Bombay Talkies

                              
Johar begins Bombay Talkies with ajeeb dastaan hain yeh hinting the conflicting, intriguing and queer nature of the story that is gonna unfold. The characters are beyond the misleading demeaning stereotypes you find in hindi movies of the past decade. Avinash(Saquib Saleem) is out in the open and Dev (Randeep Hooda) is married to Gayatri (Rani Mukherjee) and is a closet case. The conflicting nature of the leads gives the emotional depth for the movie. Gayatri brings Avinash home from work and he meets Dev , they connect through music. Dev is struck by the chutzpah in Avinash , he is jealous and also is threatened by Avinash's independence and his identity.For Avinash the conflict is as internal as external. It is like he was living a meaninless lonely life for years and years and now all life has come crowding in a single hour. Hooda stuns you with the poignant portrayal of a man who has been running from himself all his life, among the three he is the best,Rani carries herself exactly like a modern day woman, she is alive mature and sophisticated Her final scene with Hooda where she breaks down and immediately redeems herself with such brashness that makes you believe -Rani needs only 15 minutes a year to tell u she is the best. Saqib for a newcomer shows immense promise . Johar has used the most poignant melody "lag jaa gale" giving overtones of desire edged with a sense of irrevocability.This half an hour of compelling cinema reduces Johar's three hour epics to insignificance.

          When Siddiqui performs no one even touches their androids , calls go unattended messages unnoticed. While celebrating a hundred years of Hindi Cinema it is important to notice that an actor like Siddiqui struggled for 10 years to make it to bollywood. We gave a decade to the good for nothing Govinda and what about Uday Chopra,Harman Baweja,Zayed Khan the list is endless. Siddiqui plays the role of a failed actor who wants everything in his life to be easy . His practices are discursive, he wants to work, he wants to do business, he wants to act, he is unsure of everything except the fact that he loves his daughter and he loves her very much. Adaptation of  Satyajit Ray's short story the film rides on Siddiqui's shoulders. After being hesitant in his entire life Siddiqui regains his belief through a nothing of a role in a movie. The last few minutes of the movie shows you that Siddiqui is beyond words.

             A woman in a mans world is always appreciated what about the contrary?. Zoya explores this thorough the curiosity of a child. A twelve year old kid finds himself totally drawn to katrina and her dancing. He loves her moves and wants to follow her , he finds football detestable and dancing passionate. His father stands between him and his destiny . The story finds space when the kids elder sister understands and encourages the latent talent in her brother. .The boy who appers in Chillar Party also, is a gifted actor with electrifying moves. The movie questions the sexist perception of art especially dancing. 

         The last one in the anthology by Kashyap is a bit of a let down. One because it does not have thedepth or the relevance depicted by the other three. Also because it looks more like an indulgence in the the stardom of Mr.Bachchan. The movie is about the death wish of a Bachchan fan to carry a Murabba to bombay and give it to Mr.Bachchan to eat half of it and the rest to be brought back for him to savor.He entrusts this duty to his son(Vinay Kumar). The movie drags since it is low on substance and it even takes hues of sycophancy towards the end when the protagonist meets the star.Also Vinay Kumar is no Tom Hanks of The Terminal to keep you occupied throughout this capricious whim. But we can forgive Kashyap he gave us Wassepur and Dev D, without him the past decade would have been irrelevant in the history of Indian Cinema.

Firaaq

I couldn find a better word in any other language to express the eternal quest of mankind. Firaaq is an Urudu word which means a quest and much more.

 Our quest is visible from the moment we arrive in this world, our first action seems to be crying out loud. We do not have enough cells in our brain to conceive a simple thought , our movements are restricted to feeble punches and kicks which cant even topple a pillow and most probably we haven even opened our eyes, still we need something,we search for something and because we are helpless in the present state it comes out as a loud shrill cry. We all know that there is something inherently disturbing in a child's cry.This cry is our expression of our quest in the most unblemished form. Later on when we grow up ,it spreads to all our senses and become less conspicuous.

It is in our genes to seek ; seeking is way primordial than thinking or loving, it is the most seminal of our actions. We seek for love, we search for answers.At its zenith we do not know what we are searching for but we believe that once we'll know it once we find it.

