EKLAVYA : India's Official Entry to the Oscars !!

WDF ! These were the first words that struck me once I read the bulletin on the web. I was shocked to say the least. I banged my fist on the lectern and gave a huge grin at the adjoining pic of Vindhu Vinod Chopra.

It was one of those rare movies that we had gone for.[and I sincerely regret having gone for it]. With DVD ripped movies landing up on LAN within a week of their release, going to the theater and spending 200 bucks seems really far-fetched. It was not the last time. We repeated the blunder with 'TaRa Rum Pum'. From the little that I remember about the script, it had none. I still educe the fact that I spent the whole movie waiting for something to happen. It started with the revelation of propinquitous relationship between the queen and her guard and it ended with the guard defying ethics to put love ahead of his obligations. In between, we had the foreign returned prince doting on a poor girl ( surprising?), a perverse impotent king, and some excellent cinematography. That was it. Cinematography was the only thing that stood out. But do you select films to represent your country on the basis of "cinematography'"? Certainly NO. We had walked into the theater with loads of expectations - it was VVC's first movie since Mission Kashmir, he had spent over five years writing the script and the star cast boasted of AB, Saif Ali Khan, Boman Irani and Sharmila Tagore. I am no film critic but this movie certainly did not get my pulses racing nor did it cause an emotional stir somewhere within. This movie 'cupped' royally at the box office. I am not very sure if the critics rated that highly. From the little that I observed, Guru and Chak De got better reviews and yet..... I am not into regional cinema. There would obviously be some that must have stood out. I am sure that there would have been many that would have outweighed Eklavya in every other department excluding cinematography. It is not surprising that issues are being raised against its selections. An affidavit has already been filed. Movies like Dharm, Guru and Chak De were certainly better when it came to script. Better by a long way......................

PiQUANT CHESTNUT - I

Piquant Chestnut refers to my collection of interesting real life anecdotes covering a multitude of spectrum ranging from one liners to an extended dose of verbal bazookas. Whenever I title any article with the same, you can be rest assured that they are cent percent true(but there may be added sprinkling of salt and pepper to make up for my lack of scribbling potential), save for the names of the protagonist.

The first one is dedicate to a very close friend of mine. Lets call him "Grecoe" from now onwards for no reason in particular . He deserves a name because I am sure he is making the most number of appearances in this section. Now Grecoe, was crashing(sleeping) in the middle of an ongoing lecture of ID 110(duh... who didn't) and to his misfortune our hostel warden, DJ was the invigilator. He patted on Grecoe's back to wake him up; Grecoe did wake up but he just stared blankly at the Prof. and again crashed !!!(lolz) The Prof. followed the pat with a much sterner tap the next time around. Grecoe did wake up this time but the conversation that followed is a classic.
Grecoe (even before being asked anything) : Just came
DJ : What !
Grecoe : No sir, just came.
DJ : Who just came?
You just came?
Grecoe : No Sir ... Sleep just came.

P.S : If you did not get the humour in it, get back to ENG 101.


Now for a masterpiece. We entered the fourth semester aware that a certain a Elec. Prof. was to take a 2 credit course. The previous year he had turned the two credit course into a five hour one. So we were all in a state of fear of what he was to do this year. By God's grace it ended up as a two credit course thanks to some heated ego clashes[kept under the wraps] between the Mech department[goshh.... Mech deptt. and ego] and the Elec. department about the importance of the very course. This certainly didn't please the Prof. concerned and his agitation was evident. To show the worth of the course (read retaliate) he announced --
"In the present context, I will only be taking you from one level of ignorance to another."

GENRE :: RAJNI


You may not a get word of Tamil, you may hate the autowallahs who pretend to not get a word of Hindi that you are yelling, you may not even bother about the people blabbering around you in some alien language leave aside making an serious effort to find what "entraa" meant....(though one wouldn't mind decorating the walls with posters of Asin and Shreya) ; but mark my words, if you are marooned somewhere in South India longing to stay away from sambhar and rasam, there is one thing you cannot surely do - AVOID RAJNI.

