I watched the Oscars a few days ago. I must say that I liked them, especially because they showed clippings of the movie-making process when the award nominations for the technical and creative categories were announced. They actually showed the designs for the 'Young Victioria' before it got the award for Best Costume Design. The lead characters from the Best Animated Feature nominations even spoke a few lines and they were funny despite not being human.
One thing that I noticed while watching the Oscars was that all the women nominated for Best Actress had the real lead role in their respective movies. Carey Mulligan from An Education played a London schoolgirl, Meryl Streep from Julie &Julia played the famous cook Julia Child, Sandra Bullock (who actually won) played a suburban woman who adopts a black teenager in The Blind Side, Helen Mirren played Leo Tolstoy's wife in The Last Station and Gabourey Sidibe played an abused teenager in Precious. When I say that they had real lead roles, I mean that they were the lead in movies which told the stories of interesting woman. They were not part of the show, they were the show. It is good to know that there still are filmmakers who consider the lives of women worthy of cinematic reflection.
And that brings me to the Indian film industry. Over the past few years, I have noticed a steep decline in the number of lead actresses in our country. Most of the new actresses are former models who just look pretty but I doubt that they would be able to carry a movie on their own shoulders without having a big actor around. Even the characters they potray are bland and one dimensional. Many of them potray young women whose only purpose in life is to live for other people, especially their leading man. The good actresses, who may score a little low on beauty but are more talented than all Bollywood actors put together, are forced to do art films which are beautiful creations that do rounds of film festivals but never make it to multiplexes.
Remember Rani Mukherjee in Black or Karishma Kapoor in Fiza? Where did all the movies about beautiful, strong, independent yet feminine women go? Does this mean that the psyche of most Indians which like to have women in the kitchen or in a beauty pageant has trickled its way into the movie halls and now we are forced to watch women be treated as mere glamour dolls? Why can't we think of women who have brains and several shades to their characters? Are all such women dead, or have we just forgotten to look at women as something different and deeper than what we perceive them to be?
I am going to keep waiting for a good Indian movie about the life of a woman (and no, Priyanka Chopra walking down the ram in Fashion does not count). Meanwhile, here is a movie I suggest you watch. It's called The Runaways and it stars Kristen Stewart (you may know her from Twilight) and Dakota Fanning (who was the little girl in War Of The Worlds). The Runaways were the first all-girl rock band in the 1970s. Their members were mere teenagers when the band reached its height of fame. This fame, although notoriously short-lived, opened the doors for many girl singers, and the fact that you see Madonna and Britney Spears or even Sunidhi Chauhan on TV today is thanks to this band. Even though these girls were controversial and their life included scandals like drug addiction, the very fact that they chose to assert themselves through their music and played the electric guitar and the drums instead of softer instruments like the piano is interesting. These were women who refused to conform and lived an unconventional life. They thought like no man could. They were also the singers of a song called 'Cherry Bomb' which I think is the mother of all teen anthems.
Below is a trailer of The Runaways and a video of the song 'Cherry Bomb'.
And by the way, I am pretty sure that there are a lot of wonderful, inspiring women in India whose lives could be the subject of movies. We did give the world a great movie called Mother India, didn't we? Khoon Bhari Maang was a Bollywood movie, right? This means that even Bollywood can make dazzling movies about women. Until such a movie comes, enjoy this video from Mother India:
Monday, March 29, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Change Things In India Before Becoming American
On Sunday, I read a column on high-heels. Yes, one page in an Indian weekly was wasted over an article about high-heels, which by the way very few people can afford in our country.
Over the years, I have observed that English periodicals have a thing for publishing articles about stuff that most Indians cannot afford. For example, how many people can actually afford to live in a five-star hotel? So why do we have columns dedicated solely to five-star hotels?
And then, there are movies which have absolutely nothing to do with Indian society. Let's take 'Wake Up Sid' as an example. Photography is not a viable career option in India (unfortunately). Why would a girl come to Mumbai from Kolkata to become a writer when there are more magazines and journals published in West Bengal than in Maharashtra? Nobody can buy a cheap flat near Marine Drive. And by the way, nowhere in India do platonic friends live with each other the way Sid and Ayesha did. Evidently, 'Wake Up Sid' is a Hindi movie, but is purely American in its ways.