Why are we with someone? Isn't it because we have found something in this person. Can we define that something?....Sometimes 'Yes', like when it is purely carnal , when it is lust, here u know what you need, you know what to take and what not to.Everything is so well defined and what u seek is as short as the pinnacle of pleasure. Within hours, days or months you are done , you ditch, you leave. Something as superficial as lust can never hold two souls together. I believe it is when u have no clue as to what you have found in the other person , it is when you cannot delineate, demarcate or distinguish what you have found , you are ready to spend an eternity with this person.

The quest is as much internal as it is external. Once in love, you happen to find something you never knew existed like humour. All your life you had been as dull as a dishwasher and suddenly with this person you are 'The Chandler Bing'. With time you know, you ll discover much more in you. Hence atomically love is a quest, a quest of knowing ourselves through the other.

Remember we always used to learn things by differentiating. We drew tabular columns and wrote the differences side by side to grasp the concept deeper and better. So it is easier to learn one thing by comparing it with something entirely opposite to it.This is true in case of relationships too , in order to know ourselves we need to find someone totally different from us.That is why the extrovert falls for the introvert, the extraordinary for the mediocre, the strong for the weak.

Our search is not like Googles' , we do not always have a motive to search for nor do we have random algorithms running inside us to lead us somewhere. We are driven by our memories and impulses. I used to visit this bookshop to see a person who looked like a long lost friend.I used to go there everyday and stare at this person , this might sound absurd but the experience was inexplicably satiating and healing.

Our lives are built upon and defined by what we seek. When you think that there is nothing more in you or around you to discover, you are over as a person. Never let that happen.... always remember you belong to the kind that has probed down to the God particle .............

An overrated Budda and his Eternal Love crap

“Age does not define maturity, actions do”. Yashji died at the age of 80 , after a long prosperous life , adorned with Dadasahed Phalke award and Padma Bhushan . He held the biggest banner in Hindi Film Industry , some people argue that he is the greatest director ever in Indian Cinema . His movies have been blockbusters , with numero uno cast and great music. He might have been a great man , a beacon to many but as a director, he had the brain of a 10 year old!! He was stuck in an alternate universe where love is the only thing required to live, the human race as a whole has wiped out poverty, there are no diseases other than some amnesia where u forget the one whom you have loved and the lover starts singing songs(Punjabi) for u to recover. All miseries in this universe are caused by love in excess, the guy is loved by two females or vice versa. This was Yashji’s uni-dimensional view of the world. And we hail this deluded man as the bellwether of Indian cinema. Such a pity!

Yashji’s latest installment (and Thank God the last) is Jab Tak Hain Jaan . It is the most boring and pointless film about love since Dil To Pagal Hain. The story starts with Samar Anand(SRK) an army man of the bomb disposal squad who does not fear death and is titled” the man who can never die”, since he has defused 90+ bombs. Akira (anushka) is a discovery journalist who is making a documentary on him and also happens to get hold of his diary and hence his past of LOVE!!!!..

Samar Anand was a street musician singin “Punjabi” songs in the alleys of London to make a living[selling Power Prash(an aphrodisiac from tele- brands)would have been more sensible and viable]. Then he sees a fairy, Meera (Katrina) he falls in LOVE!!! Now she needs him to teach her “Punjabi” songs for her to sing at her dads 60th birthday. Then she falls in LOVE!!! And we are dragged into the most annoyin melody of the year “Saans mein teri saas …my ass”.Now we expect her rich dad whom Meera can’t disobey to disrupt their love affair , but no , in the most bizzare twist at cinemas this year Jesus comes in between them, yes Samar is met with an accident and is about to die and Meera prays to Jesus for his life and in return she ll leave him, and Samar survives, but without Meera he is a dead man walkin .So he decides that he should put this pathetic inane state of his to social service and joins Bomb Disposal Squad and later on becomes the Sachin Tendulkar of bomb diffusing. Akira reads all this from his diary and guess what , She falls in LOVE!!!.

Akira then goes with the army to different locations showing ample amount of skin enough for the army men to jerk off at night .She is also given an opportunity to film a live bomb defusin with Samar where while defusing the bomb she asks questions about his past love life and a live bomb is just secondary. Actually if Yashji was alive today and a personnel from the bomb disposal squad had seen this movie he would have tied a live bomb up Yashji’s ass and would have told SRK to defuse it with “Saans mein teri” in the background!!.

