It's Monday and I already seem to have got a head start on this week's quota of things to see 'n' do. Yesterday, I finished up with Amartya Sen's "Argumentative Indian" and today, I stumbled into a theatre screening the "Mistress of Spices".
Since I need to get this out of my system, I'll vent a li'l bit about Chitra Divakaruni's "Mistress of Spice". Just so we're all on the same page here, I'll qualify this by saying I haven't read her book - i was told off it. It has, however, received critical acclaim from several outstanding personalities and critics. This rant is solely about the movie, released in India this week, starring Aishwarya Rai, Dylan McDermot, Anupam Kher and Zohra Sehgal. For all ye that harken here, heed my word - this is one god-awful movie!!! The storyline is a brazen rip-off of "Chocolat" without any of the class. The result is somewhat akin to a Chetan Bhagat rip-off of Marquez's 100 years of Solitude. Where Chocolat thrives on a magical imagery purely through suggestion, Divakuruni's Mistress of Spice (Ash) engages in deranged monologues, in turn declaring the potency of each spice in turn and entreating the "spices" to behave in any-which-way. Paul Berge's direction is terrible and the screenplay simply appalling. It's the kind of script that one could cite as emperical evidence of the infinite monkey theorem. However the most tragic aspect of the movie for me, was Ash's (ice)maiden Hollywood performance. Oh GOD!!! This was either the worst acting performance she's put up till date or the result of a Botox overdose! I mean... I love da way she looks mon ... but this is too-f'ckin-much!!! Even the "climax" of the movie - where she 'n' Dylan-boy get all naughty is soooooo ... frigid... for want of a better word. One imagines that if not anything else, sex scenes are easy to nail. I mean... this is the sorta thing they skip at acting school because ... duhh... you're supposed to know! I mean, mebbe they tell the guys... "Y'know.. you really can't DO anything... X-nay on the getting really happy young man!"... but i'll be darned if they say "This is how you pull your post-orgasmic face". All in all, a terribly demotivating experience for anyone that drops a jaw when Ash appears. In this movie, she and her comrades in arms only succeed in making you want to pull your face off.
Enough said on that - the good news for the week was Sen's "Argumentative Indian", a book I bought after my dear Prof. B brought it to my attention. This is a good book with an interesting, and perhaps long-needed emphasis on India's analytical tradition. Sen argues that we have a strong, if deemphasized tradition of analytical enquiry. One that is distinct from the theosophic, or more exotic literary traditions that tend to dominate the western notion of "the Indian identity". The book basically consists of a series of lectures he's delivered over the years, and contains many interesting nuggets and a rather persuasive basic argument. However, the book does suffer from a fair dose of repetitiveness - the same examples (e.g. Akbar and Tagore) are cited ad nauseum and several passages repeat opinions that the author has already established early in the text. There is also a discernable ideological position here that lends an air of polemic to the book - perhaps in some part reinforced by the repetitiveness of some opinions. In addition, Mr. Sen does not seem to take the trouble to identify and critically evaluate some of his own basic assumptions. I found the essay on India's nuclear program to be particularly naive in its base assumptions. His academic interest in human development shines through in several passages, though I felt that few new arguments relevant to the context came through his exposition on human developmental issues. Sen also takes a uniformly dim view of the Sangh parivar and proponents of a unified Hindu "identity". While he does a great job of demolishing some pet ideological themes of the parivar, I felt his fundamental aversion for the politics of the Sangh precluded a more interesting analysis of the hindu-nationalist phenomenon.
While we're on the sangh, one can't but help dedicate a few lines to that parivar icon, Pramod Mahajan, who battles for his life since his tragic shooting at the hands of his brother Praveen. A Cain 'n' Abel plot if I'd ever seen one! While one wishes him a speedy recovery, I wanted to vent (yes... I think THAT's why I started this blog) on two aspects of this entire episode. First, the complete cynicism with which the players involved here have tried to masquerade their own colored interpretations as the truth - notably brazen efforts by the family to squash the initial reports of a property dispute as being the motive behind the shooting and Pravin's lawyer and wife in cynically crafting a "history" of abuse and mentally deranged behavior as building blocks to an insanity plea. The second, and more disturbing feature of this drama, has been the TV media's complete abnegation of its responsibility to probe the facts. It seems that the print media (e.g. Outlook) is picking up the trail here, but it seems too little too late. It isn't however too late to ask some pertinent questions regarding how this family, which admittedly has made a rags to riches transition, has managed to amass such riches. How does one go from "struggling student leader in Pune" to a house in Worli through a career in "public service"? The amazing thing here is that no politician has the courage to raise this issue. As they say, hamaam mein sab nange hote hain.
Okie - that's all from me I guess. Since I'm ending with a parthian shot at the media's cowardice in this country, atleast in this context, let me point with some hope toward the USA, where journalistic integrity has been in relatively short supply lately. Not that this page is gonna contribute much traffic to anybody's site, but for those who haven't seen Stephen Colbert's courageous call-out of the Bush administration, please do have a look here, and thank this brave, brave man. Salut!!
