Woody Allen

 

There’s something very Real about Woody Allen’s movies. Its like he takes all the riff-raff out of the situations he portrays and says “hey, this is how life eventually is. you have a woman fancying two men at a time, or you have this artist guy who just wants women around him and doesn’t stop a bit to hide that from anyone. this is life in the face, man.”

Most scenes are very lovable, and many of his movies have a narrative going in the background (like in Vicky … ) or there’s the protagonist breaking the fourth wall and describing his feelings, or the situation (like in Whatever Works, Annie Hall, etc). This saves the director a lot of time in terms of making actors chalk out prototype expressions / acts that would tell the average movie watcher that “they are now in love”, or “she is having a great time with this guy”. Whatever is the needful is said by the narrator or the protagonist and this way there is more time to get the story moving on, and to probably notice other things that are more important to the formation of the plot or the movie than simple logical movements among the characters.

 

I used to think that a movie in which Allen doesn’t act by himself, won’t be that good. But somehow, i hardly felt any difference between the two. He magically imbibes among his actors the same haste, stumbled speech, queerness, and the fear of commonplace life, that he himself so skilfully portrays in almost each role of his.

 

As an actor, he is one person who has achieved everything that he ever wanted his audience to know – while essentially being the same person in each movie. All his movies look more or less like sequels to each other with all the other actors and the scenarios just changing but the Allen is the same thin small guy wearing the same type of clothes, talking in his trademark way, and worrying about his trademark stuff.

 

He is one talented filmmaker whose films unfortunately go unnoticed by the “high circles”.

I think I like it better that way.

you’re fired

 

Reading headlines and news opinions about layoffs isn’t half as appalling when something like that happens close to you. especially something in the next cubicle at work. It almost makes one think that there’s absolutely no value for good work anymore in the world. I mean, a guy comes al the way from a different city, starts working, dedicated his entire life and thoughts to the work, but all he is for the company is a “resource”, with a price-tag attached. When the burger’s too expensive, they go for the hotdog. Bye-bye burger. Do these “HR” people even think once about what impact would this have on, the other employees (‘resources’)? Aren’t they taught psychology in their MBAs?

In a way, firing a professional isn’t too different from employing a poor jobless to do your gardening and then one fine day, just asking him to stop.

 

I think the problem is in the way we have perceived the contributors of knowledge and work to the making of successes. We tend to look first at the success – a company, money, a building. And then, like a pyramid chain, we tend to go downwards and downwards till we reach the point where the man who put his heart and soul into probably the smallest of the working parts, is the one looked upon as merely a liability. We don’t start by looking at him, that selfless contributor who sold his soul to dedicate himself for something he hardly even profits from.

Marx’s ‘alienation’ couldn’t be more true.

"Classes"

My tyrst with classes began, first, in my tenth standard when I joined the first and last tuition of my life. As far as I can remember, my classmates had been to this mysterious torture hole which gave more homework that school itself. I remember in my third standard or so, classmates leaving school hurriedly to gobble up lunch and reach their 'tooshan's.

When i joined my tuition it was more out of need for discipline than anything else and God knows i learnt it well.

These 'classes' have always haunted people of ages three and beyond. Right from the neighbourhood aunty/uncle who is good at maths, right till those hellholes designed to push people into engineering institutes, till professional institutions meant for the graduates and beyond and training them to excel at the world-wide competitive examinations. a Lot of money has been made off people and has made common teachers into tycoons..

Autos.

This blog is dedicated to this hard working tribe of 'shared' autowallahs, who instead of plying on 'meter' and looting the city of cash, instead do a service by moving on fixed routes with fixed prices and giving us humble citizens what the city buses cannot.

The first striking difference between a 'normal' auto and a shared one is the absence of meter in the latter. It looks rather odd since we have all grown up seeing that good old meter (usually made by Super Meter Works, Hadapsar, Pune) ticking away to glory and placed on that age old position on the frame dividing the driver's area from the passenger's.. in fact, seeing an auto without a meter would make one think it is out of order. Yet, almost everyone has had their own stories of their rendezvous with different types of auto meters. while those in maharashtra region are known to show values that need to be multiplied, divided, subtracted, added, and what-not to eventually land upon the correct legal fare. on the other hand, the autos in hyderabad have always believed in reducing the arithmetic load on people by always getting the meters tuned to the currently running fares. this gives a distinct impression that the meter moves too fast (since every 'tick' is worth 20 paisa). it is indeed palpitating to see the meter go tick tick tick faster than the auto itself (60-80 km/h)

we move on to seating space. all autos proudly write "to seat 3 only", "3 + 1", &c &c. For the metered autos, this rule more or less applies unless the commuters are ready to pay him a tenner to get that fourth friend sitting on somebody's lap instead of getting another auto. BUT, writing "to seat 3 only" on a shared auto is nothing but dry humour. The revenue model itself of a shared auto restricts the minimum number of commuters to 5. This is when creativity jumps in and you have specially designed coffee table-like seats on either side of the auto driver. These are to house two extra people beyond the three already sitting on the driver's seat. Metered autowallahs sometime spend that extra cash they get from plying a firang (Rs 300 only) into decking up the interiors with extra-cushy seats, posters of preity zinta on the left and sridevi on the right, and even a sub-woofer. (it is assumed that every true autowallah has a music system installed as a part of the whole machinery).

