Month: May 2015

Growth Wallah’s: Yeh Dil Maange More

Arundhati Roy and P Sainath  are voices that counter the neoliberal growth narrative of growth at any cost and painting growth as a linear story line. A story line where labor rights, environmental commons are commodities to be discarded as these cannot be listed in an IPO on Dalal Street. I grew up during the late 80’s and the 90’s where I transitioned from Doordarshan to Cable TV to 4G internet on the phone and where a vada pav in the mall costs 50 rupees. Where having an overpriced KFC is cooler than having tandoori chicken in the popular culture now a days. IT Sector has created a class of socially mobile class of credit cards and cool cars, but cannot finance them as IT firms are retrenching them. Suddenly, class consciousness hits home. Growth is not cool, when you are handed a pink slip in one hours notice.

Growth means the communities at the margin in Langigarh and Jaitapur have no voice in the resource and nuclear capitalism of Shining India. The growth discourse is panned out in tv panel debates and the holy shrine of Davos.

Arundhati Roy’s Capitalism : A Ghost Story is a class essay book on the fissures of the growth story. Growth has a rosy narrative when it is painted in Malabar Hill and not Dharavi or a Middle Class Mira Road in Mumbai. The middle class are sold the aspirational growth stories for them to buy in when a techie-MBA education does not render the critical thinking skills to understand the globalisation dynamics which help us to assess the next work wave.

Dibakar’s 2012 film Shanghai showed that a lands owner sells his land in lieu for being a security guard in a mall on the same piece of land ironically drinks bottled water with pride.  As Asim Shrivastava’s seminal book Churning the Earth demonstrates a treatise on how the SEZ boom is a land grab scam and how industrialisation causes ecological degradation in every respect.

Mr Modi has made development as the national totem. Although non inclusive growth is not cool, when religious minorities feel unsafe. One year of decent selfie taking does not make for development. Modi’s Foreign Policy and Defence Regime is aggressive and competent though. There is a long way to go in order to accommodate all aspirations. Delhi is not Amdavad oops Peking.

Piku : A Bengali Masterclass

Piku, directed by Shoojit Sircar of Madras Cafe and Vicky Donor fame has an stellar ensemble cast of Amitabh Bachchan as Bhakor Banerjee, the seventy year old retired ITC Executive with a constipation paranoia who lives with his fiercely independent architect daughter ‘Piku’ played by Deepika Padukone. A film set in CR Park (the Bengali Community Hub in Delhi), as in Vicky Donor; Sircar has his nuances of an upper middle class Probashi or ‘Out of Bengal’ Bengali family and its dialectics of conserving culture on one end and moving on with adopted city’s sense of modernity. Irrfan as the Saudi returned Cab Service Owner Rana, is delightful as he has his accent right and the mannerisms of a gulf returned civil engineer, forced to do business in which he is often not at ease. The ‘Kafala’ system of Gulf Countries is brought in the conversation with the mention of the employer with holding Rana’s passport once he reached Saudi Arabia, and got terminated once he made an issue out of it.

Amitabh Bachchan, the legend has his Bengali spot on, with a large part of the film in Bengali and English. Stereotypes are circulated and reaffirmed but fortunately Sircar has the nuances perfect. Deepika Padukone as Piku is hyper, articulate , nyaka but straight forward Bong Girl with the dense kajal lined eyes who wants her space and sex on her own terms, but there is a longing for a stable hetrosexual relationship which her ageing father is rather aggressively discouraging towards.

Complex human relationship between an ageing father and his dutiful daughter is zoomed in which is the heart of the story. The health mad ageing father with his constipation problem and his rebellious daughter and their banter is characteristic of a bengali household. The Bengali Lady with her loyal Boyfriend-Business Partner ‘Syed’ played competently by Bengali Actor Jisshu Sengupta is under stated but vital in the story line as Piku is wooed by Rana who himself drives the Father-Daughter duo to Kolkata from Delhi via the beautiful ghats of Varanasi as Bhaskor wants to visit his paternal home housed by his younger brothers family who are scared that Piku might sell off the property to a realtor as is the case with many ancestral homes in Kolkata with the children based in other cities for work opportunities, and not interested to come back. The undertone is strong and clear, that heritage and culture matters.

The character actors such as the help of the family Badun, and the loud, boisterous maternal aunt of Piku played by veteran actor Moushumi Chatterjee adds ballast to the film which is rather based on a cultural narrative.

Editing is crisp with camera work takes a documentary mode in sections with Anupam Roy’s earthy music lends authenticity.  Shoojit Sircar has made a very good film, worth a second watch. There were parts in the film that drew a tear in the corner of my eye, as I have middle aged parents too and have these same conversations with them as Piku had them with Bhaskor.

Bollywood with Kahani and Byomkesh and now with Piku has made being Bengali, real cool. A film that has soul and substance, Piku is a film to have in your DVD Collection.

Fragility

Fragility is beautiful, as feel yourself at your weakest, simultaneously makes one feel free while helpless.

A chance to gather the ashes from the past, a seed for a new plant

Obsession & indifference are extremes yet human

Pain is the fuel for moving ahead, yet very human again
Happiness does not feel as motivating as pain

May be it is a blessing, an opportunity to paint an alternative imagination

May be that alternative is not alternative at all

Only a reflection of your deepest desires and aspirations beneath

Yet Fragility and Pain are synonyms for the most intense expressions of the soul

Yet so beautiful, yet so human

Move on the mind says, the heart lingers on

But there is no way but to keep walking and move on

And transform the sentiment into pale words of modest expression….