Bend over democracy, pose for the camera!

Firstly, I will reiterate. Narendra Modi will (still) go down as one of the greatest prime ministers and leaders in the brief history of independent India. History will be kinder to him and not to Manmohan Singh. A litany of policy changes, basic amenity availability and massive projects that are key to provide for our densely populated country (it has been for millennia) stand witness to this. That we are able to do this much with the level of systemic, societal and leadership corruption India has, should come as a shock for anyone who has lived through 1990 to 2010 in the squalor of any small to medium sized town of most parts of India.

That said, the bar was set too low, with straight up traitors sitting on the highest seats, jeopardizing our economic, defense, international relations growth. 12 years later, there is absolutely no reason for the new republic to be held to those archaic standards. That we had widespread corruption, paper leaks, mismanagement of public property, subversion of India's cultural heritage -- is no justification of why it continues today. And it does. The people who rule now are to be held accountable for it, not Jawaharlal Nehru, not even Sonia Gandhi, and it is very annoying that you have to hear what the mughals did, what the british did, what the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty did as explanation for unmet needs of today. Or the other great excuse, foreign interference. If Chanakya or Machiavelli (both heavily misunderstood people) were watching this, they would scoff at this stupidity. Any sane political entity is SUPPOSED TO undermine its national and international opponents through sabotage and narrative warfare. Once you recognize your antagonists, like (imo) USA, Pakistan Aand forces, INC, Political abrahamicism etc, while it is useful to keep pointing them out, much larger scale narrative and ground work is needed to keep your system ready to counter such efforts.



Now, one of the great structural issue India continues to face is restricted upward mobility in a very unequal society. A narrow escape route from the talchhat (I once read a Hindi translation of a Maksim Gorky story with that title, I am such an intallackchual) are these ridiculous entrance examinations which are supposed to find meritorious students, but mostly work like a "oont ke muh me zeera" lottery system. Somehow, they have convinced a billion people that the familial traditions, expertise and blue collar jobs are benign in front of this route that anyways funnels kids into a poorly designed, insufficiently padded education system which then ends into a blind, dark alley of unemployment. It should be no surprise that roughly a quarter of India's STEM graduates and 90% of STEM PhDs leave India. Even doctors leave (~20%). If India's medical system is more accessible than a developed country like Canada, it is no thanks to India's government, it is the doctors that work themselves to death serving the patients. The remarkable failure of India's engineering and research sectors is for the world to see and the medical system can not take on even a seasonal epidemic. For these things to work, a system of merit based selection, proper hands on education based on Indian scenario and a route directly to the trained individuals interfacing with public is a must. Governments since independence have repeatedly failed to create that pipeline because Indian governance is fundamentally disconnected from the people. Ascendance into power in India directly means cutting communications with the people and looking down at them. The present government is no exception.




Already, caste based reservation is a very aggressive affirmative action scheme, which normally should work on ~10-15% of a nation's population, taking from a taxpayer base of ~70% of the population (10% might be sitting at the margin and should not have to pay income tax). India, it caters to ~60% of India's population and takes income tax from ~5% of India's population (notwithstanding the indirect taxes that everyone pays). And in terms of tax, we have actually increased our reliance on taxing private initiative and reduced the reliance on indirect taxes.. The corporate income tax will only be justified if Indian state actively protects its corporates from external competition and internal sabotage. the personal income tax is justified only if the Indian state provides the taxpayers a good quality of life -- on both accounts, the performance remains iffy and has improved only marginally. Even this astoundingly aggressive system exploitative of the taxpayer, does not really benefit people who have been kept poor by social and fiscal hierarchies, a large amount of it is hogged by communities that historically have been landowners and traditional professions that fell on tough times because of heavy drainage of India's surplus wealth and societal foundations by the British. A much smaller segment of the Hindu community was deemed untouchable before that (judging from the 12-13th century interpretations of the most extreme regional Hindu codes) -- today both the people who were treated as untouchables and those who treated them as untouchables are covered under the same reservation bracket and continue their historical animosities over the second decimal percentage margins, losing dozens of individuals to violent clashes. In addition, continuous harping on this issue has led to formulation of a toxic eugenicist narrative that implicates a population level traces of a supposed (one big supposition there) genetic group from 5000 years ago and justification of violence against people who are assumed to bear the cursed trace (de aaaaadyans). The actual people who were treated as untouchables do not necessarily overlap with the caste groups deemed criminal by the british. The benefit of reservations barely reach the people it is supposed to cater to, for India to become a better and more equitable place. Instead, in the name of "unity" they are lumped with all these other landed and professioned groups -- still left underrepresented among the .... wait for it.... "de dadavidians". Already both these hypothetical identities have found their place in global white-black sob stories (another big leap there).