 Akira is on her way to London to showcase her doc movie and she somehow drags Samar too and again Samar meets with an accident , at this point you will pray that he dies and the movie gets over and we go back home but no, Samar survives again with retrograde amnesia where he has forgotten the last ten years of his life and thinks that it is his older accident which happened when Meera was in his life and he demands to see Meera. Take a brief moment here and think , WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE WATCHIN!!!, what bull shit is this , Yashji , this cesspit of a director is suffering from retrograde amnesia for years, he makes one movie about love and after ten years again the same movie with a different cast. How is this movie different from dil to pagal hain, u have Madhuri Srk true love and karishma who plays the second fiddle , or veer zaara where Priety Srk true love , Rani supports, here Srk Katrina true love Anushka the third wheel. The only thing constant is SRK and true love and we are fed up of both..

Akira finds Meera who is still unmarried and together they cure Samar period! After 3 hours of this crap we are subjected to an additional footage of the budda , his work his achievements and that’s where I ran out...........

 The only ones I would like to thank are a few mosquitoes who have ensured that we won’t have to sit through something like this ever again. Emaar Hashmi’s kisses have more depth and character than Yashji’s whore of a love story. Yash raj is a good production house they can make intelligent cinema like Chak De or Rocket Singh which inspires and connects . What is detrimental to them is their obsession with this eternal love bull shit. Yashji is no great director , he belongs to the lost generation of Bollywood where they thought cinema was only about melodrama.The Hindi Film Industry has evolved thanks to directors like Kashyap and Dibkar who have directed and produced path breaking cinema and thanks to UTV. It’s time for Yash Raj to produce more meaningful cinema.

RAIN

It always rained in Rehan's hometown. He lived with his mom in an old house that they had inherited.His lost his dad when he was a small kid.He had fragments of memory relatin to his fathers death. He remembers a white painted van , a man's body with cotton squeezed into his nose, sandal sticks fuming on either sides and his moms arms, holding him tight as her tears rained all over his face...............

Rehan had to wake up now and run to school, his school was 28 kms from his house. His mom was always particular about his education. She wanted to give him the best she can afford. The school he studied was the best school in the district. Now he had get out of his bed otherwise his mom would start screaming at him. He folded the bed sheets then brushed, bathed, dressed and ran for the bus. His mom was employed so breakfast was always a luxury. It was raining that day too.He had to change three buses to reach his school and three railway crossings came en route and all these troubles were compounded with rain. He loathed it, the noisy deluge which made his path dank and dirty which made the sewers flood the road .Rain unchained the evil in men. In buses older men would stick close to him. Somedays he had pushed them away, somedays he had hit them with his lunch kit and somedays he had sobbed silently, he wished his father was there to protect him, he wished he could stop this vicious downpour.

 Rehan loved music, he had a huge cd collection, he would arrange and rearrange it everyday. Sometimes he even used to steal money from his moms purse to buy them.He was alone but music gave him solitude. He would always remember which song is from which movie ,who sung it ,who was the music director ,the lyricist ,everything. But his memory lagged when it came to the temporal matters, for instance he would always misplace his umbrella and lose it eventually. He would never tell his mom about this coz he knew the dire consequence it would lead to.After days seeing her son always wet his mom would find out the truth and then he would be slapped,whipped,flogged,caned , she would hit him with anything she could find when she was angry and she was always angry for something or the other. Sometimes when he scored less in the exams he was caned until blood oozed out of his veins, he would beg her to stop but she never did. One day, after years of this torture ,he grabbed the cane from his mothers hand and broke it to pieces, to tiny bits, to molecules, to atoms. His mom stopped hitting him after that. Rehan got into a good college and he owed this to his mother , she put every penny she had earned and saved into his education. He left his house and started enjoying his newly gained freedom. He would often ask his mom to put money in his account and everytime she'd put double the amount he had asked for. While in college he hardly went home .He would always make some excuse and would stay there itself even during vacations. He knew his mom was alone old and miserable now but still he dint bother to pay her a visit..

