Payanam – A review
There are some movies that you watch with enormous expectations. Some of these bowl you over with the sheer beauty of the filmmaking. Others leave you feeling shortchanged. And yet others make you happy, but make you wonder what that little missing component is, that will make a good film perfect. Payanam falls into the third category. The combination of Radha Mohan and Prakash Raj was enough to draw me to the film. Their earlier venture was quite satisfying and I expected to see a well-made film. And they do not disappoint. However, there are those nagging little details that differentiate the good from the great.
The screenplay is tailored to perfection. The pacing of the narrative, the style, the use of humour in the most tense situation, the sheer tightness of the script…all these and more keep you on the edge of your seat. Not once until intermission are you compelled to check your watch to see when you can get your popcorn. The narrative ensures that no further entertainment is needed. In all such dramas, the depth of the characters are normally open to question because of the sheer numbers of people that you are compelled to handle. When your story requires you to centre the narrative around more than a hundred passengers confined to an aircraft, there is plenty of scope for mistakes. This is especially true in the case of hijack dramas with big stars where the action needs to centre around them. Payanam steers clear of that danger (and of succumbing to commercial needs and inserting an item number in the climax) by choosing to use lesser-known, but highly talented actors in place of big-name stars. Each of the characters is etched with a decent level of detail. As a result, the middle-aged couple on the way to see their son, the young woman leaving her husband for good, the priest, the Pakistani family returning to Karachi after their child’s heart surgery; each of these characters become real people and not merely victims in a hijack waiting to be saved by a hero. And this approach, despite the presence of a star like Nagarjuna is refreshing.
The soundtrack is unobtrusive and conveys the tension in just the right measure. No exaggeration. The smaller characters, although garnering much less screen time, are as important to the main plot as the protagonists. Indeed, at one point you realize there are no protagonists really. Just a bunch of people who are trying to do their best to save a hundred passengers from a fate worse than death. Nobody is more important than the other. But nobody is less important either. The camera work and editing reminded me strongly of Unnaipol Oruvan. Slick editing, and ruthless trimming away of non-essentials have done a great deal to enhance the already tight scripting.
One thing about Payanam that appealed to me personally was the use of humour to ease the tension on screen. Wit, sarcasm and dry humour were the hallmark of Payanam and for me, that worked big-time. I have never been a big fan of Vadivel-type slapsticky humour and this is precisely what Payanam diligently avoided. Kudos to the team for that! Me, being the die-hard Kamal fan seem to compare every non-Kamal film I see with something Kamal may have produced from his stables. This is especially true in the case of my taste for humour. It is perhaps a tribute to the few Indian directors who still swear by satire and sarcasm as a weapon for criticism, that the filmmakers have chosen to employ humour even in the most critical situations in the film.
On the whole, Payanam is a satisfying film. That said, the little things sometimes irk. Like why is Yusuf Khan reading The Hindu in a scene that is supposed to be taking place somewhere in Kashmir. Ok, he is really in Tirupathi, but a local Kashmiri newspaper may have been more convincing, in my opinion. I know this is probably nitpicking and that it is entirely irrelevant to the plot, but these are the little things that go into making a good film great. Also, after all that jihadist propoganda and talk of kafirs, why does one of the terrorists have to be Hindu? Why this obsessive need for political correctness?
The bottomline is, the film is definitely watchable. It is well-made, well-scripted, well-edited and well-structured. It is not one of those films you should watch between several breaks on a pirated DVD. Go to a theatre please! This is worth the effort.
Of democracy and democratic traditions…
There has been a raging debate on the origins of Indian democracy on Twitter ever since I tweeted about Christophe Jaffrelot’s latest Foreign Policy Review Essay, comparing democracy in India and in Pakistan. I strongly recommend that you read Jaffrelot’s article and Nitin Pai’s superb fisking of the essay at The Acorn, before moving on with this blogpost.
The one problem I see with Jaffrelot’s approach to India and its democracy is that he tends to view everything Indian democracy stands for from a western perspective. I am saying this after studying not just his articles and essays, but after having studied under him during my two-year masters at Sciences Po, of which CERI, his parent organization, is a part. First, he believes that all democratic tradition in India is a legacy of the British Raj, without which India would still have been a nation of barbarians who do not know how to rule themselves. He completely discounts the influence of native cultures and traditions, which may be called democratic in the vaguest possible sense. Second, he attributes the success of democracy in India, during his lectures as well as through his writing, to the en masse politicization of the Indian population by the Indian National Congress and the independence movement. The role of other political movements however marginal, tend to be completely ignored, not just by Jaffrelot himself but by most western indologists, including Philip Oldenburg whose book he reviews in Foreign Policy. To them, democracy in India is a western legacy that its people have unquestioningly accepted to the extent that we are today, the world’s largest democracy.