Start of this year saw an effort to legitimize this toxic eugenicist narrative through a draconian law that basically criminalized being the perceived aaaaadyans. The people opposing this law formulated a comprehensive criticism of the general problems with the education and selection system, including the NEET issue. A number of them also talked about this problem on national television. However, the proposal quickly found itself buried under the noise made by international events, although some work on the injustice dealt by the NEET exam paper leak started through justice and legislative system. It was this groundwork that "cockroach janta party" hijacked and merged the student movement with all kinds of devious and unholy disruptive elements that turn up at every damn protest in India and make noise about same tired point that Indian populace has already rejected. Meanwhile, the students that protested against the NEET fiasco and the eugenics type campus regulations were not allowed by the government to protest, and were summarily kicked out of the protest premises. It shows how opportunistic the apparatus of Modi government is. The same government is then seen to be bowing, compromising in front of violent protesters during protests against CAA-NRC, farm laws etc -- including but limited to the present protests. The education ministers and his incompetent Babu aide should have been sacked in January. But back then, the white hot rod of slander, vandalism, violence and international bejjati was not inserted up the Bhajpa government's ass -- they had no reason to listen. Finally, when they have been properly served the much deserved rod, they readily complied. Not just bent but crawled on all fours, as Advani would say; the prime minister himself came groveling to Instagram. They would eventually return to their own policy, as they did for CAA and farm laws but a greater damage has been done. Not only did they act late to deliver justice to the students, they also created a new precedent: street violence will supercede Delhi's decision-making (remember Harsh Mander's declaration?) -- a feat that even congress didn't manage to land.

All I wanted from these fuckers was a clear cut conclusion to Pakistan, stopping that express freight train of real mass murder that ails the Indian subcontinent, because I became a bit hopeful after operation sindoor, which remains a pipe dream btw. Meanwhile, the state's democratic mandate based power is being distributed among vandals and criminals and hypocrites for fucking footi kaudis. Bravo Modiji, bravo.

I do think that eventually, the examination systems will get better by the groundwork that has been laid now, common sense and merit will prevail in sectors that are indispensable for India's growth (these protests padded by Bhim Army had the fucking gall to talk about merit, apparently). Recently, I met a very bright African STEM researcher who spent ~2 years in Hyderabad expressed his disappointment with the strange and aggressive reservation system and mentioned how damaging it is for India -- trying to compensate for a history we haven't even investigated fully. It really changed my outlook. If anything should come out of the peaceful component of the recent leaderless student protest, it is this: we cannot afford corruption in how we select people for such key functions, and reservation, an instrument and not a remedy of caste based discrimination, is one such corruption.

Dhurandhar review

 

What a haunting frame (see image). While Sanjay Dutt was blessed by an almost perfect casting given how the actual SP Aslam matched Dutt's generic screen personality, Ranveer played an astoundingly varied, immersive range of emotions. He has given good performances before but I did not think his work would stand so tall among the absolute titans that Arjun Rampal and Akshay Khanna are -- who themselves presented a deep study of their characters.

