Desicritics Author: Aditi Nadkarni

Movie Review: Dharm - Unfairly Snubbed

Aditi Nadkarni — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 06:39:00 EST

Dharm, a Sanskrit word that for some means duty and for yet others signifies religion. We often hear this word used by religious preachers and at other times by leaders of political parties looking to pander to the majority Hindus in India. This term was heard when a mob needed some sort of a philosophy to bind them as they went about adhering to no scripture, driven by fury alone.

This film tells the story of Pandit Chaturvedi (Pankaj Kapur), a well-respected and stringent Hindu priest who adheres strictly to the writ words of Hindu scriptures. The pandit provides key religious advice to the families residing in the holy city of Benaras, at the banks of river Ganga. The touch of a low caste prompts him to bathe in the holy waters and his wife (Supriya Pathak) has to cleanse herself before she prepares his meals. Then one day an orphan left at their doorstep makes his way into their lives and warms the heart of the otherwise stoic and unyielding priest. Little Kartikeya grows up, his adoptive father's pet, performing religious rites, reciting verses alongside his beloved "babuji". His innocence remains untouched by the mounting communal discontent that occasionally disrupts into religious riots between Hindus and Muslims in the city. Amidst these tensions, Kartikeya's birth mother shows up to claim her son. As she walks into the pandit's door clad in a burkha, neighbors and patrons gather to watch, aghast. The boy is sent away with his Muslim birth mother in a heart wrenching scene, his cries are drowned in the enormity of the religious calamity that has fallen upon the priest's family for having adopted a Muslim child. The pandit's home is promptly cleansed, severe religious penances are performed and yet the priest's inner struggle continues, eating him up inside. He is torn between the love he feels for the child he sent away in a heartbeat and his duty towards the religion he represents. As the self-proclaimed protectors of Hinduism crazed with vendetta unleash violence through the city, this Hindu priest defies all that he has valued and reaches a revelation that changes not only his own life but of those that surround him and revere him.

When watching the film, the sensitivity with which each scene had been conducted immediately suggested the touch of a female director. Bhavana Talwar's handling of the characters is remarkable. She seems to have identified real people rather than characters for her film. Whether it be the staunch Pandit, his obedient wife or the child that tugs at your heartstrings, Talwar takes her time with each persona. Pankaj Kapur's performance is a testimony to the neglected and yet prodigious talent our film industry houses. An actor who has given us films like Ek Doctor Ki Maut and Ek Ruka Hua Faisla continues to loyally work in the shadow of a giant, the all consuming commercial film industry that allows little to no platform for performers like him. Hrishita Bhatt, stands out in the role of a young girl who falls in love with a foreigner seeking spiritual guidance under the tutelage of Pandit Chaturvedi.

This film is excruciatingly moving. It forces one to empathize with characters who in our every day lives we could never relate to. The religious discontent juxtaposed with the innocence of a child offers a stark contrast that leaves one emotionally and spiritually exhausted. The blood shed and the inciters of these harrowing incidents that swallow our cities are all revealed, their intentions, insecurities and motives scrutinized. The upholders of religion are exposed and so is the true character of those whose spiritual awakening finally leads us out of darkness. This film is not about the chaos that hatred leads us into but of the humanity that pulls us out of it, unscathed.

I found this film on Netflix after I searched for films starring Pankaj Kapur, one of my favorite actors who I have not seen since the Blue Umbrella. Having watched this film, I was so overcome with curiosity at never having heard about it before, that I did some quick online searches for it and found out what sounded like a joke, an April Fool's prank. How I was not aware of this blunder committed almost three years ago is beyond me. Apparently, this spectacular film about religious relations in India that is especially relevant in today's times was passed over as India's Oscar submission in favor of, get this, a mediocre film called Eklavya starring Amitabh Bachhan and Saif Ali Khan.

Eklavya had all the makings of a commercial film and a story with as many holes in it as Swiss cheese. It was a glossy entertainer with great cinematic visuals and the beautiful backdrop of Rajasthan and yet was most certainly not a moving film with a global appeal. All it had was an established and commercially viable star cast. Yet it beat out a film like Dharm which won our National Award and the Nargis Dutt Award for a film promoting national integration. It is even more shocking that our media and our audience does not create adequate hue and cry over such blatant unfairness by the subcommittee that decides the film that is submitted for an Oscar. In a film fraternity that goes weak in the knees at the mention of the name Bachhan, local awards are hard to come by for such films as well. In the year that Eklavya was sent in as India's official entry to the Oscars, brilliant films such as Dharm, Vanaja and Black Friday stood as major contenders and were duly ignored. I wonder how these filmmakers must feel when their masterpieces are dismissed in this manner by their peers in the arts and performance industry which should ideally define a haven for nurturing talent and relatively devoid of political corruptness. Who are these people on the committee that send out films on behalf of an entire nation? Year after year they send out stories, that to a foreign audience represents us Indians. I do not know enough about the process that goes into nominating a film for Oscar submission but the selection of films such as Heena, Jeans, Devdas and Eklavya would suggest that these members are not qualified to be making decisions about what kind of a film would be appreciated by a universal audience and that at times their decisions seem to be motivated by inexplicable political derivatives. Have of them watched an Oscar winning foreign film?

An Oscar may not define our successes in cinema, but the submission process and the errors, political gaffes or unscrupulous actions committed during the submission process sheds light on why the largest film industry in the world has still failed to make it's mark as far as world cinema is concerned. In Ek Doctor Ki Maut, Pankaj Kapur plays the role of a doctor who through years of hard work comes upon a major medical breakthrough. His elation at having made this groundbreaking discovery however is short lived when he realizes that his jealous and less talented peers have decided to snub him and are making every effort to ensure that he does not receive credit for his work, much like the committee that decided to ignore Talwar's superb effort.

