The new fa(r)ce of Indian politics!

Here we go again!

A debate took place amongst four candidates in Bangalore South. Mr.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Member of Parliament, in his blog
www.rajeev.in/blog calls this the "changing nature of Indian
politics". I saw a plane fly high in the sky last night, and I
suppose we can ignore all our roads now, since this could very well be
the changing nature of transportation in India.

It appears as though Bangalore South is suddenly into a new fashion -
political debate. It also appears as though the mix of people in this
debate is a fairly homogeneous one. It does not appear, however, that
this model can be replicated elsewhere in the country or across the
country, simply because we have too many different languages and a
vastly diverse culture of communication and very different ideas of
what makes India.

There are thousands of migratory workers from Maharashtra and Bihar
working in the fields in Tamilnadu, now that the sugarcane harvest is
on. I would be curious to know whether any of them would even know
what a debate is, and if they would care about any issues being
debated upon by a bunch of urban literates. I wonder if they even
know their representatives from their home constituencies. But if
they didn't do their jobs, we wouldn't have much of a sugar output
this year. Absolutely nothing will come out of a bunch of
Bangaloreans debating the future of the nation, for they won't
implement anything they debated upon.

That's what is unique about India - the people who have all the great
ideas don't have much of an impact upon the way things are done on the
ground, until their ideas percolate all the way down to
implementation. The ideas at the top come from people who don't have
a clue on how things are at the bottom. The people at the bottom
don't have much to choose from and do not have an expectation of a
great India - they just want to get by.

The reason we cannot have a debate like the American presidential
debate is because no two leaders represent anything close to the
aspirations of the Average Indian. There is no Average Indian since
people living in Rameswaram have issues totally different from those
living in Assam. It is a great thing that India is holding together
despite our enormous diversity in culture, concerns, language,
abilities, food and outlook on life. But the truth is, we love the
idea of India and that India does not have to be anything other than
this confusing mess.

It is fashionable for the urban literate to think they can model our
country like something they have in their heads. The reality is that
no matter how much anyone tries, the whole of India is not easy to
grasp in one lifetime. Urban literates have the time to discuss
ideas, while the migratory worker, the fisherman, the farmer and the
train driver keep this country running. Urban literates can afford to
go to www.nocriminals.org and talk about real snakes getting tickets
and make noises about "no criminals"! But the real India doesn't
quite stay glued into these vanity visionaries. The snakes amongst
them will come to power, no matter what, for it is the snakes that can
feast upon the helplessness of the rural masses.

We haven't empowered the majority of India, and we will continue to
reap the rich harvest of ignorance. We will have chief ministers of
individual states refusing to accept that the chief of the LTTE is a
terrorist, while the nation's policy clearly defines him as such. We
have no cohesive "Indian" thought process that applies to the whole of
India. Indeed we can do very well without a sanitized homogenity, but
we can have no national debate until the worlds we live in can have
some common ground. An educated South Indian does not live in the
same world as an uneducated rural criminal politician from Bihar.

The ONLY thing that can hold the fabric of India together is economic
opportunity. As long as there is a reasonably good chance of most
Indians making their lives better, we don't have to question status
quo. There is no magic, no silver bullet, that will cure this country
of all ills, but we can do with a pill that can wake up our urban
educated and get them to think beyond their sterilized, protected
existences, their cute notions of how their debates and civilized
exchanges can actually do something to change the reality of the
underserved, underutilized, ignored, eroding India.

The most important question still begs to be asked - how many Indian
candidates trying to get votes actually have a brain that can process
a fair amount of information, that can make sense out of chaotic
issues that beseige us, come forward with confidence and participate
in a debate that is interesting, engaging and useful at the end? If
the figure crosses zero for any geographical area, we would be
blessed.

Come on! Let's have some truth!

Shah Rukh Khan said at a press conference earlier today that all the
owners of the IPL teams wanted to do something for sports. Yeah, I
suppose they did by investing astronomical sums of money in a sport
that has already flourished and thrived and pretty much has put India
at the control of where it goes globally.

Lalit Modi and the IPL shamelessly claim that their idea was somehow a
pioneering effort, and he does not shy away from lies that the IPL is
the first of its kind enterprise in cricket, knowing fully well that
the ICL and Kapil Dev definitely hold that distinction.

L.K. Advani is doing everything he can to distance himself from the
events following the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane to
Khandahar during the last BJP tenure at the top. He claims he was not
part of the decision making process. That's kind of like John McCain
claiming he was against Bush's war.

LK Advani is also claiming that he will bring back all of India's
wealth stashed in the Swiss Bank. It is a totally fake claim,
considering he will need to get through a whole process culminating in
Interpol truly attesting that a certain amount of money stashed in a
particular account is indeed India's wealth and has been "illegally"
accrued, not just "improperly". It will involve actually proving to
the Interpol that every single account of every single Indian who has
"improperly" put away money in Swiss bank is actually stolen from what
would be India's money!

