Days of their lives

I’ve been carrying on about Ekta’s Mahabharata, but the other day I came across a show titled Draupadi, on Sahara One. Saw just 15-20 minutes of the episode (think it was a one-hour slot) and though it looked quite dreadful in many ways – with the usual garish Amar Chitra Katha-style costumes, over-decorated sets and actors with Colgate smiles – I thought it was interesting for the way it turns the great epic into a languidly paced, long-drawn-out daytime soap.

For one thing, this show doesn’t seem too concerned with the “big picture” of the Mahabharata. Instead, it spends a lot of time showing the everyday details of the characters’ lives, especially the women’s – in that sense, it reminded me of Pratibha Ray’s intimate novel Yajnaseni. The episode I saw was set sometime after the Pandavas and Draupadi return to Hastinapur after her swayamvara, and it was full of homely conversations – between Draupadi and Duhshala (the Kauravas’ sister), and between Bhanumati (Duryodhana’s wife) and Rituvati (Karna’s wife). The talking point was that the visiting Karna has just sent Draupadi a bouquet of yellow roses, which she is known to have a preference for. What could this mean?

I’ve often wondered what might result if someone were to fully exploit the Mahabharata’s obvious possibilities as a never-ending daytime serial – to stretch it out for years, emphasizing the characters’ interactions and daily routines rather than simply moving from one dramatic setpiece to another. Such treatment would necessarily have the effect of humanising all the people; for example, it would be difficult to think of Duryodhana as a cardboard-cutout villain after you’ve seen him having a relaxed, post-dinner conversation with his wife and children, discussing nothing more important than their Math homework. In fact, the Draupadi episode I saw had a scene where Bhanumati asks Duryodhana what he thinks of Jayadratha. “You know he’s my friend,” he replies. I meant, what do you think of him as a suitor for Duhshala, she asks, whereupon Duryodhana turns to her, his face softening. “I never thought of him in that light before,” he says thoughtfully, and she replies that it’s usually the women of the house who think of these little details while the men are preoccupied with grander matters. I haven’t seen anything like this scene in any other mythological serial.

Note: meanwhile, Kahaani Hamaaray Mahabhaarat Ki (which I had thought was going to be an endless soap) is currently in such a mad rush to get to the story of Krishna’s birth and childhood in time for this month's Janmashtmi that it has fast-tracked its way through three generations of Kuru princes, not even bothering to depict the births of Yudhisthira and Bheema. An excited Vishnu, reclining on his snake mount, turns to the viewer and announces that He is ready to take earthly form, and Kamsa maama’s personal background theme includes the mooing of a cow in obvious pain. Exciting times lie ahead.

Scattered delights in Merchant-Ivory’s Bombay Talkie

Can’t recall the last time I’ve been so enchanted by the opening-credits sequence of a film as I was while watching Merchant-Ivory’s 1970 feature Bombay Talkie a couple of days ago. As a whole, the film – starring real-life couple Shashi Kapoor and Jennifer Kendal as a Hindi-movie star and an English romance novelist respectively – is an interesting but uneven work. Though it attempts to be a “meta-film” – a commentary on the Bombay film industry and more specifically on the melodrama in mainstream Hindi movies of the period – the tone is slightly forced. But there's nothing to fault in the first 10-15 minutes, beginning with the credits sequence.

The opening shot is a view of (I think) a façade of the old Taj Mahal hotel in Bombay, seen from a skyscraper. The camera then slowly moves in on the activity in the streets below until we see a group of men carrying a large billboard, painted on which is the film’s title. The rest of the sequence features similar billboards and posters with delicately drawn group portraits of every member of the cast and crew (including spot boys and junior artistes) along with their names; I especially liked the portrait of the sound recordist, Narendra Singh, who is depicted in side-profile with earphones. It's a moving tribute (a showier modern equivalent is Farha Khan’s nod to her crew in the closing credits of Om Shanti Om, which is another meta-film of sorts) and it’s enhanced by the lovely, plaintive music score by Shanker-Jaikishan. I can’t get the tune out of my head – it’s mostly sitar-based with violin interludes and it sounds very unlike anything else the composers did.

I should add that the billboards and posters don’t appear in isolation, they are placed against the background of various Bombay vistas – Marine Drive, the Nariman Point skyline, streets with double-decker buses – and Subrata Mitra’s camerawork is superb. Offhand, the only other credits sequence I can think of that combines music and visuals to such beautiful effect is the opening scene of Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, with Jean Constantin’s gorgeous score complementing the poetry of the visuals (the fleeting, worm’s eye views of the Eiffel Tower and Paris’s avenues).

The first scene proper in Bombay Talkie has novelist Lucia Lane (Kendal, luminous as always) being shown around a studio, introduced first to a sardonic scriptwriter, Hari (Zia Mohyeddin), and then to the dashing star Vikram (Kapoor, in a role that can be seen as mirroring his own real-life stardom). In the background, dancers – including Helen in a small appearance – rehearse their moves on the keys of a giant red typewriter, while one of the film’s crewmembers earnestly explains to Lucia that this is a “fate machine”; that by pressing down on the keys as they dance, they are “typing out their own life story”. Lucia responds to this gobbledygook with a polite smile and a “It’s very symbolic!”, which greatly pleases her guide.

There follows a wonderfully fluid and economical shot where, in the space of just a couple of seconds, Vikram goes from being a suave man about town, posing for photographs and speaking to Lucia in clipped English, to performing a clownish jig on the typewriter keys. It’s startling to see the change in Shashi Kapoor’s personality here as he magically transforms into a Bollywood hero, calling out for word cues (for the song he has to lip-synch to), leaping about maniacally as if he’s just received a hormone dose from his elder brother, and mouthing lyrics that go “Hum zindagi ki typewriter pe tip tip tip karte hain”. But then, Kapoor is exactly the right actor to play this role, given how adeptly he was balancing two contrasting careers throughout the 1970s: acting in dozens of hurriedly made commercial films on the one hand (sometimes playing nothing more substantial than Amitabh Bachchan’s sidekick) while simultaneously producing and starring in more austere projects with the likes of Shyam Benegal, and also remaining active in Prithvi Theatres.

If it sounds like I’m going overboard about Bombay Talkie, let me say that the rest of the film doesn’t quite live up to this stirring introduction: it soon turns into a long-winded love triangle that suffers from its own restrained tone. The idea of Ismail Merchant, James Ivory and writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala collaborating on a movie that mimics the average Bollywood potboiler is undoubtedly interesting, but Bombay Talkie never really goes all out, not even in the climactic scene where one of the protagonists is dramatically stabbed by the other. There is little attempt to milk the humorous possibilities of the subplot where Lucia tries to discover her spiritual side by joining an ashram (headed by a verbose, table tennis-playing guru). Consequently, a movie that was intended as an affectionate parody-tribute to the excesses of Hindi cinema itself plays out like a typically mannered Merchant-Ivory film.

