Friday, March 27, 2009

Kaaj

This may be one of the few Sankar novels with a predictable ending. The novel encompasses the life of factory workers with a special attention to one of them, a Sadananda Majumder, a sincere staff completing 30 years as a factory hand in Ogilvy India and residing in a Coolie Town at Howrah. Indcidentally, Sudhakar Nandi, aBengali writer, in a turn of fate came to reside as a neighbour to Sadananda. A popular writer, famous for choosing foreign backdrops for his romantic novel-cum-travelouges, Sudhakar now got a chance to peek into the stark reality of the common man. Maybe this understanding already nested in his subconscious self as we find him not able to associate romance with these people of semi-slum area. Revelation dawned upon Sudhakar as he found out the hardships of Sadananda and his concern for his daughter and son-in-law. Sadananda as a rational family man, hated the idea of squandering money and was against any kind of credit and so it gave him great discomfort as he saw his son-in-law starting his life lavishly without paying any heed to savings. His uneasiness was justified as the factory in which the son-in-law worked went for a lock-out. It became clear that the opportunist union leaders that always took advantage of the administration had an indirect role to play for it. The new management, bent on discontinuing these undue benefits found that they were too late and the deadlock for the factory’s survival could only be broken by laying off several workers. In this condition, Sadananda was subjected to a strenuous mental stress and Sudhakar could rightly understand his neighbour’s feelings at this point of time. He could contrast this condition with the fictitious plots that he devised and he could understand that while in his story he always looked for a conclusive finish but in reality it may be markedly different. Infact, paradoxical at this juncture, when we consider Sankar to be the author of this piece, we find him critical of Sudhakar’s thoughts. In the final phase, though predictable of his actions, but the apparently unrealistic braveness in Sadananda’s character deserves mention and Sankar’s dexterity in arriving at a masterly finish deserves praise.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Dhoondte Reh Jaoge

A light hindi comedy directed by Umesh Shukla and Ronnie Screwwala is a pleasant watch though it doesn't leave a lasting impact. The story is weak and the presentation quite shallow but the absence of malice makes it entertaining. Paresh Rawal and Johny Lever shines as usual but Sonu Sood in his quadruple role is quite ordinary and Soha Ali Khan and Kunal Khemu were underutilized.
There are mainly two characters around whom the plot revolves. The first is a hindi film director, Raj Chopra, who though remains down in debts but maintains a polished appearance by his smart innovative techniques which he also employs to evade his creditors. The second is the idealistic chartered accountant Anand Pawar who starts his life by shunning any short-cut way of earning money but finds himself kicked out of his company as a result. There is also his ladylove, Neha, a drama artist cherishes her dream of making it to the silver screen. Now, both Raj & Anand seem to have one thing in common and that is they both are short of cash. So though, they can't see eye to eye in any matter yet destiny forces them to join hands in hatching a plot that apparently ensures a 100cr profit for the two. The plan was to produce a film of 5cr and taking the same amount from each of the 21 financers, each being oblivious to the other's contribution. As it is meant to be a flop and thus a 0 profit movie, the financers won't bother for their share. To carry out their plan they employ the worst script writer Ashraf Pervez on a payment of Rs1000 and the superconfident filmstar Aryan who in turn urges the two to employ his masseur as the director. This done, Raj insists Anand to consider Neha as the heroine as an actress of no experience is bound to worsen the movie.
So with this pack of mostly inexperienced cast and totally rot crew, the joint venture of Raj and Anand promises a grand flop. But alas, the audience seems to disagree and the film make a huge hit thus dealing a crushing blow the actual plan. Raj-Anand makes it to gaol and Neha seems to drift towards Aryan. But a happy ending awaits the viewers though most of them surely will 'dhoondte reh jaaoge' (keep searching) about the moto of the film.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Laal Kaalo