Just to ensure understanding, the dots connected in the movie are very real, their impacts of these events on Indian psyche is very very fresh and is currently unfolding. Decades of Pakistani doctrine of bleeding India with a thousand cuts, decades of India's neutered "do nothing" pacifist paralysis and mute spectatorship of our people's deaths, and decades of USA's tacit support of Islamic travesties across Indian subcontinent -- created a mix of events that completely changed the character of India. And a movement that was quietly working on India's margins with the exception of Sindh, became fully mainstream, finally unleashing the wrath of a fed up pacifist. But we should not forget that the thread connecting the dots is a narrative, albeit the most likely one.
Dhurandhar by Aditya Dhar is a ~7 hour long saga of a composite spy (multiple R&AW operative experiences combined into one for dramatic effect), which tries to match the real life violence endured by the people of Indian subcontinent at the hands of islamic extremism and its karnadhars (spoiler: it doesn't even come close, the real extent of violence under the ambit of topics discussed in the movie is much, much greater). With newfound political patronage, the directors of this specific niche have become increasingly vocal, prominent and prolific -- but still did not manage the financial success that such an important topic merits. Mostly it was due to the shortcomings of the works themselves. They made mistakes in the presentation, choice of words while doing prachaar, scale of production, limited vision etc. For example, I criticized Baramulla for failing to maintain realism or Article 370 for deifying Modi -- you can't duck to avoid a close range bullet shot and no large scale political reform can be without its negative effects, worthy of mere glazing. These problems vanish in Dhurandhar because the action is shot in such high octane pace (well, also some jittery camera movement like the annoying Bourne movies) that suspension of disbelief becomes easier and only clips of 2014 and subsequent political changes are used instead of full fledged characters.

SPOILERS BEGIN HERE

The rahman dakait part of the movie seeks to establish our composite spy in the universe and so the first four hours of the movie really dwell on the scenes, on the reactions of the characters, their motives, their justifications. In this time, Aalam is set up as a low profile life saver, Rizwan as a solid support, Major Iqbal as the thoughtful compensatory precise brutality of Pakistani Army after 1971, Uzair as the sentimental fool, etc. In this time, through Rahman Dakait, and the huddle of terrorists around major Iqbal's office, we observe a system of financial, societal, religious and political incentives and punishments set up to provide the inevitable escalation ladder that make a likeable Baloch community leader into a full fledged betrayer of his own people and an active participator of violent Jihad against people who he doesn't particularly care about. This sets up the stage to naturalize other such characters like SP Aslma, Jameel Jamali, and Khanani brothers. You don't need to actually spend time explore their background and a simple infodump is enough to make us understand what they want and where they are going. Instead, that time is spent is showcasing, in its full merciless no-holds-barred look at the massacre in mumbai through the lens of the Iqbal collective in Pakistan. Harrowing stuff. The evilness of Rahman is established like Duryodhana's act of burning the lakshagrih does in Mahabharata. And a spectacular end to the segment sets it down. The allusions to Khalistani extremism also set the stage for what is to come: the look into the effect of the violence in Punjab on the lives of its people -- for some reason it is always characterized as Indian state activity of dealing with the insurgency but never as what the insurgency itself did to the society (exactly analogous to Kashmir in terms of the suppression of pacifist Muslims and mass murder of minorities). The characteristic toxic masculine and misogynist nature of Bhindrawale's terrorism is reflected in how the local feud plays out -- in field and in court. And we see this masterful frame (see image).

From here, the pace of the film flips and we go through the events at a very fast pace, with unrelenting background score, not studying the events unfolding before our eyes, probably compressed by the director to shorten the segment span. However, the actions-reactions of the characters do make you think more on what happened later -- which in my view, is not ideal. Most of the thinking and framing of concepts in a movie should happen right there, while the events are unfolding. Little more study of Shirani's pain of watching his community get obliterated even though he aides the chosen representatives of his community in Karachi (the damn Sher-e-balochs), of the radicalized Baloch kid, of the geography and surroundings of muridke mosque, the embedding of such centres in surrounding terror networks, the involvement of people like Dawood Headley, the compromised principles of Army towards the security of their own deranged nation the speculated role of Dawood Ibrahim as the lynchpin of the whole anti-Hindu, anti-India shebang etc. We just quickly thread through the remaining kill-list of our composite spy, a particularly satisfying one being Zahoor Mistry.