What is even more preposterous is that there are any number of havens
out there for loosely accounted money - Cayman Islands, Solomon
Islands, Belize, the Bahamas, Channel Islands, Panama, and if you have
the right connections, even the Vatican City can protect your ill
gotten money as long as there is enough of it. There was once a short
study conducted in the Wall Street area of New York around lunch time.
Two thirds of all ATM withdrawals were accessing moneys from offshore
accounts!

So, it is not as if L.K. Advani is fighting against a bunch of Indian
thugs sitting in some mountain in the Swiss Alps on suitcases of
money. He is a moron to even make the claim that he will somehow
bring back all that money stashed in acres of protective policy across
the globe. And even if that money came back, do we trust our
politicians to handle it right? Of course not. So...

Why the lies? What is wrong with Shah Rukh Khan saying he really
thinks the IPL is a good business opportunity and if his star power
helps his team, so be it!? What is wrong with Lalit Modi saying the
ICL was the first to do it, but the IPL has got it better? Would we
respect Advani any less if he said "I am not proud of the way we
handled the Khandahar affair."?

Would truth really be that much out of fashion compared to lies? We
don't really believe kids who drink Complan would grow 3 cms more than
kids who don't, do we? So, if a wannabe politician comes to us and
says, "I don't have any bloody experience in this political cellpool,
but I really think I can do better than all these pompous fools out
there", wouldn't there be something in us wanting to give him a
chance?

It isn't as if we can't tell the difference between blatant lies and
something closer to the real thing. But the presentation is killing
us. Everybody has got into this "TV clean" culture of being
presentable. They are all quickly learning from each other how to
present themselves, not what to represent.

Just for freshness, wouldn't truth be fun to have around? Who knows,
it might even become fashionable, patrotic, efficient, and even
nationalistic. I remember there used to be a guy called Gandhi.....

Talking about movies

Why the heck do people talk about their movies?

If a picture is worth a thousand words, that would be twenty four
thousand words per second, or one million four hundred and forty words
per minute, 172,800,000 words to substitute for the experience of a
two hour film. Really, what does anyone have to say that will take
172,800,000 words? And who has the patience to listen?

But surely, if you can throw at us one thousand four hundred and forty
pictures a minute, and 172,800 pictures in a two hour escape, you
should have something to say, and do it without having to yap about it
on talk shows, on promos, and you can definitely spare the print
media.

Figures apart - Do people making movies need to talk because they
forgot to say something when the movie was being made? Shouldn't the
work speak for itself? Okay, so you want to get us curious about your
film? That's what trailers are for, aren't they?

What is this whole nonsense about film makers, directors, producers,
actors, and everybody connected with a movie talking about what they
have just unleashed upon us? Usually, they're making excuses or lying
about something that is not quite so in the movie. I'll tell you why.
If it is an incredible movie, all we need is to hear that from a
friend, and we will rush to the theatres. If it is a terrible movie,
we'll get to hear about that as well.

The greatest works of art didn't have the artists promoting it all
over the world, like pimps trying to push an old hag down the throats
of sex starved men. Nobody in the world is going to die if they
didn't see a movie. They would feel horrible if they got suckered
into buying a ticket to a lousy movie, and most of the time, the
promos are trying to get us suckered.

It is one thing to splash Spiderman all over the newspaper and get you
all excited. That's okay, for the movie appeals to a lot of different
people, and we all know what to expect by the way. It's really all
about letting the kids know Spiderman is out and they should pester
their parents. To be honest, I thought Spiderman delivered on the
promise. But what I don't get is people making shitty little dramas
with confused character motivation, lousy action, and pathetic
narrative, and then actually having the nerve to use words like
"exploring the emotional dimensions of two disturbed souls...." and
crap like that.

There could be narcissicism! Of course, some directors just
absolutely love what they have produced, even though it is obvious to
most of us that the work is nothing short of thievery on people's
time. The less honest and more prevalent reason is the assumption
that most people who fall for the promo are idiots. Some just love
the sound of their own voices, and some actually believe they can
convince us a piece of crap is worth seeing, if they give us enough
intellectual spiel to masturbate over!

We know promotions work to some extent. We know they help sell
tickets. But at the end of the day, there is nothing anybody can add
with words to what is missing on the screen. If it was possible,
there should be a storybook, not a movie! Not that there are so many
great storybooks out there either, but the publishing industry is
usually a lot more honest with the material and the abilities of the
writer.

