Yuddham Sei [2011]

JK is seen sitting in his room, pensive, amidst all the paper clippings. Inexplicably distracted, he gets up, ambles across the hall, opens the door and peeks out. Seeing no one he crosses the verandah and spends a few seconds there peering into the dark. He then gets back into the room (which btw is mostly dark except for the silhouettes), he opens the draw and picks something up and places it in his pocket and finally leaves home.

What follows is a brilliantly choreographed action sequence (the inspiration of which seems to be the ambush+swordfight-in-the-snow section from ‘Sword of Doom’) .  JK is seen battling thugs with a small nail cutter knife but that is not what makes the sequence special. Only during the second view did I notice that when JK opens the draw, the object that he picks glitters exactly for a second or two in the dark. Blink and you’ll miss it. That little instance changes the hunter-hunted dynamics of the entire sequence (Not just this scene, entire film’s loaded with several such deftly orchestrated ‘control’ shifts).

The Yuddham Sei world is an eerie, dark world. It doesn’t bother holding a mirror to the real world and finds self-sufficiency in its own twisted sense of justice and order. It’s a world where consequences matter, morality doesn’t.  When Piyush Mishra wrote “Chitput si baaton mein jalne lagegi, sambhalo yeh duniya, Katpit ke raaton mein palne lagegi, sambhalo yeh duniya,” he must’ve been envisioning this world. Yet this is a place where men live and die by a code, however skewed or perverse that code may be, an allusion perhaps to the Samurai code (Seri Seri, Sappaana patthi rombha ezhudhuna: Badwa Mysskin copy adichaarunNu pazhi podriya nBaynge. Edhukku vambu, itthode nirthipPom) Normally, such rigid demarcations and sense of exclusivity serve to irritate but here the very same reasons intrigue. The film mirrors the mood of its protagonist (an impassive cop battling his own fears) and  functions as an observer who, from a safe distance, watches over the happenings without taking sides or getting involved.  It’s most refreshing to find a Tamizh film where the story is shown and not told.

But what goes for the movie also works against it. The final act gets completely buried under the weight of the first 2 acts. Either Mysskin lost the plot or the filmmakers were concerned that the film’d fly-over/slip-under the radar of comprehension (of a ‘mass audience’) because all of a sudden you find yourself staring at a ‘gaana’ at the business end of the movie. If the justification for it is pleasing the crowd, then I’d say its planted at the worst possible time and place, right before when the knots come loose.  I’m not against songs in movies (atleast not openly, I prefer being a closet snob) but this such a nasty speed-break that it completely yanked me out of the narrative . Speaking of knots coming loose, there is a bad ‘story-so-far-in-case-you-lost-us-in-all-subtle-hints’ in a confessional + flashback scene at the end which single-handedly manages to drag the film down. Also am I the only one who found the climax incredibly funny? (Completely lost it at the old couple doing a Terminator)

Pardon if this sounds like nitpicking, it isn’t.  I’m a guy who watches movies like ‘Siruththai’, comes home and sleeps peacefully like a child. Infact, the ‘mass’er the movie, the merrier it is for me. My disappointment is solely with the consistency. For a while there Mysskin really really had me believing that we finally have a reply to ‘Se7en’ (not that it needed a reply but namma paya-pulla geththu kaatna namakkum perumai thaane ).

Sigh!

ps: Mysskin saar, naanga Rashomon padam paathutom. Neenga references ellathayum explicita explain pannaama irundha nanna irukkum. Nandri.

Actually…

“Can you get home by yourself?” she asks  “I have some grocery shopping to do and won’t be driving by Lalbagh”

“Would you be needing any help with the groceries?  I can …” I offer to help.

“Oh no no” she smiles “I can manage, I’m concerned whether you can get home … You know …this rain’

“Not a problem. I should be used to rough stuff by now”  its hard to hide one’s disappointment.

“Hmmmm”  she manages to keep up with the smile. It’s pretty thin now, the smile.