I still liked it for a variety of reasons, including my nostalgic interest in the films and personalities of the time. For starters, this is a very rare opportunity to see Kapoor and Kendal in a romantic pairing onscreen, and they make a fine couple. (In some of their scenes together, one wonders about parallels to their real-life story: “How am I expected to know about your bloody customs?” Lucia snaps at one point, and it got me thinking about the possible trials of being a bahu in the conservative Kapoor khandaan.) And of course there’s the always fascinating dichotomy of Shashi Kapoor’s career. Watching the no-fuss kissing scenes in Bombay Talkie (in addition to Kendal, Kapoor gets to nuzzle with Aparna Sen, who plays his wife here, and with Nadira, playing a has-been actress) is a reminder that in the same year that he made this film, Kapoor probably appeared in at least 5-6 mainstream Hindi movies where the camera would cut to a shot of birds or flowers each time his face got anywhere close to the heroine’s.

I also enjoyed an early scene that provides a glimpse of the very young Usha Uthup (then known as Usha Iyer) singing at a party. But the vignette I liked best was the one with the aging Nadira surrounded by three admirers (one of whom is played by the young Jalal Agha), who perform a hilarious, jugalbandi-style rendition of “Baa Baa Black Sheep”. Incidentally I also learnt from this scene that the song “Mere Angne Mein”, made famous by Amitabh in Laawaris, wasn’t original to that film. It was probably a folk song that gave rise to different variants over the years, for a version of it appears here, more than a decade before Laawaris was made.

Bombay Talkie is a frequently wordy and self-conscious film, and as such difficult to recommend to a viewer who isn’t interested in Kapoor and Kendal, or in 1960s/70s Bollywood (or "Mere Angne Mein" for that matter), but little moments like the ones I mentioned here made it more than worthwhile for me. It’s part of a new set of Merchant-Ivory DVDs that are are retailing at reasonable prices (Rs 150 per disc) at local Musiclands and Planet M’s. Other titles from the 1960s and 1970s include Shakespeare Wallah, The Householder, The Europeans and Roseland.

More low comedy from the Dwapara

Am still following Kahaani Ekta ki Mahaabhaarat Ki (earlier posts here, here and here) on and off. Its amusement value has, alas, diminished. Ronit Roy’s performance as Bheeshma briefly threatened to salvage the show, but all those camera swooshes and whooshes will eventually make even the most personable actor look like an idiot. And the less said about the rest of the cast, the better. People keep telling me that Makarand Deshpande (Vyasa) is a really good actor but so far in this role he has spoken his lines in a manner which suggests that the scriptwriter just ran over his favourite pet. Very sullen and detached, definitely not the level of interest that you’d expect from a poet who has composed the greatest story ever and is getting it transcribed by a celestial being.

As discussed earlier, there are way too many of the Vyasa-Ganesha sutradhaar scenes anyway, and most of them are exceedingly dull. One unfortunate development is that the actor playing Ganesha has suddenly decided to start acting with his eyes (which are basically the only identifiable features on his face) and the editing being what it is on a Balaji production, this often produces inappropriate results: for instance, when Vyasa announces “Maine Ambika aur Ambalika ke saath niyog kiya” (“I stepped in as a surrogate to impregnate Ambika and Ambalika”), we get a reaction shot of Ganesha with his eyes widening and his eyebrows twitching excitedly. Not very restrained and Godlike. You almost expect him to say “Give me the details, quick!”

There isn't much to tell anyway. After an overwrought, faux-suspenseful build-up (where the presumably clueless viewer learns that the princesses are to do niyog not with the dashing Bheeshma but with a scruffy sage), Vyasa impregnates Ambika and Ambalika by shooting light beams into their navels from afar, whereupon they squeal and clutch their tummies, and princely babies emerge a few months later. All very pristine. But there are other, more deliberate digressions into low comedy.

Vichitraveerya (after big brother Bheeshma abducts three princesses for him to marry): Bhaiya, teen rajkumari! In mein se ek ke saath aap shaadi kar lo. (Three princesses! Why don’t you marry one of them?)

Bheeshma – determinedly celibate as ever – responds by taking out a suggestively shaped dagger with a downward-curving blade and waving it at the young king. I’m not sure what the message is here, but Vichitraveerya seems to get it.

Vichitraveerya: hee hee! Arre bhaiya, aap jaante hain ki main to sirf mazaak kar raha tha! (Brother, I was only joking! I’ll bed them all. Really.)

So Bheeshma smiles and puts away the dagger. Shortly after this, Vichitraveerya dies of indigestion, which implies that purposeless banter has no place in the Dwapara Yuga.

In another scene, the wife of the bald Shakuni says something like “Yeh toh maine socha hi nahin tha!” (“I didn’t think of that”), upon which her husband points at his head and says “Sochne ke liye iss ka hona zaroori hai.” (“To be able to think, you need to have this.”) And the lady replies, “Accha, iss ka matlab hai ki mujhe bhi mundan karaana hoga?” (“So that means I’ll have to shave my head as well?”)

I’m willing to be open-minded about these scenes (after all, why shouldn’t these kings and princes have been just as buffoonish as the people on modern-day Ekta soaps?), but what I dislike is that all this is accompanied by those goddawful squeaky sound effects from the Kader Khan-Shakti Kapoor comedy sequences in 1980s films. It sounds like a family of mice running up and down a guitar chord, and it’s terribly grating. What I would really like to see is tomfoolery played out to stirring and heroic music. A few tips from Monty Python movies would be just the thing.

Suggesting a "nice" book

[From my Metro Now column]

Being a lit-journalist has its advantages. Among these is the daily receipt of a number of attractive-looking books from a multitude of publishers. Given the 24-hour limit on one’s day, it isn’t humanly possible to read more than 3 per cent of these, but the others can be arranged like building blocks in innovative shapes. Alternately, you can remove the cover jackets of a few books, cut them up here and there and stitch the pieces back together in colourful collage patterns. These activities are good for one’s creative skills and improve hand-eye coordination.

But there are also disadvantages to working on the books beat, such as the constant danger of being assailed by recommendation requests. The most terrifying of these typically comes from an acquaintance who has been gaping at my bookshelves, and it goes:

“Suggest me a nice book.”

“Okay, but what sort of book exactly?” I ask, as my throat dries up and droplets of sweat gather on my forehead.

“Oh, any nice book.”

