Review Roundup

This is a list of reviews for the latest books and movies I have recently watched.

1. Book: Inferno
    Author: Dan Brown

This book again finds Brown's character Robert Langdon, Harvard symbologist, in a situation straight out of an action thriller, hardly a regular occurrence in the life of an academician (not counting the grant deadline weeks!). The extra touch is Langdon being a savior of the planet this time, against brilliant semi-mad scientist Bertrand Zobrist who has designs to unleash "hell" (hence the name Inferno) on the human civilization which just refuses to stop growing. Additionally, the backdrop constantly derives from Dante Alighieri's epic poem 'Divine Comedy' of which Inferno forms a celebrated first section. In the process, Brown frequently slips into a travelogue spirit where he spends paragraphs after paragraphs giving the reader a "wiki-like"  description of  cathedrals and museums in the Italian city of Florence (birth place of Dante), some of them not even relevant to the plot. Quite typically as in his previous works, this takes the readers into the regime of reading between the lines, deciphering symbols, and navigating dark corridors of medieval history and even futuristic science. I think this is an essential component of Brown's style of writing which makes him tick with such a wide audience --- of making the reader feel as if  'he/she knows' while keeping a pace which precludes the question 'how' or even 'what'. Add a dash of conspiracy theory, which Brown specializes in and you have a bestseller on your shelf. This is what Inferno manages to achieve quite successfully, especially as compared to Brown's previous effort 'The Lost Symbol' -- where reading the fine print only leads to an empty head throbbing with pain. So go ahead and pick Inferno; you will enjoy it if you flow along with Brown's spirit of crashing head long into historical tidbits, but do not question much.

2. Movie: Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani
    Actors: Ranbir Kapoor, Deepika Padukone et al.

I am not surprised this movie is doing well, but I am not happy about it either. It is easy for a movie with lead actors like Kapoor to be saleable hits these days, unless the story line is irretrievably retarded. This movie exploits the presence of its lead actors to its full advantage, but unfortunately neither of the characterizations seem genuine. The misplaced view of self, the main protagonist Kabir (Kapoor) seems to champion throughout the movie and almost gets away with it, seems absolutely contrived to say the least. If the contemporary generation is finding a resonance with this so called "devil-may-care" attitude, this portrayal goes from being annoyingly superficial to downright disturbing. Unlike the movie, where Kapoor manages to salvage all his relationships and sings/sobs his way into hearts of family and friends whom he has trashed, real life can be pretty stingy in offering redemption opportunities. The other stereotype this movie promotes is that unless you are a wastrel in your school/college days, you would turn into a self-bashing, forlorn wretch with little meaning to your life. This is what 'padhaku' Naina (Padukone) seems to personify when she yells at her mother and says "I want a holiday", before running off to Manali with her cool friends. When she comes back, the ugly duckling has turned into a swan, shed her number 5 glasses, is comfortable flaunting her waist along with her legs, and has fallen in love with the cool Kabir. The reinvented Naina then even dares to sermonize foreign-returned Kabir on 'how to lead a life' (with whom she is still in love for some god-forsaken reason), sharing pearls of wisdom like importance of viewing DDLJ at Maratha Mandir over Phantom of the Opera at Broadway. Cliched does not even begin to capture it.

If you want better worth for your popcorn, go and watch DDLJ at Maratha Mandir. Seriously!

Zara hatke music...

Check out the following youtube videos of a 19 year old who has a great voice and attitude for music. It will make you rethink about the various ad jingles we have grown up hearing and humming ... :)

The Time Traveler's Wife

Media: Movie
Genre: Pathetic

Okay, I really wanted to write something on the blog. A new month has started and as it is unrolling, I see I'll find less and less time to wag my tongue online. So I thought that I might as well indulge in this soothing exercise of blogging right away and write about something even if it is pitiful. So it is about this movie which I watched with my friend at a Mall a few weeks ago -- recently released, and non-conventional title. I was intrigued...

