Mile Sur Mera Tumhara (When Your Tune Merges Into Mine)

Something reminded me of ‘Mile Sur Mera Tumhara’ and I was immediately transported to another world. I knew I had to post the video to my blog for nostalgia’s sake.

Mile Sur was a national integration short song created in 1988 and it captivated millions of television viewers in India. More details at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile_sur_mera_tumhara

Mile Sur Mera Tumhara (When your tune merges into mine)
To Sur Bane Hamara (It becomes Ours)

Intended to highlight the diversity of India in terms of languages, cultures, races, musical styles and yet bring all those together to promote a national identity, this song became a pseudo-anthem to many and achieved iconic status. It features many famous (and not-so-famous) Indians lip-syncing to the words. Personalities from all corners of India, from sports, films, music and culture (and much to my relief excluding politicians). To this day many of us can sing its various verses in the various languages of India, not necessarily understanding all of it but nevertheless being overcome by the sheer emotion of being an Indian

Any Indophile or person interested in Indian music and culture, in Bollywood would surely appreciate.

Say It With Numbers: #2-2008

There are 49,000 airports in the world, 14,858 of them in the US

Lawrence Summers has pointed out that during the Industrial Revolution the average European’s living standards rose about 50% over the course of his lifetime (then about 40 years). In Asia, principally China, he calculates, the average persons living standards are set to rise by 10,000% in 1 lifetime.

30 years ago, China was a devastated country, one of the worlds poorest. Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution destroyed universities, schools and factories……Since then 400 million people have been lifted out of poverty in China – about 75% of the worlds poverty reduction over the last century

South Africa suffered more violent deaths per capita in 2007 than Afghanistan. South Africa is now one of the worlds 5 most violent places

In 1956, Lebanese Christians made up 56% of the country; today they are about 30%. Bethleham, birthplace of Jesus was 80% Christian when Israel won independence in 1948; now its about 16%. Some 75% of the United States’ 3.5 million Middle Easterners are Christian

The big bang is estimated to have occurred 14 billion years ago.

Indian IT industry

The top 20 companies account for 80% of the total revenues

500,000 employees hired by IT and ITES in 2007 as compared to 350,000 in 2006

India

In the partition of undivided India into the countries of India and Pakistan, between 800,000 and 2 million people died in sectarian fighting. Up to 14 million crossed the frontier, one of the largest mass migrations in humanity

Following the 1857 Uprising in India, the British imposed English as the official language for education and communication. Muslims went from near 100% literacy in Urdu to 20% within a half-century

India is the world’s 2^nd largest newspaper market, behind China

India contributes 70% to the global revenues from cricket

Life expectancy has risen from 32.1 years in 1947 to 68.5 years in 2007

Literacy has risen from 16% in 1947 to 61.3% in 2007

In 1600, when the East India Company was formed, Britain was generating 1.8% of the world’s GDP while India was producing 22.5%. By 1870 at the peak of the Raj, Britain was generating 9.1%

Movies ‘R’ Us: #1-2008

Saw an assorted range of movies in the recent past that don’t really deserve a more detailed mention than below

Gayab’ (Vanished!) (2004) is another one of Ram Gopal Verma’s factory movies fresh off the production line. Directed by: Prawaal Raman, Cinematographer: Pietro Zuercher, Produced by Ram Gopal Varma

It’s a niche movie a bit away from the standard formulaic masala movies but nevertheless retaining essential elements to attract crowds and retain the ethos of Bollywood.

It’s about a miserable loser in life (Tushar Kapoor) who manages to become invisible and then sets-about trying to fulfil his dreams, resorting to villainy if required.

There are 3 reasons why anyone would watch this pretty below-average movie: Rasika Joshi as the nagging mother (of Tushar) and wife (of Raghubir Yadav), Tushar Kapoor who so fits the character and Antara Mali, the sensuous dusky beauty.