 Rehan graduated, got a job and he was home for a brief period. It was raining that night when his mom started shouting at him for no reason , her loneliness had made her insecure and bilious. He was a man now, he did not like being oppressed. He roared back. He said things after which he dint deserve to call her 'mother'.She threw his cd collection out into the rain. He ran out searching for them in the dark, hoping to salvage as much as possible. Tears ran down his cheeks but the rain washed them away........ The next day Rehan walked out of that house, walked out of his town and came to his new city where he would work where he had friends and above all where he was independent. It never rained in his suburb and he was pleased about that.Months passed , he dint even call his mother once. He had forgotten about her. But in that city he could never turn his back to a woman begging for help or for money, he would empty his wallet for them..

 One night he was sleeping and in his subconscious he could faintly hear the rain's percussion over the roof. He suddenly woke up and yelled "Maaaaaaaaa......."but there was no response, there was silence and rain. It was raining in the city for the first time since he came . It was dark there was no power, he made his way to the door , got out of his house and the rain was heavy , he couldn see his neighborhood, everything was veiled by it. He took his cell and dialed his landline, it rang once, twice, thrice and someone picked up "hello" It was his mom , he knew it, tears burst out.He could say nothing , for his entire body was numb, numb with the guilt of abandoning her ,who had raised a fatherless child, numb with the shame of running away from his only responsibility, his mother. She was still there on the other side he could feel it but his lips were sealed and hence the rain spoke for him........

Once...............

Once is like those poems that we write at the back of our notebooks looking out of the window during a mundane geography class. Nothing baroque or byzantine but modest, subdued and unpretentious . Its subtle charm has you spellbound. The cast of Once is like u and me, who rush into the movie theaters with the first pair of clothes we find, which may not even be ours. They don’t bury themselves in layers of make up nor do they scream at each other to express themselves. The story is about a musician on the streets of Dublin played by Glen Hansard founder of the Irish folk band Frames. He captivates you with his mere presence.The guy is dynamic and depressive all at once. He plays the "Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy" with sheer brilliance. He meets a Czech immigrant girl( Markéta Irglová) who loves his music , she plays piano and they start playing for each other and somewhere on the way they pick up the symphony of love:) Once is a melody with music in its veins. The characters breathe music . Listen to “Falling slowly” and “When your mind’s made up” you will understand. And for once you will know that a refined cinematography or a sophisticated editing is not essential to make a movie beautiful , you just have to capture life as it is. Once paints the exact gloomy picture of our world which is mundane and monotonous, it is its characters ,their highs and lows that gives it the hues. It smirks at the physical aspect of love and tells us to forget ,forgive and let go. Watch it Once for the music ,Once for its actors , Once for everything we have wished for,Once for everything we have lost, Once for everything we hope and Once for the solitude that music offers in our overcrowded lives………

My Sputnik Sweetheart

I was in landmark skimming through the books. I crossed biographies and reached fiction and I could see the twilight series everywhere, it gives me nausea. I pity twilight fans and as my friend Saami says "They have morbid hormonal imbalance and need immediate medical attention". I moved on and something caught my eye, i too k a few steps back and there it was peeking out of a corner shelf , Haruki Murakami’s “Sputnik Sweetheart” .I took it and it was like I was again on that train with her.

 It was somewhere in December two years back, I was on the Chennai Mail second class reservation side lower berth .I took a gulp of coke , plugged in my ear phones and started reading some gossip from filmfare. It was ten minutes later that I noticed , there was a girl right in front of me .No, she was not the one with blue eyes and cascading hair and she didn’t have the looks to die for nor did she have those huge physical assets that can drive men crazy; She looked very ordinary and maybe that’s why i did not notice her all the while . Oscar Wilde had said “Indifference is the revenge that the world takes on mediocrities”. And yes she was reading, a book that had an elegantly enticing cover and read “ Sputnik Sweetheart”. I wondered what that could be , Sputnik was the Russian satellite , what has it to do with romance ? A completely metallic object that circles round the earth over a monotonous path, how can it ever be associated with a tumultuous and capricious affection like love I took a step forward , asked her name and introduced myself. I enquired about the book and what it dealt with? She said it’s a novel about complicated relationships. Then i asked what does a metallic thing like sputnik has anything to do with relationships. At this point she kept the book down and started staring at me for a while and it was freaking me out. It was like this innocuous question unleashed the quirky side of her. She suddenly asked "Have u ever been in love?" I said “Ya once!” She then asked “What happened?” I replied “It did not work out” She responded saying “ U were dumped right?!!!” I was offended by this question so I just smiled and said nothing. She followed up with an apology saying she did not mean to hurt , I said it’s fine I don’t mind. Then we were silent for the next half an hour or so .

