Bombay Talkies

The Indian Cinema certainly has come a long way through by growing in itself and letting people related to its different fields to hone their skill as well. No one would have ever thought that once considered a menial job will eventually turn into a job which people will wish for to have. Earlier people used to pursue acting career when they used to think that they are not worth doing anything else or they had some kind of urgency in their family so in order to meet up with the needs they used to get all histrionic, i'm not saying that people were not interested in dramatics then, there were people who used to eat, sleep and breathe acting but majority in the industry used to fall into the former category of people. Even those who were acting buffs, were compelled by their families to do something else for their livelihood as this was considered highly ignominious. There were, in fact, are many regional cinematic groups but which raise to most prominence is the Hindi Film industry or famously known as the Bollywood which is a portmanteau. 

Well, anyhow the hindi cinema came into existence, it certainly changed the way of entertainment for Indians. Its larger than life portrayal of the common indian men on celluloid touched the heart and minds of millions of its audiences which undoubtedly garnered accolades to the industry as well as to the performers. People were so enthralled by the cinema that they started imitating the characters, their gait, their dance moves and many other things at their homes or even at public events. The whole Indian fashion trend started getting influenced by the movies, as people demanded the clothes which their favourite actors have worn, so it had a gargantuan effect. People started christening their children by the names used in movies or names of their favourite actors, well what else should i need to mention to show that people were all agog by celebrities, they use to queue up in hundreds and thousands just to get a glimpse of their hero. By this mentioning of the word "Hero" i would like to elaborate that the word which actually has a complete different meaning than its usage in India, where people simply use it as an alternate word for  actor, which is used so, is also completely understandable because of all the heroic activities which a hero need to do in a movie from fighting with villains, to romancing with the "It Girl" of the movie, to singing and dancing with her, well last two are certainly not heroic but these are one of the chores to be performed by an Indian actor. People simply idolise this creative milieu, leaving all rationality behind and thereby it has become a social obligation for the artists to be next to perfect in whatever they do otherwise it could and certainly would hamper there lionised persona.

The year 2013 marked as the centennial year of Indian hindi cinema and there were several films made to commemorate the occasion. By seeing these films whether be old or new and interviews of the stars from all these decades who dedicated their entire life just to the industry you certainly get adumbrated by the fact that industry which started from scratch has now become a multi million dollar business and it indeed has been the result of all the hard work and perseverance of so many people who were involved throughout these years. Now, movies earn in millions and billions of rupees creating new definitions of a successful movie, like, 3 Idiots is the highest grossing movie of all time earning a total of Rs 392 crores, some others on lower rungs are Chennai Express, Ek Tha Tiger, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and many others.

This industry has given birth to many popular actors as well, in order of their presence on the silver screen are like Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bacchan, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Ranbir Kapoor and many more actually there are so many that it will take me a week or maybe more to jot down all the names, now turning to the dream girls of the indian cinema to name a few would be Madhubala, Nargis, Vyjayanthimala, Rekha, Hema Malini, Madhuri Dixit, Aishwarya Rai, Kareena Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra and many others whom people blindly follow.

The movie buffs also admire one more thing which got very hip in the culture were the movie posters. The movie posters were an essential part as well because apart from the cast and crew of the movie these were trusted to be the crowd pullers. Some posters which went viral were of the movies like Mughal-E-Aazam, Deewar, Zanjeer, Don and others which can be to some extent credited for the success of their respective movies.

Well, now posters are usually not used on that great scale, as now much of the publicity is done through the visual media like internet and television. So, it would be apt to say that the stars have somewhat lost their sheen now to an extent due to the audiences getting jaded by their presence on television shows, advertisements, on social media and on other such platforms concerning mass media. Earlier there used to be a certain kind of enigma attached with each star as they didn't used to be that accessible, people also had scarce resources to get intel about celebrities like through magazines and radio. But with the development of media whether electronic or print and the growing rivalry amongst them, have overwhelmed the audiences with informations which have mostly been proven tangential and has thus reduced audiences interest.