Such phrasing suggests that the asker is very open-minded about what he is willing to read, but this is usually far from the truth. The first problem is how to interpret the bland and unspecific word “nice” (a word that some people use as if it’s the only adjective in existence, but more on that in a future column). If I take it to mean a book that I personally enjoyed, it’s certain to cause trouble: experience tells me that a casual reader asking for a “nice” book is unlikely to warm to a title such as The Intimate Personal Histories of Cannibalistic Serial Killers. But why shouldn’t such a book – assuming that it’s well-written, informative and insightful – be categorised as “nice” too? Why should the word be used only for the Paulo Coelhos of the world? This seems like genre-discrimination of the worst sort. Cannibalistic serial killers deserve the same respect as cannibalistic motivational writers.

Another problem with the above request is that it invariably comes from people who are not habitual readers (in other words, they have read The Alchemist and two issues of Reader’s Digest in the past three years). Without being judgemental about these sub-humans, I have to say that giving them recommendations can be a hard task. Especially since they genuinely think of themselves as seasoned readers and have very firm ideas about what a worthwhile book should be.

But I still try.

“There’s a great new novel out. It’s all about this serial killer who...”

“Novel? Oh no no, sorry, I don’t read fiction.” (said derisively)

“No? How come?”

“Because it’s not real. I only read inspirational or motivational books.”

On hearing this familiar proclamation, I grit my teeth and explain, as politely as I can, that high-quality fiction can be more inspirational and motivational – more “real”, in fact – than a facile self-help book that sits in the non-fiction section of a bookstore and claims to solve all the reader’s problems. Whereupon the recommendation-seeker looks at me as if I were something that had just crawled out of her kitchen drain. So I mutter something vague under my breath, excuse myself and get back to playing building blocks, which in the final analysis is the only thing a book-reviewer is good for.

Notes on Cinefan closing, and Mumbai Cutting

Despite the best efforts of the organisers, the Cinefan closing ceremony tends to be a messy, chaotic affair year after year. Even with the introduction of the ticketing system and registration for all guests in the last two editions of the festival, it proves difficult to keep the vast crowds under control on the day of this very high-profile event (held on a Saturday evening to boot).

I usually stay away from the closing ceremony but I went this year, mainly because of the closing film, Mumbai Cutting, a collection of 10 shorts made by some of the most interesting directors in the country - Anurag Kashyap, Jahnu Barua, Ruchi Narain and Kundan Shah among them. The experience of getting into the hall was as trying as expected: I won’t go into the murky details, but suffice it to say that despite being at the venue at 5.15 pm (the closing ceremony was scheduled for 6.30, the closing film for 7.30) and despite being assured well in advance that my media pass would carry the same weight as the regular pass for the event (which I hadn’t been able to get, since it had been in short – and erratic – supply), I eventually found myself in the distant right balcony, watching the screen at an angle of 135 degrees. Further, my view of the closing ceremony was blocked by the bobbing heads of creatures who stumbled into the hall more than an hour after I had diligently stood in the queue outside the doors. (In Delhi, we call this the survival of the latest.) In one of the shorts in Mumbai Cutting, a narrator points out that during rush hour a local train compartment in Bombay might carry 400 people instead of the 90 it was designed for. This is pretty much what was happening in parts of the Siri Fort auditorium that evening. Long before the film began, the right balcony was stuffed to the point of exploding.

All this probably affected my experience of the film; also, when I go to see a movie in a hall, I expect it to begin within an hour of my having taken my seat. Like many other films in the short-story format, Mumbai Cutting was a hit-and-miss affair, with the hits marginally outweighing the misses. The opening short, Sudhir Mishra’s “The Ball”, was predictable story-wise but interesting in its execution, with the camera mimicking the perspective of a confused observer on a chaotic street in the aftermath of a young man’s murder. But my two favourite films in the collection by far were the ones directed by Anurag Kashyap and Kundan Shah, both of which have for protagonists “little heroes” - people who are the heroes of their own stories.

Kashyap’s excellently written and performed “Pramod Bhai 23” is about an actor-cum-teacher forming a bond with a disturbed little boy in a remand home: the boy, nicknamed Chand, weaves fantasies (about being friends with the gangster Chhota Rajan; about meeting big filmstars) to boost his self-esteem but withdraws into himself when another boy cruelly bursts the bubble. Shah’s “Hero” begins with a charming shot that had me thinking of this director’s past work about individuals struggling against the system: a cheerful young man with a spring in his step saunters towards a railway station before being almost washed away by a sea of humanity that has just surged out of a train. This dialogue-less film – shot in the slapstick style of Chaplin and Keaton, and wonderfully performed by Deepak Dobriyal – is about the rigours of the daily commute in Mumbai and a tribute to “the real heroes” of the city, those who brave the local train every day.

Another highlight was Ruchi Narain’s “Jo Palti Nahin Woh Rickshaw Kya”, in which a young girl’s experience of being an immigrant in Mumbai is defined by her travels in auto-rickshaws. Great absurdist opening scene where a rickshaw turns on its side and its driver promptly recites a verse about how this is the true test of being an autorickshaw on Mumbai’s roads. Then there’s Rituparno Ghosh’s slow-paced “Urge”, which is more interesting in its concept than in its execution. Early on, I realised the story wasn’t set in Mumbai (it’s probably Calcutta and this is a Bengali family, though cinematic licence allows them to speak in Hindi) and briefly wondered if Ghosh had independently made a short film that someone had bunged into this collection at the last minute. But one gradually realises that this is a film about the effect of Bombay’s popular culture (primarily the movies but also the melodramatic TV serials) on the rest of the country – in this case, on a missing young man (who has taken a flight to Mumbai, perhaps to become a film star), on his worried family (who occasionally speak and behave like characters on a telly-soap) and even on the local policeman who “solves” the case in the style of a self-conscious movie detective, before returning to his copy of Stardust magazine.

A decent collection, all told. Incidentally the official website of Mumbai Cutting says there are 11 short films. The one directed by Rahul Dholakia wasn’t included in the version we saw - perhaps it'll be in the commercially released one. (Update: turns out the Dholakia film was shown after all but we missed it - see the Comments.)

P.S. Here are my earlier Cinefan posts from this year: Greed and Bioscope, Ramchand Pakistani, Schlondorff’s Ulzhan, Zibahkhana. I haven’t written about a couple of the films I saw, including one that I enjoyed a lot, The Satanic Angels, about a group of Moroccan musicians who are arrested for doing anti-Islamic things like owning “bizarre books and CDs” and wearing black T-shirts. Talky film but very well-paced, with some potent things to say about individuals rights vs crippling traditions. Might write something about it later.

Zibahkhana: Screaming Pakistani teens meet burqa psycho

For years, filmmakers and scriptwriters from India and Pakistan have been making sensitive features/documentaries in an attempt to open the eyes and minds of viewers in both countries – to help us appreciate each other better, discover cultural similarities and shared histories. (Just a couple of days ago, I watched the earnest Ramchand Pakistani, about Pakistani Hindus stranded in India after crossing the border by mistake.) Now it turns out that these well-intentioned moviemakers have been barking up the wrong tree. You want to create empathy? Get off that soapbox and pick up a chainsaw. The most effective way to make young Indians feel for their brethren across the border is by throwing together a low-budget spoof of teen-slasher/gore films with a distinctly Pakistani context. Who would have guessed?