For the longest possible time we spend time in colleges and schools learning how stuff works. All that ‘baap-ki-khoon-pasine-ki-kamaai’ spent generously to add abbreviated suffixes to our visiting cards. All that effort, struggle, cut-throat-competition and for what?  We never learn how to deal with situations. We never learn to handle awkward silences, never ever learn when to give a fuck and when not to. For instance, right about now I should be grabbing her by her shoulders, shaking her, yellin’ ‘WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU? CANT YOU SEE WE HAVE A GREAT THING GOING IN HERE?’ but instead…

“Oh…that reminds me, I’ve got to shop some sportswear …..for Popat… nephew..Nice guy. I should be going now”.  (Note to self: Run home, hug your pillow and cry your eyes out, you wimp!)

“See you around then” she says

“Yeah”

13D just pulls into the bus-stand. I turn back and run as fast as I can to catch it . Mangalore is a bitch when it comes to torrential rains. Heart-in-heart I wish that, on cue, Sonu Nigam or KK or Atif Aslam’ll sing some poignant Urdu-ish Hindi song about life, love, destiny and separation.  Turns out today is ‘Melodrame-ki-maa-chudh-gayi-divas’

“Onji Bondel” I hear myself say fishing out a not-yet-wet 50 rupee note.

“Change ijji maaraya” comes the reply with no effort to conceal its annoyance.

It’s an awful feeling when one is ripped to little shreds and the whole world is busy giving a fuck about chillars for a bus-ticket.

Withnail and I [1987]

( source)

The picture says it all. There is nothing much else to say.

Cut To Conflict

25 Apr 2006:

“Is there a God?” I ask.

The humidity wrings the fuck out of you in this city. 12 in the night lying on the terrace floor, your skin screams ‘Encore’ at the slightest of breezes. So much for the romantic “lying back and gazing at the stars together” shit. Plus what the movies never tell you is that 99% of the terraces in this country are ant-infested. Little fuckers are notorious to the point where one psyches out and goes on a stomping rage.  Fuck the karmic shit, I’d demolish multitudes of ants any given Tuesday.

“And the award for the most cliched question goes to…” she quips, her fingers absentmindedly fiddling with my sacred thread.

“You know what  Bunty told me last week at that beach house party?” I ask

“What? Something about his wife?”

“No…nothing about his wife. Just a general observation. He says that sarcastic quips are women’s way of telling men that they’re in the ‘mood’. “

“Balls! What was he smoking?”

“The usual shit”

My hands reach up to her sweaty nape and I let them traverse the contours of her face.

“I wonder if there is a point to all of this madness. Here we are, both of us, intimate, completely in love (Jesus! did I just say ‘completely in love’?) and yet something feels odd.  Isn’t this too random an arrangement? Why are we here? I feel like I don’t even know you…. as in …  as in… Don’t you feel manipulated? Like a puppet whose strings are being pulled by an invisible hand?   I mean … why am I saying things which I’m saying out now?  Don’t you feel that we’re two random characters shoved into a romantic scene with no sense of context whatsoever? “

“Hmmmmm” is all she can manage in reply. Half-moan/Half-sigh types.

Oh well!

Last Week at that beach house party:

“Is there a God?” asks Bunty

A loud groan from Skooter “Don’t do this da! The last time we had this conversation, it almost came to a fistfight”

“Yes Yes I know. But of late I’ve been bumping into a lot of atheists btw”

“By bumping into, you mean….” I begin. Knowing Bunty as I do, the question wasn’t irrelevant or lewd.

“No penetration involved, if that’s what you fear. I’ve just been meeting a lot of them lately and they’ve started to get on my nerves” he smiles (or that’s what we think he did. Such accounts rapidly lose their authenticity as they progress to the 4th round of drags and if I know Skooter right, the bastard’s stopped mixing tobacco after the first hand) “I mean, I can’t bear the general snobbery that gets tossed around when 3 or more of such goats get together. Infact fuck me if I’m wrong but I haven’t seen one atheist who can’t keep his/her trap shut”

“I agree. I mean, being your friend for such a long time and all” I try slipping one in under the radar

“Chutiye! I don’t go about being an overbearing or a condescending asshole at social gatherings” he shoots back

“Oh like that you are saying a? Good Good! Continue” I reply

“So that is when I meet one of these guys who tells these snobs to give theists some credence. Naturally, the whole gang pounces on this guy and starts to take him apart..and then he says something that sounded brilliant.”