 She broke the silence saying “I never want to be in love!”. I asked “why?” She said “In love we are like satellites!!” I responded saying “Oh , ya please explain!” She smiled and replied “ Once in love our entire world stars revolving round that single person , and he or she defines our day and night, sometimes there is enough force to keep us in the orbit like the gravitational pull for the satellites and sometimes there isn’t. We are like these satellites and love from the other side is our gravity. If that is not adequate we shall be hurled along the tangent, devoured by some blackhole, looted of our identity and our own existence. I do not want to risk that so I don’t wanna be in love!”. I was impressed by this reply. She then added asking “What do u think went wrong with your relationship?” I said” I cannot say a specific reason, it’s something that keeps piling up over time and one day u are unable to ignore it, so u question it, when u already know that there won’t be any answers and that’s when you part ways to find a new person, build a new bond and seek answers for what went wrong with the previous one....” We were distracted by the train coming to a halt. She exclaimed “ I need to get down this is my stop” and started gathering things. I asked for her number she looked at me and said “See i think you were not listening to me i feel that I like u already, i liked u the moment u questioned the metallic and melodramatic side of sputnik , i do not wanna go any further , let’s just leave it here, let’s be strangers all over again....If possible find this book and read it you’ll understand more” I walked her to the door, she smiled again from the platform said bye and vanished.....

 Today i read it and i know what she meant . Murakami says “It came to me then, that we are travelling companions, but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal on their own separate orbits. From far they look like beautiful shooting stars but in reality they are nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together, maybe even open our hearts to each other. But it was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant, we’d be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing”.............

Shayari from zindagi na milegi dobara

Jab jab dard ka baadal chaya
Jab ghum ka saya lehraya
Jab aansoo palkon tak aya
Jab yeh tanha dil ghabraya
Humne dil ko yeh samjhaya
Dil aakhir tu kyun rota hai
Duniya mein yunhi hota hai
Yeh jo gehre sannate hain
Waqt ne sabko hi baante hain
Thoda ghum hai sabka qissa
Thodi dhoop hai sabka hissa
Aankh teri bekaar hi nam hai
Har pal ek naya mausam hai
Kyun tu aise pal khota hai
Dil aakhir tu kyun rota hai




Ik baat honton tak hai jo aayi nahin
Bas ankhon say hai jhaankti
Tumse kabhi, mujhse kabhi
Kuch lafz hain woh maangti
Jinko pehanke honton tak aa jaaye woh
Aawaaz ki baahon mein baahein daalke ithlaye woh
Lekin jo yeh ik baat hai
Ahsas hi ahsas hai
Khushboo si hai jaise hawa mein tairti
Khushboo jo be-aawaaz hai
Jiska pata tumko bhi hai
Jiski khabar mujhko bhi hai
Duniya se bhi chupta nahin
Yeh jaane kaisa raaz hai



Pighlay neelam sa behta hua yeh samaan
Neeli neeli si khamoshiyaan
Na kahin hai zameen
Na kahin aasmaan
Sarsaraati huyi tehniyaan, pattiyaan
Keh rahi hain ki bas ek tum ho yahaan
Sirf main hoon meri saansein hain aur meri dhadkanein
Aisi gehraiyaan
Aisi tanhaiyaan
Aur main sirf main
Apne honay pe mujhko yaqeen aa gaya



Dilon mein tum apni betaabiyan leke chal rahe ho, toh zinda ho tum
Hawa ke jhokon ke jaise aazad rehna seekho
Tum ek dariya ke jaise lehron mein behna seekho
Har ek lamhe se tum milo khole apni baahein
Har ek pal ek naya samaa dekhe yeh nigaahein
Jo apni aankhon mein hayraniyan leke chal rahe ho, toh zinda ho tum
Dilon mein tum apni betaabiyan leke chal rahe ho, toh zinda ho tum.