Dear Subbu

"Do you have a girlfriend?"

Nanga Fakir: (Faintly amused) "Nope."

"Ever had one?"

Nanga Fakir: (More amusement) "No."

(Slightly incredulous) "What do you do to pass free time then?"

Nanga Fakir: "Goofy comics, seedy pulp fiction, ultra violent anime."

"Whoa...man are you lucky!"

Nanga Fakir: (Smiling from ear to ear) "I know."

Another V Day passes.

Subbu, take heart. Don't die yet.

The Outsiders

Bangys have finally risen against the nitwit immigrant population (Link).

CJ is a happy soul I am sure. Many a time during many a conversation, his semi-humorous, semi-serious loathing against non Kannadigas (especially stupid philistine Northies) came to the fore. I don't know if he knew that among the worst of the worst immigrant philistines that he poked fun at, I should have, on all counts, figured at the top of the list on account of my prominent connections with East UP and Bhojpuri culture. If he pokes fun at the laborer class, then most of them are from UP. If he pokes fun at Northies (read Hindi speaking junta) then too I am indicted for having played a part in soiling the glorious culture.

I did not have a particularly nice time in Bangalore either. That I lived in an obscure corner which most Bangys themselves would not know about didn't help matters much either. The auto rickshaw guys fleeced me regularly. The buses were few and far in between. Was it because of the cultural stain that my people were on the immaculate fabric of Kannada culture? I don't think so.

Did I get pissed off when 'my people' were ridiculed? Not at all. I'd like to imagine that I am at the forefront of such 'ridiculous' activities. But of all emotions that could've surfaced, the most prominent one was that of immense surprise. That genuinely smart people like CJ would hold the views that they do (some of his more outrageous ones are simply to ruffle stupid politically correct people's feathers) comes across to me more as a problem of the remarkable existence (and domination) of irrationality in humans as a whole - irrespective of how smart/brilliant/talented they are individually.

But we - the poor, stupid, backward, uneducated, uncultured blundering buffoons (read UP/Biharis) get fucked wherever we care to go. Mumbaikars are pissed off with us and they'd hate to let us see our "Sasura Bada Paisa Wala" and "Ab ta Ban_ja Sajanwa Hamaar". Modern Bangys hate us because we can't speak English and don't understand the power of Rock and Roll. Old Bangys hate us because we speak Hindi/don't learn Kannada, are insular, are hell bent on polluting Kannada culture and are a general nuisance. Delhi hates us because we eat up resources which don't exist back there in our state. (Link)

Bascially, we are to India, what India was to the world twenty years ago -- poor, corrupt, diseased and showing no chances of recovery. South Indian mothers are afraid to send their children anywhere more north than Mumbai (AK's mom fretted if in IIT Kanpur, he will be eaten alive by mysterious Northie rakshasas).

What is the solution to the problem? And more importantly, does there exist a solution if you have people decrying the strain immigrant junta are on their resources in one breath and congratulating themselves on the success of their US placed sons/daughters in the other?

Being the misanthrope that I am, I think not. What I think will happen is that every now and then, some smart guy, to his advantage, will stir up and manipulate gullible (read stupid) junta into killing some poor rickshaw pulling sons of bitches from the Dark Land (read UP-Bihar). This will lead to the consolidation of the poor Northy in the civilised South. Which will entail a demand for a representative of the community during elections. This will help some Northy parties fight it out for the chunk of the aforementioned votes. Since BJP plays the culture card, it wouldn't be able to side with the cultural polluters in the South. These poor fellows will find their true leader in the charismatic Mayawati of the BSP. Slowly the spread of the BSP will increase and in due time BSP will will rule the Centre leading to the entire MG Road in Bangalore being turned into Parivartan Chauk II.

(Link to news of Mayawati's Prime Ministerial ambitions)

A Bangy will then rise to beat the shit out of the Northy motherfuckers. He will be called CJ. And so shall Mayawati be assassinated.

PS: Although the Garden City of India is Bangalore, I still think that there are more gardens/parks in a mere one kilometre radius around Parivartan Chauk in Lucknow than there are in the entire city of Bangalore.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Sin sat on his throne -- a tattered, rickety old chair. Yesterday, his close friend Winter had emailed him, informing Sin of his worsening disease and possible death which seemed merely a matter of time. "That Death is a close childhood friend who would see to it that the demise will be as smooth as possible is a slight comfort, but only slightly so...", the email remarked.

Sin concurred. Visitation by this close childhood friend was not an agreeable proposition.

He imagined Winter in his youth. Terrible, implacable, exacting and harsh (and pretty dashing too!). He saw him now as a toothless caricature whose only signs of virility were infrequent attacks of incontinence. Who would believe that entire planets were once covered with his excrement and that humans the world over shivered under the spell of his thunderous farts!

Humans...He gnashed his teeth as he thought about the culprits. They had been at his throat ever since he could imagine them. Through sheer luck and genius he had not fallen victim. But he was growing old too. It was only a matter of time when the vermin attacked and forced him out of the inconspicuous old age home he currently lived in.