The first full length Bengali animation film, based on the late Girindra Sekhar Basu's (founder of Indian Psychoanalytical Society) tale of two ant kingdoms viz the red and the black probably paves the way for movies of this kind to come to the limelight for Bengali film industry. As a starter for the genre, this provides excellent animation supported by the able voice modulations of Kharaj Mukhopadhyay, Sabyasachi Chakrabarty, Biswajit Chakrabarty and others. This refreshing peace of entertainment is directed by R.D. Mallick of Elecom Fiesta who not only directs the movie in style but never includes a dull moment to the whole show. But being critical as I am, I felt the number of songs in the 80 min exceeding the necessary requirements. Barring this, this brightly coloured fun filled yet lightly moralizing picture should be given all the credit for its successful endeavor.
The story starts with peace reigning between the red and the black ant colonies near a pond. But a misunderstanding triggered by the mischief of some playful young red ants on the aged Lalburo (a close acquintance of the red King) and the haughty Kalobou (the favourite companion of the black Queen) results in the later taking offence on Lalburo which prompted the black Queen to ask the meek black King for Lalburo's head. Soon Lalburo goes missing that enrages the red King and he declares war on the blacks on the provocation of Ghoon, the evil termite who was keen on destroying the whole animal kingdom so that he can rule the world. But this war dissapoints the red Prince, Lohit who falls in love with the black Princess Krishna and requests his father to call off the war. But the red King turns a deaf ear to Lohit and dejected, he leaves the kingdom and takes Krishna with him. Now Ghoon plays the part of a double agent and divulges the secrets of the red and the black camps to each other. He manipulates each party and also pursuades different animals like the powerful chameleon, toad, sparrow, snake and the mongoose to take part in the war for one side or the other and the stage is set for a huge battle. Now it is left to the wise spider and his two associates, the purple crabs to deliver justice, bring peace between the warring parties thus preventing the destruction of a part of the animal kingdom and bring back Lohit and Krishna from their exile.
The viewers, both young and old will definitely enjoy this fascinating story that finishes off with a strong but nice moral and is a pleasant change to the mundane tollywood productions.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Chandacharit

*****Foreward
This is my 1st poem to be published! Actually it all started when one of our secretaries of the Satattar Palli Sarbojanin Durgotsab Committe hit upon the idea of ornamenting the 2008 Puja souvenir with contributions from the Palli members. As we were collecting materials for the same, I was thinking of writing a 1 page summary to reflect some feelings of the Puja days when all of a sudden it dawned upon me that if the same can be done in rhymes, the effect may be even cooler. So following moments of anxiety while searching for rhyming words, I finally made a draft of the same. A slight modification was sugested by my father and finally the whole thing was approved by my wife and parents. So, emboldened by their encouragement I went on to submit the following for the local Durga Puja souvenir for the year 2008-09.



Bish

http://calcuttatube.com/bish-2009/1642/

Monday, March 09, 2009

The Magic of Malgudi

I've never read R.K. Narayan's work but had been fascinated by the simple yet thought provoking episodes of the popular TV serial, "Malgudi Days", and one of these, viewed sometime in the previous year inspired me to have a look into his works. But at the 2008 Calcutta Book Fair, owing to my purchase exceeding my budget and the confusing titles of the Penguin India publications, which puzzled me to choose among the abridged and the unabridged versions, I didn't go for buying one. Later I researched @ wikipedia and penguin online and so this time at the Book Fair 2009, I purchased this copy containing

