Death Lays Its Icy Hands

The other day, a friend sent me the link of a blog from the Asom Times. It was written by a close friend of the late Ranjan Das, CEO of SAP India, who passed away of cardiac arrest in October 2009. The blog was personal, touching and left me with a twinge of sadness. Das' story was that of the meteoric rise of a middle class boy to the corporate blue-eyed boy. A story of grit and brilliance. At 42, Das was clearly not yet at his peak in terms of his professional achievements and had loads of things to be done on his unfinished agenda. It is anyone's guess what he would have scaled had he still been around....

Actor-Director Shankar Nag died in a tragic road accident more than two decades ago. Nag,in his time, was a brilliant director (we all remember the televised Malgudi Days, dont we?), and had in mind his baby, Rangashankara, a centre intended for promoting theater amongst all age groups. But, when fate struck, wife Arundhati, bravely fulfilled her late husband's dream. Today, Rangashankara stands tall in South Bangalore. The point here is Shankar Nag was set to do a good many things which were abruptly curtailed by death. It was well known that he was a restless, ambitious, creative man who would have worked wonders had he been around.

Indian's former premier, the late Rajiv Gandhi too is another example of a promising life cut short by fate. Gandhi dreamt of the Telecom and IT revolution for India way back in the 80's, and took giant steps to get our hitherto traditional economy well on track with the world. He was young, handsome to boot, and had won many admirers all over for his diction, his charming smile, amongst many other endearing qualities. So, even while mainstream media was divided in its opinion about his capabilities as a politician, he was scoring many points elsewhere, with the able support of his close coterie and his wife, Sonia. May 21, 1991 signaled the end to one of India's most charismatic leaders. There have not been too many ever since.

The recent Carlton Towers tragedy in Bangalore, footage bits of which local TV channels aired relentlessly, really wrenched my heart... young people jumping from the building in blind panic and meeting their end was tragic, to say the least. Open the city beat of any daily and one would see reports of deaths -natural and unnatural. It takes one second for us to cross over from life to the unknown. A cousin once narrated an incident that happened in his home town some years ago. On a sunny afternoon, a holiday, while he was enjoying time out with his friends and was crossing a particular highway service road, he witnessed a brother duo being run over by a speeding lorry in a matter of seconds. The friends later found out that the deceased were muslims : It was Id that day... Celebrations would have turned to mourning at the boys' house that day and for several years to come...

Death is a truth that we all know but often do not want to talk about; we prefer to go into denial. We go on with our lives mechanically like we have taken immortality for granted. It is about time we acknowledge the ephemeral nature of our existence, live by the day and stop planning endlessly for a future we cant be sure of being alive for. It aint so easy? We could do better by asking some of the survivors of terror attacks, accidents and others who have had close shaves with the moment of truth. Their numbers are many; they would agree with this, I am sure.

The Sun Never Sets on the Badshah...

In recent years, I have begun to like watching movies in the comfortable environs of my home and hence my visits to the movie halls have come down drastically. It is about total control and also avoiding a situation of being trapped with a bad watch and a headache in the theaters.

During one such home movie session, while watching MNIK, I could not stop thanking the Almighty and other forces that I was not subjected to the movie in the halls. Nevertheless, Shahrukh Khan s having the last laugh... again... I heard the the movie's opened to a very positive response at the box office here and overseas. And, Khan's exchange of words with the Shiv Sena has garnered more and more support for himself and his movie. The man has done it.... once again, typical of the Scorpio spirit (I cant afford to forget his birthday, since he shares it with a host of people right from my father to close family friends!).

Personally, I would not rate Khan's acting skills as anything beyond an attempt at pyrotechnics. For all the irreverent self -praise he subjects us to through the media, barring the stray Swades, Chak De India or a Paheli, I cant imagine the man ever having delivered a credible performance in his long career spanning over two decades. And understandably, he was reported to have had differences with the directors of each of these movies.. simply because they were not going to suffer the routine rubbish doled out by our matinee idol (it was expecting too much that all would be like best buddies Farah Khan and Karan Johar:)). The numerous blockbusters notwithstanding, Shahrukh remains a star trapped in mediocrity, predictable insufferable mannerisms; this, inspite of a stint in theater and despite a spark of talent (he was compared to Dilip Kumar) one saw in him in his formative years in Bollywood.

But, what makes the Badshah tick...appeal, charisma, lifestyle, matinee quotient, mass reach?
In reality, he is a product of studious brand building and hard work achieved over a number of years, and I guess he deserves to make the most of his efforts. All said and done, love him, hate him, but one just cant afford to ignore Shahrukh Khan- oh yes, he s a superstar and does not shy away from the fact. The person hurting most with the rise of the star is none other than the other Khan-Aamir. Few would remember that it was Aamir Khan' s refusal of Darr (1994) that catapulted the Badshah to superstardom. And our dear friend, Aamir Khan had to work doubly hard to reinvent himself in the cerebral meter in order to counter the Shahrukh box office onslaught... In the Khandom of Bollywood, Shahrukh s clearly stolen the show right under the noses of the other 3 Khans.