And what will the world come to then? Without Winter, without Sin, without Evil, without Darkness. Scorching Light will be everywhere busy searing off skins using his shiny happy demeanour (US Patent No: PT 1087934). Gloom would die. So will Depression. Our sister Melancholia will be ravaged by the clumsy oak Cheerfulness.

The names of those who once were in The League will become unspeakable in the new regime. There will never be born, in the coming generations, those who would've heard of The League. How will the Dostoyevskys, Alan Moores, Orwells, William Gibsons of tomorrow ply their trade? Suicide shall not be there to help them either. Poor souls...I feel so sorry for them!

As he thought such thoughts, Gloom and Depression set in. He laid a hand on each of their shoulders and said with a voice that was drenched with tears, "Ah friends! What would I do without you? Don't ever leave me!"

Status Report

Finished (last month) one of the most ambitious and brilliant SF books - A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge.

Although reams of well educated, intellectual criticism have been written about the book (it won the Hugo Award), let me write my two utterly insignificant lines too.

The book is utterly, overly, devastatingly ambitious. A near six hundred page epic opera, it takes the most stereotypical and beaten to death SF formulas - space operas, wicked aliens in the far, far future and adds a dash of brilliance by introducing the awesome concept of Zones of Thought - the premise being that Earth is in such a region of Universe which is the Slow Zone - faster than light travel is impossible by the laws of physics. There are other zones namely the Middle Zone and the Beyond where nearly infinite speeds are possible and ultra ultra advanced technologies and near sentient AI can exist.



The wicked aliens are undeveloped dog-like creatures who stay in packs of four or five. Loss of one member is like mutilation of a limb. Their mind is a collective sum of the individual brains and groupthink is the only mode of thinking.

An awesome odyssey unfolds in which courtly intrigue, betrayal, imaginary identities vs real identities, weird inconceivable alien beings (cf Skroderiders) play out the vision of the author in a grand backdrop of an ominously spreading Universal perversion.



The scope of inquiry and the variety of issues dealt with in this ultra speculative setting is staggering and although the book gets slightly boring in the middle, if you stick it out till the end, the reward will be supremely satisfying.

The other book which has been on the back of my mind for quite some time is The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K LeGuin.

Again, this is a very celebrated book and it won the Hugo Award the year in which it was published ('60s I think) but I have always found some aspects of the book to be underrated and unappreciated.

More than an SF classic which it obviously is, I found it to be one of the most touching love stories I have read. I dislike love stories and they are generally a test of my patience -whether movies or novels. (The only exceptions I can remind myself of are the movies As Good as it Gets, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Before Sunset). However, the love story in this book beats all previous giants.



The story is about a planet of people who are androgynous and sexually neutral for most of the year but for the short mating period (kemmer) during which, depending upon the hormonal secretions and situation encountered, the aliens (a cousin of the human race, we are told) can revert into either of the sexes.

The protagonist is an ambassador of the Galactic Federation whose task is to convince the different countries of this ultra cold, Antarctica-like planet to join the Federation. And thus is laid the foundation of a fantastic novel about the nature of wars and their connection to the sexual nature of society (the novelist seems to be of the view that since the population is sexless, the aggression latent within such a society is less than that of a 'normal' one).

The love story doesn't emerge until the later parts of the book and even then it is nowhere pronounced, as if the author did not particularly want it highlighted. But it is remarkably beautiful, subtle and heartwarming.

Ra, this post is for you. You wanted me to recommend some real badass, topnotch SF. Go ahead and get these. (Buy, beg, borrow or steal)

Books read during Winters (Dec-Jan)

1)Watchmen (Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons)
2)A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge)
3)From Hell - Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

A Fiasco, an Aftermath and Inconvenient Truths

It all happened not so long ago.

As a Final Year Chemical Engineering student, I had to clear this mandatory two credit seminar course that was taken by the evil lord which in his earthly form went by the name of Professor Sriniketan (that more evil lords existed and Srini was, but the cliched hard hearted angel compared to the others was discovered much later).

That I lived in H Wing didn't help my cause much. That I was assigned the topic "Dairy Pollution and Methods to Combat it" (or something on those lines) didn't help my cause much either.

Not one draft of the seminar floated on the LAN. Why??? Because none of the seniors were assigned such an arbit topic for their seminar. That implied I would have to prepare the seminar ON MY OWN!

Which sent shivers down my spine. So like the good, hard working student I am, I began work on the preparation full 12 hours before the presentation. By sheer hard work, ingenious Googling abilities and concern for my immaculate record as an outstanding student of the Department, I had the material ready full two hours earlier than the presentation was due.



My power point was supposed to finish in exactly ten minutes - five minutes less than the stipulated time. And one of the major causes of dairy pollution I had discovered was Cattle Farts. Yeah, you heard it right. My ingenious combination of search keywords took me to such a website where the research done by UC Davis scientists on the aforementioned topic was detailed. Being a duty conscious, well meaning engineering student, I decided to report on this major discovery and so it was, but natural that one of my slides mentioned this important result.

I heard suppressed snickers from the back benchers. I saw the Prof eye me in a nasty, amused sort of way. He interrupted me.

Prof (with considerable menace in his voice) : "How do you propose to contain such a form of pollution?"

