2 States: The Contrarian View

I admit I am not a great fan of Hindi Movies, and having watched only a handful of them my experience with Hindi movies is limited.  I liked a few of them though, especially the emotional dramas from the black and white era, such as Seema and Haryali Aur Rastha, and the Raj Kapoor knock-offs of the Charlie Chaplin movies.  The Raj Kapoor versions, I felt, were more interesting than the original. May be that’s a cultural thing.

I have never been able to sit through the five most popular types of Hindi movies: 

1. The siblings separated at birth

2. The father-son conflict (often includes brother vs. brother)

3. The reincarnated woman-snake story

4. The story of vengeance against three/four villains a la the Count of Monte Christo

5. The ever popular one where the story begins with the killing of the hero's parents by the villain(s) and the hero growing up to take revenge.

The last type is often grafted on to the first type to increase the emotional quotient.

In am aware that many of the better, more enjoyable movies in Hindi are either remakes of successful films from other Indian languages in which more accomplished film cultures flourish, or knock-offs of foreign movies (example Beja Fry  the curry version of Le Dîner de Cons). A casual survey will show that Hindi films always had a tradition of borrowing its muse from Hollywood. Sometimes I am just curious to find out how well the rip-off works and end up watching the movie. These are often older movies like Kati Patang, the adaptaion of No Man of Her Own  which was based on the cult noir novel I Married a Dead Man by Cornell Woolrich (my favorite suspense writer).

I had recently watched the Tamil romantic movie ‘Nee Thane En Pon Vasantham’ (You Are My Golden Spring) and had liked it. The film, slow and sure-footed, had the subtlety of underplayed emotions, sophisticated but believable characters, and a thread of longing and yearning running through the film. Is this the new trend in Indian movies? So it seemed, and when a friend suggested I check out the new Hindi block-buster ‘2 States’, I succumbed to the temptation. The contrast between the two movies was drastic.

Before I go on, I must  pause and praise two elements in 2 States that stood out. The incredible acting by Amrita Singh (what a transformation from Betab to this!), and the coruscating dream-like visage of Alia Bhatt in a Saree.

I thought I was appalled by the movie's immaturity, the cardboard-like lead characters, and the plastic props in place of supporting characters (how did Revathi agree to this humiliation?). The in-your-face shallowness of the script and its unabashedly kitschy mounting, the two-dimensional characters whose mental and emotional growths seem to have stuck somewhere in pre-pubescence, the incredibly brazen stereotyping (especially of the Tamils), and a male lead with a wooden face on which even a stray accidental molecule of emotion has to struggle to maintain its footing, cried out for an abysmal rating for the movie. 

Then, think again.

This is What We Are

Think about us.  We might have high opinions (often misplaced) about our sophistication, behavior, intelligence, and intellect, but is that the real us?  In real life aren’t we indeed two-dimensional characters like the crudely wrought protagonists of 2 States, who lack intellectual depth or sophistication in the conduct of our daily life?

People are not mature or sophisticated. Nor are they subtle.

That sounds a very harsh judgment but think back, for example, about how we behaved when we (those of us who) were in love.  We exchanged puerile one-liners when we wooed, and generally behaved like pre-pubescent kids. Spoke to each other in stilted clichés ('Are you hitting on me?'). Our nods to the fashionable were 'going steady' and the ultimate statement of modernity a contrived sexual conquest. To our callow minds these were not artificial addenda to everyday life, but symptoms of sophistication, our homage to the in-thing. Most of us, not unlike the two cardboard lovers in this movie, existed on a low level of psychological maturity, intellectual growth, and emotional intelligence.

Our minds and behavior did not grow beyond the early teen’s even when we attended prestigious adult institutions, like an IIM in the movie. We will later take the stunted growth to Harvard, if possible. We looked at the world through stereotypes, and the jokes we laughed at were ethnic slurs or those that reinforced the stereotypes in our yet (nay, ever) immature minds, and we continue to delude ourselves that the victims too should enjoy the jokes.  In short, we were rather uninteresting, unsophisticated.  Doesn't, then, the lead pair of this movie appear less improbable and ridiculous? 

The film is based on Chetan Bhagat’s novel of the same name, which according to the author is autobiographical.  Chetan Bhagat’s style is unabashedly pulp, pulp kneaded and flattened with a heavy hand, and he revels in it, not a bad thing in itself considering the success he has had with it so far. We should believe him if he owns up the film as a true depiction of his love, wooing, and marriage. The author is to be appreciated, because it needs courage and humility to own up something that uninteresting and uninspiring, a slice of humdrum love life in the Flatland.