This standpoint is often accepted by many Indians themselves and this acceptance triggered a raging debate about whether democracy was actually Indian in nature. This is where I feel compelled to clarify certain popular misconceptions, prevalent even among the well-read, intellectual elite. My claim is not that democracy as it is practiced today is entirely Indian in nature and we had it all before the British came along and conquered us. My contention is merely that democracy survived and prospered in post-independence India the way it never could in Pakistan because the Indian traditions of pluralism, tolerance and multi-culturalism are derived mainly from certain traditions that may be considered democratic in nature. At this point, it is impossible to ignore the obvious differences between the Indian and the Pakistani State: pluralism vs. monism, federalist union vs. unitary state, non-interference in religion vs. Islamist governance. Viewing the two countries through the politically-correct prism of secularism is neither sensible, nor desirable.
It becomes important, at this juncture to clearly define those democratic traditions, so as to dispel the perception that I claim democracy to be purely Indian in origin. The example of democracy in India that I am personally most familiar with is the “kuda-olai” system of electing village administrative officers. K.A. Nilakanta Shastri explores this system in detail in his two volumes on the Cholas. The books are now out of print and can only be found in colleges and public libraries. This information, unearthed from stone inscriptions in Uttiramerur near Chennai, date back to the 12th Century A.D, especially during Rajaraja’s reign between 985 and 1014 A.D. To put things in perspective, the Chola administrative system pre-dated the famed Magna Carta signed in 1215 A.D. With the signing of the Magna Carta, the western world finally accepted the limitations on the right of the king, whereas in southern India, the system of electing representatives who were governed by rules already existed two hundred years previously.
If we go further back in history, we have archaeological and documentary evidence of tiny clans and even some bigger ones like the Lichchavis of modern-day Nepal, who practised a primitive form of democracy in choosing the leader of their tribe. They are often called “republics” by scholars like Steve Muhlberger to whose work I have linked earlier.
That said, these primitive systems can, by no means, considered a precursor to modern-day democracy because voting was largely restricted to men aged between 18 and 60 years, who in addition, must be land-owners. This constituted approximately 20 percent of the total population, excluding large groups like artisans, laborers, and most importantly, women. However, by that definition, no system predating the universal suffrage movement of the 20th century can be called democratic. Looking for a replica of democracy as we know it today in the Arthashastra or the Manu-Smriti is an entirely pointless exercise because much of what we hold dear today, including human rights, civil liberties, individual freedom and universal suffrage have evolved over the last two hundred years. Not even the famed democratic nation-state of Athens would qualify for that title. The Magna Carta, often considered the precursor to the British writ of haebeas corpus, and to modern democracy was actually devolution of power from the monarch to the feudal lords and not to the “people” as we qualify them today.
Finally, no country can adapt a completely foreign system if it goes against its political ethos, unless founded on complete destruction of earlier cultures and imposition of a new religious, social and political order as in the case of some South American countries. If democracy has succeeded in India, it is because our basic political ethos is not fundamentally different from the one imposed by western-style democracy. While British rule accelerated India’s acceptance of multi-party democracy as the only possible system of governance, it would not have survived the various threats posed, first by the bloody massacres of partition and subsequently by the state of Emergency imposed by Mrs. Gandhi, had that democratic tradition not existed in the first place. It is only intellectually honest to accept that a native discourse in democracy-studies is not an entirely-flawed approach, unlike indologists like Jaffrelot and Oldenburg who seemed determined to negate that influence.
Of democracy and democratic traditions…
The mandatory (pre) Women’s Day post!
