prabāt

How do you know you are having a headache?

Because you are holding your head? Because you just shouted at your spouse for no reason? Or is it simply because you are not feeling good? Well, then how do you know you are not feeling good?

Imagine how the world would look like, if one fine morning everyone were to turn good. People are contented with what they have, all people have enough for themselves, no prejudices, no greed, no lust, no one wants to be dishonest, no one pokes nose into others affairs, every one respects the other, everyone works hard to earn, everyone is tolerant to others, women are understood.

Wouldn’t that be a perfect world! The ideal place for mankind! Well, think again.

No one needed to regulate others, no desire for more and hence no competition, no motivation to become better, no boost to personal growth, no intellectual growth, stunted thinking, simplistic attitudes, convoluted behavior and the predictable eventuality – struggle for survival! And we are back to square one! And mankind begins to degenerate until it comes to a rusty screeching halt.

More often than not, the essence of goodness is realized only by realizing its opposite. It needs a sadness to teach the lessons of being happy. Life thrives on scaffolds of the oxymoronic twins of the being and the not being. What is, is understood by what is not.

You appreciate rainbow because you know grayscale. You know you are happy, because you know sadness. You know you are full, because you know hunger. You know joy, because you have felt pain. You perceive the presence because you have felt an absence. You understand yourself by understanding what you are not. You know you are having a headache because, you know how it feels not to have a headache.

The world is balanced by a receptively intricate tight-rope clutched between the perpetual pillars of the good and the not good, and a mismatch at either side, rattles the fragile poise of nature. It is the parallel co-existence of the good and the not good that maintains this balance.

So, the next time you are having a not so good time, remember to be thankful. For, you are learning some hard lessons the easier way.

1857. Barrackpore. Four messengers on an elephant back beside the banks of a bright sunlit river singing praises of the land, inspiring people to rise from their slumber, to admire the scrambled beauty that the medieval age was all about. Well, atleast that was the idea.

In historical epics like Mangal Pandey, where one is already aware of the story, the history behind it, the expected climax and the obvious conclusion, the least one would expect from the movie is to carry oneself into that day, retelling and reliving the emotions of the past as if it were happening in front of his eyes, rather than an amalgamated narration of the incidents with intermittent bouts of fiction and masala. The fervor appears lost even as the movie begins with the Mangala mangala song and the four men on the elephant back theme.

The movie was Ketan Mehta’s 17 year old dream and had considered Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjay Dutt to play the lead role during the days of his initial contemplation. But eventually, 17 years hence, when the project did manage to take off with Aamir Khan, Ketan Mehta seems still hooked on to his erstwhile visions of the movie.

The movie moves more like the Discovery of India (Bharath ek khoj) series telecast in Doordarshan 20 years back, with Om Puri’s voice (it was Om Puri in that series as well) narrating the events as they unfold, at times making one wonder if someone is reading out lines from a completely illustrated story book. Historical texts seem to talk of a British general, William Gordon, who fought with the Indian sepoys against the British forces. The movie goes a step further fictionalizing an intense friendship between Mangal Pandey and William Gordon, and the betrayal of his friendship eventually forcing Mangal Pandey to turn in the rebellion.

A friendship ensuing between an Indian sepoy and a British general is understandable, but some parts are hard to comprehend. A case being the wife of a sepoy who breast-feeds a British lady’s baby at the cost of ignoring her own baby whom she opium-izes and at a point when she warns her of the rebellions resorts to deeming the lady’s baby as her own. There could be a better way of showing a mother’s feelings. Wonder if any mother in this day or that, would resort to this.

The costumes are a let down. For a period placed in the mid 19th century, the costumes and settings seemed much contemporary. But for the uniform of the sepoys, there wasn’t much by way of costumes to carry the viewer into the medieval age. Compare the scenics of the villages in the movie with a present day village, and you wouldn’t really tell them apart. Camera angles and choreography fail to instill a sense of thrill or emotion. AR Rahman’s tranquilizing numbers appear lost in simplistic choreography with conversations taking over half the songs half-way through.

Rani Mukherjee does not have enough of a part to talk of her performance, while Amisha Patel does her insignificant role fairly well. Toby Stephens (William Gordon) performs the most vital role of the movie (next only to Mangal Pandey) with neat precision. Aamir Khan is probably the best thing that could have happened to the movie. His 2 year long grown moustache and hair and his uncanny knack of living the role he performs deserves due credits.

Mangal Pandey is a good break from the laborious stereotypes of typical bollywood masala, but far from living up to its hype.

Just finished reading Sujatha’s essay velinaattu mogham konda ilaignargalukku... Thanks to Lazy Geek for sharing it with me.

One of my distant relatives once asked me where I work. When I told him, he asked ‘And how are your chances of going abroad?’. Give me a break!

The irresistible craving for sophistication and man’s eternal tryst with his ego to which he ends up meekly succumbing more often than not, is the root of all velinaattu mogham. Relationships and the sensitive emotions that relationships render upon us is not just ‘an’ aspect of life, but ‘the’ pathway that provides a direction for our living. The sense of belonging and the sense of security that emanate from these sensitive bonds is something hard to notice in velinaadu.

As the writer candidly notes, higher education for the guy (oh! my son is studying in US) and getting married to an NRI for the girl (oh! my daughter is married and settled in US) is where the major chunk of this mogham lies. At times, the neighborhood gossip of their ‘brainy’ son studying abroad or their daughter settled in foreign married to a wealthy intelligent (‘foreign’ automatically translates to ‘intelligence’ for some strange reason) boy is more important than the boy being ‘her’ choice of a guy. And if you don’t go abroad, you are just another ol’ swine spending his life marching between the delirious streets of a dusty South Indian suburb, who goes to the Kodaikkanal hills for his honeymoon and wonders how beautiful God’s creation is.

The beauty of togetherness, the tranquility of an emotional bond goes begging caught in the audaciously luxurious lifestyles of velinaadu. I stand by the writer when he says ‘I don’t prevent anyone from going, but just want them to understand the cost they pay’. I would say a part of this responsibility for making one understand lies with the parents, in channeling their children with a balanced state of mind – modern thinking but traditional values! The former is prevalent, but the latter is running out fast in perilous attempts at emulating the velinaattu values.

Talking of velinaattu values, here’s a glimpse. Over a casual lunch, an American colleague of mine was talking to me about someone we had seen and we were trying to guess his age and experience. I said, ‘He might be in his mid-30s, so probably even married’. And my colleague spontaneously pipped in, ‘Yeah, at least once.’

I would rather drive a second hand car in the Saturday evening traffic in MG Road laughing my heart out with my wife and kids seated beside me, than earning big bucks in a far off land with each of us going different directions for work and juvenile merriment each in our own state-of-the-art cars.