Just Another Papadum

Steve Jobs

papadum — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 11:44:48 +0000

That Steve Jobs died was not a shock. After all, we all knew he was very sick. But his death made me sadder than I thought it would. The world without Steve Jobs is a poorer world. And in strange way, I feel saddened that my 10 month old daughter may not experience the feeling of wonder that Steve Job’s products made me feel the first time I encountered the ipod, the ipad or the Mac Air. This is not to say that I am pessimisstic about technology’s future. There is enough talent in the world of technology and I am optimistic about the great wonders that this world will lay out in the next decades and I am certain that technology will improve human lives in ways we cannot imagine today. But Apple had a way to delight those like me who while not a technophobe was never a eager adopter of new technologies. Apple married ease of use with beauty and made technology accessible to everyone. And for that, Steve Jobs will be missed.

Having said that I was always a tad irritated by the commercials released by Apple in the 2000s. The one with the smug spokesperson taking a dig at the nerdy Gates-look alike Windows personification. I almost vowed to switch away from Apple. But the products were superior to the culture of smugness that Apple devotees created. But now looking back the devotion that ‘Mac-people’ had to the cult of Apple was Jobs’ creation. He made the very secular and potentially utilatarian act of using technology to accomplish a series of acts, an aspirational act of creativity. He made Apple synonymous with freedom, creativity, rebellion. He made technology akin to religion – at least in its positive incarnation. To escape the mundane and touch the sublime. RIP Steve Jobs.

Khan market and the failure of the private commons

papadum — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 09:35:26 +0000

A few years ago, I remember reading about the failure of the commons in privately owned areas. The theory is that even in private spaces, (an apartment for instance), there are common spaces that need to be maintained through the cooperation of all parties who share that space. In the West, this problem has been largely solved, for instance, by house owners associations, by condo fees or a store owners association. However, in India there seems to be a way to go in arriving at a satisfying solution to this problem. Khan Market is a perfect example. Talk to any Delhiite about shopping and they will direct you to Khan Market – where all kinds of high and medium end stores, restaurants, cafes, bars jostle for attention and your money. When I first heard about this place, I had great expectations for this place because I imagined an area that was welcoming to the shopper, with neatly arrayed stores, walkways, parking space, strolling space. But in reality, it is everything but…the place is congested, there is no proper sidewalk anywhere, it is dusty, when it rains, puddles are everywhere. In other words, the reality of Khan market is no different from the reality of any other open air market in India. It is a challenge to be outside the stores in Khan market. Walking through the area is like playing a videogame as you try to avoid cars, bicyclists and other pedestrians. Yes, there are good shopping spots there and once you enter these stores, the choices are satisfying. But outside, it is as if the place has no claims to be the foremost shopping area in New Delhi. And it is not as if landscaping is a skill lacking in India. The majestic Rajpath, the India Gate area, the road leading to the Rashtrapati Bhavan or any five-star hotel in India is breathtaking in its attention to detail and the beauty and the majesty of the landscaping. There are even great shopping malls, where the common spaces are well maintained. But these places were built by a single entity with a clear plan for maintenance of outside spaces. But Khan Market and other historic shopping areas in New Delhi, however upscale they pretend to be, stubbornly refuse to leave the dusty, disorderly past behind. It is as if the stakeholders have decided that the basic infrastructure of the public spaces will not be updated even as they make large investments in the interior spaces to make it more refined and tasteful. Is it that they will not make any investment that will benefit their neighbor even if it will benefit themselves? Is there not a Khan Market store owners association that looks at the interests of the collective? Or is it that the idea of the collective good in the private sphere is anathema to the individual actors (the excesses of Indian driving supports this hypothesis). Or is it that there is no interest in making any changes because even without changes their margins are good? I don’t know but this is something that is a constant source of frustration. The potential to to make something great that lies unfulfilled because of a lack of vision or lack of initiative. Of course, if a Delhiite reads this, they eagerly point out the failings of the United States or the West. And they would miss the point.

