Lootera - A great film. . almost

There is not much I can write that has not already been written on different websites and newspapers by so called professional critics. Many of them ran out of adjectives while praising Lootera and ended up drooling all over the movie. But then if you give 3 stars to Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and as many to Jab Tak Hain Jaan, giving just one more star to Lootera does not really help restore your credibility. Are you reading Rajeev Masand? (obviously not, whom am i kidding)

Before any of you make any assumptions, let me be clarify. I have not watched either YJHD or JTHJ and I do not plan to. And that is why I can never be a professional critic. I cannot watch bad films. I just enjoy reading the (honest) reviews.

Not that Lootera did not deserve 4 stars out of 5, it most certainly did. Maybe even more. It is indeed way better than most mainstream Hindi movies that I do not watch.

I will keep my critique brief (it would have been longer) by saying that I completely agree with all the critics who have praised Vikramaditya Motwane for his direction and Mahendra Shetty's camera work. Great cast, good acting even by support roles so on and so forth. (But why did they need Divya Dutta for that bit role?)

One thing that is not praised enough though is their attention to detail in recreating 1950's era. But that might have been accidental considering that Motwane used to assist Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who managed to make all his contemporary films look like they were set in the 50's.

What made me happiest is that Motwane stayed true to his sensibilities and did not feel the need for any lip synced songs or, to use a cliche, people dancing around trees. There were more than a few dance worthy trees in the movie. And he was true to his screenplay. I could not think of a single scene that was unnecessary; except for the one where Divya Dutta was cutting bhindis and crying. (Yeah I have a problem with a character which did not add anything to the story and only got prominence because of a prominent actor playing that role)

What else....oh yes.. the music. .  awesome music with awesome lyrics. Even though the background score needs to be explained by Amit Trivedi. It is too similar to be a coincidence. And I have said this before and I will say it again, Amit Trivedi should more judicious on which songs he sings himself. Zinda would have been a much better song if sung by a more accomplished singer. But overall a very good album with a couple of great songs worth playing on a loop.

But I do have a bone to pick, and that has something to do with the story. Do not get me wrong. The short story from which this was adapted is one of my favorite stories. And it is probably one of O Henry's most famous stories. And that is exactly why I think the screenplay let me down on many fronts. I knew the ending before the interval because it was obvious in the first painting lesson that the director was going to use exactly the same twist in the tale as the original story. But I think what bothered me most is that Motwane did not realize, or decided to ignore the fact, that many in the audience who would actually appreciate this film would already be familiar with the story. And for them the payoff at the end just could not be as satisfying as ...well... something more original.

Even if he decided to go with the same idea as the original, he could have used a different setup. Maybe he should have included a reference to the original story instead of the "bheel raja" folk tale in the movie. In fact I think that a big library like that could certainly have a copy of O. Henry's short story collection. He died in 1910 and the movie was in 1952. Not a stretch to imagine that the characters were already familiar with the said story. And maybe the final payoff could have been based on the hero's already established skill of stealing, instead of something that he was clearly not good at. Would that not have been more appropriate given the title?

Festival of lights

This diwali, let's take a moment, before we tear the packet of crackers open, and read the label. Where was it made? Most likely we will see the name Sivakasi. Before we light that first sparkler, let's spare a thought for the hundreds, maybe thousands of children in Sivakasi who are working for hours everyday in dangerous conditions to make those crackers. Or let's not. Go on as if we never read those news articles. It is diwali after all. We have to celebrate, right? It is indeed a time to enjoy. Get together with friends, eat good food. And who knows what other products I am using that involved exploitation of cheap labor. My jeans, my shoes, my iPhone, my online banking software. It is not like I will stop using them. Or that my stopping using them will make any difference. There we go. I am good at this. I am good at talking myself out of feeling guilty. What a relief. Happy Diwali friends! Have a blast . . . or two. . . from a safe distance. . .

Blasphemy

My first response after watching the video was . . . . really? Is this the reason why people are killing other people? Yes, you are right. I am referring to the so called anti-Islam video. The video, the responses to that video and the responses to those responses, in my opinion, represent everything that is wrong with our world.

