Some people derogatorily use the word "intellectual" (or the more direct "pseudo-intellectual") to brush off a dissenting view. If you didn't care for a "masala entertainment" film that everyone else liked, it can only be because you're pseudo. Mention a book that isn’t on the current bestseller list? Yup, again, it must be because you're trying too hard to be different.
What's more amusing is when this accusation surfaces in the context of something as plebeian and mass-friendly as sport. As I’ve mentioned earlier on this blog, the Indian Premier League – all two months of it – entirely passed me by, so that I was still irritating friends with uninformed questions towards the end of the tournament: “You mean Shane Warne is playing for Jaipur – how is that even possible? Didn’t he retire a few months ago? Does Preity Zinta bat or bowl? Is this a unisex tournament?” During this period, much of my spare time has gone in watching tennis and participating in the messageboard of the TennisWorld website.
The average response goes: "The IPL is on and you're going on about tennis? You must be one of those snobbish pseudo-intellectual types who likes moving against the herd!" Now I have nothing against being called pseudo-intellectual or snobbish (or a vagrant sheep for that matter), but it's an ironic label given that most of my comments on the TW site run along the following lines:
"Rafa gets the break!! Woo-hoo!! Now HOLD SERVE, you moron, and take this to a third!! Bury the Djoker!"
Friends tell me IPL cricket is so exciting because of all the action off the ground: the cheerleaders, the movie stars, the Harbhajan-Sreesanth controversy. What does a bland sport like tennis have to compare with this, they ask.
More than you'd think, actually. For starters, in recent times, the mothers of players have been in the spotlight, and when mothers get involved in anything it always makes for good drama. During the tense Monte Carlo semi-final between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, the usually unflappable world number 1 shouted "Be quiet!" to Djokovic's shrieky mom, who was creating an unnecessary ruckus in the stands. Meanwhile, Britain's Andy Murray exploded in rage during a match, accusing his opponent of saying something inappropriate about his mother. Hindi-film scriptwriters might want to see the video – while Murray didn't actually slur "Maa kasam, chun chun ke maaroonga!" in Dharmendra style, it still makes Harbhajan's "Teri maa ki" to Andrew Symonds pale in comparison.
Speaking of Harbhajan, his physical assault on Sreesanth has nothing on a tennis player's recent assault on himself. This year's most viewed tennis clip by far is the one that shows Russia's Mikhail Youzhny repeatedly smacking himself on the head with his racquet – and drawing a nasty stream of blood in the process – after messing up a forehand. Cricket may have long ceased to be the gentleman's game, but tennis is no longer all strawberries and cream and long, leisurely days in the Wimbledon sun either. At this rate, contact sports like WWE will soon be an endangered species.
Lanka notes contd
Anyway, it turned out that my lack of interest in the biggest thing to hit cricket since coloured pyjamas was even harder to explain in Sri Lanka, where not only was it assumed that anyone getting off a flight from India would be reciting IPL match stats in his sleep, but where my very name helped steer the conversation. “Hi, I’m Jai,” I said when we met our guide/tour representative Keith at the airport, and on hearing these simple words his face lit up with the combined effulgence of a million glowworms, causing the people around us to look up in astonishment at the night sky. “Jaya like in Jayasuriya?” he exclaimed, scarcely able to believe his good fortune. “So pleased to meet you!”
“Um, yes – Jaya,” I replied, “but with an Arjuna instead of a Suriya!” At this our man sighed long and deep, and people around us looked up to check if monsoon winds were gathering. “Arjuna like in Arjuna Ranatunga, our great captain?” “True,” I conceded, “but without the ‘Ranatunga’ – or the captaincy, for that matter. I gave up both after we won the World Cup in 1996, ha ha.”
The joke fell flat but on the whole we had got off to a good start, and over the next several days we learnt about Keith’s love for cricket, his strong views about the game and its players, and even the ways in which it had affected his personal life: he told us about a promising job offer he had received in Australia, which he turned down on no other grounds than “the behaviour of their cricketers, and the way they treated Muralitharan”. (I decided to avoid disclosing that Australia had been far and away my favourite team back in my viewing days.)
Jayasuriya’s violent knocks for the Mumbai team were key talking points and it was noteworthy that throughout our stay, the one channel that would unerringly be available on every hotel-room TV set was SET Max. “Do people in India like Jayasuriya?” Keith asked tentatively. “Oh, we always admired him,” I replied, “but we like him a lot better now that he’s playing for a domestic team in a friendly environment rather than hitting Indian bowlers all over the park in an international match.” The next morning, Keith reciprocated with a few unexpected words of praise for an Aussie cricketer. “Did you see how Hayden celebrated with Murali after they took that wicket?” he asked, “I think he’s not so bad.”
I’m sure that the people who thought up the IPL were driven by baser motives than tearing down the narrow domestic walls of partisanship, but they might just have managed it anyway. On the other hand, if future editions of the tournament are as successful, India might soon revert to being a collection of sovereign states.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
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.)
“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.)
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Sri Lanka photos 3: miscellany
Rushing through some of the other pics. One of the highlights of our stay was the climb up the 600-foot Sigiriya rock fortress, at the summit of which was the palace of King Kasyapa in the 5th century AD. There's a long-shot view of the Sigiriya rock in the last post; this is a close-up of part of the rock, with a spiral staircase for tourists (click to enlarge).
It used to be known as the “simha-giri” or “lion mountain” – it's believed that to climb the final stretch of the rock, you had to enter a stairway through the mouth of a giant stone lion. The head of the lion was subsequently destroyed by invaders but the paws on either side remain.
More than 100 metres above ground level, in a depression on the rock face, are the 1,500-year-old “Apsara paintings”. The painted band used to cover an area of 140 metres around the rock surface but sadly only a few of the figures survive today.
Buddha statues are to Lankan tourism what castles are to northern England and Scotland – you can never have enough of them. These are from the Dambulla cave temples, which can be accessed after another good climb (not as steep as Sigiriya though). The cave interiors were dark and the camera wasn’t too effective, plus photography is frowned upon here so these had to be taken surreptitiously. Did what I could.
Giant reclining feet.
[For much better Sigiriya and Dambulla photos, check the Wikipedia entries here and here]
At the temple of the tooth relic in Kandy: one of the Buddha’s canine teeth has its resting place here, apparently, though all you’ll ever get to see of it is a golden casket that contains around 9 other golden caskets, in the smallest of which is kept the tooth. Here’s a collection of statues from around the world, depicting the Buddha according to the distinct styles of different countries.
