I can not help but remember a show by Russell Peters, a stand-up comedian, where he emphasizes the importance of one dollar for a Chinese merchant during a hilarious conversation between him and an Indian buyer. For extracting a good laugh, a dollar might be used as an insignificant entity, but for millions of people in Africa who are dying of AIDS due to abject poverty, a dollar means the difference between life and death.
We live in a world of air conditioned homes with plush interiors and abundant to eat and perhaps even more to waste. Do we ever recognize the fact that for every dollar we waste, there's a life getting wasted somewhere in Africa?
You must be wondering as to why am I stressing so much on a dollar. Well, for one, it's the per diem cost of the retroviral drugs that fight against the deadly AIDS virus. Statistically, half of the population of Africa is dying due to their impecunious state. Because they cannot afford that dollar a day to give them a fresh lease of life. Because the aid that's directed to them either is too meager or gets lost in the rampant corruption, somewhere. Because we'd rather spend that dollar on chicken nuggets than save a life. It's a situation which is not waiting to explode, it's an explosion that has failed to reach our deaf ears.
Ironically, US is facing another kind of epidemic, one that exists due to people being overfed. It's called obesity and yeah a dollar does make the definitve blow here too, only this time it manifests by the name of 'dollar menu'. That's another name for all the junk that McDonalds and it's fast-food cronies sell under the garb of cheap affordable food.
Living with this dichotomy, if I were to extract a moral from this story, would it be that Dollar kills both in its abundance and its shortage or perhaps I have had too much of Russell Peters lately!
(First in a series of posts that follow on this subject)
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
A feeding tube for thought
From eating a bagel cut into small triangular pieces for lunch to the most splashed face on TV, Terry Schiavo has come a long way. We could term it to be a journey but to me it's an ordeal of gigantic proportions.
Most of us will always remember her as a file photograph taken in 2002 (after she was kept alive in a vegetative state for 13 years) and flashed all across the length and breadth of this country by media networks. An inanimate figure with cropped hair and glazed eyes smiling in a retarded manner to the touch of her mother. I wonder if that's how Terry wanted the world to know her. Would she, who suffered from an eating disorder as she was afraid of being overweight, have liked us to remember her as this unsightly figure who could elicit nothing but a tepid sympathy?
We will never spare the time or the effort to read who Terry really was. We will never know that she was a shy and insecure kid who had more birds than friends. We will never know that she was so conscious of her looks that she veered into an eating disorder that caused the cardiac arrest. All that we will ever know is that she's someone who, for most of us, has become synonymous to a feeding tube.
Terry does not deserve it. She deserves to be left alone with her family and not crucified everyday on national television. She does not need the support of pro-life demonstrators; she needs a peaceful end to the drama that has surrounded her life. She does not need Congress or the President to use her misfortune to prove a point; she simply needs to retire far from the madding crowd where she's treated like a human being and not a primetime reality series.
In times that we live, sometime that's too much to ask.
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
A little waltz for a night
Remember in 'When Harry met Sally', Harry Burns had this peculiar habit of reading a book backwards. I don't have that problem but I, for one, did see the second part of a sequel without watching the first. Strangely, I don't regret it and like most of the people who can't wait to see the sequel, I can't wait to watch the prequel.
I am talking about 'Before Sunset' starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy and directed by Richard Linklater. It, IMO, is not a movie it's one hour and twenty minutes of meandering through the streets of Paris by two brilliant characters sketched by Hawke, Delpy and Linklater.
Before Sunset is an essay in human relations. It portrays the chasm in the life of the two characters left by the day they spent together in Vienna, nine years ago. Both Delpy and Hawke render brilliant performances. They are older and skinnier from their previous film, Before Sunrise, but still hopelessly in love with each other. There are moments in the film when Hawke looks at Julie with this touching helplessness, when she's not watching and she reaches out to almost touch him when he's not looking. The tension portrayed between them is mesmerizing.
The highest point of the movie is it's climax. Julie Delpy, in her melancholy song and the impersonation of Nina Simone leaves you with a feeling that's as simmering as the Chamomile tea she offers Hawke. Her dance fades into the titles and leaves you floating with the opening bars of her song....let me sing you a waltz!
I am talking about 'Before Sunset' starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy and directed by Richard Linklater. It, IMO, is not a movie it's one hour and twenty minutes of meandering through the streets of Paris by two brilliant characters sketched by Hawke, Delpy and Linklater.
Before Sunset is an essay in human relations. It portrays the chasm in the life of the two characters left by the day they spent together in Vienna, nine years ago. Both Delpy and Hawke render brilliant performances. They are older and skinnier from their previous film, Before Sunrise, but still hopelessly in love with each other. There are moments in the film when Hawke looks at Julie with this touching helplessness, when she's not watching and she reaches out to almost touch him when he's not looking. The tension portrayed between them is mesmerizing.
The highest point of the movie is it's climax. Julie Delpy, in her melancholy song and the impersonation of Nina Simone leaves you with a feeling that's as simmering as the Chamomile tea she offers Hawke. Her dance fades into the titles and leaves you floating with the opening bars of her song....let me sing you a waltz!