Enter the stylised but empty world of new bollywood

papadum — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:06:09 +0000

Over the last few weeks, I caught up on two movies I had missed. Abhinav Deo’s Game and Rohan Sippy’s Dum Maro Dum. Let me admit this first. I am an Abhishek fan and I think he has great acting chops – as seen in Yuva, Guru, Sarkar. But lately he has got into a rut and the two movies I watched did not allow him to break free from this rut. Both movies were very well shot, well edited, and there was nary a scene that felt unnecessary or cut-worthy. However, they are not movies I would recommend wholeheartedly to anyone. Why? The story, my friend, the story is where a movie ought to begin and end and both of these had stories that did not deserve a movie. The script was flat, belaboured and at the end of the movie, there was no denouement that made me feel like the journey was worth it. And this is critical because both are movies with a twist at the end and if the twist does not satisfy then the journey ought to have been pleasurable in and of itself. And in both movies though there were individual scenes that were eye-catching, a series of individual scenes doth not a movie make. I can’t wait to see Zindagi Na Mile Dobara because as my earlier post shows, I am a Zoya Akhtar fan and I believe she can write a script. And I believe, without a story, it is hard to make a movie that stays with you – even if it is not meant to be a movie that elevates film making to an art, every movie that is made should yearn to stay with the viewer for at least a few days.

Guzaarish and the return of SLB

papadum — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 05:22:28 +0000

I had written off Sanjay Leela Bhansali. I could not watch Devdas nor Sawaariya despite having given it a couple of tries. In both movies, the splendor of the film sets had overtaken every other aspect of filmmaking. The movies were predictable, melodramatic, over acted and unwatchable. I had watched Black from beginning to end but not because I wanted to (I watched it at an Amitabh retrospective in DC and Amitabh was in the audience along with Abhishek for post screening tete a tete). Black was similarly overwrought and sentimental despite the stunning images. So it was with much trepidation that I watched Guzaarish. When I had heard that SLB was making a movie that was loosely inspired by the Sea Inside I was quite apprehensive. What would Bhansali’s histrionical approach to movie making do to the poignant understated masterpiece that was the Sea Inside. But yesterday I watched Guzaarish and was glad to have been wrong. This is by far SLB’s best movie – an emotional tale with lots of opportunities for overwrought story-telling held back with deft editing and confident direction. The cinematography is stunning – almost very scene fit to be a national geographic photospread. The director lets the images and the story tell that tale without going into laboured dialogues to spell it all out. The music appropriately low key and soothing and never a minute too long. Hrithik’s performance appropriately restrained. And a fair bit of the movie is in English – a sign that SLB did not compromise on the logic of the story and the setting. I still remember watching Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam with low expectations and not really knowing much about the director. Prior to watching it I had wondered how a movie with such a terrible title could be worth a watch. I remember being taken aback by that story and the deft way in which SLB had redefined Indian notions of manhood. After HDDCS, I waited for his next movie and was disappointed every time. But even if took a dozen years, I am glad SLB has delivered another surprising movie and that he is back. I can now say again that I no longer dread his next movie – that I am positively waiting for his next one. SLB can now return to the roster of directors making interesting cinema in Bollywood – Anurag Kashyap, Sudhir Mishra, Prakash Jha, Zoya Akhtar, Farhan Akhtar, Raj Kumar Santoshi and grudgingly, Ram Gopal Verma. I can’t wait for Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra and John Matthew Mathan to return to form from Rang De Basanti and Sarfarosh – movies that showed promise that was not followed up with similarly gripping movies.