Strong element of commercialisation here – the caretaker of the tooth is a rich man, the Nilame, elected by the monks not only on the basis of his standing as a good Buddhist but also his wealth. Incidentally, the series of paintings depicting the Buddha’s life and the posthumous history of his tooth is “sponsored by the Bank of Ceylon”.
Waterfall on the way to Nuwara Eliya.
We visited a tea estate near here. More than the thousands of tons of tea leaves, all going through various stages of processing, I was interested in this ancient machine, used as a calculator during the early days of this tea plantation.
On our way down the mountain from Nuwara Eliya, we passed the river Kelani, near the banks of which several scenes in The Bridge on the River Kwai were shot. The place is also a base for white-water rafting.
There was a charming café in a little clearing near the river, where the tables and chairs were made out of raw, untreated wood. Very quaint to look at, and extremely heavy.
A collection of Lanka’s famous masks in a showroom.
This was in the basement of a gem factory-cum-showroom: part of a lifesize representation of the arduous gem-mining process. Just before this, we saw a short documentary on how precious and semi-precious stones are extracted from the earth’s surface.
It’s startling to see how primitive and unglamorous the early stages of the procedure are: grime-covered workers crawling about in deep, watery pits, communicating through makeshift talking devices that resemble children’s walkie-talkies, trawling through dozens of stones for that one potentially valuable piece – which they will never be able to reap the benefits of themselves, despite being the first to get their hands on it. Of course, there’s nothing new in the idea of the poor man’s labour being used to benefit the shrewd businessman and the already-rich, but in this case the nature of the finished product makes the contrast much starker. What the documentary showed was worlds removed from the associations we commonly have with jewellery: the glitz of a Swarovski showroom, celebrities flaunting their rocks on society pages.
Which also means that though this post wasn't meant to be thematic, it begins and ends on the rock motif.
[Related posts: pics 1, pics 2, tourism overkill]
It used to be known as the “simha-giri” or “lion mountain” – it's believed that to climb the final stretch of the rock, you had to enter a stairway through the mouth of a giant stone lion. The head of the lion was subsequently destroyed by invaders but the paws on either side remain.
More than 100 metres above ground level, in a depression on the rock face, are the 1,500-year-old “Apsara paintings”. The painted band used to cover an area of 140 metres around the rock surface but sadly only a few of the figures survive today.
Buddha statues are to Lankan tourism what castles are to northern England and Scotland – you can never have enough of them. These are from the Dambulla cave temples, which can be accessed after another good climb (not as steep as Sigiriya though). The cave interiors were dark and the camera wasn’t too effective, plus photography is frowned upon here so these had to be taken surreptitiously. Did what I could.
Giant reclining feet.
[For much better Sigiriya and Dambulla photos, check the Wikipedia entries here and here]
At the temple of the tooth relic in Kandy: one of the Buddha’s canine teeth has its resting place here, apparently, though all you’ll ever get to see of it is a golden casket that contains around 9 other golden caskets, in the smallest of which is kept the tooth. Here’s a collection of statues from around the world, depicting the Buddha according to the distinct styles of different countries.
Strong element of commercialisation here – the caretaker of the tooth is a rich man, the Nilame, elected by the monks not only on the basis of his standing as a good Buddhist but also his wealth. Incidentally, the series of paintings depicting the Buddha’s life and the posthumous history of his tooth is “sponsored by the Bank of Ceylon”.
Waterfall on the way to Nuwara Eliya.
We visited a tea estate near here. More than the thousands of tons of tea leaves, all going through various stages of processing, I was interested in this ancient machine, used as a calculator during the early days of this tea plantation.
On our way down the mountain from Nuwara Eliya, we passed the river Kelani, near the banks of which several scenes in The Bridge on the River Kwai were shot. The place is also a base for white-water rafting.
There was a charming café in a little clearing near the river, where the tables and chairs were made out of raw, untreated wood. Very quaint to look at, and extremely heavy.
A collection of Lanka’s famous masks in a showroom.
This was in the basement of a gem factory-cum-showroom: part of a lifesize representation of the arduous gem-mining process. Just before this, we saw a short documentary on how precious and semi-precious stones are extracted from the earth’s surface.
It’s startling to see how primitive and unglamorous the early stages of the procedure are: grime-covered workers crawling about in deep, watery pits, communicating through makeshift talking devices that resemble children’s walkie-talkies, trawling through dozens of stones for that one potentially valuable piece – which they will never be able to reap the benefits of themselves, despite being the first to get their hands on it. Of course, there’s nothing new in the idea of the poor man’s labour being used to benefit the shrewd businessman and the already-rich, but in this case the nature of the finished product makes the contrast much starker. What the documentary showed was worlds removed from the associations we commonly have with jewellery: the glitz of a Swarovski showroom, celebrities flaunting their rocks on society pages.Which also means that though this post wasn't meant to be thematic, it begins and ends on the rock motif.
[Related posts: pics 1, pics 2, tourism overkill]
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Notes from Lanka: tourism overkill
I first became acquainted with the phenomenon of tourism overkill during a coach tour of Britain years ago, when our guides were ludicrously dramatic about every sight and anecdote, often getting hyperbolic about mundane things. (Remember, this is already a country that resembles a giant museum in places, every second house displaying a signboard that boasts its historical significance, however fleeting, e.g. “The poet Robert Burns reclined against this post for three minutes in January 1785 on his way to the house around the corner.”) At Stratford-upon-Avon, when we were shown the house Shakespeare was supposedly born in, each room was artificially made up to look like it might have looked in the 16th century, right down to the tiny water-pots used by the midwife, and the basement where wee Willy's dad, a glove-maker, plied his trade. "This is how he would fit the glove on his hand, just so," explained a guide, carefully demonstrating the procedure while we mad tourists clicked photos like we were paparazzi and the building was the Paris Hilton, so to speak.
Now Sri Lanka is a lovely country and I was happy to allow its most visitor-friendly elements – mainly the natural beauty – speak for themselves, but here too there was no escaping the tourism-overkill bug. For a visiting Indian, this can be particularly noticeable. Our two lands are separated by just 30 km of water, but the Lankan tour guides we encountered seemed to think we belonged firmly in the Western-tourist category. So we were expected to gawp at sights that most Delhiites wouldn't normally look at twice.