By this time, I was shitting bricks. And so, I came up with the following engineering solution:

Me : "We could preprocess the food that the cattle are fed. We could also employ some liquefaction towers that could absorb such gases and produce harmless by products." (This is a standard chemical engineering answer. No matter what sort of a question, profs always fall for this answer or a suitable variant.)

The snickering had spread to a full throated laughter by now. I smiled nervously at my friends trying to gauge how deep a shit I was in. Meanwhile, Srini's eyebrows furrowed and in that god-awful threating voice he roared.

"Do you think this is a joke?"

Oh my fucking god...the hell that broke loose then!

The fame of the presentation grew wildly. So much so that an account of it was included in the next NewsWagon issue (despite the fact that I was the Con and in principle at least, I could've stopped Biswas from writing about it). Juniors who hadn't seen me in ages began coming by to say 'hello' and 'see how I was doing'. Boy, did that suck!

Now why did I bring this issue up at all? The reason is the following:

Concerning your dairy pollution fiasco, let me first tell you that I had been to the college at the end of September, concerning my transcripts. It was then that I met one of our juniors at the department – I forget who – who told me that Dr. Srinikethan had warned them against making a mess of their presentations, with cow-dung and straw, such as one of their seniors, though I think he did not name you, had. Further, copies of it continue to circulate on the LAN, not for reference, but for some comedy.

This is taken from a recent Shandy email. And it kind of pissed me off. The reason is the following:

Every year, cows and other four-legged livestock emit 80 million tons of methane into the atmosphere. As a greenhouse gas, methane is 20 times more potent than CO2 -- serving your family a steak dinner is like taking a 40-mile drive in a Hummer.

British scientists have a solution: garlic. In a study published in July, they used it to kill methane-producing stomach bacteria and have designed high-sugar feedstock to improve digestive efficiency. But consumers might not like garlic-flavored beef, and controlled feeding isn't always possible, so Australian researchers are putting stomach bacteria from kangaroos -- a zero-methane animal -- into cattle.

Link

So I was right after all!. Even the solution I postulated was partially correct - fiddle with the feed of the damned cattle! And to have been the butt of infinite jokes on account of standing up for TRUTH!

Kalyug, ghor Kalyug

The only solace I can find from this otherwise forgettable episode is that juniors assigned the same topic in the future, can find ready drafts for the same on the LAN.

Heard it through the Grapevine

The following are an arbit collection of pithy adages I find are funny/interesting/illuminating etc etc

1) He who is not a socialist before the age of 30 has no heart. He who is a socialist after the age of 30 has no head.

(Overheard on the internet)

2) The future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed

- attributed to William Gibson

3) Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice. Either...would suffice.

- attributed to Robert Frost

4) I cannot conceive of a God that could make things like toothache and incontinence

- attributed to Kurt Vonnegut

5) Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.

- attributed to Richard Feynman

The following doesn't exactly fit the pattern since it was an anecdote from my NCERT textbook for Physics in Class XI/XII. But it is hilarious and brilliant. Also, since it is an anecdote, I am merely recollecting what I have in mind and it should not be considered to be a verbatim rendering of what I had read back then.

6) Consider the plight of physicists during the Quantum Revolution. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, experiments led them to believe that electrons were particles. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, they believed that electrons were waves.

On Sundays, they prayed.

Another one that doesn't quite fit the pattern:

A century and a half ago, a debate was raging about the question whether God spoke Hebrew. Jacob Grimm, one of the brothers to whom we owe the collection of fairy tales, pointed out gently that if God spoke language, any language, we must assume that he had teeth, but since teeth were not created for speech but for eating, we must assume that he also ate, and this leads to so many other undesirable assumptions that we better abandon the idea altogether

- Overheard on the Internet.

Why I Pray that Britney Spears Lives a Long Life?

CNN IBN has a recent piece on Britney Spears in which some big shit (did I mean to type 'big shot'?) analyst and addiction expert has averred that Britney's "bubble has burst" (wonder what he meant by that?) and that she is on a suicidal path where each of her recently bizarre actions (one of them being numerous visits to gas stations reportedly to pee) indicative of her fervent plea for help. If she commits suicide, she would have died young. She's only 26, you see!

I'll quote from the article which can be accessed here : Brit's 'bubble of illusion' could 'end in suicide'

"She's losing it now, and she's going to eventually lose it altogether if she doesn't get the help she needs."


Also,

"She's exhibiting bipolar signs and she's clearly fighting depression,"

...Brenner insisted that this might be Britney’s latest ploy for gaining attention after her 16-year-old sister Jamie Lynn's announced her pregnancy.

"Britney now needs to cry out for even more attention. She's really going for it. No one stops to pee that many times. She has a major problem," he said....

But the important question that needs to be addressed here is the following. Why has the great Nanga Fakir, the high profile, ultra popular blogger-in-demand whose mere name causes his enemies to shit in their pants decided to report on this?

Let us imagine that Britney Spears decided to kill herself tomorrow by choking on her own shit (a not unlikely scenario, experts tell me). Probably a lot of horny teens will lose their idol. Hers will be considered a tragic suicide, another case of a musical sensation deciding to end her life early. And that is where the trouble will start.

