I should not critique Teen Behenein

Needless to say that 'Teen Behenein' is a very relevant film. Its a film that tells the story of a small town- the story of three girls in a lower middle class household in a city that is still untouched by the global tunes of metros. Even off-beat cinema of the Kashyap's and Manorama Six Feet Under types present the small Indian city in a certain narrativised tone- where the town is a mere incidental reality after the first few scenes.

Teen Behenein shows an Indian small town and its visceral life without showing it at all. The film chooses to stay in a room in a small town. Only some sounds and the quintessential terrace (chhat) provide reluctant glimpses into it. The film depicts the mind set of people living in these towns and thus constructs the town.

The film captures a reality that needs re-telling: Dowry is rampant, throbbing and murderously-legal even today in India(although not in small towns alone; or in lower middle class households only).

Teen Behenein is standing on passion for a cinema that advocates. It is beyond the confines of the regular New 'New' Wave of contemporary Indian cinema.

But then why does Teen Behenein fail as cinema? Could it be that we are too used to the gloss of Bollywood's colour correction?

I am still wondering why a film-director like Kundan Shah would fail at directing his core actors? The three actors- the three sisters perform for the theater stage all through the film. Highly accentuated body language with a very dialogic script reminds you of the old telefilms that were done on the national network. As I sat I could almost physically count the dialogues that were a dozen too many. The dialogues are burdened with too many unnatural words in Hindi- not sure they are representative of the vocabulary of the 'small-town-girls' of today.

The three songs in the film seem forced fantasies for relief from the intense narrative- the lyrics and the music is more than ordinary. The metaphors are so obviously intercut that they almost seem literal descriptions thrown at the audience.

The film uses a lot of fantastic elements; magic realism as a stylistic device also finds place- they work as premises when narrated to someone but fail as formal devices in the narrative of the film.

At best Teen Behenein is a story that needs urgent telling- a very relevant tale. I am sorry that its form pulls it down so severely that one fails to dialogue with the film.

VIR DAS- NLMAO

Watching Vir Das will make you type this to your friend with hurried and worried fingers as you are still watching the show-'NLMAO'-in other words NOT LAUGHING MY ASS OFF... :( :(- The show I saw can have grave consequences for a person's sense of humor for life- because as people will laugh you will sit alone with a question- "What are they laughing on?"

You will bend to ask this question from your neighbor but every time you start the question the jerk will laugh loudly and you will repose into your lonely seat. Yes, at this point you will stifle the strong urge to knock him on his face.

The show I saw should carry a warning. It should say- "I can be seriously injurious to your funny bone- especially if you come from the creed that swears by Jaane Bhi do Yaaron."

Most of the so called 'interactive show' is a hybrid between common theatre exercises and laughter show games- pedantic and overused on television since the 80s.
It is anybody's guess(butt for weird ass's)that the show is trying hard to be an Indian version of 'Who's Line is it Anyways?'-But unlike the latter the chemistry between the four performers on stage in-here is cold and damp; do not expect intuitive humor tangents like the television shows you grew on.
Just run to save your left over weekend as you keep typing 'NLMAO'to your lucky friends who did not get tickets.

India's Stand-Up Comedy- Some Serious Laughing Business ?

Delhi is having a 'celebrating humor' week. I guess this city does need to be humored- You took a deep breath. I know.
Delhi is too hot. Laughing gills are a sure find.

Like the guy in my office keeps saying-ATM- 'Jolly raha karo, madam...' Delhi needs to learn how to give 'Jolly' a chance- inspite of the traffic snarls, the weather, the anger, slut-walk or the need for it and the constant fight for everything.

See laughing is a tough job- cause unlike crying you cannot cheat it well- unless you have been practicing-well on your boss's bad jokes. I mean then obviously slowly you will forget when to laugh and soon enough someone else will have the last laugh. What I am getting to is that making people laugh needs a much more subtle and refined sense of drama and knowledge of human humor behavior- especially that of a culture. Funny- but here even Chaplin can fail.

So went for a taste of Indian stand-up comedy. It was in three acts.
Act 1 was by Abish Matthew- Abish urgently needs to hire a scriptwriter for if he wants to do some serious laughing he needs some seriously humored scripts. The script was hackneyed(boy/ girl/ penis/ vagina jokes-How old are you?) - I mean the jokes, not you. Another focus was his Malyali self- the Malyali names, dress, parents,culture- potential premises, obviously he has lived in this celebrated history- but just a premise does not create humor- needs more creatively ingenuous scripts to make it work more than the churlish American Pie way it works right now. Also at times he took too long to reach the actual humor- the exposition killed the climax.

