Movie Review- No One Killed Jessica (Hindi)

This might be one of the most well publicized movie on one of the most well publicized incident of our times. The Jessica Lal murder case gave the Indian youth to unite and enlighten themselves on the façade behind the fool’s paradise. As for the film, everyone supposed it to be a sure shot hit with face saving exercise for two of the ‘once upon a time’ heroines- Rani Mukherjee and Vidya Balan.

The director would have been compelled to do something different as the incident and proceedings are too well known. He would have gone for a better treatment and meaningful visuals.

The visuals are genius work in parts and there are compelling dialogues. But they are too obvious and fall short of brilliance. The film begins in a very dull note. The opening of a film seems to be a waterloo for most Indian film-makers. The usual Page 3 bashing has been done very well. After a grueling half, the film falls flat. The characters suddenly vanish into thin air and from then on ‘public’ is the hero!

Can’t help closing, without a special mention on Rani. She tried her best to play a sophisticated, career minded, soft hearted bitch. Some of the dialogues would have sounded cool. Hope she realizes this is her best time to quit. Vidya did a great performance. She is one of the most under rated in industry. Other than these two no one else have anything much to do.

The role of media in social enlightening has turned out to become a very critical issue. I choose that to be a different topic.

Book Review- God's callgirl

Catholic are finding themselves in a very unenviable position, punching bag, and that too after decades of world domination. Right from the writers, movie makers, humanitarians, liberals, gay rights everybody a re more than happy to have a go at it. The recipe for the season is the harrowing tales of nuns who called quits because they no longer could stand it.

It wouldnt be widely off the mark to say that the women doesn’t enjoy an enviable position in the church. They are expected to pay up the penance for the sin Ms. Eve did centuries ago. They were only supposed to cook, clean and give birth. Still we don’t see much dissent through out- goes on to prove that women accepted the position with devotion.

When it came to nuns, the establishment went a step ahead. Sisterhood was an exclusive community stoically protected from the outside influences. They had their own machinery to control, defy and survive. Nuns had tto practice more renunciation, obedience and poverty compared to their male counterparts. They had less chance to climb up the hierarchy or earn. So the nuns had no life outside the monastery and may have had to seek help for any emergency expenses. Church found their services extremely useful in the educational instituitions. The repressed emotions manifested in varying degrees as cruelty and perversions. But these aberations, visible in a few , got onto become celebrated by the media and gave many a good opportunity to come up with autobiographies.

Carla Van Ray’s book ‘God’s Call girl’ is one such work. Very juicy, graphic, questioning and in the end meanders to boredom. Carla was born in a poor dutch family who migrated to Australia. Van Ray had a very strong blind faith in the church and its teachings. She grew up in a pious atmosphere very close to the church. She is very brave enough to portray her dysfunctional family and her average performance in academics.

She grew up admiring and worshiping her Dad. But while in childhood she was subjected to sexual molestation from her dad. Later the shattered image of her dad influenced her view on men and the way she chose them.

Being an average student from a very ordinary background, convent came a natural choice for her. She had no problems in getting admitted and later the demons in her came out to the fore as years went by.

Vatican went ahead with reformations post WW-II. She argues that she had self realization after the liberalisation and so quit. It sounded a bit shaky for me. As mentioned earlier, she is brave enough to paint her psychological weaknesses. The sudden freedom, a liberalized world and childhood nightmares affects her post-convent life as she switches between men and later opts for prostitution. The profession is portrayed very honourably, spiced with oriental theories until some 100 pages into the end when the vase shatters.

Don’t go for the book hoping for an anti-catholic read. The shaky theories will confuse you nevertheless. But if you want a spicy read, the book sure offers you some.

Saraswathi molested

A couple of years ago I was on a train to Pune. The era saw the world slipping into an economic recession and the markets growing increasingly volatile. The ‘economists’ and the media pacified the public that all will be over in a couple of years. The MBA colleges saw a great opportunity amidst the doom. The PR teams went around convincing the confused young graduates to drop in whatever they had been doing now and jump into the bandwagon. By the time the dark clouds pass over in two years, there would be huge MNCs waiting to whisk them off. As if the marketing wasn’t enough, the course fee was hiked and so were the application fee, which was nearly doubled.

The confused and the idiots like me were not bothered by the four digit application fee and the seven digit tuition fee. We were blinded by the huge pay packet we would be earning before the end of two years.

So here was a mad group of young people applying for any exam they could find, going for the applications and waiting for the results. The extent to which these scrupulous elements would go was obvious by the fact that the last date for application was even before the announcement of results of written examination. Even the second graded colleges made a cool 50 crores before the students were even selected for admission.

One fine day I get a mail from Symbiosis institute for Management (SIM). They were planning to collaborate with Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) into churning out successful financial experts. The best part was the selected would be absorbed into SCB at the end of the course. Still the fees weren’t monstrous too. I fell into the trap and frantically prepared for the trip.

It was the peak of the season and the tickets weren’t easy to get. I managed to find for myself a train no one would dare travel. The reason being it crossed through five states in India before reaching Pune, that too at the peak of the summer. I was assembled with a curious group of travellers. A fat lady who threatened to give me wet dreams with her huge cleavage, a spiritualist who had some strange kind of theories and a benevolent old couple. I alighted into the station suffering from a bug, thanks to the ‘train food’.