It is really good to see an auto with a "3+1" sign containing 6+1 people, with the latest telugu hit songs blaring from below the commuters seats.
Its even more fun to be one of the 6.

(more, later)

To Read


Isn't there anything better left to read?? Other than the usual editorials, opinions, of people sitting in high-rising airconditioned buildings? opinions that are based on, sigh, other opinions or things that are 'thought of' in other high-risers? Nobody writes about, say, African farming. Or the natives of Gobi desert?

Sigh.


Thrown into this mood by the overload of editorial opinions set upon the humble reading schedule..and how one of them talked about (very little, but still) the impact of the global recession on the poor, and the 'marginalised'. After which, of course, the article got back to talking about what the G20 is gonna do in the next meet. (another high-rising building-ers)

Top.

Remember, a top?

The other day I saw kids from a nearby slum playing outside my building, with a top. While the taller and evidently older one skillfully released the strung top with a graceful jerk of the hand, the smaller kids stood bewildered staring at it as it twirled at top speed and eventually came to the much-dreaded sideways tilted halt.

It took me back years, when my mom used to show me how to use it, followed by my failed attempts to do the same. I still can't manage it.

But, do today's kids even know what a top is? In this world of digital entertainment, and "fashionable" games, does any middle-and-upper class kid feel fascinated by that amazing piece of gravity-play?

I completely agree with today's Haaretz editorial titled "The benefits of rapport". Clinton's personal visit to N. Korea and his meeting with Kim Jong Il played an instrumental role in not just freeing the two American journalists imprisoned there, but also in sort of "cooling down" the childish stand-off between the two countries.
US, indeed, always has childish standoffs. Look at the way they treated Afghanistan and Iraq, look at the way they are treating N.Korea and Iran now. They seem to be running on a definite set of beliefs which nothing can change. If Saddam is bad, Iraq is bad (ooh but so much oil), so bomb the hell outta them, imprison most of them in Guantanamo, (but make sure the oil is safe and sound). For reasons undeclared (read: oil), they haven't attacked N.Korea yet and due to the diplomatic smartness of Iran in the way it has interlinked itself with other countries (notably India), it has been much more difficult for the US to attack Iran.

Why can't a US official go to N.Korea, or Iran, and just talk? "Nuclear States", they say. Well if you are so concerned about these going haywire with their nuke arsenals, wouldn't it be more logical to pursuade them to abandon their programs? And not that this stand-off and untouchability has resulted in anything worthwhile.
Why can't the yanks learn a thing or two from us? No matter what happens between India and Pakistan, there's always constant dialogue and interaction between the premiers of the two countries. I'm not advising that these result in fruitful solutions, but what I am saying is this reduces the coldness and stiff-upper-lip-ness between the two countries which certainly helps in reducing adverse "problems" like the ones Iran and N.Korea pose for the US.

A short essay on riding a bike in sadashiv peth [Part I]

India, with its excesses and ambitions, has a wide variety of powerful and powerless bikes availabe to the average customer. these, i may add, are auto and manual transmission based. while the ones using the former mode of transmission are those who dont have to worry about clutching, shifting, neutral, etc etc and thus speed up, slow down, stop, again speed up, at their own sweet wills, i shall leave them aside from this manual-transmissioned-perspective and in fact treat their presence on the roads with a (partly jealous) trivialization.

Sadashiv Peth is a different bet altogether from the wide, well-made, well-divided roads that our contemporaries are so used-to and happy 80 kmph-ing on.
What with its innumerable turnings, and nondescript lanes all along the roads, crossing 30 becomes tough. crossing 50 is what you do only on LSD and end up at a sadashiv peth 2-bed hospital with awesome docors, but expired tinctures.

While riding, a beginner usually regards 4-feet-wide lanes as useless and not very dangerous. it is when this same lane bournes a speeding Tata Sumo/Hyundai Accent/Tata Indica, that he gets shocked and in the end applied all the levers endowed to him by his two-wheeler and runs the risk of skidding and crashing into an old building, an old shop, or an old man.
These Sumo's/Accents/Indica's, mind you, do not respect that fact that they need to honk or dip before exiting from non-existence onto a main road. they would rather zoom past from one non-descript lane into another.

[To be continued]