Escape to No-Where - By Amar Bhushan (A Review)

It is a story which, when it erupted some 10 years back in the national media, had us sitting on the edges of our seats and biting nails. Till then, folks of my generation had only heard of RA&W and its clandestine and espionage activities. We had heard even less about counter-espionage, except in a few glamourized versions in James bond movies. Of course, we always had Le Carre and his “safe houses”. But rarely anything in the Indian context.

The even now faceless Rabinder Singh caught our collective imagination as the quintessential “traitor”. A man who ducked our internal and external intelligence agencies, siphoned off tonnes of information and also managed to give Indians sleuths the slip, before disappearing somewhere in the US of A under layers of fake identities and security rings.

Amar Bhushan, a former bureaucrat (I assume he worked with RAW), finally gives us a clear picture, though fictionalized, of what really happened in the episode.

In many ways far more realistic than even Le Carre’s rendering of the murky world of espionage and counter espionage, "Escape To No-Where" is a surprise package. The very first page grabs you by the collar, demanding attention. It is a thoroughly deglamourized portrayal of the Indian external intelligence agency’s workings, replete with red-tape, procedural dreariness and operational lethargy. No blood. No fancy sequences. No smart-ass repartees. Yet, that is what makes this whole tale all the more nerve-wracking.  

Amar Bhushan, the author, trips several times in the writing style department. The copy-editors and proof readers have done a job that would put even the south block babus to shame. Yet the glaring mistakes, jarring typos and a surfeit of clichés do not take a wee bit away from the mystery of one of the biggest espionage scandals that hit India in recent memory.

I’m sure Rabinder Singh, perched comfortably – or even not so comfortably, going by the book – in the hinterlands of America, would thoroughly enjoy this systematic peeling away of his life as a US mole in the heart of India’s premier spy organization. 

A great book.

Pax Indica (Shashi Tharoor) -- A brief review

I started the Pax Indica with a lot of enthusiasm. I've always liked his style of writing. And IR and geostrategy are two of my favourite subjects.

But the initial few chapters were a dampener. I felt they merely took off from where C Raja Mohan left in his "Crossing the Rubicon". For someone who has closely been following India's cruise in the international waters, there was nothing new; just a brushing up session. I realised these chapters were for those who are new to the subject.

Yet, things perked up once the sweep of the current state of India's IR got covered. I was particularly enriched by the 'domestic underpinnings of India's foreign policy' and his take on Indian diplomats.

All in all, Pax Indica is a timely and enriching book. An imperative for anyone even tangentially interested in the subject.

Malayalam cinema -- a new wave

A few years ago during a discussion on Malayalam cinema in Orkut, I held forth that I rarely watched the latest Malayalam movies. I said I preferred watching – repeatedly even -- movies of the 1980s and 90s. I found them honest, unpretentious and uplifting.

I was absolutely bored and utterly disgusted by the crap that Lal and Mammooty were churning out in the name of performance in the late 1990s, ’00s and ’10s. The plots were horrendous, the music was simply forgettable, the dialogues plain unconvincing and the acting came across as worse than those by debutantes.

Commercial Malayalam cinema had stagnated. And as always, it was the pigs, as represented by the reigning stars of the day, who ruled in the dirty stagnating waters.

Fresh faces like Dileep (I dare call him fresh for the sake of contrast with the bulging behemoths Lal, Gopi and Mammooty) Surya and Kunchacko Boban, though pretty talented, were trapped in the mores, styles and other entrapments of traditional Malayalam cinema, which was so obviously stale.   

  

The so called art movies – ones such as Ore Kadal and Vanaprastham – were bloody pseudo. Classic examples of movies that were made ONLY to win awards, fuelled by a narcissist star’s aesthetic ambition.

  

Malayalam cinema had, in short, stopped evolving. It lived under the fading limelight of its heady days.

However, that was then.

In 2011, on a trip to Kozhikode, I decided to splurge on movies again. I was taking a risk. But I was desperate for a taste of the latest in Malayalam cinema. So Rs 2,000 was not a huge amount for an assorted 20 movies of the past one year.

What I found was nothing short of a revelation --  a revelation that has today forced me to retract my earlier stand that I’d rather not lap up the latest wares of the industry.

While I must accept that there are miles to go, Malayalam cinema is certainly undergoing a renaissance – in style, content, technique, tone and performances.

It’s a transformation that fits the bill as the next wave after the change that swept through in the 1980s. Ushered in by such stalwarts as Padmarajan, Bharathan, Lohitadas, Satyan Anthikkad and others, that was when the movie-buff Malayalee began to expect a new standard that rendered almost everything of the previous era outdated.

