Shubh Mangal Saavdhan: British sex comedy in desi milieu Jaljeera with Whiskey.

Can Indians laugh at themselves? The answer is finally yes. I loved"Shubh Mangal Saavdgan"  - an unlikely  comedy of manners and behavioural idiosyncrasies in a society transitioning from a moribund sanskari inertia to a more liberated value system.  It is tough to blend British style sex comedy with a small town Indian milieu, but director R.S. Prasanna, who earlier made this movie in Tamil, pulls it off,aided by earthy UP-meets-NewDelhi dialogues. This is what happens when mausis and tayajis meet malls and multiplexes in an age of feminism and the Internet.

Rangoon: Epic Meets Masala. Yeh Kya Ho Gaya Saala?

There is always a challenge for makers of period films as they engage a current audience with a journey to the past. Is theirs an effort a fantastic one to recreate as authentically as possible the reality of a bygone age or is a bygone reality a muse upon which to construct a fantasy of  dubious authenticity? Vishal Bhardwaj’s Rangoon is largely on the latter side. It has already been slammed by leading critics but could do with a treatment that deserves more sympathy than the amount he has extended to his characters. It is a magnificent effort, with much to admire and celebrate but served in a manner that can understandably underwhelm critics and audiences alike.  Nevertheless, it is watchable for it has efforts on nearly everyone’s part that is rare in Bollywood – starting with the very simple fact that we have not seen Indian cinema offer much of World War II in the digital era with its immense possibilities – not counting the occasional Madras Pattinam in Tamil or  Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s “1942: A Love Story. The latter is remembered more as Rahul Dev Burman’s  Last Hurrah than a path-breaker in period cinema.

Bhardwaj’s first fault -- if one might call it that -- is that he has made movies that have raised our expectations. “Maqbool”, “Omkara” and “Haider” with their magnificent interpretations of Shakespearean themes raises one’s appetite. Rangoon has warts that show up bigger like a small meal after a series of fine appetisers.

Rangoon, to start with, has no shot of Rangoon – and I was hoping to see a pagoda shot or Bahadur Shah Zafar’s tomb alongside Kangana Ranaut. But that is not to be.

However, there is much to celebrate in the movie that critics have underemphasized. Glorious outdoor shots of Shahid Kapoor and Kangana Ranaut locked in a sandy romance are set in templates that are classically period. Cinematographer Pankaj Kumar romances steam engines fuming black smoke across lush green landscapes, relentless rain in tropical foilage infested with leeches and lizards, bamboo huts, rope bridges, sepia-toned bombings and air raids. Maharajahs and sundry wives in princely costumes give us plenty of time travel.

Bhardwaj's audacity in trying to combine Julia, a takeoff on Fearless Nadia, with the struggles of the Indian National Army is enriched by a characteristic use of a vulnerable woman torn between two lovers as a metaphor for a nation struggling between moderate and extreme efforts to seek Independence from British imperialism. Like a nation that has to choose between going with a colonial power or partnering with a racist Nazi aggressor in its quest to find an identity and freedom, Julia struggles, despite her penchant for stunts – as one weakened by her dominating lover and her own fluttering heart that flows kindness at the drop of a hat and shows gratitude to a strong-arm saviour.

There is plenty in the film that brings us memories of classic cinema. General Harding with his ruthless mannerisms who reminds us of Colonel Saito in David Lean’s “Bridge On the River Kwai” (the ultimate Burma movie).  There is a colourful dance scene for cheering soldiers clearly inspired by Coppola’s Suzie Q shots in “Apocalpyse Now.”  The sand and the mud rolls are like Oliver Stone’s “Platoon”  and the propeller-driven air raids are so quaint that you love them.

Kangana Ranaut as Julia, Shahid Kapur as army man Nawab Malik and Saif Ali Khan as film maker Russi Billimoria give their best (and a doff of the hat for some beautifully shot interiors of a Parsi home with all the costumes).

But, but, but…

At some point, there is a line from Saif that seems to speak for the director: “Hum funkaar hain: jhooth ko sachhai se jeena hamara pasha hai” (We are artists. To live the lie honestly is our profession).

And we want to ask: Dear Vishal, have  you?.

The script is too laboured and there is a point where the labour falls into the trap of trying too hard – particularly because there is plenty of compromise in the basic soul of the story in dialogues that sound so multiplex that we are constantly jolted to the present. 

The music and lyrics are too folksy to be classic. Some outsourcing might have lightened the burden on the director. This is not a low-budget Gulzar-and-Vishal heart-tug show for the genteel, patronisingly cerebral middle class. This one is an intended epic for posterity.