Movie Review: Nishikanth Kamath's Dombivali Fast

Aditi Nadkarni — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:20:37 EST

Nishikanth Kamath rose to fame with Mumbai Meri Jaan, a film that depicted the struggle of the middle class caught in the complex mesh of terrorism. The terror unleashed by a bomb lives on, deep in the most vulnerable sections of society. One by one his characters introduced us to the people in these pockets of our city, the ones who carry both, the fear and the hope that drives Mumbai.

But his debut film, Dombivali Fast, a critically acclaimed Marathi piece of genius escaped notice. The language I am sure was a limiting factor for viewers outside Mumbai but few realize how relevant the subject matter of this film is for every person frustrated with this mysterious, monster like entity that we refer to as the "system", that bulldozes our lives and puts our ethics and morals to test every single day. Madhav Apte (played by Sandeep Kulkarni), the protagonist of Dombivali Fast is a bank official responsible for ensuring that all documents are accounted for in the passing of a loan. He is a father of two, a husband and a citizen of Mumbai, caught in the daily rut that this city spins around one's life. He is a regular good guy, a man who battles and survives the harrowing commute in Mumbai locals and then emerges at the other end willing to put up with water and electricity shortages. But he has a major limitation, a challenge that in India does not bode well for a middle class man. His principles are forever in his way, be it getting his daughter into a good school or a hospital admission for a beggar boy he is trying to help. And one day something in him breaks. His anger finds expression. He moves through the city like wildfire, sending panic waves through law enforcement and starting a debate among the general public about whether he is a Robin Hood, a psychotic, a victim or a criminal who should be put behind bars.

Dombivali Fast is not just an engrossing film, it holds a mirror to the lives most of us have led in India. Nishikanth Kamath, the debutante director speaks through his film, through each of his characters. As Kamath's own anxieties, experiences and revelations about the city and the system come flooding through the screen, you recognize them as your own. Through a simple story of a perfectly ordinary man, this young director forms an extraordinary kinship with his audience. Our commercial film industry seeks relentlessly to form this very bond with us but through a drug like addiction of escapism. Kamath frees us of this addiction in the most versatile of ways. He seems to have decided that when he shows us our own stories, we want to know what happens next. How will we end up in this tale, he makes us wonder. Will we be the survivors, the victims or the fallen, forgotten vigilantes? And that sentiment is what keeps us glued until the very end of Dombivali Fast.

I have been on that very local train. Dombivali Fast was my daily ride to college and back. I have been cramped inside a small, ladies compartment, trinket sellers on one side and the burkha clad women of Mumbra station with their many children on the other. I have hung outside the door, the breeze freeing my nose of the stench of fish and replacing it with a medley of some other unwanted smells. It was less than a twenty minute ride. But right from getting aboard this train to successfully disembarking at my station of choice became an experience, an education in itself. I learned something new every day, about myself and about those who shared that journey with me, until one day I somehow became one with that train, its rhythm matching that of my heartbeat. Watching Dombivali Fast reminded me of both, the melody and the cacophony of that rhythm.

Homosexuality Versus Violation of Privacy

Aditi Nadkarni — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:04:22 EST

Dr.Siras, reader and chairman of Modern Indian Languages at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), was filmed having consensual sex with a same sex partner in his on-campus home without his knowledge. This video was then sent to his university employees. This likely seems the work of a group of pranksters looking for either entertainment or the settling of some scores. Some media outlets speculate that a local news channel may have been involved in this "outing" which I find bizarre.

Our media is now invested in splashing private sex lives over the news? When did that happen? It is very easy for the decent and thinking ones among us to pick out the victim and the perpetrator in this situation. If a heterosexual couple were filmed having sex in their own home, practically everyone would immediately conclude that the couple were innocent victims of a gross violation of their privacy. Would it matter if they were doing it doggy style or in the missionary position when they were filmed without their knowledge? I don't think so. It would be a slam dunk case where police would have gone after the people who filmed the video without Dr.Siras's knowledge and Dr.Siras would've eventually been able to file a lawsuit against the perpetrators. Right? Well, apparently, our societal morals and ethics depend upon a person's sexual orientation. AMU has pronounced this as grievous conduct on part of the professor to have sex in his own home and has suspended him.

It is an interesting time in India for homosexuality and sexuality in general. We as a society have never been openly homophobic or openly opinionated at all about anything remotely sexual. We don't talk about it. We just do it and then shush other people when they bring it up. As a nation we are all secretly homophobic, especially the men of our masses, the ones who adjust their crotches in public and molest women in trains as a mark of their machoism. They might not go around bashing homosexuality in public like the right-wing Christians do in the United States but they do their bit. Raani, chhakka, hijhda, all code for eunuch, are the terms they have coined to add to the existing offensive nomenclature for those whose sexual orientation does not quite fit with rigid ideas of who should sleep with who. Our commercial filmmakers gingerly broach homosexuality in films, often doing more damage than good for the LGBT community in India. Gay men are portrayed as weak, overtly effeminate and used mostly as comic relief in films thus successfully reinforcing popular and damaging stereotypes. I have personally witnessed college kids torment a classmate who is not into girls or does not invest into building a macho image. We all watch people being teased or left out but how many of us speak up? I grew up in this very society and yet when I see a gay couple, I see a couple. When I see homophobia, I see irrationality driven by fear of the unknown.

