Golt movies ain't half bad

Okay, if "Golt" offends my Telugu brethren, I will invoke the Chetan Bhagat excuse - you only make fun of people who you care for.

It is now almost three years in Andhra Pradesh and what better way to get to know a people than to watch their movies? My wife and I have started watching Telugu movies on DVD borrowed from our neighbors. Going to the theater does not work because of the language problem, which is conveniently resolved with subtitles in the DVD form. And yes, my conclusion of this post's title was reached by a sample size of two - Magadheera and Arya 2.

When I was growing up, Chiranjeevi movies (dubbed in Tamil) used to be shown in the 10:30 morning show in my home town; I remember seeing trailers of these and feeling all superior about Tamil movies - the Chiranjeevi movies seemed like cheesy masalas even at that age. The only good Telugu movies seemed to be from K. Viswanath (Sankarabaranam, Sagara Sangamam, Swathi Muthyam etc.) at that time.

Fast forward 25 years (sheesh, I feel old writing that), and now Chiranjeevi's son Ramcharan is acting in masala movies, arguably much better ones. Magadheera was a super-hit last year and we could see why. It is a love-story that spans 400 years - a warrior and a princess from a pseudo-historical Deccan kingdom whose unfulfilled love gets another chance when they are reborn in modern-day Andhra (or is it Telengana?). Ramcharan is swashbuckling in the warrior role and passable in his modern day incarnation while Kajal Agarwal pulls off both roles with aplomb (aside from looking cute beyond belief); my wife's assessment of the two actors might be the reverse.

It amazes me how little the Indian film industry dips into our vast and rich history for its stories these days. I can't remember a single recent movie set in pre-colonial India other than Jodha Akbar and Ashoka (both laudable efforts). Movies like Magadheera show the possibilities even though this one is actually not based on historical events.

Indian movies have made enormous progress in photography, art direction and other technical areas. I think it is about time big-budget producers and directors made some blockbusters set in our history.

Anyway, coming back to Magadheera, it should show Tamil masala directors a trick or two. I now see why a lot of recent masala hits (the Vijay ones especially) are being imported from Telugu to Tamil.

A lot of the movie is shot in Hyderabad and it was fun to see some places that we know. I have been to the Golkonda fort many times; it is a great place especially when you see it with a guide who can put it in the right historical context. But it never looked as beautiful as it looked in Senthil Kumar's camera in the song "Panchdhara Bomma". The song alone is worth the price of admission. It is arguable whether India produces world-class movies, but we sure make the world's best music videos.

The other movie Arya 2 was more of a guilty pleasure. The movie is outrageously campy but it was also very funny. Boy, this guy Allu Arjun can dance (and I thought Vijay could dance).

- R. Balaji

He did it!

One of the issues I have continued to follow after I returned from the US is health care. I have also been following how Obama is doing as president. It was a no-brainer to vote for him being on the center-left myself, especially after the Bush years. While I knew expectations on him were wildly unrealistic, I was still hoping for say just a couple of miracles.

However, in the first year he had managed to disillusion everyone who voted for him and enraged everyone who did not. The health care debate was going badly for the Democrats with Republicans managing to vilify it quite effectively. So when I went to the US for my quarterly business trip in February, I was in a morose mood. I was especially disgusted by how the loss of one senate seat could make Obama and the Dems so timid (filibuster, schmilibuster).

However there were signs of a turnaround in those two weeks I was there. When the history is written about how Obama pulled off a legislative achievement that could very well rank among FDR's New Deal, the Reagan tax cuts and LBJ's civil rights bill, the healthcare summit should be judged as a turning point. It was political theater at its best, seemingly orchestrated only for the O man's benefit. He seemed like the only adult in the room, and just couldn't help coming across as the most intelligent and knowledgeable on the issues. He also came off as gracious in accepting a couple of Republican ideas and in a hilarious moment acknowledged the feisty John McCain's criticism about some pork barrel in the bill.

Since then, the Democrats (led by the formidable Nanci Pelosi) seemed to have new energy infused into them and for once have acted with the courage of their convictions. The Dems in the House are passing a bill that is supposedly unpopular (depending on what polls you believe) and might even cost some of them their seats in November. Why? Because they believe it is the right thing. Where were they all these years? Looks like there is some hope for them after all.

So why do I think this bill is a good thing ? There is a part of the bill that spends money to cover un-insured and under-insured people*. I support this part for the same reasons why most bleeding heart liberals do. Don't get me wrong - capitalism is the greatest thing since steamed idlis, but there are a couple of things for which we should make an exception. Health care is one of them.