It has been a phenomenal rise from where Shahrukh started off two decades ago. A classic case of making hay while the sun shines - the cinegoers love him; so do the advertisers. Yeah, for every ten who cant stand his movies, there emerge another hundred who seem to lap it all up, and significantly, they come from a carefully cultivated overseas market. If he continues to play his cards well, he may have scripts written for him right into his 50's and 60's a la AB. Going by the way it is shining, Shahrukh Khan' s career may never see the sun setting on it. Now, is that good news or bad?

The Return of the Aryans?

Bhagwan Das Gidwani would never have dreamt that his epic title would be used in this context. Well neither did I. I would have never ever contemplated or been vocal about the North-South divide or the Aryan-Dravidian separations in my life had it not been for...

Let me explain. Being a Bangalorean, who grew up on a healthy diet of Hindi cinema and being someone who had a good mix of friends across communities, I would be the last candidate for such talk. I have enjoyed Holi as much as Ugadi; I love dal tadka as much as I would relish slurping rasam; to me Kareena Kapoor is no different from Ramya. I have rushed to catch the 'first day first show' of many a Bollywood caper during my college years. Watching Aamir Khan was as exciting as seeing Kamal Hassan on screen.

My father's love for rare old Hindi film songs is very well known in his family. Infact, many of his kith and kin are vintage hindi film music afficionados. I made Hindi my preference of second language way back in standard eight atschool and this continued till the day I graduated from college. I have studied the language and loved it in all forms - prose, poetry and drama. I made sure that I got my diction right. I did not make the stereotype errors, you know, small nuances, that went a long way to establish that Hindi was in no way different to me from Kannada or English. So, when all these influences have grown in me over the decades, then why, out of the blue, would I be rabble rousing about the insufferable attitude of the people on the other side of the Vindhyas? Why would I get passionate about the 'Aryan' outsiders in my city?

The last decade has seen me share my time between two employers - both MNCs and the best in their businesses. Alongwith the fact that they were big players, they came with the package of having a huge crowd of people from outside the city. Which meant for every one or two locals, one was getting to see eight outsiders in various hues - from other southern states as well as from the North - from the northern most cap to the cowbelt states. The national integration opportunity was thrilling till I came face-to-face with situations I never thought existed in my integrated world....

What appalled me were the condescending, downright pathetic comments about the South made by the Northern crowd I bumped into - ranging from the food, people, the cinema, to the local language here. "Hamen to idli nahin bhaati," "Ooty kya hain, North mein toh Mussorie, Nainital, Kashmir aur Shimla hain." The Southern mountains never seem to match the grandeur of the Himalayas... is it actually in the altitude or in the minds of the people who pass these comments? Aur phir.... ek second, Andhra Pradesh ki state language kya hain? Andhra? aur Kerala mein kya bolte hain? Keral? Yahan ki bhaasha... Kannad? (Please note the shocking knowledge of geography and phonetique or the lack of it; one would have presumed they would have paid some attention to basics at school).

The southern way of dressing is too simple; South Indian girls are too drab; South Indian weddings are so boring, southern finishing on any product is too... well, local! The sad part is such snobbery can be be heard even from some second generation North Indian locals. And this would beat it all.... raised eyebrows to my Hindi..."Tum itni acchi Hindi kaise bol leti ho, tum to North mein kabhie nahin rahi ho na?" Well, I know, short visits and vacations to the 'holy land' do not count, but give us some credit for 'having being here and having done that'.

And well, the two time-tested, pet mock points for my North Indian friends: the southern diction of their bhaasha, Hindi and the colour of the skin. Well, all I can say, my dear ignoramuses is, please read your bit of authentic history and you may get a wee bit enlightened, and perhaps be shaken out of some of the historical 'Aryan' superiority that plagues most of you.
And while we do appreciate your food, dances, festivals, tehzeeb and your flambuoyant spirit, my dear friends, this is the way we are, and we are not ashamed of that; there is no reason to be. And no,we are not the Mehmood 'Padosan' or the Quick Gun Murugan caricatures that you would want to believe us to be, and the onus of national integration does not rest solely with us. As it goes in a famous Kannada film song of the 1980's, "Nodee Swami, naavirodu heege..." Find out what it means for yourselves if you mean business... I mean the business of becoming Indian, instead of remaining your fancy North Indian!