Please Give

I watched writer-director Nicole Holofcener's Please Give a couple of weeks back and since then I’ve been thinking of writing this post. This is sort of a ‘what-this-movie-is-about-and-why-does-it-make-me-write-this-post’ post. It is a story about a well heeled present day New York couple, Kate and Alex (Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt).

In this era of really complex storytelling, Please Give is one of those films where nothing much happens. It is too self-indulgent, full of dialogues and follows linear storytelling. But it is as charming as life is, warts and all. It’s got its selfish, guilty, passionate and morbid moments.

It is set in present day New York. But it could have been a story of any metropolis in any part of the world. It is so much our story. We, the children of the new world, who make more money than all the family members of our previous generation combined . We, who are fighting this daily fight of being part of this dog-eat-dog world and yet want to believe that somewhere we are good people. I don’t think anybody likes to believe himself or herself as a bad person. We all got reasons to justify any shit we do in life.

Kate and Alex run a business selling overpriced retro furniture to upper class hip people of the city. Furniture which they buy as scrap from the unsuspecting people selling off their dead parents ‘useless stuff’ and hoping to make some money in the bargain.

The business is doing fine, swindling off people of their priceless furniture. But then again, Kate is saddled with this desire to do something good. Maybe she’s saddled with her guilt of bilking people and wants to redeem herself. So she hands out generous dollars to the homeless in the street. But at the same time, she wishes the next door old lady dead, so that she can buy her apartment and combine it with hers. Kate’s character likes to believe that the old lady lived a sad life, no matter if she actually did. But she needs to believe so, maybe to feel good about her own life. She needs to do something to feel good about herself. She doles out 20 dollars to a homeless but denies her teenaged daughter a 200 dollar pair of denims. Because somewhere she likes to believe she is middle class, rooted to the downtrodden. Even Nita Ambani and Shahrukh Khan like to indulge themselves in that belief, no matter what obscene depths of money they are in. There has to be a redemption about being the way you are. Sounds familiar, isn’t it? It does to me.

I loved Please Give because it is such a comment on how our heart is. How we really are and how we like to believe we are. Clueless but clued in. Selfish and generous. All that makes us human. It is in the same school as a Woody Allen film. Or a Satyajit Ray, or a Ritoporno Ghosh, or a Dibakar Banerjee film.( I know, somewhere some bengali is rubbing his palms, grinning, that all the references are of bong directors…hehehe). All the directors and storytellers adept at dwelling into the finer nuances of human mind and heart.

Ok, coming back to the film, Nicole Holofcener writes strong women characters. And she manages to take out some brilliant performances out of her actors, specially the female characters. Even in this film all actors, especially the women, outshine their male counterparts. Whether it is Kate’s gawky 15 year old daughter Abby (Sarah Steele), or the controlled radiologist Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) and spa attendant Mary (Amanda Peet) – or their ailing and sharp-tongued grandmother (Ann Guilbert). But the one who really is most amazing is Catherine Keener as Kate. I must confess that I never much liked her, unlike Priti who forever did. In fact, i almost hated her. That’s maybe because I always saw her enacting these very strong women characters. But I saw her as the mother in Where The Wild Things Are, and now in Please Give, both parts where she is vulnerable and yet strong. And I have to confess that I am in love with her. Maybe that’s how all love stories begin. With a certain dislike and resistance towards a potent force and then a complete surrender.

Please Give is kind of movie which is critical of us but at the same time is sympathetic to us. All it’s doing is showing us that what we really are. Human, with all our flaws and shortcomings, far from the idealist picture of this righteous person we carry in our heads.

So if you can lay your hands on it, please watch Please Give.

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.