It is a movie about this guy who time travels, all over the place without control. And when he does so in his hurry he leaves behind his clothes..captivating hunh (?). He starts this habit of 'never being in time' as a child when he time travels out of car in which he is traveling with his mother. The car gets crashed in an accident but he time travels and saves himself (after watching the movie you'd wish that he didn't). And then we all know, bad habits die hard... and so he continues...meets his wife when she is a child, forgets her when she actually grows up and meets him, then goes back in time and meets her again in childhood, in the meantime his older self returns and gets married to his wife when actually he should be marrying him - what? ..........whatever! And the mystery continues - mystery of what was the story writer thinking when he was writing this crap. (may be was also a traveler from his kindergarten past trying to write a Hollywood flick). And it does not end there - his baby also keeps traveling out of his wife's womb leading to miscarriages...yuck!

Still I sat through this.... only to end up wishing ardently that I could also travel back in time to stop myself from buying the tickets and put my money to some good use instead..cheers to another bag of popcorn (without the movie of course!).

Rampaging ragging

It is one of those pieces where I feel angry with myself for writing so late. Not that I was unaware of the incident which brought this ever-prevalent monster back to light, but the thoughts had flickered and died out amidst the platitudes of routine life. The revival was triggered when I recently caught up with episode of 'We The People' on NDTV. The discussion was covering recent acts of violence committed in the name of ragging, particularly the one which took place in Dr. Rajendra Prasad Medical College in Himachal Pradesh leading to death of a teenager Aman Kachroo due to severe beating by his drunken seniors.

One of the panelists was the father of deceased boy --- Dr. Raj Kachroo, who had the courage to come out and voice a balanced opinion against this growing menace even in the wake of his own terrible loss. There were a few other noted names on the show --- like Deepak Paintal, the VC of University of Delhi who took the controversial yet sanest stand of complete eradication and defended it adequately, famous columnist Jug Suraiya who insisted on discriminating between 'good' and 'bad ragging, based on the halcyon days of his adolescence. He recounted, to the glee of some members of the audience, how ragging used to be indeed quite innocuos in his hostel, and just involved hurling water-filled condom balloons --- really innocuous and stupid....yeah! Other panelists included R. K. Raghavan of the Raghavan committee which submitted a report with the government in 2007 advising certain measures to eradicate the evil, filmmaker Manish Gupta who has made a movie 'Hostel' based on his real experiences of ragging in engineering college and who was ballistic in his support for complete ban and also towards likes of another movie maker Apoorv Lakia. Lakia is an alumnus of Lawrence School Sanawar, which was the spot for a recent incident involving beating of some junior students by their Class XII seniors. He, however, expressed surprise of a 10-year old on the occurrence of this incident at his revered school and tried to make us believe in the golden days he had spent there interspersed with being made 'murga' by the prefects (form of punishment where the defaulter crouches and holds his ears_more details on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murga_Punishment) --- but that was it, he insisted.

I think the show was pretty good and covered most of the related issues, giving space to all viewpoints (.. how else can you get Lakia on airwaves for so long a time - it exceeded the combined run-time of all his movies at the theaters !!). Nonetheless, I still want to share my sentiments on this through this blog. The reason in part being that, though I have had a fair share of fun in my college life spanning DU's St. Stephen's and IIT Delhi without perpetrating or suffering this menace myself, yet I kept seeing around myself and reading about varying forms of it - consensual, coercive, light fun, sick - really the complete spectrum! And again and again I have been convinced of the complete futility and hypocrisy of this mindless exercise, which had reared its ugliest face in the case of Aman Kachroo and cost him his life.

Let us face it guys (and girls) - there is really no justification of ragging. If we are making ourselves or someone else believe that, without ragging, the students who attend the same institution for 3-4 years will be left exchanging nods as strangers at their graduation ceremonies, the whole argument crumbles on being dealt with an iota of logic. Alas we never-got-to-know-you-better excuse because there was no ragging, is so hollow and cliched that even a political speech before elections will sound fresh to that. If there is a sincere intention of both seniors and juniors of extending a hand out, I don't see why such an awkward, and often embarrassing, interaction required to break the ice. And seriously, if a senior refuses to help you and makes the above excuse, it's good that you escaped the clutches of that psycho. 'Dance for me so if you need this set of notes' - sounds like a perfect gentleman, isn't it! So once and for all, let us give a rest to this friendship argument for ragging - we all know that there are much healthier avenues to know each other better.