“Yeah? What’s that?” asks Skooter

“He said: Imagine a bunch of human cells in some vein somewhere down the abdomen, meeting up, chatting in their own language, about how they are the pinnacle of evolution and how perfectly they’ve built a complex system (the vein, that is), the sum of which, is greater than themselves. They are quite proud of what they’ve achieved and laugh derisively at the thought of a third party beyond their schemes of action and the corresponding reaction. Of course, they do acknowledge that there were far too many things that they haven’t learnt yet but the idea of an higher organism whose being encompassed all their worlds sounds downright ridiculous to them”

A few seconds of silence

“Bunty” said Skooter finally “I’ve got to say this: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?”

“Huh? You don’t get it?” Bunty putting on his best incredulous face

“Nope, even I dont get it” I add

“It’s so simple. The analogy was to illustrate that sentient and intelligent as they may be, the cells don’t have a frame of reference or context about the truth. They simply don’t have the means or know-how to understand that they’re just part of a bigger, infinitely more complex system.”

“Alright. But this still doesn’t explain the presence of God” convincing Skooter ain’t easy. (because the bitch’s gotten its head inflated from all that Yale MBA gas)

“But it doesn’t have to, no?” I was getting the hang of this “All the guy said to the gang was to give theists the same benefit of the doubt they gave themselves. The faith movement is all the same whether you choose to believe or disbelieve.  “

“Tough.” you can see that Skooter is visibly annoyed

“Let me put it this way.” Bunty putting on his best helpful face  “Atheism is not so much against God as it is against ignorance. I don’t think it ever set out to contest the presence or absence of a higher being. All it stood for was truth and all it stood against was the mind-numbing atrocities that were carried in the name of organized religion. That being said, if a man claims that worshiping a roadside milestone gives him peace of mind and if he keeps the practice well to himself, it shouldn’t be a problem to these atheist goats, no?”

“But it sure does look stupid” giggles Skooter (Don’t get me started on this giggle of his. Let me just say its one of those ‘choose to ignore’ things)

“Fuck yeah, that’s true” says Bunty “But that’s no reason to be smug about…by the way,  either of you have any dinner plans?”

“Dinner plans? Bunty this is a fuckin’ party man! There is shit loads of food downstairs. Go help yourselves”  I tell him

“Yeah, but I want Veg Pizza”

“At 2 FUCKING AM?”

” Yeah, check if the Dominoes is still open?”

25 Apr 1998:

“Maybe its green or wait… isn’t it blue?”  Its been an hour and the all important question still remained: ‘Green or Blue?” Of course its Blue. Of course its  Copper.  Mani did promise, didn’t he? I had, in an act of great forethought, bribed the lab assistant shortly before the exams.  The fella had told me he’d arrange it in such a way that I’d end up with Copper Nitrate (the only combination I had any clue of deducing).

So there we were, the entire batch, at the door steps of the gigantic lab. Each of us were called in, one at a time, to collect his/her tiny beaker of salt. As my turn arrived I confidently walked up to receive the beaker only that they didn’t give it to me. I could hear indistinct sounds coming from a room nearby which went something in the lines of  ‘No Stock…. Try another….It’s okay…. I’ll take care’ or such.

Fuck fuck fuck! Everything from a grad seat in a reputed university to my father’s scorning face swam before my eyes. Why Sachin, why? Why hast doth played with my life thus?

Doom. Dead. Death. Have to work in father’s factory. As a coolie. Will never fetch a good dowry.

Failure.

A million bricks were shat by the time I was handed my beaker.  Mani nods slightly in the background as if to assure that this is indeed Copper Nitrate.

I look at my salt suspiciously.  Cuprous salts are blue, aren’t they? Then why the fuck is this salt mild green? Is it Phosphorous or Ferrous? Surely, not Zinc. Dear Lord, not Zinc! Anything but Zinc! After what seems like an eternity, I try dissolving a portion of the salt in water. Soluble. Aha! Maybe there is still hope. But solubility alone wouldn’t wash with the examiners. The Chemistry lab is the last place, of all places on God’s green earth, where one expects a test of faith.

Ah! The hell with it. I get to work with the tests.

“49238, kindly come forward”

I carry all the test tubes for the final validation.

“So 49238, what’s the inference?”