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
An englishman in New York!
Pain caused by humiliation must be one of its worst forms. I had an experience yesterday which left me with immense pain and hurt. I am simply trying to assuage it by sharing it with you. Texas, for the most part, has been a pleasant living experience for me. The weather reminds me of back home, the people are warm and friendly, much like the climate, and life moves at a comfortable pace.
In short, it's been good here up until yesterday when things took an ugly turn...literally.
Yesterday afternoon I took an exit from the freeway 114 and stopped at a traffic light. I was talking to my wife on the cellphone and missed the signal turning green for no more than a second. To my utmost surprise, I heard a honk, witnessed some frantic actions in the rearview mirror and a few minutes later was cursed at by the driver of a speeding Camry.The words still ring in my ears, “You’ve got a problem, you fu***** idiot immigrant!"
I felt seething rage rising inside me. Humiliation and insult followed. I tried to figure out what my crime was. It was not the delay and it certainly was not the fact that I was talking on the phone. The answer lied in the way we perceive people, how we see them - as white, black, rich, poor, alien, immigrant etc. I figured that this racial divide is deep-rooted in all of us and surfaces whenever our limits of patience are tested. In some cases it is less than a second, and in some a lifetime.
I remembered these lyrics from an old ‘immigrant’ song:
Takes more than combat gear to make a man
Takes more than a license for a gun
Confront your enemies, avoid them when you can
A gentleman will walk but never run...
I'm an alien I'm a legal alien. I'm an Englishman in New York
In short, it's been good here up until yesterday when things took an ugly turn...literally.
Yesterday afternoon I took an exit from the freeway 114 and stopped at a traffic light. I was talking to my wife on the cellphone and missed the signal turning green for no more than a second. To my utmost surprise, I heard a honk, witnessed some frantic actions in the rearview mirror and a few minutes later was cursed at by the driver of a speeding Camry.The words still ring in my ears, “You’ve got a problem, you fu***** idiot immigrant!"
I felt seething rage rising inside me. Humiliation and insult followed. I tried to figure out what my crime was. It was not the delay and it certainly was not the fact that I was talking on the phone. The answer lied in the way we perceive people, how we see them - as white, black, rich, poor, alien, immigrant etc. I figured that this racial divide is deep-rooted in all of us and surfaces whenever our limits of patience are tested. In some cases it is less than a second, and in some a lifetime.
I remembered these lyrics from an old ‘immigrant’ song:
Takes more than combat gear to make a man
Takes more than a license for a gun
Confront your enemies, avoid them when you can
A gentleman will walk but never run...
I'm an alien I'm a legal alien. I'm an Englishman in New York
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Black is beautiful!
Black is stark. Black is elegant.
Black is mellifluous. Black is absorbing. “Black” is also Indian cinema's coming-of-age effort!
We live in a world that's filled with light and it's spectrum of millions of colors. Most of us can separate the blues from the reds and the yellows from the greens. We can, metaphorically speaking, categorize sounds too into different colors based on their aural tones. But sometimes we stumble upon people who are less fortunate and have to live their life with a single color. Those people are the blind deaf-mutes of the world and the color is the color of darkness, the color of silence, the color Black!
Sanjay Leela Bhansali, inspired by the life of Helen Keller, takes this vacuum of human life and weaves a magical, almost surreal picture depicting the power of belief and human endeavor in a light that dispels the very notion the movie is based on. He takes the erstwhile black canvas of a blind deaf-mute and fills it with the colors of human resolve, hope and indomitable spirit. It shows that with guidance and encouragement even handicaps of epic proportions can be overcome.
The movie, in short, portrays the life of Michelle McNally, a blind deaf-mute girl and her relationship with a quirky teacher Debraj Sahai who refuses to give up in spite of the gargantuan proportions of the task at hand, which is to make Michelle learn to live life as normally as possible.
On the cinematic front, Bhansali works at his usual grand scale, only the fiery reds and bright turquoises of his earlier films get replaced by darker shades of brown and black. His canvas is big and almost Bergmanesque in many frames reminding you of the ice cold Swedish imagery with lavish doses of black thrown in to break the monotony. True to the theme and the name of the film, Bhansali uses color in a masterful manner to supplement the moods of his frames. It is magical and makes you want to go back to those haunting images again and again.
The performances embellish this superlative effort in movie making. First, its the mesmerizing portrayal of the young Michelle by Ayesha Kapoor which evokes a sense of both despair and hope in the viewer. It makes you look helplessly on as you are introduced to her sightless soundless world, and it makes you choke with emotion to see her learn to perform tasks which seemed Herculean a while ago. It is the performance of a lifetime and is delivered with authority and convincing aplomb.
Rani carries on from where Ayesha leaves off in her portrayal of Michelle and delivers a performance which is surely her best till date. She gives the character a sense of pride and infuses it with a never-say-die spirit on the screen.