Savage Grace

papadum — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:37:25 +0000

Yesterday, I watched Savage Grace. It is certainly one of the strangest movies I have seen in recent times. Strangeness in and of itself is not a critique of a movie but in this case, it is. The movie deals with a coming of age story of a young man born into a family that inherited some but not a lot of wealth but still wishes to maintain the pretense of wealth. The characters are all deeply troubled – an insecure attention craving mother, a cold distant father and a predictably confused protagonist. While there have been many a good movie based on this premise (the squid and the whale comes to mind), this movie fails to lift off the screen. It is a series of scenes, one more disturbing than the other, of the unravelling of society’s norms within the family. I am not sure if the director meant the movie as an ironic critique of the foibles of the rich but the characters in this movie have more than just foibles. They are disturbed. Sadly, despite competent acting by Julianne Moore, Eddie Redmayne and Stephen Dillane, the characters do not earn the viewers sympathy. So we see dysfunctional people doing dysfunctional things. And the movie ends. Since I have not seen Tom Kalin’s earlier effort, I cannot speak knowledgeably about his world view but his film making needs some work. I was neither moved nor enlightened by the movie. And since entertainment was not the goal of the movie (and it succeeds in not entertaining), this is not a movie that can be recommended to another sentient being. Leave this movie alone.

Gold…the new housing

papadum — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:25:56 +0000

Dollar is falling, the US economy’s future is uncertain, take refuge in gold. That seems to be the new refrain among those seeking to seduce scared investors into the new sure thing. Ads on tv for websites and companies that sell stocks of gold are no longer limited to 3 am informercials. So called experts hold forth on arcane and outdated macroeconomic concepts to theorize on why gold prices are going to increase tenfold over the next few years. Gold buying parties are replacing tupperware parties where desperation seeks the next quick buck.

But is gold such a sure thing? Yes, historically, it has been a store of value for countries and kingdoms but in these days isn’t gold just another metal, albeit one that is used for all kinds of fancy jewellery. And given that gold is not the most liquid of investments (where does one sell a gold coin or biscuit when one fears prices are going to drop), why would individual investors want to store their savings in gold?

I guess the underlying question is what makes gold valuable. Its scarcity? But there are other scarce metals and rocks but why not invest in those? So what is it about gold that makes it the refuge of today’s snake oil salesmen (and they are mostly men)? When people have been burned by other things they don’t understand (tech stocks, sub prime mortgages) why the rush to invest in an illiquid commodity whose quality is hard to verify for ordinary investors?

I don’t have an answer but I am certainly troubled by the phenomenon. I am not sure gold is a substitute for the dollar or an investment in stocks. There are real things behind the dollar (the American economy, free markets, transparency) and stocks (real companies whose performance can be debated and analysed). But there is nothing behind gold. Just the belief that it is a store of value and other people see it to be a store of value as well. But how can something be merely a store of value and nothing else. It may make sense for countries to buy gold (because they can shed them easily as well) as a hedge against US treasuries. But these governments are also capable of manipulating the price of gold. Not so, the individual investor.

Unless one is predicting a new gold jewellery fashion craze (and no one is), there is little reason to jump on this bandwagon. Buyer beware. At least one can stay in one’s house. Gold, you have to lock away and protect. It is just one more thing to worry about.

