In praise of the Delhi Metro

Working from home for the past few years has softened me up in some ways – for example, I can no longer smile at the many visions of apocalyptic carnage on Delhi’s roads. Driving in this city was stressful enough even when I was doing it regularly, but having fallen out of practice I find that the veins in my forehead make popping sounds when I’m stuck in traffic for even 10 or 15 minutes. Not good for the old blood pressure and all that.

In recent years I’ve rarely travelled more than three or four km beyond Saket unless it’s for an important appointment; I don’t attend most of the book-related events I get invites for, especially the ones held near Connaught Place (spending an hour each way on the road and driving in circles to find parking space is not my idea of evening fun). Besides, our colony has become an autonomous little village since the malls opened. With a variety of good restaurants and coffee joints, bookstores, music stores, plenty of walking and sitting space, and pretty much everything else one needs, there hasn’t been much incentive to go to, say, Khan Market, which was once a regular haunt.

Now the Metro is changing this to an extent. When I wrote this post in 2008, it seemed like the construction would go on forever and we’d never get to see actual trains (all we saw then were hordes of solemn-faced, helmeted men wandering about our park with giant measuring instruments, occasionally visiting houses to take photos of every crack on every wall so we couldn’t subsequently blame the damage on the vibrations). But it’s all in working order now, and a huge convenience – these days I sometimes find an excuse to get out for a while even if I don’t strictly have to.

The initial sense of well-being comes from the fortunate location of the two Yellow Line stations in the Saket area. The so-called Malviya Nagar station is a minute’s walk from my mother’s flat where I lived for over 20 years (and where I still spend most of my working day), while the Saket station is a minute’s walk from our other flat. This makes the decision to travel by train a straightforward one. If I have to go to Connaught Place or even somewhere closer like Green Park or Dilli Haat (right next to the INA station), it’s a no-brainer. In the winter months, it's a comfortable 2-km walk from the Jor Bagh station to Khan Market or the India Habitat Centre (where the Penguin Spring Fever fest is starting today) or the Alliance Francaise (where I was in conversation with Namita Gokhale yesterday).

The stations are spacious and (at this point anyway) clean, and the trains run smoothly most of the time; so far I’ve found an empty seat on only two occasions, but standing isn’t a problem for a trip that takes 20-25 minutes at most. If I had to nitpick, I’d say that travelling on the Saket-Rajiv Chowk route can be monotonous – the entire line is underground, nothing to see outside the windows, and reading isn’t really an option if you’re standing and the train is crowded. (The journey in the opposite direction to Gurgaon – with the line elevating as it approaches Qutab Minar – is pleasanter.)

But on the whole - massively empowering. I can think of only one possible improvement: given that a section of the Malviya Nagar station is located directly under our house, it would be most useful if we could get digging rights and install a sliding pole that would take me directly from my room to the platform a few metres beneath (like Groucho shinning down the fire pole into the ballroom in Duck Soup). But that’s the lazy, mollycoddled, freelancing homebody talking again, and you’re free to ignore anything he says.

[As a tribute to crowded trains, here’s the great opening scene of Sam Fuller’s Pickup on South Street, a film I wrote about here]

The musical conquests of Goopy and Bagha

My latest movie column for Yahoo! India is about Satyajit Ray's most playful and timeless film, and the minor disconnect I once felt from it as a non-Bengali-speaking viewer. Here goes.

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Update - here's the full column:

I'm watching Satyajit Ray's fantasy-adventure classic Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, about two simpletons - the singer Goopy and the drummer Bagha - who use their music and their generally upbeat outlook towards life to help save the land of Shundi from an attack by a rival kingdom. I've seen the film twice before, and each time the subtitling has been inadequate (to say the least). Besides, on the first occasion years ago, I wasn't familiar with the original story written by Ray's grandfather Upendrakishore, and so I had to draw my own conclusions about some of the plot details.

Thus, when Goopy and Bagha used a boon given to them by the king of ghosts and accidentally reached a land called Jhundi, I figured this couldn't be a real place in Bengal because the landscape was snowy. A while later, the subtitles vanished altogether for a 10-minute stretch, leaving me clueless about what the Raja of Shundi was saying to our two heroes. Since I had guessed by this point that Shundi too was an imaginary land, I briefly wondered if the Raja was speaking an invented language that the viewer wasn't supposed to understand. (Not a very improbable idea given the Ray family's flair for fantasy, including the nonsense verse composed by his father Sukumar.)

On the DVD I have now, there is an attempt of sorts to capture the rhythmic playfulness of the film's dialogue and songs. For instance, in a scene where Goopy sings a song to thwart (and "freeze") the cunning minister of Halla, the subtitle for the opening lines read:

"Oh Mr Minister with Plots so Sinister...
Stop!
Don't you try concealing
Your crafty double-dealing!"

