sees as a "stringent law". So far, Dubya's War on Terror has pissed away a trillion dollars in the wrong country, killed more than 3000 of his country's troops, and thrown his economy into the toilet, apart from awarding no-bid contracts to Haliburton in the billions of dollars, and has slowly cancelled war veterans' benefits!
14 of the 19 Sept 11th hijackers were Saudi, and Saudi Arabia continues to be beyond radar range for the American military! And Osama Bin Laden still roams free, seven years after the event.
So, that's a lousy example to follow.
Britain's anti-terror laws haven't been so spectacularly full of wrong results, but they too ended up sending and killing their troops in Iraq, which to this day, has nothing to do with terror around the world!
Another lousy example to follow.
Now, here's why our bumbling idiot on TV needs a real kick in the nuts for not even considering the most basic of questions before opening his mouth on national television: What terrorist would reallly stop to update himself with the latest laws before blowing himself up? What kind of words would really deter a terrorist and make him really shiver with fright? Could it be something like "We've already screwed your 72 virgins!"
By the way, Arnab, wouldn't it be cool to have traffic laws like they have in the US and UK? I'm sure then we'd really give a rat's ass about driving properly!
This stupid question was asked by that bumbling idiot Arnab on Times Now a short while ago. Since he appeared to be looking at me on TV, I suppose an answer is expected of me. So, here we go.
The biggest of bumbling idiots, GW Bush declared "War on Terror" that our home grown bumbling idiot sees as a "stringent law". So far, Dubya's War on Terror has pissed away a trillion dollars in the wrong country, killed more than 3000 of his country's troops, and thrown his economy into the toilet, apart from awarding no-bid contracts to Haliburton in the billions of dollars, and has slowly cancelled war veterans' benefits!
14 of the 19 Sept 11th hijackers were Saudi, and Saudi Arabia continues to be beyond radar range for the American military! And Osama Bin Laden still roams free, seven years after the event.
So, that's a lousy example to follow.
Britain's anti-terror laws haven't been so spectacularly full of wrong results, but they too ended up sending and killing their troops in Iraq, which to this day, has nothing to do with terror around the world!
Another lousy example to follow.
Now, here's why our bumbling idiot on TV needs a real kick in the nuts for not even considering the most basic of questions before opening his mouth on national television: What terrorist would reallly stop to update himself with the latest laws before blowing himself up? What kind of words would really deter a terrorist and make him really shiver with fright? Could it be something like "We've already screwed your 72 virgins!"
By the way, Arnab, wouldn't it be cool to have traffic laws like they have in the US and UK? I'm sure then we'd really give a rat's ass about driving properly!
Labels:
arnab,
idiot,
india,
laws,
stringent,
terror,
timesnow.tv,
UK,
US,
war on terror
The Leopard of the Times!
Leopard Dies a Miserable Death in Mysore! People attack a defenceless animal!
These were the headlines and voice bits that screamed at us this afternoon from the Times Now channel. I thought it was very interesting for a few different reasons, the first one being the tone of the reporting that really felt pity for the poor leopard. Fair enough. But...
Too bad the animal strayed onto territory that is occupied by human beings. We care for our safety and we instinctively attack anything that even vaguely threatens our safety. Simple instinct. What's the big deal? Cockroach or dinosaur, same result. We perceive certain threats and we have some idea what we can take on.
If an elephant had wandered into a clump of apartments, we'd most certainly call for qualified help. Because as unlikely as this event may seem, it isn't likely to encourage any number of humans to attack the elephant and take a chance against that kind of size and strength. A tiger, now that would really frighten the crap out of most people, but a leopard, sorry to say, is a bit borderline, especially when it has wandered far out of the wild.
Now, a leopard being called "defenceless"? Come on you Times Now ladies! What kind of children do we have writing news and reading these days? Hello? A leopard is a predator, a wild animal, perfectly capable of killing a human being with one good swipe of its forepaw.
Its bite pressure is enough to snap a human neck in one bite, and is agile enough to challenge any physical human move and tremendously built for the kill! Haven't you watched channels like Discovery or National Geographic? Does a leopard ever look like a panda to you? Please don't tickle one the next time he snuggles into you.
