District 9

Sci-Fi movies (the good ones at any rate) generally oscillate between mundane action and metaphysics. Rare is a movie that combines genuine dystopia with high-octane action, stark realism of modern cities and socio-political challenges. The only other movie that comes to mind is Alfonso Curaon's Children of Men. For once, thankfully, the aliens of District 9 don't land in the US, but in a post-apartheid Johannesburg.

Neil Blomkamp's aliens of District 9 are not particularly smart, they have no aim or purpose on earth and live as scavengers. As it happens so often in such cases, they are rounded up in a slum and forced to live among crime, poverty and deplorable conditions. To write more of the story, would be to give away too much. I'd rather delve into the film's directorial prowess.

Blomkamp's docu-drama like realism of a grimy, claustrophobic slum populated by aliens, crime addicted gangsters and an economy of simple scavenging is remniscent of Slumdog Millionaire and City of God. But the director's real genius is not his portrayal of a slum, but his ability to transcend this reality and look into socio-political issues like the world of private armies and governments conceding administrative space to large private organization and the simple impunity that "Us versus Them" offers. Blomkamp doesn't stop there, he even delves into the human emotions of Kafka-esque Metamorphosis.

The movie runs with a feverish pace even while keeping the big picture in sight. You don't have to be a Sci-Fi enthusiast to enjoy District 9, you just have to appreciate good movies.

Kamineyyyy

You walk out of the threatre and think, "Wait a minute! Why has no one thought of this before?" We were made to believe in the world of technicolor dreams, of eastman color locales, of flash-backs in sepia, of dancing ladies and happy families. We never saw this in real life and somehow it was make-belive (Jo bhi soye hai khabron mein unko jagaana nahi.). But not for Vishal Bhardwaj such happy-yuppy world. His world is grisly, grimy, ugly, grotesque and fascinating.

Bharadwaj populates Mumbai's slums with all kinds of sidey, insidious charecters, each one pursuing his own goals and agendas. They are Bengalis mafia men, Marathi goons-turned-politicians, African diamond traders, crooked cops and drug dealers. Thrown in to this mix are two twins. Ah! The twins, probably bollywood's second most loved concept (usurped of their first place recently by those NRI heroes). Charlie and Guddu played by Shahid Kapoor. One has a lifp and the other ftammerf. Charlie believes a person is not defined by the road he takes, but by the one he doesn't. Guddu has it all planned out, sex in 2009, marriage in 2014.

So what happens when Charlie has something all those sidey charecters would love to get their hands on........ Dhan te nan, te ne ne na…. Yep its all there, romance, fights, tragedies, sacrifice and even a video game like shoot out. This is one movie that we can call "Bollywood Cool".

Love in the time of Swine-flu

Life Lessons from Swine-Flu

1) Panic is more contagious than flu virus: In a nation of a billion, and an increasingly violent one, 20 deaths shouldn't worry anyone. But it does and we are suddenly a nation of mask wearers.

2) Everyone and Baba Ramdev has an opinion: Baba Ramdev, in his usual inane way, declared Swine-Flu could be cured by yoga. Even that brash up-start Sri Ravi Shankar (of Art of Living fame) declared it could be cured by Ayurveda.

3) News channels can be critical and silly at the same time: Swine-Flu panic was created by News channels, period. But they can also hold a debate of whether 'we' are over-reacting. In reality it is 'they' who over-react, create a panic and then try to be critical.

Urban legends : The Swine-Flu Chapter

There's a reason why UFO sightings and alien landing happen only in the U.S. For the same reason my neighbours' Ganesh statues started consuming milk a few months after the advent of Cable TV. It is also the same reason those characters in Delhi-6 claimed to see Kaala Bunder ("We saw him. He's invisible."). Swine-flu too finds victims only in metros, not in remote villages or sleepy small towns. This urban legend, like its predecessors, is a news broadcaster's wet dream.

Ofcourse we are all worried of Swine-Flu. But we also fail to ask if those construction workers building plush up-market apartments wear the same masks, if the servant maid living in a city slum uses hand-cleansing lotion. Sorry, in our middle-class world of "Daddy-knows-best" and arranged marriages, the only thing that can disturb our lives is a damn flu virus.

Symptoms of Swine-Flu Paranoia:

1) You wear a mask.
2) You wash your hands obsessively every few minutes.
3) Walk away from anyone who sneezes or coughs.
4) Apply weird lotions with vodka-like odour.
5) You feel a little feverish, with body pains (Or you are just bored with work.)
6) You read too much Times of India and watch Indian news channels.

Dusty and Boring........

For a Booker prize winning novel written by a multiple Oscar winning writer, this book is mediocre at best. Long before the Booker garnered glamor and fat advances, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala won it in 1975 for Heat and Dust. It was also turned into a movie by James Ivory.

The narrator, a young English woman, comes to India sometime after the Independence to understand the life of her step-mother, Olivia Rivers. She knows Olivia only from the letters she wrote to a friend. Her interest is the affair Olivia had with a local Nawab. It is not clear why the narrator is so interested in Olivia or what she intends to establish from her stay.

Jhabvala was born Ruther Prawer in a German Jewish family. She immigrated to England before World War-II, married an Indian architect, Cyrus Jhabvala and lived in India for a significant part of her life. Inspite of her background, she falls into the all too familiar pattern of exoticizing of India. The India of the British Raj with Nawabs, servants, strange customs, poverty, heat and dust. In some strange way she also allows her characters to justify customs like "sutte" (burning of a widow on her husband's pyre). There is an attempt to portray the characters as instinctive and passionate, but they come off as petulant and silly.

I wouldn't recommend this novel unless you wanted to understand the stereotypical India from a westerner's eye.