Two and a Half Men

Most religions are based on the concept of one divine power or God. And in most of them, three entities represent that one divine force. The Holy Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiv is central to hindu mythology or belief system, so is the idea of The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost in Christianity. My knowledge is pretty limited in the subject but i'd read somewhere that even Greek and Egyptian mythology too mention the concept of holy trinity.

The idea of trinity is a world in itself. It’s the politics of life on earth. it's how every story unfolds, like every story has a beginning, the middle and the end. Everybody's got to play their part in this play, and play it right. So, according to Hindu trinity - Brahma is associated with creation or beginning, Vishnu is associated with life and it's maintenance and finally Shiv is associated with end or destruction.

They say god created man in his own image. I absolutely agree with that. So if you thing about it, nothing much has changed over millions of years. Men are still the image of trinity. If you want and if you please, you can pretty much categories most men of the world into these three categories. And you can pretty much categories the women who go for these men as lakshmi, parvati and saraswati.

Ok yeah, you'd say saraswati was supposed to be Brahma's daughter so we cannot call them a couple and yadayadayada, but then again, legend has it that he was so enamored by her that he supposedly grew heads on all sides to be able see her wherever she went. The dude had to lose his fifth head when he tried looking up. I swear to god, i'm not making this up. Check your mythology on Brahma and you’ll know what I’m talking about. So yeah, they were forever together. One of the earliest example of older professor-young student admiration club thingy, i guess. The world has a huge respect for brahma character and rightly so. He's the Creator dude. The scientists, the scholars, the intellectuals, the artists, the nerds and all. Dudes who start a thing, maybe turn it into a movement and then rule the world. And they got the babes! And money, a lot of it, if you happen to be a jewish nerd.

Then of course there's the Vishnu. The Maintenance guy. The metrosexual. The MBA. The corporate lawyer. And an occasional advertising guy. The squeaky clean guy who every girl wants to take home to mama. The man with all the boxes ticked right. The smartass who runs the show smoothly. the man of the world. And all the lakshmis love him. He’s such a MAN, you know!

Shiv gets the worst deal. I mean, it's not funny when you're reduced to a destroyer, or worse still, to a dick! The good for nothing, lazy, uncompetitive, loner guy. The destroyer. Some guys don't like to work, they like to smoke up and while away their time (read meditate) but you guys wouldn't have it other ways till you try and make a vishnu of that guy. 'He's so passionate, he's such a good lover, such a good boyfriend material, sister...but he's SO irresponsible. I doubt if he'll ever become a good husband and a good father. For all you know he will chop off my son's head and try to replace it with an elephant's. I love him , but i am so scared he's wasting away his life.' you get a life, sister! boo you!

So yeah, you Brahmas and the vishnus, agree that you rule the world. but you know what, you need this shiv guy to validate your existence. . You could be the makers and the rules but you're nothing without a guy who's ever threatening to destroy what you got. You need the bad ass to make you look good. You can't do without him so let's get on with it.

Love, Sex aur Dhokha, darling!

“And you call this a film!?”

That’s how one of the 3 young women sitting next to us reacted when the end credits of Love, Sex Aur Dhokha started rolling. Not that they were quiet through the film, like most of the other viewers. Like this man in the row in front of us complained during a brutal scene of honour killing ‘kya film hai yeh?. He even asked his wife to remove the food-tray in front of him, citing ‘mann khatta ho gaya.’

What were you expecting, bade bhaiya? Probably a movie with some ‘scenes’. Before he bought his popcorn, he could have done a little homework on the film. But I guess that is too much to expect out of people, the whole thing about expectations out of a film, that is. People just float in, expecting to watch a film which is already there in their head. A film just the way they are used to seeing, a three act narrative of the beginning, the middle and the end. Nowadays, most have opened up to the idea of ‘different’ films as well. But LSD is nothing like you expected. You don’t have a clue of what’s coming. LSD fucks you. In the ass.

With so much voyeurism and reality TV happening around us, somebody had to make a film on it. And thank God, it wasn’t Madhur Bhandarkar.

LSD doesn’t follow a pattern of single story with the beginning, middle and the end. It uses three different stories of love, sex and betrayal to give you one composite film experience. A film which has no lose ends, all of them tied together tightly with one another. Long back when I was in college, I’d watched a film called ‘The Idiots’ in a film festival. I had no clue about the director Lars Von Trier or Dogme films, but I was pretty moved by the film. There was a certain naivety, and a certain devilish morbidity to it. It was heartbreaking to watch that film. As was many of Lars Von Trier’s films I later watched. I had the same reaction watching LSD. It slaps you across your face throughout. It is not exactly funny when you think it is. It is moving to see how mundane people are, and yet how devilish they can be. People do the most horrible things to people they love, or let’s just say to people who are their own.