If you go to a restaurant, and the chef gives you a half an hour
lecture on how many wonderful ingredients he used, how slow the fire
was, and how deliciously coloured the spices were and what an aroma
there was in the kitchen as he cooked it, and then serves you a lousy
plate of dhal, how would that make you feel? Most Indian film makers
are very capable of doing exactly this. The lousy dhal is okay if you
could just send it away, but that doesn't happen at the movies, does
it? The thieves have got you for full whack with their talk, and then
you're screwed with the terrible movie that follows!

Dear shotmakers, you need to grow up a lot before we can confer upon
you the title of "film makers" - We don't need to be told in words
what a film is about. A film has its own wide canvas of expression
and it can talk on several levels - IF you know what you're doing
while making it. If you made a dud and you want to polish it, then
please... spare us the torture. Cinema is for enjoyment. If you have
delivered torture, go commit suicide, you intellectual freaks, and
don't talk on the way either!

The fate of being Indian.

I just returned from a death ceremony. A senior cousin of mine died
this morning. Five people involved in a head-on collision with a bus.
All dead. None of them had a chance.

It was sad seeing the community having to come together to support the
family after the loss. A father had lost one of his two sons, a son
had lost his father, and a village had lost one of its political
voices, apart from a community of chartered accountants having lost
one of their own. This is all just my cousin, mind you, and I can
only imagine what the loss of the other four lives could add up to. I
just don't know the others well enough at this point, apart from that
they were all precious in some way or the other.

It is consistently the same feeling - life is precious. Only on the
rarest occasions have I heard people actually celebrating the fact
that someone could pass on without suffering, and after having lived a
great, full, fun life. Blessed are those who get to do that, and
blessed are the ones who come to enjoy their company.

The majority of us live with health risks, physical danger, terrible
lifestyles not withstanding. These are just facts of life, and we
just don't need to add to the list. Terrible drivers are a fact of
life too. And they stand a very good chance of getting us killed.

I found a few conversations discussing fate, the inevitability of
death, and the philosophical perspectives were all well worn ones.
What frustrated me was that there were no rational conversations about
how the accident could have been avoided, so I had to investigate. I
asked the question straight - what exactly happened?

As it turns out, the Scorpio was driven by a 19 year old with a
reputation for rash driving. He tried to overtake a bus at speed,
thought he could muscle his way before the bus from the opposite
direction could come through, and all five on board paid the ultimate
price. It also turns out the 19 year old did not have a driver's
licence.

There you go, I pointed out - no fate, no inevitability of death, and
no God's wish. Just plain stupidity, bad driving, bad judgment, plain
old Indian incompetence. I wonder why people have to be so
incompetent even while having an argument, so much so that they cannot
differentiate between someone trying to get a point across, and
someone showing disrespect. It just doesn't matter, they said, it was
fate that made them let the kid drive!

It is interesting that everyone in the Scorpio had gone to send off a
political figure and were all active members of the AIADMK. To me, it
doesn't matter what party, but I could not help but think our
politicians are not even capable of being responsible about their own
safety and behaviour, so what the heck are they going to do about the
nation.

People, it is time to move away from dogma. It is time to rudely
shake people out of their stupor, for the time is gone when other
people's stupidity affects only them. It affects us all. It is fate,
I am willing to concede, that we are Indian. It is impossible to
choose where we are born. That is simply not in our control, so it
just could be fate.

What we do have control over is the Indian trait of blaming fate for
all our follies and failures. It wasn't fate that hundreds of people
lost their lives in Mumbai on the 26th of November last year. It
isn't fate that thousands of us die in road accidents every year. By
no means is it fate that our children are malnourished, badly
educated, and many of us are living below the poverty line. We need
to get this act of being Indian together, before we lose all semblance
of a rational existence. At the very least, those of us who are
rational deserve our chances of surviving against this dogmatic
incompetence that is uniquely Indian.

Controversy's children

It was only a matter of time before it happened - Deepa Mehta and
Salman Rushdie coming together for the mother of all controversies
designed from scratch - a movie called "Midnight's Children".

Salman Rushdie didn't do the world of literature any great favour by
writing "The Satanic Verses", but the silly narrative gained a lot of
traction by courting the unmistakable ally of poor art - controversy!
It was no masterpiece, but it got plenty of publicity, by getting
banned, criticized, and by managing to get the author a fatwa from the
Islamic world!

Deepa Mehta made a lousy film called "Water". It should have been
called "Drain" for what it did to the viewers, but it picked up
plenty of controversy along the way, and it is really only poor art
that CAN pick up this kind of controversy, because people who react
quickly and take to the streets by perceiving an attack on their
culture aren't going to fall for sophisticated points of view that can
actually be thought provoking.

So, it is perfectly expectable that terribly overrated artists would
provide enough ammunition to start the next controversy, and please
don't be surprised that such controversy is easier to kick up in the
Muslim world either.