Even so, I loved the vignettes of the spy's interaction with his long separated friend, with his ill-fated wife, of the follow up investigator after SP Aslam, of Iqbal's father (so metaphorical!). What a well composed movie. What well composed frames. Like they say, peak detailing by Aditya Dhar.

I couldn't help but notice the stylistic traditions followed here; a big name flashes: Ram Gopal Varma. A dude already going off beat in southern cinema, leaked into northern movies and created a genre defining faultline, a cinema of liminal spaces, of transtions, of spaces where ravi does not reach but kavi does. The jarring glittery bright frames of mumbaiya chalu cinema are left behind and the earthy brownness of southern cinema pervades the screen (like Pataal lok) If the latter half of the movie were allowed to breathe, it would have been as good a movie as Gangs of Wasseypur -- but then it would have maybe also become a niche and not a hit. But this is the point of making more and more movies. You open a leaf, you take a dig, you fail, and the next time you bring out more beauty, more authenticity. then you self examine and ensure that next time you are more authentic. So many stories languish in this land of stories that is Aryavarta, that is Bharata. So much beauty, so much love, so much pain, so much potential, so much strength -- waiting to be found by the community at large, waiting to be unleashed, waiting to be re-embedded in the once grand panoply, brought to life in a new, rapidly changing world.

ईरान-इजराइल-अमरीका युद्ध पर फेक खबरों का अम्बार

फेसबुक

पता नहीं ये सिर्फ मेरे फीड में हो रहा है या सभी के परंतु झूठी न्यूज़ एक अलग स्तर पर फैल रही है अब। बहुत सारे ऐसे पेजेज से पोस्ट दिखाई देतीं हैं जिन्हें मैं फॉलो नहीं करता हूँ। और उनकी पोस्ट्स साफ साफ झूठ बोल रहीं हैं, जिसका कोई आधार नहीं है। मैं ट्विटर पर इसकी अपडेट देख रहा हूं और ईरान ने कोई घोषणा नहीं की है पर इनको पता है। और ये भी साधारण झूठ नहीं है बल्कि ऐसे झूठ हैं जिन्हें हम मानने के लिए तैयार बैठे हैं। जैसे किसी भी प्रकार भारत को तेल मिले और भारत युद्ध के चंगुल में न फंसे, ऐसी मेरी इच्छा है, तो मेरे फीड में उसी प्रकार के पोस्ट दिखाई देते हैं। भारत ने जब बात की भी नहीं थी अपने जहाज़ों की सुरक्षा के बारे में, तब ही इन्होंने कह दिया कि ईरान ने भारतीय जहाज़ों को जाने दिया। तब ऑनलाइन ट्रैकर्स डिस्कस कर रहे थे कि ये परिमल भाग रहा है और पार कर चुका है। परंतु क्या उसे ईरान की सहमति थी? पता नहीं। फिर नए आयतुल्ला, नेतन्याहू के मरने की खबरें -- ताकि युद्ध खत्म हो जाए ऐसा महसूस हो -- जो सरासर झूठ है। फिर एक कोई अमेरिका रडार सिस्टम पर मिसाइल पड़ने की फोटो -- बड़ा साफ सुथरा नुकसान हुआ था, देखो साम्राज्य वादियों को मजा चखाया गया, मजेदार। कम से कम दो क्षण के लिए में पूरी तरह से स्वीकार कर चुका था। ये है शक्ति डाटा सेंटर की। स्ट्रेटेजिक टारगेट्स तो आप चिन्हित कर ही सकते हो, भावुक जनता को भी ठीक ठीक वही झूठ बोल सकते हो जो उन्हें सबसे आसानी से गुमराह करे। इस परिस्थिति में व्यक्ति सिर्फ यह नहीं सोचता कि अमुक अमुक उनके राजनैतिक विरोधी हैं बल्कि ये भी सोचते हैं कि हम जीत रहे हैं और अमुक हार रहे हैं। जिससे प्रतिद्वंदिता और व्यक्तिगत नफरत और बढ़ जाती है। दीलचसप।