The first story follows an Aditya Chopra school of film making obsessed young guy Rahul (Anshuman Jha) making his diploma film, who has the same idea about love as depicted in his mentor’s films. Now you can laugh saying this guy is unreal, but believe me this guy is real. They are all around us. There are so many like him, my brother in law is one such guy, with his motley crew of FB friends who sound just like him. So the hero falls for his film’s heroine, a rich girl Shruti (Shruti) with a fleet of Mercs and her Punjabi Baroque house. The second story is about Adarsh (Raj Kumar Yadav) and Rashmi (Neha Chauhan) in a 24×7 departmental store, always under CCTV surveillance. The third is about a sting operator journalist Prabhat (Amit Sial) who carries out an operation with frustrated model Naina (Devdutta Banerjee), who is out to avenge being ditched by famous Punjabi pop star Loki Local (Herry Tangri). All mundane people, like you and me. Feeding off each other like parasites. Clinging on to each other for love, giving in to sex, and tied with a common thread of betrayal.

Most film-makers have a brilliant debut film and there after start corrupting, giving into the pressures of banners and box office. Or simply because they don’t have any good story to tell. So the treatment takes over the content. Not the case with Dibakar Banerjee, he debuted with the brilliant Khosla ka ghosla, followed it with an even sharper Oye Lucky! And now has surpassed all his brilliance with his most caustic film. He is a director in command of his craft.

The screenplay by Urmi Juvekar and Dibakar Banerjee is gripping. The camera work by Nikos Andritsakis is absolutely brillaint. As Dibakar said in his interview that this is the first time in India that the digital cameras are used as digital cameras, and not as a poor cousin of the 35 mm camera. Editing by Namrata Rao is crisp. You must listen to the music album, if you are not already hooked on. I’m in love with Sneha Khanwalker's music, she is absolutely charming in this one as well. The lyrics written by Dibakar himself, are sharply written and topical. Lyrics like ‘main saat janam upwasa hoon, aur saat samandar pyasa hoon’ are absolute gem. The cast is brilliant, all the actors including the guy playing Shruti’s father and the other cocky store attendant have done their bit effortlessly.

It has more heart and soul than a lot of things I have seen, read or watched. The last time I was this moved watching a hindi film was Maqbool. After watching LSD, I wanted to go sit alone somewhere. Say nothing. Light a cigarette. Maybe shed a tear or two.

Priti and I end up watching films back to back in halls. Even today we had bought tickets for LSD and Lahore, of which we had read and heard good things only. But after watching LSD I felt like tearing away the tickets of Lahore. But that would be an insult to the very reason a film is made. To be watched. So I didn’t do it. I wish I had.

Viva America

People are celebrating halloween in india now...waiting for the day we'll have 4th of July fireworks. Viva Ameerika!

That's what my FB status message read around last Halloween. Some of my friends reacted quite sharply to it, labelling me as no-fun and an anti-American. Now i take serious offence to that. Not the no-fun part. I largely agree to being a no-fun boring kind of a guy. But i have serious reservartions against being labelled an anti-American. Because i love America. I’ve never been to America, but I have this genuine love for some things American, not all, but most. I love America as I know it, these images I get of America through Hollywood, media, American sitcoms, music and popular culture.

I love films, and you cannot love cinema and be oblivious to Hollywood. Hollywood of 70s (which I only saw later), 80s and 90s played a huge part in discovering my love for cinema. Well most of Hollywood fare is utter crap but then there are some gems every now and then. I love American sitcoms, they’ve got more easy humour than British ones. I love the Stand up comedians. I love the whole idea of New York. I want to spend at least 6 months of my life there. Soak up on all the urban ‘culture’. Watch Musicals (they are unarguably the best in the world), visit pubs and listen to underground bands, jazz acts, stand ups video artists. Be part of The Central Park and the Times Square of hurried, smug people. Of warm and clipped smiles. Be part of the cosmopolitan jamboree that New York is.

How can I love a place without ever being there? Well, I haven’t met Madhuri Dixit also, but boy, don’t even get me started on how much I love her. Yes, even now.

One can always divide oneself into being a hindu or a muslim, gujarati or a Bengali, south Indian or a northeasterner and then there’s this whole thing about being a world citizen. But I believe after being an Indian, more than anything else, we are American. The urban Indian life imitates American lifestyle. And it is true for most of the countries around the world. We are bombarded by everything American (some of them excellent, some good and some bad). You switch on the TV and the sitcoms you love are all American, the music you mostly like is American, so is the fast food you so love, the language you pass off as English is American. For a country colonised by brits for over 200 years, we are more American than we are British. We drop our easy on tongue American and put on our best Liverpudlian accent only to sound exotic. You go to “fookin hell” or "let’s rob sum ciggies fellas" only when you want to sound different.

We have the same kind of family values and melodramatic ideas about patriotism and social behaviour. Are homophobic, and have closeted ideas about sexuality as Americans do. Only they being a ‘first world country’ and us being ‘third world country’, there are differences in how we approach them, but the basic structure of society is the same. Being American makes us feel at home. Gives us a sense of belonging. For example, sometime back a couple of my friends were traveling through Cambodia and Vietnam. They were sick of eating ‘exotic’ asian food and then they saw a McDonalds and they immediately felt ‘at home’. That’s how American we are.