Act 2 was by Sanjay Rajoura- Sanjay Rajoura was funny, rehearsed in a candid natural manner. Aware of his politics and the relevance of humor in politics. What I enjoyed most perhaps was the peep onto contemporary 'Indian-ness' in the humor- Where we can move from a local thana(police station) to Bill Clinton and come back to Osama Bin Laden via Abottland. Hardly any sexist repetitive humor. -Long and short of it- It works.

The last act was from Maya Rao- a senior theatre actor. A very interesting cultural experiment that was licking the edges of the humor genre but not settling into it- was teasing you to laugh as it wanted you not to laugh too much. Basically do not laugh so much that you miss the politics of the performance in the giggles.
An intelligent theoretical framework- an antithesis of the stand-up comedy genre?
Also, I felt her act is still a bit half-baked- it would help to chisel the first part where she went through the mythical history of her life through slides and a humorous live narrative commentary- loved the form; I even cherished a smile through the first part of her performance. Her choices were more than courageous! Not sure it was Stand-Up comedy- Absurd theatre, yes! Bravo for that itself.
Must add that I do think she performed as she is conceiving her performance- its still in its artful nascence.
So all in all one part worked...
Was worth the bucks just to know what makes Indians laugh apart from the pathetic laughing shows all over television...
'Cause I for sure do not find them funny.

Jagjit Singh- Pied Piper of India

You are to ghazal what Michael Jackson is to pop. You brought it out of the gharanas to the tired souls of the middle class- into their small Sanyo tape recorders, heard on T-series and HMV tapes depending on your pocket. You became many things- from tears of a young boy's heart-break to the sorrow of a lonely wife; to the sigh of a soul living away from home dying to hear some real Hindustani.

I have lived with your voice since I was a young girl; you were and I think you still are my mother's favorite ghazal singer. So you were our lullaby mixed well with other maestros.

Over the years I have heard you sitting on floors, in lobby s after stampedes and of course occasionally when all is strangely disciplined and ordered till you sing a Tappa and the quintessential sardarji gets up and starts dancing.

I recently heard you after about half a decade- you were obviously not the same guy of the 80s, now you sat on a chair with your harmonium-(and made fun of it yourself) but the microphone celebrated your honeyed-golden-voice like before although your vocal range had decreased from before. Age is cruel, equally cruel to all.

That day I had thought I should have never erased my magnificent memories of your live shows for that entertainment filled evening- But today I am glad I sat there, it was momentous to see the energy of that hall when five-thousand people sang with you- through the night- every ghazal from any which where. You needed your yellow old diary now and then for words- your lovely fans did not.
Good bye to you, YOU the Pied Piper of the Indian middle class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ratfxfj9yCo&feature=related

Dudette Says -

Dudette says is a bi-weekly column on Indian Urban Woman. Part fiction, whole reality.


She peeps with one eye into her I-phone– the alarm is still 15-minutes away. The reluctant eye closes as she goes back to sleep lazily, pampering herself in bed on a Monday morning. It is 8:15 am already.

Finally the young girl from Jharkhand fills-in the 15-minutes with tea. Dudette asks for another cup as she reads the newspaper in bed. Meanwhile she also checks her I-phone. That girl from Jharkhand is well- trained– the kind that comes from a good agency. She irons and keeps her clothes on the bed takes instructions for breakfast and leaves.

The girl from Jharkhand is dudette’s good wife.

Who is dudette?

After a few quick phone calls to arrange the morning agenda at office- she jumps out of bed. By then her laptop and lunch is readily arranged on the table.Its also carried to the car and put on the back-seat gently. Dudette gives instructions for the day as she drives off in her new steel gray four wheels. The girl from Jharkhand waves with a trite smile like those wives who stand in old over used night wear.

Life is as smooth as the inside of her SUV when her parents call.

They want her to get married. Dudette wants to too. A boy has to be found as dudette has none in her I-phone. She meets eleven over coffee. She talks to seventeen and marries the twelfth. He was the only one who earned more than her. He also used words like ‘profound’.