Then there is the part that prohibits insurance companies from doing plain old shady things - like stopping coverage once you get sick and deny coverage for pre-existing conditions ( the latter is arguably less shady). The fact that profit-minded companies will do things like these (can't even blame them), is exactly why we need to exempt health care from capitalism and free markets. And why it is reasonable for a social justice minded government to get into this business.

There is a supposed third goal of this bill that reduces the upward spiral of health care costs. The problem is real enough (US spends the most per capita on health care in the world, while it is not in the top 15 nations in terms of health indicators). But this part seems so complicated that we will never know until we see some results.

- R. Balaji

We're World No. 1!

India reached the no. 1 ranking in ICC Test Rankings after beating Sri Lanka at home 2-0 in December. The real test came this February when they played No. 2 South Africa at home. They promptly lost the first Test by an innings and more at Nagpur, crumbling against a speedy and swinging Dale Steyn. Reverse swing used to be the domain of bowlers from the subcontinent and Dale Steyn seems to be the first white bowler to have cracked the code. We sorely missed Dravid and Laxman, both out with injuries.

India needed to square the series (don't ask me about the logic of a 2-match series) at the lovely Eden Gardens to retain their No. 1 ranking. And that is exactly what they did. The win was made possible by a mammoth 643-6, thanks to 100s by Sehwag, Tendulkar (his 47th!) , Laxman and Dhoni.

India's ascent to the top has been built on a batting order "designed by God himself" as someone said. With Sehwag, Gambhir, Dravid, Tendulkar, Laxman and Dhoni you can probably create two international teams of great batting caliber. The so-called seniors (Dravid, Tendulkar and Laxman) don't seem to be in any hurry to retire. All 6 of them have been in form recently and that is a bit too much to handle for any attack in the world. With the wise Zaheer Khan's reverse swing and the wily and fighting Harbhajan Singh's off spin, we have a reasonable bowling attack to boot.

The South Africans are a sporting bunch - they actually walk when they're out without looking at the umpire; a welcome change from the lows in sportsmanship inhabited by the Aussies. It was nice to see that these things still happen in cricket. Most of the Indian players still walk (may be except the naughty Harbhajan).

Call me old fashioned, but I believe Test Cricket is the only pure form of cricket bcause it is a true test of bat against ball. I detest 20-20 and I eagerly await the day it will go away. Limited overs cricket makes sense when the need to slog is balanced by the need to keep the wicket to last the entire overs. With 20 overs, there is little risk of getting bowled out, so batsmen can slog with impunity. This tilts the equation too much in favor of the bat.

As for tests, yes, it is impossible to sit and watch all 5 days, but you catch pieces of the action when your favorite batsman or bowler is operating and the extended highlights in the evening are rather convenient. To be No. 1 for the first time in this form of cricket is just plain awesome.

- R. Balaji

Reading and watching Chetan Bhagat (part 2)

We went and watched 3 Idiots. It is a honest-to-goodness feel-good melodrama that leaves no emotion in the human mindscape un-visited. It was also hilarious at times. Indian movies are like chaat; evey movie (dish) will contain every emotion (taste).

I also don't get why the hero has to have superhuman physical prowess, Einstein's smarts and Gandhian nobility all in the same movie; among others, it also has the problem of seriously lengthening the movie since each quality takes about an hour to demonstrate. I am fairly certain the book (Five Point Someone) doesn't do this, now I have to go and confirm. Anyway, dinging it for the bad habits of the genre is not being fair to it. Adjusted for the genre, it is certainly one of the better movies I have seen recently. Every Indian who went to an Engineering college (either willingly or forced by some circumstance) will connect with it in many many ways.

- R. Balaji

Readings in history (part 4 - Harappans and Aryans)

One of the things that has drawn me to history recently, is really the curiosity about who we (Indians) are as a people and where we came from. Yes, it sounds like a cliched middle-age crisis driven thing, but it is real enough.

I went back to reading John Keay's book, especially the first few chapters that deal with Indian pre-history. Turns out, we only have two major sources to understand our history in the 3000-5000 years before Christ. One is the Sanskrit literary and religious compendium in the form of the Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Brahmanas and the two great epics . The other is the Indus Valley civilization which is one of the three great civilizations from that era (the Egyptian and Sumerian being the other two).

First the Harappans - as Keay calls the folks from the Indus valley civilization. Harappans did not build towering monuments like the Egyptian pyramids. They however built arguably more egalitarian structures (i.e. not monuments for kings' after-life built by slave-laborers) of bricks so advanced that when they were excavated in the 1920's, the presiding archaeologist thought they were merely 200 years old. They also may have invented the proverbial wheel and spread their civilization over an area that spreads more than 600 km.

The thing is, even though these two societies (Harappans and Aryans) lived roughly in the same geographical area there is no link between the two. It is clear that the Harappans did not write the Vedas. The Aryans' arrival in India post-dates the last of the Harappans by at least a few hundred years. Further the Harappan writings look like anything but Sanskrit.