Commentators will instantly put her in the league of those that died early-Duane Allman (25) (of The Allman Brothers Band), Jim Morrison (The Doors), Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain (Nirvana) (all when they were 27-the age when I think Britney Spears will choke on her shit), Ronnie Van Zant (29) (Lynyrd Skynyrd), Jeff Buckley (30) and Layne Staley (Alice in Chains) (32). And that is when (I prophesy) hordes of techies will rip their shirts off, howl at the top of their lungs, destroy their cubicles, sift through the junk in their homes to find their Kurt Cobain/Jim Morrison T-shirts they hadn't worn in a long time, don them proudly and march on the streets of Kormangala and mourn her inclusion in the holy pantheon. And the damned commentators will 'interpret' this act as a march of Britney Spears fans.

Now would THAT SUCK!!!

Let the 'one more time baby' live through at least forty. After that, we don't care shit. Do we?

Of Dark Lords and their Minions

A really, really cute firang girl stopped Nanga Fakir as he was walking his trademark absent-minded-looking-down-on-the-ground walks. Why???

"Elementary, my dear Watson! She is smitten by your month long stubble, scattered (lice ridden?) hair and skeletal, unwashed-for-seven-days body. Look at her as she smiles in sweet anticipation of having an audience with the great man!", he said to himself.

Yes, clearly Nanga Fakir had slain one more fair maiden. Behold the power of smelly underwears!

Fair Maiden: "Won't you have a look at this book?"
Nanga Fakir forcibly takes his eyes off her bewitching face to the ware she was selling.

The book was Bhagwad Gita. Nanga Fakir could not, but laugh his famous cruel, maniacal laughter (which reached across to the Fair Maiden as a soft chuckle).

Fair Maiden: "You're Indian? No? You must know the deep philosophy contained in it."

Nanga Fakir: (Still laughing his cruel-laughter-which-is-manifested-as-a-soft-chuckle) "Yeah I know! But I am an atheist". And as he said these words and felt slightly proud of himself, he saw, that a part of the Fair Maiden wilted, even visibly so.

Fair Maiden: "But you know this is independent of all these things...No?

A deep regard for aesthetics stopped Nanga Fakir from saying what he had in mind. "Let Alice be in Wonderland. The fuck you care???" he said to himself.

So he grew quiet and let the Fair Maiden begin her story-how the Prince of ISKCON had come to rescue her from the great black Demon of Despondency and how the Fair Maiden was, but a month away from her sojourn in Vrindavan-the abode of the handsome prince of ISKCON.

Nanga Fakir tried to listen but could not. So he, rather abruptly and even cruelly, stopped the (rather emotional) recounting of the Fair Maiden's story and muttered some pitifully lame excuse and ran off.

........

But he could not forget the Fair Maiden. Why??? Did Nanga Fakir finally fall in love? ...Fuck no! Why then? Why?

He kept thinking about her as he randomly roamed around. Her earnest face, full of new found conviction, kept returning back to him. He had rebuked her irrevocably and her deeply affronted (or so he imagined) face came back to haunt him.

"What the fuck is the problem with these firangs?", he said to himself, by now genuinely angered-both at the snazzy, fashionably spiritually minded firangs as well as himself, for having been thinking about the Fair Maiden for so long.

But he imagined her alone in the far off lands of the Old Country-full of dust, dirt and mysterious magic. And he saw evil demons eyeing the Fair Maiden lasciviously and also the sly sorcerers who would magically transform themselves into great yogis and lure the (rather gullible) Fair Maiden into their secret caves. He gave an involuntary, anguished cry and ran back to the one he had so wantonly wronged.

He had no problem in finding her as she unsuccessfully tried to sell spirituality to fellow kids who were probably already sold out to the great American Dream. Nanga Fakir sneaked up to her.

Nanga Fakir: "Hi, I am back."
Fair Maiden: "Hi..."
Nanga Fakir: "...I...I just came back to say this......"

Some oppressive silence.

Nanga Fakir: "Look, there are many imposters out there in the garb of holy men. Don't go out with people you don't know. Trust me on this. Take care of yourself".

A barely inaudible "Thanks" escaped the visibly surprised lips of the Fair Maiden. He didn't know why, but he held her hands and squeezed them as he felt a gush of genuine brotherly affection for her surge through him. He saw she was about to speak something, but before she could do that, he muttered something lame and ran off.





PS: In one of the English translations, I read Krishna referred to as The Dark Lord. (Krishna means 'Black/Dark' in Sanskrit.)

"Whoa...", I said to myself. Who wouldn't want to follow The Dark Lord? It sounds so awesome! Sauron, Voldemort, Darth Vader-all the most awesome villains (with the notable exception of Mogambo and Gabbar Singh) were referred to as The Dark Lord.

Man do I want to join ISKCON just to be called the minion of The Dark Lord!

Who's that girl?

Don't you see it yet?

The End

I,

Wanted to be a writer...but discovered Dostoyevsky,
Wanted to form a band...but discovered Indian Ocean,
Wanted to make a film...but discovered Anurag Kashyap,
Wanted to blog...but discovered Great Bong,

So I am stuck with Math and have, but discovered Grothendieck.