I have been staying in Chennai for the past two years and despite all my sincere efforts I have not been able to prevent Rajni from getting into system. Sigmund Freud remarked, "The mind absorbs only what it wants as its appetite "; but his quote falls to flat ears when it comes to Rajni and South India. I have not watched a single Rajni movie and I even avoided the screening of "Chandramukhi" in my institute (I remember the day. It was like Diwali being celebrated all over again. The countdown had begun the day the announcement was made and on the eve of screening people were behaving as if ATLANTIS was supposed to be launched. The anticipation, the craze, the excitement........ I wish, I could put it in paper.
The OAT where the movie was being screened was jam packed(IT IS THE UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE DECADE). I believe more people attended it than the Shanker-Ehsaan-Loy concert. I avoided going to the theater on the pretext that I wouldn't get the language.[Well.... If you would believe my southie friend, one-third of the theater was filled with people who didn't get the language and supposedly half the crowd go to watch Rajni movies not because they care for the script or dialogues but exclusively for Rajni's mere presence]. At this point I must admit that my real reason of avoiding the screening was because the racist in me was not ready to accept a South Indian idol. My only previous memoirs of Rajni were that of a pot bellied, supernatural hero who defied Newton's laws of Physics. He could kill two goons with one bullet by merely using a blade to bifurcate the speeding bullets. If he was separated from the antagonist by a wall, he would toss one gun up into the air and shoot at it with another when the former attained its peak. The bullet from the latter would cause the trigger motion in the first one killing of the predator on the other side of the wall.

That was about Chandramukhi and the ignorant me before I was marooned in South India. Times have changed. Its "Shivaji" now. But Rajni-mania has not changed. Its the same madness in his fan following, the same craze and the same demi-god treatment. I didnt get it then, I still dont get it. I dont even know if his movies are romances, comedies, action or for that matter parallel cinema. I asked a close friend of mine, who actually missed on an evening with his ex-girl friend because he had to watch 'Shivaji', as to what genre 'Shivaji' belonged. To my amazement, he asserted that you couldn't characterize Rajni's movies. Characterizing into one particular mould meant that you are claiming that Rajni was not effective in the other mould.

In his words, " Genre :: Rajni. It's a Rajni movie macha... "

Keyser Soze
The Only Suspect

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist"
One line that defines the man, the greatest conman in cinematic history. Tracy Whitney, D B Cooper, Daniel Ocean, Charles Milverton, Gasper LeMerc are no doubt all great conmen in their own right but if you ask me Keyser Soze is like the solitaire that adorns the Con Crown.

My biggest regret after watching that movie was how in the world I could have missed it. I saw it 12 years after its release, that too even when it had been consistently rated among the top 20 movies of all time on IMDb. The whole movie is nothing but the metamorphosis of Keyser Soze from a "mythical" mafia kingpin to a factual embodiment of the con spirit. The movie is not about Kevin Spacey, its not about the quick witted and enthralling interrogation session, its not about 5 men fencing gems : Its about Keyser Soze and that is it.

Keyser Soze literally transforms to "Verbal Emperor" in Turkish and he lives upto every alphabet of his name. Fabricating a truly convincing tale in front of a ruthless and eccentric FBI agent is no mean deed.

You are struck with a sense of terror the moment Keyser Soze is introduced as a mafia kingpin. It is said that --
When he was a small-time Turkish drug runner, a rival Hungarian gang tried to seize his territory and business by taking his family hostage, raping his wife, and traumatizing his children in the process. Söze, in response, killed his own family and all but one of the threatening gangsters, who is spared in order to carry the news of the event to the rest of the gang.

If you think I am the only one going gaga over Keyser soze, you are in for shock.
In popular culture, you actually have a phrase as "Keyser Sozed" which basically means to be fooled by someone's identity or agenda. And then any movie or book for that matter that tend to redefine the facts towards the climax contrary to what had been presented before ( which in retrospect is actually a standard literary technique ) are said to suffer from the "Keyser Soze Syndrome".


To conclude, if you idolize conmen, factual or fictional, and still have never heard of Keyser Soze then as they would say it in hindi, "Chullu bhar pani mein doob mar".