Who is Dudette?

Dudette is married. The moon dips in honey and the sun rises on another Monday.
The I-phone rings. It is 7:00a.m. She peeps reluctantly with one eye and decides to sleep for those fifteen minutes again. She hears that sound. She wakes up slowly in the kitchen.

Dudette’s mother-in-law likes her face in the kitchen, supervising the maid in the morning. She takes her tea walking around in the new house as her husband is sleeping till 8:15 a.m. His blackberry buzzes, he sleeps for another 15-minutes waiting for his wife to send tea in bed.

Dudette’s reluctant eye moans. The girl from Jharkhand goes back to the agency.
Our dudette is the wife now.

Who is Dudette?

Illustration - M. Healy's Photostream- Creative Commons

Veeru left a Note. Mausi going Jail. Really?

Malini Murmur killed herself - We as a society give a word to that act, 'we' that is the state and its people call it suicide. Very soon an attempt at taking your own life will not be a crime in India(except if you are living in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh). A law that was thought in the late 70's is finally seeing the light of day, after four decades. A highly criminalized police force has added to the delay and to the need for this repeal.

I have read-about and seen many distraught families paying bribes to police personnel (read extortioners) so that the officer(read extortioner) forgets to register a FIR against the suicide 'doer'. Most often the families are doing these thana (police station) rounds with fruits and food in hand for the 'victim' in the hospital. I have noticed a certain resentment in the family members, resentment against the person who forced them to be face to face with the visceral and unsympathetic system namely -section 309. In short section 309 shrouds suicide in this tabooed secret zone. This secrecy has added a layer of domestic persecution too, that is if the person survives the attempt to take their own life.

In the last few days I have read many informed opinions on the issue commending the repeal. I am resisting from discussing that here. Instead I wish to move to the less discussed idea of abetment to suicide. Even the playing sphere of that needs to be intently re-examined by Indian lawmakers. We need to at-least recognize its obvious complexity.

Malini Murmur left a note with her ex-boy friend's name. We know this man wrote a message on a social networking website, taunting the end of his relationship with her publicly (for his friends, on his page). The note is evidence now, so is his Facebook page. The investigation has begun, a FIR has been lodged by Malini's family. He has been booked under section 306 of the Indian Penal Code. He has abetted the suicide of Malini Murmur. He is invisible from the public sphere since that day. It has already begun for him.

Just a day after Malini Murmur committed suicide in the posh IIM Bangalore campus, Dhara Makwana, a 17-year-old girl of class XII of G T Sheth Girls High School in Rajkot hung herself to death in another hostel room. In a three-page suicide note she accused six of her hostel mates of taunting her and pushing her to take this step. Dhara mentions in the note that her hostel mates teased her about making one girl her ‘sister'. Based on a complaint filed by Mansukh Makwana, Dhara’s father, a case of abetment of suicide is lodged by the investigating officer here too, this time against a group of six sixteen-year-old girls whose names find mention in the note.

Just a month before Dhara's suicide we read about Mira Chopra getting relief from court in the case filed by her friend's mother. We read about the case because Mira Chopra is Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra's cousin sister. Mira was booked under section 304-B and a FIR was registered at DLF Phase II police station on July 5 after the death of Ruchi, wife of Sumit Bhutan, who is a friend of Mira. A complaint was filed by Ruchi's mother Sudha Gupta alleging that prior to his marriage with Ruchi in December 2005, Bhutan and Mira were friends. Sudha had mentioned that her daughter committed suicide due to the acts of Bhutan and Mira as the duo wanted to get married after Ruchi's death.

Some more flash back, we reach a day in Kamala Nehru College, a teacher marked an assignment which was plagiarized. She mentioned the plagiarized elements to the student and gave the student a zero. The student told the teacher that she never got a zero ever before. In turn, the teacher told her that may be no one noticed that you have been copying. The teacher also asked her to resubmit the assignment for consideration. The student said,"But you just can't give me a zero." The teacher informed her that all plagiarized assignments always get a zero in her evaluation. The student finally left for home, obviously unhappy that she lost her internal assessment marks. Next day the college authorities got a call from the student's father. The father said,"My daughter is very upset over X teacher's marking and is crying saying that she will commit suicide if the concerned teacher does not re-mark the same assignment." The college administrator and the concerned teacher finally put up the matter to the principal. The principal supported the position of the teacher. The college informed the father that everything you are saying/doing now will be used in a court of law if your daughter commits suicide.

