Step Across This Line - Salman Rushdie

The right book to talk about would have been Satanic verses for today, but since I'm not bold enough to court jail yet, I'll make do with this one.

Good read overall. Its a collection of essays on varied topics like books, music, politics, sports, movies and television . And not the least being the fatwa , ban and free speech in general.

Some of it is too high brow for my taste, but much is well written and was read with much satisfaction and pleasure.

An excerpt from from an essay, written on 14th of 1999, which was the 10th anniversary of the unfunny valentine as he called it.

The best defence of literary freedom lies in their exercise, in continuing to make untrammelled, uncowed books.

Amen to that.

Free Speech.

Liked this idea of a flashread on 14th. Shall post something tomorrow. Meanwhile for now, one of my favourite quotes has always been this

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Long back I'd posted another of my favourites from Tagore on this blog, tomorrow might be the day to repost it - where the mind is without fear.

The Lives of others - Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Quite liked this one. I'd missed this few years back when it was making news, and caught it on TV by fluke. Lucky that UTV world movies exists!

An east german secret agent ends up bugging a writers house, and listening in to his life.. ( hence the lives of others). The story has some predictable turns, but its  restraint and direction is just lovely.
And I completely and totally loved the ending.

Do watch!

I'm OK, you're OK - Thomas Harris

A good introduction to transactional analysis, something we've heard of now and again.

The idea behind the PAC ( Parent, Adult and Child) , along with the concept of a transaction is explained. I found it a useful tool at times, however like all such tools and techniques, its a lot of hard work, and you end up leaving it aside a lot of times, because the effort of making your parent and child go back and the adult come forward is just too uncomfortable.

Some things I didn't like were its constant harping about treating PAC like the proverbial silver bullet which can fix everything. Plus there are lots of chapters towards the end about morality and world affairs etc, which I just found pointless.

Worth a read though.

Screw Indian values. Hail individualism, hedonism, freedom!

Some days you just wake up wanting to pick a quarrel with someone. Anyone. Today is one of those days. After giving it back to an unreasonable conductor, and staring down some street gawkers, trying to push down a cars rearview mirror, I finally arrived at office in one piece.

Came across this post from amit verma, and I couldn't agree more.  So since this is still a free speech country ( or so I think, rushdie, teli, mochi, godse notwithstanding, ) thought I'd give a piece of my mind in response to the senior idiot pung. Before mr sibal sits down to his screenings that is.

So lets take apart this punj fellows bullshit. After all if he's got an opinion, so have I.

Demise of family = Some ass in norway gunned down tonnes of people. If I remember correctly, some ass in the nepali monarchy gunned down half his family some years back. And thats your poster child country, right mr punj? Would you say that was a right reading of 'our' hindu family values ? eh?

Society in decline = Under 16- pregnancies, another pet peeve of these assholes. Lets consider this one. A ton of our grandmothers, great grandmothers etc etc, were pregnant by their teens. A few were taught to revere women who burnt themselves on their husbands pyre. Heck, even we were taught how jumping into a burning pyre was preferable to getting raped. Really??? I mean really??? If you consider death a better option than rape, then you really need to think about your real reasons for being worried about teen pregnancies. So what is this really about ? Is this about the age ( teens)? Or about the pregnancy (without the marriage)?  Or , ah dear lord, the failing control over a womans' sexuality?  Sure it becomes a social problem, but teenage pregnancies ( within the accepted social constructs ) of 70 years ago, were an equal problem - for the women. We didn't hear you complaining about that.

Loss of abiding values in family life = Increasing divorce rates - amits written an excellant piece on that, let me not repeat it, except to say - Divorce is a damn good thing, specially if it threatens our rotten family values. The more the damn things are threatened, the better.

Family = Marriages - ah, where do I even begin. If marriage is not contracted for raising a family, apparently it becomes haram. I can't even counter his logic, because he doesn't have one. I guess his brain stopped funtioning at the very thought of gays and liberals, ( not to mention me - a human being with no desire or intention to produce another human being. )  Extremist liberals are demanding that gay and lesbians be given the right to practice what they believe in. , erm and that is worrying because???

