The template of a city, the fate of a nation
Interesting times these, overwhelming at times, but intriguing on the whole. Films have taken every possible commoditized space. Film songs were never more instant. Yet the perfect irony plays its wishful role quite consistently, and it might all be a game of chance, a mere coincidence, for every overwhelming film or song there are 20 bad ones. So happy and lucky as we might feel, there is room for worse.
Creativity is going through another instantification. Think of the one thing you like doing, or would like doing, and you become ‘it’ the next moment. Scriptwriter. Film maker. Your wish is your command.
Buzz of films. Promos. Teasers. First looks. Previews. They are all there. In all possible spheres. I often pride myself at the fact that I catch film gossip and inside stories young. Not after yesterday, when I saw a running-out-of-breath VJ spelling it all out in one breath obviosly, right from January 2009 to well, 2010, 2011. Did I feel small at that. He even knew about Mira Nair’s shelved films which Mira Nair wouldn’t know about.
News. So many forms. Which size you want? What’s your deal? What’s hot on your playlist? Do you like to shuffle, or do you like a loop? Or would you simply place all your trust on our time-tested acumen and market knowledge yet again?
Fast moving world. You feel high one moment as you fly by the city, clouds et al, morning breeze, only to be confronted with harsh realities of a picturesque jam, comes with smoke imagery. Think again. Put on FM radio. They are talking about Delhi 6. Suddenly you are transported to the suburban bylanes of Dilli.
Delhi 6. The ‘as good as it gets’ moment of 2009, one size fits all. Hardly anyone who doesn’t like being titled ‘Dilli ke hain. It has that romance around it. Yes, its a far fetched and romantic thought. Some view it differently. The DTC regulars, red line, blue line green line, CNG history, monkey man. Monkey Man? Jee haan. One of the many hot stories from this city of stories.
Phoenixnu mentioned yesterday how The Legend of Monkey Man is revisited in Delhi 6, there is a song too called Kaale Bandar. And for a change, I shifted my attention from the song promos(and trying to decipher them, the title song was out like 6 hrs ago and it’s already a rage, but anyways, I will bore you with the music stuff later, in inshallah a much longer music piece) to searching about The Legend of Monkey Man. And for all my poor current affairs/news story search quotient, I did hit upon a decent piece in strangemag. In fact something written a notch better than what you normally get. Some interesting excerpts…
Contributing to the situation were three factors that afflict Third World cities in particular: the presence of many illiterate and superstitious rural immigrants, a modern mass media, and a high population density. These added to the elements that could inflame imaginations in the hot darkness.
“Jokes” increased the tension. In Nangloi, a rat bite was claimed to be the work of the Monkey Man. (That surely must have left everyone laughing.)
Whatever the explanation(s), the beast seems amazingly malleable and, indeed, prolific. One Delhi resident spoke how it was a monkey until it turned into a cat when grabbed. (It was, of course, likely a feline in the first place.)
What can one make of all the entire situation? In the May 25 Wall Street Journal — Europe, Lionel Tiger, a Rutgers professor of anthropology, comments that the Monkey Man taps into something also resonant with Westerners — “a deep vein of interest in the ghoulish and disastrous….” Life is a risk, whether one lives in India or the United States. Tiger notes how Western fears of cloning and genetically modified foodstuffs tap into the fear of possible genetically altered humans, which Tiger calls “monkey-men of our own devising.”
Paul Cropper, in his e-mailed “Weird Crypto-Stuff 2001: Monkey Man Mania!” (May 17, 2001), writes, “My own take on the Indian material is that it will turn out to be a case of mass hysteria, fuelled by rumour, fear, pranksters and a few New Delhi monkeys….”
These monkeys may have appeared taller than they were — seeming up to three or four feet tall under the circumstances.
Kenneth Wright, in a piece titled “On the Trail of an Uncanny Creature” in The Herald of May 23, wonders if the “mass hysteria” was as mass as it was purported to be: “No-one wants to be the only chap on the street who hasn’t seen what all his neighbours have.” Wright compares the Monkey Man with 1800s London’s Spring-Heeled Jack, an alleged Victorian jumping semi-humanoid often said to have breathed fire and who was reportedly witnessed by reputable people.
Lest one judge other societies too harshly, Wright writes about communal irrationality being prevalent in the West, as witness the popularity of dubious “alternative medicines” and the recent bright idea of investing pension funds in Internet start-ups.