Do you wear a tuxedo with Kolhapuri chappals?

 There was no ear-worm that I could spot, only the "Bloody Hell" bit that has helped Rottweiler critics.

Weaned on Greek theatre and Shakespearean dramas that set characters with tragic flaws in shades of grey, we look for the director’s tragic flaw, which turns out to be his obsession with tragedy. You can’t go overboard with a stretched climax on a rope bridge with a Romeo-Juliet kind of drama that seems Maudlin, and worse, depressing. Here is an audience that regularly buys large buckets of overpriced popcorn to celebrate Rajkumar Hirani’s overdose of high-school optimism. Do we need this cross-continental, anachronic obsession with tragedy?

O Tempora!

And so, like Mark Anthony in Julius Caesar we may call Rangoon an honourable film. Friends weaned on his Haider, Romans who have relished Hollywood classics and countrymen brought up on happy endings may each have something to grumble about.

 But Rangoon has to be admired still for its guts, ambition, cinematography and fine editing.

Take a deep breath and rewind and taste the movie in your memory, and there is a lot to celebrate. When General Harding speaks English, he sounds authentic, but when he spouts Ghalib in a faux accent, you know it is Bollywood. Kitsch Kitsch Hota Hai!
 -- Madhavan Narayanan

Jio Beta! Is RIL hiding a secret sauce?

Reliance Jio is creating a flutter in India's telecom market. Mukesh Ambani seems to be using a late mover advantage by going in for aggressive pricing because he has not spent much on buying spectrum, in contrast to big incumbents such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and idea. This gives his Reliance Industries Ltd more elbow room in terms of flexibility.
At the same time RIL is targeting 100 mln customers in a short span of time. He can hope to play the volume game. But where will the profit come from?
My guess would be that it would come from data science.
By being flexible on handsets, adding content and using smart software to figure out profit opportunities, a retail-savvy game can be played.
Here is how.
By combining Lyf-branded house phones, partnerships with low end brands like Intex and content providers, RIL can get high volume semi-rural consumers.
Reliance Retail can be the e-commerce play using supply chain management efficiently.
There is also room to create, procure and manage in-house content. Remember, Ambani controls Network 18 and Viacom 18 is famous for Nagin serials!

When Bollywood bodies mess with Sufi souls: A day out at Coke Studio, India

It is all in the point of view.
Sitting on the 18th floor of the Westin hotel on the Western Express Highway – or is it the 17th? – the view is stunning as we look at the distant condominiums with a golf course in the Goregaon area – green, serene and resortish. The perspective from the coffee shop’s charmed glass window is not quite the Bombay we are used to – noisy, bustling, congested.
We are on our way to Malad, the Coke guys and us, and there is a sense of thrill. Finally, Coke Studio is happening in India, and over some eclectic banter on the flight with Coke’s senior brand manager Abhijit Datta, I get some interesting tidbits on the phenomenon that has become quite the rage in a new-new South Asia.
Apparently, Coke Studio was not born in Pakistan, as it is often believed, but in Brazil, as Coke Estudio. And the man who made it happen there – Ricardo Fort - - was, believe it or nuts, until recently posted in India as vice-president, marketing, though it beats me how this novel experiment of putting rock stars, folk singers and sundry musicians in a novel, milkshake concoction did not happen during his Indian reign.