This became tedious, since only up to a point can one pretend to be enthralled by such observations as "Sir, look at all those buffaloes in the distance!" or "We have stray dogs walking around on these roads. No owners! Sometimes the bus drivers even hit them and kill them." I was tempted to reply that where we came from, buffaloes rule the streets, people often abandon their pets and dhabas frequently serve roadkill for dinner. Also, it's one thing going on an elephant safari as an early-morning leisure activity, but quite another to be handed a certificate informing us that we have just undertaken "a daring and adventurous tusker ride through the dark jungles of Sigiriya". (Actually, we stayed on the main road throughout, motorbikes whizzing past us, and the biggest danger was that our aging mount looked ready to doze off mid-ride.) We should have kept a pamphlet of our own handy, explaining that we in India had an ancient tradition of lopping off the heads of fierce elephants and transplanting them onto the bodies of Gods.
There was also the theme of guides producing an impressive stream of English sentences that had been learnt beforehand, but then blanking out when asked to answer a simple but impromptu question. I call this the customer-care executive syndrome – remember the Friends episode where Phoebe encounters a CC executive trained with a pamphlet of readymade answers to suit any given question, but whose wires short-circuit when an unanticipated situation arises? At a batik factory in Kandy, we were given a demonstration of a dyeing technique.
Demonstrator (in a sing-song voice, like the ones used by children while reciting answers in class, after learning them by rote from the History textbook): First we put the black-and-white sketch in boiling water with red dye so that the white parts become red and the whole becomes black and red, then we introduce the paraffin wax and dip the cloth into yellow dye and then at the next stage..."
Tourist: That's interesting! By the way, who set up this factory?
(Demonstrator's eyes dart wildly; hunted expression suggests that her favourite History textbook has been dipped in boiling dye.)
In short, though Lanka is well worth visiting, especially if you're starved for lush, verdant landscapes, I recommend that you direct your ears towards the sounds of nature and shut out all other noise, especially the guides' chatter.
[A version of this appeared in Friday's Metro Now]
Now Sri Lanka is a lovely country and I was happy to allow its most visitor-friendly elements – mainly the natural beauty – speak for themselves, but here too there was no escaping the tourism-overkill bug. For a visiting Indian, this can be particularly noticeable. Our two lands are separated by just 30 km of water, but the Lankan tour guides we encountered seemed to think we belonged firmly in the Western-tourist category. So we were expected to gawp at sights that most Delhiites wouldn't normally look at twice.
This became tedious, since only up to a point can one pretend to be enthralled by such observations as "Sir, look at all those buffaloes in the distance!" or "We have stray dogs walking around on these roads. No owners! Sometimes the bus drivers even hit them and kill them." I was tempted to reply that where we came from, buffaloes rule the streets, people often abandon their pets and dhabas frequently serve roadkill for dinner. Also, it's one thing going on an elephant safari as an early-morning leisure activity, but quite another to be handed a certificate informing us that we have just undertaken "a daring and adventurous tusker ride through the dark jungles of Sigiriya". (Actually, we stayed on the main road throughout, motorbikes whizzing past us, and the biggest danger was that our aging mount looked ready to doze off mid-ride.) We should have kept a pamphlet of our own handy, explaining that we in India had an ancient tradition of lopping off the heads of fierce elephants and transplanting them onto the bodies of Gods.
There was also the theme of guides producing an impressive stream of English sentences that had been learnt beforehand, but then blanking out when asked to answer a simple but impromptu question. I call this the customer-care executive syndrome – remember the Friends episode where Phoebe encounters a CC executive trained with a pamphlet of readymade answers to suit any given question, but whose wires short-circuit when an unanticipated situation arises? At a batik factory in Kandy, we were given a demonstration of a dyeing technique.
Demonstrator (in a sing-song voice, like the ones used by children while reciting answers in class, after learning them by rote from the History textbook): First we put the black-and-white sketch in boiling water with red dye so that the white parts become red and the whole becomes black and red, then we introduce the paraffin wax and dip the cloth into yellow dye and then at the next stage..."
Tourist: That's interesting! By the way, who set up this factory?
(Demonstrator's eyes dart wildly; hunted expression suggests that her favourite History textbook has been dipped in boiling dye.)
In short, though Lanka is well worth visiting, especially if you're starved for lush, verdant landscapes, I recommend that you direct your ears towards the sounds of nature and shut out all other noise, especially the guides' chatter.
[A version of this appeared in Friday's Metro Now]
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Sri Lanka photos 2: elephants (and elephant produce)
We began the elephant leg of the tour at the Pinnewala elephant orphanage just off the Kandy road – a key tourist attraction for anyone visiting non-coastal Lanka.
There are shops here that sell products made of elephant dung. On average you get 4 kg of dung from each elephant per day, and that’s enough to produce 48 poster-sized sheets of paper.
Even if you know that the dung-processing is very efficient and scientific, and that the raw material is basically reduced to a collection of fibre after being boiled and treated for a few hours, you can’t help some Beavis-and-Butthead snickering at how proud the shop-owners are of dung products. “Sir, this notepad is more expensive because the pages are all made of pure elephant dung – see!”
Two weeks ago I would never have guessed that I’d be photographing a pile of elephant poo, much less putting it up on my blog, but one learns new things about life every day. In the background are the rectangular frames that are used to mix the dung fibre and pulp together, and make coloured paper.
An elephant skeleton in the shop factory. Just so you know what it looks like.
On a happier note, live elephants on their way to the nearby river for their afternoon bath. It’s a major tourist attraction out here – you can see some of the paparazzi in the background.
This chap’s something of a local legend. One of his front feet was blown away by a landmine and he limps around on three legs. Treads very cautiously and stays near the edge of the river, doesn’t go in too deep. There’s talk of getting him a prosthetic if money can be raised.
One of the mahouts takes a quick nap under the shelter of a rock – it was a hot day.
A family appropriates one of the rocks for itself. The little one was very enthusiastic throughout.
Lady elephants are better at public displays of affection, much the same way it is with humans. This one kept nuzzling her husband's belly with her trunk. He seemed to enjoy it but he didn't reciprocate - looked straight ahead.
Abhilasha feeds a baby elephant. After seeing the photo my mother, in the tradition of all good mothers-in-law, remarked that they have exactly the same smile on their faces, though Abhi is definitely missing a trunk.
From our “brave and adventurous” elephant safari in Sigiriya. Sitting on the guy’s neck was quite an experience – very powerful muscles = free butt massage. Don’t miss his crossed hind legs.
He took us into the lake as well.
In the background is the Sigiriya rock fortress – more on that in the next post.
(Click photos to enlarge)
There are shops here that sell products made of elephant dung. On average you get 4 kg of dung from each elephant per day, and that’s enough to produce 48 poster-sized sheets of paper.