A Flatland it is, inhabited by two-dimensional beings going through the motions of their dull lives and unimaginative loves spouting one-liners, surrounded by a supporting cast of papier-mâché figurines stuck on props ever ready to fill in with actions expected of the stereotypes on demand. A nod to Karnataka Sangeetam here, a Balle Balle there, and throw in a Kancheepuram saree in between. We are caricatures on the pages of pulp.

Considering the honesty in all that I rate 2 States very, very high.

Squirrels, Tulips, and the Coming of Spring

When the ice in our front yard melted it revealed the carpet of rotting grass underneath, and the tiny pink tip of a lone timid tulip plant pushed through the peaty ground, signalling the winter is over, almost!

This was one of the nearly 100 tulip bulbs we planted in the fading days of the fall.

May be half of them survived the marauding squirrels. 

We had to wage a relentless battle against the squirrels to get those bulbs into the ground and make them (the bulbs) stay there.

The rascally rodents have a free run of our front and back yards in the summer.  When the fall approaches they are restless, frantic, running against time to stock up food for the winter. The squirrels watch us from a safe distance and silently mock our efforts when we go about planting the bulbs.  The moment our backs are turned they sneak in and ferret out the bulbs from the ground. The bandits know where to dig and are very professional about it.  The routine is: dig, snatch, run.  Safely ensconced in the crook of a tree, the critters have a way of clutching the bulbs between their paws, like a child examining a surprise gift, which is so endearingly human. But given the circumstances we are hardly able to enjoy such display of child-like innocence by the thieving rodents.

If even half of our tulip bulbs survived the plundering by these rowdy elements, we will have a riot of colors when the spring gets into full swing!

Beauty and Terror: Backwater Legends

In a village in the interior of coastal Kerala, one grows up imbibing the beauty and grace of its nature. It is all around you. The breeze that plays in the groves, the coconut trees swaying in the wind, the tranquil waters of the lagoons caressing the land in gentle waves, the network of canals and waterways that quicken the vegetation and sustain the greenery, the paddy fields snuggling close to the white motherly hills, the sunsets that turn the blue into gold. Peace pervades the mind. But peace is hardly a catalyst for creativity. Mind wanders beyond the beauty of this reality and invents dark fears.

Hurrying Home Before the Darkness Falls

For a stranger who wanders into this fairy tale land the lush green countryside would seem like an abode of peace and tranquility. It lies under the canopy raised by coconut trees, languorous in the sweaty heat of the summer, playful and inviting when the heat abates and the landscape turns into a riot of colors, and voluptuous and desirable like a bathing nymph when the rains wash and seed the land.  It would seem in this land people have no right to be discontent, no reason for being poor or hungry, no justification for being afraid. A minister from the north (I think it was the Late Yogendra Makwana) once caused a huge controversy with his casual remark, on seeing coastal Kerala, that people here had no right to be unhappy or poor when there were an abundance of beautiful women to be wooed and plenty of coconuts to be plucked. Laurie Baker, a true Malayalee if ever there was one, once said this was the only place in the world where people preferred to build their homes under the trees (though it is not true any more). A contented people living in peace with the nature. That is the picture.

Life on the Backwaters

But this land is just like the nymph of the lore, full of beauty, passion and caprice. Terror is an inseparable part of anything so unfathomable. If you had lived and belonged here, you will know this: the land broods. Fear of the unknown, of the dark forces, of the lurking menaces of netherworld, is an inseparable part of the lives of its people. The fear lives on in its lore, its legends, and its interpretations of reality itself.

Objects of beauty and grace become ominous symbols of fearful supernatural elements. There is a manic frenzy in the growth of the vegetation. Weeds and grass overrun the land and it turns a dark green. Tangle of weeds and bushes overgrow village paths. Dangers lurk underneath. The narrow paths turn into corridors of shade when the trees from both sides grow and meet above, shutting out the sun. One is afraid to walk there. There is uncertainty there.