When I first read about this case, I desperately hoped that the story would be about how AMU stood by their professor and how the police immediately were on the case, looking for the people who had violated Dr.Siras's privacy. I set myself up for disappointment. In my mind, academia and media are the the outer, growing fringe of our society's thought map defining how progressive we are as a populace, they make up the forward moving wave on which intellectuals ride out and set themselves apart from the rest of the crowd. In this case, it was television reporters who allegedly filmed a man having sexual relations within the confines of his own home and then a university condoned this by castigating the professor because the form of sex he was having was not appealing to them. When media and academia promote regressive thinking it comes as more of a shock than it would have if it were say a political party doing it to pander to voters or a religious group looking to recruit. This sort of thing could happen to any of us. Even if you, my reader, may not be a homosexual, I am pretty sure you do things in your own home that you would not want media filming and showing to your employers, right? I guess 15th August is just a public holiday then.

History is witness that it takes times like these to brew a revolution. It takes nerve to side with the right kind of morality, the one that does not pause in doubt and morph into something unrecognizable when overcome with prejudice, intolerance or fear. In my opinion, the LGBT community in India needs to empower themselves and be more vocal. A lot of homosexual individuals do not make their presence known. They prefer to lead privately gay lives often offering up the understandable explanation of "My sex life is nobody's business". Sure. And this attitude may afford them a relatively drama free life, but as a community it will not bring them to the status of equal citizens with equal treatment unless they come forward and fight for it. Today in the face of this scandal, Dr.Siras according to a news report is voluntarily leaving the university. There are so many gay individuals who avoid a scandal and walk away from the mess, not demanding their rights or questioning the raw deal they are dealt.

Last year, Chief Justices Shah and Muralidhar made me proud when they mandated that Section 377 was inapplicable to consenting sex between adults in private. They noted that, “Constitutional morality must outweigh the argument of public morality, even if it be the majoritarian view.” It was a small, yet mighty step in the right direction. And now, a group of idiotic television reporters and the Aligarh Muslim University has brought us a few steps back again.

Shooting At University Of Alabama and The State of Affairs In Academic Research

Aditi Nadkarni — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 20:10:59 EST

Last night news broke out about the shootings at the University of Albama at Huntsville. Dr. Amy Bishop, a Harvard trained neuroscientist was being reviewed for tenure. Screams were heard coming from the room. Bishop had allegedly shot three people named in several news reports as Dr. Gopi Podilla, the chair of the Biology department, Dr. Maria Ragland Davis and Dr. Adriel D. Johnson Sr. Media speculates that denial of tenure was the primary motive for Dr.Bishop's rampage. Tenure, for an academic professor to put it simply is a permanent job security status granted by the university and the department.

A few months ago there was the case of a Yale graduate student, Annie Le, who was found murdered by a member of the janitorial staff, Raymond Clark III, at her animal research facility. In that case, media had reported some information about how this janitor had certain standards of animal welfare and lab area maintenance that he had felt Annie Le was not adhering to.

These are sad and devastating scenarios. Those who have been through a lengthy academic process such as graduate school can recognize what a safe environment the university is viewed as. Up until the Annie Le case I did not think twice about working late nights or venturing into deserted research areas alone. Just a few days ago, I attended a seminar where the dismal statistics correlating tenure and careers in academia were discussed. What I gathered from the talk was that only about 10-15% of PhDs receive tenure in their academic careers and the average age for receiving their first major research funding from the NIH is about 43. These are extremely depressing numbers.

Frustrations are forever mounting in the academic research setting with no real outlet. It is a highly competitive environment encompassing researchers, students, administrative assistants and housekeeping staff all of whom have to work together at some point or another. One constantly hears of these primary investigators from hell who abuse their students and other employees. While workplace abuse is not limited to academia, it is slightly worse because students do not have as many rights as other corporate employees and cannot afford the legal route. I have heard many a story where students and research fellows were denied authorship for their work and could not do very much to get justice served. The Office of Research Integrity states that they might not mandate in situations involving authorship disputes . This leaves graduate students at the mercy of their university which when faced with a major ethics overhaul might choose the quickest fix that does not always result in a just and fair decision for the student. In certain smaller universities, I have observed these big fish, the dons of their fields, with an impressive publication record and a funding record that makes the higher-ups go weak in the knees. Students and fellows in the labs of such big fish seem to be at their mercy entirely. Immigrant researchers are left scrambling for research funding grants, a majority of which are reserved for citizens. They climb up the ladder, quietly enduring their own share of ill treatment by superiors and when they finally get to the top, some of them turn around and put their juniors through similar ordeals. Diversity is encouraged by the institute but does not always lead to assimilation of the different groups at the university. There are rampant tensions between people with advanced degrees and those who have years of experience but very little to show in terms of qualifications. It is not easy working with people who are constantly carrying a chip on their shoulder because they lack the right letters after their names. This goes the other way as well with MDs and PhDs talking down to their less qualified employees and colleagues.

The pool of PhDs at US universities includes a very high number of immigrants such as Indians and Chinese and from my own experiences and through anecdotes offered by others in my field I have come to observe that Americans who are not as qualified regard these accomplished outsiders with a sense of resentment which often boils over. I have witnessed department secretaries and technologists mocking the accents of international students and throwing insults in the faces of researchers arriving fresh of the boat, not yet familiar with the ways of this land. As a fresh graduate student, when I couldn't quite a figure out how to use a fax machine I was told to quit my PhD because I was such a "doorknob". There were wonderful, warm and helpful people too who I was fortunate enough to find. But most people are not this lucky. To add to all this, academic careers are not highly paid. Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows are the hardest working and have probably the lowest salaries and the least rights as employees. The lines of hierarchy in a laboratory setting are terribly blurry. None of it makes any sense. You have a highly qualified, sometimes inexperienced group working alongside this other group which consists of highly experienced, technically skilled people who usually do not hold advanced degrees. Each group thinks they are in control of the other, that they are the boss of the other, that they are better than the other. It is a bizarre scenario. So many of us have encountered a guy like Raymond Clark III, the man who is accused of killing Annie Le. We have all met that guy who wants to exercise control and his positions or credentials don't really allow him to and so he finds other ways to do it, to make your life difficult, to slow your work down.