The whole century long odyssey of the hindi cinema has been segmented into decades and each decade marks its presence with signature movies, posters, dialogues, actors. Each decade has distinct type of movies which had different issues to depict according to the audiences they catered to. Well, nowadays movies are made which are though more lucid in their way of presentation but the basic elements of a good movie being its storyline, screenplay, editing even good music has supposedly taken a back seat. Nowadays, what works is gimmicky neither people are that much enthusiastic nor the industry people themselves and this remiss on the latter front has led audiences to shift towards Hollywood where still some good movies are made which are "watchable", i'm not saying that Bollywood movies are no good but the quantity of good movies is a handful or might be even less. Indian directors need to comprehend the ever varying tastes of viewers and work upon it, they need to add some sense to their movies instead of letting profanity and lewd language to intrude. It's not just the sex or item songs which people feel like seeing, now their need to be a strong storyline which have to act as backbone of the film. With the mushrooming internet channels, sex videos and pornography already flush these channels and with their accessibility they also have an equivalent reach if not wider than the former. People watch movies in their leisure times and want such cinema which can serve their need of spending a good family time without people getting awkward throughout the movie.

It is true that movies are meant for entertainment and need to cover a large volume of audiences but a middle way need to be found out without being either too perverted or too bland. There are different movies made for different group of people whether the group either being differentiated on the grounds  of age or taste for movies but only making non sensical flicks just to get the cash registers ringing at the box office is highly contemptible. I would like to request industry people on my part to please get some senses and start making movies which really have substance and stop plagiarism as the viewers have become very smart, so it is difficult to get them hoaxed now. Well, against all the odds indian cinema has grown by leaps and bounds and hope to grow at the same pace and keep on entertaining and enthralling people through its world of imaginations and reality.

PS:- 3 Idiots the highest grossing movie of Indian Cinema and one of my favorites too. I hope everyone would have seen it, if not then go grab a dvd or watch it here ..

                                         

The United States Of India

India was a princely state in the pre British Empire when several rulers used to command their respective regions without much interference of the neighbouring states, since each leader was head of his own people and had meagre interaction with the others around so it eventually made these kings stoic towards each other. As there was lack of solicitousness, so it lead to frequent attacks on smaller kingdoms in order to assimilate them and spread the reign supreme over a wider area which used to be the whole sole dream of an efficient king in those times. The foreign invaders took advantage of this  dissonance among leaders and entered in India by alluring these leaders of their personal profits and instigating them against each other whether it be Afghani invaders like Mohammed Ghori, Mohammed Ghazni, the Mughals or even our last rulers the Britishers all followed more or less the same principle of "Divide and Rule". Some of the indian rulers were so captivated that they were ready to sell their souls for filthy lucre and these were the only perpetuators whom irresponsible actions changed the whole Indian history. Earlier, the states were divided basically on the fact that the state was lying in which region of the country like in Rajasthan most states were Rajput dominated while in Maharashtra they were Maratha dominated and so on. Each State thus had and is having different culture, clothing, language, cuisines and many other religious beliefs and faith. The overall population was very less as compared with now thus effective domination was possible. Then came democracy in the post freedom era when people, the common man became powerful as they had to elect their representatives amongst themselves who can raise and strengthen their voice in the Parliament so that their needs and issues can be catered well. The n-number of princely states were told to coalesce and form single regional states so that the whole country can be governed easily, some of the rulers were subservient enough to give in readily while some others were not as gullible and they had to be compelled into agreements and treaties to join together.

With the passage of time, the country grew and developed in every walk of life and so did the population. At an early time when we were a bare minimum now transformed into a nation having the second largest population in the whole world. As the population grew so did the related problems which started creating divide among people who were earlier vaunted for synergy and secularism now started brawling with each other to get the lion's share of resources for their own community. The country which boasts of unity in diversity have started to grow weak from inside itself, people who used to worship their motherland are now ready to plunder it for their own benefits.