Who will blame me if I end it all?

I wouldn't.

More...

The lonely SF fan



Wikipedians beware!




The most famous



And the best

A Hacker's Fantasy

Courtesy: http://www.xkcd.com/

The Man Himself!

Anurag Kashyap on the sets of the fabulous No Smoking enjoining junta to stop smoking and kill off the smokers



Here is an older video of him talking about Paanch and earlier struggles.



Memorable Quote: Dus baar deewar pe sar maroonga, kabhi na kabhi to tootegi.

Gawd...do I need to lay my hands on Paanch. If any of you readers comes across the same, please inform by commenting/emailing.

These are two more videos from Zapak.tv. This is part 1 where he gives the names of his favourite movies and Directors. No surprises that Scoresese and Fight Club feature so prominently.



and here is part 2 where the Director openly cites Kafka, Charlie Kaufmann, Eternal Sunshine..., Being John Malkovich-all the names that I cited as possible allusions in the movie No Smoking. Now I get to say the most satisfying thing ever-"I told you so".



Anurag blogs at Passion For Cinema. Read him.

This is his video for Passion for Cinema

A Masterpiece of Unimaginable Proportions: No Smoking

I have never ever felt so militantly in favour of a movie ever before. The last time I felt strongly about saying something out (I am generally passive and not given to outbursts of any kind) was when I saw Omkara and was seen frantically messaging people I knew to watch the movie if it was the last thing they did before they died. That was one and a half years ago. Again, some months later, I felt that I really had to make people, whose well being was on my mind see a movie. This one was called Oldboy.

Pandu (henceforth referred to as Satyavrat, since I respect blogging identities while transacting business on the blogosphere), who has been seeing every Hindi movie that has been released in the past two months, counted off his fingers the names and characteristics of movies he had watched recently. The conversation left me wondering if I had missed out on so many flicks-all of them, according to him representing an unprecedented paradigm shift in the Hindi Film Industry. I decided to watch the boldest (in his words) of them-No Smoking.

As I progressed through the picture, a part of me stared unblinking in sheer disbelief at what unfolded on the screen. Was I watching a Bollywood movie??? No, I wasn't. No way.

The names of Fellini, and his magnum opus 8 1/2 came so naturally to mind! So did the names of so many others: Guru Dutt, David Lynch and his Eraserhead (I know some of my more knowledgeable and far more talented cinema buff friends would scoff at the name of Lynch and automatically decide not to see "No Smoking" since his name has been associated with this movie. If they do so, they will miss out on what is probably the most important Hindi film EVER made. Too bad folks!), Bergman's classic Persona, Alan Parker's take on the Pink Floyd's masterpiece The Wall, Natural Born Killers (in that brilliant short episode of "Kyunki Bachpan bhi Kabhi Naughty tha", Charlie Kaufmann and his wonderfully warped creations Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich (incidentally, one should remember, Anurag Kashyap himself has been a brilliant screenwriter known for his taut and brilliant screenplays of Satya, Shool, Yuva, Kaun and several other acclaimed films)...Gawd, I could go on forever.

And the remarkable point is that, it is all done in such a quintessentially Tarantino-like way that at first your brain refuses to believe it. These are deliberate dedications that are being offered to masters of Cinema. Yes it also means that Anurag Kashyap is flaunting his encyclopaedic knowledge of world cinema but can we really find fault with a peacock shedding its inhibitions and dancing in the rain flaunting his fabulously regal plumage? No, we don't. In fact we have it as a National Bird simply because of this.



Tell me, how many movies have you seen whose opening screenshots are quotes from Plato followed by Socrates and Frank Sinatra (‘To Do Is To Be’ ‘To Be Is To Do’ ‘Dobe Dobe Do!’)? Tell me, which movie have you watched which mixed Franz Kafka (the hero is called K-the name of so many Kafka heroes; the mood, the scenes, the settings, the cinematography-you don't have to be a PhD in comparative literature from JNU to recognise the allusions to Kafka in particular and sundry existentialist themes in general) with Stephen King (based on his story Quitters Inc.), surrealism with existentialism, Adnan Sami with Bob Fosse, Rahman's Ae Ajnabi with Dean Martin, Black Eyed Peas' Shut Up with Gulzar's Beedi Jalaile, Schindler's List with Comic Book Bubbles? Mark my words when I say that this is a work of a staggering genius! It takes an extraordinary amount of brilliance to weave such disparate and eclectic sensibilities together in one whole. What we have here is probably one of the most brilliant Directors of not just Hindi but World Cinema. He also pays tribute to the Indian Cinematic Masters. Observe: "Maqbool, Main Hoon Na!”(This is what Abbas Tyrewala says on the phone-both films are written by Tyrewala) "Beedi Jalaile ke Vishal desh mein cigar Gulzar"-a dedication to Vishal Bharadwaj for his directorial and musical acumen and to Gulzar for what he has given to Indian Cinema-beautifully directed movies and volumes of impossibly brilliant poetry. What he is also saying via this is "Thank you for having produced this film".