A few hours from now, people I haven’t spoken to years, and who have probably even forgotten what I look like will be texting me to wish me Happy Women’s Day! Also, the blogosphere and twitter will explode with posts and tweets about the Women’s Day celebrations all over the world. Pardon me for my ignorance, but I just don’t get it! Why do people go all out to celebrate womanhood, worship their wives, mother, daughters et al. just one day in a year and promptly forget about it before the day is out? Don’t get me wrong. I do enjoy the attention, the Happy Women’s Day wishes, the occasional chocolate that someone decides to give and everything else that accompanies such symbolism. Just don’t expect me to forget how you treat me the other 364 days of the year, while you’re at it! This Women’s day, perhaps it is time to tell all you men out there a few things that women want from you! Read on…
- Treat a woman just the same all days in the year. She may be too tired, ill, bored or just sick of your demands to bother to dress up. She may look like a slob and not even have that mandatory kajal on. But she’s still a woman. Treat her well. And she’ll love you for it.
- Whether she is your colleague, your teacher, your boss, your mother, your wife or your friend, give her respect. Acknowledge that she knows as much and perhaps more than you do. Treat her as an equal in intellectual terms and you’ll earn her love and respect in no time.
- If she’s succeeded the way you never could, don’t question her methods or imply she got there because she is a woman. That hurts more than any swear word or abuse you heap on her. She’ll never forgive you for making her feel cheap. But give her that respect and you’ll earn her love way quicker than you would have ever hoped to.
- Don’t call a woman a bitch simply because she is your boss and don’t like reporting to a woman. A woman’s problems with her boss are rarely because of gender alone. It’s not fair that your problems with a woman boss should be just because of her gender.
- Don’t expect your wife or your mother to babysit you because you’re a man and feel entitled to such treatment. We don’t expect you to share all housework exactly 50-50, but getting off the couch in front of the TV for a short while to deposit your clothes in the washing machine or your dirty plates in the sink would make us feel like family instead of maids. That’s the least you can do if you find yourself incapable of cooking us a fancy dinner!
- Treat your daughters exactly the way you would treat your sons. Give them love but don’t spoil them. Be there for them, but let them decide. And never tell them they cannot do something their brothers can because they are girls. They will grow up believing themselves to be inferior or superior, but never equal.
- And finally, remember that every day is probably Women’s Day because without a woman’s constant and reassuring presence, you’re most likely to be lost. And yes, even women need other women in their lives for stability’s sake. A mother, a grandmother, a sister, a daughter, a friend or even just a colleague…every woman is special because is she. Love her, cherish her. And most importantly, respect her.
Just a little step. And you’ll earn a woman’s respect forever. You may be called a mama’s boy or a sissy. But those who call you that aren’t worth your while anyway. And yes! Happy Women’s Day!
Some totally unconnected thoughts…
I have been meaning to put something down in words for a week now. But, every time I put my fingers to keyboard, I realize I don’t have enough material for a blogpost. You know? It’s one of those times when you have too much to say to fit into a tweet of 140 characters, but not enough to make a blogpost of! So, I decided to put all my random thoughts down into one single blogpost, instead of waiting forever to elaborate on them and basically kill the expression!
______________________________________________
The census guy was at aunt’s place last week. With apparent boredom he quizzes aunt about the names, ages, dates of birth of the members of the family. Getting to language, he asks what the mother-tongue was. My aunt says Kannada. He noted it down and asked, “Vera baashai?” Aunt said, Hindi, English, Tamil, and Sanskrit. The lady accompanying the man tells him, “Just write Tamil and English. Others are irrelevant.” Aunt insists for a moment, then gives up because the milk boiling on the gas is more important and the man taking the information down is refusing to relent. Then comes religion. He asks, “Hindu, Christian or Muslim?” And my aunt says Hindu. And that’s that! After a few more questions, he thanks us and leaves. This incident left a bitter taste in my mouth. First things first, you cannot and must not restrict the number of languages recorded in the census. For me, there would be at least 4 apart from my mother tongue, in which, incidentally, I am not fluent. Secondly, the issue of religion. Religion is a personal affair. People must not be forced to select their religion from a drop-down list, figuratively speaking. As an adult, I must ideally be allowed to declare myself as atheist, agnostic or Bah’ai if I please! Also, the religion of my parents must not automatically become mine! What about inter-faith marriages? The children should be allowed to remain sans religion until they are old enough to decide what they want to be. I don’t know if the census take into account such special cases, but I do know that the officials coming to collect information are very often quite rigid in their approach.
______________________________________________
On a different note, I finished reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Gut-wrenching, yet hopeful. Some scenes describing the Taliban era are scary, intense and hit you like a ton of bricks. What it must take for a man to write so sensitively about two female characters! For a minute, I was transported into a world where being a woman is the biggest curse of them all. I was so emotionally affected at times that I had to put the book down and do something else. But, the book is so gripping that you can never stay away for too long. I would like to read it again, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to stomach that again.