  1. Swami and Friends
  2. The Bachelor of Arts
  3. The Vendor of Sweets
An introduction, summarising the contents by S. Krishnan, initially discouraged me as I don't like stories being told before going through the whole of it, but as I flipped though the initial chapters of Swami and Friends, I was instantly delighted to find that even if the whole story been known from the first, the author's style was simply so elegant and unique that just devouring the words can bring pleasure to the mind.
In Swami and Friends, the author has described the activites of the young schoolgoer Swami who lived in Malgudi, the fictitious Tamil town of India and barring the South Indian dishes I just couldn't find any difference between the protagonist and the ordinady school goer from any part of the country. Not only for Indian readers, this narrative will surely usher nostalgic school day memories for other readers from every part of the world.
I don't know, maybe it's my age that is responsible, but I liked 'The Bachelor of Arts' more than 'Swami' and starting from the 1st sentence, I just couldn't resist loving Chandar, the lead character. In this story the transition of a young scholar to a mature individual is brilliantly depicted and I found it quite justified in considering this to be the sequel to the first novel and while finishing it I was kept longing for the third in the trilogy, 'The English Teacher' that was sadly not a part of this volume. In fact Penguin India may seriously consider this and may reconfigure their volumes so as to maintain the continuity in the novels by Narayan.
But I think the best piece in the volume is 'The Vendor of Sweets', where the skilled penmanship of the author nicely portrays the conflict between the father and his growing son and nowhere else had I found the generation gap so decently depicted. Prior to reading this piece I had an apprehension whether this would be so much delightful as the other two as this was the 10th novel by Narayan and thus, I quite naturally & also erroneously assumed the lateness to adversely affect the writing. But as I was going through the piece I was gladly proven wrong and I'll may even say that this enchanting piece turned me into a follower of Narayan novels though the final chapters were a bit boring. The refreshingly curt way of narration adds to the splendour and the author never used too much emotion to sympathasize or alienate any particular character thus leaving it to the readers to infer about their nature. It won't be out of the place in acknowledging the fact that it was the televised edition of 'Vendor of Sweets' in the 'Malgudy Days' series that, in the 1st place, drove me to buy Narayan's novels.
The author covers all the aspects of everyday living including most of the emotions that a person, in his lifetime, goes through with the ease of a master storyteller. So his partrayal of severe misunderstandings, slight betrayals, forced hypocracies, illogical conjectures, cruel break ups, opportunistic behaviours never bring malice to the reader's mind, instead the unbiased readers can be silently amused while identifying himself/herself with the fictional characters. The realistic touch blended with humour, as was the custom of Mr. Narayan, has made the stories so much live, that I request all Indians to read this so as to understand India from a more rational and more Indian perspective.

Delhi-6

A Ronnie Screwala & Rakeysh (watch the spelling!) Omprakash Mehra produced movie with the later directing a fine cast of Waheeda Rehman, Om Puri, Rishi Kapoor, Prem Chopra, Atul Kulkarni, Abheshek Bacchan, Divya Dutta, K.K. Raina, Supriya Pathak supported by Sonam Kapoor (she is the heroine but couldn't manage to direct the limelight towards her), Cyrus Sahukar, Vijay Raaz, Pavan Malhotra and with a special appearance of Amitabh Bacchan.
The story starts with an ailing mother, Annapurna of an NRI in New York expressing her wish to die in her own soil. As the son vehemently refuses to return to India (possibly due to some earlier confrontation with his late father), her grandson, a young man named Roshan suggests to take the responsibility. So it was Roshan who takes his Dadee to her home in old Delhi with the pincode 110006. As soon as he sets his feet on the lanes of Delhi-6 he is introduced to several of the locals including, Ali Baig (a silent lover of Annapurna and a close friend to her late husband), feuding brothers Madangopal & Jaigopal and their families, sweet merchant Mamdoo, Gobar the simple God-fearing soul and the Sethji and others.
With time Roshan, though quite intrigued by the compromised lifestyle of each and every member of the locality, gradually warms up to the place and secretly becomes attached to Bittu, the daughter of Madangopal who has a dream of making it to the Indian Idol and winning it. In this regard she seeks the help of Suresh, the cameraman and an opportunist.
Meanwhile the media creates a hype following the sudden appearance of a miscreant monkey and names it Kala Bandar. So it was not surprising that Gobar accidentally getting a glimpse of the same creates panic in the midst of an ongoing stage performance during RamLeela. At this juncture Roshan falls prey to the corrupt local police Inspector Ranvijay as he questions the laters unjustified actions following the commotion. He is sent to jail and it was Ali who bribes the inspector to release Roshan. Roshan also comes across the local trash-collector Jalebi, the untouchable and gets to understand the social evils that still prevails in these modern times. As he gradually gets the feel of the people in and around the community, a misunderstanding caused some locals to accuse Roshan as an immoral womanizer. But inspite of feeling a cursed flavour of the Indian life, Roshan is himself surprised to find more and more atraction towards these people.
Soon Roshan gets a taste of communal violence following the trivial case of the Kala Bandar which was taken up as a religious issue by the opportunistic Hindu assembly woman and Sethji and Haji Sulaiman, an older Muslim of the locality. Each incites his/her community and soon the whole area, that lived peacefully for so many years, gets divided based on religion. In the meantime, Bittu, tired of her father's attempts to get her married and also due to her selection for the Indian Idol finals tries to elope with Suresh to Mumbai, much to the chagrin of Roshan.
So it was now upto Roshan who takes the responsiblity to prevent Bittu from escaping in the one hand and also tries to save the whole community from destroying each other.
How he did this should be left for the audience but as for myself I must say the finishing was a kind of forced type and the delightful way by which it started could not be continued till the end. As to the acting, Waheeda Rehman, Om Puri again proved their class while Abhishek was moderately good but Atul Kulkarni was fascinating and Divya Dutta also played her part well. Rishi Kapoor, Prem Chopra, Supriya Pathak were underutilized while Sonam Kapoor and Cyrus was so-so. The lady who player Rajjo Bhabi must be praised for her small role in which she portrayed her character of a middle aged Indian housewife splendidly. The idea of the movie was good, the message that it wanted to convey was fine but as a whole I'll say the storyline was very weak and the same could have been done in a much more elegant fashion.

