Four school mates scale the walls of the Boys Hostel to watch a seedy B Grade film Kanti Singh Ke Angoor. To their horror they discover that the middle aged man getting cozy with a woman in the row behind them is the Hostel warden. This chance encounter turns a harmless teenage adventure into the beginning of a life changing experience. Forced to come back to Jamshedpur to live with his authoritarian father who Rohan - the protagonist (Rajat Barmecha) has not met for eight years. Udaan is the story that is beautifully layered. There is the relationship among four friends that is brief but endearing. Rohan is coming back home to a father (brilliant performance by Ronit Roy) who scoffs at his poems and does not hesitate to wallop him mercilessly when drunk. Rohan is forced to sign up to study Engineering and work in his father's small run down foundry. It is grim existence for a dreamer. Rohan still manages to sit on the banks of Subarnarekha river and write some really sensitive poetry. The other layer in the story is the brilliantly handled relationship between Rohan and his 6 year old step brother (played by Aayan Boradia).
I have always believed that India has had two landmark events that continues to impact where we are headed as a nation. Political independence happened in 1947 and then economic independence happened - at least for the middle class in 1991 when India took the big bold step towards liberalization. I think we had to achieve political independence to make way for economic independence. I believe that political and economic freedom will clear the way for India to build an inclusive society that will help us to say that we have achieved social freedom as well. There are many ways to understand a society. When societal shifts take place, they show up in many places because the expected traditional behavior gets replaced or gets reflected in a new idiom. While some things change, at least at the surface, they tend to show up in mysterious ways. You need a sharp eye to observe these, decode them and then hold up a mirror so that others understand it too. Santosh Desai's book Mother Pious Lady tends to offer these priceless nuggets of insight about contemporary India by leveraging the insights that he has of Indian consumers thanks to his years of experience in advertising. Add to it his insightful, entertaining and pungent style of writing. Mother Pious Lady is all that.Santosh talks about advertising often (See this video) and is a popular choice as a speaker in in advertising forums in India and abroad. It is difficult to describe India and Indians in short snapshots. Here is an ad I found to be insightful and hilarious.Mother Pious Lady is a lot like that ad you just saw. It has loads of short essays that take up different elements of everyday India. If you are intrigued about what the title means, it is from a matrimonial ad that Santosh came across once :) Matrimonials are a great insight into a society. For a society obsessed with fair skin (Just look at the number of skin lightening products in India starting from Fair & Lovely by Unilever), it is not surprising to see that showing up in ads. "Wheatish complexion, slim and homely, KKB, non Manglik, 5'3", father very high govt official, mother pious lady, brother MBA with handsome salary seeks respectable marriage" is a complex code that can be understood only by an Indian. Here is Russel Peters (a stand up Canadian comedian who is of Indian origin) describing his take on arranged marriages. Or this ad for that matter...Why during any event, are hordes of volunteers wearing large badges made of ribbon running around barking orders looking very busy? Why will someone when caught jumping a traffic light yell back at the cop, "Do you know who I am??". Why is squeezing the last drop out of any bargain so intrinsically coded in our genes? Why do stainless steel utensils matter to us? Insights on food, music, Bollywood etc all find place in this book. Are all the essays equally insightful and entertaining - ummm no. But then that should not be expected in a book which has almost a 100 essays and peeks into a psyche as complex as India's.The language is witty. The symbols get decoded and little by little things that have always made sense only to Indians gets to make sense. I loved the book. To understand what economic freedom does to a society, look at how it has affected consumer behavior and then get an ad guru to describe it in an interesting manner. Mother Pious Lady does just that.
Prakash Jha the director of Rajneeti, is a multi faceted person. From his first documentary made in 1974, his body of work spans more than 25 documentaries, nine feature films, two television features and three television series. My favorite would have to be Mungerilal Ke Haseen Sapne, a popular Hindi TV comedy serial based on James Thurber's novel The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. In 1989, he took a sabbatical from films, and moved to Bihar for four years, during period he formed two organizations, Anubhooti, which trains young people from region, in film making, and Samvedan, in Champaran, to promote small and micro industries. The National Award winning film Gangaajal (trans: Water of the Ganges) made in 2003 based on the infamous incident in 1980 in Bhagalpur, Bihar when 31 undertrials were blinded by cops pouring acid in their eyes. Prakash Jha is no stranger to storytelling. Rajneeti (Trans: Politics) is a blend of the great Indian epic Mahabharat, some elements of dynastic politics of India's ruling party and generous "tributes" to The Godfather.
When you ask interns about their experiences with their project guides or managers, you get to hear some crazy stories. The insecure and moronic will always treat Interns as a form of life similar to amoeba and consequently low down on the food chain. While the smarter people use the interns to get a fresh perspective to some real life issues and problems. The evolved look at it as an opportunity to build the employer brand.The jobs are back. So are internships. Their cover story of 15 April 2010 is labelled Angels, Bosses and Demons. The article clearly identifies the ideal boss. You have to decide who they refered to as Demon or Angel. JAM's reporter Prachi Parekh wanted to know how I would treat an intern. Here are some excerpts...
According to Yahoo News, 'Books such as 'Almost Single', 'The Zoya Factor', 'Bombay Rains' and 'Keep off the Grass', 'Married But Available', 'Secrets and Lies', and very recently 'Keep the Change Year After Year' have been a series of titles from Indian authors for the Indian audience that end up doing big numbers,' Lipika Bhushan of Harper Collins said.
Mr R Gopalakrishnan of the Tata Group recently did this story on Corporate Novels for the Economic Times. The article is a great recall of all the "Corporate Novels" that have been written in recent times. In this story called Mixing Business With Pleasure, they have traced authors from corporate India who have penned their novels with stories that somewhere resonate with their experiences. While it is fiction, almost all of them have perhaps been triggered off by some incident or character(s) they have encountered for real. This probably is the formula for realistic fiction that the readers have appreciated generously as well as the sales figures of all these novels will vouch for. I feel honored that Mr Gopalakrishnan is aware of my novels - but I will feel better if I know that he read them as well. Do you think he has?
Husband and wife both get nominated for Academy Awards. Husband's film has already grossed up big bucks and big awards. The bets are on. Everyone knows that no woman director ever wins the Oscar for being the Best Director. Especially when the husband is James Cameron who has made movies like Titanic and the runaway success called Avatar. She tends to make these action movies. A woman making an action flick in Hollywood may get appreciation but not the big award. The big night is here and the Oscar for the best director goes to ...
If there was one musician in KCP4 who really plays oblivious of the crowd, it was the pianist Mike Herting. He listens to the opening vocals and then peers close to the keys of the piano as if just the way the diamond merchant would look to see that no precious stone from his collection would be missed. He mumbles to himself, he hums the note that he is playing and then with each improvisation, experiences the bliss that comes from playing good music. By the time the song is over, his hair is dishevelled, his specs are foggy and he looks more like a scientist emerging from his lab. But oh what talent... he was just incredible.