When I first started my journey in academic science as a graduate student, one of the prompt pieces of advice I received was to be excruciatingly humble or even servile, if need be, with the technologists, secretaries and animal technicians. Or else, I was told, I would have to pay in a big way. As a naive young researcher, I used to think that the delays in finding cures for diseases are attributable to lack of funding alone and now years later I am of the opinion that people and their egos are the number one factor holding back science. I experienced the tension, the racial and cultural divides and of course the all important educational status divide. I constantly heard statements like "Your PhD is just letters behind your name. Means nothing." or "Immigrant PhDs are just cheap labor". If one complains you are told to put your head down and keep working. "Oh just deal with it professionally. This is nothing!" they tell you and launch into a narrative of another more horrific case of student/ employee abuse that they have heard about which makes your situation sound like a walk on the beach.

After a while, you learn to filter the noise and focus or you get eliminated from the rat race. Towards the end of graduate school, I finally realized that no matter how polite and humble I was, when faced with someone with an inherent insecurity, my own disposition would have very little impact on that person's behavior. I had to accept it and move on. Unless of course they decided to strangle me and stuff my body up a wall. Which based on news reports is probably what happened to Annie Le. Most universities or academic supervisors do very little to curb such problems and do not open their eyes to the brewing discontent in the academic environment. The primary strategy is to shove the mess under the carpet. The higher-ups in administration are very corporate in their dealings. Their primary concern is money. Graduate students are kicked out of laboratories after putting in years of work and the university hushes it up, preferring to side with the professors because they are the ones bringing in funding and grants. Postdoctoral research fellows most often being temporary employees are treated like dispensable cheap labor by the other permanent members of the academic work force in spite of the specialized skills and knowledge that they bring to the job.

In this gun-happy nation, it is frightful to imagine what would happen if someone with a twisted mind and a disregard for human life were to decide to get even. The drama in academic research begins on day 1 and simmers for the rest of your academic career, until you get the golden ticket of "tenure", the very one that Dr.Bishop was denied. Dr. Gopi Podilla, one of her victims, seems to be an immigrant, a man who as the department chair probably had a major say in decisions about tenure. It is a remarkable coincidence that all of the 3 people Bishop killed happened to be non-white.

Here's another interesting facet of this recent news story about the shootings that I noticed. The news media has not descended on it like they do for all other reports. Shootings and violence at universities usually receive quite a bit of attention on television in the US and so I was a bit surprised. Some news reports have even revealed that Bishop had killed before and it was ruled as an accidental shooting then. There are some online reports that discuss a possible cover-up in that case from 24 years ago where Bishop might have already been guilty. But in spite of such a story building about this case television media seems oddly disinterested. I have been watching CNN for a while and apart from a couple of quick mentions, I see no signs of this situation being discussed at all. While it is a little paranoid to assume that the race of the victims would be the sole reason for the media's neglect of this news story, it does give pause for thought.

Movie Review: Avatar - A Movie for the Theater Audience

Aditi Nadkarni — Sun, 7 Feb 2010 04:40:11 EST

Finally watched Avatar. Sat in a chilly theater with a pair of terribly ugly 3D glasses awkwardly balanced on my nose. I did not know what to expect from the film so my mind was blank, consumed by the most bourgeois of things. I was worried if the diet Coke would make me want to pee during the film, and if the whole 3D thing would get me motion sick. Then all too suddenly, within minutes of the film having started, I was transported into a world where all these petty concerns of mine, sheepishly shrunk and right before my eyes turned into luminescent little seeds of the Eywa tree.

I was in Pandora and I did not want to leave. One minute it was scary and dangerous, coming at you, teeth bared and the next moment it was lit up, fragile and beautiful, just like Neytiri, the brave and lovely heroine of the film. It is easy to see why Zoe Saldana is the star here. She brings emotion and authenticity to a character which otherwise might have seemed cartoonish. The magical world that James Cameron delivers does not have a Disney or Pixar like unbelievable quality. Not at all. He creates a world that you truly want to believe exists. The creatures and the flora are all wildly colorful but still very much alive. Pandora is the planet of our imaginations, the one where we hope scientists will finally discover life one day.

Lets face it, Cameron films have never been known for their plots and his direction is not subtle. The plot is usually predictable and the story is peppered with romance. Nothing wrong with that. It's just that this tale of a white man transforming into the much awaited hero for a race and saving them from other terrible white people is a bit old and borrowed from the many films about the fate of Native Americans. Anti-imperialism is the political favorite of the masses and of award committees as well. Everyone wants to be that one white guy, the hero who stepped in and saved people from tyranny. Unfortunately, in the context of history it is too late because Native Americans, Indians and Africans all fought their own wars against forced colonialism without a white Toruk Makto.

The tough military guy as the penultimate villain and the bulldozing of the Navi homes in the quest of "unobtanium" are familiar themes which have appeared in other less spectacular films. For a film with such a revolutionary style used in its making, Cameron could have employed a more memorable and unique plot just so that his remarkable effort did not seem like a gimmick or become outdated years from now. But the film left an impression on me. It gave my imagination a wild ride and then some. I will likely dream of Pandora tonight or wake up with a jolt as I fall off my Ikran. And ultimately I think Cameron's film making strategy might just be about delivering a memorable experience for the audience at the movie theater.

As I walked out of the theater, I thought to myself, James Cameron could easily be the crowned king of Bollywood for he excels at the one philosphy that scaffolds our commercial film industry in India: escapism.