Movies such as Traffic, Cocktail, Kerala Café, Chappa Kurishu, 22 Female Kottayam, and the like, though hardly complete and worth being called the best or great, have literally opened a can – a can of ideas, talent and vision.     

They have dug a deep divide, as BC and AD. Although, the exact date of the transformation is difficult to locate, it has been a revolution – and I suspect a revolution spread over some five years ending in 2012.

It struck me only last week though.

   

I was watching Pranayam – a movie I liked some time ago – on Sunday.

While the plot was endearing and performances convincing in the conventional sense, my perspective had undergone a sea change.

Pranayam – with the background score inevitably following every frame and sequence (someone enlighten these guys about the importance and depth of silence) -- was clearly a BC movie on the Malayalam cinema timeline. Dialogues were jarringly lyrical and preachy. Acting was, of course, still reminiscent of the era when Anupam Kher and Lal epitomized the skill.     

Pranayam was a complete movie, but so outdated in its craft.

In contrast was Chappa Kurishu, a movie that had so many loose ends – it was boring at times, the acting department was far from convincing (particularly of Vineeth Sreenivasan and his lady love), music was forgettable. But Chappa Kurishu, with its plot, Fahad Fazil’s performance and the ‘punchy’ climax, was emblematic of the new energy, sensibilities, style and narrative of the new Malayalam cinema.

Chappa Kurishu and Pranayam are contemporaries. But clearly, they represent two different eras. The former is I guess the last gasp of a dying breed so badly tarred by the latest specimen of its kind. The latter is the future.

It’s painful to call the likes of Lal, Padmarajan and Satyan Anthikkad outdated. But that’s what should be. And I welcome that all-changing next wave.

Kali Ma beer: Frothing cartoons, bitter nothings

In the 60^th year of India’s Parliament, raising a toast in the name of goddess Kali is not our ‘pitcher of piety’, or so it seems to our representatives there. Coming amidst the cartoon controversy, Tuesday’s Rajya Sabha sideshow saw more competitive carping. Yet, another frayed feather to our cap of legislative infamy. 

The story goes something like this. Portland, US-based Burnside Brewing Co decides to launch a beer named “Kali-Ma”. A section of Indians and some MPs promptly do what they far too easily of late: take offence.

Apparently appalled at the American company’s blasphemy, the BJP’s Ravishankar Prasad even read out the product’s ad-line in the House: “Come, worship the black one, Kali, as the ultimate reality.”

However, this outcry doesn’t seem to be in line with either the fiery concept and myth of Kali itself or even the realities of India’s own alcoholic drinks industry.

First, the most basic incongruence of the MPs’ misplaced piety, going by Centre for Policy Research (New Delhi) economist Bibek Debroy’s take on the goddess.

“Kali is clearly portrayed as drinking before she sets off to kill Mahishasura in the Chandika section of the Markandeya Puran. While the word used is ‘madhu’, it is clear what is meant going by the subsequent description of Kali being inebriated,” he told me.

Debroy would know. He is the author of an abridged version of the Purans. In the Hindu pantheon, Kali is the surreal epitome of volatile energy, almost equal to the explosive essence of Siva.

According to Rachel F. McDermot and Jeffrey J. Kripal, “As his (Siva’s) consort… Kali often plays the role of inciting him to wild behavior… exciting him to take part in dangerous, destructive behavior that threatens the stability of the cosmos.”

Kali’s bizarre resplendence is described in The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna this way:

“Crazy is my Father, crazy my Mother, And I, their son, am crazy too!

Shyama (Kali’s epithet) is my Mother’s name,

My Father strikes His cheeks and makes a hollow sound:

Ba-ba-boom! Ba-ba-boom

And my Mother, drunk and reeling,

Falls across my Father’s body!

Shyama’s streaming tresses hang in vast disorder;

Bees are swarming numberless

About her crimson Lotus Feet.

Listen, as She dances, how Her ankles ring!”

Going by these, one would think Burnside Brewing hit the bull’s eye with Kali-Ma—“spiced wheat ale involving cardamom, fenugreek, cumin, India dandicut peppers, etc”.

Some Parliamentarians obviously think otherwise though.

Perhaps, the argument is against using a revered icon commercially. Now, that could be taken seriously but for the popularity of one of India’s oldest beer brands – Kalyani Black Label.

'Kalyani’ is goddess Parvathy, Kali’s modest and sober version. With 7.8% alcohol content, one of the highest in the category, the brand is particularly popular it seems in Kali’s own city Kolkata. And guess who owns it?

In Indian mythology, Amrut is the drink of immortality. Perhaps our MPs just need to down a couple of ‘Patialas’. Cartoons too could do with a life!