After the sunset the lagoons present an eerie vista. The steely gray of the backwaters has a menacing look. An evil spirit broods there under the dirty sky. As you sit there longer, what at first seemed like only melancholy becomes an apprehension of something malignant. It is in the air. The last crow hurried home. The sky is empty. The trees lean close to the water. Their reflections have vanished. Now there is only a glittering darkness in the water where earlier those reflections moved with the breeze. Evil spirits are awakened from their slumber. They are moving in. The trees are their abode. It is dangerous to sit under those trees at that time. The oppressive atmosphere paralyses the soul.

With the rains come the thunder and the lightning, like malevolent warriors traveling across the sky flaunting their multi-pronged weapons. The gentle swaying of the coconut trees becomes an ominous dance macabre, and the medusa-like heads of the trees swing madly in the wind. The wind howls and screeches through the trees like a banshee, slashing at everything in sight. When darkness falls there is no let up, the dance macabre continues. The rain pounds on the window panes. Something crashes to the ground and there is the cry of an animal, almost inaudible in the howl of the wind. A bolt of lightning throws the fury of the elements outside into stark relief. Silvery ropes are tied across the tops of the trees and some invisible hand pulls at the tangled ropes. There is fear outside the windows.

But the most terrible, heart-constricting fear is in the moonlight. Especially if you are a lonely wayfarer in the night. The distances look unconquerably long. Like a leprous patina the moonlight lies on the hills. Those white hills are special to Pallippuram. They are made up of ‘silica sand’ and are probably the whitest natural objects in the world. In the daylight they looked like heaps of milk powder. Now they are heaps of crushed bones, bleached to their whitest. In the moonlight they look a bluish white though, an eerie bluish white. They sit there in the moonlight, there is one of them every hundred meters or so. The moon is bright, but these hills have no shadow. That itself is frightening. They loom huge as you approach them. And once you pass them, you are afraid to look back. There is a scraggly looking tree just on the side of the large hill, and a pale shadow of the tree lies on the hill. The silence! the cursed silence is like a heavy burden laid across your heart. And when you look ahead you see that shadowy wavering form approaching from the distance. It cannot be human. Your legs feel like they were cast in iron, and your heart pounds. There is uncertainty and fear.

Given Beauty, human mind will invent the opposite, Fear. Fear is the primal element of human psyche, and it is not hope but fear that enables men and women to conduct their lives. Apprehension, fear, uncertainty. These are the three emotions that lie at the roots of creativity. Human life is a continuous effort to make the future safe, and creativity is its tool. Safe for what? Safe for human life! This seems like incestuous logic, a paradox. True, but life is a paradox too.

The Book of False Records?

It has been claimed that Guinness Book of World Records (Now Guinees World Records, GWR) holds the record for being the most frequently stolen book from North American libraries. I am not surprised by this. GWR is well qualified to be a target of book thieves. Most people will not consider GWR worth spending their money on. But here is a book whose curiosity quotient is high enough to tempt a few itchy hands among the reading public to filch it from the library shelves.   An example of curiosity getting the better of good sense.

Is GWR indeed the world’s best-selling book after the Bible and the Koran, as the publishers proudly claim in their website?  According to their website, “In November 2003, Guinness World Records celebrated the publication of its 100 millionth copy! This confirms that, excluding non-copyright works such as the Bible and the Koran, the definitive book of world records is the world's bestselling book…”  This is a dubious claim, not solely for the fact that they so cleverly add up the sale of 55 odd books (GWR is an annual publication).  According to lincencing.biz, GWR has sold around 115 million copies during the period 1955-2010. That is just 2 million copies for each of its annual number, that too in 40 languages.  No doubt, GWR does makes a lot of money through its spin-offs and associated franchises (TV shows, exhibitions, museums, and such like) but most of its annual sales go to institutions (schools and libraries) for whom such purchases are an annual ritual. 

Nevertheless, there is some fun to be derived from flicking through the book, to marvel at the absurdity of some of the ‘achievements’ listed in the book and the fact that someone had taken the trouble to record them. Here is a sample of GWR records.

o   The record for keeping the most number of snails to the face for 10 seconds. Alastair Galpin (New Zealand) achieved the record of 8 snails at The Warehouse shop in Sylvia Park, Auckland, New Zealand, on 27 October 2007.

o   The record for owning the largest number of airplane sick bags (5468) is held by Niek K. Vermeulen of the Netherlands.

o   The loudest purr achieved by a cat: Smokey, from Northampton UK emitted the record of  67.7 dB (LA peak) on March 25, 2011. The decibel was measured and certified by a sound engineer in the presence of the local MP.

o   Gurning[1]: The record for ‘gurning’ (for the uninitiated, ‘gurning’ is ‘making ugly faces’) is held by Gordon Mattinson from U.K., who is the world champion gurner.

o   To have the most people tossing coins simultaneously: An Indian, Rev. Saint Gurmeet Ram Rahim Sing Ji Insan (India) from Sirsa, India, holds the proud record. 12,013 is the precise number of coin tossers he mustered for the momentous event on 15 August 2011.