Movie Review: Tingya - A Little Boy and his Bullock

Aditi Nadkarni — Mon, 1 Feb 2010 00:33:45 EST

Cold winter weekends have led me into the arms of Netflix. Here I can order films from all over the world and watch stories with universal appeal. Over time, having seen cinema from Israel, France, China and even Iraq, I have begun to appreciate a world outside of Bollywood escapism. This weekend I watched Tingya, a small budget Marathi film, director Mangesh Hadavale's debutant effort. I watched it with an American friend who does not really understand Marathi and yet she was able to empathize with and appreciate every aspect of this remarkable story.

The story is of a little boy, Tingya, who loves his bullock. This bullock, for the rest of the family is a means of survival; for them he is livestock, he ploughs their fields and the little money that they earn from the yearly crop keeps them going. They live a humble, hand-to-mouth existence in rural Maharashtra where poor farmers are known to commit suicide in desperation when the rains refuse to grace them and their fields dry up. One day when the bull falls into a leopard trap and breaks his leg, overnight, he becomes useless to this family of poor farmers. But not to Tingya. To Tingya the bull is a beloved pet. When his parents contemplate selling the injured bull to the butcher, the little boy begins a battle to save his pet's life. In this endeavor he has the sole support of his little friend Rashida. When the film was over, we still had in the room, the characters living with us, their smiles and their tears and their struggles hanging heavy over our shoulders. I have been starved of Indian films that make me feel this way. The performances by the children and the attention to detail in this film are a testimony of the director's intuitive skills. Not very many debutante directors can draw such moving performances from a child who is not a trained actor. In spite of how beautifully this film has been crafted I only found it because I heard about it from a friend and went looking for it. Not because it was promoted with in-my-face advertising like say 3 Idiots or Paa.

Currently, a look at the big releases reveals that most commercial Hindi films are made by rich film families, the big banners, as they are popularly referred to. Every second commercially viable blockbuster has a Kapoor or a Bachhan associated with it. Our Indian populace, used to deity worship, promotes films like these and in their zeal to uphold their existing heroes ignores new talent that does not have the money to market their creativity. In the current scheme of things, films made by a small-time, struggling director get shoved into a corner, neglected because our masses are so taken with the idea of escapism that they do not want to see the depth and meaning in the stories of our reality. If such a film is a Marathi or non-Hindi film, it has even lesser chances of being a big hit back in India.

I tried looking up Tingya online and could not find any major articles about this film in any Indian news dailies. Only bloggers seemed to have covered this film extensively in 2007 when it was released. While the film has a short Wikipedia page, it does not have a website, using instead a blog to promote themselves. It seems that this film has received only local film festival awards and I doubt they were taken to bigger overseas festivals for sheer lack of funds. And yet big budget films like Devdas and Jodha Akbar receive unwarranted attention at international festivals because they have money and big names driving their efforts. This movie lost out to Taare Zameen Par for an Oscar submission. I am certain that if it were chosen it would have definitely been nominated. The western world may have seen a child's struggle with dyslexia but I can guarantee you the story of Tingya would have struck them as unique. But Tingya didn't stand a chance against Aamir Khan's directorial debut.

I want my readers to watch this film and talk about it, spread the word. I know some of you may not be Marathi speaking but this film and its story is driven by powerful scenes and not just dialog. Some of you are animal lovers and I can tell you that this story will move you to the core. Help this little piece of genius along and in some little way encourage such talent instead of fueling the blatant nepotism and cronyism that is plaguing our film industry back home. Mind you I do not mean to put down our commercial film industry. They have earned a place in people's psyche and that industry too supports a million careers. But there is more to India than the glossy, commercially viable, rich lives portrayed by the regular Bollywood fare. In a world plagued by superfluous, fleeting and material content, there are stories have the power to move us and introduce us to the joys that lie beyond what's on the surface. These stories might not highlight our affluence but they tell people of how much happiness there can be without it.

Dr.Shah Rukh Khan Gets His Ph.D - Dilwale Doctorate Le Jayenge

Aditi Nadkarni — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 06:20:16 EDT

"Mera beta doctor banega" Hari Prasad Sharma (Munnabhai's father)

I worked my butt off for 5 years to get my doctorate. I drove off into the sunset when I was done and could not attend the convocation ceremony because I was too lazy to drive twelve hours just to recieve my diploma in proper photo-op fashion. My parents missed out on watching me don the black robes and that now gives them something in common with Shah Rukh Khan's children who missed witnessing their father's convocation ceremony.

The University of Bedfordshire conferred an honorary degree upon the King Khan making him Dr.Khan. The reactions among desi public, I notice, range from "Hurray!" to "What the fuck!". In India, we do not have a tradition of meriting talent or achievement with anything at the academic level, leave alone with honorary doctorates. So people are finding it hard to digest that a person who has pranced around trees, done the jhatka-matkas of Bollywood and fueled the escapist cinema that makes some of us cringe in embarrassment, has now been honored with a title that we commonly associate with academic achievement (or at the very least with a pair of thick nerdy glasses). How can Shah Rukh Khan be Dr.Khan?

I am no Shah Rukh Khan fan. I do not watch his every film with star lit eyes nor do I swoon when he appears on screen. I have in the past enjoyed some of his noteworthy performances. I thoroughly enjoyed Chake De and Swades. As a teen, I watched Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge twice in the balcony section of the theatre and then again in the god forsaken stall ranks where bed bugs sapped me of blood for three straight hours. At an age when one still had favorite SRK films, mine was Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa. Here in America, I turned traitor and fell in love with foreign films, art and indie films, short films with stories, gradually drifting away from the bright pink, dreamy arms of commercial Hindi cinema. I still managed to catch glimpses of the Khan in Devdas and Om Shanti Om when we graduate students worn with the sternness of realism craved a Bollywood masala fix. Occassionally, when I watched him speak in interviews and during award ceremonies, he struck me as an intelligent, eloquent, quite humorous and mostly unpretentious person.