Amitabh Bachchan as the idiosyncratic Debraj Sahai delivers a performance that leaves you both baffled and flabbergasted. His initial scenes of quirk, underlined by some fine dialogues by Prakash Kapadia, and later his first scenes in the McNally household give you a feeling of unsettlement. (which in retrospect I can see why) As the story unfolds, Amitabh's actions make more and more sense. They reflect the intensity of Michelle McNally as a perfect mirror. He is her voice and eyes. He is her 'Teacher'. He shouts at her, challenges her, inspires her, loves her and then forgets her!
Amitabh is simply fluid in every aspect of his persona.
Together, from their very first scenes in the movie, Amitabh and Rani inhabit their roles so completely, acting with such simultaneous command and finesse that the occasional bouts of histrionics that Bhansali offers can not distract us from their relationship. Both of them act with supreme nuance and neither is ever less than compelling!
Shernaz Patel deserves mention for her wonderful portrayal as a helpless doting mother.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali has created a movie which will make every film maker in his right mind push the envelope a little bit more. It is, and should be, the watershed moment of contemporary Indian cinema, akin to Ray's Pather Panchali. If marketed and promoted correctly, Bhansali might bag the ultimate honor for a movie, just like the man he's trying to emulate, Ingmar Bergman, did many a times.
In the last scene of the movie, Debraj Sahai opens up a symbolical window to his mind. The music rises to a crescendo as he takes Michelle's hand and makes her feel the rain.
The memories come back flooding in, only this time the landscape of these memories is not black, its stark white…
Black is beautiful!
Black is mellifluous. Black is absorbing. “Black” is also Indian cinema's coming-of-age effort!
We live in a world that's filled with light and it's spectrum of millions of colors. Most of us can separate the blues from the reds and the yellows from the greens. We can, metaphorically speaking, categorize sounds too into different colors based on their aural tones. But sometimes we stumble upon people who are less fortunate and have to live their life with a single color. Those people are the blind deaf-mutes of the world and the color is the color of darkness, the color of silence, the color Black!
Sanjay Leela Bhansali, inspired by the life of Helen Keller, takes this vacuum of human life and weaves a magical, almost surreal picture depicting the power of belief and human endeavor in a light that dispels the very notion the movie is based on. He takes the erstwhile black canvas of a blind deaf-mute and fills it with the colors of human resolve, hope and indomitable spirit. It shows that with guidance and encouragement even handicaps of epic proportions can be overcome.
The movie, in short, portrays the life of Michelle McNally, a blind deaf-mute girl and her relationship with a quirky teacher Debraj Sahai who refuses to give up in spite of the gargantuan proportions of the task at hand, which is to make Michelle learn to live life as normally as possible.
On the cinematic front, Bhansali works at his usual grand scale, only the fiery reds and bright turquoises of his earlier films get replaced by darker shades of brown and black. His canvas is big and almost Bergmanesque in many frames reminding you of the ice cold Swedish imagery with lavish doses of black thrown in to break the monotony. True to the theme and the name of the film, Bhansali uses color in a masterful manner to supplement the moods of his frames. It is magical and makes you want to go back to those haunting images again and again.
The performances embellish this superlative effort in movie making. First, its the mesmerizing portrayal of the young Michelle by Ayesha Kapoor which evokes a sense of both despair and hope in the viewer. It makes you look helplessly on as you are introduced to her sightless soundless world, and it makes you choke with emotion to see her learn to perform tasks which seemed Herculean a while ago. It is the performance of a lifetime and is delivered with authority and convincing aplomb.
Rani carries on from where Ayesha leaves off in her portrayal of Michelle and delivers a performance which is surely her best till date. She gives the character a sense of pride and infuses it with a never-say-die spirit on the screen.
Amitabh Bachchan as the idiosyncratic Debraj Sahai delivers a performance that leaves you both baffled and flabbergasted. His initial scenes of quirk, underlined by some fine dialogues by Prakash Kapadia, and later his first scenes in the McNally household give you a feeling of unsettlement. (which in retrospect I can see why) As the story unfolds, Amitabh's actions make more and more sense. They reflect the intensity of Michelle McNally as a perfect mirror. He is her voice and eyes. He is her 'Teacher'. He shouts at her, challenges her, inspires her, loves her and then forgets her!
Amitabh is simply fluid in every aspect of his persona.
Together, from their very first scenes in the movie, Amitabh and Rani inhabit their roles so completely, acting with such simultaneous command and finesse that the occasional bouts of histrionics that Bhansali offers can not distract us from their relationship. Both of them act with supreme nuance and neither is ever less than compelling!
Shernaz Patel deserves mention for her wonderful portrayal as a helpless doting mother.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali has created a movie which will make every film maker in his right mind push the envelope a little bit more. It is, and should be, the watershed moment of contemporary Indian cinema, akin to Ray's Pather Panchali. If marketed and promoted correctly, Bhansali might bag the ultimate honor for a movie, just like the man he's trying to emulate, Ingmar Bergman, did many a times.
In the last scene of the movie, Debraj Sahai opens up a symbolical window to his mind. The music rises to a crescendo as he takes Michelle's hand and makes her feel the rain.
The memories come back flooding in, only this time the landscape of these memories is not black, its stark white…
Black is beautiful!
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