Okay, we'll skip the "defenceless" part. Now, about the reporting - what is so "barbaric" about people whacking a leopard to death, when we whack tons of chickens and lambs just for the pleasure of eating them on a daily basis? Come on now! Man vs. animal - somewhere near human civilization - very little chance for the animal. It's that natural. I suppose things look very different from the synthetic, sterilized corridors of air conditioned television studios. The real world is just a bit different, as the leopard found out today. It happens. He could just as easily have been killed by a tigress in the wild for poaching one of her young.
All the words reserved for cute, rare animals - just amazing how many will come out of the woodwork to defend a leopard or a whale or some animal that we will never get to see most of our lives!
Conservation is for the cute! But pigs and chickens, lambs and pigeons, we can see them all slaughtered by the millions and nobody cares. It's okay to kill some animal as long as its species is not endangered! If it isn't cute, eat it! Talk about the mentality here!
The real story here is the mob mentality of the people of Mysore. This is no different from hammering a pick pocket to death. It takes a mob of humans to bring down a leopard and the Mysoreans were ready to become that mob. That's all there is to it. I actually thought that policeman was pretty brave to whack the leaping leopard a couple of times with his lathi! I never would have imagined a Mysorean cop would have that kind of courage. Kudos to you, Sir!
The Forest Department was there all right, but they were there to control the leopard, not the mob. Tear gas could have been used to diffuse the mob first. And then, the Forest Department could have got down to its job of subduing and capturing the leopard. But then, who can be that clear in the face of two dangers? I am kind of happy the mob got the leopard. The next time we can call one of our damsels from Times Now to reduce the threat or atleast seduce it.
These were the headlines and voice bits that screamed at us this afternoon from the Times Now channel. I thought it was very interesting for a few different reasons, the first one being the tone of the reporting that really felt pity for the poor leopard. Fair enough. But...
Too bad the animal strayed onto territory that is occupied by human beings. We care for our safety and we instinctively attack anything that even vaguely threatens our safety. Simple instinct. What's the big deal? Cockroach or dinosaur, same result. We perceive certain threats and we have some idea what we can take on.
If an elephant had wandered into a clump of apartments, we'd most certainly call for qualified help. Because as unlikely as this event may seem, it isn't likely to encourage any number of humans to attack the elephant and take a chance against that kind of size and strength. A tiger, now that would really frighten the crap out of most people, but a leopard, sorry to say, is a bit borderline, especially when it has wandered far out of the wild.
Now, a leopard being called "defenceless"? Come on you Times Now ladies! What kind of children do we have writing news and reading these days? Hello? A leopard is a predator, a wild animal, perfectly capable of killing a human being with one good swipe of its forepaw.
Its bite pressure is enough to snap a human neck in one bite, and is agile enough to challenge any physical human move and tremendously built for the kill! Haven't you watched channels like Discovery or National Geographic? Does a leopard ever look like a panda to you? Please don't tickle one the next time he snuggles into you.
Okay, we'll skip the "defenceless" part. Now, about the reporting - what is so "barbaric" about people whacking a leopard to death, when we whack tons of chickens and lambs just for the pleasure of eating them on a daily basis? Come on now! Man vs. animal - somewhere near human civilization - very little chance for the animal. It's that natural. I suppose things look very different from the synthetic, sterilized corridors of air conditioned television studios. The real world is just a bit different, as the leopard found out today. It happens. He could just as easily have been killed by a tigress in the wild for poaching one of her young.
All the words reserved for cute, rare animals - just amazing how many will come out of the woodwork to defend a leopard or a whale or some animal that we will never get to see most of our lives!
Conservation is for the cute! But pigs and chickens, lambs and pigeons, we can see them all slaughtered by the millions and nobody cares. It's okay to kill some animal as long as its species is not endangered! If it isn't cute, eat it! Talk about the mentality here!