But over the years, I have rolled my eyes at him, scoffed at his corny lines and been embarassed when I watched him bust a move not befitting a 40 year old. That being said there is no denying that SRK is now the brand amabassador for our Hindi film industry. In Europe, they may not know our prime miniter but they do know who Shah Rukh Khan is. The completion of a doctoral dissertation is usually marked by a significant body of work, a compilation of orginal contributions made to the relevant field by the candidate. In reviewing Dr.Khan's thesis in the arts and culture field, one realizes that he was probably the first commercial Hindi film hero to risk donning the garb of a villain. He was the murderer, the obsessive lover, the stuttering psychopath who changed how we as the audience viewed Bollywood characters. He brought in gray shades to the hero's character in a genre of popular cinema that until then had only safe, predictable black and whites. He was not your typical macho Hindi film hero or devastatingly handsome when he first arrived on the scene. He wasn't even the chocolate hero with a sweet. likeable face. His dancing skills were adequate at best. And yet he became the sensation, doing everything people say one should not do on their way to filmi success. He went against the tide, starting with television, which among acting circles is known to dent chances of a future in cinema. He acted in not one, but two hit television series. At the peak of his career in cinema, he made his return to television hosting the popular Kaun Banega Crorepati (Who Wants To Be A Millionaire) show.

At the Golden Globes recently, watching him up on stage, humble and restrained, made me smile. I felt like I knew him. Among the smooth Geres, Pitts and Nicholsons of Hollywood, his mocha skin, his endearing accent, his shy manner and crooked eyebrows were such a welcome sight for me, an Indian in America. In spite of not being a devout SRK fan, I hung onto his every word.

The point of my article originally was not to list all of the Khan's accomplishments but to emphasize that in spite of his very obvious and signficant contribution to the arts, to the popular genre of Hindi films, some of us have an issue with his receiving the honorary doctoral degree. And this I find quite interesting. India has an exam based meritocracy; therefore a degree, a credential has to be accompanied by some kind of a measurable score. A box office score, mind you, may not be acceptable because in India education and films don't mix. If one was an aspiring artist, the middle class in Bombay immediately proclaimed him/ her a dud at school. If you scored well in your SSC exams, you took up sciences, commerce being the next best choice. In my time, doleful parents of students who scored low SSC scores, sighed, shrugged and resigned their children's future's to the unreliable, fickle paths of the arts.

"Yes beta I know you are a theatre artist but what do you do for a living" an old uncle would sometimes ask a young struggling actor, "Art will not be feeding you!" the greying man would exclaim bundling up his fingers and thrusting them towards his mouth, a common gesture for "roti". He would walk away shaking his head satisfied at having trampled the young man's aspirations under the bitterness of his own ignored dreams.

"You are not some Bachchan or Kapoor to have Subhash Ghai and Yash Chopra welcome you with garlands" Karnik aunty would tell a young, break-dancing Rahul when he announced that his performances at the Ganesh Chaturthi festival were in preparation for the 70mm screen.

"Have you seen your face in the mirror? You? You want to be a hero!Ha!" now this one we have all heard someone saying unaware of the cruelty of their words.

To all these questions, Shah Rukh Khan has now become the national answer. He wasn't a Bachchan or a Kapoor. In an industry plagued with nepotism, he arrived as a nobody, with no godfathers or mummy-daddies to usher him in. He had no charming good looks to wow the teenage crowds. I am certain that the commercially viable genre of films in which he stars have critics and reviewers frothing at the mouth. I'm also equally sure there are people who would look through my thesis and find critique-worthy sections or flaws in my discussion. There may be some who disagree with my philosphy or the subject I chose for my resarch. What matters in the end is that a committee at an established institute decided it was worth a PhD. So while Bombay University or the many IITs might not confer benevolence upon an artist of any kind, much less an actor, the University Of Bedfordshire has decided to honor a man who represents in current times the largest film industry in the world.

The Death Of A King: Michael Jackson Passes Away

Aditi Nadkarni — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:53:13 EDT

Michael Jackson is gone. He was my very first introduction to pop music, our generation's pop music. If it weren't for him, our times would not have had any star to show for itself, no Elvis, no Beatle mania. We from the 90s would have passed by without a craze. Instead the 90s gave the world its King Of Pop. His biggest and best selling albums were made popular by my generation. We were the teenagers who followed his moonwalking footsteps and filtered his lyrics through the funnels of our walkman headphones. I remember hearing the scream, the sounds of shattering glass weaved into his music, the irreverant howl, the vulnerable quiver of his voice and the startling hiccup that punctuated his songs so in contrast to the steady, unbroken, melancholy notes of Indian music. It was different, like nothing I had ever heard before and so a pre-teen eager for something to define me, I fought valiantly for rights over the sole music system which my father's Jagjit Singh and Ghulam Ali albums had monopolized for preceding years.

At my all girl's convent school, every annual function had a dance on a catchy Michael Jackson number. Girls dressed in black and white, with big plastic hoops for earrings performed what could not really be called a break dance but when the famed "crotch" move came along, howls ensued from the crowd and loud clucks came forth from the nuns. In an otherwise solemn classroom, when Sister Maria asked us who was the first man to walk on the moon, our whispered answers amidst suppressed giggles included "Michael Jackson". In India, somehow we never saw Michael Jackson as Whacko Jacko. For us, he was merely this one representation of what the West itself was: eccentric, different, crazy and laden with bling-blings. If you asked a kid off the streets what America was to him, he would promptly say "Michael Jackson" and bust a break dance move. Johny Lever even created an Indian counterpart including "Mai-ka Lal Jaikishan" (Mother's pet, Lord Krishna) for one of his comic routines and everybody in audience, young or old knew whose name he was parodying.