Poll Sell

There was a time when the walls in Calcutta were plastered with posters and graffiti endorsing political parties, once the poll frenzy began. Thanks to Court's order, that has been curtailed, well almost. But the political parties have found out more sophisticated ways to advertise themselves, which is what else but hiring advertising agencies. So now you have TVCs, press, outdoor, web advertising, the entire works done by leading agencies of the country for political parties And that, is something I am so afraid of. I work in advertising and I do my bit of selling aerated drinks when you actually should be having water. And I have designed cigarette packs and glamourised a life-threatening thing initially in my career. So yes, I am guilty of it all. But I believe, endorsing a political party and its people are a different ballgame altogether. And I am glad I am not in an agency which endorses them. Because I know, I will not do it, just like I will not work on cigarette brands. EVER.

How can we endorse criminals, mass murderers, people who have orchestrated hate crimes and genocide against a section of people or a particular community? How can we advertise them! Glorify them! And more so when we might not believe in a particular party’s ideology (if it has any). I am glad I am not part of the team which sits down and ideates on how to ‘sell’ a politician to masses. A politician, who might have criminal cases pending against him, or has led an armed mob to maul a particular community, or has twisted the system’s arm to facilitate genocide against a particular community.

But then I am an advertising guy and my job is to sell things. Only thing I can try doing is sell a product which is honest. So here am me selling you a politician who has what it takes. Ok, on a serious note, we know that not all politicians are corrupt. There are people out there who are doing it to actually make a difference. One such person is Mr. Arun Bhatia, an ex IAS Officer who is contesting from Pune. An honest man of steely resolve who in his own word, “paid the price of denial of promotion, frequent transfers (26 transfers in as many years of service in India), numerous charges and enquiries, bad assessment reports, ridicule by peers, seniors and subordinates, lack of support when giant offenders like Glaxo or senior officers and politicians were prosecuted by me, ugly threats from the Bombay land mafia.” You can read more about the man (And I insist, you must) on his site, http://www.arunbhatiaelect.com/

Delhi went to poll today. I could not vote as I am registered in Calcutta and I haven’t had it transferred to Delhi. The total turnout in Delhi was roughly 50%, while sometime back Bombay recorded a shameful 43%. I wonder what is it with people. People in Bombay had come out in full force a la Rang De Basanti to light candles after 26th November’s terrorist attack. Roughly 4 months later, the very people took the first train, bus or car out of Bombay on polling day, just to enjoy the long weekend. How sorry is that! As they say, a nation gets the government it deserves; I hope the 50% of you in Delhi who have voted kept that in mind while voting.

Mall-Mutra

Been planning to write this post down for so long, finally did. The title is courtesy Kaushik da, which so aptly describes in a word what i'll take an entire post to.

Somehow or the other, I just couldn’t manage to take a vacation back home to Calcutta in more than 2 years. I finally went there this pujas. Once there, I realized it was a bad idea to be in Calcutta during pujas as the entire city is out on the street. It’s one big carnival, a big orgy of people on the streets, all dolled up with particularly nowhere to go but from this end of the town to the other visiting pandals. Which needless to say is not exactly my idea of fun in Calcutta. So there I was, in the middle of it all, and hoping for it to pass. Which it did after the four days of pujas and I got my city back. Just the way I like it, or should I say the way I liked it. Call me a little hung-up or whatever but I have forever been a fan of the Calcutta of yore, of the old Victorian charm, which already was in it’s way out while we were growing up.