If you are a fairly neutral consumer of books, you will see no great
literary value in The Satanic Verses. So, the best way to sell the
book to you is to get you really curious through controversy. Deepa
Mehta is a perfect ally to Salman Rusdie now with Midnight's Children.
For an author who is reasonably good at best and a film maker who
can't tell a story to save her life, a venture of this nature was
inevitable.

Don't show them any sympathy, but know that a paucity of creativity
can be exploited and substituted by an abundance of controversy - as
far as the marketplace is concerned. It is one thing when a work of
art aims to debunk theories humanity has subscribed to, asks questions
that make us examine our convictions, and provides perspectives that
shock us out of our stupor - that is the power of art. The
controversies that follow such works are a fallout of the effort and
merely a part of the journey.

It is entirely another to NEED a controversy in order to bring some
sort of recognition to an effort at art. Those are the props true
artists should never have to have. Whether it is a Danish cartoonist
or a pretensive Indian painter, their expressions are not richer for
having controversy carry them to recognition. Know the difference!

Here is the prediction - clear as day. The moment this film goes on
the floor, and you bet it will do that in India - there will be a
protest against it. And from then on, Deepa Mehta will continue to
roll the dice exactly as terrible artists are prone to - focus on
everything except on her lousy film making ability. In Water, I still
remember with disdain the scene where the long yearning lovers finally
come together before their flight into the promise of the unknown -
the birds being released from the cage. And they came together like
two dead bodies, bereft of all emotion, and made me wonder what
unfeeling, soulless creature would create a mess like this!

The same creature is about to unleash another rotten stink upon the
world of cinema, and it is called Midnight's Children. She should not
be stopped, definitely not for any fear of her great art influencing
anybody's thought process or culture. She is nowehere near capable of
that. That dopey Salman Rushdie should not be stopped either, for he
is, just like her, a child of controversies, and nothing more.

One billion rights to remain stupid.

What is it that one billion people do together - sneeze, cough, spit,
hang our heads, cheer, have a hiccup, climb a tree... on and on...!
Oh, it's the IPL! Of course we do! Wait a minute! Do we? If we
did, then there's no point having eight teams, is there? There is no
way all of us would cheer for the same team the same way, and all
together. Even the Bangalore Boozards have their own fan following
and a Chennai Super Kings fan would never bother about a team led by a
guy called "The Wall" in any case. So, even if one billion Indians
watched cricket, they wouldn't by a long shot, do anything together,
unless it was India playing Pakistan in a world cup encouter. In
India, we fight for our right to be stupid, and we are never denied
that right. How lovely!

But the advertising world is famous for inflicting abject stupidity
upon us, and it is reaching insulting proportions.

Look at the latest Lifebuoy ad. where people in one building A used
the damn soap, and the people in building B didn't. Apparently, the
kids in building A were cleaner, healthier, happier, performed better,
grew taller, became national leaders, and those in building B became
cripples, sewer cleaners, smugglers, terrorists and beggars! This is
really asking to be slapped in the face, and I'll be damned if I buy
this bloody soap.

That Complan ad. has got to be campaigned against, I tell you.
Especially since they showed proof that there were two groups of kids
- one that went on a Complan diet that grew 3 cms more than the other
who didn't. Now, what kind of parents supported this great experiment
and what kind of heartless company would have paid them to prevent the
second group of children from having the opportunity to grow 3 cms
more? What are we talking about here? Using our children as
laboratory animals? How low can this get? This is definitely a case
of abuse. All the fools who raised a hue and a cry against the story
of Slumdog Millionaire depicting our kids in slums haven't clued in on
our own backyard yet.

More and more we see ads for bikes with piddly one hundred odd cubic
centimetre engines that do all kinds of outrageous stunts, with the
warning that those stunts are being performed by experts and should
not be imitated. If I am a youngster and I am supposed to be
impressed by those stunts, why am I not supposed to try them, and why
the heck would I buy that bike if I wasn't going to do any of that?
Duh duh go!

And what's up with Akshay Kumar inventing a new challenge to inspire a
whole generation of youth - finding a Thums Up without putting his
feet on the ground? Of course he had to mention that, or we'd
completely miss the message right? People with feet on the ground do
not drink Thums Up! We got it, thank you.

Now, for the not quite so stupid amongst us - here's a thought - We
don't quite seem to notice, but many of our models and actors do
actually endorse competing brands. See how many you can spot. Here's
a big one to get you going - Shah Rukh Khan, the owner of an IPL
franchise is Dish TV's top model. Dish TV belongs to the Zee group
which owns the ICL, and they are direct rivals. Bloody thief. Go
figure the rest!

Our fundamental right to be smart is never going to be questioned as
long as we don't choose to exercise it! Our fundamental right to be
stupid is never denied.