Omar Ali Khan’s Zibahkhana (Hell’s Ground) raises the question "Which is the worse fate: to be chased across a deserted jungle by a homicidal maniac armed with a spiky iron ball or to have a sweet old lady hold your hand, look closely at you and ask Tumhari shaadi kya ho gayi hai, beta?" Watching this movie in one of the smaller auditoria at Cinefan was among my most surreal experiences in eight years of attending the festival. The camaraderie in the audience was comparable to that in the screening of Ram Gopal Verma ki Aag (mentioned here). As the Pakistani teenagers in the film followed the example of their predecessors in western horror movies – saying and doing numerous brainless things, wandering off alone in the woods when common sense dictated otherwise – and paid for it by having their limbs chopped off and ground to mush, people in the hall hooted and whistled. Roars of laughter accompanied the scene where a boy and a girl suddenly turn all bashful and awkward just because they’ve been left alone with each other (never mind that their friends are being massacred a few trees away).

As you can tell, Hell’s Ground follows the 1970s and 1980s B-horror movie template of errant teens doing something they shouldn’t be doing (in this case: lying to their parents, stealing out together on a long drive to a rock concert and shooting up along the way). Naturally, this invites bloody retribution.

The protagonists are five youngsters – three guys, two girls – in a large van, and we realise that they’ve gotten off the main road (in more senses than one) when they encounter a creepy, Dracula-like tea-stall owner who shouts after them, “Jahannum mein jaa rahe ho, mere bachchon!” (“You’re on the path to hell, my children!”) After a run-in with bloodthirsty zombies and other unsavoury types, the film climaxes with a – what else – burqa-clad psychopath who comes running after them whirling a most unwieldy ball-and-chain. This psycho belongs to a family who make Norman and Norma Bates look like the Kumars at Number 42 in comparison, but I have a word of advice for him: for optimum results in slicing up terrified teens, use a less cumbersome weapon. (Even Leatherface never put himself to as much grief with his bulky chainsaw as this monster does.)

Hell’s Ground isn’t a good film. In fact, I wouldn’t even call it a “so bad it’s good” film – more like “so bad that it’s good for a few chuckles here and there, with some fun reference-spotting for the gore-movie buff”. But it’s very entertaining if you’re in the right mood and if you see it with the right audience, and it’s also the epitome of a critic-resistant movie – try to point out that the acting, the script or the camerawork are amateurish or shoddy and someone can retort that it's meant to be that way. As such I feel silly trying to write something coherent about it here.

But as a big fan of the horror and gore genres, I want to make a point. Walking out of the hall, I heard more than one person offhandedly saying, “You know, all gore films are like this – it has all the usual elements of the genre.” I have to disagree. The great gore films are many cuts (no pun intended) above Hell’s Ground in their execution (um, again, no pun intended) and most of them have their own internal consistency; simply having “all the elements” isn’t enough. This one tries to be a spoof but never really fixes on a tone. It plays some scenes obviously for laughs, nudging and winking at the audience (one of the funniest scenes involves the realisation that the real name of the hippest, most “chilled out” member of the crowd – a girl called Roxy – is Rukhsana), but it plays others dead straight. The one thing it gets right is its running time – less than 80 minutes, which is optimum for this film.

It’s sometimes forgotten that horror and gore are different genres, though they often overlap. Hell’s Ground – though it picks up ideas from horror movies such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Night of the Living Dead, Friday the 13th and even Psycho – belongs in the latter category. There isn’t a single scary (as in “jump out of your seat” scary) scene: all the potentially frightening moments are broadcast well in advance (sometimes with comic panels that show us this or that monster about to make an appearance). The accent here is on showing as much bloody flesh as possible, along with providing viewers a few comic breathers.

The highlight of the screening (apart from the sheer thrill many of us felt at experiencing a film like this at a festival that takes its role as a purveyor of Meaningful Cinema very seriously) was the interaction with the director. Omar Ali Khan was very likable, very self-deprecating (honestly, it’s hard to see how he could be otherwise with a roomful of people who had just seen his film!). He joked about his early influences as a movie-watcher (“my parents let me see just about anything I wanted to – maybe they shouldn’t have!”), about Hell’s Ground being “a tribute to directors whom you wouldn’t even have heard of, they are so bad”, about the gore effects being bought wholesale from the hardware store down the road , and even about the contaminated-water problems in Pakistan (referred to in the film), “which doesn’t mean that all of us will turn into bloodthirsty zombies – but some of us might!”

The film has understandably caused ripples at many film festivals, where people tend to have pre-set ideas of what a Pakistani film should be like. Will there be a sequel, someone asked Khan. If I can get someone deranged enough to finance one, he replied. Hell’s Ground cost only about 100,000 US dollars, and it shows. (I suspect the bulk of that money went in purchasing the big van - the teens are more concerned about not getting zombie blood on it than about their own safety.)

[Here's an earlier post on one of my favourite gory films, Dario Argento's stylish Suspiria. And another on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre here. Also see the official website of Zibahkhana - I think it has a couple of clips.]

More from Cinefan: Stroheim’s Greed, Madhusudhanan’s Bioscope

I first watched Erich von Stroheim’s superb silent film Greed on the Turner movie channel around a decade ago. The version they showed then was the four-hour-long restoration that combined the approx. two hours of surviving live-action footage with another two hours of movie stills from the footage that had been lost forever. This odd combination of moving pictures punctuated by stationary images was one of my strangest, most poignant film-watching experiences, and it helped me appreciate what an ambitious project the original work must have been. (Stroheim shot it as a nine-hour epic, a scrupulously detailed version of Frank Norris’s novel McTeague, but it was reduced to one-fourth that length by the studio. Legend has it that much of the original footage was destroyed to extract the silver nitrate in the film; this possibly invented story makes for a stirring footnote, given that the film is about materialism corrupting all that is good in human nature!)

The version of Greed screened at Cinefan on Wednesday was the severely truncated two-hour print, which was disappointing, but it also made it possible for the film to be seen as a continuously running feature meant for a regular audience – rather than as a historical artifact, a butchered epic that had been reconstructed as best as circumstances would allow, so that movie scholars could gape at it. The introduction to the film, made by a member of the Osian-Cinefan team before the screening, was respectful and well-informed (it also included an apology about a print of the longer version not being available). However, it built up the film too much. Phrases like “a true landmark in cinema history” and “regularly on the top 10 lists of best films” were thrown about, most of which are justified but not very discreet – especially given that the version of the film we can see today is emphatically not the one that Stroheim created 85 years ago.