Rasika Joshi is aptly cast and is a tremendous character artiste. Tushar Kapoor proves he is a very good actor (his transformation from a timid and pathetic personality is a worthwhile watch) but with his non-filmi looks its always going to be tough for him, pedigree (he is Jeetendra’s son) notwithstanding.

And as for Antara Mali, she oozes sexuality and she knows it and we know it and both enjoy the spectacle. I could just keep on gazing at her. Here’s a lady who delights in cavorting before the camera. She is not ashamed of her body and revels in bathing in camera light. Her voluptuous body is well documented by the cinematographer and no one’s complaining

Watch this movie also for its cinematography. Lots of unusual camera angles, crane shots and crisp editing

Watch this:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8073268394714291893&q=antara+mali&total=76&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

Bees Saal Baad (Twenty Years Later) (1962)

A puerile detective-cum-horror story moving at an imbecilic pace and a script with a decidedly odd ending for an Indian movie particularly of those times. Soppy acting all round, especially from the lead actors, Waheeda Rehman and Biswajit. The beautiful Waheeda acting a bit silly at times as village girls were supposed to do in those days.

With those clichéd techniques to enhance the scariness quotient of the movie: the eerie music, the camera movements etc., the villains trying to conform to bookish definition of villains (i.e. a patch covering the blind eye, funny white and black leather shoes, overcoats, sideways glances etc.etc., your patience will be severely tested.

About the only saving grace being 2 songs which are hummable to this day and age

Kahin Deep Jale Kahin Dil

Bekarar karke hame yun na jaiye – Lyrics are pretty average though

Playback: Lata and Hemant Kumar, Lyrics: Shakeel Badayuni, Music and Produced by Hemant Kumar

Chakra (The Wheel) (1980)

An ‘art’ film based in a slum and about the pitiful life of its inhabitants. Based on the novel ‘Chakra’ by Jaywant Dalvi (the famous Marathi writer), the movie is singularly bad in most respects.

Witness the low production values, as visible in the poor quality of the raw film stock, the patchy sets. A dusty and grainy movie just like the slum it roams through. A slum surprisingly shorn of chaos, with lots of open spaces albeit rocky and dusty. Extremely poor editing, sub-standard dialogues, songs that flit through incongruously like ghosts, slum dwellers behaving like caricatures of themselves, Characters trying to act like characters who are trying to say something serious, thought-provoking and deep. The trouble is, you can see through their fake-ness. The movie fails to evoke the pathos of the situation that we see the characters going through.

You almost feel you are intruding upon the script by actually listening to the dialogues. Starring such luminaries of Hindi cinema as Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Rohini Hattangadi; the quality of supporting actors is pretty low

At the end you are no wiser then you were in the beginning.

It is so bad that I would like to put on record the people associated with making it: Special Asst to the Director: Raj Kumar Santoshi, Original background music score arranged by Amar Haldipur, Lyrics: Madhosh Bilgrami, Playback Singers: Lata, Bhupendra Singh, Suresh Wadkar, Ravindra Sathe, Chandrashekhar, Sponsored by NFDC, Script and Dialogues by Shama Zaidi, Javed Siddiqui. Edited: Bhanudas, Photographed: Barun Mukherjee, Original Music composed by Hridaynath Mangeshkar, Produced: Manmohan Shetty, Pradeep Uppoor, Screenplay, Written and Directed by Rabindra Dharmaraj

Sarfarosh (Fervour) (1999)

A relatively modern hit movie starring Aamir Khan and which addressed the problem-of-the-season during that period: Terrorism (specifically the kind carried out by Pakistan-based terrorists) in India.

Although the film garnered much praise (dunno, what for!), scratch the surface and it’s just another masala movie. Nothing about it really distinguishes itself: the script, the acting, the songs, cinematography etc.etc.

The Pakistani ghazal singer (Naseeruddin Shah) as a terrorist recruiting agent really takes the cake!! What the fish, as the ‘OSO’ Shahrukh would say!!!

