Mera pass cinema hai
You watch a TV show and then you move on. If you keep re-running it again and again and again within a short period of time, you are ruining it for yourself. One of the finest features of cinema as a medium is its mystique. When you don’t allow time to get in between you and your favourite TV shows, neither of you are growing — them as a production and you as a person. If you first completed Breaking Bad in 2013 and are watching it again in 2020, you will notice stuff that you possibly couldn’t in 2013 itself. You were a different person back then; it was a different show back then. That’s how human perception works. You watch something, you watch it again after a long while. You read something, you read it again after a long while. Letting time cook up its magical recipe on your mind during the interval. Besides, I don’t understand why you would want to watch re-runs of old shows from last millennium — be it The Jeffersons, Frasier, Seinfeld or Friends — when there is no dearth of quality content online to stream.
From the recent list of binge-worthy-watch, my vote goes to the Israeli show Fauda (2015-) followed by the Swedish show Caliphate (2020-) and in terms of comedy, Schitt’s Creek (2015-) takes the cake. A singular factor that separates Schitt’s Creek from its peers is it’s unassumability. Built on a handful of prominent characters, it is like visiting your native place and tolerating the folks out there in their true element. And the jokes land so subtly that you might miss them if you don’t pay attention. For instance, a yesteryear actress named Moira Rose — in the comical mould of Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard (1950) — falls asleep in her closet and wakes up with a finger on her lip saying, “Shhhh… my leg has fallen asleep!” Now, that’s an excellent joke but it isn’t followed by canned laughter so we might just ignore it. Speaking of Rose, she plays a Canadian who speaks in an eloquent but strange manner. Turns out she uses Transatlantic accent — the same fake accent associated with the Hollywood stars of the ’50s and ’60s — it’s neither American nor British, somewhere in the middle — but very gentle on your ears. She does it because, like Desmond, she too is stuck in the past that doesn’t exist anymore.
Have you been to a zoo? If yes, do see the irony in you coming back home after your visit? Those so-called animals in there don’t get to go back anywhere. That’s their 24/7 job as instruments of exhibitionism. We pay our nominal charges and see them isolated from their wildlife and pretend as if we are doing them a favour by peeking into their jailed existence. Yes, the authorities will tell you that these zoos go a long way in educating people, especially kids, about nature. In my humble opinion, that must have been true 10 to 20 years ago. As of today, kids are more fluent in technology than adults and can watch online different varieties of creatures. Education doesn’t have to come at the cost of untold suffering. Maybe the next generation will be able to see this contradiction clearly and do the needful. For them, the question would be, if we stopped visiting zoos, will those animals get to go back home?
What if I told you the oldest discovered living creature was killed by scientists? Well, as bizarre as it may sound, this is actually true. In 2006, some British scientists were researching a very old specimen of clam which they thought was 405 years old. It was only after they opened its shell — for more detailed investigations — did they realize that it was not only 500+ years old but also alive until that moment. In simple words, they killed the longest surviving creature in modern history. But then, they didn’t do it intentionally. It was a freak of an accident. Today, that particular clam has become a legendary tale of scientific temper and is appropriately called Ming because it was alive when the Ming dynasty was ruling China.
A lot of debates are rife on the role Mughals played in the culture of Indian subcontinent. As usual, those who don’t have the patience or the will to read, resort to childish simplifications. And this is stark against the recent uprising against colonial figures like Robert Clive and Winston Churchill. If the British were the oppressors, how are they any different from those who ruled this land before them? Both these outsider groups built stuff in our country from the money they collected from the locals. None of it — from the architectural Taj Mahal to the industrial railway tracks — was a gift from the kindness of heart. In all fairness, they cared more about the small minority of foreign rulers than about the indigenous folks but what set the Mughals apart from the British is their naturalisation. Except Babur (the founder of the Mughal empire), all the other 16 emperors were buried in India itself. Interestingly, for so much noise about their Islamisation — associated more closely with Aurangzeb and rightly so — none of the 17 emperors even performed the Haj pilgrimage. Which, again, didn’t mean that they had fully accepted local culture — the way Mongols did as they swarmed towards Europe — but still there were hints of assimilation. For instance, Akbar was the first to issue coins celebrating Hindu deities but the inscribed language remained Persian. The locals could see their gods on their currency but couldn’t read what was written on it. So, in conclusion, history is more complicated than the eminent simpletons want us to believe.
