Car Drapes

Of all the quirks I come across in India, one that seems to have vanished with time is the phenomenon of putting up drapes in cars.

It's understandable, of course. As India gets motorized, they've been replaced by tints that come with the newer cars and which are much easier to maintain. Consider removing those tiny little things to dust off and occasionally launder. And having to replace them occasionally because the radiant sun scorches the color off everything.

But just the other day I saw an Ambassador burping along with the prettiest and most elaborate curtains I've seen in a car and I realized how much I miss cars with curtains.

Is this man in the right spot?

The beleagured Virender Sehwag's horrendous - shall we call it - uppercut brought his latest test innings (India vs SAfrica, 2nd Test in Durban) to an end rather briefly: caught off the first ball he faced. Andre Nel was the bowler and AB DeVillers was the acrobatic catcher in second slip.

Recently the Indian tour selectors (which includes an omnipresent chairman - Vengsarkar) decided to send back Irfan Pathan. In a brief interview with the Times of India, former India opener and a fellow Barodian Anshuman Gaekwad welcomed the decision to allow Irfan to play Ranji in order to get his rhythmn back but also astutely pointed out that all non-performers should be dealt with in a similar manner. This now includes, one presumes, Sehwag.

The bigger question for me is: should we continue to play Sehwag as an opener? Sehwag was never an opener - he started his career as a later order batsman, a natural stroke player at No. 6. He was pushed into the opening spot because his sparkling strokeplay could quickly put runs on the board and put the opposition on the defensive. This was very good strategy and worked really well. But it has been dead in the water for some time now. Sehwag hasn't been consistently delivering the killer punch in the opening spot. And when I say that I include the fact that impact players like him can't be consistent all the time - even accounting for that, he's still dreadfully inconsistent. And recent loud calls in the media for Sehwag to be wary and watchful simply erases the original intent of him opening.

Kabul Express trundles along

I went past somber ticket helpers dressed in maroon pathan suits and Afghan turbans on the opening day to see Kabul Express in a packed cinema hall in Vadodara. Kabul… has a short running length by Hindi film standards, weighing in at just over one and a half hours. But that is not the only convention it breaks. It doesn’t have a traditional male lead – John Abraham who gets most media junket publicity shares screen time – almost equally and selflessly with two other male leads – Arshad Warsi and Salman Shahid, it doesn’t have any songs in the movie and it doesn’t have a romance of any kind. Normally these types of movies in Bollywood tend to be the arty, serious types. But writer director Kabir Khan tackles weighty subject matter in a mainstream way while still eschewing traditional Bollywood trappings. It’s a bold and noteworthy effort by a filmmaker who is leading off a 3 picture deal with Yash Raj films, enough to make anyone want to play it safe.

Unfortunately, Kabul… is poorly written and dies a very early death although my curiosity to see the experiment come to its logical end did engage me fully.

Kabul… is the story of an Indian reporter, Sohail played by Abraham, and his cameraman Jai played by Warsi, who travel to Kabul to interview a member of Taliban just as the American siege is coming to an end. Driven around in the titular SUV by an Afghan guide Khyber (Hanif Hum Ghum), they meet an American journalist Jessica (Linda Arsenio) and get kidnapped by a Talib (Shahid) who wants to make his way back into Pakistan.

With primary photography in Afghanistan, Kabul… is supposed to be a thriller with political overtones and human undertones. Although Afghan politics take center-stage, the movie’s primary resolution comes along the Indo-Pak relationship between the Indian journalists and the Pakistani taleb. The script focuses on how the characters discover (amidst some healing and bonding) that they are not so different after all and might even have been friends under different circumstances.

In other words, it’s a fairly warmed over plot.

As in all such endeavors, the plot trappings are significant. This is where the movie fails badly. Let me count the ways.

• There is no initial character development that engages you. Abraham and Warsi’s journalists are given very meager treatment hardly enough to make you want to care when they are put in peril (which is really in the first scene). The characters do unfold as the movie progresses, but this is done in very simplistic and stereotypical ways with pert summary dialogues. (Hey Bollywood, can we have an Afghan in a movie who doesn’t talk like Kiran Kumar in Tezaab?)
  