Nowadays, people have started to fight for separate lands for their communities which means India needs to be further sub divided into communal provinces where the rights and demands of the concerned community will be dealt well. The politicians are the ones who are to be blamed for because to fill in their coffers and to win elections they profess demagogy despite giving it a thought even once that what impact their speeches and actions will make on the multitude. In a country like India where overall literacy rate is about 74% most people get affected by the political rhetoric and eventually  get frustrated when their demands are not met accordingly.
Recently, their have been many such cases where a demand of separate state has been put forward like in Uttar Pradesh there are talks to get it divided into several almost 4 other states, well amongst the cluster the newest one is the division of Andhra Pradesh into 2 smaller states which are Telangana and Seemandhra. The bill was proposed in both the houses of government and has been passed finally after much a do. The division of any state is heck of a job as it involves millions of people whose future may directly get affected by it, on the other hand not just the people it also involves gazillion amount of money for construction of new buildings, relocation of people and many other things. At the juncture as i read the news the state government has also cleared the bifurcation of land. There is a group of ministers(GoM) who will supposedly present a report within few weeks of circumspection and then the final decision will be made like from where would the boundary line pass, where the capital would be or it be the same and on many other things. Ultimately, whatever the new states would look like the politicians will definitely manage to gerrymander so that their political positions get aggrandised.

Well, in my opinion the division of states might be able to solve the problem of weak governance and uneven representation of different communities in Lok Sabha where they can put forward their demands directly to the higher authority but by such segregation of land there are chances that the communities may become ethnocentric and this chauvinistic demeanour might prove cataclysmic for the nation. All these situations have left us at cross roads where we need to introspect and retrospect our actions that what went wrong or where while fulfilling the dream of placing India amongst the cluster of developed nations we became so negligent towards our fellow countrymen that now the conditions are getting out of hand and soon if nothing has been done then the country should get ready to see some catastrophic ramifications which will be incontrovertible and full of contrition.

PS:- This is an image of a troll posted on facebook mocking at the current scenario and gives an insight of would be future of India. 

   

There is a link below refering to the current leads on formation of Telangana.

The Hindu: GoM on Telangana to submit report in 6 weeks

India Today: Cabinet note on Telangana recommends Hyderabad as capital of new state