Even if you know that the dung-processing is very efficient and scientific, and that the raw material is basically reduced to a collection of fibre after being boiled and treated for a few hours, you can’t help some Beavis-and-Butthead snickering at how proud the shop-owners are of dung products. “Sir, this notepad is more expensive because the pages are all made of pure elephant dung – see!”
Two weeks ago I would never have guessed that I’d be photographing a pile of elephant poo, much less putting it up on my blog, but one learns new things about life every day. In the background are the rectangular frames that are used to mix the dung fibre and pulp together, and make coloured paper.
An elephant skeleton in the shop factory. Just so you know what it looks like.
On a happier note, live elephants on their way to the nearby river for their afternoon bath. It’s a major tourist attraction out here – you can see some of the paparazzi in the background.
This chap’s something of a local legend. One of his front feet was blown away by a landmine and he limps around on three legs. Treads very cautiously and stays near the edge of the river, doesn’t go in too deep. There’s talk of getting him a prosthetic if money can be raised.
One of the mahouts takes a quick nap under the shelter of a rock – it was a hot day.
A family appropriates one of the rocks for itself. The little one was very enthusiastic throughout.
Lady elephants are better at public displays of affection, much the same way it is with humans. This one kept nuzzling her husband's belly with her trunk. He seemed to enjoy it but he didn't reciprocate - looked straight ahead.
Abhilasha feeds a baby elephant. After seeing the photo my mother, in the tradition of all good mothers-in-law, remarked that they have exactly the same smile on their faces, though Abhi is definitely missing a trunk.
From our “brave and adventurous” elephant safari in Sigiriya. Sitting on the guy’s neck was quite an experience – very powerful muscles = free butt massage. Don’t miss his crossed hind legs.
He took us into the lake as well.
In the background is the Sigiriya rock fortress – more on that in the next post.(Click photos to enlarge)
Friday, May 30, 2008
Sri Lanka photos - 1
Am putting the pics up in random order over a few posts, along with some commentary. (Click photos to enlarge.)
Nearly everywhere we travel, we manage to do some impromptu “cat tourism” and the pattern continued in Lanka; our guide was befuddled by the greater interest we showed in the feline-life than in the monuments and sculptures he was pointing out. The most impressive of the kitties we encountered was this little model of piety in the Ruwanvelisaya stupa complex in Anuradhapura.
He/she remained in this position all the time we were there – arms stretched out in prayer, feet folded in a distinctly yogic posture. Didn’t move at all. I also like the expression on the woman's face.
Another languid (but not as saintly) cat outside the Arunalu Spice and Herbal Garden, just before Kandy.
Once we were done tickling this one’s belly, we dutifully spent some time inside the garden, admiring the plants, learning about the preparation of the very distinct curry powder that is used in nearly all Lankan cuisine. (The yellow daal was consistently excellent, though it isn’t for delicate stomachs.) Had some fine herbal tea too – very fresh, like all the tea and juices we had in the country.
But still running with the animal theme: here’s a bedraggled mongrel on a cold and damp day in Nuwara Eliya.
I was very taken by the topography of this place. Had thought it would be like a north Indian hill station, situated on a mountainside so that you have to negotiate steep and winding roads uphill or downhill even to travel just a few kilometers. But Nuwara Eliya is on a plateau, so even though it’s 2,000 metres above sea level there are vast patches of flat land, including the area occupied by the lake you see in this photo. Much more relaxing on the whole for people who suffer from motion sickness on mountain roads. Some of the scenery also reminded me of the Scottish highlands; these photos don't really do it justice.
Hanuman temple in Nuwara Eliya. The people who built it claim this was the spot where Sita was kept captive by Ravana, and where Hanuman found her.
Naturally, this means that they have a spot on one of the rocks marked with yellow to show that this was the indent left by the deity's giant foot when he landed here.
Also, one of the lake-beds in this region has a black-ish tinge, which has to mean that this is where Hanuman dipped his tail after it had been set on fire. (More on tourism overkill in a subsequent post.)
Next to the temple, there's a flower nursery dedicated to the abducted goddess, with her name spelt very differently from the north Indian style.
One of the performers in the mask dance, part of a cultural show we saw at the Kandy Arts Association Hall. Picked up a few of these masks later.
And the Raban dance, which involves the balancing of several spinning drums. Very impressive. Apologies for the picture quality though - dark hall, poor vantage point.
The ancient capital of Anuradhapura is full of old buildings and ruins, not all of which seem very well-maintained. We had a decent enough time there but it could have been better: we were there at the hottest time of day, there was very little shade and lots of walking to be done, much of it barefoot. This is the Isurumuniya temple, dating from the 5th century, along with a famous carving of forbidden lovers.
Also from Anuradhapura: a section of the semi-circular moonstone in the Abhayagiri monastery, with its motifs of buffaloes, lions, horses and elephants - some say the animals stand for the four stages of life, though there are other interpretations too.
(In the miniature versions that we saw in souvenir shops, the swans looked like Donald Ducks.)
Also, a guardstone, with the guard carrying a pot of plenty, representing prosperity and fertility.
More pics to follow, including several that involve elephants.
Nearly everywhere we travel, we manage to do some impromptu “cat tourism” and the pattern continued in Lanka; our guide was befuddled by the greater interest we showed in the feline-life than in the monuments and sculptures he was pointing out. The most impressive of the kitties we encountered was this little model of piety in the Ruwanvelisaya stupa complex in Anuradhapura.
He/she remained in this position all the time we were there – arms stretched out in prayer, feet folded in a distinctly yogic posture. Didn’t move at all. I also like the expression on the woman's face.Another languid (but not as saintly) cat outside the Arunalu Spice and Herbal Garden, just before Kandy.
Once we were done tickling this one’s belly, we dutifully spent some time inside the garden, admiring the plants, learning about the preparation of the very distinct curry powder that is used in nearly all Lankan cuisine. (The yellow daal was consistently excellent, though it isn’t for delicate stomachs.) Had some fine herbal tea too – very fresh, like all the tea and juices we had in the country.But still running with the animal theme: here’s a bedraggled mongrel on a cold and damp day in Nuwara Eliya.
I was very taken by the topography of this place. Had thought it would be like a north Indian hill station, situated on a mountainside so that you have to negotiate steep and winding roads uphill or downhill even to travel just a few kilometers. But Nuwara Eliya is on a plateau, so even though it’s 2,000 metres above sea level there are vast patches of flat land, including the area occupied by the lake you see in this photo. Much more relaxing on the whole for people who suffer from motion sickness on mountain roads. Some of the scenery also reminded me of the Scottish highlands; these photos don't really do it justice.