I had planned to write my next post on the old Bungalows or ‘Baadis’ of my locality in particular and of Calcutta in general. I have grown up in Elgin Road, which they now insist on calling Lala Lajpat Rai Sarani. Elgin Road, sourrounded by Bishop Lefroy Road, Lee Road is now one of the most so called ‘happening’ part of Calcutta what with ‘this’ mall and ‘that’ shopping complex sprouting all around. The only old baadi left on Elgin Road is house no. 38/2. The house of Subhash Chandra Bose, now known as Netaji Bhawan. And the only reason it’s standing intact and preserved is because it is now a museum and a tourist spot. It’s the house from where Netaji escaped to his freedom, with the dream of India’s armed struggle. A dream which was lost. Much like the world which Elgin Road was. Other than Netaji’s House, this locality was dotted with old bungalows, each one grand and beautiful in it’s architecture. Baadis like Rajabadi, Lal Kuthi, Phoolbadi with their Buicks(mostly left as a showpiece only) or Fiats parked were such a delight to the eyes. Reminiscent of a world gone by. A world I am so romantic about. I wanted to take pictures, but there remains nothing to click, but ugly vertical buildings in their place, all bought over by land-sharks and converted into ugly multiplexes and Shopping Complexes, or ‘flats’(The word itself is so uninspiring, isn’t it?!). The families who lived in these buildings have lost their sheen much like the buildings they owned, so they were forced to sell them and move into the oblivion of Calcutta by-lanes, making room for the neo rich of the city.

Calcutta is going through a weird time, a weird phase, one which is torn between the old and new. At one side, it is as dirty and as unorganized at it could be, and on the other side, the malls are mushrooming, the misery and grandeur lives side by side, rather uncomfortably. The city doen’t have the flamboyance of Delhi, or recklessness of Bombay, which ends up making it a nowhere land at the moment. That certain something, which is so Calcutta, which is hard to put down in words, in phrases, is getting lost. In its reckless quest to become a global city its losing its charm, its identity, its character. And what is a city without a character!

I had planned to photograph the old ‘Baadis’ of Elgin Road, along with this post, but then, none are left to be.

Paisa Vasool

Ever realised that cinema halls are a great place to catch up on all the latest ringtones and all the happening gossip? I mean, whats wrong with people?? Why don’t they have simple public place propriety??? Okay, three sentences ending with a question mark. But seriously why don’t they shut the fuck up???? Another one ending with a question mark and yeah, I finally used the f word in my blog. But these people get on my nerve so much I can’t help it. There I am, spending as much money as the person next to me, to have my unadulterated cinema experience. But the person sitting around me always has other plans for sure. Somewhere in the middle of the film, a girl’s phone rings around me. I know its a girl because she picks it up, (c’mon that’s what mobile phones are for no matter where you are, yaar!), and then goes on to tell Rahul on the other side of the phone that she is watching a ‘good’ film with Chetan. And when she is done with Rahul, she turns around to Chetna, her girlfriend sitting next to her and they have a good laugh. You naughty girl, that’s what we call ‘Ek teer se do sheekar’ in hindi. You, my bright friend not only made your ‘guy’ jealous of a crossdresser sitting next to you, but successfully disrupted our film too. But then c’mon, somebody’s having fun. And if I am at all uncivil enough to ask them to talk softly ( I’d be a moron to take away their democratic right and ask them to shut up), either they go, okay(giggle-giggle), yes (like we mean it) or a plain ‘what’s-your-problem-i-paid-for-my-ticket-too-dude’ look which you can’t miss even in the dark cinema hall.

And if they are not talking on the phone, people talk amongst themselves. Somewhere down the line, they decide the film is not engrossing enough but then hey, they’ve paid for the ticket too, so what do they do? Simple, they catch up on gossip. And if that’s not enough, some go ahead and do the ‘cool’ things like throwing popcorns at each other. Its so disheartening to see that people don’t know their film. They just come to catch a flick. Once I was watching Dev, a Govind Nihalani directed, Amitabh starrer. A family which obviously ventured into the hall expecting a full blown amitabh movie got a surprise when they found out that it wasn’t exactly what they came in for. But they didn’t lose heart. So while the prosecution scene was happening on screen, the 8 year old of the family decided to recite a poem. He faltered at some point but his loving mother right on time corrected him. And the father? He must have dozed off. One happy family there.

Another time we were watching Mystic River, a poignant film about a father looking for his daughter’s murderer. Again there again was a gang who would talk non stop and their phones kept ringing through out the film, which they kind of stopped after some of us asking them to shut. And then in the film, a phone rang and pat one of the kids says, ‘ab usko band karne ke liye bolo’ and all of them laughed their heart out. You are too funny, man!.