Nina Davuluri: Indian Mettle Proven Again

It was one of the historical moments for the indians who live in America or aptly said as the american indians when Nina Davuluri won the most prestigious title, given for the ensemble of beauty and brains in America. It was indeed a phenomenal moment when two Asians got zeroed in for the final round of Miss America. Nina who earlier won Miss Sycrause and Miss NewYork was very skeptical of her win before the actual pageant as she knew that never ever any non resident indian have been privileged to such an extent in this concerned field but with her zealot and perseverance she has achieved what was long just an unspoken dream. The journey was not easy and it is never easy to snuggle your way out for an expatriate amongst the citizenry because the people though fraternise along well but on the fringes of their hearts deep down somewhere have a prejudice feeling for the migrants, inconsequential of the fact how long the person have been on their land bigotry prevails. Well, talking about Nina she was born and brought up on the US land itself, she belongs to a well learned family which immigrated to America around three decades ago. Her father is a gynaecologist, her mother is a computer specialist and her elder sister is a medical student, so seeing her elders excelling so well in academics she also decided to be amongst the cluster but she was destined for something different. She grew learning all the indian traditional values and teachings, she even got herself trained in many indian classical dance forms like Kuchipudi and Bharatnatyam which certainly shows her Indian-ness and she even showed her prowess in dance by performing a Bollywood dance item in one of the rounds of Miss America finale. She won many beauty crowns in the initial phases as well which provided her the driving force to step ahead and compete at the national level. All her dreams and aspirations finally materialised on September 15, 2013, the day when she was crowned as one of the most beautiful women living in the United States. She has definitely made her residing country and her root country proud but as we all know nowadays nothing comes for free and so is success, which came here with a price of controversy, these seem to be part and parcel of each other.
Miss America crown fetched along many criticisms and racial remarks which were really very heart wrenching, its like you are being punished for something which you are not even guilty of. The Almighty created this world with a simple formula of symbiosis but as the complexities increased human perspective also bore the brunt and became so alloyed that the principle of the omnipotent clamoured for attention and consequently lost its sheen. Well, in this unscrupulous world of today such events have got hackneyed, as nowadays people just do not give a damn to others unless they are  going to profit them in some sense or the other. Although, USA has been one of the world leaders and is so advanced in technologies and in providing other amenities but still the mindset of people there is highly contemptible. People are so bewitched by their country's reputation and power that they have failed to learn of the fact that now there are several other nations as well who are if not more but have at least touched the benchmarks set by them in every field. Such racial remarks made by them not only hurts the person whom they are directly referred to but they also affect the sentiments of the whole community at which these remarks are intended to. People simply forget the fact that if such communities would have not been living in their beloved homeland and would not have toiled hard then their would have been odds that their motherland would not have achieved such great heights which it has now. Its true that America has better opportunities, better living conditions than many other nations but it's highly unacceptable to get so blinded in your own hullabaloo that you loose respect for other co nations which are somewhere or the other responsible for your damn glorification. As soon as she won the crown whole twitter verse was full of racial remarks regarding her skin colour, her ethnic origin, her relations with Al Qaeda and many more, though, there were some people as well who applauded her on her historical win and even posted videos and comments supporting her and rejecting all the gibberish. Despite of all this mayhem, Nina handled the whole situation very well by saying that she wants to get over with this and rise above. Either Americans are so overweening with power or they are so terrified by the fact that Asians specially Indians are going to take their jobs away in every field and there nightmares will turn in reality, so instead of improving themselves they are being contentious about each and every thing which others are doing. Well, i would like to say that first they need to get their asses moving and start working and educating themselves because by just munching on fast food items and criticising other's things are not going to bring a change any time soon. By their critical remarks instead of affecting Nina they have affected themselves as they have become an object of mockery on the world stage as they don't even know where India is actually, they think its in Arab, there was a tweet reacting to one of the american remarks saying that"Every thing thats in your East is not in Arab". As any other country America is also a mixture of all types of people but the actions of the good ones usually get obscured by the follies of their other fellow countrymen. America is having an overall literacy rate of 99% which itself is axiomatic that how open minded people are there but then to such events make the whole picture a bit abstruse.

Well, whatever the case is i would definitely like to agree that America is a land of immigrants and by Nina winning this crown it has been ascertained that America celebrates diversity through cultural competency, in spite of all the controversy this has proven to be a silver lining in the cloud. Discrimination exists everywhere it's not just the case here for instance in India many people as well agreed that Nina shouldn't have won the title just because she is too dark in complexion. India is a fairness maniac society here people believe that whatever is fair looking is good instead of it's other side effects and it's very clearly visible by the sales of so many fairness creams available, so many skin lightening techniques teeming in the markets, it's a craze in both men and women to get themselves a tone lighter or two. We are Asians and specially we living in India are bound to be wheatish or brown skinned because of the tropical climatic conditions here but people are not in a mood to accept that, for Indians the proverb " All That Glitters Is Not Gold" should be a bit altered and it should be "All That Is Fair Is Not Good". Though we have an array of actors who are or were brown skinned and people admire them with open hands but when it comes to an individual then they prefer to be fairer themselves and even want a fair looking life partner as well. These all idiosyncratic activities have just done good to these cosmetic industries only and have exasperated the multitude's desire of looking one or two skin tones lighter. Again i would like to refer to one of the tweets which said that If Nina would have been living in India then she would have never won any beauty pageants as according to Indian thinking she is too dark to win. Indians associate beauty with skin colour which is highly bigoted, they get negligent about other credentials of the person if he/she dose not fulfil the prime criterion of being fair.