You might have heard that the Harappans' script has been defying proper deciphering by epigraphists. There are two theories on it - the initial hypothesis of links to Aramaic and Iravadam Mahadevan's more recent theory that it is indeed linked to the Tamil-Brahmi script.

As for the Aryans, it is remarkable that we know about a society primarily from their literary and spiritual work and not traditional sources of historians such as inscriptions recording actual events. Unless of course you believe that the events in the epics like Ramayana and Mahabharatha actually happened in some form. Interestingly enough, John Keay seems to suggest exactly that. He even dates the Great Bharatha war at around 1000 BC. Looking at these epics from a purely historical view, Keay however seems to oversimplify them. For instance he condenses all of Ramayana into a single statement that its goal was to institutionalize dynasty based monarchical system in North India (as opposed to the clan-based societies that existed around that time). I was disappointed that he did not delve into the content of the stories to reason about the people who wrote them. Whether the events in Mahabharatha and Ramayana happened or not, the stories at the least give hints to the kind of values that must have existed around that time. The great sacrifice of Bheeshma, and the sense of filial duty and nobility of Rama and Bharatha to just mention a couple of examples. Not to mention the complex interplay of characters and their motivations in the Mahabharatha. May be it is not aligned with the historian's method to do this kind of reasoning.

Keay writes amazingly well and I have yet to see another book that so concisely, dispassionately and readably narrates Indian history, albeit in a cold-blooded western way.

- R. Balaji

Reading and watching Chetan Bhagat

My head was beginning to hurt reading too many improving books - as P. G. Wodehouse would have called them - and it was time for some lighter fare. A neighbor of mine recommended Chetan Bhagat; apparently he is what twenty-somethings are reading these days. So I decided to reconnect with my younger self and read his latest book, the hugely entertaining Two States.

Within 5 pages I was transported to my college years; Bhagat's simple no-nonsense style and acerbic bluntness fit the gen X (or is it Y?) narrator's sensibilities like a glove. Well it better, since it is semi-autobiographical. It is the love story of a boy and a girl whose families in a certain way represent opposing ends of the Indian cultural spectrum; a live-life-to-the-full Punjabi family on one side and a serious geeky Tamil Brahmin family on the other. Cross-cultural weddings are ripe with humorous possibilities and Bhagat takes full advantage. The book works equally well as a satire (of the corporate world, north and south Indian stereotypes) and as a family relationship drama. It is also probably the best service to national integration since Bharathiyar's "Sindhu nadhiyin ..". If these two families can get along, surely anyone in India can with anyone else (like for e.g. Andhraites with Telengana-ites; sigh) .

It is a screenplay ready to be made into a movie and I can't wait to see how the movie will do in Tamilnadu. Bhagat holds nothing back in his digs on all-things Tamil (or more loosely South Indian). He needs every word of the apology he makes in advance in the preface: "you only take digs at people you care for"; he is married to a South Indian and I suppose he has a certain right.

Apparently this is not even Chetan Bhagat's best book. I hear good things about his earlier book - Five Point Someone, a film version of which (3 Idiots) has recently released and is a big hit. I have not seen it yet. Another one is One Night at a Call Centre (film version "Hello").

- Balaji

Readings in history (part 3 - a couple more books)

Thought I will briefly mention a couple of other books on history.

A few years ago, when I was in the US, I read India - A history by John Keay. If you're looking for a comprehensive & readable account albeit from a western eye, you could try this. I remember being vaguely irritated by his dispassionate treatment at times; a plundering Mahmud Ghazni would receive the same level of respect as Raja Raja Chola or Akbar from his very academic view of history.

A remarkable part of the book is the chart in the Introduction that shows the percentage of territory controlled by various dynasties in the last 2000 years. A pretty neat way to summarize and picture Indian history.

Another book I read in 2007 is No God but God by Reza Aslan which is a history of Islam. Events in the last decade had piqued my curiosity on Islam (to put it mildly) like I am sure many around the world. It was quite educational and an easy read. The chapter on Sufi Islam struck me as interesting and surprising - Sufiism is a mystic tradition of Islam whose practitioners talk about almost a romantic love of God - not unlike Hinduism's own Andal and Meera. Modern day Islam however seems to look at Sufiism with a disapproving eye. You might have heard of Rumi, a well-known Sufi poet who has attracted a lot of attention in the west. I sampled some of his writings a couple of which reminded me of The Gita's central motto ("Karmanye..."). It is always interesting to see common ground between religions. The books also takes great pains to depict how Islam has been this multi-faceted religion through history while it may not appear that way in modern times.

- R. Balaji