After some difficulty I managed to find the campus. Exhausted, I waited in the lobby for my turn. There was a constant stream of hot girls and cool boys walking past. I dreamed of roaming around here soon, spotting a beard and looking hot.

It was a pleasant surprise to know during the interview about the ‘contents of the course’ . I was expected to do a theory class for the first four months followed by the practicals. The practical consisted of selling off SCB products to the people of Pune. I pictured myself roaming around the hot ans\d dusty Pune trying to sell products of an unknown bank to strangers, meanwhile living on a meager stipend. I walked out of the room fuming.

The last week I came across a guy in Kurtha asking my help to draw a DD worth lakhs. I was intrigued and asked him the reason.

‘IIM Rohthak’

I haven’t heard of the place and there was an IIM in it.

The guy told me there were about 10 IIMs now with a couple about to begin. Our government is hell bent on educational inclusion and is starting up IIMs even in the unheard of places. But there is no question of inclusion when it comes to fees. The fees are on par with the costliest ones. The government has gone a step ahead and doubled the available seats.

The flooding of IIMs have totally devalued the value of the MBA course and warns us the prospective downfall. These guys today vie for jobs with which they cannot even repay the loan!

The faculty position has become the ideal hunting ground for the ego bloated, useless professors. They get in through some backdoor and then take it as a part of job to teach the outdated stuff. My bro once eagerly downloaded a virtual lecture of a famed professor. Ten minutes into it he learnt with horror that the Professor was merely narrating some passages from a text book.

When we threw out MF Hussain alleging he insulted the Godesses through our painting we had been literally doing it.

Movie Review- Taxi Driver

It has been a dream for sometime to watch the top Scorcese movies. I had done half the job with ‘Raging Bull’, and ‘The Taxi Driver’ was left. Thank Heavens, I completed ‘the-every-movie-lovers’ dream last week.

Scorcese has been an entirely different man, making all those mind boggling. Fascinating movies. He had the powerhouses like De Niro to help him out. De Niro spots an entirely cool and handsome look. There is no guy like De Niro who can mould his body to the extremes for the sake of character. Right from ‘The Godfather’(the first I’ve seen) he continues to amaze me.

De Niro plays a hazy character with so much undercurrents and emotions flowing through him. The diary he writes gives the viewer a fairer picture of his confused and psychic mind. There are plots and sub-plots like Vietnam war, prostitution, emotional detachment, lust, betrayal. So it would be foolish to draw a clear theme. But basically the director dwells on urban degradation.

De Niro comes across as a insomniac taxi driver who drives through the night hoping to catch some sleep. He sees around him only equally desperate and perverted people and there is no one to seek advice. Then there is a presidential campaign happening in the background promising a lot of change. De finds a love in midst of this campaign. She dumps him because she could not adjust to the uncouth ways. The emotional shock coupled with some happenings gives him a belief that he can redeem this world through guns.

In the end we see a De Niro who is made hero by the media, even when his supposed attempt to rescue a hooker turns bloody.

Something that stands out through the movie is videography. I have not seen a better claustrophobic camera work. This proves that shelling loads of money need not give us the best visuals. We miss these kind of films. Sadly we even miss it from Scorcese.

IPL 4.0

With all the trappings of a good entertainer show, the fourth version of IPL has rolled to a halt. Right from the moment ‘the father of IPL’ was shown the door until when Dhoni lifted the cup we had great fun. I would refrain from using ‘total fun’ as many a times it meandered to boredom. The empty stands would bear a witness to this statement.

BCCI did a great job in getting rid of the master of extravaganza, Mr. Modi, and doing a good job by themselves. There would have been a few pessimists for sure. But something they would have forgotten is in a country where there are almost a billion people willing to spend their money and time on cricket, BCCI had to do nothing extra. They simply had to announce the date and venue and wait for the media to do the rest.

As expected the event received much more publicity when India won the world champion title. How unimaginable it would have been if India didn’t. No wild guesses on a foul play please! Indeed Modi would be sulking to see IPL4 doing better. He has lost the last chance for redemption.

The season hit a new range of controversy when the players did an extra bit for the game,. Many international stars ignored their injury and carried on playing, forgetting their patriotic commitments. A few went a step ahead by announcing the international retirement. The pseudo patriots made the situation even more ridiculous by calling for the blood. Although this issue has been a bit late to catch up in cricket, it has been a matter of discussion for sometime in football. I find it funny to read the international journalists defining patriotism. A sportsman lasts barely for a decade or a little more than it. He will have to spend rest of his life grappling with the injuries of his heroic days while we watch it comfortable in our sofa. So it’s same as enjoying a gladiator’s show in ancient Roman theatres when we ask for more ‘national’ commitment.

For the first time my place came into the map of IPL. Thanks to a lot of controversies and Mallu’s typical pessimism and envy, the game didn’t catch on throughout the state. I moved to Kochi mid-season. I stay very near the stadium. I was waiting for raucous street celebration and traffic blocks only to see a load of kids hurrying off to catch the bus after the match. The city itself didn’t witness a total celebration. We have got to thank the organizers who came up with a second string team for the matter. Only guy who was enthused was one Mr.Tharoor who tweeted on the great excitement to sit next to Shahrukh. His other tweets are on how the left government prevents him from doing anything. So a congress government at the state has robbed off half his potential tweets