Monday, March 02, 2009

Indian Jones and the Last Crusade

The 3rd in the Indian Jones franchise, I found it the most entertaining and also it seemed to be the story where equal attention has been given to action and drama as the later was curiously lacking in the earlier pieces. Shaun Connory co-stars in this quest for the Holy Grail where he features as Indiana's father, Henry Jones and it was his dissapearance during the quest for the Grail that forces the Junior Jones to the trail. Jones travels to Venice, meets the femme-fatale Dr. Elsa Schneider and is immediately confronted by the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword, the protector of the secret to the Grail and their leader, Kasem, when cornered, reveals the wherabout of Henry in a place in Austria. As Jones finds his father, they are captured by the Nazis but the Jones' escapes by Zeppelin to Athens. In the course of this journey, they are again attacked by Nazis but they manage to flee and seek the help of Sallah at Hatay. The race between the Jones' and Nazis reach the climax at the entrance to the secret chamber of the Grail where the villain Donovan mortally shoots Henry to force Indy to find the entrance to the chamber amid the primitive booby traps set up by the knights of the First Crusade. It was earlier revealed that a sip of water from the Grail gives immortality to the drinker. Jones manages to understand the clues to the trap and entering the chamber meets the last Knight of the First Crusade and then correctly selects the Grail from a host of other cups. The evil Donovan drinks from the wrong cup and withers to death while Elsa, not paying heed to the Knight's warning of not taking the Grail outside the temple while attempting to do so, results in the collapse of the temple. Henry, now cured by the Grail's healing power pursuades his son, quite maturely, to leave the Grail alone and they escapes the temple in time avoiding the collapsing structures.
This was the best Indiana Jones movie I watched so far and thought it to be the most fun-filled, thanks to the witty acting of Shaun Connory.