* * *

Beyond the fish-smelling suburbs of a sultry Mumbai afternoon suburbs, beyond the Shiv Sainik posters promising moustachioed regionalism, beyond scurrying, emaciated Mumbaikers, we reach a place that is now Coke Studio for us. This could be a haunted house in a nice Bollywood flick, where they have the final fight scene. It is some old Goanese-style mansion. Inside, I see a counter-intuitive sight. My bad. I expected some cosy, concert-like atmosphere with a decent crowd being enthralled in sequence by a procession of talented musicians. But, no. This happens to be just a studio, where the focus is on the recording. Just a few moveable chairs strewn in the darkness for us.
And like a Bollywood movie, there are takes and re-takes and re-re-takes and re-re-re-takes.
Sabri Brothers (the local brew, not the original Pakistani singers), are busy doing what could be a rock qawwali of a song that we used to sing more in jest than in profound musical experience as children: “Hamein toh loot liya milkey husn walon ne, kaley kaley balon ne gorey gorey gallon ne.” The folks apologetically tell me as I see 18 re-takes that it is not always this bad. Songs move faster in the series of recordings that preceded this. Guided by Aditya Swamy, MTV India’s channel head, I am taken to a waiting van outside (the kind in which Bollywood stars dab make-up and give interviews to Page 3 journos). In a laptop, they make me taste the sounds that happened before. Good stuff, actually. There is Harshdeep, there is Shaan, and there is a Bengali folk singer called Sourav Mandal and a Tamil folksie, “Chinna Ponnu” (literally, Little Girl). It is clear to me by now that the magic of Coke Studio, is, well, in the studio. Much mixing and bartending will make this drink hit you. And a big question hangs. Why is this all so Bollywoodesque? The Pak version was more Sufi rock, wasn’t it? Inside, Leslie Lewis, the talented composer, producer and guitarist who ought to be the alter-icon to any Rahman-respecting aficionado, explains in a simple analogy the daunting challenge he has faced in the 40 days of a Lent-like penance that audaciously straddles the superficiality of the pop culture and the richness of a heritage it is trying to court. “I am giving them some bitter chocolate. And then I given them the chocolate they are used to, in the hope that later, they discover the bitter taste.” To good effect, he adds his own intuition as he experiments away. Ramya Iyer, the dusky “English pop” singer I hang out with as the Sabri Brothers drone on in re-takes, has a rich voice and so Lezz decides to do away with all musical instruments for her -- but for a sound pad. With her is Roop Jolly, a poetess. The surprise is that Ramya sings a Urdu ghazal (Aaj jaane ki zid na karo) and Roop intersperses it with recited poetry.
This is all so experimental.
Lezz has not slept much for 40 days, and his supportive wife is hanging in there, helping him every step as he walks the crevices of an uneven, glacial musical landscape. And Lezz is no mere composer, but a medicine man. His plaited hair waving, he gestures to the musicians from a console as he brews what he hopes will be a trick that works. In another console a few yards beyond, Samar Khan, with a crutch to guide him after an accident, watches as a key member his team is guiding the cameras like a soccer coach shouting to half-backs.
The mission of this man, who directed the 2008 movie “Shaurya” is to add to the event some of the Red Chillies (the SRK company) he works for now. The red-and-black colours of the studio glow amid the cameras and I get one more hang of what will eventually become a TV experience: angles and lights and sounds in a Coca-Cola concentrate formula. The logic of the focused factory over the magic of the spontaneous craft.

As I get ready to take the flight back, the music seems more evolved. There is seasoned Kay Kay and there is the talented Mathangi, trying to do a pleasant, quicker version of the S.D. Burman classic, “Khilte hain gul yahan.” The humming is nice, the reverb just fine and the song somehow sounds alluringly new.

The challenge for anyone who has tasted the Pakistan stuff is to shed the baggage and look at the Indian Coke Studio with a new pair of eyes. The burden for the Mumbai gigsters is to be odiously compared with the geniuses of Lahore. The challenge for Leslie Lewis is to make it all somehow popular with the kids who watch MTV (er, aren’t they drooling on foul-mouthed Roadies, otherwise?), while he tries to transplant a Sufi-folk soul into the humdrum of the Bollywood culture.
Bitter chocolates are so hard to sell to sugar-high kids.
Somehow, one hopes that India’s own Coke Studio will provide the respectable view of the kind I got on Mumbai from the top floor of the Westin. In the end, it is all in the point of view

Endhiran: Kyunki Hollywood Bhi Kabhi Kodambakkam Thi

Endhiran: A wonderful effort.
I fell for the first half, but quite sure the money is being made from the second.
Freudian psychology and Darwinian perspective wrapped in post-Asimovian sci-fi narrative with special effects razzmatazz curated specially with Tamil Nadu's feudo-democratic sensibilities.
I am afraid the magic of Vairamthu's lyrics and Sujatha's dialogues must be wholly lost in translation for those who watch it as "Robot" --much like the humanoid without human emotions that is the heart of the movie.
Special mention for a satirical interlude, where Rangusky, a mosquito gangleader, demands National Bird status!
Watch out dear Hollywood, here comes Kodambakkam.

Private Dictionary of Shashi Tharoor

Twitter: A place where you first invite troubles, and where troubles later invite you

Pushkar: Brandname associated with the trading of cricketers like cattle

Cattle Class: The class you acquire when you buy cricketers as described above

Rendezvous: A secret meeting to discuss things with partners.

External Affairs: Affairs you have while sojourning abroad

Ban Ki Moon: An endearing Korean term that sometimes sounds like a Punjabi abuse

Hat Trick: When you bowl a maiden over, three times in a row while having a ball

Trivandrum: A place in India connected with Dubai, with a mysterious Gulf in the middle

Kashmir Problem: Something that Lalit Modi creates when he tweets across my Line of Control