Inference?  What did I infer from life so far?  That randomness is all-prevalent. That all morality is subjective. That if life is just a dream, we are just the variations of a same subconscious projection. That time is just an illusion. That the purpose that we so desperately seek to justify our existence is in itself, the purpose that drives the search. That irony is lost in its rich subtlety. That people just don’t care. That this here, the judgment of my salt-analyzing skill, is another water molecule in the gigantic ocean of cosmos. That nothing is lost and nothing is gained.

‘Child!  Are you there? What is the inference?”

I look up and clear my throat.

“There is no God”

 

 

Home

A writer’s life ain’t all rosy n snug. Especially true if the said writer’s hit a block and is staring at an 8am deadline, smoking the nth cigarette of the day, wishing madly for that brilliant spark which would get his story rolling. I’m not your ‘also occasionally write columns for the magazine’ guy nor am I your hot shot ‘I have the most erudite of opinions’ editor of some online journal. I write for a living. Short stories (and by that I mean the ones that get you all ‘tingly’ below), gossips, page 3 snippets, cooking specials in a couple o’ regional mags, sports columns, ghosting, hecka lotta ghosting, weekly gadget reviews, jokes, puzzles, fuckin’ crosswords, even movie reviews once in a while (To be fair, I do it better than the filth that is called reviews these days); almost every thing that can be put to words.

This is how I get by.

A couple of days back, this ‘high profile’ fiction writer, the author of 14 best sellers (all of which adapted into successful films), suffered something major. Died. It so happens, this guy writes short stories in one of those magazines that I work for. Apparently a big deal, huge fan following and shit. As is the tradition with such cases, the editors try to get the author’s last ‘creative’ work and hope he croaks within the next issue’s release. If the poor chap does die (as he has, in this case), they print the story and stick to its ass, a 800-1000 word tribute.  Apart from the healthy surge in circulation this also brings in a good opportunity to publish memoirs.

So here I am ghostin’ that famous cricket column written by that famous retired veteran cricketer (Remember that insightful article on saving Test Cricket? Well! Those insights were all mine), I get the call from the editor. I generally don’t get calls from the editors themselves unless shit hits the fan. This guy tells me that he’s willing to pay thrice per word for an ‘article’.  He says that I come in well recommended (like Bull!) and that he’s fairly sure of me crunching this assignment in 2 days. But the schmuck never let me in on the ‘real’ catch. Our high-profile ‘now comfortably resting in his sweet grave’ author hasn’t completed his last story. From what I gather, it isn’t even half done.

17:50pm:

Shuffling through those pages, I get the frickin’ rage. Some pansy-assed, poetic, nostalgic shit about home, affairs of the heart etc etc. Goddamn these fiction writers! Here’s a thing I can never understand: Why do so many people aspire to be WRITERS? It’s a shitass lifestyle choice. As if groping and stumbling, trying to find one appropriate word after another is not punishment enough, one has to sit and bother about opening, structure, placement, format, conciseness of delivery, consistency in character development, proof reading, 2nd round of proof reading, million other rounds of proof reading, editing, re-editing, cover design, market, PR, whoring, some more whoring, so on and on and on. All this under the assumption some publisher, in the first place, agrees to print your crap.

Get a fuckin’ office job and be at peace already!

19:00pm:

Desperate. Tried every trick in the book and failed. Can’t write a fuckin’ sentence in context. Wrote some 248 random words. Stared at it long enough in hope that the words’ll magically fall in line and complete the story. 30 mins of fuckall staring later; not a thing.  Already 2 calls from the editor. The routine drill of ‘When’, ‘What’ and ‘Can I at least see the draft now?’. Heh, the draft it seems!

20:45 pm:

Home. To a minuscule few like me, home isn’t a place to go to. It’s a point in time or a figment of memory where things are unreasonably pleasant and life erratically fair.

Corny is good.  I lie back on my cot and light another cigarette.  I can think about a hundred things that defined home, none too substantial.  The problem with people is that they expect nostalgia, flashbacks to be clear, concise and in HD.  All I can muster is colloidal memories of some random shit that happened 18 years back.

22:03 pm:

Called Chaubey’s place to order food.

“Account mein daloon, sir?” asks the fella.

“Haan.. aur suno bhaaiya, pyaaz thoda kum”

“Ji”

One of his few customers who spoke Hindi in this town and hence the “account mein daalna”.  Poor bastard keeps coming to me, twice a year, to beg a few hundreds for his journey to Allahabad. Some random village called Iradatganj. I don’t even know if there’s such a fucken place or if he’s making it up. I do pay him though.