But even the most imaginative subtitles can't replace the experience of understanding the words as they are spoken, and therein hangs a tale of disconnect. I love Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, but I'm aware that it can never be part of my childhood mythology in the way that Hindi movies were - or the scone-and-macaroon-filled world of Enid Blyton for that matter.

The first time I saw Ray's film, the language was a barrier. Take the enchanting scene where the king of ghosts, speaking in a singsong voice, offers Goopy and Bagha three boons. The impact of the scene - the sense of mystery and wonder it creates - hinges on the cadences of the ghost's speech as well as Ray's use of a syncopated electronic tune; it requires an immediate link between the viewer and the characters. And so, there's a big difference between the experience of the Bong viewer - who understands the words and their inflections directly - and the experience of the gatecrasher whose eyes must flit back and forth, from the subtitles (which in any case are often so poor that a second layer of conscious interpretation is required) to the expression on the ghost's face (it's delightful how he looks wide-eyedly from Goopy to Bagha and back again as he speaks, as if they, not him, are the oddities).

Similarly, when Goopy and Bagha sing about the various types of ghosts they saw in the forest ("Tall ghosts, squat ghosts! / Fat ghosts, lean ghosts! / Ripe ghosts, mean ghosts!"), it wasn't much fun having to read the rapid-fire flow of English words at the bottom of the screen instead of simply enjoying the song and dance, and the expressions on their faces. (Watching the scene on DVD now, with the subtitles turned off, is much more satisfying.)

As a result, my perspective on this film is necessarily different from that of the Bengali viewer who grew up with it (and perhaps with the original story as well). The reference points and associations are different too. Watching Ray's occasional use of wipes to separate one scene from the next, I wonder if he was influenced by Kurosawa's use of this technique in films like The Hidden Fortress and The Seven Samurai. The repeated call for an executioner to "chop off their heads" is reminiscent of the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland. When the king of Halla breaks into song in the presence of a group of distinguished ambassadors who are visiting his court, I think of Groucho Marx's loony "Just wait till I get through with it" act in Duck Soup. (This isn't a stretch: Ray once wrote that if he had to take a single film with him to a desert island, he would choose a Marx Brothers film without a moment's hesitation.)

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But it would be a mistake to suggest that the Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne experience can be spoiled by not knowing the language - it contains so many fine examples of pure visual storytelling. Watching it now, I marvel at how playful and experimental Ray was here (possibly one reason why this film and his other movies for children are neglected by Western critics: their existence is inconvenient for those who pigeonhole him as a director rooted in realism). He very effectively uses tracking shots and close-ups (as in the gloating faces of the village elders who get Goopy into trouble early in the story). There are freeze frames, there is even a series of jump cuts (when Goopy claps his hands while singing "Maharaja Tomare Selaam" for the king of Shundi), and many striking compositions that create a sense of unease: a scarecrow in the foreground as Goopy makes his way across a field; a shot of water dripping onto a drum followed by a slow pan to Bagha sleeping nearby. Best of all is the film's most famous sequence: the inventive and multidimensional ghost dance, which is a superb example of an aspect of Ray's creativity that many people are still sadly unfamiliar with.

The dance begins with four groups of ghosts (representing different classes of society - noblemen, soldiers and so on) posturing grandly, but it ends in all-round massacre, with everyone dead, and this foreshadows a key theme of the film. I doubt that anyone watching Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne even at the level of "mere entertainment" can fail to be moved by its understated yet clear-sighted pacifism, which finds its final expression in the uplifting climactic scene where hungry soldiers lay down their weapons and make a beeline for the pots of sweets that Goopy and Bagha have conjured for them. Ray doesn't underline the anti-war theme, but it's there for anyone to see.

Warmth and empathy are qualities found in all of Ray's movies, but this genre allows him to display them in their rawest, least guarded form: where else could you have that lovely visual of Goopy and Bagha performing for the Shundi Raja (played by the wonderful character actor Santosh Dutta, whose smiling presence is one of the most reassuring things about any movie I've seen him in), all three men so caught up in the moment that they beam unselfconsciously at each other, with the Raja swaying and clapping his hands like a little child in tune to the song? Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne is about many things - it's about the strange and complex interactions between kings and commoners, about underdogs who triumph in the end, and about the value of good companionship (Goopy and Bagha must stay together if they want to continue availing of the ghost's boons). But most of all it's about two little heroes who want nothing much more than to "please people with our music" - though it doesn't hurt that in the best fairy-tale style they also end up winning the hands of beautiful princesses along the way! It's one of the most timeless films I've seen.