So, coming back to Delhi 6, a lot might happen, a lot might not. Rakyesh Omprakash Mehra is beyond that. As I see it, it is a template of a city more than news stories, its nostalgia, its the love for wide angles, for the yore, for the romantic idea of a city we all love to belong to. Its the personal Vs the imminent. The obvious Vs the bewildering. The macro Vs the micro. Monkey Man might be a trigger for something more substantial in the story for all you know, if you do care about it. Frankly I don’t. It was just an early morning thing that I latched on to.
See, that’s what, as Russell Peters would put it, media does to you. They make you think a certain way. Well, his sense of humour intact, I wouldn’t take the philosophy home. I wish I could say the same about Sajid Khan though. His unchartered and unbranded humour died a loud and obnoxious death years ago. And so happens for many stand-up comic aspirants in our country. I am not sure if they can be called aspirants in the first place. Because they ‘wait’ for the applause. That shit is not real. Peters again. Not a great literary reference I know but can’t help it.
Coming to a more profound tangent, the template of a city. What the hell does that mean? A city, as told in Aamir and OLLO and Mumbai Meri Jaan rather effectively, is more than the events occurences and the people, it is about the ‘spirit’, which is albeit a risky statement to make. But I might escape because of my reputation and almost nil grip on politics or economics or basically anything that would impress my dad enough to snatch that TV channel or news story away from his attention.
So much goes on in a city. How can you capture all that? What you can do, and rather personally at that, is tell your impression of it, narrate your associations and memories and the city that you have in your head. I have a romantic image of Bangalore. So I keep it at that. I do not attend awareness meetings and marches. Yes, that is highly irresponsible, but so is not watching a film like Tashan in Rex. So you see, priorities do vary from Punjabi Bagh to Rajouri Garden(they are not too far by the way if I remember it correctly).
Mumbai Times. Bangalore Times. Delhi Times.
The Times of India.
Which one do you reach out for first? Whichever you choose, there will always be sub-selections to make. Choices. Choices. Chooses. One.
Then amidst all this overwhelm-fest of great music, one great sounding nothing-can-go-wrong film after the other, cloudy weather, morning breeze, Golden Globes, there comes a terrorist threat, a bomb blast at worse, and it all changes in gloom. Gloom for the suffering, gloom for the watching(TV), and indecision for the rest.
Then you squirm and wait for a more relatable news story. Like a financial scam, a millionnaire extra-marital affair, an untimely celebrity demise, the loss of public memory. You will find it. You should just keep looking.
Mumbai Times. Bangalore Times. Delhi Times.
The Times of India.
Daraarein daraarein hain maathey pe maula
Marammat muqaddar ki kar do mere maula…
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Is it me or you are really not making any sense? Or to quote you, “what the hell does it mean?”
@jitesh, if I wanted to make sense I would have. Glad that you didn’t get it.
Last time around, Mehra had done a fantastic job of incorporating news(back then) of MIG Crashes and dubious defense deals into the story. Hope he does an even better job here.
“for every overwhelming film or song there are 20 bad ones”–yeh hi hai kadvaa sach :-(
Anyway, cool write-up, Tushar. Had fun with the monkey-man research? :-)
“So much goes on in a city. How can you capture all that?” So true…so many choices as to how to capture “all that” in a film…so many decisions…which elements to include…which to ignore…Like you said, “there will always be sub-selections to make. Choices. Choices.”…it’s interesting though to explore what leads one to the choices they eventually make…
@trimoneo, yes, I didn’t talk about RDB but was thinking about it later. I guess he walks in both camps, the news watcher and the news haters, and guess that makes his cinema reflective yet opinionated. I can already sense all these shades in the film’s music. Kaala Bandar is much beyond a groovy song, just like Khalbali was. I think this should be more dimensional and spontaneous, let’s see.
@Amanda, thanks. A city is such a big subject. You can either squeeze it in a central character like OLLO or make a social commentary like MMJ. D6 I guess combines these elements and many more. We must also be ready for contemplative cinema, much like some European films of Wim Wenders, Fatih Akin or even topical stuff like Soderberg elements.
Hahaha… I missed this and how!
Love the prose, took a reading more than usual but I think I get it. The overwhelming incongruity of everything that a man seeks to derive some instant gratification.
Reading this before Delhi 6 review… makes sense.
@ravptor, thanks man. feels glad to have come a full circle.