Hanuman temple in Nuwara Eliya. The people who built it claim this was the spot where Sita was kept captive by Ravana, and where Hanuman found her.
Naturally, this means that they have a spot on one of the rocks marked with yellow to show that this was the indent left by the deity's giant foot when he landed here.
Also, one of the lake-beds in this region has a black-ish tinge, which has to mean that this is where Hanuman dipped his tail after it had been set on fire. (More on tourism overkill in a subsequent post.)Next to the temple, there's a flower nursery dedicated to the abducted goddess, with her name spelt very differently from the north Indian style.
One of the performers in the mask dance, part of a cultural show we saw at the Kandy Arts Association Hall. Picked up a few of these masks later.
And the Raban dance, which involves the balancing of several spinning drums. Very impressive. Apologies for the picture quality though - dark hall, poor vantage point.
The ancient capital of Anuradhapura is full of old buildings and ruins, not all of which seem very well-maintained. We had a decent enough time there but it could have been better: we were there at the hottest time of day, there was very little shade and lots of walking to be done, much of it barefoot. This is the Isurumuniya temple, dating from the 5th century, along with a famous carving of forbidden lovers.
Also from Anuradhapura: a section of the semi-circular moonstone in the Abhayagiri monastery, with its motifs of buffaloes, lions, horses and elephants - some say the animals stand for the four stages of life, though there are other interpretations too.
(In the miniature versions that we saw in souvenir shops, the swans looked like Donald Ducks.)Also, a guardstone, with the guard carrying a pot of plenty, representing prosperity and fertility.
More pics to follow, including several that involve elephants.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Back
Well, the vacation happened and it was nice, which is just as well since tough times loom ahead – the family situation is getting more intense generally. Shortly after touching down I learnt that my grandfather had passed away around 36 hours earlier. My dadi, one of the strongest, most pragmatic people I know, decided not to call and inform us because she felt it would spoil the last day of our stay and anyhow we couldn’t have made it back to Delhi more than a few hours before we were scheduled to. We missed the cremation, and that’s something I feel very bad about. My last memory of dadaji is of him wishing us well, telling us to “have a good time in Ceylon”. He turned 90 this March and much of his natural poise and authority – which impressed so many people during his lengthy army career – had been undermined after a stroke a couple of years ago. But he was still very alert given his age and circumstances, and still partial to a peg of scotch every evening.
Also, the vaguely old-world British style of speaking English was in place till the end. “How are you, my dear?” he would say to dadiji each morning in a clipped but warm voice, though most of their longer conversations were in Punjabi. They would have celebrated their 60th anniversary later this year and I worry about how she will cope. She had been prepared for his passing for a long time, and often voiced her hope that he would be the first to go (since he was so dependent on her), but dealing with the actual loss is of course a completely different matter. They had been together since she was 20 and he 30, and though it wasn’t a love marriage in the often-myopic way that we use that term today, it was built on respect, an attachment that kept growing over the years and an understanding that adjustments had to be made (in both directions, not just on her part) given their very different natures. They traveled the world together on his postings, on one occasion living for years in another country with no other family to depend on; they brought up a son who was to be a constant source of disappointment and trouble, and later in life they did everything they could for a grandson who couldn’t always be around for them. It’s difficult to imagine the strength they must have derived from each other through all the good and bad times.
Most people don’t have to wait till their thirties to experience losing a grandparent for the first time, but in my case one grandparent (my nana) died before I was born and the other three have had extremely long lives. This has had its good and bad sides. On one hand, it’s been painful to see them get old and fragile, constantly afflicted by illnesses, dependent on domestic help on a day-to-day basis while also dealing with other family woes that I won’t mention here. When Abhilasha and I got married last year, my dadi joked that she wished it had happened when I was in my early or mid-20s since they would have been in better shape then, and would have been able to pamper their granddaughter-in-law the way they would have liked.
On the other hand, their longevity has meant that I've been able to spend some quality time with them in the past few years – something that wouldn’t have happened if they had left earlier, when I was in the much more self-involved phase of growing up and working hard to establish myself in my profession. I’ve cherished this extra time, the fact that it’s helped me fulfill a few of my responsibilities towards them, or even make them happy through little things like seeing my name at the top of a newspaper article.
Though I’ve lived with my mum and nani since I was a child, I’m also the only grandchild of my dada and dadi, and for all practical purposes their only immediate family too – so the level of responsibility has been high, especially in the past few years as they have grown more infirm. (I should clarify that for most of this time, my dadi has been astonishingly resilient and very determined that my life and work mustn’t be compromised on their account, except in the most extreme situations.)
Am going to do what I can to persuade her to stay with us now, but there are many complications, many things that have to be settled first, and none of it is going to happen quickly. It looks like I’m going to be spending a lot of time moving between houses and dealing with tetchy matters in the foreseeable future. Might also have to cut down on work after I’ve finished with the few assignments I have pending.
Will post a few old photos of my grandparents once I have them scanned, and will also put up some pictures from Sri Lanka soon, but otherwise it looks like activity here will continue to be sporadic for some time. More updates when possible.
Also, the vaguely old-world British style of speaking English was in place till the end. “How are you, my dear?” he would say to dadiji each morning in a clipped but warm voice, though most of their longer conversations were in Punjabi. They would have celebrated their 60th anniversary later this year and I worry about how she will cope. She had been prepared for his passing for a long time, and often voiced her hope that he would be the first to go (since he was so dependent on her), but dealing with the actual loss is of course a completely different matter. They had been together since she was 20 and he 30, and though it wasn’t a love marriage in the often-myopic way that we use that term today, it was built on respect, an attachment that kept growing over the years and an understanding that adjustments had to be made (in both directions, not just on her part) given their very different natures. They traveled the world together on his postings, on one occasion living for years in another country with no other family to depend on; they brought up a son who was to be a constant source of disappointment and trouble, and later in life they did everything they could for a grandson who couldn’t always be around for them. It’s difficult to imagine the strength they must have derived from each other through all the good and bad times.
Most people don’t have to wait till their thirties to experience losing a grandparent for the first time, but in my case one grandparent (my nana) died before I was born and the other three have had extremely long lives. This has had its good and bad sides. On one hand, it’s been painful to see them get old and fragile, constantly afflicted by illnesses, dependent on domestic help on a day-to-day basis while also dealing with other family woes that I won’t mention here. When Abhilasha and I got married last year, my dadi joked that she wished it had happened when I was in my early or mid-20s since they would have been in better shape then, and would have been able to pamper their granddaughter-in-law the way they would have liked.