Since I need to get this out of my system, I'll vent a li'l bit about Chitra Divakaruni's "Mistress of Spice". Just so we're all on the same page here, I'll qualify this by saying I haven't read her book - i was told off it. It has, however, received critical acclaim from several outstanding personalities and critics. This rant is solely about the movie, released in India this week, starring Aishwarya Rai, Dylan McDermot, Anupam Kher and Zohra Sehgal. For all ye that harken here, heed my word - this is one god-awful movie!!! The storyline is a brazen rip-off of "Chocolat" without any of the class. The result is somewhat akin to a Chetan Bhagat rip-off of Marquez's 100 years of Solitude. Where Chocolat thrives on a magical imagery purely through suggestion, Divakuruni's Mistress of Spice (Ash) engages in deranged monologues, in turn declaring the potency of each spice in turn and entreating the "spices" to behave in any-which-way. Paul Berge's direction is terrible and the screenplay simply appalling. It's the kind of script that one could cite as emperical evidence of the infinite monkey theorem. However the most tragic aspect of the movie for me, was Ash's (ice)maiden Hollywood performance. Oh GOD!!! This was either the worst acting performance she's put up till date or the result of a Botox overdose! I mean... I love da way she looks mon ... but this is too-f'ckin-much!!! Even the "climax" of the movie - where she 'n' Dylan-boy get all naughty is soooooo ... frigid... for want of a better word. One imagines that if not anything else, sex scenes are easy to nail. I mean... this is the sorta thing they skip at acting school because ... duhh... you're supposed to know! I mean, mebbe they tell the guys... "Y'know.. you really can't DO anything... X-nay on the getting really happy young man!"... but i'll be darned if they say "This is how you pull your post-orgasmic face". All in all, a terribly demotivating experience for anyone that drops a jaw when Ash appears. In this movie, she and her comrades in arms only succeed in making you want to pull your face off.
Enough said on that - the good news for the week was Sen's "Argumentative Indian", a book I bought after my dear Prof. B brought it to my attention. This is a good book with an interesting, and perhaps long-needed emphasis on India's analytical tradition. Sen argues that we have a strong, if deemphasized tradition of analytical enquiry. One that is distinct from the theosophic, or more exotic literary traditions that tend to dominate the western notion of "the Indian identity". The book basically consists of a series of lectures he's delivered over the years, and contains many interesting nuggets and a rather persuasive basic argument. However, the book does suffer from a fair dose of repetitiveness - the same examples (e.g. Akbar and Tagore) are cited ad nauseum and several passages repeat opinions that the author has already established early in the text. There is also a discernable ideological position here that lends an air of polemic to the book - perhaps in some part reinforced by the repetitiveness of some opinions. In addition, Mr. Sen does not seem to take the trouble to identify and critically evaluate some of his own basic assumptions. I found the essay on India's nuclear program to be particularly naive in its base assumptions. His academic interest in human development shines through in several passages, though I felt that few new arguments relevant to the context came through his exposition on human developmental issues. Sen also takes a uniformly dim view of the Sangh parivar and proponents of a unified Hindu "identity". While he does a great job of demolishing some pet ideological themes of the parivar, I felt his fundamental aversion for the politics of the Sangh precluded a more interesting analysis of the hindu-nationalist phenomenon.
While we're on the sangh, one can't but help dedicate a few lines to that parivar icon, Pramod Mahajan, who battles for his life since his tragic shooting at the hands of his brother Praveen. A Cain 'n' Abel plot if I'd ever seen one! While one wishes him a speedy recovery, I wanted to vent (yes... I think THAT's why I started this blog) on two aspects of this entire episode. First, the complete cynicism with which the players involved here have tried to masquerade their own colored interpretations as the truth - notably brazen efforts by the family to squash the initial reports of a property dispute as being the motive behind the shooting and Pravin's lawyer and wife in cynically crafting a "history" of abuse and mentally deranged behavior as building blocks to an insanity plea. The second, and more disturbing feature of this drama, has been the TV media's complete abnegation of its responsibility to probe the facts. It seems that the print media (e.g. Outlook) is picking up the trail here, but it seems too little too late. It isn't however too late to ask some pertinent questions regarding how this family, which admittedly has made a rags to riches transition, has managed to amass such riches. How does one go from "struggling student leader in Pune" to a house in Worli through a career in "public service"? The amazing thing here is that no politician has the courage to raise this issue. As they say, hamaam mein sab nange hote hain.
Okie - that's all from me I guess. Since I'm ending with a parthian shot at the media's cowardice in this country, atleast in this context, let me point with some hope toward the USA, where journalistic integrity has been in relatively short supply lately. Not that this page is gonna contribute much traffic to anybody's site, but for those who haven't seen Stephen Colbert's courageous call-out of the Bush administration, please do have a look here, and thank this brave, brave man. Salut!!
posted by sreeram at 11:15 AM
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