• There is no thrill in the thriller. Kabir as a director fails to infuse any sense of dread or peril in the scenes that call for close-calls and tense face offs. This results in a movie that feels underwritten.
  
• While the complexity of the politics has been acknowledged, it hasn’t been explored fully. Kabir takes on Afghan, Pakistani, American and gender politics, but dwells primarily on Afghanistan and gives the others cursory treatment. He even makes a neat if heavy handed statement on journalism. But at no point does he address ethnic divisions or the role and position of India in any of this, which I would think should have been central to this movie. The two Indian journalists come across as saints where the reality should have been presented to be far more complicated.

Some positives: there are some genuinely touching moments in the film – I counted three. There is some deft comedy in the film, mostly keying off of Warsi’s motor mouthed delivery, which is reigned in at the right moments. And there is some lush music and camerawork.

Cinema Halls in India

Watching a Bollywood movie in a theater hall in India is an experience unlike any other. Especially if you go to a middle of the road hall somewhere in the city. But even the glossier suburban editions are not without their quirks. When I was growing up I used to go watch Mithun Chakraborthy’s pulpy movies in Sagar Cinema, one of the worst halls in Vadodara. There would be at least one instance when a rat would brush up against your feet following by a cat hard on its heels. Initially I would lift my feet up and go WTF. Then my comfort level rose to where I would raise my feet without even taking my eyes off the screen. Finally I became enough of a regular that I would barely even move my feet.

More recently when watching a movie in Galaxie in Nodia, I felt a “cat” brushing up against my feet (I was in the aisle seat). Scarcely believing this, I turned to see a small baby, still less than a year old, crawling up the stairs and hugging my shoes. Apparently Dad was letting his baby girl exercise her newly found crawling skills up and down the side stairs. He had gotten a bit engrossed in one of the scenes and had forgotten about baby. And here she was, sidling up to the wrong Dad. Later, she essayed a few bellows, forcing Dad to tear his eyes off Aishwarya and run to attend to her.

One of my favorite cinema hall stories is that of a good friend who took his NRI friend, who was visiting India to see Ghayal in Mumbai. They got seats jammed up against the wall but there was a banister that ran the length of the hall next to them. Midway through the second half the NRI friend felt a little cat crawling down the banister and rubbing up against him. Determined not to let his newly found prejudices prevent him from enjoying India in all its glory, the NRI reached out and petted the cat in the dark, which it seemed to like a lot and became absolutely still. The NRI continued to enjoy the movie in the company of his new animal friend. When the lights came on and the NRI glanced at his friend he shrieked. For it was not a cat, but a gigantic rat looking back lovingly at him. The NRI ran straight out of the hall with both his arms up in the air and stretched out in front of him. In a Bollywood cinema hall, even rats are full of maya.

The Dhoom 2 Report Card

I finally watched Dhoom 2 and while the movie is being widely panned by the Indian public, I found it to be fairly interesting and mildly entertaining. A report card:

The Movie
D:2 plays to the same formula of its predecessors so I won’t repeat it here. The first thing that strikes you about the movie is driven by set pieces. The time devoted to advancing the plot in between set pieces is minimal. Even beats within scenes are set pieces, heck even the dialogues are sound bites. It’s not about actors starring in a movie as much as it is about stars acting in one. Plot holes, as usual, abound. The heists, the centerpiece of the action, are convoluted beyond belief to make them look clever. And characters do complicated things when more straightforward and believable options are readily available. B

Hrithik Roshan
D:2 has Hrithik front, center and on the sides. It’s his movie and most of the juicier masala bits in the movie exploit his best abilities – in other words he’s given a lot of running, skating, jumping and dancing to do with his clothes off. When he falls in love, he makes you believe it could happen. When his betrayal is at hand, he makes you feel for him. When he faces off in the climactic scene with the cops, he makes you root for him. And given that there is little time for fully rounded characters that is quite a feat. B+

Abhisekh Bachchan
Since he’s had a good chunk of time to develop his character in Dhoom, he manages a more rounded character than others. Abhisekh isn’t afraid to make his character a bit of an anti-hero: he’s surly, short tempered, flirts with other women with a pregnant wife at home and even makes mistakes. Other than one song where he threatens to become this generation’s whacky Jeetendra, he goes through the movie unscathed. B