Powerful ideal leadership = Singapore. Singapore, singapore, what can I say about singapore, why not pick one of the poster communist countries then? Who chooses what is to be controlled? What if the chooser turns out a little unbalanced? But then the lure of the good benign leader is endless. We've had a good example of that in India in recent times.

The failure of capitalism is also ascribed to a stagnant population. Although my knowledge of economics is almost zero, that simplistic statement seems full of holes, even to me. Just some common sense thinking about the implications of such a 'fact' make the mind boggle. Lets leave that one aside to the economists to debate over, but if its true, then I guess the human race is doomed any way.


In a nut shell, what Mr punj is calling 'values' is after all a social system, which worked, like all systems, at the expense of some. In this case the women. So forgive me, if I choose the immoral west, or world annihilation, to a patriarchal system ( thats all it is, not a bloody indian value, its a bloodsucking system in which some thrived at the expense of the others)

From Medication to Meditation - Osho

Okish read, but just barely.

Started off ok while there was some emphasis on the deeper connection between the body and the brain, than allopathy ( or even some of the alternative systems) talk about. As an introduction to alternative thoughts about medicine, specially the disjoined, selective way in which allopathy is often practiced, the book has passages that would be interesting. Unfortunately, thats all there is, passages. I expected this to be a more hands on book, than an eulogy, and unfortunately thats what it turns into.



Plus, he gets a rather pompous and tedious, and I disagree a lot with some of his generalisations. About AIDS and cancer for example. Or the harping about beautiful childbirth. Or his rather selective take on sexuality. 

Overall, the book is wayyyy to long, the same thing could've been said in half the pages.

J Edgar - Clint Eastwood

Decent watch, but nowhere near great.

Its covers the life of J Edgar Hoover, the main man of FBI , right from the days before there was an FBI. It covers the days of how he sets it up, his proclivities towards 'organising', his outlook and fears- real or imagined. Also a big theme, is the dominance of his mother, and his closeted sexuality.

Leaving aside the accuracy or otherwise of the depiction, the movie as such somehow didn't get anywhere near as gripping as Eastwood's other movies. Although luckily not as terrible as his last. Caprio is pretty good though.

Worth a watch, but don't sweat much if you miss it.

Its not about the bike - Lance Armstrong

Good read overall.

He talks of growing up hard, the early wins, the cancer. And then the hard fight back from cancer, and back to the gruelling bike racing. And the historic wins at the Tour.

Inspiring. ( and no, I still haven't learnt how to ride the cycle!)

The Dirty Picture - Milan Luthria

Begins promisingly, ends disappointingly, watchable overall tho.

The movie chronicles the rise and fall of a siren in the south indian movie industry. Loosely based on Silk Smitha's life.

Has a pretty good pace in the ranchy first half. Pretty good acting by Vidya Balan. Naseer is priceless as usual. Liked the fact that the so called 'compulsions' angle was underplayed, although I expected it to be even more underplayed.

But the warning sign, comes on right before intermission, as a laboured speech is delivered, the typical dumbing down of a movie - the clear sign that the director realises that his art can't get the message across, either since he's too dumb, or the audience is too dumb, and so the 'message' will have to be spelled out, slowly, in small words and in capital letters.  At any rate, once you have to make her state the obvious, you know things aren't going well with the movie.

Post intermission, it slides down the usual path of cliches, too many to count. Emraan's part was badly scripted and badly cast.

Still doesn't scratch beneath the surface, and I totally hated the end. Its the anti-thesis of everything that Silk has to symbolise for me. For a woman who's protrayed as unapologetically as she is, to conclude with her in a fully covered saree, bindi, pining for that kiss on the forehead, sounds like a complete cop out. Fitting her right back into the stereotyped tack of womanhood.

Ok for a few laughs though.