bollywood and women directors

papadum — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:52:51 +0000

I am listening to songs from a Hindi movie which was released a couple of years ago, Om Shanti Om. Loosely inspired the 1980s hit movie, Karz, Om Shanti Om was the perfect Hindi blockbuster of romance, and revenge, a melodrama told in a highly entertaining style that outdid the 1980s masala entertainers of Manmohan Desai and Subhash Ghai. It did this by being a melodrama without being melodramatic. It knowingly made inside jokes about melodramas of yesteryear while being shamelessly inspired by the same storylines. This trick was quite successful given that it appealed to everyone – those that enjoy a typical bollywood movie and to those that take their cinema more seriously. In other words, Om Shanti Om was a celebration of India. An Italian American friend fell in love with the movie because she felt it was a very exquisitely directed choreographical masterpiece – not unlike broadway musicals. Anyway, my point in this seemingly pointless digression is to highlight that this well directed Hindi movie was directed by one of the few woman directors we have in Hindi movies – Farrah Khan. Farrah Khan first made her name choreographing dances – most successfully in many Shah Rukh Khan – Yash Chopra multistarrers. Today I watched another Hindi movie which was probably one of the best written Hindi movies I have seen in a long time and directed by another promising woman director. Yes, written. For a long while there were two types of hindi movies: nonsensical melodramas and serious art movies. This new generation of filmmakers have been trying for some time to bridge this gap by making movies that entertain without offending the general rules of storytelling. But while there are a lot of good Hindi movies being made today, they are often good because they are well directed with superb technical production values and not because of the writing. The scripts which often start with promising premises often fizzle out because one sees commercial calculations impinging on the logic of the story. They have been rarely as successful as the movie I watched today: “Luck by Chance”. By most measures, Luck By Chance is not a great movie. But it stands out because the writing is so good and refuses to take short cuts to tie up loose ends. Rather, it stays true to its characters.
Simply told, the movie is about two struggling actors in the Bombay film industry where it is virtually impossible break into lead roles in commercial movies without being from a family of actors. It is also a movie about the corruption of the soul when fame and yearning for fame takes over. With this plot, the movie could have been preachy tear jerker. But a good writer creates good realistic characters, and places them within a plot and allows that plot to breathe newness and truth. This is what Zoya Akhtar, Javed Akhtar’s daughter, does in this movie a movie she wrote and directed. She plumbs the depths of the filmy environment she grew up in to etch characters that populate that colorful world: the image conscious stars, the greedy, hypocritical but always charming Bollywood producers, the struggling actors that dream of being the next hot thing, the stars of yesteryear who overbearingly direct the careers of their offspring.
Of course, Zoya Akhtar has resources that few other writer-directors may have given her lineage. The movie has Dimple Kapadia as a overbearing actress from the old days, Rishi Kapoor as a ruthless but charming and passionate film producer, Hrithik Roshan in a small role as manipulative superstar and a host of todays stars playing themselves (Abhishek, Shah Rukh Khan, Karan Johar, Rani Mukherjee, Aamir Khan et. al.) But in the lead roles, Zoya cast two low profile actors. In the male lead is her brother, Farhan Akhtar and the female lead is Konkona Sen Sharma. Farhan Akhtar is not known as an actor but I was very impressed with his highly nuanced performance as a ambitious struggling actor with a compromised sense of morality. (Farhan Akhtar is one of the very promising young directors in his own right: the three movies he has directed so far – Dil Chahta Hai, Lakshya and Don are all movies that took Hindi movies in new and better directions – an essay for a different time). Konkona Sen is very good as well. What Zoya succeeds in doing is making these great actors play great characters without letting anything else get in the way. The movie has no pat resolutions though it ends in a positive note that does not involve the star crossed lovers living happily ever after or unhappily ever after. Zoya tells a story worth telling – of the largest and most colorful film industry in the world – and does so without glamourizing or deglamourizing it. Bollywood is a microcosm of India – with all its passion, and pettiness, the advantages conferred on the haves and the disadvantages on the have nots, but all with the promise of a better tomorrow.
Of course, the movie is also ironic: It took Zoya Akhtar, the daughter of Javed Akhtar and Honey Irani to tell the tale of the outsider in Bollywood.

Khuda Kay Liye and Manorama Six Feet Under

papadum — Sun, 03 May 2009 15:48:07 +0000

Watched two subcontinental movies this weekend. The Pakistani sensation, Khuda Kay Liye and the low key low budget Manorama Six Feet Under. Khuda Kay Liye is the tale of two Pakistani brothers from the upper middle class who go their different ways – one embraces secular ideals and moderate Islam while the other embraces radical Islam and extremism. It is a movie with a message and while I am not against such movies, this one did not deal in subtleties (except in small doses). And so the extreme positions are drawn and then every one pays for their positions. But I don’t want to make a political statement about the movie here – suffice to say it is an important movie for Pakistan because it is evidence of a level of self-appraisal that is conspicuous in its absence when one talks of Islamic societies. But it also does not completely avoid the “we are victims” mode that plagues developing societies.
What stuck me about KKL was its amateurishness. The terrible acting, the stilted dialogues. So while the story is compelling, it was difficult not to be distracted by the clumsiness of the execution. This was in stark contrast to Manorama Six Feet Under – a modest low budget Bollywood movie starring Abhay Deol and Gul Panang. But in comparison to KKL, it was a work of art because the cinematography, the acting, the story telling was all eons ahead of the standards in KKL. Which makes one wonder about the benefit of practice. Indians have been making movies for a long time while movie making in Pakistan has had to struggle against an unfriendly state and an increasingly strident minority who oppose entertainment on principle.
Another ode to democracy and secularism. They make better art.