Well, all this mine scribbling has led me to infer that people living in any nation irrespective have been biased  to someone or the other without any rhyme or reason and this behaviour of them needs improvement as because of this all the good work done by their fellow citizens reduces to a trickle. People need to understand the true mettle of someone not by the place he/she belongs or by their skin colours they need to rise above these tawdry measures of judgement and show some true skills of being a human being who have been gifted with a brain which demands utilisation.

PS:- This video shows the crowning of Miss America a phenomenal event where Indians have proven their mettle once again despite all potshots.

Indian Society Perspective

India as said so has been the land of Gods and Goddesses, there are about 330 million deities which reside in this peninsular land. People respect and worship them with all their might. The Indian culture or popularly known as the Hindu culture has certain devoted festivals to these deities not only festivals even week days are associated with them. I dunno what to say whether its prevalent disbeliefs among people or the modicum of knowledge due to lack of literacy amongst the large factions of the populous which has made people to believe in the Almighty but not in his preachings. In a country like India where a human sea resides and vies for the opportunities which are a bare minimum as seen through the  eyes of a common man, its very difficult for him to pull through and with the rocketing population its just getting exacerbated. Nowadays, the society yearns for things to be done ethically but the evils have now been so prominent that even if a single person tries to work with honesty he is broken down by several others and his survival is made difficult, thus, the reality has a domino effect going on which has made the country an abode of barbarians whether in action or in thinking.
A country which was once known for its high cultural values, secularity and integrity is now known for its vulnerable people who are ready to do any crime for a handful of green backs, the frustration level of  the multitude has risen new heights and this all has culminated because of the unscrupulous conditions since the times of freedom which has slowly and steadily started tarnishing the well to do plight of the people and have surfaced the actual conditions of misery. The dream which Nehru and Mahatma would have dreamt about India and the India for whose freedom they fought for thinking that the lineage ahead will accrue to its pride and dignity with their actions have certainly been trashed. Their didactic speeches which solely had the aim to make people realise that "Selflessness is the biggest Virtue" have been proven vague, if those great leaders and fighters would have been here to see the dire straits of their cherished homeland then they must have been shaken to their souls. People were there, people are here but the scenarios have changed drastically. There are many questions which arise in every Indians heart and mind now and then that what have we become now, why have we changed so much, well darting back to the early years as we came out of our cocoon every individual had his/her dream and had his/her right to breathe and bask in the air of freedom after a long hiatus of around a century. The things were going well initially but due to callowness of the incumbent government and their policies which enamoured the people at those times failed to live up to the dream of the common indian man eventually. The policies which were passed without circumspection of the prevalent conditions at those times and neglecting their future effects ultimately made the country hollow from inside. Those pretentious plans harmed the country much more exponentially than even the Britishers did whom we blame for everything. On the contrary, i would say Britishers did leave some of the very good things in India like their governance system, their education system, their mannerisms, their language and many more things, they have left indelible marks in every walk of the Indian society which are clearly visible. Even i would like to mention that Britishers didn't come walking on their own, it was the condition of the natives which attracted them to creep in swiftly by applying the policy of "Divide and Rule", if the people would have been united then, the book of Indian history would have been having different pages now and not even the Britishers the other umpteen rulers who invaded us were also the results of our own follies.
If we travel back a bit more in time to the ages of the Aryans which are considered to be amongst the firsts who have had lived in well settled societies and who are also considered to be our "Godfathers", it is them who are the actual cause of the conditions today. It were there principles and beliefs which certainly passed on to generations and have crippled the society. The future generations also merely followed the beliefs without even brooding once that the propositions that we are embracing whole heartedly might have ill effects as well like for instance Casteism which was practised earlier to get the work done more effectively in the society, people were divided according to their skills, their were no derogatory intentions then but the things changed eventually. With the passage of time things changed and people too, they got more learned, more