Baramulla review

Kashmiri muslims claim genocide against them by the indian state and justify violent jihad against the "colonial" entity. You can hardly claim such a thing after having mass murdered and exiled the last remaining people of your own minority -- an integral part of the idea of an imagined community "kashmiriyat". Years of proxy war and radicalism can do that to a place. The oppression of Kashmiri pandits continued from long before that, many sensed the inbound doom and left. The gory brutality of the crimes committed by radicalized muslims against the pandits is well documented and yet remains an underexplored sentiment as a much more pernicious strain of wokeism pervades India (in contrast with the west) and polices even a remote possibility of finger pointing at islam/muslims for the sufferings of non-muslims in the subcontinent. Until that spectre is investigated and laid bare, a solution to Kashmir and other such places is a mere fantasy. However, many movies disregard that and dive straight into the issue of Kashmiri muslims being stuck in an active warzone with overpowering infiltrator and an apathetic government. Notwithstanding the fact that they shared religious bonhomie with the infiltraror and antipathy towards the government for simply being of a Hindu Majority nation. Therefore, good-quality movies from the POV of Kashmiri Pandits, Hindus and India (all very different with decent amount of overlap) are needed for serious discussion -- which feel-good chest thumping movies like "Maa Tujhe Salaam" cannot bring in.

On the movie Baramulla: I have seen Jambhale's "Article 370" which was a well filmed mixture of political drama, action and social commentary if you discount the overture to expressionless Govil-Modi. Jambhale is good at his craft. Aditya Dhar of "Dhurandhar" fame is a writer on both these movies and shines through.

Baramulla attempts to be horror while its main purpose is theatrical social commentary. The lead pair come from theatre background and do a really good job at adjusting emoting for a movie. The sequences are moving and really bring out the horror of what happened to KPs. It also points to a continuous inquisition going on in the subcontinental Islamic environment, desperately trying to cleanse the Muslims of their history/roots. But the dialogue writing leaves much to be desired and points to a gap between the theatre and the film -- and something I feel needs criticism, despite the fact that I am 100% in for more movies like this. This gap is a persistent problem in Indian movies left or right where the movies have a strange unrefined nukkad natak residue in them. Now, such signature should not ever be erased but refined further because they could become a genre defining stylistic feature. Same is true for background music. For indian audiences, background music is preferred to be prominent and even a bit distracting whereas in Hollywood movies, it gels in the background to the point of becoming white noise. Therefore, the prominence of the BGM while sometimes jarring, in other cases, makes indian filmography more unique and dramatic -- swelling surges putting the observer in the centre of the emotional turmoil going through the mind of the POV character. Another irritant was the sloppy action -- which i thought Jambhale is good at, going by Article 370 (Manav Kaul's character dodges a bullet by ducking....).

I really liked the depiction of the spiritual elements of KP existence, of which the screenplay seems to have a good understanding because kashmir shaivism has a very distinct and complex profile. It is good that despite borrowing heavy influence from Hollywood where the same scene would be depicted as satanic, the aesthetic in Baramulla instead chooses Bhairava-like influence (after all, the actual European satanism echoes the pain of the gods that were taken down, the haunting image of an angel that fell for speaking up against the popular and uncomplicated sky daddy). The movie frames this in parallel with Manav's character being haunted by his past actions and by the past actions of his community. When Bhasha's character barges in on the police investigation I did think "are you serious?" because the full extent of the supernatural element was not clarified yet and it made a great transition into the landscape where present, past and the other plane merge to generate a painful reliving of the trauma which is otherwise cliche in horror movies. Unlike "Article 370", this movie also doesn't indulge in some kind of ego massage of national leaders. I suppose if some day KPs return to their homeland in peace, it would make sense to express gratitude to those who facilitate it.

Overall, this is a great attempt at starting a discussion on the sufferings of non-muslims of the Indian subcontinent. If more such movies are made, maybe we reach proper and specific artistic expressions for theatre, cinema and reportage and provide a platform to the voiceless.

दिशासूचक

१.