Groucho's fake mush-stash

This was a surprise. Yesterday’s Delhi Times had a piece – probably taken from some website or syndicated from an international publication – listing Hollywood’s “most mushy lines of dialogue”. The list mostly contains genuine samples of mush, including “You complete me” from Jerry Maguire, “I want to take care of you” from Monster’s Ball and “I want all of you. Forever. Every day” from The Notebook, but then placed without comment in the midst of all the gooeyness is this line spoken by Groucho Marx to Margaret Dumont in A Day at the Races:

“Marry me and I’ll never look at another horse.”

Wonder if someone misunderstood the tone or whether including it in the list was some kind of tribute to Marxist humour. (Incidentally, Groucho also once said “Alimony is like buying hay for a dead horse.” More Marxisms here.)

Thought for the day

The Mahabharata could have been a truly great comic work if the role of Krishna were to be played by Groucho Marx. This is one of my favourite fantasies. Not just because Groucho was an adept practitioner of the flute (as the first song in Duck Soup makes clear) but because of his all-knowing air, his prescient, faraway look, his calm confidence about being on top of any situation and his amusement at how seriously everyone else took him (as mentioned in this post). He would have been perfect in the many passages where Bheeshma, Vidura and the other elders stand before Krishna (who in his mortal state is several years their junior) with hands folded in adoration and eyes brimming over, and acknowledge that their own lives and actions are but fragments of the grand drama He has orchestrated to save the world from Evil. (Imagine what fun would come if it turned out that this wasn't true; that Krishna wasn't the Avatar after all, the whole thing was an elaborate joke, and after bringing the armies face to face on the battlefield he simply leapt off the chariot and pranced away yelling "I refuse to join a war that would have me as a member!")

Also starring: Gary Cooper as the solemn, upright and self-doubting Arjuna, Margaret Dumont as an exasperated Balarama, Chico Marx as a very shrill Draupadi and Harpo as a silently adoring Radha (to whom Krishna says, "I could dance with you till the cows come home. On second thought I'd rather dance with the cows until you come home").

More suggestions welcome. Has to be from 1930s Hollywood. (Falstaff, weigh in.)

Where Groucho is, there is Comedy - Sage Vyas, Dvapara Yuga 18,770

Manic Marxists: Duck Soup revisited

“Je suis Marxiste, tendance Groucho” ("I'm a Marxist of the Groucho variety")

- (Attributed to) Jean-Luc Godard

Have to second Godard on that. Watching my DVD of the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup, one of the very greatest of movie comedies, I come to a favourite scene, early in the film. The madcap Rufus T Firefly (played by who else but Groucho Marx, painted moustache and cigar firmly in place) has just been appointed leader of the tiny republic of Freedonia. The amply proportioned Mrs Gloria Teasdale has donated 20 million dollars to save the country from bankruptcy. Mrs Teasdale is played by the delightful Margaret Dumont, who was the prime target for Groucho's many insults in film after film, and this is the first scene between the two in this movie. Naturally, Groucho lays into the woman with his trademark machine-gun delivery of non-sequiturs.

Mrs Teasdale (gushing profusely): As chairwoman of the reception committee, I welcome you with open arms.

Firefly (snapping back): Is that so? How late do you stay open?

Mrs Teasdale (recovering with aplomb): I've sponsored your appointment because I feel you are the most able statesman in all Freedonia.

Firefly: Well, that covers a lot of ground. Say, you cover a lot of ground yourself. You'd better beat it, I hear they’re going to put up an office building where you're standing. You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff. You know, you haven't stopped talking since I came here. You must have been vaccinated with a phonograph needle.

(Groucho delivers the above lines at what seems like 10 words a second.)

The subject of Mrs Teasdale's late husband comes up.

Firefly: Will you marry me? Did he leave you any money? Answer the second question first.

Mrs Teasdale: He left me his entire fortune.

Firefly: Is that so? Can't you see what I'm trying to tell you, I love you!

Mrs Teasdale (rolling her eyes in adoration): Oh, your Excellency!

Firefly (rolling his in imitation): You're not so bad yourself.

And so on. Much as I'd like to, I can't quote all of Groucho's dialogue here - it would take up too much space and it would be pointless anyway, because to appreciate it in the truest sense you have to watch and hear him saying it.

Duck Soup is a brilliant, subversive film about petty politicking and war-mongering, much more potent a satire than Chaplin's The Great Dictator (which was made seven years later). I've heard criticisms about how it doesn't have much of a storyline, that it's just a stitched-together collection of jokes and gags - but this isn't fair. Here's the basic plot: Ambassador of Sylvania calls President of Freedonia an upstart. Latter smacks former with a pair of rubber gloves. Former declares war on latter's country.

That's a good enough storyline for any film, in my ever-so-humble view. But with so much brilliance from the finest set of comedians of the talking era, why would this one need a plot anyway? Like many other Marx Brothers aficionados, I sometimes find it difficult to look beyond Groucho - but Duck Soup provides Chico and Harpo (as a pair of spies) with some of their finest moments too: especially in the running gag about Harpo producing just about anything on demand, including a flaming blowtorch that he has hidden in a coat pocket. And the scene where a real dog emerges, barking, from a house painted on his chest is worthy of a Dali-Bunuel collaboration.