On the other hand, their longevity has meant that I've been able to spend some quality time with them in the past few years – something that wouldn’t have happened if they had left earlier, when I was in the much more self-involved phase of growing up and working hard to establish myself in my profession. I’ve cherished this extra time, the fact that it’s helped me fulfill a few of my responsibilities towards them, or even make them happy through little things like seeing my name at the top of a newspaper article.
Though I’ve lived with my mum and nani since I was a child, I’m also the only grandchild of my dada and dadi, and for all practical purposes their only immediate family too – so the level of responsibility has been high, especially in the past few years as they have grown more infirm. (I should clarify that for most of this time, my dadi has been astonishingly resilient and very determined that my life and work mustn’t be compromised on their account, except in the most extreme situations.)
Am going to do what I can to persuade her to stay with us now, but there are many complications, many things that have to be settled first, and none of it is going to happen quickly. It looks like I’m going to be spending a lot of time moving between houses and dealing with tetchy matters in the foreseeable future. Might also have to cut down on work after I’ve finished with the few assignments I have pending.
Will post a few old photos of my grandparents once I have them scanned, and will also put up some pictures from Sri Lanka soon, but otherwise it looks like activity here will continue to be sporadic for some time. More updates when possible.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Going to Sri Lanka...
...for a week. Or Ceylon, as my dadi persists in calling it. Much-needed break after all the family illnesses/troubles of the last few months (don’t even want to think about how many enticing travel assignments I’ve had to turn down in the past year).
Will mostly be in the highlands and non-coastal areas: Kandy, Nuwara Eliya, Sigiriya, Dambulla, Anuradhapura. Won’t have Net access for most of the time I’m away, but will hopefully have some pictures to put up next week. Back on the 28th. Bye-bye.
Will mostly be in the highlands and non-coastal areas: Kandy, Nuwara Eliya, Sigiriya, Dambulla, Anuradhapura. Won’t have Net access for most of the time I’m away, but will hopefully have some pictures to put up next week. Back on the 28th. Bye-bye.
The LOTR disc-set
The 12-disc extended edition of The Lord of the Rings trilogy is available in stores in India now. I picked up the set a couple of days ago and it looks sumptuous. As anyone who reads this blog often will know, I make a lot of noise about DVD extras and the need for directors to use the medium to provide value-addition for home-viewers (rather than simply have the film on the disc along with a “songs selection” feature, as many DVDs of Hindi films lazily do). Well, what Peter Jackson and his team have accomplished with this disc-set represents the most thoughtful use of the medium I’ve yet seen; it’s obvious that they've relished the opportunity to show off the behind-the-scenes material that piled up during the many years of shooting. “Specially created for home viewing” says the package, and the booklet accompanying the set adds that with no constraints on running time, each film was extended by between 30 and 50 minutes (sounds a bit like a 600-word film review being expanded on a blog!).But rather than simply inserting deleted scenes, Jackson approached this Extended Edition as if he were creating a whole new version of the film. He and editor John Gilbert carefully evaluated material to be integrated into the film, and then worked to bring each scene up to the same polish as the rest of the feature – visual effects were completed, dialogue was recorded and sound effects created.Based on what I’ve seen of the discs so far, these are no idle claims. Each of the three films in the trilogy – The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King – has its own box with four discs. Two of the discs in each box are labeled Appendices and Jackson himself introduces these, explaining the bonus features and how the menus should be navigated. The features include dozens of good-sized documentaries about various aspects of the filming; galleries with thousands of categorised images (storyboards, artwork created for the production, behind-the-scenes photos); four separate feature-length commentary options (by the director and the writers, the cast, the production and design teams, each group providing a specialised perspective on participating in one of the grandest movie epics ever); and detailed interactive maps, based on the ones that Tolkien created for his books, which allow the viewer to trace the routes taken by various sets of characters (a mini-screen simultaneously plays part of the relevant scene from the film, so the various complicated place names can be easily related to the landscapes in the movies). Whoever put this material together must have had a lot of fun doing it.
Of course, to get through all these features you have to be an obsessive fan of the trilogy, or a Tolkien-nerd, and also have an obscene amount of free time on your hands. It’s staggering to think of how much time would be required to navigate everything on this set. The films by themselves add up to around 12 hours and if you were to listen to all four of the commentary tracks (I did say you have to be obsessive), that means a cool 48 hours spent in front of your TV screen. The documentaries run into several hours too, and it’s impossible to estimate the amount of time needed to see all of the images in the galleries or to study all the map routes.I doubt I’ll be able to do all of this anytime soon, but for now I’ve watched the extended version of The Fellowship of the Ring as well as bits of The Return of the King, and the extra material has been quite good, especially the quieter scenes that punctuate the grand moments (this is something I occasionally thought was missing in the films when I saw them on the big screen): such as the melancholy scene early in the first film where Frodo and Sam watch a group of ghostlike, fading elves marching slowly towards the ships that will take them to Valinor; or the confrontation between the heroes and Sauron's sarcastic messenger (known as the “Mouth of Sauron”) outside the Black Gates of Mordor just before the final battle begins.
More info here, here and here.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Waiter, there’s a drop of soup in my plate!
It’s not often that I’m struck dumb in a restaurant, but this happened at the Smoke House Grill in Greater Kailash a few days go. We had been warned by food-journo colleagues that the place is basically a bar that makes a very half-hearted effort at serving meals, but we were meeting friends on a short time-frame and our preferred haunt in the complex (Mainland China) had a long waiting queue, so we plodded across to Smoke House instead.
There were four of us. Since we weren’t hugely keen on the appetizers, we decided to order two soups and split them. All went well up to the moment we were placing the order and the phrase “1 into 2” was used. At this, the waiter smiled sadly and shook his head.
“Sorry sir,” he said, “Our soup portion is too small and it cannot be divided further.”
Coming from a member of the serving staff at a high-profile restaurant, this was a startling proclamation, but we recovered our poise. “Never mind how small it is,” said my wife, “We’ll make do. Just bring it in two bowls.”
“Ma’am, no!” he replied, with greater conviction, and the overall demeanor of a man who has fought these battles before and emerged triumphant each time, “It is very, very small. We don’t have bowls that are small enough.”
After he left we sat about muttering at each other, marveling at this conundrum of the indivisible soup. He was probably exaggerating, we decided, or maybe he was in a bad mood and taking it out on us; or this was a management ploy to get diners to order extra dishes (if so, we had foiled it by sticking to our original order). At any rate, the portions couldn’t be THAT small – we figured we could still pass the bowls around the table. But then the soup arrived and it turned out that the waiter knew his beat.