Irrfan Khan’s demise in April was immensely shocking but not as cruel as Sushant Singh Rajput’s. There is a difference between natural and unnatural death and maybe that’s why it hit differently. For an industry that is synonymous with nepotism, SSR felt like a breath of fresh air. In a relatively short period of time, he transitioned from television stardom to movie stardom. Not many can boast of this career graph. With zero filmi connection, he managed to make his presence felt. Now that he has passed away, we are learning so much about him. I knew he was an engineer by education — back in 2013, I even did a feature article for mid-day on actors with engineering background — but I had no idea that he rejected Stanford scholarship to pursue his dream of becoming an actor. Imagine the amount guts that decision must have taken for a middle class guy. I was going through his bucket list and his interest in astronomy and philosophy — you don’t associate these two words with somebody from the bubble soap world of Hindi cinema — is telling. Suicide is indeed a touchy topic for many of us not because it reveals our fear of death but because it reveals our naivety of life. If somebody so full of curiosity can take a step like that, we must just shut up to reflect on ourselves and try not to add fire to chaos.
We can brush off stardom as a petty pursuit but the truth is these famous personalities, propelled by the power of cinema, do touch us in mysterious ways. For example, I’ve been thinking (not working) on going back to my 6-pack abs days. And every time I thought of the desired belly, the image of SSR from Kai Po Che (2013) used to pop up in my head. Unlike the gym rat-ish whey bodies rolling out of Bollywood, his lean figure appealed to my goals. Of course, I haven’t done shit over the past seven years to achieve my lost city of abs. Yet, it’s amazing how moments remain with us for good.
Similarly, of late, every time I logged onto chess.com on my laptop — I’ve stopped playing on my phone for migraine related issues — I saw this header image (below). And the guy on the left always reminded me of SSR. Uncanny resemblance. So, the point is, sad as it is, unless the person is gone, we don’t fully gauge how much they impacted our lives. Perhaps that’s the beauty of fame and achievement.
Since I mentioned nepotism, let’s dwell on it a bit. Anybody who thinks that Bollywood can ever be led solely on the basis of merit either lives in Los Angeles or doesn’t know how business works in India. From time to time, we’ll be graced by the screen genius of Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Nawazzuddin Siddiqui, Manoj Bajpai, Irrfan Khan, Vidya Balan, KK, Pankaj Tripathi, Rajkumar Rao, Kangana Ranaut, Vicky Kaushal, Ayushmann Khurrana and ilk. However, these names will remain an exception because those who rule this industry will continue to ensure that their clout holds all the heavy cards. Even a marquee outsider like Anurag Kashyap ultimately bows to the pressure of the mainstream. That’s just how it is. In fact, with the rise of the Internet Age, things have only gotten worse. Earlier, star kids like Kumar Gaurav had to leave the stage because they couldn’t deliver. As of today, somebody like Ananya Pandey with negligible amount of screen talent shall weather at least 7-9 years of peak compensation. The concept of BO failure doesn’t count as the ecosystem feeds on contacts, not to mention the PR optics in place. For all the noise made by social media warriors, star kids have never been stronger.
Some things are like John Cena’s insta love for India. It’s hard to explain in words. Why do we see certain people in our dreams? Who do we become while thinking of happiness? Where are we going with our endless count of to-dos? How far off are we from achieving enlightenment? Which version of us is our true self? What stops you from breaking that shackle enveloping your peace of mind? Explain love in 5 sentences. Explain hatred in 20.
For the majority of my 20s, I told people around me that I am an ‘atheist’. In my late 20s, I adopted the word ‘agnostic’. As I am fast touching my mid-30s, I am more comfortable with ‘apatheist’. For distinction’s sake, an atheist is somebody who doesn’t believe in god/gods; an agnostic is somebody who believes that there is not enough proof for the existence of god/gods; an apatheist is somebody who doesn’t give a fuck about this topic. In other words, I am not interested in accepting or rejecting any claims that god/gods exist or not. That said, I continue to be intrigued by the layered notions of religion. Gods and religions are two different elements connected only by power or spirituality. In the post-colonial independent India, this distinction was well played by the politicians as well as the screenwriters. If you remember, there were many atheistic Hindu characters in the Hindi cinema of ‘70s and ’80s; the sort of protagonists who refused to visit temples or follow rituals, etc. Never once had I watched a non-Hindu atheist on the big screen. Maybe the artistic burden of atheism could fall only on Hinduism as it’s the only major religion — for lack of a better term— that actually accommodates atheism. Anyway, it’d be nice if we could see fictional apatheistic characters in the not-so-distant future. And hopefully, from all possible faiths.
