Sahir, The Romantic Rebel

Sahir Ludhianvi: The People's Poet

-- by Akshay Manwani

"Hindi songs lost their virility after Sahir left." This is what composer Ravi of "Chaudahvin Ka Chand" and "Ae Meri Zohrajabein" fame (Bombay Ravi for Malayalees) told me long back. He was bang on. And, as the author of the book says, there will never be another Sahir Ludhianvi.

Manwani's biography of the poet-lyricist amply backs that stand. It traces his childhood trauma and agonies of the youth, which moulded the egoist and self-made man who would then take on the high & mighty -- in his poetry as well as in real life.

Imagine his gall to lock horns with the sublime S D Burman, when the composer had hit his peak with "Pyaasa". Or breaking ties with Lata. Or

the equally egoistic O P Nayyar. And yet emerging unscathed as the greatest lyricist of all time.

Manwani's research is impressive. And most of the times his grasp of film songs too. For instance, the chapter on Sahir's songs that were diametrically opposite in tone, texture and mood even when they belonged to the same year, really opens up one's eyes. For example, in1957, he wrote the 'anti-patriotic' "Jinhe Naaz Hai Hind Par" for the cynical "Pyasa" and also the vivacious "Ye Desh Hai Veer Jawanon Ka" for "Naya Daur".

Even though a lot of what he has written about Sahir is well known, Manwani embellishes it with some clean writing and an insight or two. At least, he's better than that ridiculous pun-machine Raju Bharathan.

Yet, sometimes Manwani shocks you with his statements and observations.

He says Roshan was a B-grade composer. Utter utter rubbish. Period.

He thinks S D Burman's contribution was minimal in "Pyaasa". Highly debatable. And, for Manwani, lose-able.

He virtually rates "Chalo Ek Baar Phir Se" above "Aap Aaye To Khayal-e-Dil-Nashad Aaya". Disappointing.

Nevertheless, these don't take much away from his effort. And for a vintage Hindi film song enthusiast and Sahir fanatic like me, the book is thoroughly enjoyable.

Reading the Qur’an: By Ziauddin Sardar

Reading religious texts can be cumbersome. Particularly if the religion is not that which one is brought up in. Plan B. Interpretations, translations, excerpts. Reading the Qur’an is a mix of all these, with underpinnings that attempt to tear the revered text away from obscurantist clutches and misinterpretations.

Reading the Qur’an is a wonderful trip. Even if one does not agree – or is not convinced -- with some of its bits and pieces. A whole lot of miasma hovering over Islam’s holy book gets cleared. Especially when one feels the love for the book that the author shows.

Like for many south Asians, Qur’an is not just a holy text for Sardar. It is a whole tradition, inculcated into a child who sits on the mother’s lap while she reads it out and interprets it for the child. I can easily replace the Qur’an with the Ramayana in this happy and peaceful imagery and see myself in Sardar’s place – the meaning and context remaining intact.

The systematic “learing” of the Qur’an in the tradition way has not stopped Sardar from interpreting the book on his own dynamic terms and rendering a tight slap on the “collective conscience” (I have begun to hate this term now, thank you SC) of obscurantist ‘authorities’ of Islam.

The underlying feel one gets out of the book is that Quran is not a set of laws, but a set of principles to live through a dynamic world.

A must read for Muslims and non-Muslims.

A few words for a real hero...

The dust is slowly settling down. The Delhi braveheart's funeral pyre is now ash, her last remains by now perhaps one with the Ganga's already overburdened waters. The sordid year has just breathed its last.

Now, I believe is the time to spare a thought for the one shining example that may have saved Indian chivalry from complete degradation. One man, who, when we were all expressing our anguish, silently felt the worst. The man who saw it all in all its gruesomeness. While the graphic descriptions of the gangrape have shocked us, only he was scarred for life.

Stoic silence may mean anything -- a deeply disturbed mind, or plain fortitude. Because what he lost two weeks back, and again following her death, was much more than a relationship or perceived self-respect. What he lost was perhaps all that he was made up of.

As the six brutes took turns to snuff out the torch of manhood, one man lit a candle -- a candle much more brighter than those held by all of us angry souls.

So, here's to THE man. To, perhaps, 'Nirbhaya/Amanat's' only friend in need.

A tribute to his courage, silent suffering and sheer tenacity.

Salute, sir!

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!