The student obviously did not commit suicide. She also did not mention the zero again. But lets change one detail in this story. Lets say the student does not try the emotional blackmail but instead does take her life leaving the assignment and the infamous note behind. If that were to happen, both these would become evidence and the X-teacher would be booked for abetting suicide. Did she abet the student to commit suicide? If media gets the story she will have many other demonic horns coming out from her head.
This is just an example of how dangerous this abetting suicide law can become in the hands of a vengeant impulsive individual. And do not fear for a lack of them, there are many wanting short cuts in a busy transient life. It is quite possible that the teacher is not charged in the end. But we need to wonder if its not conviction enough in India to deal with courts and police stations for half a decade or more. And all that for doing your job. The teacher simply tried to stop plagiarism.

This incident happened to a colleague in the very college I teach-in. I witnessed the emotional trauma of the teacher. I guess she was plain lucky that she had a principal who thought it was relevant not to buckle to this kind of hand-twisting. Most principals/administrators would possibly be too scared(clever move), and will ask the teacher to re-mark the assignment just to be 'SAFE'. It has made a our creed very scared, scared of mainly doing our job as expected. Things that are intrinsically relevant to the job of teaching sometimes are not pleasant for all. I mean try catching a 'farra', in an examination room, and you will know what I mean. I am aware that some my colleagues are scared of doing that too, for the child might 'DO' something later. In my opinion they simply do not do their job. And may be that is a smart decision seeing the statistics in India.

According to the latest report of National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) every four minutes one person in India takes his or her life and one in each three of these victims is a youth below the age of 30 years. Although there is no real data on how many court cases are filed every year for abetment of suicide but one can easily put an estimate on how many cases are being registered every few minutes.

The Supreme Court of India has observed that a criminal trial is not a pleasant experience, and thus unless there is specific material and evidence of abetment to suicide, it is/will be hazardous to ask an accused to face trial. The court has asked courts to be extremely cautious in convicting the accused in abetment to suicide cases. A bench of Justices V.S. Sirpurkar and Cyriac Joseph has noted that a person who took his own life would not be available for cross-examination, to verify the allegations made in the suicide note. Justice Sirpurkar said that baseless and irrelevant allegations could not be used for prosecution for a serious offence under Section 306 (abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code. He added that in such matters, there must be an allegation that the accused had instigated the deceased to commit suicide, or secondly, had engaged with some other person in a conspiracy, and lastly, that the accused had in any way aided in any act or illegal omission to bring about the suicide. The bench further noted that the intention of the accused to aid or to instigate or to abet the deceased to commit suicide is a must for this particular offence under Section 306. The bench gave this detailed judgement as they quashed the case filed by the wife of a driver who committed suicide writing the name of his employer in a suicide note. The defendant(the wife) claimed that her husband committed suicide as he was being harassed by his employer. The court quashed the case owing to a serious lack of evidence to support the the wife's case. But as we come to know if this case, we must notice that the case with no real evidence(as said by the Supreme Court bench itself) found a life so long that it went all the way to the Supreme Court of India. You can just imagine the trauma of the accused and the defendant for all those years of hope and misery. So- Why was this case forwarded for trial inspite of clear lack of evidence? The subjectivity attached to section 306, the varying possibilities of interpretation make it a very potent tool in two hands - a)The grieving family of the person who committed suicide. Most families of the victim in India do not go for counseling, and often live wanting a closure. At times that closure can come from making one person responsible and a tangible cause because the victim left a note b)A criminalized police force often loves to make green-hay from every suicide, every four minutes.

The possibilities for misuse need to be curbed. Although obviously this must not be at the cost of those where clear and undeniable evidence apart from the note is available. You do remember that this same police force forgot to lodge a FIR against DGP Rathore inspite of glaring evidence available for abetment of the suicide of Ruchika Girhotra.

CCB UPDATE

Dear All

I got a email query so thought will be best to reiterate here too. CCB is an initiative aiming to see if community film making can be made a possibility.
We have NO READY FUNDS- TO fund these projects.

CCB will collect funds on project to project basis as said in the first note on CCB. So this does mean that like all experiments this yields nothing. As much as it means that it becomes a solid TREE!