This is a classic tale of a spurned young man's revenge on Bollywood and its incessant artistic timidity. It is a cry of a tortured genius much in the same way The Wall was Roger Waters', Pyaasa was Guru Dutt's and Grunge was entire generation of apathetic teens'. This is Anurag's way of showing a middle finger to Bollywood. Observe this in particular when he takes K to Uzbekistan (or was it Kazakhstan?). Is this not deliberately lampooning Hindi Cinema's fascination for foreign locales like Switzerland? I bet you it sure is! It is his way of getting back at people like Karan Johar (whom he openly hates) who make glitzy, snazzy soap operas about the rich and the powerful's debaucheries in Fantasyland. Hell, take this trip to another Fantasyland! It doesn't give a rat's ass about sloppy sentimentality that forms the basis of interaction for all characters in Hindi movies-whether male or female. It is an openly, brazenly, brilliantly intellectual movie which wallows in the journey of storytelling rather than the destination. It is an open celebration of all that is good in cinema as an art form.



Which brings me to another achievement. Tell me have you ever seen a Hindi movie with such God level special effects which are comparable to international standards? Have you ever seen such brilliant cinematography in a Hindi movie? Dharavi looks like a synthetic hell hole. The eeriness you feel when Chacha of the Kalkatta Carpet Factory takes K's handprint, the wonderful contrasts of black and white that cast their shadows during K's walks in Dharavi, the obvious debt this movie owes to Film Noir-all these features are first for a Hindi movie. An amalgamation of so many firsts in a movie is an unparalleled achievement. It is as if twenty years of evolution were compressed in a mere two hours. Have a look at the trailer as an example:



Kashyap, in his own blog has written about this movie's autobiographical character. He asks us to take it as his hopeless fight against the Hindi film establishment. His film Paanch was not released and was kept in the dustbins for years on end because it was not what the Censor Board thought of as the purpose of a film which, according to them should provide 'healthy entertainment'. Kashyap says Paanch was neither healthy nor entertaining. Then came Black Friday another brilliant documentary styled movie which was banned by the Government and was rescued only through the intervention of the courts. In addition to the new stylistic devices introduced by Kashyap in this movie, it also featured a beautiful album by Indian Ocean. His struggles for making a movie were cut short when long time collaborator Vishal Bharadwaj decided to bail him out of his financial problems. Observe that K not only alludes to Kafka's influence on the movie but possibly also to Kashyap himself. He says it was his struggle to remain afloat and not bow down before the preacher Baba Bangalis of the Censor Board who were hell bent on doing things for society's good. The only way to stay afloat, as he reveals in the movie, is to 'sell out' (his way of saying what Pink Floyd were singing in the song "Welcome to the Machine"?) and conform the way K does. The question is for how long can Kashyap survive as a non conformist?

It is a brilliant, surreal, Kafkaesque odyssey into the murky recesses of the mind of an unbounded imagination. Performances are very tight as well-from John Abraham's cocky narcissism to Ranvir Shorey's quirky oddities, from the supremely confident Paresh Rawal's grasp of the subtleties of his character, to those many more in small/minor roles-nobody disappoints. The screenplay is Kashyap trademark-taut, compact and supremely engaging, the dialogue-wonderfully character driven. The gloom, the darkness, the dystopia, the mood-a killer combination of all the effects a movie could ask for. All in all, this is a supreme work of art.

As for the interpretation, although I do think I have understood the movie on different levels and have in general, a fair amount of understanding of what it was all about, the thing to realise here is that the interpretation is actually not that important. It is the way the movie engages with its bizarre surrealism that's important. Hell, I don't think smoking's got to do anything with the movie at all! It could as well have been about pornography instead of smoking and everything else would've remained the same. But what 'No Smoking' in particular did achieve, was that it duped the Censor Board into passing it while Kashyap fooled them into thinking that the movie was anti smoking. Another evidence that the Censor Board junta are a bunch of fools.

I take this moment to pay my homage to what is easily one of the top ten Hindi movies ever and probably the most important, paradigm-shift inducing and path-breaking Hindi movie of all times and to its tortured Director. I also prophecy that it shall become a cult classic, much the same way Jane Bhi Do Yaaron did.

My Comment at Anurag Kashyap's Blog

Dear Anurag,

Thank you for making the truly brilliant "No Smoking". I am personally in debt to you.

I know critics have reviewed it badly. But fuck them man!

I am a nobody. But let me predict that this movie is going to be a cult classic and although you may be spurned as a Director from the mainstream film industry, for fans like me who care about good cinema, you have come as a godsend.

Don't lose heart if junta punishes you, critics berate you and producers harangue you. You are a genius and such is the fate reserved for all great artists.

You may have lost some producers, some money, some sleep but you have gained a DIE HARD FAN in me.

If I have money tomorrow, I'll gladly produce your film in the future. But given that your luck isn't good, I am broke.

Accept praise from a humble fan!

Yours Truly,
Nanga Fakir.


I won't try to review the movie (at least not now). Suffice it to say that it is the single most important picture that Hindi Cinema has produced in many, many, many long years. It is finally solid indication that Hindi Cinema has come of age.