Truth is, we are slowly detaching ourselves from our society. We are trying to be American, when we are actually Indian. We dream of the freedom that youth in the west already has. We dream of the luxury that most Indians do not have. I actually think this is a good things, but not completely.
Let us try to be Indians for a change. Isn't that better than hanging out at forbidden clubs and then taunting divorced women for not being able to handle relationships? Let us first try to respect people of all professions and not think of domestic servants and sweepers as people who are meant to disappear into the background once they are done serving us. We do respect a waitress' profession when the waitress is played by someone like Julia Roberts. Maybe then we can think about unviable professions like photography and writing. Maybe we should try taking the responsibility that comes with freedom before actually experiencing the perks of freedom. Maybe we should change things in India before becoming pseudo-American.
Over the years, I have observed that English periodicals have a thing for publishing articles about stuff that most Indians cannot afford. For example, how many people can actually afford to live in a five-star hotel? So why do we have columns dedicated solely to five-star hotels?
And then, there are movies which have absolutely nothing to do with Indian society. Let's take 'Wake Up Sid' as an example. Photography is not a viable career option in India (unfortunately). Why would a girl come to Mumbai from Kolkata to become a writer when there are more magazines and journals published in West Bengal than in Maharashtra? Nobody can buy a cheap flat near Marine Drive. And by the way, nowhere in India do platonic friends live with each other the way Sid and Ayesha did. Evidently, 'Wake Up Sid' is a Hindi movie, but is purely American in its ways.
Truth is, we are slowly detaching ourselves from our society. We are trying to be American, when we are actually Indian. We dream of the freedom that youth in the west already has. We dream of the luxury that most Indians do not have. I actually think this is a good things, but not completely.
Let us try to be Indians for a change. Isn't that better than hanging out at forbidden clubs and then taunting divorced women for not being able to handle relationships? Let us first try to respect people of all professions and not think of domestic servants and sweepers as people who are meant to disappear into the background once they are done serving us. We do respect a waitress' profession when the waitress is played by someone like Julia Roberts. Maybe then we can think about unviable professions like photography and writing. Maybe we should try taking the responsibility that comes with freedom before actually experiencing the perks of freedom. Maybe we should change things in India before becoming pseudo-American.
Think Of A Character
When I was young, I was a huge fan of the Powerpuff Girls. I even made a huge poster of them, which continues to grace the living room wall in my Delhi flat even though it has been ten years. On one of the episodes, I saw Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup making up an imaginary friend. This imaginary friend was created by them because they, being 'real people', could not fight against an evil 'imaginary friend' created by one of their lonely classmates, who despite being imaginary was starting to take over the classroom.
So what are imaginary friends? Imaginary friends, also known as 'imaginary companions' are pretend characters often created by children. Imaginary friends often function as tutelaries (or perform a tutelary function) when they are engaged by the child in play activity. Imaginary friends may exist for the child into adolescence and sometimes adulthood. Imaginary friends often have elaborate personalities and behaviors. Although they may seem very real to their creators, studies have shown that children understand that their imaginary friends are not real.
But if expert opinion were to be taken, we would know that i has been theorized that children with imaginary companions may develop language skills and retain knowledge faster than children without them, which may be because these children get more linguistic practice while carrying out "conversations" with their imaginary friends than their peers get. Some psychologists have suggested that children simply retain but stop speaking about imaginary friends, due to adult expectations and peer pressure.
I never had an imaginary friend. In fact, I don't think any Indian kid has an imaginary friend and even if some creative kid does, he won't tell anybody about it. The reason is pretty simple. In India, people think that if your life involves anything which is larger than life or cannot be seen, you are crazy. We are very liberal about calling people 'crazy'. Going to the psychiatrist or getting some therapy is equivalent to social suicide. Maybe that is why many people who really suffer from mental disorders hesitate to get medical help before it is too late....