The adventures of tintin - Steven Spielberg

Was thoroughly enjoyed, even though the story left much to be desired.

However i've always loved the cartoons, and was willing to forgive much, specially for snowy, Haddock, and the Thomsons, not to mention the nightengale.

Although, when compared with some of the other animation movies, this one really struggled with the story, and tended to be a bit of a drag initially, and even the ending was too much of a 'sequel, here i come'.  But there were some hilarious moments to compensate, and overall I had a good time.

I was perhaps 6 or 7 years old. Not more than 8 certainly. We lived on the ground floor, and a bunch of us usually played on the street and pavement right across the house.

Oonch neech ka papada used to be one favourite, with the oonch being the pavement of course. Vish amrit was another, which usually covered more ground. Chupan chupayi used to be good fun too, and I remember hiding behind the cows who were usually parked around randomly, ruminating away.

I remember looking at the pavement one day, and thinking that it really could do with a good sweep. But even back then, I was old enough to know, that what I was contemplating, was probably in the same league, as sneaking off a chavanni to buy an orange candy. Something to be actively discouraged.

I sneaked out the broom surreptitiously, nevertheless, and made a few ineffectual sweeps at the pavement. My mom found me within a minute however, ah the sixth sense they are endowed with. Specially when the kids are upto-something.

She explained pretty patiently to me, how this was not my work. Not my problem. How the best thing to do , was leave well alone.

I was reminded of that day today..

Yes, the attitudes run very deep. But if we don't try , we'll never know how deep right?

Rockstar -

AVOID. AT. ALL. COSTS.


ps, 2 days later:- Now that my intense frustration has cooled off somewhat, and I've realised that I'm in a bit of a minority here ( almost everyone I've spoken to has like it) , thought I'd update this post and flesh it out a bit.

To start with, I do stand by my original statement, I for one could not stand the movie at all. When the intermission sign came on, I remember thinking - oh no, I feel like I've already lived through a whole, slightly boring movie, surely there can't be more. And after the intermission, there were just too many cringe inducing moments, where I would have walked out of the theatre had I been watching the movie alone.

So, the customary summary , a young aspiring singer/guitarist does the rounds of colleges, but doesn't quite seem to be making the cut. He's adviced that true poetry can only come through pain. He then tries experiance the pain, by choosing to fall in love with a girl. Of course, the choosing goes nowhere, and of course these two end up really falling in love. However they spend many years, and her wasted marriage, to realise that they lauuuu each other. Meanwhile, our budding rockstar, gets even more pain his way, by being thrown out of his house, and but of course with all this pain, his music shines through, and he does get to be a Rockstar.

One of the biggest drawbacks is the completely stilted and unconvincing female lead. Plus I think the whole romantic angle, was badly scripted and filmed. Not as an idea, which was fine, but in how its actually come out. I found most of the sentimental scenes between the two, quite cringe inducing to say the least. Post intermission, they become unbearable. Ranbir, to his credit, does a half decent job, even in those god - awful romantic scenes. But overall, it just seemed a stumbling, bumbling silliness of a movie, with big pretensions.

The music, probably has a niche audience, in people who really appreciate rock , I don't , so it wasn't much of a turn on. Plus I found just wayy too many songs in the movie, the usual complaint with hindi movies. Inserting songs, whether they make sense or not. And I didn't really find the song lyrics blending into the movie. Maybe the songs as an album would have made more sense. Sadda haq - whats he angry about again, within the confines of the movie? katayan karun - you couldn't find appropriate dialect lyrics for a Jat and a Kashimiri? kun fayakun - was there a more forced plot turn to get him to nizamuddin to sing this? 

Anyway, I think in summary, this is just the usual 'romantic comedies' or 'musical love stories' that bollywood churns out, just with better finishing, but the same sad hackneyed plot and direction. I haven't seen any of them on the hall, only on tv, where i could channel surf, when I wanted, hence my  intense hatred for the movie.

If you like the bollywood love stories, you should ignore my AVOID advice, and make your own judgements.