It was served in one of the most impressively designed pieces of crockery I have seen. Imagine a largish dinner plate – 14 or so inches in diameter – with a tiny bit in the centre hollowed out to make a circular cavity that can accommodate around 40 ml of liquid. Into this hollow was poured the soup, very carefully, so that not a drop would spill out onto the rest of the plate. One of the soups was tomato and it must in fairness be said that it was aesthetically pleasing: a blob of orange surrounded by acres and acres of white plate – like a fried egg with an exceptionally small yolk. But they should have given us a complementary magnifying glass.
Providing a visual break was a tiny piece of maida floating despondently in the middle of the thin, translucent liquid. They called this a dimsum, but that’s a bit like calling Frodo Baggins the Great Khali. We suspect that the only reason the chefs allowed this food item to be pried from their grasp was that it would displace the volume of the liquid and raise the soup level, thus giving the impression that it was three spoonfuls instead of two.
“You didn’t have to bother with the big plate,” one of my friends called out, “You could have served the soup in a ladle instead.” The waiter simply grinned and walked away – it was obvious that this wasn't the first time he was hearing this joke.
But the restaurant did make amends for the small soup in the end – the bill was a large one.
P.S. While on food, a recommendation for Delhiites interested in Malaysian cuisine. There’s this very promising new place called Kayalan (website here) – it’s based in Neb Sarai in extreme south Delhi but it does home-delivery far and wide (even up to central Delhi as far as I know). I’ve tried their Nasi Goreng (which is a staple order for me at an Oriental restaurant), Otak Otak (steamed fish fillet in banana leaves) and marinated Pandan chicken, and all of it has been very good. Abhilasha, who ordered from there with her office crowd a few days ago (the ball-and-chain routine has a few side-advantages!), also recommends the Char Kway Teow, which is a stir-fried preparation of rice noodles with prawn or crab. You’ll find the details on the Menu section of the website.
There were four of us. Since we weren’t hugely keen on the appetizers, we decided to order two soups and split them. All went well up to the moment we were placing the order and the phrase “1 into 2” was used. At this, the waiter smiled sadly and shook his head.
“Sorry sir,” he said, “Our soup portion is too small and it cannot be divided further.”
Coming from a member of the serving staff at a high-profile restaurant, this was a startling proclamation, but we recovered our poise. “Never mind how small it is,” said my wife, “We’ll make do. Just bring it in two bowls.”
“Ma’am, no!” he replied, with greater conviction, and the overall demeanor of a man who has fought these battles before and emerged triumphant each time, “It is very, very small. We don’t have bowls that are small enough.”
After he left we sat about muttering at each other, marveling at this conundrum of the indivisible soup. He was probably exaggerating, we decided, or maybe he was in a bad mood and taking it out on us; or this was a management ploy to get diners to order extra dishes (if so, we had foiled it by sticking to our original order). At any rate, the portions couldn’t be THAT small – we figured we could still pass the bowls around the table. But then the soup arrived and it turned out that the waiter knew his beat.
It was served in one of the most impressively designed pieces of crockery I have seen. Imagine a largish dinner plate – 14 or so inches in diameter – with a tiny bit in the centre hollowed out to make a circular cavity that can accommodate around 40 ml of liquid. Into this hollow was poured the soup, very carefully, so that not a drop would spill out onto the rest of the plate. One of the soups was tomato and it must in fairness be said that it was aesthetically pleasing: a blob of orange surrounded by acres and acres of white plate – like a fried egg with an exceptionally small yolk. But they should have given us a complementary magnifying glass.
Providing a visual break was a tiny piece of maida floating despondently in the middle of the thin, translucent liquid. They called this a dimsum, but that’s a bit like calling Frodo Baggins the Great Khali. We suspect that the only reason the chefs allowed this food item to be pried from their grasp was that it would displace the volume of the liquid and raise the soup level, thus giving the impression that it was three spoonfuls instead of two.
“You didn’t have to bother with the big plate,” one of my friends called out, “You could have served the soup in a ladle instead.” The waiter simply grinned and walked away – it was obvious that this wasn't the first time he was hearing this joke.
But the restaurant did make amends for the small soup in the end – the bill was a large one.
P.S. While on food, a recommendation for Delhiites interested in Malaysian cuisine. There’s this very promising new place called Kayalan (website here) – it’s based in Neb Sarai in extreme south Delhi but it does home-delivery far and wide (even up to central Delhi as far as I know). I’ve tried their Nasi Goreng (which is a staple order for me at an Oriental restaurant), Otak Otak (steamed fish fillet in banana leaves) and marinated Pandan chicken, and all of it has been very good. Abhilasha, who ordered from there with her office crowd a few days ago (the ball-and-chain routine has a few side-advantages!), also recommends the Char Kway Teow, which is a stir-fried preparation of rice noodles with prawn or crab. You’ll find the details on the Menu section of the website.
Phew!
I think I lost around 10 years of my life watching this match yesterday - almost feel like I played the thing myself. Warrior moment for Rafa, holding on to his number 2 ranking in the face of some absolutely superb clay-court tennis by Djokovic. Great match from both guys, great last game (which went on for something like 20 minutes). Rafa meets Federer in the Hamburg final today, but I really don't care whether he wins or not. Yesterday was enough.
I spend a lot of my spare time on the Tennis World blog and it's been interesting to see how the arrival of Djokovic in the last few months seems to have united Federer and Nadal fans. Roger's groupies were actually cheering Rafa on yesterday (though that's partly because if Rafa had lost the number 2 spot, he might have been seeded to meet Roger in the French Open semi-final this year instead of the final, and that would have been frazzle-inducing for any Federer fan). The camaraderie between both groups of fans has been quite remarkable in recent months, especially given all the rancour that used to be directed at Rafa when he first came on to the scene. (More on that in these posts, about sports-fans and their perceptions.) A lot of that rancour is now being directed at Djokovic, who is seen as the cocky young upstart trying to overturn the established order, but I think he'll start building up goodwill for himself in the next few months. So it goes in sport.
P.S.: if none of this makes any sense to you, look away. I usually do a good job of keeping my very intense life as a tennis fanatic away from this blog, but have to unburden every once in a while.