Another time, another film. Monster, a woman serial killer’s story. A group of college kids, who came into the hall expecting a horror film, were so disappointed that one of them says aloud, ‘she is not a monster, she is a bitch!. And good time was had by all.

But jokes apart. Why people do this to others? How can they be so insensitive? Why don’t people learn some etiquette? Is it too much to ask?

Peeping Tom, Pinky and Harry

Just when you think that it can’t get any better (or worse or perverse), the reality TV scene in India has taken a whole new turn with a new show on Star called The Moment of Truth. It’s an American ‘reality’ show where a person is asked the most intimate questions about his or her life. Prior to the show, the contestant is hooked up to a polygraph and asked more than 50 questions. Without knowing the results of the polygraph, he or she is asked 21 of those same questions again on the program, each becoming progressively more personal in nature. The questions vary, increasing in difficulty and degree of personal nature of the questions. Sample this, “Have you in all these years of your marriage ever cheated on your wife?” or this, “Have you gambled away any of your kids’ college fund?” Sometimes, a "surprise guest" - such as an ex-partner or a good friend - will come on the stage and ask a particularly difficult question. The more you answer the more you go on winning and the jackpot amount is $500,000, which no one, by the way, has won so far. You can imagine how popular the show is that we have it beamed in India now.

We humans are voyeuristic and we, the Indians, have forever been a pretty nosey and voyeuristic society. From the mundane “who’s daughter is going out with whom” to more serious nosey business, we just think it’s our right to know. The idea of ‘private space’ was never there. It still is not. No wonder the reality TV format with its camera shoved into people’s bedrooms works wonders in our country. Be it an adventurous Roadies or the very stupid, very perverse Splitsvilla, where 2 losers get to ‘dump’ girls on their way to choosing the ultimate girl for them (though it’s a different thing that the girls on the show are no better) to song and dance competitions to the Indian version of Stand Up, reality TV is there on all channels.

Another reason for the popularity of reality based programs is that anybody, be it a post office clerk from Jabalpur or an automobile workshop owner in Jalandhar can be on TV and have his 15 minutes of fame. I had read somewhere that each of us have our Oscar speech. Reality based programmes gives people an opportunity to read that out to the world. Reality TV churns out celebrities every week, every episode. People come on TV, they sing and dance, and if that doesn’t work, they cry and do everything in the world to garner support and sympathy. Perverse, you might say, but it’s working. Contestants find a launching pad, people get their voyeurism satiated and a sense of pride that their vote made the contestant win (no matter what the reason for voting, no matter how good or deserving the contestant actually is) and channels laugh all the way to their bank.

Pornography is the biggest form of voyeurism. In the eighties the porn industry fought and adapted and eventually boomed manifolds on the internet. So now, a Jenna Jameson ends up fighting for attention with an aunty from Lajpat Nagar thanks to the MMS craze. People want ‘live’ action, they want to know what’s happening in their stars lives, or even in the lives of others. The more we become insulated and isolated as a society, the more we want to voyuer into the other people’s lives. We might not be friends with our neighbour but we surely would love to anonymously be privy to what’s going on with them. What more it even gives us a chance to simulate their action, control their fate, however much of a make-belief control it actually might be. And Reality TV provides us with that opportunity. Call it perverse, intrusive, entertaining, immoral whatver you may, but one thing is for sure that Reality TV is here and it is here to stay.

Tu Manush ahe ki....