Anurag Kashyap is arrogant. But he is also a genius. This picture is a masterpiece in the wonderful tradition of Fellini's "8 1/2" and Kafka's "The Metamorphosis","The Trial", "The Castle" (hell, even the hero is called K-the hero's name in Metamorphosis!) etc. I am so in love with the movie!

If I were a girl, I would flat out ask Anurag Kashyap to marry me. Thankfully I am not!

You can read what Kashyap himself has to say about his movie at his blog.

PS: I added this movie in my (in)famous (???) "Top Movies" list before the first half got over. That is a new record I guess!

New kid on the block

Try out Quintura, a new search engine which I have been using intermittently for the past ten days or so and which I think, is a better alternative to Google.

I came across a Wired (or was it Slashdot? I don't remember well) article that gave an account of alternative search engines and how they may become a threat to Google. The article was of the opinion that Yahoo! is ranked better in terms of customer satisfaction and in general, merits a larger share of the marketplace than it currently has. It also remarked that in Japan, South Korea, Russia and some other countries, Google is already way behind alternative search engines which have captured a larger share of the market. It also featured Quintura as a promising search alternative that is better than Google in some respects.

Intrigued, I began using Quintura and specifically began comparing it with Google by typing in search queries that I knew should link to some sites that I had in mind (among a vast number of others). The result was unbelievable at first and given the fact that I belong to the generation that has not used any search engine other than Google, I wasn't ready for the result. I saw Google lose convincingly in the vast majority of tests I cooked up and though it means nothing in general, especially as regards to Quintura's so called superiority over Google, it does imply that one must take another look at Google's much hyped invincibility.

Some of the things that you would find wrong with Quintura include the obviously very long time it takes as compared to Google to search something. But you should also note the fact that Google has thousands of dedicated servers running 24/7 providing enormous computing power that drives the giant Google behemoth while these fledging startups have barely a thousandth of Google's resources (hell, they wouldn't be called 'start-ups' then, would they?).

Also observe the tag cloud in the left half of the search engine. You just have to point your mouse in that direction and automatically your search is appended and the new search results are displayed.

Basically if you don't want an all inclusive search and are looking for very specific search results that you already have some non-zero idea of, then it is better to use Quintura. Your search results are more streamlined and much, much more relevant. Try it out. This kid sure looks promising!

Jai Wikipedia!

This is WikipediaVision that shows you a Google map that displays in real time who is writing/editing what Wikipedia entry across the globe. Really, really, really cool!

This is Veropedia. It describes itself as:

"Veropedia is a collaborative effort by a group of Wikipedians to collect the best of Wikipedia's content, clean it up, vet it, and save it for all time. These articles are stable and cannot be edited, The result is a quality stable version that can be trusted by students, teachers, and anyone else who is looking for top-notch, reliable information."

Awe-some!

Geekdom

Nanga Fakir does not claim the origin of the following (origins of such things are, as a rule, hazy), but he does claim to have realised the significance of the following research and edited the editable portions to couch the finding in a different language. And yes, he has begun referring to himself in the third person.

Question: Define as precisely as you can, the term geek.
Answer: A geek is a thirty year old virgin.

The discovery was made while ruminating why geeks love Natalie Portman. Further insights into the nature of this profound question shall be appreciated and published in leading research journals.

Childhood, Adolescence, Youth...my love affair with Comics

The inspiration for writing this piece came from the introduction (in Wikipedia) of various comic book characters that I used to be a fan of during my adventures as a little kid in Lucknow. I remember very well, the times when these comic books were the sole means of 'timepass' (I know the purists will cringe at my use of non existent English words but let them!) of a single kid in the long and hot summer vacations when you weren't allowed to go out of the house because of the raging 'loo' (double entendre intended).

Let's see what these descriptions are like:



Note on Image uploaded: I used to read comics in Hindi. So I wanted this image to be a representative of the comics I used to read. But the website of the cartoonist Pran has English translations only.

Chacha Chaudhary: "...Chacha is seen in waistcoat which has a double inside pocket. He has a 'gandhi watch' to see time and enjoys eating watermelon with relish. Whenever Chachi nags him he takes off for a walk with Sabu and Rocket...

"Chacha Chaudhary not only fights them off and help the common man but also teach them moral lessons and good behavior. Most of the events end up with goons embarrassed of their deeds. You can see middle class dealing with everyday's problems. In a way Pran takes a whip at those problems still maintaining a happy go lucky feel with twinkling eyes and smiling faces."

I have a feeling that the guy who wrote this up was in the pay of Diamond Comics.

Sabu: "Sabu is an alien from the planet Jupiter, always faithful to Chachaji and provides the physical strength in time of need. He is huge and strong, about 20 feet tall. In some comics he is able to increase his size. He wears only a wrestler's kachha (briefs), a pair of ear-rings and a pair of gum-boots. Sabu decided to stay at Earth with Chacha Chaudhary when he tasted delicious paratha and halwa made by Chachi during his visit to earth. Sabu has a twin brother called Dabu and the giant earrings that Sabu wears had been gifted to him by his mother when he left Jupiter. It is said that whenever Sabu gets angry, some where a volcano erupts. (It is generally depicted in a small bracket in a corner). Whenever he performs an act of great strength, he utters the cry, "Hu-Huba!" Sabu eats 108 chapatis at one time,12 kilos of halwa and about 20 litres of lassi in one meal.