Anyways, imaginary friends have been used by many writers, graphic novelists and film-makers. Chances are, no matter which newspaper you subscribe, you have at least once seen the 'Calvin and Hobbes' comic script. It follows the humorous antics of Calvin, a highly precocious and adventurous six-year-old boy, and Hobbes, his sardonic stuffed tiger. Hobbes is Calvin's imaginary friend. He appears to be real only when he is with Calvin and is portrayed as a stuffed animal when other people like Calvin's family members are around.
The only example of an imaginary friend in Indian media is Jai's imaginary friend from the old TV show (one of my favourite TV shows of all time, by the way) Just Mohabbat, which starred Vatsal Seth (the actor last seen in Toh Baat Pakki). In this TV show, Jai is always accompanied by an imaginary friend whose name I have now forgotten, who gives him advice and is an integral part of his life.
Even though I never had an imaginary friend, I have always been good at creating characters in my head. Five years ago, I wrote a novel called 'Space Travellers'. As the name suggests, it was about aliens and UFOs and stuff like that. But to add my own twist to it, the story was centred by me around ICUP (Interplanetary Council Of Universal Protection), a fictitious organization I had based on the UN. The only difference was that besides having members from all countries, it also had members from all planets. This novel of mine was never published.
For this book, I had depicted 'Plutoites', that is inhabitants of Pluto, as grown people who despite being adults look, speak and dress like babies. Since Pluto was considered a planet back then, and was hence deemed as the smallest planet, I decided the Plutoites shouls be the smallest people. The Jupiterians, that is inhabitants of Jupiter, were the complete opposite. They were giants with booming voices and gaits like armymen.
Over the years, I have created at least hundred characters and written stories about them. These characters have kept me better company than some people from my real life. That is why I don't need Facebook and Twitter and thousands of friends in the virtual world. My 'virtual' friends are safely locked in my head and no, they can never be cyber criminals.
So what are imaginary friends? Imaginary friends, also known as 'imaginary companions' are pretend characters often created by children. Imaginary friends often function as tutelaries (or perform a tutelary function) when they are engaged by the child in play activity. Imaginary friends may exist for the child into adolescence and sometimes adulthood. Imaginary friends often have elaborate personalities and behaviors. Although they may seem very real to their creators, studies have shown that children understand that their imaginary friends are not real.
But if expert opinion were to be taken, we would know that i has been theorized that children with imaginary companions may develop language skills and retain knowledge faster than children without them, which may be because these children get more linguistic practice while carrying out "conversations" with their imaginary friends than their peers get. Some psychologists have suggested that children simply retain but stop speaking about imaginary friends, due to adult expectations and peer pressure.
I never had an imaginary friend. In fact, I don't think any Indian kid has an imaginary friend and even if some creative kid does, he won't tell anybody about it. The reason is pretty simple. In India, people think that if your life involves anything which is larger than life or cannot be seen, you are crazy. We are very liberal about calling people 'crazy'. Going to the psychiatrist or getting some therapy is equivalent to social suicide. Maybe that is why many people who really suffer from mental disorders hesitate to get medical help before it is too late....
Anyways, imaginary friends have been used by many writers, graphic novelists and film-makers. Chances are, no matter which newspaper you subscribe, you have at least once seen the 'Calvin and Hobbes' comic script. It follows the humorous antics of Calvin, a highly precocious and adventurous six-year-old boy, and Hobbes, his sardonic stuffed tiger. Hobbes is Calvin's imaginary friend. He appears to be real only when he is with Calvin and is portrayed as a stuffed animal when other people like Calvin's family members are around.
The only example of an imaginary friend in Indian media is Jai's imaginary friend from the old TV show (one of my favourite TV shows of all time, by the way) Just Mohabbat, which starred Vatsal Seth (the actor last seen in Toh Baat Pakki). In this TV show, Jai is always accompanied by an imaginary friend whose name I have now forgotten, who gives him advice and is an integral part of his life.
Even though I never had an imaginary friend, I have always been good at creating characters in my head. Five years ago, I wrote a novel called 'Space Travellers'. As the name suggests, it was about aliens and UFOs and stuff like that. But to add my own twist to it, the story was centred by me around ICUP (Interplanetary Council Of Universal Protection), a fictitious organization I had based on the UN. The only difference was that besides having members from all countries, it also had members from all planets. This novel of mine was never published.
