Blast from the Past

Blast from the Past - My Song Picturisation (Playback) Exercise at FTII was a Robindrosongeet - Noyon Chhedey Geley Choley (I was intensely loyal to Bengal in that phase of my life) - I recorded the song (with Kedar Awati forcing music out of an off-tune piano), as well as shot its visualization (inside the 'Forest' and the dry 'Ayodhya' Pond opposite the Boys Hostel) - Anik Ghosh (then my immediate junior in Direction at FTII) and a young Bengali homemaker from the city played the leads. Here is all of sincere me explaining the nuances of my would be masterpiece to my female lead, in the much-loved dappled light of a Pune winter.

(Posted earlier on Facebook on 24 December, 2013)

Mughals and all that...

One of my great retrospective resentments once I was an adult was the shoddy way we were taught history in middle and high school. The indifferently written and produced text books thought of history as an unending saga of kings, queens and successions, bereft of day to day lives of the people and the society at large. This book does something similar, but in a slightly more sophisticated and engaging manner. I am also quite confused after reading it – Akbar was great and secular but could be cruel and narrow-minded; Aurangzeb was cruel and prejudiced but could be great and liberal, and so on and so forth. The book (The Great Mughals and their India by Dirk Collier) seems to look at the Mughal period of Indian history as one long-running blood-feud, full of remorseless brutality; where kings and courtiers, concubines and consorts did their licentious things, in-between killing and getting killed. Average, or worse.

The Talk Fest

The talk fest is about to begin. The listeners are ready - with their ear-plugs. All is well.

Strong Leaders

We have a sickening regard for 'strong' leaders, especially when they die. Death does not change the nature of the crimes - the arrogance, the disregard, the manipulations, the megalomania... And standing tall as a corrupt woman amidst other similarly 'tall' corrupt men is no achievement at all.

From the Others

"BEEING THE OTHER: The Muslim in India" by the veteran journalist Saeed Naqvi is a sometimes self-congratulatory memoir cum reportage of the progressively unsettling experience of being a Muslim in India post 1947. The significant point he makes is that the troika of Gandhi, Nehru and Patel (and not only Jinnah, as is usually believed) were as much responsible for the sub-continent's immature and bloody partition, eager as they were to ascend the 'Hindu' throne in Delhi, with or without what is now Pakistan. He also importantly asserts that the seeds of today's toxic and ubiquitous 'Hindutva' hate wave were sown by none other than the Congress leaders themselves, upto Rajiv Gandhi's times.

Surgical strike

It is presumed that by end of December, 2016 about 95% of the now demonetised 500 and 1000 rupee notes would have been legally exchanged, leaving no black money regained bonanza for the eagerly expectant maai-baap sarkar. The surgical striike might end up hurting the wise medical professionals involved.