The real story here is the mob mentality of the people of Mysore. This is no different from hammering a pick pocket to death. It takes a mob of humans to bring down a leopard and the Mysoreans were ready to become that mob. That's all there is to it. I actually thought that policeman was pretty brave to whack the leaping leopard a couple of times with his lathi! I never would have imagined a Mysorean cop would have that kind of courage. Kudos to you, Sir!
The Forest Department was there all right, but they were there to control the leopard, not the mob. Tear gas could have been used to diffuse the mob first. And then, the Forest Department could have got down to its job of subduing and capturing the leopard. But then, who can be that clear in the face of two dangers? I am kind of happy the mob got the leopard. The next time we can call one of our damsels from Times Now to reduce the threat or atleast seduce it.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Why mess with Hinduism?
Like we in India need once more incident of this nature.... Today, churches in Mangalore were attacked by Bajrang Dal Activists. Shortly after, a spokesperson for Bajrang Dal came on TV and clearly and dispassionately said their activities will continue, and that they are not against Christians but against conversions carried out by an organization called New Life that has put out publications in print denouncing Hindu Gods as "not gods"! They want this organization banned.
Enough already by way of people refusing to evolve beyond religion and God and tearing each other up in the name of theories and beliefs that have no bearing on life beyond our own intent and behaviour! Enough already by way of throwing one more problem on a country that needs to solve a lot of problems like power, education and heath for all, eradication of diseases, and removal of corruption!
But, we cannot risk ignoring the forces that disturb peace, and those that wake up in reaction, disturbing peace further. There are interesting checks and balances that are not official, and I cannot help but think that in the absence of watchdog groups, however unrefined their purposes may be, there will be others quite happy to run amok with their agendas. Let moral high ground not be the place where we ignore what is real, and let us not run away to an educated escapist's haven of pure but aloof consideration alone. We do have a problem in India - a clash of religions in an imperfect but powerful mix of great potential, for both growth and destruction.
This is the time when we can most certainly look up to a higher existence that we should all subscribe to, grow beyond our petty issues, and really, really, for the last time, stop fighting in the name of our Gods! But this is also the time when we should realize we cannot take so many people with us on a journey that will probably take a few generations of evolution and coming of age, mentally, socially, economically, emotionally, and spiritually. That is a place we should no doubt aim for, but we cannot get there without the rules being enforced in the game we are playing today. Today's reality is that a lot of people have arguments over religion, and right now, before us, the Bajrang Dal has taken strong exception to a Christian group's overture. This incident could spark mistrust, uneasiness, and outright destruction, and once again, we have chaos in our country due to someone's stupidity.
That's what our fight in the long run is going to be against - stupidity. Stupidity in all forms must be questioned and checked and torn to shreds by all and whatever means possible. The longer stupidity goes unquestioned, the stronger it will get and the harder it will come to bite us. We are in too deep into this connected world to remain immune to others' stupidity. It is here to threaten us and it will destroy us if we are not willing to fight it all the way. But we cannot fight it without looking at it in the face.
It would hurt us not to understand the animals that are in this circus, for the cages are being rattled right now, once again.
This one was started by the Christians. The Bishop of Mangalore came on TV and mentioned that he appealed for peace, and has apparently asked for all Christians held in police custody to be released immediately, but I didn't really hear an apology for denouncing Hindu gods. An attack is an attack whether you do it with printed words or with breaking buildings. So far in this specific set of incidents from Mangalore, there have been no sweeping statements from Hindus denouncing these attacks on churches, and I predict there won't be too many of those coming up this time.
Why not? Because - Hindus don't really appreciate this kind of behaviour, but are certainly inclusive enough in their thinking to understand how the Bajrang Dal or any other Hindu group is likely to feel, given the actions of "New Life". As far as I'm concerned, New Life attacked and are now feeling the heat of retaliation.
There was plenty of Hindu outrage over the destruction of the Babri Masjid, and to this day that incident remains a really sad reminder of what the country will have to suffer if one group of lunatics is allowed to go that far. Since then, we have seen terror attacks, religious riots, destruction, loss of productivity, and countless acts of insanity in the name of religion and God. Your God vs. my God. Ours versus theirs. Stupidity, most certainly, but in a country where the majority is overwhelmingly Hindu, no matter our stated secular ethos, you cannot forgive the minority for their stupidity and hope the majority won't react to it. So, it wouldn't hurt the minorities to understand what Hindus are made of, if only to make informed choices on whose Gods to denounce the next time.