I wonder what his thoughts’d be…on this subject.  Must be romanticized and skewed.  Dammit! He should be the one on this assignment, not me.

00:02 am:

The tribute was a piece of cake. I just had to tinker the standard template to make our man look like JesusNelsonKaramchandTeressa. No sweat.

I get reminded of Ghouse Peeran, the 2nd of the 4 Peeran brothers.  The guy used to be our cricket team’s captain. We made it to the district finals. Our kits were all stolen goods. The school fees from my dad’s pocket never reached school. Of course the teachers (nuns really) who ran the school were partial to our financial condition and that gave us the opportunity to dabble in vices (some well known, others best not revealed).

03:00am:

Something did emerge. Good. More of this, now.

Home (or to be more accurate, my parents’ home) was a 400 sq feet, 1 bedroom hell. Everything in it was worn-down, creaky, rotten, infested, half-dead, leaky, borrowed or quarreling in a loud voice. We children were taught to pray to the Gods and lie to the debt collectors; the latter being the only good thing my parents ever taught me. Back then the word ‘justice’ didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me (to a large extent, it still doesn’t). Every moment spent in escaping the present was a moment well spent.

06:45am:

Must rush. Haven’t got much time. This probably will go to print before the editor’s had a chance to read it. Fuck! I am so not getting my money for this.

Education, sooner or later, fails everyone. I, like most other learned fools of my generation, learnt it the harder way. Sure it keeps the stomach relatively full and all that… but that Math Ph.D that I pursued so passionately? What a bummer! What were those grants, accolades, certificates for?  In what context do I put them now? 24 years of being cooped in a classroom like pregnant hens trying to shit out golden eggs.

24 years. God!

09:00am:

Just got off the call with the editor. He’s massively pissed that I ran it under his radar. He says that the story’s ok, though if I had infused a little more grit and reality it’dve really “soared” .. Also says that he’s a reasonable man and so inspite of letting him down with the deadline, he will  still pay me half what he promised.

Grit and Reality, it seems. What a rotten asshole!

I clearly remember it as if it were yesterday (it might’ve been yesterday… ), his father was sitting out on the porch, smoking. He waves his hands signaling me to go in. The house was relatively quiet, looked like everyone’s done their share of weeping and there’s only so much you can weep. In the hall, lay Ghouse, all stitched up and clean; not bad for someone who’s been hacked to death in a riot.  His mother, with a tired smile, asks me if I’ll take coffee. I say No. Ghouse was 16 when he died. So were seven others who went for an afternoon swim in one of them huge irrigation wells…Young and dead.

Not many cared really. Fewer mouths to feed in that hellhole ain’t such a bad news.

10:45am:

Ouch!  I was rushing to catch the bus when this ball comes flying out of nowhere and smacks me on my head. Bastard kids! I pick the damned thing up and put it in my pocket. Soon a young kid comes by with his head bent and his eyes searching for the lost ball presumably.

“Anna” he asks “Inga Baal Vandcha? Paathengala?”

“Aama, Paarthen… Enpa Inge Vayasanavanga ellam Nikkraangelle … paathAada Maateenga? Padcha Pasanga thaane neenga ellam? Oru responsibility illa? “  Yes. This is me. Talking about responsibility. Feel free to judge.

He manages a “SorryngNa…PaaththAdrom”

I throw the ball to him. “Enna Unga Teamle Setthupeengla?”… It’s been a long time since I even saw a match on TV. I guess I put him in an awkward place. He kept scratching his head. Meanwhile his friend comes by and learns that some random “big guy” wants to join them in their game.

“SorryNa… Bet Match aditirukkom… Neenga konjam wait pannengunna unglkku thaniya Gaaju podrom”. Little Brat and his nerve… Bet match, it seems!  Told him and his tongue-tied friend to scram.

They flee from the scene avoiding further outrage.

The bus is late again today.

Inception

Inception

I wanted to add “In Hindsight” or “In Retrospect” to the title but refrained for three good reasons: a) The film’s barely a week old (as I write this) and it quite odd to associate such words with it b) I prefer my hindsights/retrospective perceptions, clear and precise and c) too corny a title.