For this book, I had depicted 'Plutoites', that is inhabitants of Pluto, as grown people who despite being adults look, speak and dress like babies. Since Pluto was considered a planet back then, and was hence deemed as the smallest planet, I decided the Plutoites shouls be the smallest people. The Jupiterians, that is inhabitants of Jupiter, were the complete opposite. They were giants with booming voices and gaits like armymen.
Over the years, I have created at least hundred characters and written stories about them. These characters have kept me better company than some people from my real life. That is why I don't need Facebook and Twitter and thousands of friends in the virtual world. My 'virtual' friends are safely locked in my head and no, they can never be cyber criminals.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Decline Of The Handwriting
Do you have any idea what your mother's handwriting looks like? Or your father's? When was the last time you read a secret note from your best friend?
There was a time when handwriting meant a lot to people. Ancient Roman handwriting styles included Roman cursive, and the more calligraphic rustic capitals and square capitals, the latter of which forms the basis for modern capital letters and was used in stone inscriptions. In India, the inscriptions from the Harappan civilisation and Indus Valley civilisation give us some serious insights into our past.
What you see above is an example of classic American business handwriting known as Spencerian script.
Gandhiji was one of the many great men to lay emphasis on good handwriting. But despite the success of Lage Raho Munnabhai, nobody seems to acknowledge the beauty and grace of good handwriting anymore. The beautiful calligraphic script that people once prided themselves for have now turned into clumsy scrawls, as you can see below:
When I was younger, I won an award for good hadwriting for two consecutive years. The school I went to back then, i.e. Birla Vidya Niketan in New Delhi, even organized annual handwriting contests for young children. Back then, I never realized the importance of this, but today I know why a hand-written letter looks and feels so much better than an e-mail written in a computer-made font.
There are many people who say that e-mails and computers are just a way of saving paper. We don't want our beloved trees to be felled, do we? But such notions take the attention from more obvious causes of deforestation such as large-scale industrialization in forest areas, wastage of paper and aversion towards recycled paper. If schools made it mandatory for students to use recycled paper notebooks, a lot of paper could be saved. But no. Teachers are way too bothered about the relatively darker shade of recycled paper. So, now most people think that e-mails and phone texts are the solution to deforestation (seen that Idea ad with Abhishek Bachchan as a tree?). But this has led to the disappearance of the traditional culture of handwriting. Today, most teenagers are more comfortable writing e-mails than letters. What if you have a relative living in some part of West Bengal which does not have internet connection? What do you do in such a situation? Break off all ties with them because picking up a pen and writing a letter is too cumbersome for you?
Today, we don't know what our best friend's handwriting is like. Gone are the days when people wrote emotional notes to their loved ones. Today we have generic smileys which convey emotions. Whether or not you are truly smiling, the same smiley will appear on the computer screen. The art of expressing one's emotions through writing has been on the decline because ready-made 'emoticons' are just a click away.
Did you know how much the disappearance of handwriting has hurt the art and business of penmanship? In the United States, starting in the late 19th century, there were cries that handwriting was being neglected due to the typewriter. By the 21st century, blame was being attached to the use of computers. Linked to this decline in penmanship has been a decrease from two hours per day in penmanship instruction during the 19th century to less than an hour per semester in 2007.
And what about our history? How will our future generations (if they ever get a chance to grace this planet given the constant threats of the end of the world being presented by movies like '2012' and 'I Am Legend') ever get to know anything about our lives? We have not made strong monuments which will stand the test of time. Not only that, we won't have inscriptions and scripts written by us which give a detailed account of our lives and practices. What do you expect them to do? Access our Facebook or Twitter page thousand years from now? But won't our internet accounts expire by then and won't our posts and blogs become irrelevant once new technology comes in?
Thankfully, there are still some people who understand the value of good handwriting. Throughout most British oriented countries such as Nepal, Competitions are held almost everyday as penmanship is an important asset of every student. These competitions carefully analyze the handwriting of the competitor and chooses the one with most ease, neatness, and beauty.