I had made up my mind that my second post was going to be a logical followup to my first post. I  am really a staunch supporter of freedom of speech and the need to protect that freedom unconditionally. And I thought that this video presented a great opportunity to further expand on what I was trying to say. Since most of what I heard or read about the video, was through our extremely reliable and unquestionably balanced news reports in the Indian media, I thought I needed to do some research on my own to get all the facts and opinions. I went through numerous (read "a few") different websites, blogs, videos, new articles; and as I mentioned at the beginning even watched the original video on youtube.  But after reading and watching everything I read and watched, I realized that my second post (this one) cannot be as trivial as the first one. I have to take time to explain why I think the way I do. And I cannot say everything in one go. So I think I will have to say it over a series of posts. I must warn in the beginning that most of you might not agree with what I am saying. But my intention is not to offend you.

As I am thinking about what to write about, I am beginning to realize that I have undertaken a difficult task. Thoughts are racing in my head to get ahead of each other and get noticed. But there is nothing that I can write or say that has not been written or said already by much more qualified individuals; individuals who in many ways have influenced my thinking or I should say showed me how to think. efore I start talking about all the different aspects of religion and why I think that the world would have been a better place without it, I think I should try to explain how I became an atheist; rather how I realized that I was an atheist.

It has been almost 15-16 years, maybe more, since I started questioning the existence of god. I do not know how it started. I think it was something I had read in the book "Mother" by Maxim Gorky. I do not recall exactly what, but I do not have the time to read that book now to look for what triggered the doubt. It is not like I had spent too much time thinking about god and religion before that. And to be honest I was not raised in a particularly religious family. The only thing slightly religious that my mom would occasionally ask me to do was to light incense in front of the pictures of my late grandfather and grandmother and seek their blessings. Most importantly they never discouraged me from asking questions. Both of my parents believe in some form of god. My mom does go to temples once in a while and offers prayers. My dad, now that I know a bit about different forms of religious beliefs, is what you can call a Deist. But I think that the fact that I was allowed to think freely and did not have religion forced down my throat, when I was small and could not decide for myself, had a lot to do with how my thinking evolved over time.

As mentioned earlier I had started thinking and contemplating about the existence of god and the need for worshiping god after I read Gorky's novel. But it was a year later when my dad gifted me a copy of A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking when my mind really opened up. I realized that how little I had learnt, and possibly would learn, in all the years in school. That book, in retrospection,  turned out to be one of the biggest influences on my how I thought about the world.

But this influence was not immediate. I went through varying degrees of theism, agnosticism, skepticism, atheism and again theism at various phases of my life. There was a time when I used to silently pray to god everyday asking for things to be okay, when not everything was okay in life. (I will spare you the details). There was a time when I believed in the occult and read  Cheiro and Jon Saint Germain to learn palmistry and was tried to summon spirits using a planchet. I had briefly submitted to fatalism after I predicted a painful death for myself at the age of 21. But all these passed as quickly as they came.

There was a point of time when I took the convenient route of changing the definition of god to suit my needs. I would say. hey! maybe all the laws of science are governed by god so that he does not to constantly worry about what is going on in the world. Maybe science is god's signature. It was my attempt to get my rational mind to accept what everyone else around me so strongly believed in. But that was at an age when I was too naive to understand that the such a god did not need to be prayed to. Such a god, even if it existed, would not worry about an individual's piety, prayers, devotion and what not. If such a god existed that governed everything in the world, it would not have created free will or the ability to do "wrong". No, such a god was not God. Such a god did not need religion and most religions that I have come across did not have any mention of a god like that. And the problem was not just with the definition of god. The problem was in the nature of religions and how religions influence the followers. Religions to me presented a bigger problem.

Religion is divisive. There might be a lot of good in what is preached in different religions. But no one needs to attend a history class to know how many lives have been lost in the name of religion. It was religion that motivated thousands of hindus to go to Ayodhya and demolish a mosque that was built in 16th century claiming that it was the exact site where Ram was born, which, if it ever happened, happened 9000 years ago. Religion gave them the zeal to exact revenge for something that happened more than 400 years ago. It was religion that motivated some muslim zealots to set a train compartment and it's Hindu occupants on fire in Godhra. And it was religion, which gave some members of the hindu community in Naroda Patiya the conviction that anyone belonging to the muslim community deserved to be punished irrespective of whether they were involved in the Godhra incident or not. In the name of bringing religion to a savage land in 15th century, some christians slaughtered almost an entire civilization off the face of the earth. Ironically in the same land, the tallest buildings have been blown up by airplanes in the 21st century, religion being the primary influence. I can go on and on. Witch hunts in North America, apartheid in South America, Untouchability and Sati in our own country were practices with roots in religion. Holocaust? Ethnic cleansing? The never ending conflicts in Israel and Palestine. I can go on and on.