Anyway, watching Duck Soup again, I noticed a few things that hadn't occurred to me before. Firstly, all this talk about Groucho's dialogue delivery being deadpan. In a sense, it is - his voice is completely flat, even when he's saying the absurdest things (which is what makes it so funny). But he isn't straight-faced in the Buster Keaton style: watch his expression after he's tossed off a few insults and is puffing at his cigar before launching into the next round. He always has this amused little look, this slight smile that suggests he's privately surprised people put up with him for as long as they do. This, remember, is the man who once famously said, "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would want me as a member". (Of course, he also said, "Someday I'd like to join a club and beat you over the head with it.")



The other thing that struck me was how important Margaret Dumont's own personality is in the scenes between her and Groucho. Conventional wisdom tells us that her role in these films was to be a mere foil, a bouncing board for Groucho's lines. But that isn't quite accurate. One of the reasons why the exchanges between them work so well is that Dumont is always so good-natured. At most, when Groucho says something particularly insulting, her brows furrow and she looks around, flustered - but then, a couple of seconds later, she's back to smiling luminously at him. It's almost like a fond aunt indulging a loopy nephew. They get my vote for the Greatest Onscreen Couple ever.

Links: A comprehensive scene-by-scene write-up on the film from Tim Dirks' Film Site. And a nice collection of Groucho quotes.

"Take two turkeys, one goose, four cabbages, but no duck, and mix them together. After one taste, you'll duck soup for the rest of your life." - Groucho Marx

S J Perelman, and Motilal Nehru’s laundry

Working my way slowly back into the reading habit like a man recovering from paralysis and re-learning how to walk, I turned to some of S J Perelman’s short stories. Perelman was a great American humorist, an absolute master of the non-sequitur, who worked as a screenplay writer in Hollywood in the 1930s and helped in the development of the Marx Brothers brand of humour, among other things. He was also among the best of a long line of writers with the ability to take the most everyday occurences - a stray remark in a newspaper clipping, for instance - and spin comic masterworks around them. A good example is a Perelman story I read recently with the enticing title "No Starch in the Dhoti, S’Il Vous Plait", which is built entirely around an actual newspaper report about Jawaharlal Nehru. The original report included the following passage:

"Nehru is accused of having a congenital distaste for Americans...it is said that in the luxurious and gracious house of his father, the late Pandit Motilal Nehru - who sent his laundry to Paris - the young Jawaharlal’s British nurse used to make caustic remarks to the impressionable boy about the table manners of his father’s American guests."

What Perelman does is to home in on that one phrase "who sent his laundry to Paris" and write:

"I blenched at the complications this overseas despatch must have entailed. Conducted long before there was any air service between India and Europe, it would have involved posting the stuff by sea - a minimum of three weeks in each direction, in addition to the time it took for processing. Each trip would have created problems of customs examination, valuation, duty (unless Nehru senior got friends to take it through for him, which is improbable; most people detest transporting laundry across the world, even their own). The old gentleman had evidently had a limitless wardrobe, to be able to dispense with it for three months at a time."

The rest of the story is epistolary, as Perelman conjectures the exchange of letters that must have taken place between Motilal Nehru and the Paris-based laundryman. The letters are extremely improbable, but they are hilarious.

(P.S. "No Starch in the Dhoti, S’Il Vous Plait" is just one of the many very entertaining titles for Perelman’s stories; others include "Methinks He Doth Protein Too Much", "And Thou Beside Me, Yacketing in the Wilderness" and "I’ll Always Call You Schnorrer, My African Explorer".)

Woody Allen once said something to the effect that reading Perelman was fatal to a young writer because his style seeps into you... "he’s got such a pronounced, overwhelming comic style that it’s hard not to be influenced by him." I tend to relate this observation to the effect reading P G Wodehouse in school/college has on many young aspiring writers in India. It’s a shame that Perelman isn’t as well known or as widely read here. That probably has something to do with the fact that his stories are full of colloqualisms, with many references to things we aren’t familiar with - staples of American popular culture in the 1930s and 1940s (for every one time I chuckle out loud while reading him, there’s another time I frown, uncertain exactly what he’s talking about even while acknowledging that whatever it is, it’s probably very funny). Whatever the case, he isn’t easy to read and you have to be prepared for the occasional story that’s just too abstruse to get through. It’s a bit like that blurb about Saki, which goes "his writing is so intense, it induces a kind of literary dyspepsia".

Last month incidentally was Perelman’s 100th birth anniversary. Here’s a profile by Time magazine’s Richard Corliss.

Groucho Marx to S J Perelman: “From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.”