Die-hard Aamir Khan fans could probably find some take-aways from the movie. The character of AK is unnaturally rude and impatient in the movie but what I like about AK is his studiousness about the character and the script and his insistence on a certain integrity to run through he movie

His companion in the film is the sensuous Sonali Bendre who manages to look sexy without looking vulgar. Though her ‘don’t mind’ takiya kalam gets quite irritating after a while.

If you must watch any particular scene let it be the end confrontation between AK and NS. Two Muslims in real life acting out parts as an Indian and a Pakistani confronting each other and spouting some home-truths. If that isn’t meant to convey something specific, what is? And for a change, Pakistan is overtly mentioned as the villain, the enemy throughout the movie

So lets turn to the key songs, some of which are quite hummable:

Hosh Walon Ko (lyrics: Nida Fazli, Sung by Jagjit Singh. Choreography: Farah Khan) – a delightfully picturised song and Sonali looks sooooo charming

Is Deewane Ladke ko (lyrics: Sameer, Singer: Alka Yagnik, Choreography: Farah Khan)

Music: Jatin-Lalit, Story, Screenplay, Produced and Directed: John Matthew Matthan

'Thought' So

I read the following in some totally different context. And I couldn’t help but think that this so applies to the Bollywood film industry

“People learn more easily and retain information longer when the lesson is housed in a story, illustration or metaphor

If you go back to tribal behavior, one of the most critical people in any tribe was the shaman, the fundamental storyteller: Keep in mind, their job was not one of historical accuracy. Instead, their job was to tell stories that influenced and guided behavior. Stories were modified in order to achieve the appropriate kind of culture.”

For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so
- Shakespeare, Hamlet Prince of Denmark

I would rather that India perished than she wins freedom on the sacrifice of truth……..Democracy is not a state in which people act like sheep. Under democratic liberty of opinion and action is jealously guarded. I am not pleading for India to practise nonviolence because it is weak. I want her to practice nonviolence being fully conscious of its power.
- Mahatma Gandhi

Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to
– Mark Twain

Say It with Numbers: #1-2008

India

Tele-density (number of phones per 100 persons) today is at 22.52. In March 1999, this was at 2.8

Only 3% of Indians i.e. 7 million out of a working-age population of 321 million, invest in the share market. 1 out of every 4 of them owns ‘Reliance’ shares

Reliance: Dhirubhai Ambani’s sons, Anil and Mukesh’s estimated combined net worth at his death in July 2002 was $2.8 billion. When the brothers split in 2005, the figure was $7 billion. This year, in the Forbes list of world’s richest persons, Mukesh was valued at $49 billion and Anil at $45 billion

One in every 6^th village in the country does not have electricity i.e. 99,287 villages out of 5,93,732 (70% of Jharkhand villages, 44% of Orissa, 33% of Rajasthan, 25% in Bihar, 14% of Maharashtra are without electricity)

India Software sector

Software export revenue has grown from $100 million in 1991-92 to $32 billion in 2006-07

India accounts for 65% of global market in offshore IT and 46% in offshore ITES

Software sector accounts for 20% of India’s exports and 4% of GNP.

It provides direct employment to 1.3 million IT and ITES professionals

Every direct job in this sector leads to generation of 3 times indirect and induced employment

Over 95% of current exports are from 7 metros – Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and Delhi NCR

Movie Review: Jaanbaaz (The Bravehearted?) (1986)

This is another of Feroz Khan’s flicks: a story modest in its ambitions, lush locales, female stars exploited as far as the Indian censors permit (i.e. attractive women suitably undressed (or under-dressed)) big budget, foreign shoots, visually stimulating, above average music, songs and photography, full-on masala flick.