IPL version 2

papadum — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 23:24:25 +0000

IPL 2 started today. Like many aficionados of cricket, I was a hesitant fan of the 20/20 incarnation of cricket. Last year, I was not sure what to make of the frenzied version of the elegant sport that I so loved. I frowned at the ugly utilitarianism of the batting, the pathetic straits of the bowlers. Only the quality of the fielding seemed to be a move in the right direction. But over the course of the long month during the last installment, I came to enjoy the crass entertainment value of it all. And I began to treasure the excitement of greats from different countries playing on the same team. A sentimental heart valued the opportunity to watch Sachin, Shaun Pollock and Sanath hover at cover while strategizing against the onslaught of an Yuvraj or Shane Watson. By the time the unlikely Royals from Rajasthan lifted the trophy, I was beginning to concede that there might be some reason to the madness. It wasn’t the team with the biggest weapons (at first glance, the Deccan Chargers) that won but the team that played the smartest cricket under a surprisingly likeable Warne. Maybe the IPL was worth a second look. Not that my judgment mattered. The crowds had spoken, and so had the sponsors and it was looking like the players around the world were itching to get a piece of the riches…and the glamour of playing in the latest and greatest innovation in cricket.

One week into the second edition, I have not completely overcome my reservations but I will admit to having enjoyed the sight of Sachin specials; of seeing Dravid and Gilchrist back in the limited overs mold; of watching Sachin and Sanath walk out to open together; the simply unstoppable death bowling of Malinga; the sight of Sachin guide an elegant Duminy playing for the Mumbai Indians. If nothing else, the opportunity to see most of the game’s greats match wits against and with each other over the scope of one week is a pleasure that I have relished.

And 20/20 seems to have changed a bit as well. The spinners, who I feared would soon be extinct in this version of the game, are the bowlers who have changed the course of a match, be in Ojha, Vettori, Kumble or Warne. And that is a welcome sight; and a vindication that old fashioned smarts (which is what the spinner fall back to in the absence of pace) can outdo any haywire big-hitter.

The rejuvenated Deccan Chargers are my favourite team and I can’t wait to see a Laxman special. He is only one of India’s fab four who hasn’t clicked as yet. As for the top four, I hope they are Delhi, Mumbai, Deccan and Chennai. These teams seem to have the most balanced teams. But the funny thing about the IPL is that for every match, I tend to have a different favourite based on the collection of individuals playing that day. How can I root against Dhoni or Dravid or Gilchrist or Sachin or Sehwag or McGrath or Yusuf? There is something to be said for the IPL if it forces to the forefront of my mind the appreciation of individual talent over parochial longings. In this, the IPL has already succeeded. It makes for a purer appreciation of the talents in the game while arguably tarnishing some of its old fashioned charm.

the pleasures of philosophy

papadum — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:01:16 +0000

In his book, The Examined Life, Robert Nozick reflects on various aspects of life – from death to sexuality to enlightenment to god. I am thoroughly enjoying the book because it is a book written with such gentleness and at the same time, such insight, that it is music to my ears and it is in such contrast to the tired rants of political talking heads, and presidential campaigns. If only everyone were one-tenth as thoughtful in their thoughts at Nozick is in this book. Nozick argues that a life, in order to be lived fully, has to be a life that is examined. He urges us to break free from living in autopilot. But he makes this claim with an unpretentious gentleness. “I do not say with Socrates that an unexamined life is not worth living – that is unnecessarily harsh. However, when we guide our lives by our own pondered thoughts, it then is our life that we are living, not someone else’s. In this sense, the unexamined life is not lived as fully.”

I highly recommend this book because it is a very accessible reflection on the questions that often plague us momentarily before we get caught up in the next little thing that makes up our lives.