Next Valentine's Day- a festival which has lost all meaning and become a commercialized affair- try writing a handwritten note to all the people you love. Next Diwali, make a card and just write 'Happy Diwali' inside it. Next Christmas, pick up a sparkly red pen and make a 'Merry Christmas' note to your friend. Write a letter to your friend living in another city and experience the excitement of waiting for a reply. I assure you, these events will become just a little bit more exhilarating.
There was a time when handwriting meant a lot to people. Ancient Roman handwriting styles included Roman cursive, and the more calligraphic rustic capitals and square capitals, the latter of which forms the basis for modern capital letters and was used in stone inscriptions. In India, the inscriptions from the Harappan civilisation and Indus Valley civilisation give us some serious insights into our past.
What you see above is an example of classic American business handwriting known as Spencerian script.
Gandhiji was one of the many great men to lay emphasis on good handwriting. But despite the success of Lage Raho Munnabhai, nobody seems to acknowledge the beauty and grace of good handwriting anymore. The beautiful calligraphic script that people once prided themselves for have now turned into clumsy scrawls, as you can see below:
When I was younger, I won an award for good hadwriting for two consecutive years. The school I went to back then, i.e. Birla Vidya Niketan in New Delhi, even organized annual handwriting contests for young children. Back then, I never realized the importance of this, but today I know why a hand-written letter looks and feels so much better than an e-mail written in a computer-made font.
There are many people who say that e-mails and computers are just a way of saving paper. We don't want our beloved trees to be felled, do we? But such notions take the attention from more obvious causes of deforestation such as large-scale industrialization in forest areas, wastage of paper and aversion towards recycled paper. If schools made it mandatory for students to use recycled paper notebooks, a lot of paper could be saved. But no. Teachers are way too bothered about the relatively darker shade of recycled paper. So, now most people think that e-mails and phone texts are the solution to deforestation (seen that Idea ad with Abhishek Bachchan as a tree?). But this has led to the disappearance of the traditional culture of handwriting. Today, most teenagers are more comfortable writing e-mails than letters. What if you have a relative living in some part of West Bengal which does not have internet connection? What do you do in such a situation? Break off all ties with them because picking up a pen and writing a letter is too cumbersome for you?
Today, we don't know what our best friend's handwriting is like. Gone are the days when people wrote emotional notes to their loved ones. Today we have generic smileys which convey emotions. Whether or not you are truly smiling, the same smiley will appear on the computer screen. The art of expressing one's emotions through writing has been on the decline because ready-made 'emoticons' are just a click away.
Did you know how much the disappearance of handwriting has hurt the art and business of penmanship? In the United States, starting in the late 19th century, there were cries that handwriting was being neglected due to the typewriter. By the 21st century, blame was being attached to the use of computers. Linked to this decline in penmanship has been a decrease from two hours per day in penmanship instruction during the 19th century to less than an hour per semester in 2007.
And what about our history? How will our future generations (if they ever get a chance to grace this planet given the constant threats of the end of the world being presented by movies like '2012' and 'I Am Legend') ever get to know anything about our lives? We have not made strong monuments which will stand the test of time. Not only that, we won't have inscriptions and scripts written by us which give a detailed account of our lives and practices. What do you expect them to do? Access our Facebook or Twitter page thousand years from now? But won't our internet accounts expire by then and won't our posts and blogs become irrelevant once new technology comes in?
Thankfully, there are still some people who understand the value of good handwriting. Throughout most British oriented countries such as Nepal, Competitions are held almost everyday as penmanship is an important asset of every student. These competitions carefully analyze the handwriting of the competitor and chooses the one with most ease, neatness, and beauty.
Next Valentine's Day- a festival which has lost all meaning and become a commercialized affair- try writing a handwritten note to all the people you love. Next Diwali, make a card and just write 'Happy Diwali' inside it. Next Christmas, pick up a sparkly red pen and make a 'Merry Christmas' note to your friend. Write a letter to your friend living in another city and experience the excitement of waiting for a reply. I assure you, these events will become just a little bit more exhilarating.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)