Good night and good luck

Well I really don't need to apologise for being absent for so many days from the blogosphere since probably no one reads my blog, but I do apologise anyway. Feeling lazy, writer's block (I wish) - usual excuses. Just finished watching Good night and good luck, George Clooney's movie about how Edward R. Murrow took on McCarthy and triumphed shall we say. Not a brilliant movie but leaves you musing anyway. The tension in David Straithairn's face was pretty palpable and I couldn't believe how much everyone on screen was smoking. There was even a cigarette company ad thrown into the mix. It was all satirical me thinks, but then I haven't won any Nobel prizes for thinking lately, have I?

But the real reason I mention the movie is because it struck a nerve with me. For those who know nothing of London, we have an evening newspaper called the Evening Standard. They have posters with hand scribbled headlines like this one at vendor stalls and shops. The one outside my tube station this evening read - "Guide dog refused by Muslim cab driver". No prizes for guessing why they didn't go with "Guide dog refused by cab driver". On the same day a former foreign affairs and home minister asks Muslim women not to wear veils and then of course a veiled woman gets attacked by a 60 year old (go figure) man in Liverpool.

Point is this: I have witnessed this sort of stirring up of communal feelings before in the media, not here, but in Hindu nationalistic media in India. So called "mouthpieces" of right wing Hindu parties are more likely to publish these kind of headlines and stories. I am not going to go into a tirade as to how the western society with its values of tolerance blah blah are held up as a beacon for all supposedly backward and fractured societies to follow. This is plain not right. If you have issues with integrating some of your own citizens into your society, then there ought to be a better means of dealing with those issues than to pick on them as a collective in the media. Wiser people might dismiss them as mere sound/news/whatever bites but I can imagine how painful and hurtful these comments must be to any muslim. For all those who are going to immediately brand me a "bleeding heart" or worse, I don't really care, its your already threadbare society you are shredding. This is a cowardly attack on a section of the UK's own citizens, to gain media headlines, sell newspapers or for self advancement. Happened before - with McCarthy and his commie witchhunt - seems to be happening again.

If we have such seemingly unsurmountable problems with a people, then let's cut through the chase. Let all the Muslims in the world move to one place and let all other religions live in some other place or maybe each religion gets its own continent or country or something and we can all have a nice little cold war again. Dilemma - what do we do with those pesky black christians and white muslims? Conclusion - its not going to happen. Wake up and smell the stuff you are peddling. This behaviour is counterproductive, its not going to lead anywhere - ever - and these problems will outlive our miserable lives unless we stop insulting and picking on each other. If we don't want muslim women to wear veils, sign it into law and let everyone abide by it and live with the consequences. Do not be surprised if we are then asked to stop drinking on Fridays or going to our GP's for routine health problems like cancer or something. Its the contract of the society that one lives in that lays down the basis for behaviour. We live in a society where hands don't get chopped off for mugging and stealing and no one gets shot up with a whole load of lethal stuff for killing someone. That's the contract - it guarantees our freedom - and that's what we must live up to. Pointing fingers at different but nevertheless harmless behaviour or rounding up on a section of our own society doesn't form part of it. Let's all grow up and be respectful to each other - regardless of religion, height, weight, penis size, colour of mole on nose, whatever. But next time someone holds up a placard telling me how Osama is going to blow my arse to smithereens, apply the law, the very contract of this society that I am living by, and teach him some manners.

I didn't have any scotch, honest

Whisky is the favoured spirit of Indians - in 2004, they drank 590 million litres, some 40% more than the US, which has the second largest clientele of whisky drinkers.

From the BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4941588.stm

Now that is one of the most mind boggling-ly unexpected statements I have ever read or heard. I knew there was something to be said for my ability to consume copious amounts of alcohol but being one of the largest group of whisky consumers never crossed my mind. Especially because I never drink whisky. I think I agree to a large degree with the courts that no Indian company should be allowed to market its whisky as scotch/scot if there is no sizeable amount of scotch in there. Its like calling a drink lemonade when there is no lemon juice in there (hang on...don't artificial flavours violate the same principle?? Anyway..) but that's only part of the debate. As the article goes on to mention, Andhra weavers from Pochampalli sued weavers in Bombay for calling their sarees Pochampalli too. Something doesn't sit quite right with me about that. Sure - maybe the silk from Ppalli is a certain kind which can't be grown in Maharashtra or synthesized and maybe Ppalli sarees are woven a certain way according to distinctive and unique design patterns which are not quite emulated by the Bombay weavers. But - to my mind - there are a million problems with this litigative Andhriite aproach. Ignoring the fact that it pits one Indian against another and obviously encourages regionalism (I thought the whole point of all this trading stuff was globalisation? Or was I the only one who get mislead by the world in the World Trade Organisation name?), I have these issues with all this nonsense:

A) Say I, as a weaver, source my silk from Ppalli and apply the same designs and weaving methods as the Ppalli weavers - but I weave in Bombay - why am I not allowed to call my sarees Ppalli sarees? Coke everywhere in the world is called Coke, it isn't Indian coke, English coke etc.? My argument here may be a bit fallacious considering we are talking about different manufacturers/producers of saress vs. the same Coca-Cola Company across the world, but then Coke is bottled by individual bottlers spread across the country, so you could stretch your imagination a little bit here.

B) If a Ppalli guy adopts a Benarasi or Kanjeevaram pattern (no saree manufacturer can keep churning out the same patterns - they must come up with new ones every so often) then he shouldn't be allowed to call his saree Ppalli saree anymore by extension of said Andhriite litigative mindset, right? I am not talking about the silk or even the weaving methods here, just designs, which are considered the precursors to modern software programs. Design copied, Ppalli guys gets a slap on the wrist or worse.