Religious conversion is really not something that necessarily irks followers of the Hindu way of life, for we understand religion is a personal thing, and people are indeed free in a secular country to choose whatever religion they want. But we also understand and respect that there are unspoken but clear lines that people should not cross. We know that such a line was crossed when a religious body or organization made a spectacularly stupid statement denouncing Gods of another religion. If this line was crossed, then that's what started these "incidents" in Mangalore. No smoke without fire.
Hindus understand that not a lot of converts to Christianity are signing up because of their love of Christ. In fact, walk into most churches around the country and you will see only poor people from bacward sections of society who have come to find at the church, not in Christianity or in the soul of Christ, whatever it is they are looking for. I went to a church once for a non religious reason, in the rather posh 6th main road in H.A.L. 2nd stage in Bangalore. I was thoroughly disappointed when the pastor, a fairly slick man who was clearly not used to being slick, addressed the crowd and said they must all love Jesus for the Hindus needed to shower their Gods and dress them and what not, but you don't have to do any of that to Jesus! Huge cheers went up! This guy was a riot! That's the kind of mentality that signs up for being "converted" to Christianity in India these days, so if you want to feel great about recruiting this kind of sheep, they're all yours, baby!
At the end of the sermon, I noticed a lot of people were dressed in festive looking clothes, and they all looked like villagers who were in the city for the first time! Sorry, but that's the impression I got looking at them. They looked rather gaudy, they were rather noisy, and completely sold on the joy of being in that church, while the church was busy collecting money from all of them before they could leave their benches! If they didn't have to shower and clothe Jesus, wonder what they need their money for.
While we shower our Gods and want to make life really comfortable for them, I wonder how Jesus really feels about being nailed to the cross and having to hang there for centuries after the crime was committed. I don't subscribe to the "Jesus died for us" theory, so save your reaction. Why should Jesus die for us? He has already lived a live of great example, and we should pick up after him and follow what he preached, not expect him to soak up our sins! What baloney! And the gall to still hang more sin on Jesus! No wonder he doesn't want to show up anytime soon. Of course, this is all none of my business, but heck, don't you Christians want everyone to embrace Jesus? So, what's wrong with my interpretation? If I robbed a bank, I wonder if the pastor who made fun of me showering my God will be wiling to go to jail in my place. There, the answer to that question tells me how fake you Christian zealots are.
There is this mistaken notion that somehow Hinduism and non-violence are inextricably linked. Gandhi is partly guilty of propagating this image, but looking at Kali Mata, Maha Vishnu, Shiva or Narasimha in their fastest recollected avatars, I wouldn't think they are in any mood to negotiate peacefully. Our Gods have weapons! And they're all known for vanquishing a lot of fools! How do you expect me to worship them and not follow in their celebrated footsteps? Here's the part you Hindu bashers really, really need to worry about - there's not ONE story in Hinduism where one of our Gods magnanimously forgave a grave wrongdoer on the battlefield. Not one who begged for mercy got away with it at the last moment. The bad guys were ALL vanquished, killed, obliterated, destroyed or eliminated. So, don't you dare fool yourselves that we will keep on taking shit from others. Gandhi is not worshipped as a God either, so make your choices wisely.
Our Gods don't move easily. They wait and watch, rather endlessly. Even Ravana had his chance to reverse the wrong he had committed. We will give you that chance. But if you push it, you know what happened to Ravana. We may choose violence late, but we will pick up arms, and not feel guilty about one thing we do after that point.
Now, that doesn't mean we go looking for trouble and trashing other people's religions. The funny thing about Christianity is that I have immense love, respect and regard for Jesus Christ, for the life he led, for the compassion he showered upon the world, and for the unbelievably superior example he set for purity of soul. Whether he is the son of God, or God himself, or a distant cousin, doesn't matter to me. He is Jesus, and he is good enough for me to accept him as God. But Christians I have come across aren't quite worthy of a soul this good to be their saviour. I am always disillusioned rudely by the kind of nonsense Christians stand for in the name of the one and only Jesus Christ.