Aishwarya Rai
She’s taking a bit of a hiding from audiences in this film and much of it is, I’m afraid, justified. Her character is given throwaway sound bites like “Funny Guy” and “like” – a muddle of Mumbaiya and stereotypical bindaas babe – to convey to us what she is all about. Her makeup is off too, culminating in a tan gone wrong in a crucial Russian roulette scene. There is one scene where she rips off her heist clothes to reveal, well barely anything underneath on a body so skinny it hurts to look at it. This plays to everyone’s funny bone unintentionally. She is clearly there to dance and strut, both of which she does enormously well. But, c’mon yaar! C

Bipasha Basu
Bipasha plays a sequential double role in this film, both roles clearly there to amp the babe value in the movie. She looks terrific in role 1, and barely manages to avoid audiences from throwing tomatoes at her in an ill-advised take on role 2. B

Uday Chopra
Uday revives the role of the comic buffoon in Bollywood films. He’s there purely for comic relief with no contribution at all to the story line. He has some good lines in the film which he delivers full tilt, but in general he had audiences shaking their heads (in a not so good way). C

The women in D:2
The women in the movie, I’m afraid take a beating. The old women are replaced by newer swankier ones. Esha Deol isn’t in the movie. Not that she set Dhoom on fire, but Rimi Sen has been impregnated and relegated to the role of the one-dimensional jealous wife a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it role. Bipasha plays a sharp, driven cop in one of her roles but manages to spend her time fumbling and running around aimlessly. Aishwarya has a critical role, but she acquiesces to be Hrithik’s “shadow” and takes all pretence out of her importance. One scene in the movie is emblematic of the role of women in this movie: Abhishek and Uday are driving down a highway somewhere in Rio in an open top jeep and Bipasha is preening on the backrest in the back in a bikini. She is there as eye candy, propped up in a ridiculous position and hardly saying a word. F

What's with this kiss?

So what's this media-fueled controversy over the kiss between Hrithik and Aishwarya in Dhoom 2? I counted three light pecks to the lips, hardly the type of full-blown sloppy stuff that Roger Moore used to dole out in countless James Bond flicks watched by Indian audiences in the 80s.

Ah, it's Indians involved you say? Watching non-Indians do it is acceptable, but when it's one of us (ok two of us) doing it it changes the equation. After all hardly anyone watching Bond would go try it at home. But watching the two biggest stars in Bollywood doing it will now make everyone want to try it, right?

This seems to be reflected in the case filed where the kiss is said to be "immoral and promotes something alien to our culture". GIven that culture is a moving target (won't we all go to court to argue this in a system that is essentially borrowed from the west? wasn't there an outburst of Indian pride when we detonated a nuclear device in an escalating show of muscle with Pakistan - I don't remember reading about nuclear fission or fusion in any of our cultural texts), this then becomes an exercise in preserving our culture.

Unlike most everyone I've talked about this with, I don't think this controversy is insignificant and worth dismissing with a roll of urbanized eyes. There are interesting questions that get raised by this: what's more important to us? What is the type of nation Indians want to live in moving forward? What is moral that is worth protecting the most? What part of being Indian within us do we want to give up least? The answer will no doubt vary probably even from person to person. What is insignificant to me might be significant to others. On the other hand, I wonder what would would have happened if we had shown two of our biggest stars going at it in some wildly convoluted position - something right out of what's been etched in several Indian caves and caverns from ages past. Would that have been more culturally in line?

Thanks to Hrithikmylove for posting this on youtube. More interesting stuff about this on Jabberwock's blog here.

Why the Aussies keep winning

Even though it was stunning how Australia snatched victory from the jaws of nothing in the second Ashes test on a featherbed in Adelaide, it wasn't suprising. It wasn't surprising because this generation of cricket fans has seen that team pull incredible feats of heroism on a regular basis.

So what makes Australia so special? This last test showcases a microcosm of their strengths and makes for a very interesting study. There is a lot to a winning ecosystem, so I'll focus briefly on the elements in play on the field that make them winners.