This is a perfect example of Wikipedia being as accurate as Encyclopaedia Britannica. No comic book expert could have got those figures right unless he was a totally wasted, wretched and jobless kid in a small town in India. I personally vouch for the accuracy of the above cited figure of 108 chapatis, 12 kilo halwa etc. I have read that issue in which Chachi gets fed up and cites this figure to sober up Sabu and shake him from his jobless existence. The ruse is effective and Sabu promptly scoots off to fetch sabji for Chachi from the bazaar. Ditto for the 'Hu Huba'.

Chachi:"...In one comic she is shown with stirring a giant pot with a ladle for Sabu and serving him more affectionately than Chachaji."

When you're a kid, somehow you don't get subtle undertones of marital infidelity/extra marital affairs in Chacha Chaudhary. I am sure that the little Harry Potter fans wouldn't have guessed that Dumbledore is gay from the nuanced writings of JK Rowling either.

"Chacha's comic with 'Raaka ki waapsi',' is one of the best selling comics of Diamond Comics. Apparently Raka was put to sleep by some potion given by a saint from Himalayas and buried in the ocean in the first time. On his return by another potion he was reduced to a small size, closed in a bottle and buried in a grave."

This is indeed true. For more dramatic consequences of this read a previous post Boy Meets Girl whose hero Ghongha Basant claims that it is his favourite comic book of all time.

Another comic book that took my world by storm was the "Fighter Toads" series. It was a cold hearted rip off from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series with the creators confident that Indian kids wouldn't know who the latter are. And they were goddamned right. We loved the Toads even though their comics were expensive.

Here's the Wikipedia entry:

"Fighter Toads are the four innocent but very brave toads. Fighter toads features in Raj comics. There names are Fighterr, Masterr, Cuterr and shooterr ("terr" is the sound that toads make in Hindi comics). These were created by "Dhananjaya", one of the friends of Super Commando Dhruva, another Raj comics character.

An inspiration from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, these characters became a superhit in their very first year. These comic books were of giant size but after some time raj comics reduced the size of these comic books to normal size."

Again, I vouch for the accuracy of all facts stated but for the "...innocent but very brave toads.." part.

As I re-read whatever I have written about the passion (by no means extinct) for comics that I have nursed for so long, I realise that one post cannot do justice to all those years spent in fervent hopes of getting one's hands on just one more comic book. So let me just finish off this part without concentrating on the other comic book characters that I was fond of. So although I focus on only the clownish acts of the Indian Comic book industry in this post, I will try to cover the other, more mature facets of the same in other parts of the series of posts that I plan to write in this area.

I end with a miscellany:

The following is the video that Raj Comics have released about Nagraj. It's funny to see the new emaciated version of Nagraj in the video as well as the Matrix ishtyle stuntmangiri that he indulges in. I don't know this Nagraj...my idea of him was the usual more macho superhero. Anyway...



The following, I remember well, was the first Nagraj comic book:



This is the first Super Commando Dhruv comics "Pratishodha ki Jwala" (I remember I asked this question in the India Quiz in Inci '07 of which I was the Quizmaster):



Read "Muft Dhruva ka ek Poster". I was a total sucker for such collectibles.

The following is Doga. The Dog-Raja (hence "Dog-A"??? I wonder...) who communicated with dogs. It was a pretty dark and very violent comic with multiple scenes of mutilation, bloody killings and gore all round. I remember we had named our PT teacher "Doga". The name was so popular that even he knew it and approved of it! I still remember the day when he was called to the dais in the morning assembly for some shit and the entire college was shouting out "Doga...doga...doga...". Boy...is this nostalgic! It was a cold winter morning in December (I think) with the dystopic fog that Lucknowites know so well covering us from head to foot.



Now we come to Bhokal. The fame of this character rested on his talwar (sword) and his popularity can be gauged from the fact that "Bhokali" meant brilliant/bond/chaapu etc before we had discovered the engineering lingo that forms the major chunk of our vocabulary now.



There is also Fauladi Singh-the android whom I believe was the first instance of Science Fiction used in Hindi comic book medium. I remember it being brilliant for its times. It was one of the reasons that I found Science interesting and it made me resolve that I would become a scientist when I grew up (in response to the overly cliched question that elders bug kids with "Beta bade hoke tum kya banoge?") (...That I changed my mind as soon as the World Cup '92 (Italy) aired on Doordarshan and promised to myself that I will become a footballer instead is a different question altogether).



And now, I turn my attention to my favourite comic book of all times: Bankelal. This was a real goofy character similar to Tantri the Mantri that you read in Tinkle. One of my earliest memories is reading the first comic book of this series (below) in my room with the sunlight from the windows falling slantingly on the book (a gift from my Uncle).




The End

TRIBUTE: The inspiration for this post is Vishal Patel. I dedicate this wretched little effort to him and his pioneering work on the comics of the '80s.

PS: This is the longest, biggest and baddest post I have written, ever! Took me close to four hours.