But even in this pared-down form, Greed still has a lot of power. I remain particularly impressed by the cinematography and the naturalistic (for the time) performances: the burly Gibson Gowland in the lead role of McTeague, the slow-witted dentist who is increasingly dismayed by his wife’s obsession with hoarding her money; Jean Hersholt as his one-time friend Marcus who starts off seeming benevolent and large-hearted (even sacrificing his love for his buddy in a gloriously melodramatic scene) but who soon reveals a more devious side; and Zasu Pitts as the woman in between, whose lust for her newfound wealth leads to hand-wringing of Lady Macbeth-ian dimensions. The location shooting in San Francisco (and in the austere landscape of Death Valley, for the climatic scene) was revolutionary for the time, as was the use of high-angle shots and close-ups. (While watching the pioneering silent films, one has to keep reminding oneself that things movie-watchers today take for granted were once new and unheard-of. That’s also true for this film’s vaguely sexist stance about a woman’s responsibilities to her husband, which will be disturbing to modern-day sensibilities. Made me think of D W Griffith glorifying the Ku Klux Klan in The Birth of a Nation.)

One thing about the Cinefan screening: the version they played had no music score at all (actually, I’m not sure if Greed has ever been properly scored; it could be that Stroheim’s efforts to achieve maximum realism precluded the use of a soundtrack). This seemed to discomfit many members of the audience - I’ve never heard so much coughing and general fidgeting in a movie theatre in my life (someone suggested that maybe it was just easier to hear the coughing and fidgeting in the absence of any sound coming from the film, but I don’t think that was the case). This despite the fact that most of the audience seemed to appreciate the film overall (though there were understandable chuckles during scenes like the one where Marcus nobly gives up his girl, telling McTeague, “You can have her, old sport. Anything for a friend!”).

[More on Greed here]

Coincidentally, on the same day, I watched a film that dealt with the early days of cinema and was set in roughly the same period that Greed was made in. K M Madhusudanan’s Bioscope opens with a Paul Cezanne quote, “look at that mountain, once it was fire” – possibly a reference to how unrecognizable modern-day cinema is from its distant origins in bioscope tent-shows and the persistence-of-vision trickery in photo-books. The story, set in 1920s Kerala, has a poor man named Diwakaran watching his first bioscope show, becoming entranced by the instrument, buying it from its owner (a Frenchman about to leave India) and taking it back to his village.

As expected, people are both fascinated by and afraid of the new device. Devilry is suspected; there is gossip about a ghost in the machine; superstitious people speculate that the pictures cast by the bioscope are the imprisoned shadows of dead people, and that this is against the order of nature; a witch-doctor pronounces that Diwakaran’s wife will never recover from her illness unless the foreign object is destroyed. At a screening of a Dadasaheb Phalke film, as people marvel at the scene – so familiar from folktales and oral renditions – where little Krishna defeats the snake Kaliya, a villager mumbles, “All this is an illusion. But the story is true.”

Bioscope is a languorously paced film with a lot of recurring imagery, notably a beautifully shot slow-motion scene – taken from a woman’s feverish nightmares – that shows the bloated corpse of a white man being washed up on a shore and carried away by three fishermen. There’s something appropriate about the slow pace, because what we’re seeing here is an elegiac tribute to a world that is on the verge of being altered forever – we can see that modernity is about to impinge on this setting, that permanent change is on the horizon, and the film seems simultaneously excited and saddened by the prospect, looking ahead to the future but also reluctant to leave the present behind.

I also enjoyed the scenes of villagers watching in awe as images from films like The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and the Lumiere Brothers’ historic Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station and Workers Leaving the Factory play out in their little tent. And of course the Dadasaheb Phalke film on Krishna, which for some reason has the little God dressed in pyjamas in one shot. Unless that was another optical illusion.

Occupational hazards

On my flight to Chennai a few days ago, I got a seat next to the emergency exit. This made for additional leg-room, which is always welcome, but it also meant that I saw at close quarters a flight attendant struggling with one of the most awkward jobs in the world: having to tell passengers how and when to use these exits. It’s a job that requires much friendly grinning and nodding, like you’re doing nothing more than casually discussing the weather, while what you’re really doing is bringing alive a nightmare scenario. The kid giving the brief looked like a newbie and tried hard to hit a balance between explaining things as clearly and professionally as possible while also keeping a smile plastered on his face to reassure his listeners that nothing would in fact go wrong. At least one of the three passengers he was briefing (seated across the aisle from me) looked like a nervous flier. The following conversation ensued:

Flight attendant: Sir, in order to open the exit you have to pull this handle down. But first look out of the window and assess the conditions outside. If you see smoke or fire outside, please do NOT open the exit.

Passenger 1 (possible attempt at light humour): But is it not dangerous to open the exit while the plane is flying?

FA: Not to worry sir, it won’t open in mid-air, no matter how hard you try.

Passenger 2 (looking nervous): You mean it opens only after we’ve already crashed?!

FA: Um, no sir, we don’t think like that. Actually it can be used if there’s an emergency landing or...

P 2: What’s the point? I’ll already be dead! (people in the seats nearby look around, suddenly interested)

FA: God forbid, sir (makes indeterminate religious gesture involving hand and head). Everything will be alright (smiles a Stepford Wife smile). And anyway, if one of you is... uh...erm...immobilised, then not to worry, we will also be apprising the other passengers about how to open the exit. Thank you for your time and patience.

The beaming doomsayer then turned to me and repeated the instructions, while I observed that two of the passengers he had just spoken to were leaving their seats with great alacrity and heading for the toilets.

Anyway, my confidence in my ability to open the exit (in the very specific circumstance of an emergency landing-not-a-crash that didn’t involve smoke/fire and would thoughtfully leave me alive and in full possession of my limbs) was dented when I found that I couldn’t open the plastic cap of the mineral-water bottle that was supplied to us. “I think it’s some kind of a test for the emergency-exit passengers,” I whispered to my impatient wife, “If you can’t loosen the cap, they send you to the back of the plane. Or upgrade you to first-class. Or do whatever needs to be done to the really incompetent passengers.”

Shortly afterwards, I heard one of the passengers across the aisle calling out to the flight attendant: “If we have to open the emergency exit and be the first ones out, does that mean we won’t have the time to take our hand-bags?”

Also overheard at boarding time:

Flight representative: Have a nice flight, sir.
Distracted passenger: What?
Flight representative: I said, have a nice flight, sir.
Passenger: Oh. Okay!

Cinefan notes: Ramchand Pakistani

There’s a telling scene early in Mehreen Jabbar’s Ramchand Pakistani. Shankar, a Pakistani Hindu who has accidentally strayed across the border with his little son Ramchand, is being manhandled by paranoid (or perhaps just bored) Indian soldiers who suspect him of being an enemy agent. “Don’t you know how bad things are between the two countries?” they holler, referring to the attack on the Indian Parliament a few days earlier. Shankar shakes his head dumbly: though he works part-time as a schoolteacher, he hasn’t even heard about this incident, which will cast a long shadow over his family’s lives in the years ahead.