Their batsmen make time for their bowlers. All of the Aussie batsman start by batting in third gear and can motor into fifth if the situation demands it. It's in the mentality of the batsman: if a ball is to be hit, you have to try and hit it. If you don't, it's considered a failure of small proportions, but a failure. The Aussie coaches and commentators rarely criticize their batsmen for attempting legitimate shots and losing their wickets. Contrast this with other teams who tend to suck it in, grit their teeth and adopt a defensive attitude for various reasons: the fall of a wicket, the loss of some form, a tight situation. When Australia scores its runs quickly, their bowlers get extra time to bowl the opposing batsmen out. And as is well known in cricket, the team that can take 20 wickets wins the game. Witness the rare draws played out by a team like Australia and it'll give you some measure of how important this particular area is to their success.

They know how to pick and execute from multiple game plans. The Aussies may not have pioneered specific game plans for specific players and situations (The South Africans under Bob Woolmer broke new ground there), but they seem to have multiple game plans ready to execute. More importantly, they have a great success rate at picking the right one and executing it with discipline. Just as well as you have to know your opponents strenghts and weaknesses, you have to know your own. And game plans need to be flexible in order to accomodate situations. In the second Ashes test, Australia used in-form Hussey ahead of Damien Martyn to put quick runs on the board when chasing to win. Similarly, Warne assessed the mental situation of the English batsmen and the state of the game quickly before switching his disappointing leg side line to a more attacking line in the second innings, resulting in matchwinning figures.

They know how to drive home the advantage. A few deliveries from Brett Lee and Shane Warne is all it took to unsettle the English batsmen on the last day, which resulted in one horrific hour in which England lost four wickets. To turn that into a win of historic proportions takes a lot of initiative and execution, both of which the Australians have because they have a stable set of very experienced players who have won a lot in the past and know how to go about it.

They are masters at the mental game. This has been a mixed blessing for Australia. While applying pressure through a number of crude sledging techniques - infamously called "mental disintregration" by previous captain Steve Waugh - has allowed Australia to turn many a session into a favorable one, they've also attracted a lot of brickbats. As a result the Aussies are widely admired but much less respected. Recent statements made by the captain and administration to change this view have been undone by on-field behavior to the contrary, making it obvious that the purported changes have not reached below the surface.

They play each session with specific goals. The Australians set specific short term goals within sessions. The next 25 runs or the next wicket to break a partnership. Setting smaller goals relieves the pressure of any intimidating situation and allows the player to create a pattern of success by attacking smaller targets. The Aussies also construct their innings in terms of partnerships rather than individual scores. It's not as important for one or two batsmen to score big as it is to establish one or two big partnerships. This tends to spread responsibility among more players.

It helps to have four all-time greats. Captain Ricky Ponting has had enough banner years to make the ICC top ten list of all-time great batsmen. His runs by the bucketful have reinforced many totals while making light of tricky situations. The bowling department is sheparded by Shane Warne and Glen McGrath, who are #1 and #3 respectively on the list of all time wickettakers in Tests. Their bowling techniques (finger-spin for Warne and pin-point accuracy for McGrath) make them forces to reckon with on any wicket. Wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist is such a destructive force of nature with the bat - his invincibility only recently tempered by a run of poor scores - that hardly anyone mentions his work behind the wicket: he is the second leading wicketkeeper of all time in Tests.

Bollywood Sequels: The Offspring

Beth Loves Bollywood outlined some ways to make sense of the star son/daughter phenomenon that pervades Bollywood. This sounded so interesting that although I'll comment in her blog, I thought I put some thoughts down here anyway.

Beth had the following factors in mind when looking at star offsprings.

1. "child who most let down parent
2. child who did/is doing better than parent
3. "What was Dad/Mum thinking?"
4. child who is likely to out-do parent in an arena unrelated to on-screen performance
5. parent who has a level of superwowness that could never be touched by a child's abilities,
6. no matter how great the child becomes
7. child who has a character, dialogue, picturization, or costume eerily similar to a parent's
8. parental scene you would most like to re-cast with the child"

In #1, one could argue that Raj Kapoor was massively let down by all his sons. While the senior Kapoor established himself as a much loved phenomenon by doing tender-broken-hearted, fool-for-love, socially conscious roles, his sons - Rishi, Randhir and the famously and unintentionally comical Rajiv - achieved varying levels of success, none approaching that of their illustrous father.