He isn't quite the God that my clan goddess Malaiamman is, and he certainly is no Lord Krishna. But he has a place in my heart. For sure if Jesus asked something of me, I'd be more than happy to do it for him. But he's not quite the God I'd give up other Gods for. I love the dispassionate warrior that Krishna is, and he has the entire universe in his mouth? Now, that's my kind of God. The kind of God nobody can mess with, nobody can question, and he won't even look at you if you are being petty with your stupid squabbles and being a little shithead around your stupid little planet. Krishna demands some serious understanding of the cosmos and your insignificant little corner in it. Yet, there he is in The Gita, urging you to fight the good fight, regardless of the consequences. After all it was he who informed Arjuna, "I'm the beginning and the end, and all that lies in between". Now that's a God I'd bow to. Confidence, mastery, all encompassing knowledge, absolute power! I surrender. Krishna, you have me absolutely hooked. Even if you're entirely fictional as some people might have the gall to claim, you're still greater than all other Gods I know!
Yet, neither Krishna nor Jesus found it necessary to trash each other. So, when I don't find it necessary to trash Jesus as a fake, what right do these Christian shitheads have to trash any of my Gods? These monkeys are fair game, Bajrang Dal. Don't let them get away. I'm cheering for you, no matter how you choose to retaliate for the attacks on your sentiments. Now, don't go around breaking mosques with stupid claims of some temple being buried underneath, for that is totally wrong, but this time, you have no need to prove you're on the right side. Stupidity should invite ire.
What is interesting is that never in history has any Hindu organization ever trashed the Gods of another faith. Sure we have jokes about Jesus and Allah, and every God we are familiar with, but we are ready to slap the face of that Danish cartoonist who drew The Prophet as a bomber and the idiot who published it. That's a line we'd never cross. And please, for the love of your own God, don't cross it, especially in a country that is over 85% Hindu.
One Max Arthur Macauliffe, a highly placed British administrator serving British India, once famously told Sikhs that Hinduism was like a "boa constrictor of the Indian forests," which "winds its opponent and finally causes it to disappear in its capacious interior." Hinduism has an enormous capacity for love and tolerance. It has a capacity to assimilate everything around it. You will have to study it for ten lifetimes to understand it just a little bit. You cannot escape the Hindu influence over you if you are in India. Do not fight it and encourage it to digest you entirely. That is simply the way Lord Krishna will tell you it is!
Enough already by way of people refusing to evolve beyond religion and God and tearing each other up in the name of theories and beliefs that have no bearing on life beyond our own intent and behaviour! Enough already by way of throwing one more problem on a country that needs to solve a lot of problems like power, education and heath for all, eradication of diseases, and removal of corruption!
But, we cannot risk ignoring the forces that disturb peace, and those that wake up in reaction, disturbing peace further. There are interesting checks and balances that are not official, and I cannot help but think that in the absence of watchdog groups, however unrefined their purposes may be, there will be others quite happy to run amok with their agendas. Let moral high ground not be the place where we ignore what is real, and let us not run away to an educated escapist's haven of pure but aloof consideration alone. We do have a problem in India - a clash of religions in an imperfect but powerful mix of great potential, for both growth and destruction.
This is the time when we can most certainly look up to a higher existence that we should all subscribe to, grow beyond our petty issues, and really, really, for the last time, stop fighting in the name of our Gods! But this is also the time when we should realize we cannot take so many people with us on a journey that will probably take a few generations of evolution and coming of age, mentally, socially, economically, emotionally, and spiritually. That is a place we should no doubt aim for, but we cannot get there without the rules being enforced in the game we are playing today. Today's reality is that a lot of people have arguments over religion, and right now, before us, the Bajrang Dal has taken strong exception to a Christian group's overture. This incident could spark mistrust, uneasiness, and outright destruction, and once again, we have chaos in our country due to someone's stupidity.