The craving to get into GWR was a widely seen phenomenon in South Asia, especially in India, during the 1970s-90s.  Those who were bitten by the GWR bug were willing to go to any extreme for achieving the fleeting fame of being an entry on the pages of GWR, never mind the entries did not often last the season. The candidates shut themselves in cages filled with snakes, walked backward for large distances, stood on one leg for days, sang non-stop for hours, ate large quantities of food, and in general tortured themselves for the dubious distinction of being in the book. Some of the aspirants grew nails, hair, beards, whiskers, and generally anything that had the potential to grow on human body, and had pictures of themselves flaunting the often repulsive growths splashed in newspapers. It is even reported that there was a gent who boasted of not having bathed for almost all his life time.  This particular claim was reportedly rejected by GWR because they could not verify it. The hydrophobe’s dream remained unfulfilled.

GWR’s slogan is "We always endeavor to achieve the highest possible standards of accuracy”.  How accurate is this claim itself? Here are some dubious examples from GWR’s accuracy department.

In their editions during 1974 - 1991 GWR listed the Indian Singer Lata Mangeshkar as the most recorded singer, crediting no fewer than 30,000 songs to her between 1948 and 1987.  Lata Mangeshkar is arguably the greatest female singer India has produced in the 20^th century, but this record was a gross impossibility. Most of her songs were recorded for Hindi films, and that there weren’t more than 3500 Hindi movies during the period 1948-87. In fact this record was contested by the supporters of Mohamed Rafi, India’s leading male singer at that time, who claimed to have recorded more songs than Lata, and some enterprising soul presented statistics showing Lata recorded only about 5500 songs. The dubious record was deleted by GWR in 1992.

Are the GWR guys done with this error? No. The 2011 edition of GWR mentions Lata’s sibling Asha Bhosle, the other leading female singer in India, with studio recordings of 11000 songs, as the most recorded artist in music history!  Now consider this:  of the 36000 movies made in India in the last half-century (source Anmolfankaar website), over 23000 movies are in the southern languages (Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil), 6500 in Hindi, and the rest in the other Indian languages. Asha’s main turf, like her sister, is also Hindi movies, whereas there are other Indian singers who sing prolifically in movies in all the 4 south Indian languages. These singers have prolific outputs in devotional music, classical recordings, folk music, and pop albums as well.  You can work out the statistics.  As against, Asha’s 11000, SP Balasubramaniam (SPB) is reported to have made close to 50000 recordings.

 

That takes us to movies.  Which actors have acted in most number of movies in the world in various categories?  GWR lists Brahmanandam of Telugu cinema (India) as the record holder. 897 movies!  That is a huge feat, but there are many Indian actors who have exceeded that seemingly impossible number (Manorama with 1200 movies come to mind).

The Indian actor Prem Nazir held 4 GWR records at various times, but for some reason these do not appear in the recent editions of GWR. . Nazir played the lead in over 550 movies (!), and IMDb lists over 500 of these. But at various times, GWR had listed Marion Mitchell Morrison (John Wayne) as the most prolific actor in lead roles in movies (142 movies).

An amusing case of record number of errors per length of text is cited by Yakov Damsky in his book the Batsford Book of Chess Records: A 650 character entry on Chess, in which there are over a dozen errors! Some of the errors are really baffling if not hilarious. For example, the great Lasker’s (2^nd world champion) first name is misspelled to equate it to that of the fictional sexual adventuress Emmanuelle. And where does this bunch of errors, representing a record in itself, appear? In the 1998 edition of Guinness World Records!

‘The publishers stern warning that no part of the material may be reproduced by electronic, electro-mechanical, mechanical, or any other means without permission, is superfluous.’, writes Damsky, and rightly wonders, ‘Who will pay genuine money for such forgery?’

Who indeed! May be that explains why so many copies of the book are stolen from libraries.

---

[1] Native speakers of Malayalam language will recognize ‘Gurning” as ‘കൊഞ്ഞനം കുത്തല്‍!