The soldiers don’t believe him, but at that moment the viewer, who knows of Shankar’s innocence, can see him as a little person swept along on the vast tide of history, overtaken by events that he can only dimly understand (and isn’t much interested in). This has been a running theme in many of the better films I’ve seen at Cinefan over the years, especially the ones from small countries that don’t have well-established film industries and only produce a few features a year. Inevitably, many of these are instructive films that place intimate human stories against a daunting political background.

Ramchand Pakistani begins in a little settlement in the sun-baked Thar desert, where Shankar (Rashid Farooqui), his wife Champa (Nandita Das) and their son lead impoverished but reasonably contented lives. It’s a homely picture but you can see that little Ramchand is the restless sort, and the shift in the film’s tone comes when he impetuously saunters across the border, getting himself and his father arrested in the process. After they are taken to an Indian jail near the border, the film moves between their plight and the growing desolation of Champa, who has no idea what might have happened to them.

The role of Champa is underwritten – I never got a real sense of her loss, or of the trajectory that the life of a poor, deprived woman in this situation could take – and the casting of Nandita Das didn’t work for me; it would have been more effective if the protagonists had all been played by unknown actors. (I didn’t have the same problem with Rashid Farooqui, though I gather he’s fairly well-known in Pakistan.) Also, Das is just too luminous, even in the scene where Champa considers throwing herself into the local well. The scenes in the prison are much more absorbing, as father and son slowly adapt to their new life and form tentative relationships with their fellow inmates; Ramchand also develops an ambiguous bond with a harsh-tongued Maharashtrian lady officer, a serial watcher of 1980s Sridevi films like Mr India and Chandni, who initially recoils from him because he’s a Dalit but gradually softens.

This is a simply told tale and, despite the potential darkness of the subject matter, a consistently upbeat one. It might possibly be too upbeat for some tastes, given the realities of the lives of prisoners on either side of the border. Personally I had a couple of minor reservations. The dialogue is too refined and mannered in places (there are Punjabi gaalis thrown in at healthy intervals, but they seemed contrived rather than spontaneous) and there’s too much patient exposition, with characters spelling out their predicaments. No one seems really angry enough at what has happened to them. At other times, the film alludes to great horrors but then sugar-coats the blow; for instance, there’s a disturbing scene where Ramchand is taken to an interrogation room and sees his father hanging upside down, bruise marks on his body, but the viewer is never allowed to feel the full force of what Shankar has gone through – we see him limping briefly in the next scene, but things are back to normal soon enough.

Likewise, when it comes to the most traumatic episode for the incarcerated father and son – a false dawn, hope of freedom that turns out to be a bureaucratic error – the camera merely looks away: one moment we see Shankar and Ramchand walking happily towards their assumed freedom, but then there is an abrupt fast-forward and we find that they are still in the same prison four years later, looking not much the worse for wear. Consequently, as the film finds a way to loop towards a happy ending, the last few scenes meander; there isn’t as much at stake as one would think.

At its best, though, Ramchand Pakistani is a dignified film about the struggle to maintain dignity in the face of very difficult circumstances. It also makes some interesting points about the notion of home and what it means to different people. The idea of a Hindu family living happily in Pakistan, but feeling dislocated and uncomfortable when moved across the border to India, is presented very naturally here, but we are also reminded that Shankar, Champa and Ramchand don’t think of themselves primarily in terms of belonging to this or that country; their comfort zone lies in the company of their loved ones, and that's been taken away from them by larger forces.

[Was away in Chennai for a couple of days and have had to miss a lot of Cinefan, including some promising panel discussions; will try and catch up this week. Here's the official website of Ramchand Pakistani.]

'Go find yourself a human stenographer'

Philosophical question for the day: if you’re a poet who has spent a lot of time and energy persuading an elephant-headed God to transcribe your opus, is it wise to include a scene where the hero of the epic (whom you repeatedly extol in the verse) proves his manhood and general superiority by punching a harmless elephant on the forehead?

Because that's what the grown-up Devavrata/Bheeshma does in his first scene in Kahaani Hamaaray Mahabharata Ki. With absolutely no provocation (the pachyderm is merely ambling out of the palace gate), our hero performs a Matrix-style leap, bops the poor animal between its eyes, bringing it to its knees, and then climbs atop it with a triumphant yell. I picture Ekta Kapoor calling a hurried conference with her writers to plan this scene. “We’re about to introduce one of the most important characters in the epic,” she tells them, “We need a maximum-impact shot. What’s the largest animal on the set?”

But imagine how Ganesha would feel about this. He hasn’t had enough of a raw deal already? First Vyasa invites him to earth, which means he has to undergo a long and tedious wait as the Google Earth software downloads on his computer. After this, his sadistic mouse-steed elects to take the most difficult route possible through a dense forest, so that Ganpati has to ward off leaves and branches with his many plastic hands. Then Vyasa, instead of giving him a nice air-conditioned office and an endless supply of coffee, makes him sit in a dank, mossy cave that has dandruffy substances floating down from the roof. The working hours are no good and the stylus feather tickles his trunk. And to top it all, he has to write out this demeaning scene where Devavrata proves his king-worthiness by violently attacking an elephant that could well be a descendent of the beast who lent Ganesha his head after the bathroom wars all those yugas ago.

I feel for Ganesha, I really do, because this reminds me of the time I helped a friend improve the language in an internal brochure for a public-relations company. I don’t clearly remember what purpose the document was to serve (if any), but midway through the second paragraph I found that it included a diatribe about how terrible and avaricious journalists were, how their mistreatment of PR people would be avenged in the after-life, and other such ravings. Of course, I feel much the same way today, but this was during my early months in journalism when I was still prone to fits of idealism about the profession. Just reading some of the thoughts expressed in the brochure felt like someone was thumping my forehead with a hammer – and as if that wasn't bad enough I was required to refine the thing further.

My advice to Ganesha would be to keep quiet for now, but to get his revenge by deviating from Vyasa’s script in the future. I suspect Ekta’s writers will help him in this endeavour.

[Earlier posts on the show here and here. And some pictures to show that elephants are mostly sweet and harmless animals and should be preserved]

Food review - Spice Market

Despite many opportunities I’ve mostly shied away from doing food reviews, the chief reason being that I like to be able to simply enjoy a good meal without having to analyse or make mental notes about it (it’s bad enough that reading books and watching films is no longer as relaxed as it used to be). But recently I did a restaurant review for Time Out magazine. The place was the Spice Market, situated behind the Select mall in Saket; to reach it by car, you have to negotiate a rough and bumpy road alongside the Marriott hotel. It’s a homely restaurant that makes a spirited if obvious effort to live up to its name. Sacks of spices line its interiors, there are red chillies and coriander seeds (or convincing facsimiles of red chillies and coriander seeds) in the decorative glass bowls on the tables, and even the artwork and photos on the walls have a spice theme. There is a nouveau-Indian cuisine feel about the extensive menu, which includes pungent dishes from around the country.