At the outset let’s get the story outline done-with and out of the way: Feroz Khan and Anil Kapoor play brothers, the former a do-gooder police inspector, the latter a goon. Dimple is an illegitimate daughter of Kulbhushan Kharbanda who is killed by the drug-lord Teja. She arrives to roost at the house of a distant relative: Sushma Seth (whose hubby is the rougish Amrish Puri) and who is the mother of Feroz and Anil. Feroz’s ex-girlfriend too has been eliminated by Teja. Dimple falls for Anil, but he is of the wham-bam-thank-you-maam mentality. Ultimately they do come together at the house of a friend of Anil’s: Shakti Kapoor who is a lackey of Teja. And the entire story comes together in a gripping finale.

A good reason to watch the movie is for Dimple: the sensuous beauty. Not a great actress, certainly not blessed with a great dialogue delivery or command over the language. Her laugh is not engaging. So all-in-all many flaws fully smoothened away by her disarming beauty. She is there for providing us viewers with visual bliss.

The shapely, buxom Sridevi makes a guest appearance as FKs dead ex-girlfriend. She was the reigning queen of Hindi cinema (roughly in the 80s) before she retired and Madhuri Dixit replaced her (roughly in the 90s). Since then the throne is unoccupied. What people found attractive in her, I am not so sure (certainly not her squeaky voice), but you can check her out in this movie, she is at her seductive best (trust Feroz Khan to bare his heroines as best as possible).

In a sense Hindi films always act as a social barometer of the age they live-in. And the villains of different eras reflect accurately the key problems faced in that era. This film tackles the drug menace.

Teja is the (unintended) comic villain with his chemical laboratories on verandahs of bungalows, that manufacture drugs like cocaine. So in addition to the miscellaneous chemical paraphernalia like beakers with coloured water and small burners with a wick lamp arranged on a small table, lookout for the big fat books in the backdrop including a dictionary which he no doubt reads in his leisure time. Pretty literate drug-lord that.

The songs to watch-out for are

1. Har Kisi Ko Nahi Milta (a hummable song in which you can watch FK stare unabashedly lustflly at Sridevi and u can perhaps you can understand his predicament)
   
   
   
2. Jaanejaana
   
   
   
3. Tera Saath Hai Kitna Pyara sung by the one-and-only Kishore Kumar
   
   

I have very little doubts that FK in his films offers tribute to the Penthouse / Playboy kind-of-influences. You can see that in many of the intimate moments in many of his films. And in this movie you see that between Dimple and Anil K. AK in his heyday got to get intimate with the top heroines of his time, I mean, they let him do that. What they found attractive in that hairy bear one doesn’t know but his virility led these top heroines to be very close-up with him

So this is a film which is juvenile in many respects: the dialogues, situations, characters etc. but one in true-blue masala tradition of Bollywood. Wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone as an initiation to Bollywood.

Starring

Feroz Khan

Anil Kapoor

Dimple Kapadia

Amrish Puri

Shakti Kapoor

Jagdeep

Kulbhushan Kharbanda

Sp.App: Rekha and Sridevi

Playback: Kishore Kumar, Manhar, Sadhna Sargam

Lyrics: Indeevar, Farooq Kaiser

Director of Photography: Kamal Bose

Dialogues: Madan Joshi

Written: K.K. Shukla

Music: Kalyanji Anandji

Produced, Directed, Edited by Feroz Khan

And btw, in deference to Bollywood symbolism: the rougish Hindu father (Amrish Puri) shows his subscription to syncretism by praying at the grave of a Muslim saint. Some things never change……………….

A Happy New Year to You

To the thousands of readers and admirers of my blog (may i say that till date you have done a jolly good job in remaining invisible), wish you and your near and dear ones a Very Happy New Year.

If you wish to comment on my blog, this is your best chance. Free Swiss watches to all those who log a comment.

Love

Nirvana

PS: You didnt believe that part about the free goodies did you? But then i am sure lots did, as evidenced by the hordes who regularly fall for the popular Nigerian 'my-uncle-died-but-for-some-indecipherable-reason-
you-win-a-million-dollars' scam