I suppose you could be underwhelmed by an actor but if his parent was equally unimpressive, you'd leave him out. This results in the disqualification of Kumar Gaurav, who waved at scenes as they passed him by, proudly launched by father Rajendra Kumar (it doesn't matter who you are, you can't wear collars made from frocks and let them upstage you).

But more along the lines of #2 is what I am most interested in. My vote for the male offspring who outdid his father is Hrithik Roshan. Dad Rakesh was a solid B-lister, a man who wore his shirts outside his pants (see Amol Palekar and other poetic Bollywood archetypes) and a swooshy wig that has since passed on as legend. He acted in a number of films, some as a headliner. But he eventually settled into a groove supporting marquee names throughout his career.

Son Hrithik on the other hand burst on the scene as an A-lister and has stayed there ever since - touted by many as the only actor who would challenge the Khan-deadlock on the industry. While I find his need to act with every muscle on his face and every fiber in his eyes somewhat interesting, the man is a pretty consumate star and very competent actor, isn't he?

And the winners for me in the female category are Karishma and Kareena Kapoor, who have far outstripped their mom Babita's fame (after adjusting for media inflation). Babita toiled as a C-lister in thankless roles in sometimes memorable films. But after a series of frightful 80s-inspired turns with actors like Govinda, elder daughter Karishma established herself as a force to be reckoned with in the pre-Aishwarya era. Later as her star waned, younger sister Kareena walked on the scene, primed to be a star. Despite numerous flops, she successfully navigated an image makeover (gone: bubbly teen. in: mature chick equally comfortable in slacks and sarees) and produced some decent revenue for her producers.

Finally in #3 ("What was Dad/Mum thinking?") I nominate Rahul Khanna, son to Vinod Khanna and younger sibling to Akshaye. While it's hard to live up to someone like Vinod, who I believe genuinely had the super power of heat vision, what I've watched of Rahul Khanna makes me wonder where the famous Khan personae vanished. You can't just walk your way through shots, Mister! At some point, you have to act.

More here on Bollywood families.

Can VVS Laxman save India?

Given how India have struggled to be competitive against the South Africans this winter, it wasn't suprising the selectors took all of three games to call in VVS Laxman to bolster the line up. Clearly, the batsmen flailing at deliverings rising above (gasp!) their knee rolls was enough to send Vengsarkar's pulse racing. But the drafting in of VVS as the Indian vice captain, replacing Virender Sehwag has some things worthy of note.


So far the new chairman of selection for India has been honest and forthright about how the team sucks and changes are needed. This is well and good. We'll see how the honesty holds up after a while because Vengsarkar would be criticizing his own work. However, clearly he has thoughts about how things should be and is making changes to rectify what he might have believed wasn't the right way to go in the first place.

The decision to bring VVS back as VC is not stunning if you consider that Sehwag as a vice captain was simply a scary prospect. Rumors of why Sehwag was ousted from the position while still retaining his spot are doing the rounds. But IMO, at no point did he ever appear to be captaincy material. We need a more stable head on steady shoulders to captain a rocky boat like India. This "act and think later" is not a captain's lot. So sanity has been restored with Sehwag's departure from this spot. Also the bells has been rung clearly for Sehwag: "you might be on the way out fella. The only way to be on the team will be to perform consistently". The consolation for Sehwag in all of this is that everyone else around him is struggling just as much as he is.

Back to VVS. A lot of cricket purists will be delighted to see him back. And will hope that he delights them more then he infuriates them (a trend in the past that saw him losing his spot in the team during the England tour). Certainly, VVS's record is not as spectacular as his batting. His average in Tests is 42.70 with 10 hundreds and 25 fifties. To be fair, it is healthy production by a middle order batsman. For the Indian team these days, it is positively Bradmanesque.

Will he struggle just as much as the rest on the bouncy South African pitches? Given his record, he most definitely will. Will his experience be enough to help the team to stop embarassing itself? All of us who are huge fans of the Indian team will certainly be hoping for that.

Meanwhile for those interested in how Pollock has mesmerized Tendulkar, you can find some good stats here.