That's what our fight in the long run is going to be against - stupidity. Stupidity in all forms must be questioned and checked and torn to shreds by all and whatever means possible. The longer stupidity goes unquestioned, the stronger it will get and the harder it will come to bite us. We are in too deep into this connected world to remain immune to others' stupidity. It is here to threaten us and it will destroy us if we are not willing to fight it all the way. But we cannot fight it without looking at it in the face.
It would hurt us not to understand the animals that are in this circus, for the cages are being rattled right now, once again.
This one was started by the Christians. The Bishop of Mangalore came on TV and mentioned that he appealed for peace, and has apparently asked for all Christians held in police custody to be released immediately, but I didn't really hear an apology for denouncing Hindu gods. An attack is an attack whether you do it with printed words or with breaking buildings. So far in this specific set of incidents from Mangalore, there have been no sweeping statements from Hindus denouncing these attacks on churches, and I predict there won't be too many of those coming up this time.
Why not? Because - Hindus don't really appreciate this kind of behaviour, but are certainly inclusive enough in their thinking to understand how the Bajrang Dal or any other Hindu group is likely to feel, given the actions of "New Life". As far as I'm concerned, New Life attacked and are now feeling the heat of retaliation.
There was plenty of Hindu outrage over the destruction of the Babri Masjid, and to this day that incident remains a really sad reminder of what the country will have to suffer if one group of lunatics is allowed to go that far. Since then, we have seen terror attacks, religious riots, destruction, loss of productivity, and countless acts of insanity in the name of religion and God. Your God vs. my God. Ours versus theirs. Stupidity, most certainly, but in a country where the majority is overwhelmingly Hindu, no matter our stated secular ethos, you cannot forgive the minority for their stupidity and hope the majority won't react to it. So, it wouldn't hurt the minorities to understand what Hindus are made of, if only to make informed choices on whose Gods to denounce the next time.
Religious conversion is really not something that necessarily irks followers of the Hindu way of life, for we understand religion is a personal thing, and people are indeed free in a secular country to choose whatever religion they want. But we also understand and respect that there are unspoken but clear lines that people should not cross. We know that such a line was crossed when a religious body or organization made a spectacularly stupid statement denouncing Gods of another religion. If this line was crossed, then that's what started these "incidents" in Mangalore. No smoke without fire.
Hindus understand that not a lot of converts to Christianity are signing up because of their love of Christ. In fact, walk into most churches around the country and you will see only poor people from bacward sections of society who have come to find at the church, not in Christianity or in the soul of Christ, whatever it is they are looking for. I went to a church once for a non religious reason, in the rather posh 6th main road in H.A.L. 2nd stage in Bangalore. I was thoroughly disappointed when the pastor, a fairly slick man who was clearly not used to being slick, addressed the crowd and said they must all love Jesus for the Hindus needed to shower their Gods and dress them and what not, but you don't have to do any of that to Jesus! Huge cheers went up! This guy was a riot! That's the kind of mentality that signs up for being "converted" to Christianity in India these days, so if you want to feel great about recruiting this kind of sheep, they're all yours, baby!
At the end of the sermon, I noticed a lot of people were dressed in festive looking clothes, and they all looked like villagers who were in the city for the first time! Sorry, but that's the impression I got looking at them. They looked rather gaudy, they were rather noisy, and completely sold on the joy of being in that church, while the church was busy collecting money from all of them before they could leave their benches! If they didn't have to shower and clothe Jesus, wonder what they need their money for.
While we shower our Gods and want to make life really comfortable for them, I wonder how Jesus really feels about being nailed to the cross and having to hang there for centuries after the crime was committed. I don't subscribe to the "Jesus died for us" theory, so save your reaction. Why should Jesus die for us? He has already lived a live of great example, and we should pick up after him and follow what he preached, not expect him to soak up our sins! What baloney! And the gall to still hang more sin on Jesus! No wonder he doesn't want to show up anytime soon. Of course, this is all none of my business, but heck, don't you Christians want everyone to embrace Jesus? So, what's wrong with my interpretation? If I robbed a bank, I wonder if the pastor who made fun of me showering my God will be wiling to go to jail in my place. There, the answer to that question tells me how fake you Christian zealots are.