It does not really matter to me that the perpetrators of some of the recent religious crimes across the world might have been misled, misguided or misinformed. They thought they were doing right by their religion and that was enough for them to commit inconceivable acts of hate and violence. So religion has not prevented these crimes against humanity from being committed. Did the victims not pray enough? History shows that religion has not been very successful at promoting peace and harmony or showing people the right way as people claim that it does.

You might say that I am being one dimensional, that I am just criticizing the acts of certain people, but ignoring the  the benefits that people get from religion. Some people argue that religion gives discipline and structure. That it provides a moral compass to its followers. Helps them discern good from bad. And that precisely, in my opinion, is one of the causes for the divisiveness. Followers start thinking that somehow that their religion is the better than others'. That their good is somehow better than the good preached by other religions. That their morality is somehow more moral. And many even feel the need to criticize other religions to feel better about their own. But the worst effect is that religion somehow becomes the most important identity for many. People belonging to different religions somehow start seeing each other differently. Prejudice permeates the subconscious mind. The moment they hear that a person belongs to a particular religion or caste or sub caste, they draw some conclusions. They judge the book not only by it's cover, but also by it's label.

And even if I agree that, yes, all religions in some way or the other try to preach good values and morality, it does not mean that people who are not religious are immoral or lack values. So do we really need religion?

I spoke about religion. About my perception of religion and why I feel so strongly about it. Today I am not going to go into the scientific or rational arguments against the possibility of a supernatural god and other mystical phenomena like souls, spirits, heaven, hell, rebirth, avatars and what not. One reason is that I do not want this post to drag for too long. But the primary reason is that I myself did not have to go through a scientific study or extensive research before realizing my own position on the matter of god and religion. I am not claiming that I have the knowledge or expertise in science to be able to dispel all myths with scientific evidence or mathematical equations. But I have my own arguments, which though not sophisticated, were enough for me. I will try to explain them in a subsequent post.

So how did I realize that I was an atheist? Honestly, I do not know the answer to that question. Everything I have said above is based on my opinions formed over a period of time and it is really difficult to go back in time and recall when a particular idea first occurred to me. But I know when it happened. I was going through this phase of skepticism or you can also say partial theism. This was when I was in college. My friends and I used to go to this big temple not too far from where we stayed. It was big, magnificently constructed. There was a big garden with lots of plants and trees. Bangalore weather was perennially pleasant that time. Cool breeze, peaceful environment, green all over, the ambiance seemed to have a calming effect on all of us, which most of us immediately attributed to the temple. And then one particularly bad day, I went to the temple with a couple of friends. As I said, it was a bad day. It seemed like the world was coming crashing down all around me. (why? well that is a story for another day). I was stressed and tensed. So we went to the temple looking for some peace (and the tasty prasad that they made in the morning) and to pray for things to get better. As I was standing there in front of the main idol, trying to figure out how I got into that situation and what could be done next, I had this strange empty feeling inside me. It is very difficult to explain that feeling. But I could not get myself to pray. I could not even get myself to think the words "God, please help me" or bless me or whatever it is I used to say while praying. Ironically, standing there inside the "holy" temple, right in front of the idol, listening to the priest chanting, I realized that I did not belong there. I had never felt more convinced or confident about anything in my life compared to what I felt at that time, when I realized that I did not believe in god. That was more than 10 years ago. And that was the last time I ever entered a temple voluntarily.

If you believe

Do you believe in freedom of speech and freedom of expression? So do I. But how far are you willing to go to exercise that right? More importantly what does it mean to you. And do you let others speak their mind freely even if you do not agree with or like what they are saying? After all one cannot really be free, in the true sense of the word, if there are limits to that freedom.