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

Though it is the 1st film in the Indiana Jones series, but I watched it after Crystal Skull & Temple of Doom respectively. So the monotonous chases were obviously boring for me though I must appreciate Spielberg's signature style in which each tense situation follows another and the time passes with the audience being quite unaware of the same.
Here Indy is in search of the Ark of the Covenant, the chest believed to contain the remains of the Ten Commandments, built by the Israelites. For this he required the headpiece of the staff of Ra that will show the path to the Ark, that was believed to be hidden somewhere in Cairo. In this chase Jones teams up with his embittered past lover Marion who is again the daughter of his dead mentor Avner Ravenwood and also seeks the able help of the Egyptian digger Sallah, the best man in the job and tries to win the race against a Nazi agent Toht helped by the French archaeologist Belloq. Though Jones recover the chest but it changes hands several times and a pursue on sea adds to the thrill. At the climax when Indy & Marion are roped and Belloq performs the ceremonial opening of the Ark, Jones asks Marion to keep eys shut as he correctly knew that supernatural will cause those watching to die immediately. Thus the opening of the chest kills the villains and the Ark again closes by itself. Though Jones is informed by Army intel that the chest is being investigated upon but actually it is shown to be sealed in a crate and stored among countless similar crates in a secret government storehouse. Thus the secret is never revealed.
There was one error that I found defied justification and that was while excavating for the chest when Jones found the secret basement room, from above it was seen to be filled with Egyptian asps, of which Jones was too afraid of. To drive them off Jones climbed down in the middle and sprayed petrol on the snakes and then applied fire to them. I think the same could have been done from above without undue risks that Jones took by it and how this simple procedure is overlooked by an extremely cautious man is quite non-understandable to me.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

I'd lost counts of the number of times I'd tried to watch this movie and failed as each time an unforeseen event prevented me from watching it till the very end. So last Saturday, I'd kept my fingers crossed as I tried watching it till the very end & would you believe it, I succeeded at last!
This Spielberg directed, and evergreen Harrison Ford acted two hours of gripping adventure was the 2nd in the Indiana Jones series.
The adventure starts with Jones being chased by a group of Shanghai thugs whom he apparently dodges with the help of his ten-year old side kick Shanghai taxi driver, Short Round. In the precess he is forced to take hostage a nightclub singer Willie Scott. As he escapes by the air route, the pilots turned out to be the henchmen of Lao Che, the crime boss, whom Jones was trying to evade. As the tired passengers sleeps, the pilots leaks the fuel tank and themselves jumps with all the parachutes available and leaves Jones and Co. in the mercy of the Himalayan mountains. Fortunately Willie wakes up and rouses Jones and Round and they manage to jump on an inflated boat moments at the nick of the time. The boat sails along a mountain stream and they reach an Indian village on the foothills of the Himalayas.
Here Jones is requested by the local tribe leaders to recover the lost Shiva Lingam and the kidnapped children from the evil forces residing in the Pankot Palace. As Jones sets on the mission much to the chagrin of Willie, the local guides, in fear of the black forces, escape as they near the Palace. They are warmly received by Chattar Lal, the Prime Minister to the Maharaja of Pankot and get invitation to Royal Dinner. In the dinner the dishes, including live snakes, insects and monkey brains horrifies the guests as well as any of the Indian viewers as it really shows how little Spielberg had researched into the Indian eating habits and surely he relied on some rubbish rumours that are so rampant in the Western world.
In the course of the dinner, Jones questions Chattar Lal about the accusations of the villagers that not only infuruates the latter but the young Maharaja too gets the wind of it and tells Jones that these accusations are quite false. But after the dinner was over, Jones is attacked in his room and evading the same he finds a trapdoor in Willie's room that takes him to the underground where he witnesses black magic being performed by Mola Ram, depited as a follower of Kali who used the kidnapped villagers as offering to the evil. Here also Spielberg has made a grave mistake in depicting Kali as evil and this shows how any blasphemy to the Indian culture doesn't raise even a single eyebrow in the Western world.
As the story rolls on, Jones finds three Shiva Lingams, which contained some stones that glowed when they are brought near one another. But while trying to retrive them, Jones gets caught and Mola forcibly converts him to a follower of evil forces. Now it was left to Short to take matter in his little hands and his quick thinking saves the day and Jones as well who, following a series of encounters manages to recover the Shiva Lingams and the kidnapped villagers and bring them back to the village.
The film was beautifully shot and the car chase in the Shanghai street seems to the best part of it. If India could have been a bit truthfully portraied, I could have appreciated the movie even more.