There is this mistaken notion that somehow Hinduism and non-violence are inextricably linked. Gandhi is partly guilty of propagating this image, but looking at Kali Mata, Maha Vishnu, Shiva or Narasimha in their fastest recollected avatars, I wouldn't think they are in any mood to negotiate peacefully. Our Gods have weapons! And they're all known for vanquishing a lot of fools! How do you expect me to worship them and not follow in their celebrated footsteps? Here's the part you Hindu bashers really, really need to worry about - there's not ONE story in Hinduism where one of our Gods magnanimously forgave a grave wrongdoer on the battlefield. Not one who begged for mercy got away with it at the last moment. The bad guys were ALL vanquished, killed, obliterated, destroyed or eliminated. So, don't you dare fool yourselves that we will keep on taking shit from others. Gandhi is not worshipped as a God either, so make your choices wisely.
Our Gods don't move easily. They wait and watch, rather endlessly. Even Ravana had his chance to reverse the wrong he had committed. We will give you that chance. But if you push it, you know what happened to Ravana. We may choose violence late, but we will pick up arms, and not feel guilty about one thing we do after that point.
Now, that doesn't mean we go looking for trouble and trashing other people's religions. The funny thing about Christianity is that I have immense love, respect and regard for Jesus Christ, for the life he led, for the compassion he showered upon the world, and for the unbelievably superior example he set for purity of soul. Whether he is the son of God, or God himself, or a distant cousin, doesn't matter to me. He is Jesus, and he is good enough for me to accept him as God. But Christians I have come across aren't quite worthy of a soul this good to be their saviour. I am always disillusioned rudely by the kind of nonsense Christians stand for in the name of the one and only Jesus Christ.
He isn't quite the God that my clan goddess Malaiamman is, and he certainly is no Lord Krishna. But he has a place in my heart. For sure if Jesus asked something of me, I'd be more than happy to do it for him. But he's not quite the God I'd give up other Gods for. I love the dispassionate warrior that Krishna is, and he has the entire universe in his mouth? Now, that's my kind of God. The kind of God nobody can mess with, nobody can question, and he won't even look at you if you are being petty with your stupid squabbles and being a little shithead around your stupid little planet. Krishna demands some serious understanding of the cosmos and your insignificant little corner in it. Yet, there he is in The Gita, urging you to fight the good fight, regardless of the consequences. After all it was he who informed Arjuna, "I'm the beginning and the end, and all that lies in between". Now that's a God I'd bow to. Confidence, mastery, all encompassing knowledge, absolute power! I surrender. Krishna, you have me absolutely hooked. Even if you're entirely fictional as some people might have the gall to claim, you're still greater than all other Gods I know!
Yet, neither Krishna nor Jesus found it necessary to trash each other. So, when I don't find it necessary to trash Jesus as a fake, what right do these Christian shitheads have to trash any of my Gods? These monkeys are fair game, Bajrang Dal. Don't let them get away. I'm cheering for you, no matter how you choose to retaliate for the attacks on your sentiments. Now, don't go around breaking mosques with stupid claims of some temple being buried underneath, for that is totally wrong, but this time, you have no need to prove you're on the right side. Stupidity should invite ire.
What is interesting is that never in history has any Hindu organization ever trashed the Gods of another faith. Sure we have jokes about Jesus and Allah, and every God we are familiar with, but we are ready to slap the face of that Danish cartoonist who drew The Prophet as a bomber and the idiot who published it. That's a line we'd never cross. And please, for the love of your own God, don't cross it, especially in a country that is over 85% Hindu.
One Max Arthur Macauliffe, a highly placed British administrator serving British India, once famously told Sikhs that Hinduism was like a "boa constrictor of the Indian forests," which "winds its opponent and finally causes it to disappear in its capacious interior." Hinduism has an enormous capacity for love and tolerance. It has a capacity to assimilate everything around it. You will have to study it for ten lifetimes to understand it just a little bit. You cannot escape the Hindu influence over you if you are in India. Do not fight it and encourage it to digest you entirely. That is simply the way Lord Krishna will tell you it is!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)