जैसे बहुत सारे पतले-पतले तार 

एक साथ मरोड़े गए हों 

वैसे गुंथी सी लकीरें 

कई गाड़ियों की बत्तियाँ

पल भर के लिए प्रवाह के गुच्छ से बाहर आकर 

पुनः लौट जाती हैं प्रवाह में 

कुछ देर तक तुमने सोचा होगा कि हाइवे छोड़कर 

मुड़ लिया जाए गली में

ओझल हो जाया जाए इस झमेले से 

फिर घबराकर मोड़ लिया 

स्टीयरिंग फिर से 

ठीक प्रवाह के केंद्र की ओर  

और बढ़ चले समाज की गर्दन की ओर पुनः 

मैप्स के वैकल्पिक पथ सुझावों ने भी चुप्पी साध ली है 

गोया कि गहन चिंतन मनन 

का दारोमदार उठाया हो 

चुम्बक सा खींचता प्रवाह 

निषिद्ध करता है ठीक से साँस लेना 

लहरों के बीच के बुलबुले काफी होने चाहिए 

आख़िर संचय शक्ति का, है ज़रूरी 

किसी बाँध, किसी सिग्नल पर काम आवेगा 

अभी बगल में दौड़ती किसी गाड़ी से 

तुम्हारा क्या ही लेना-देना है 

पर प्रवाह की गति अब मंथर हो चली है 

सब इन्द्रियाँ व्यस्त है अब 

स्टीयरिंग पर हाथ कस गए हैं 

कुछ पुलिस वाले लट्ठ लिए 

ऐसे दिखना चाहते हैं जैसे हांक रहें हो एक तालाब को 

अचानक तुम्हें क्रोध आता है 

दौड़ कर सड़क पार करती एक महिला पर 

तुम पहचान सकते हो विकृत भृकुटियाँ 

अगल-बगल के शीशों के पीछे

अंततः दबा ही देना होगा 

ब्रेक

२.

हर मिनट लेन बदलते, गरियाते, भोंपू बजाते 

कुछ हज़ार ड्राईवर 

पच्चीस मीटर बाई पच्चीस मीटर में 

इकट्ठे हुए 

नफासत से सटे, पैक होकर 

बेतरतीब दिशासूचक बने बिखरे हैं 

शहर की धमनी में एक विशालकाय थक्के की भांति

तुम्हारे कपाल की नसें गांठों में कसमसा रहीं हैं 

तुम्हारे पेट गुड़गुड़ाते हैं भूख से तिलमिलाते 

माथे की सलवटों पर इस्तरी सी करते

कारों के बीच से सड़क पार करने का रास्ता ढूंढते लोगों

की जान बख्शते

तुम 

ट्रैफिक सिखाता है तुन्हें सोचने की तमीज़

या बद-तमीज़, पक्के से कहना मुश्किल है 

जहाँ समस्याओं की जड़ तक पहुँच कर 

मुर्गियों और अण्डों की बहस में तुम नहीं पड़ते 

बस मान लेते हो कि 

तुम्हारी कार की चहारदीवारी 

विभाजन रेखा है प्रकृति और पुरुष की 

परस्पर गुंथे तार शायद बाँट लेते हो कुछ इलेक्ट्रान 

पर उनके बीच लगभग तिकोनी घाटियों में भरी हवा 

काफी है कहने को कि 

"माइंड योर ओन बिझनस"

कि मानवता-मानवता खेलना अच्छी बात है 

पर प्रेम की पींगें तुम अपने मोहल्ले में घुस कर बढ़ाना 

तुम्हारे खिलखिलाते भंवर 

तुम्हारे ट्रांस-ह्यूमन सरोकार 

परे धरो 

और ये देखो कि गला फाड़ कर चिल्लाते 

बड़बोले की गाड़ी तुमसे कितनी समानांतर है

दिशासूचकों के अवकलन-समाकलन में 

तुम्हारे सलामत निकलने की कितनी सम्भावना है 

किस तरफ़ बन्दर घुड़कियाँ 

और किस तरफ़ साझा झल्लाहट भेजी जानी है 

कि बत्ती हरी हो 

और तुम ऐसा एक्सेलरेटर दबाओ

रुको फिर 

अपने अंतर्मन में जाकर ही