When Michael Jackson arrived in India, even the usually Hindutva and nationalistic fervor ridden Bal Thackeray was smitten, raving to delighted news reporters about how MJ had stopped at his home and used his toilet. The concert was something I could not even dream of attending. Instead I fed on the remnants of the wave that his arrival set forth in Bombay. Riding on the buses the next day, we pointed to each other, flyers and posters of the concert and the places that we speculated MJ must have surely passed through on the way to his hotel. "Look", we cried excitedly, "They said he stopped there before they drove from his hotel to the concert!". Street children wore the one white glove symbolic of the King's visit and street hawkers made a killing selling MJ hats with a lock of curly hair attached. I was one of Bombay's teeming middle class. being part of the concert was not for us unless its traffic manifestations counted. We only took pride in the fact that MJ had decided to visit our city. He knew he had fans here, we told ourselves and therefore he knew us at some level. He had come all that way to our city and bathed it with his music, matched the beat of our crowded local trains with the rhythm of his songs and even put in a bharatnatyam dancer in his album. He acknowledged us and we loved him for that. He folded his hands and said namaste and even the grandmothers dismissive of his moves were touched. Mai-Ka-Lal-Jai-Kishen.

At my own grandmother's house, there lived a beautiful new god that had just made its way into India: cable TV. This tele-caravan of non-stop entertainment brought with itself, MTV and VTV. I watched MJ move around Naomi Campbell crooning "In The Closet" and that to date remains my favorite dance MJ number, its sensuality somehow ripening with age, mine and the song's. At thirteen, this to me was sex in the West. A voluptuous, scantily clad woman sashaying with a tall, frail man clutching his crotch. One monsoon day on our way to a movie theatre, the shattering of glass and a well-delivered scream in Jam, startled my dad when maneuvering our fiat through Bombay's tricky traffic. And much to my dismay MJ was banned from playing in our car.

"Do you even know what he is saying? Can you even tell?" my mother asked one day, challenging my adoration as I stared into the TV and let the the beats consume me. I turned up the volume and pretended to ignore her but her comment set me off. Up until then I did not understand his accent. I only knew that the beats of his songs excited me and made me want to dance. So the next time I made sure to look through the little lyric booklet that came with the cassette and learned a new language, his language. Suddenly, I was even more in love, not just moving with the beats and humming the tune but singing with the song. My mother immediately regretted having unintentionally led me into this karaoke phase. As I recognized the words, the message in "Black or White" and the angst in "Stranger In Moscow" were delivered with the beats. When our richer cousins bought a gigantic stereo system with speakers in every corner of the room, consumed with a mixture of pride and envy,I feigned nonchalance but only until "Blood On The Dance Floor" made its way into my tapping feet through their shuddering marble floor. I had never heard an MJ song being played like that before, at such a dangerous volume.

Through all his legal trials and the plastic surgeries, it became somewhat shameful or embarassing to admit that you liked him and adored him. And yet his music remained his one true face, untarnished and whole bringing discotheques alive when the 90s were called upon. Yesterday, I got back after a long day at work and just as suddenly as the shattering of glass and his trademark howl had entered my world, startling me years ago, I found out he was dead. I felt an urgency to listen to one of his songs. It is amazing how a tune can transport one back into the time to which that music belongs. Last night, I sat on my sofa, turned up the volume, closed my eyes and was a teenager again.

"Do you remember the time, when we were in love. We were young and innocent then"

Iran's New Revolution: A Cyber Movement

Aditi Nadkarni — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:40:01 EDT

There is something very moving about a mass revolution, about watching throngs of unarmed people hungry for freedom and change take to the streets. It evokes goosebumps to witness personified, the unyielding passion that plants itself into time and changes the face of history. What is happening in Iran is not happening to just Iranians but to all of us. It is happening to the world.

I am amazed at the scenes and at the coverage. I am even more spell bound at the new role of the cyber world in a revolution. Before this, I had never known the faces of Iranian women and now they suddenly flash across my television screen, angry and bold, nothing like what I imagined them to be. They have been, literally and figuratively, behind a veil. Americans, Indians and people from other progressive democracies have their own imaginative perceptions of what Iranian women must be like. When I read Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, I could sense in the backdrop of her story the restrained, calm energy of the women but nothing quite like the fervent enterprise that I see bursting forth over the internet and in news reports. Their resilient fists thump the air and their voices cut the silence in half as they make themselves heard and remind the world that sometimes the scarves that hide their faces, also hide indomitable resolves. And today, as an Indian woman, raised in a progressive environment and living a free life in the United States, I want to be them. I wonder if I could've ever been them, taken to the streets in protest if my vote were not counted in India? Such events define us. What would we do and be capable of if our rights were denied. As a nation would we unite? As an individual would we stand up and march even if we are alone? Would we take a gun and run a riot or would we march silently in protest? Like the fate of these protesters, Iran, the nation, stands in limbo, neither here nor there. This revolution could make Iran more progressive if the protesting populace wins or like the Ayatollah promised dire consequences and bloodshed could silence their voices forever.

What an army it is, of people who lose fear and fight for something more than shallow practical objectives like money, territory, oil or governance. The hunger for freedom is unmatched. The sentiment that brings these Iranian men and women to the streets is not one that adheres to the selfish, materialistic present. I believe that the fervor of these people is latched onto the abstract future, the idealistic visions for the next generation. That is probably why so many people have joined in. When a parent is fighting for their child's future, there is very little a gun or a tear gas shell can do. The fear that their next generation will live through the same duress that they did is probably bigger and far deeper than the fear of any physical harm.