I spend a lot of my spare time on the Tennis World blog and it's been interesting to see how the arrival of Djokovic in the last few months seems to have united Federer and Nadal fans. Roger's groupies were actually cheering Rafa on yesterday (though that's partly because if Rafa had lost the number 2 spot, he might have been seeded to meet Roger in the French Open semi-final this year instead of the final, and that would have been frazzle-inducing for any Federer fan). The camaraderie between both groups of fans has been quite remarkable in recent months, especially given all the rancour that used to be directed at Rafa when he first came on to the scene. (More on that in these posts, about sports-fans and their perceptions.) A lot of that rancour is now being directed at Djokovic, who is seen as the cocky young upstart trying to overturn the established order, but I think he'll start building up goodwill for himself in the next few months. So it goes in sport.
P.S.: if none of this makes any sense to you, look away. I usually do a good job of keeping my very intense life as a tennis fanatic away from this blog, but have to unburden every once in a while.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Bhoot camp: notes on Bhoothnath
I had very low expectations going in to see Bhoothnath (I feared it would be the culmination in a series of dreadful films – U, Me aur Hum, Goal and Jodhaa Akbar being among the others – that Tehelka has asked me to review in recent weeks) and the first half-hour lived down to these expectations. After a five-minute preamble that could have come out of any B-movie about teens in a spooky mansion, we meet a family of three, newly arrived in Goa. Aditya (Shah Rukh Khan in a relaxed cameo) is a cruise-ship engineer who is setting sail soon, leaving his wife Anjali (Juhi Chawla) and their little son, the unfortunately nicknamed Banku (Aman Siddiqui), in an old haveli rented by his employers. It’s a very large house and much is made of its largeness (“Upar chhat bhi hai!” the freshly arrived tenants marvel in unison, leaving us to imagine what the place might have looked like if it had been otherwise). As Banku discovers late one night, it’s haunted too: the ghost of a former owner, Kailash Nath (Amitabh Bachchan), doesn’t want people straying into his personal fiefdom and will do everything he can to scare them off. But he hasn’t reckoned with Banku, who starts bossing him around instead.The early scenes had a very amateurish feel about them, as if they had been written and shot in two or three days. The slapstick, built around Satish Shah as a school principal who covets the children’s lunches, was tedious – you could point out that I’m probably not the target audience for this anyway, but there were a few kids sitting in my row in the hall and they appeared just as unimpressed by the onscreen tomfoolery (they were more animated when an Etam lingerie ad played just before the film began). And while I don’t think it’s possible for Juhi Chawla to be less than likable, she looks tired and worn-out here, a reminder that it’s been exactly 20 years since QSQT and that we too are growing old.
Watching Amitabh in his early scenes, I mused that he may have taken on this role only because he was playing Babban Singh in RGV’s Aag at the time and he could simply step into the studio next door without changing his clothes or washing up. (Personal hygiene is not high on Bhoothnath’s priority list and in the first few scenes he strongly resembles Babban in Aag. Even some of AB’s facial gestures – scowling menacingly at the camera, sticking out his tongue and wiggling it around – play like outtakes from the earlier performance. Bhoothnath’s attempts to scare Banku are just as ineffectual as Babban’s efforts to convince the audience that he is the ultimate bad-ass villain.)But then, almost imperceptibly (and much to my surprise), the film found its footing and started to improve. As Bhoothnath and Banku develop an unlikely bond, Amitabh slowly sinks his chomps into his role and you sense that he’s enjoying himself (which is an impression I haven’t got in some of his other recent work) in the company of young Siddiqui. There are some good visual effects – I liked the scenes with the dry leaves and the furniture rearrangement, and the goofy touches such as Bhoothnath gliding through the gates of the haveli as if he’s doing the moonwalk. The highlight of the film’s middle section is the gentle, nicely shot song “Chalo Jaane Do”, sung by Amitabh and Juhi in their own voices. (Another song, “Mere Buddy”, where ghost and boy groove and hip-hop with glamorous back-up dancers, isn’t as melodious, but it had me wondering if the support staff were Bhoothnath’s friends from the spirit world – if so, this could be the first convincing explanation for the extras in a Bollywood dance number moving like zombies.)
The genre-change trick
In earlier reviews, I’ve touched on the schizophrenia of many current Hindi films – the tendency to split themselves down the middle in a simplified attempt to provide viewers “the complete package”, so that the movie you see post-intermission is completely different in tone from what went before. (U, Me aur Hum was the worst offender.) This happens in the final half-hour of Bhoothnath too. When the ghost's back-story is revealed, what started as a fantasy for children changes direction to become a family melodrama – full of teary-eyed speeches and recrimination – about demanding parents, insensitive progeny, the importance of forgiveness and the even greater importance of performing ceremonies around a sacred fire.
I had a mixed response to this change of tone. It’s jarring and inconsistent with the first half of the film, and my feelings about religion and the religious indoctrination of children being what they are, I strongly disapproved of the climactic scenes where Banku is made to participate in a shraadh ritual to help Bhoothnath’s atma find mukti.** Personally, I would have been happier with a climactic martial-arts confrontation between Bhoothnath’s ghost and his evil, westernised daughter-in-law (the source of much of the old man’s misery while he was alive).
But if you accept that this is the film's premise, the dramatic scenes – however misguided in their conception – are well-executed on their own terms. Director Vivek Sharma and his writers seemed more assured and on firmer ground with the family-drama material than with the kiddie stuff that precedes it. Of course, this means that Bhoothnath ends up being something of a hotchpotch, but are we really looking for narrative unity in this movie anyway? The later scenes might feel out of place, but you can just as easily say that about the fantasy song early on, which has Banku and the other schoolkids dressed in colourful cargo pants, vests, headbands and cheerleader outfits, and carrying basketballs and pom-poms.
In the final analysis, the question that must be asked of Bhoothnath, as of many other mainstream Hindi films, is not "Is this movie internally consistent?" but "Does it have enough 'paisa vasool' scenes in it, even if those scenes are randomly dispersed and should logically belong in several different films?" My answer to the second question is yes, but only just, and as always it depends on what your definition of paisa-vasool is.
** Footnote: there IS humour to be found in the shraadh scene, if you know where to look for it: the almost diabolically gleeful expression on little Banku’s face as he pours stuff into the divine fire gives the impression that he’s offering burnt flesh to a very vengeful God. Also, with all the speculation about the testy off-screen relationship between Shah Rukh and Amitabh, there’s something cheekily appropriate about SRK participating in a ritual that will send AB packing to an indeterminate other-world. (At the end of the film, when the ghost disappears and Banku dolefully asks his dad “Papa, mera Bhoothnath kahaan gaya?”, my wife preempted Shah Rukh’s reply: “Tere Bhoothnath ki aisi ki taisi! Ab saare endorsements mere!”)
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