Having seen the movie, I have several problems with a) the movie itself and b) with people calling it the best film (or the best Sci-Fi) they’ve ever seen. I won’t be bothered if this comes from the same bunch of people who sincerely believe Avatar to be a “Game changer”; I have learnt to live with that kind of hyperbole. What surprises me is that the people who’re hailing the movie to high heavens are the ones in the know; people whose opinion I respect. I can see where they are coming from. But having just a complex plot with an open ending which lends itself to multiple interpretations, does not a great film make. I am more than sure that they know this as well.

If I have to start, I’d start with the cast; my first problem with Inception. I have no idea what people praising the actors saw in those performances. Not that the actors hammed (though Cotillard did that too towards the end) or were outright bad but their characters were never given space that they could explore. Here’s an exercise: Replace the film’s cast with any other set of decent actors and you’d find that the film still works. Why? Because Nolan’s script isn’t dependent on who is playing whom as long as someone is filling the blank spaces. Now I am indecisive as to whether this can be construed as praise or blame but the truth is, this kind of film-making makes me a bit uncomfortable.

As far as I know, memorable characters are as integral to a great film as a good script. I can’t separate one from the other. The audience has to root for someone, relate to someone and sympathize with someone in the movie. It’s that simple. With Inception, every other character is perfectly forgettable as long as you are caught up with the grandeur of deducing the complications/convolutions of the plot.

My second problem is with the script. It’s claimed to be as original as mainstream Hollywood permits a script to be and then some. Many even had the gall to claim that its better than the Matrix.  Matrix cleverly laces its exposition with continuous little conflicts. Every new explanation brought in a conflict, a challenge to surmount.  Neo may be “The One” but he still can’t jump across buildings in his first attempt. One may defy physical laws but if one’s killed in the matrix, one stays dead in the real world. So in effect, the exposition isn’t just tutoring the audience, it also paves way for the script to move forward.  Compare that with Inception where we sit through explanation after explanation after explanation without the story propelling itself. When it does move, it rushes at breakneck speed towards the resolution. Having character spout dialogues to get us into the “same page” is mighty tedious to withstand. I’m surprised Nolan who apparently spent years plotting this maze, didn’t sit and think the script through. Yes, he does manage to “blast our senses off” for the last 80 minutes but how will that be any effective without the proper set-up?

The most undeniable evidence of this extended exposition is the needless chase sequence in Mombassa. What is it doing in this movie? Do we learn anything from it at all? No. How is it important to either Leo or Tom Hardy’s character development? Aren’t there such things called cell-phones? Surely a business call to “Eames” would have done the trick?

Thirdly, Nolan’s editing proves to be his Achilles’ heel. I don’t think he learnt much from those fatal fast-cuts in The Dark Knight. While this helps him to stuff in as much as information as possible, it distances the audience from the film. After all, isn’t editing the art of knowing when not to cut? I guess this is the reason why Nolan’s recent films largely get the flak of being emotionally shallow.  For example, that scene from Memento where the protagonist burns the “objects” belonging to his wife (and thereby attempts, metaphorically burns his hate and his need to avenge), it lingers just long enough to capture the hopelessness of his situation.  That scene alone explains more about his condition than most of the movie put together. That’s how Memento stayed with me, that’s how I remember it: “Probably burned truck loads of your stuff before. Can’t remember to forget you“

When people talk about an “emotional take away” from a film, they don’t expect someone to create a tearjerker. Just a scene, a moment of clarity when one truly connects with the movie. Where is it in Inception? It should’ve been there when “Cobb” tries to confront his wife’s image right at the end. But no, sir. We are too busy floating people in zero gravity, let’s not waste footage here.  It should’ve captured “Cobb’s” relief upon reuniting with his kids (which btw is his prime motive, mind you). But no, sir. We are too busy zooming into spinning, yet ever-so-slightly-faltering totems.

Sigh! BRanganwas right when he wrote “One can never will a movie to great movie into being. It just happens”. And for that to happen you show the movie to the audience, you don’t tell it. That is where Inception fails, there is no unspoken word here. There are no unexplained terms which the creator leaves out for the audience to fill in with their imagination.  Like a huge bundle of legal papers explaining the “terms and conditions”, it rambles on and on (much like this blog too)

…and then they just drop the van.

Slowly.