______________________________________________
Finally, now that the euphoria of President Mobarak’s exit has died down, can we please get a bit more practical? Egypt has a long way to go before it becomes a fully-functional democracy. Gloating over successes even before the success is total is not only premature, but also carries with it the risk of people losing focus on the task at hand. Let’s not forget that it is still the military that is ruling. And a military in power is never a good thing. For now, the only thing we can do is wait and watch. And hope that for their own sake, the Egyptian people manage to set up a functional democracy.
Literature? Or not?
A few days ago, I came across these two posts by Jai Arjun. Both are rather old posts, but the issues raised in them are still pertinent, especially in the context of the reading bug that has bitten me since the beginning of the year. Now, I am not expert in literature, but I do read rather a lot. My taste in reading ranges from Jeffrey Archer to Salman Rushdie to Paulo Coelho, and I don’t mind experimenting with books. Jai Arjun’s posts set me thinking on what books are deemed read-worthy and what are not. Personally, I would, as I admitted read any book once. If I like the genre and find the author even remotely interesting, I’ll probably read the second or the third. The first link is on the end of pretension in publishing. While discussing the democratization of publishing in India, he says that literary critics often tend to lose sight of the possible directions Indian Writing in English could take in the coming years. I agree that literary critics, especially those who critic for a living tend to be rather partial to what might be termed as literary works. But, beyond the obvious definition of literature to most lay minds as serious, even boring writing, the second post on literature being often considered as “pseudo-intellectual” provided much food for thought.
As a student of literature, I tend to agree that much of what we considered worthy of being classified as literature is serious writing. Rarely, if ever, is any book on the recommended reading list of a literature student unless it wins some sort of award. I also distinctly remember cribbing that Midnight’s Children was eminently unreadable despite having won the Booker of Bookers. I also remember telling a friend that no matter how interesting the style, it just did not cut it for me because it did not manage to hold my attention the way a lot of serious literary works have in the past. I also plead guilty to considering books by Chetan Bhagat and the likes of him (referred to by Jai Arjun as dude-lit fiction) as nothing more than pulp fiction. While I enjoy the occasional chick-lit, Devil wears Prada-type fiction, I really wouldn’t consider adding it to my must-read list. I suppose the authors Jai Arjun interviews would consider me a bit of an intellectual snob! And I plead guilty. While I don’t belong to that group of people who wouldn’t go near a Chetan Bhagat book with a ten-foot barge pole, I also don’t think he is worth discussing or taking seriously by anyone who really loves books. The other extreme that Jai Arjun talks of is even more interesting. This equating of literary fiction with pseudo-intellectual and therefore boring, is also something that I disagree with. A lot of literature is extremely interesting. One of my favourite books is not even a novel: it is a play. Andromache by Jean Racine is the one book I have read again and again over the past 5 years and it is not even in modern French. It belongs to the 17th Century and there is something so appealing about it that even 300 years later, there is someone who finds it interesting.
What I find intriguing, and perhaps even a wee bit distressing, is that authors would want their books to be priced low because it shouldn’t eat into the going-out-with-girlfriend-to-coffee-day-budget! And even more distressing is the intention behind writing easy-to-read books: sells thousands of copies, make a lot of money! I agree that a lot of people do not read because they find it too boring to read. I also agree that the likes of Chetan Bhagat have brought the reading habit to people who wouldn’t have touched a book in their lives without a gun held to their heads. But, this trend of writing books just to make a quick buck is something I will never be able to understand or empathize with. I want to write a book some day. I don’t know if this is going to be fiction or non-fiction, humorous or serious, literary or pulp fiction. But, I do know that when that happens, how many copies my book sells will be the last thing on my mind. Much like writing a blogpost, I will be happy if just one other person in this world (apart from my publisher and editor of course) took the trouble to read the book and give me feedback. Maybe because, for some of us, writing is not a profession, it is a passion. Pardon me if I am being ranting right now because the idea of equating books to cup of coffee with girlfriend, as some of the writers themselves seem to be doing, is too much for me to take. And yes, if I have a thousand extra bucks to spend, I’ll probably spend it on books rather than on coffee….unless am having coffee with someone like Ameen Merchant! 😀