For starters, we ordered the intriguingly named ganne ka kebab and the dal pakodi. The former turned out to be flavourful chicken seekhs wrapped around sugarcane sticks; it’s a nice idea, and if you’re willing to forgo mundane rules of etiquette and chew hard and noisily on a cane stick at a restaurant table, the warm juice nicely offsets the dryness of the meat. The dal pakodi – compact little balls filled with moong daal – passed muster, though they were a little too tough for my taste. We washed this down with rose lassi – rich, creamy, very sweet – and a pungent and invigorating strawberry cinnamon mojito, which my wife insisted was the highlight of the meal.

Next, we ordered a Parsi chicken biryani main course: I'm not sure there was anything notably Parsi about the preparation, but the dish was greatly enhanced by the accompanying Burani raita, which had a garlic base and a distinct, pleasing tinge of mustard. The big disappointment though was the boatman’s prawn curry, which is listed on the “chef’s special” page on the menu – it was an unremarkable onion-and-tomato curry, not too different from standard dhaba fare and soaked much too generously in oil. Definitely didn’t justify the price (Rs 625). Since we already had a rice dish at hand, we opted to have the curry with tandoori phulka, soft and warm like a homemade chapati.

The food had been more than filling, especially for a summer afternoon, but in journalistic interests we ploughed on. Our dessert choices were a very interesting blackcurrant phirni and a sampler that conveniently provided miniature versions of five items on the dessert menu, including a gulab jamun dunked in chocolate sauce and a mango shrikand. It was a decent way to wrap up the meal, even though we weren’t especially hungry at this point.

Spice Market tries hard and the service is polite, efficient and well-informed, but based on our experience I wouldn’t say the food is good value for money. However, one has to make allowances for the limitations of the food-review format (we visited anonymously and could only order a meal for two - couldn't sample a variety of dishes) and it probably isn’t fair to judge the place on a single visit. There’s a lot of variety on the menu - from Rajasthani laal maas to Goan fish curry to Bengali kosha mangsho - though this can also be indicative of trying to cater to too many different tastes and not doing full justice to any of them. On the whole, I’d say it’s a pleasant place to visit if you’re in the mood for appetizers and a couple of cool drinks rather than a full-fledged meal. Or if you’re looking to escape the hurly-burly of the Select mall, which has its giant behind turned disdainfully to the restaurant.

Meal for two (including a non-alcoholic drink, starter, main course and dessert each): Rs 3,000. 12 noon till midnight. Liquor license awaited. For reservations, call 9958453636.

[Some earlier food-related posts here, here and here]

Cinefan notes: Schlondorff, Shakuni, Carriere, Oskar

It’s spooky how the Mahabharata has started inveigling its way into everything I watch these days, even the stuff that’s completely unplanned. Just returned from seeing Volker Schlondorff’s latest film Ulzhan at Cinefan. I knew very little beforehand about the film (the catalogues weren’t available at the venue today) and saw it only because of the director and because it was on at a convenient time. My interest was further piqued by the discovery that the screenplay was by the veteran French writer Jean-Claude Carriere, whom I’ve met for interviews a couple of times (including at Cinefan two years ago).

Ulzhan turned out to be an engrossing, nicely shot series of episodes built around a drifter making his way across the Kazakhstan wilderness for reasons that are gradually revealed. It’s very much a contemporary tale too, so imagine my surprise when Charles, the protagonist, runs into a talkative character named Shakuni! I immediately wondered whether Carriere (who also scripted Peter Brook’s fine screen version of the Mahabharata) had anything to do with this development. Quite probable, though I couldn’t see much connection with the mythological Shakuni (except that this character was silver-tongued and enigmatic).

To add to my unsettlement, the actor who played Shakuni looked very familiar but I was unable to place him. It was only after coming back and doing an online search that I realised it was David Bennent, who played the role of young Oskar in Schlondorff’s celebrated movie version of The Tin Drum – a film I had watched at the same Siri Fort auditorium more than a decade ago. What a twisted series of connections – Ekta Kapoor could make a 500-episode soap out of them.

Episode 2: squabbling sutradhaars

I have a feeling that Ekta’s Mahabharata will soon cease to be funny and settle down into the solemn blah-ness of all her daytime soaps. Episode 2 contained lots of the familiar camera whooshes and swishes, sudden zooms, intensely irritating combinations of fast and slow motion (often used within seconds of each other), excessive reaction shots and awkward, stilted dialogue. When the key character of Ganga is introduced, the camera lingers on the giant blue sapphires in her earrings and necklace, showing us her face only as a sudden afterthought. (Cameraman slaps self on the forehead: "I knew there was something we were leaving out!")

More worrisome is the interaction between Vyasa and Ganesha. As any Mahabharata enthusiast knows, Ganesha’s pre-condition for agreeing to transcribe Vyasa’s poem is that the thing is recited continuously – no breaks or deviations. To which Vyasa replies that Ganesha must fully comprehend each verse before he sets it down. This is all very well, but midway through the meeting of King Shantanu and the mysterious lady in white who will become his queen, Vyasa interrupts his narrative and teasingly asks Ganesha, “Ab aap yeh soch rahe hoge ki yeh aurat kaun hai aur kya chahti hai?” (“Now you must be wondering who this woman is and what she wants”).

There are two problems with this chatty interlude: one, it means Vyasa has already reneged on his side of the bargain, so Ganesha is entitled to cite breach of contract, tear up the manuscript, clamber onto his rat steed and fly back into the stratosphere whence he came. The second problem is one of insolence. Aren’t Gods supposed to be omniscient? If I were in Ganesha’s sandals, I would have yanked at the sage’s beard for daring to imply that there was something I didn’t already know. (Actually, since Ganesha would have known beforehand that Vyasa was going to ask the question, he could have yanked at his beard without even waiting for him to ask it.)

So the narrative framework of this show will likely be a problem as things progress, and I wouldn't be surprised if the poet and his transcriber are smacking each other on the head by the time we arrive at Book Two. One of the best things about the B R Chopra Mahabharata was its use of Time – represented by a revolving chakra – as a narrator. The two sutradhaars in Ekta’s version display less personality than that wooden wheel.

Cinefan '08

Yes, it's that time of year again. Cinefan begins tomorrow and goes on till the 20th. The official website has a list of films and a schedule, but the links don't all work and the schedule one is a bit wonky (dates are repeated, multiple films are listed for 21.30 pm on the same day) - hopefully they'll fix that soon.