A related issue is that of 'good' and 'bad' ragging. But 'good' for one can be a 'torture' for other. If you are a dancing sensation in your school, asking to burn the dance floor on a hip bollywood number is a cakewalk and surely a lot of fun (On second thoughts, even if I dance like Hrithik Roshan, I will not be willing to shake a leg on someone's command) - but the person standing next to you might have been born with two left feet. The prospect of dancing in front of a group including his own peers and seniors can be horrifying. Yet another excuse often furnished by seniors/raggers is 'you-need-to-open-up' program. Not every student thinks that he/she requires a majors in dance/drama/poetry.. and maybe harassment by the end of program! Another hazard of letting even non-physical ragging unabated is the danger of it quickly devolving into something more perverse. Unbridled authority is dangerous, esp. in hands of 20-year somethings. There have been ample examples of physical and sexual abuse in the name of ragging - it might just have started with the usually thought to be innocent song and dance routine or something of that order. And really, the whole idea of any sort of authority exercised in this hierarchical fashion is quite perverse in itself. As far as lighthearted teasing goes, that is a usual riot even in close-knitted friend circles - but demanding such a right just because of academic seniority is pretty baseless. All the people who pass off as teasing seniors are just a bunch of deeply insecure people who vent their insecurities and impress themselves in a twisted fashion through an aggressive act of ragging - rest all the excuses are rubbish and mere hypocrisy. So we need not bother ourselves with drawing lines between good and bad ragging - there is just one line to be drawn, that of ragging (in any form) or no ragging.

This also brings us to an important question of responsibility. I think besides meting out irrevocable punishments to those directly involved in propagating this menace, the relevant authorities should also be held accountable. The importance of the institutional responsibility cannot be diluted, esp. after the report tabled by Additional District Magistrate of Kangra makes it clear that, in Kachroo case, the college authorities behaved imperviously to student complaints of rampant ragging in the institution. Moreover, evidence for physically abusive ragging in the college dates back to at least 2006. Such apathy on the part of the institution should lead to charges of criminal neglect against the top management and in absence of remedial measures educational licenses may be revoked. Also, each student, junior or senior, should feel responsible towards curbing this menace and fearlessly report the perpetrators to the authorities. To ensure and encourage the report of such incidents without any fear of retribution, setting up anonymous helplines for students should be helpful. It has reached a proportion where any price is a small price to pay because nothing is more precious than human life and dignity.

The Atonement

Media: Movie
Genre: Fiction

This post is about the movie made by Joe Wright on the novel by the same name from Ian McEwan. The views expressed are solely based on the visual depiction as the author is blissfully unaware of how true a rendition of the book the screenplay is.

I got this movie issued last week from the library. The movie section at Yale's BASS library boasts of a small yet excellent collection of new and old English movies (with some crossover cinema ---couldn't think of an alternative to this awful and widely used word --- thrown in here and there). Besides, if the DVD cover boasts of some academy award nominations/awards, it may serve to boost the confidence of the viewer and this one had a golden globe for best movie to its credit in 2008. (Though the last test doesn't always work as I discovered in the case of American Beauty :-X ).

This movie is set in the backdrop of a British country estate before and during the period of World War II. The story revolves around three main characters - Cecilia, Briony and Robbie. Briony is a fledgling teenage writer who gets jealous of a passionate romance between her beautiful elder sister Cecilia and her childhood crush Robbie - the housekeeper's suave, Cambridge-educated son. Her jealousy drives her to tell a lie which changes the lives of all three characters irrevocably.

The movie has a taut screenplay, which develops and catches pace as the movie evolves. The director uses the clever trick of first showing a compelling visual at a dramatic turn and then depicts the sequence of events leading up to it. It has a desired effect in most places but makes the narrative confusing at some others.

You might be thinking that I would really be recommending this movie to everyone. Well..yes and no. Cinematically, it is of course a unique presentation of a unique story and the viewer revels in the richness of exposition of the characters. But me being a lover of Hindi movies believes in happy endings (gullible me - at least I am honest!) - so at that front it might fail as it makes you sad, really sad.

Nonetheless, why I thought of writing about this movie on the blog was the deep influence it exercises on you through Briony. You can almost feel the stifling existence she practices bearing the penance of her lie in form of a lifelong guilt. The screenplay conveys both her imagination and existence perspicaciously to the viewer.

I am still not sure whether I want to read the book!