Just the other day, me and my wife returned from somewhere. The main door of the building where we live in a rented accommodation was bolted from inside, so we rang the bell. The old lady of the house came to open the door. We did a little chitchat standing right there and found out she was all alone at home and hence the extra cautiousness. Everything was ok till she said…heard another news?? A Nepali servant has poisoned the family he used to work for ( this, in the wake of another ‘sensational’ news of a teenager Arushi and a Nepali help, supposedly killed by her doctor father) So, our landlady went, “In these times you got to be careful.” And then she went on to proclaim…”Nepali log toh waise bhi hote hai khatarnaak” (Nepalese anyway, are dangerous people). I was so taken aback by the comment that I didn’t know whether to laugh it off or to get angry at it. I am a Gorkha, which the poor lady of-course didn’t know. I was shocked and hurt by what she said. It reminded me of a comment some people make about us, that all Gorkhas are mercenaries. It’s so shallow. This generalization of people is so disgusting, yet we all do it. I mean, we don’t even realize that we are doing it all the time. It’s fed to all of us at home to be wary of ‘others’. ‘Others’ are discussed over dinner tables at home. How ‘they’ are different, how they are so not ‘us’. It’s just everywhere. I was reading an interview of well-known playwright Vijay Tendulkar long back and he was talking about racial profiling. Supposedly when his teacher in school would get angry at someone he’d scream,”Tu manush ahe ki musallman??” (Are you a human, or a muslim??)

I remember, when I started in advertising back home in Calcutta, this senior copywriter found out I am a Gorkha, and he ‘joked’, “oh, so you are a Gorkha! How come you are on the other side of the door??” Or sample another gem from him, “O ki idea korbe, o je nepali.( how can he come up with ideas?? He is a nepali after all.) Well, he sure has a sense of humour. And I am glad I forever have had a sense of humour for people like him.

Calcuttan by nature

I came to Delhi some three and half years back from Calcutta, leaving my mother, my family, my friends and my city behind. I have spent my formative years there, walked the streets, enjoyed the city, been part of the ‘experience’ that Calcutta is. Little did I know that everything I took for granted there, would soon be gone. I moved on to this city to earn a living and get ‘ahead’ in my life.

As I sit to write this post, innumerable memories of Calcutta flood my heart. It was a pleasure being on the road in Cal. The people, the commotion, the unorderliness, the chaos and the women clad in ‘saree’. There is a method in madness in Cal, and I felt at home in it.

My best friend Rajesh and I watched films after films, paying as less as Rs. 5 at Nandan and Rs. 7 for the ‘boxstall’ at New Empire. I remember the time when Bikash and I on our evening stroll, have egg-chicken roll or mughlai paratha at Mass Snacks near Jadu Babu Bazar for 10-15 bucks, or rice and beef bhuna for an unbelievable Rs.13 at Neezam’s, or mixed Chhow Chhow at stalls in Totti Lane for Rs. 25, which two people could share. Or dirt cheap early morning Chines and Tibetan breakfast at Tiretta Bazaar. In those days we hardly had any money to indulge ourselves, but we had some great fun with whatever little we had. We would get drunk on the cheapest booze, dope up and make our own Thukpa to eat if had no money to buy food. I remember how we would get drunk at Olypub and then head to Someplace Else to listen to some live music. And if at all any one of us orderd a beer there, before you could say ‘Indian beer’, the bartender would uncork an Imported brand of beer and charge some Rs. 150 for it. Needless to say, some 6-7 of us would nurse that beer for an entire evening.

Now I can afford to go to the best cafes and the best bars and have the best food in the best restaurants, but it simply doesn’t feel the same. I call my mother and ask her how’s the weather there in Cal, and insist that it’s raining a lot in Delhi, just like Cal, as if it’s some compensation. I ask her what they ate for dinner, and how was it? I don’t know why but I need to know, maybe to imagine the food and taste in my head, the familiar taste and aroma I have grown up devouring. I call up my friends during Kali Puja and Saraswati Puja, and insist on talking to all of them, who’s got drunk?, who is dancing like crazy and who all actually fasted to give anjali?? When in Cal, I would sleep through Pujas, but now I miss it. I think it is the price we pay for taking things for granted.


Now that I am away, I realise what I have left behind. Being away from Calcutta, I now know one thing for sure; I might go to Timbuktu to work and have a career, but Calcutta is where my heart is. It’s home.