I won't be able to attend the fest as much as in years past (general busyness at home, plus am out of town between the 12th and the 14th), but will take a closer look at the list soon and make some selections. The Paul Schrader session on screenwriting should be worth a look too.

Mahabharata, episode 1: the tattoo menace

Once again, real life makes satire seem feeble. When I wrote this post about Ekta Kapoor’s Kahaani Hamaaray Mahabharata Ki, I had no idea how summarily the actual show would outstrip my expectations. The first episode was telecast last night and though it didn’t feature the Tushhar Kapoor item number I had been hoping for, there was lots else to relish.

In the first of many inventive twists, the kahaani begins not at the beginning but with the game of dice and the attempted disrobing of Draupadi – which, we are told, is the single most important incident in the epic. Most of the Pandavas are shown in silhouette (possibly because the casting hadn’t been finalised when this episode was shot), Shakuni giggles continually and resembles Dr Evil in the Austin Powers films, Duryodhana has impressive breasts and there is unintentional phallic imagery in the worm’s eye shots of Bhima’s mace limping impotently between his legs. At the end of the episode, the actress playing Draupadi turns to the camera and shrieks something to the effect that whenever a woman is insulted or dishonoured, a great war will take place and the world will be changed (which leads me to wonder if Ekta and her scriptwriters follow the daily news at all). After this, a long cosmic zoom-out reveals that our solar system is but a speck in the waggling ear of the elephant-headed Lord Ganesha; as Vyasa prepares to compose his great poem with Ganesha as his transcriber, we may expect that the story will be narrated chronologically from episode 2 onwards.

Notes on the first episode:

- The opening dateline, written in Hindi, says “Dwapara Yuga, approximately 2000 B.C.” This is a bit like saying "Indraprastha, located approximately 8,000 miles east of New York". Do these guys even know what “B.C.” means? They need to be careful about offending the saffron brigade by acknowledging the existence of another religion.

- Most of the script is in shudh Hindi (compared to the more ornate language used in B R Chopra’s production of the epic) but pronunciation definitely needs to be worked on. For instance, someone should quickly inform the actor playing Duryodhana that it’s “gadaa-dhaari Bhima”, not “gadha-dhaari Bhima”. The former means “mighty Bhima, wielder of maces”, which sounds very grand, but the latter translates into the much less impressive “mighty Bhima, carrier of donkeys”. This has the effect of further diminishing the dignity of a character who doesn’t have a huge amount of it in the first place. Also, the Mahabharata war would look very ludicrous if Bhima spent all his time on the battle-field time brandishing donkeys by their hind legs. (Even worse is "gadha-daadi Bhima", which simply means "mighty Bhima who resembles the beard of a donkey".)

- They had tattoos in the Dwapara Yuga! The pretty-boy actor playing Yudhisthira has an elaborate one on his right shoulder and, not sure about this, but I think Draupadi has one on her neck. Closer inspection reveals these to be writing of some sort. Remember Amitabh in Deewaar brooding about the line “Mera baap chor hai” (“My father is a thief”) tattooed on his arm? Well, given the dubious origins of many of the characters in the Mahabharata, there are richer possibilities here. Suggestions for tattoos for other characters:

Yudhisthira’s son: “Mera baap juwari hai” (“My father is a gambler”)
Bhima’s son: “Mera baap gadha-dhari hai” (“My father wields donkeys”)
Bheeshma: “Meri maa nadi hai” (“My mother is a river” [and abandoned me when I was a child, resulting in my life-long problems with women])
Drona: “Meri maa katori hai” (“My mother is a bowl”)

Comparing tattoos would be therapeutic for the people concerned, a bit like attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meet and discovering that others are much more screwed up than you are. (Karna, of course, would probably need to get himself tattooed from head to toe, in font size 8.)

- The most impressive bit in the episode by far was when Draupadi calls out to Krishna for help and he heeds her call by sending forth a gigantic sudarshan chakra that resembles a flying saucer. The zoom-in from outer space towards the topography of India on the rotating globe suggests that when Gods wanted to come down to earth to answer individual prayers in the ancient days, they used Google Earth to find their way. This raises intriguing possibilities: what if Krishna got his coordinates wrong, ended up in the heart of the African continent and was captured by hungry tribesmen who didn’t give a tapir's ass about his claims that he was an Indian deity? (Given that it was so difficult to travel from one part of the globe to another in those days, surely even Gods must have had restraining orders.)

Anyway, there were no such concerns in this episode. The sudarshan chakra/UFO adeptly locates north India, floats down, takes a quick left turn from the main palace, reaches the scene of the action and hovers above the heads of the characters as they look up in astonishment. Then – again, remember, this isn’t a spoof – lengthy quantities of sari flow down from it to ensure that Draupadi remains well-clad even as Duhshasana tugs away at her garment. As if it isn't difficult enough to put on a sari the conventional way...no wonder the poor woman wanted the wholesale destruction of the human race.

Draupadi’s sari didn't unravel but the story of the great epic definitely will, over the next 5,000 or so episodes, in Ekta's loving hands. I’ll watch it whenever time allows and provide commentary now and again.

Perceptions 3: a human Roger?

[Previously: Sporting perceptions 1 and 2]

I had to log off the Tennis World blog last night around the time of the first rain break in the Wimbledon final, but I must have exchanged at least a hundred SMSes with tennis-loving friends in the next few hours. A theme emerged in these discussions. Some of these friends are fellow Nadal fans and one of the reasons we initially became fans was that during Federer’s years of unreal, round-the-year dominance (mostly 2005 and 06), it was good to see someone spicing up the mix, bringing a touch of unpredictability to the men’s game. Back then, I had blogged a bit about how annoying, even disheartening Federer’s reign had become. If he lost four straight matches to Nadal in 2006, there was no question of feeling sorry for him: it was simply a microcosmic version of what Federer himself was doing to everyone else for most of the season. (Besides, those four matches were practically the only ones he would lose all year anyway.)

This has changed, at least for the time being - since last year, Roger has been looking human (only by his own earlier standards, of course: basically, all it means is that his win-loss percentage in the last few months is around the same as Sampras’s was during his peak years!) – and with it so have the perceptions of us non-fans. It’s possible now to feel genuinely sorry for him, to hope that he comes back strongly at the US Open and the Olympics. (A year without Federer winning a single Grand Slam would be just as bad for tennis as a year in which he wins nearly everything.) That’s a hope I never thought I would express a couple of years ago.

For now though, very pleased for Rafa. There’s always going to be a question mark over his career longevity and I don’t expect him to ever reach the levels that peak-period Roger did on all surfaces, so it’s good to savour what he does have. Vamos!

[An earlier post on the fading of once-dominant champions]