The Medium...

It's been some time, days infact, since i came back after watching the movie Iqbal. And its one film that i believe should be seen by anyone who considers film making to be an art that extends itself as a medium to reach out and touch lives. This film does that. The blogs are full of Salaam Namaste, and with me being stuck in the now coined M(ediocre) B(ut) A(rrogant) schedule of mid-terms, end-terms, project submissions, and my mandatory quota of time spent doing nothing; have not yet managed to squeeze in time to watch the hallowed film. But i think it is films like Iqbal that make a film worth the experience.

I am not here to write an ode to Nagesh Kukunoor, but he is an excellent filmmaker. And has never ceased to amaze me. Watch the little hopes blossom into determination, and watch the humble will overcome the hundreds of sleazy hurdles that the Indian bureacratic system has managed to erect over the years. It is a fantastic story, fantastic with the fantasy that i agree it incorporates. For the Iqbal saga is something straight out of the books, true blue fiction like Howard Roark , or John Galt. But watch the film and you can see, how simply the multiple elements of India can be incorporated in a simple story, all the while keeping its grip on the script.

Way back in 1964, Marshall McLuhan pioneered the thought, The Medium is the Message. And with the blossoming of the electronic media in the current situational scenario, the medium gains importance that it never had garnered before. There was this song Urvashi Urvashi in the film Hum Se Hai Muqabla, released in 1995; and in this seemingly dumb dubbed song, there was a line that went,

"...agar ladki ko andhere mein, aankh maari toh hoga kya?"

I started writing this blog in the belief that blogging has a responsibility, something that is as fuzzy as the much talked about Corporate Social Responsibility. Yet is. With the rapid proliferation blogging has become a new status symbol. There are people creating blogs just for the heck of it. And heck as in pure unadulterated heck. They have pasted their photographs and have posted things like,

"Heyy, this is my pic!"
"I am standing with this and this" et cetera et cetera.

I know i should not be criticizing or putting down anyone. And i amy sem to be arrogant in saying this. But then do we need to have a blog, I want to know why is it being dome? What exactly are they thinking when they create blogs like that? Is it that they want to see their names in google when they search for it (once there was a fad of doing this, it was called something like an ego-search or some other thing like that)? Or is it a symbol of telling "heyy i have a blog"?

This entire business of bogus blogs, sometimes drives me nuts. But then the medium is the message. And its a democratic world. Thankfully there are some gems like Iqbal. And all the bloggers whose written words are a treat in themselves.

Like in Savage Gardens, Crash and Burn video;

Communicate Anyhow...

Where the Mind is Without Fear...

These lines by Tagore, have always inspired awe in me. I was in sixth standard, or maybe seventh; when i read this poem for the first time, in my english textbook, the 'Gulmohar Graded English Reader', and i remember trying to hum it in a weird crude tune (I always have had this mad streak in me). But nostalgia apart, this poem still leaves a longing in my heart, for a country that could be just that. And the belief that India does possess the mortar to be this and more, is more or less subdued by the missing gumption.

In the movie Swades, when Mohan Bhargaw (SRK), claims at the public meeting that the slogan Mera Bharat Mahaan, is merely lip service. he goes on to say in the face of shocked villagers that we are not a great country, but we do possess the fibre for greatness. I wonder how many people would have given second thoughts to those pregnant words.

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

It was sitting in Trade Logistics lecture and in the gray stupor that generally wraps me in the monologous lectures; i heard the professor tell us that we are a nation capable of producing a million Vivekanands, but alas to recognise them as Vivekanands, we require the approval of the US of A.

I am not preaching patriotism, neither is this a critique of neo imperialism. But yes, think of Yoga, and Vaastu, Organic Farming (our poor farmers have been using the dung fertilizers since ages) et al; did they not get popular post their re-import from the distant shores?

We talk about the 'Head held high'. We write odes singing 'Saare jahaan se achcha'. We shout about the superior culture and values, and yet at the drop of a dollar (no devaluation here) all the facades of granite crumble like cheap plaster of paris.

The problem is not about the belief in 'them'. It is more of a lack of conviction in 'us'. Its about seeing and not believing, till it is aired on CNN. And its about cursing Naipaul, for he criticizes India and then paying 500 Rs. to the line-man, so that the telephone keeps working.

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father,

Let my country awake.

Ears Tight Shut...

The MG road in Delhi connects Mehrauli to Gurgaon. Everyday at least 10,000 odd vehicles ply on this road (this may be an under-estimation); and like all the roads in India and elsewhere, it is subject to wear and thence tear. There is another route, NH-8, one that further connects the capital to the pink city Jaipur. But owing to the construction of an 8-lane express highway; the traffic situation has skewed towards the MG road. And so anytime of the day, one would encounter automobiles of all types whizzing on the broken asphalt.

Roads are the most democratic of all the human constructs. On its surface the rich and poor alike find motion. And be it a Maybach or a humble Maruti-800; everybody is entitled and empowered to his share of the ride. Amidst the gleaming cars, and scurrying bikes; one can also find a few bicycles, a transport that is very rare here in the capital of Indian dreams.

But this post is not about the road, nor the vehicle ratios that finds the largest number of cars in the country to the disproportionate number of bicycles. This is about the little people that ensure that that the roads remain the roads, and mot turn into the friction worn memoirs.

It was just another of these numerous commoditized days, when i was on my way from Delhi to Gurgaon. It’s not very often that I undertake this little journey, and so I was not aware of the repair and maintenance work that was going on the road. A couple of kilometers from Mehrauli towards Gurgaon, there is a bend in the road; one which has swallowed quite a few lives. There is a white metal board, 3feet by 1 foot, which pronounces in red letters ACCIDENT PRONE AREA PLEASE DRIVE SLOWLY; but like the countless many things that we tend to neglect it too finds its name appended to the list of the neglected ones. Vehicles have a proclivity to hit the road divider on this bend, and in their sheer inertia, break it.

On this very bend there was a woman. Young by the number of summers her skin had seen; and old by the woes that time had bestowed on her. She sat on her haunches, with a small mallet in her hand, working on the broken concrete slabs of the erstwhile divider. And lost in the growing grass leaves was her little girl, dressed in a dusty matted frock and with a flaming red ribbon in her dry wiry hair. Her underfed sight gave a unique contrast to the monsoon fed verdant grass blades. And her red ribbon defined her even more clearly. But what many eyes that would have been busy comparing their latest auto possession to the one that just zipped passed them; would have missed is the way in which she sat on the grass. She sat with her tiny feet spread in front of her, she sat with her hands over her ears.

Hands to shut out the drowning roar of the kilo BHP engines. Hands, that shut out the reality pronouncing her place in the race of time. Hands, that asked the world to stay where it was and leave the childhood untouched. Hands, that no one would see, leaving out the noise that would not be able to pass through the air-conditioned moving glass palaces. So maybe there was a story that was being whispered in her ears by a friend from her own neverland; a story that we shall never hear. Maybe it was a script of the future dreams that she nurtured, dreams that have a rare chance to come true. Perhaps it was a song of redemption, to salvage her lost childhood amidst the dust and fumes; songs whose strains will never be played.

When we all are rushing through in our own pursuits, who has the time to look and see what the sounds shut out have to say. And even if we have the time to listen, what are we doing to make a difference?

You are not, I am not...