refined in their skills, got themselves acclimatised but the only thing which didn't change was their mentality, their thought process was still oozing with age old superstitions and beliefs. The post independence era which marked the rise of world's largest democracy indirectly made people powerful. In this era when people started looking outside to other countries and their natives, there occurred an upsurge of emotion demanding for rights to people and rise of every echelons in society. As discussed above certain propositions were presented, policies were formulated which somehow satiated the need of the hour but proved incompetent to level up with the future needs which were yet to unfold. The policies though had a progressive approach but deep down in the crux they were stigmatised by blinkered outlooks of the leaders who just cared about securing their positions and neglecting the public. Through these politicians corruption and other acts of malfeasance perpetuated which we eventually got in inheritance and these evils are tormenting us even now. With growing population the marginalised section of people also got involved in the wrongdoings and thus the dream of creating a shining developing India metamorphosed into an antithesis reality of a decadent and despondent India whose own people looted their motherland.
Well, i digressed way to much, the bottom-line being that the mental perception of today's man has been a result of centuries of misconceptions and disbeliefs. The crimes which are occurring nowadays especially the rape cases which are in vogue these days are all our own brainchild fantasies. Well, at least a merit in disguise of the growing media is that now people are getting informed about these heinous crimes and these are also doing the work of stimulating the human conscience of their audiences to act against these atrocities which otherwise used to happen but no one paid heed to them, for instance, the rape case which happened on December 16, 2013 in Delhi in which a boy and a girl were brutally beaten and the girl was raped by six men and was injured very badly internally as well as externally. The culprits were arrested and are even sentenced to death now but the judgement which has been passed in this particular case which is defined as the "Rarest Of Rare"; will act as panacea for all other similar cases or just because of the surmounting pressure of the people on the administrative machinery this case has been given a special treatment and for rest others things haven't changed, will remain a debatable topic. The only solution for such criminal offence is that the mental perspective of both of the sexes need to be changed. Men need to be taught the lesson of veneration towards women and this need to be taught starting from the basest level at the school to little children as they being the future citizens of our country otherwise there is no other way to curb this sick Indian male inherited mentality. According to a study it takes about three generations to bring a change in society successfully, so we better need to pull up our socks from now onwards as changes can't take place overnight.
Well, me also being an Indian male i'm saying this because after listening about such deplorable events it makes me feel ashamed that i'm part of such a society where though females are worshipped with all pomp and show but on the flip side female infanticides, dowry and rape cases do thrive. Well, putting my cents in i completely agree that up to a certain degree both the sexes are responsible for such ill practices which have been proliferating from a long time now but i would also say that the perception of a female in a male mind has been and is still somewhere below himself. The irony being that every male always dreams about a girl in his life to love and care but whenever the same girl transgresses this flimsy line of lust and desire and enters into a zone of competition where the fairer sex competes equally for their rights and share of resources their enters the male ego, this ego which used to objectify female as a thing of covetousness starts to "man handle" her. Female have always been tormented at each phase of their lives sometimes because of their own parents who think she is a burden on their family, sometimes because of their husbands under whose covertness she is secure from the outside world but who is their to save her from her husband himself and sometimes because of their own children who leave them in solitude forgetting all the sacrifices which they made for them. The journey of a female is highly complex throughout and that too in this patriarchal society its traumatising as well.
Well, i really salute the entire female fraternity for living their lives so beautifully, the relationship which was supposed to be a symbiotic one, has only found them at the giving end whether as a mother, daughter or wife.
The crimes happening against womanhood can only be reduced by changing the attitude of their male counterparts otherwise the scars of monstrosity will always be visible on the face of humankind.
PS :-  This book reveals some of the intricacies involved and the loop holes in the economic policies which were formulated for the general betterment but resulted otherwise.

http://www.flipkart.com/india-unbound/p/itmczyrphqsnzfpt?pid=9780143063018&otracker=from-search&srno=t_3&query=india+unbound+by+gurcharan+das&ref=af9a7262-85ca-4150-8b30-0dd456f55f63