C) All those ready to eat meals called Punjabi Chole, Kashmiri Vegetables, Madrasi Sambhar etc. manufactured by Indian food companies or prepared in restaurants around the world should no longer be given those names either, if the food stuff was not prepared in Punjab, Kashmir and Madras respectively. No, I am not trying to play the devil's advocate here, but last I heard Cornish pasties not made in Cornwall, England may not be called Cornish pasties - period. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/4378245.stm.

Now do you see why I am getting so uncomfortable with all this nonsense? It kind of loosely ties in with my previous post - restrictions (self imposed, legal or social) being placed on the spreading of knowledge (intellectual property to some). A guy comes up with something and calls it "regional X". If anyone else who learns/knows how to manufacture X but lives in region Y and still calls it "regional X" markets the stuff, this guy in X cries bloody murder and brings the force of the whole legal system to bear on region Y guy's ass. Surely, when I learnt making "Mysore bonda" watching my mum and now make them in my excuse for a kitchen in London, I am not cocking a snoot at all those culinary czars of Mysore? I am just making a snack, which for lack of a better name, I call "Mysore bondas".

Question for the girls - is artificial silk called silk? I would have thought since silk technically is the cocoon threads of the silkworm, artificial silk cannot be referred to as some kind of "silk"??

Bollywood - they are all copy cats, aren't they?

The other day we discovered http://www.bollycat.com, which purportedly "catalogues plagiarism and forgotten inspirations in the Indian movie industry". Ok, perhaps a commendable objective if you think of the number of times you have started watching a Hindi flick and suddenly gone "I have seen this somewhere...oh yeah its that Meg Ryan movie where she...damn can't remember the name". Now you are sorted, make your way to bollycat.com, movies are alphabetically listed by Indian titles that have "ripped off" Hollywood storylines or you can check which Indian movie is a "blatant copy" of a given Hollywood film. Maybe that's all that interests you about this blog and now that you have got your information fix, time to move on, eh? Wait....

I used to have a bone or two to pick with most Bollywood producers, directors, actors and assorted personnel - there didn't seem to be a single brain cell dedicated to original thinking and creativity among them. And not to mention the staple diet of rehashed songs, scores and beats that most music directors breakfast,lunch and dine on (incidentally I noticed a new phenomenon - recycling one's own work - listen to Jatin-Lalit's Chand Sifarish or Chanda Chamke from Fanaa and then play Yaara Yaara from Hum Tum - uncanny).

But only till recently, when I asked myself a seemingly simple question - how is this different from retelling a story or reciting a song heard elsewhere. I know you are going to throw the rule book on intellectual property in my face, but indulge me for a little bit here. I don't think the good people who contribute to bollycat.com are as concerned about the IP rights of Hollywood houses as they are indignant about having been taken for granted and deceived of a couple of hours' entertainment and mystery.

To go back to my simple question - haven't we, as individuals, at some time or the other heard a story somewhere and narrated it elsewhere. We have retold jokes, we have sung movie songs and perhaps parodied them by creating our own lyrics. Sure, we haven't profited from such innocuous activity but that is hardly the point, or is it? For the sake of clarity, I am going to ignore the profit jealousy possibility here and assume that you are ticked off with Bollywood for not inventing their own stuff. If a Bollywood story does closely (ok completely) mirror a Hollywood storyline, it still is a retelling. Its a re-enactment, not unlike the ramshackle stagings of Ramlilas in small town India, with passages from the Ramayana conveniently adapted to present day nation moving songs. Or jagraata (jaagaran - all night Holy parties for the uninitiated) songs, with cunning religious and pious lyrics set to all manners of Bolly songs, that the hired crooners would belt out one after the other? They are all at it and good for them. The point of movie making is to tell a story, doesn't have to be original - just interesting. The point of creating a song is to lift the spirit - again it doesn't have to be original - just fun. And besides, I don't remember people having an issue with the remaking of a Tamil/Telugu/Bangla/what have you language film in Hindi or the other way round. Or don't I know about www.allindianmoviemakersarecheats.com yet??

Beyond all this, if this retelling of a story or the rendition of a song spreads ideas across the world, isn't that a good thing? Indian movies are seen all over the world, and I don't mean the UK and US only. I am talking European gypsies and Ethiopian children and our Afghan neighbours here. Bollywood movie producers are doing a great service to global integration (national integration was achieved a long time ago) by shooting movies in London and showing them to kids in the Phillipines. Hollywood does the same when it remakes a Norwegian film into an Insomnia. But then we call that an adaptation, don't we? Why is it not accused of plagiarism when it converts a stage production into movies like Chicago or The Producers etc. Why is it that we think that movies based on books (Lord of the Rings anyone?) are such fantastic pieces of art, when there is not an original idea except stage production and perhaps some decent music and costumes in there? Because they own the rights to the book/material? Do you really want to rest your argument on that one legged table?

This is what Bollywood is about - they are good story tellers, and they reserve the right to tell a story , any story as they see fit. If it means narrating something verbatim to keep the flow, so be it. If you have a problem with that, air it, by all means, shout it out as loud as you can. But don't take this moral high ground, this holier than thou attitude where you feel compelled to catalogue perceived deficiencies in others. Almost makes me think that you are one of those who feels compelled to prove to anyone who cares to listen that the "West is indeed the best - after all we can't even make our own movies."