A nation's biggest strength is its youth. If the youth is nonchalant about their rights and take their freedom for granted then democracy slowly dwindles. Any youth movement gathers momentum faster because the younger generation communicates differently and has more zeal than say a middle-aged individual who may have resigned his fates to the system. The role of Twitter in Iran's uprising is unique especially in view of the strict regulation by Iranian government of internet services. Communication over the internet spreads like wildfire. It seems like the cyber world is more than accommodating towards Iran's movement as Google and Facebook reportedly speed up their Farsi translation services. Twitter, bloggers and citizen journalists are serving as Iran's eyes and ears and are fueling the movement simply through the remarkable power of swift, unedited communication. Now that Iranians have had a taste of what uncensored communication and journalism can do, I doubt they will ever settle for anything less.

Ever since international politics first drew me in, I have always harbored a secret hope of peace and liberty throughout the Middle East. Quite ominously Iran seems be the heart, in the center on a map of the Islamic world. Its sits smack in the midst of Iraq, Afghanistan, UAE, Pakistan and Turkey. A part of every individual watching this revolution unfold wants it to go through and make the fatwas and the rule of the clergy be a thing of the past when the next generation arrives. Studying sixth and seventh grade history, I read about the 1857 uprising, Rani Laxmibai and then about Mahatma Gandhi's satyagrahas. The chapters in India's independence movement had me fired up, sitting at the edge of my seat. Today, as I watch Iran go through what can only be described as the labor pains of freedom, I feel the same excitement and make a wish for the youth of that nation. I hope that they ignite a fire that spreads and does not stop until everybody has tasted freedom long enough to know that there is no other way to live.

It has been so long since my generation has witnessed a revolution, that we have grown complacent. We take our rights for granted and, weary with having accomplished our short-term goals, we do not demand that our system changes for coming generations. Our objectives are so set in the practicality of the present that we dismiss the future as an idealistic dream, too far, too unreal to achieve. May Iran remind us that this is is not the case. May their revolution serve as testimony for those of us who live in free, democratic nations, that what we have is worth fighting for, worth taking a bullet for, worth enduring the blow of a lathi for and worth uniting for.

The Palin-Letterman Skirmish & A "Biased" Media

Aditi Nadkarni — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:16:16 EDT

Sarah Palin is not going away. Television channels seem to lap her up because lets face it, there is some perverse fun in watching someone make a fool of themselves on TV. It's like watching a celebrity edition of America's Funniest Videos. Add to the mix, David Letterman and now we have Democrats and Republicans fighting over stand-up-comedy instead of the usual tragedies like economic strife or terrorist attacks. Now in addition to Rush Limbaugh, Judge Sotomayor and Newt Gingrich, we have Letterman and Palin as the subjects of heated debates between the forever warring right and left.

People of my generation grew up knowing that ninety percent of Letterman's jokes were crass. I mean, come on now, that man does the quintessential dirty old man look, cackling and sticking his tongue up in the gap between his teeth. Didn't we know his humor was tasteless? Over the years, everybody from our very own Aishwarya Rai to the prison-returned Paris Hilton, have been at the receiving end of his jokes. According to Palin, now at 62, Letterman has finally crossed the line when he made a joke which she insists was about her 14 year old daughter Willow but Letterman claims was about the 18 year old Bristol Palin. The joke was meant to be on Elliot Spitzer and Alex Rodriguez but the reference to a Palin girl seems to have cost Letterman his few cheap laughs. Somewhere in New York, perhaps a Tonight show writer joined the growing unemployment statistic.

All in all, we lost out on what could have been an absorbing discussion about a gas pipeline in Alaska which is what Governor Palin supposedly came on TV to speak about in the first place. She ended up calling Matt Lauer naive for believing Letterman's lame excuse about his joke. What's with people insulting Lauer? First Tom Cruise and now Palin. Where in the world is Matt Lauer's retort? Interestingly, this whole Tonight Show row has an innocent, pale, redheaded victim: Conan O'Brien. It is so unfair that my favorite night show host might lose out on ratings because Palin wants air time; either that or people will recognize that Letterman's humor is too crude for anybody's taste and move to NBC for their nightly entertainment.

The whole charade has made for some very interesting television and media moments. Stooping to the levels of stand up comedy routines, Palin's spokesperson suggested that Letterman should not be allowed near teenage girls. When the otherwise sensible Matt Lauer asked Palin if this comment itself was in bad taste, she with some very awkward sounding sentences refused to clarify if they were in fact insinuating that Letterman was a child molester. After expressing her support for, umm, "flight attendants" she also added that Letterman's joke trivialized statutory rape (because that is what statutory rapists are doing, watching Letterman before they go after a teen when in fact they should in fact be watching NBC's To Catch A Predator). Palin wants Letterman to "apologize to young women across the country" (who let's hope are in bed by the time his show comes on or at the very least have better taste in television programs). She also claims that young girls in the country have low self esteeem because of such jokes.

Fox News wants "feminists" to stand up against Letterman but were noticeably quiet some years ago when another young woman's self-esteem was in jeopardy. Remember those comments made by John McCain and a few other noted Republicans about how "ugly" a teen Chelsea Clinton was? What about the "ape rape" joke made famous during last year's elections. No apologies for those? Well, so much for accusations of a "biased media". Looks like the biases cancel each other out.

But as Palin appears on various morning shows, makes it to the headlines day after day, and does not seem to slink away into the backdrop with her new wardrobe like everyone had hoped, I wonder if the GOP is wishing she would do what she does best: stay in Alaska and keep an eye on Russia.