An abrupt start to the first post in a blog, you may say.

Notice the date when this was posted? Now I am under no illusion about my blogging skills. The only thing I have been told I am good at writing are work related emails. So even if this blog attracts any readers in the future it certainly will not be in the immediate future. And considering the short term and selective memory of my fellow countrymen, I feel the need to jog your memory a bit, divert your attention to the date of the post and ask you to recall the incidents that happened in India around the time when this post was . . . er .  posted. Yuvraj Singh's comeback in cricket?, You might ask after careful consideration. What on earth does that have anything to do with freedom of expression, I will reply. Oh, then you must be talking about that movie by that director Q. What movie? I would say, pretending I have not heard about it. And I will not correct you saying that the movie was made 2 year before this date lest you realize I had indeed heard about it. Yes that would be a good example. But no, I am talking politics.

"Coalgate?". (That incredibly ingenious name will certainly stand the test of time and outlast our short term memory). No, I am referring to something more specific and I will not be surprised that if you do not remember this incident  I am talking about a cartoonist who got more fame because of a much publicized arrest than he could have ever expected from his cartoons. Aseem Trivedi. (Disclaimer: I am not sure if these links will be working when you read this. Also I have no special affinity for ndtv.com. I was too lazy to find a better news site)

At this point, you should google and see the cartoons that got him into trouble. I am not going to cross link or attach any images here.

It will not be fair to say that the politicians of this country should have shown a better sense of humor. At least not in this context. The cartoons were not particularly funny as such. Personally, I felt that Aseem Trivedi's cartoons were not very sophisticated. He lacked the dry and subtle humor we (at least I do) normally associate with political cartoons. Maybe he was not going for humor and was intentionally relying on the literal interpretation. Also he cannot be blamed for being original or creative. After all he was not the first person to suggest that the politicians and "buerocrat"s (sic) were raping the country. And the image of the country as a lady draped in the tricolor and wearing a hindu goddess like crown showed that as an artist this Aseem Trivedi relied a lot on his primary school art lessons. But I digress. The objective of this post was not to critique the cartoons or the cartoonist.

I was talking about the freedom of expression.

Are you one of those people who protested against that arrest? Or blogged and tweeted or status updated deliriously when Government of India was trying to block twitter accounts. Tell me something. Tell me how would you have reacted if some cartoonist had distorted images of religious figures and emblems and god and goddesses? Tell me how did you feel when one of India's greatest painters had to leave the country because he portrayed your deities as naked. He thought you believed in his right to that express freely, but forgot that there were limits within which you would let him. He forgot the two-facedness of your belief system.

Or are you one of those who supported the arrest because you feel the symbols and emblems are more more important than the institutions they represent. Did you feel the cartoonist was treacherous and seditious because he disrespected the national symbol? Then sorry to have wasted your time because I do not really have anything to say to you. I am afraid that anything I say might hurt your pride in things you have been taught to be proud about. And it is dangerous to cross anyone who does not think logically. Which brings me to the question . . do I really believe in freedom of speech?

Well, yes... and no. Yes I believe that I should be free to say, do, write, draw, sculpt, sing whatever I want and whenever I want and wherever I want, as long as I am not physically or financially harming anyone. But I do not believe such freedom exists anywhere. There is always a line somewhere waiting for me to cross it.

I feel I should be free to criticize your religious beliefs if I do not agree with them. But I have a feeling that you are not free enough to tolerate my criticism.

It was convenient for you to support Aseem Trivedi because he was making fun (trying to) of the politicians, easy targets. But I would not be surprised if you had led a mob to lynch him instead, if he had made fun of some religious pontiff.

My point? What is the fun in having a point? I would rather go round and round in circles till you are dizzy, in hopes that you will confuse the dizziness with some kind of a heightened sense of pleasure and enlightenment from reading the blog.

But since this is the first post and you have actually managed to reach this far (or at least bothered to skip to the end), I might as well pretend to have a point. My only point is that you cannot be selective. Either you support freedom of expression completely without conditions or you do not. And if you do not, then stop beating the drums of freedom whenever you think it is convenient. But if you do, then do not let anyone tell you what is acceptable and what is not. You have the freedom to decide for yourself.