Ek revolutionary ki mauth…

I took some time to write about Kanu Sanyal, one of the fathers of what is arguably the only genuine revolutionary insurrection in post-independence India. I took some time to write about his death not only because it was a suicide but also because writing about the death of a revolutionary means bringing in his life as well…

Kanu Sanyal was found hanging in his house, at the same place that saw the break of the Spring Thunder in 1967. The end seemed almost poetic, but then you need a Neruda for to make poetry. All that the old warrior had was a few columns in newspapers, one of whom actually described it his death as the “death of a top Naxal leader”, as if he was still in the neo-Naxalite movement…

In the end, all he had become was a blurry myth and a sad present, repudiated by those who carry his legacy and casually ignored by those who once feared him…the fate of all great men who did not die in the blaze of glory and whom history passed by in search of fresher and more photogenic heroes…

His death came a few days before the Naxalites massacred 76 CRPF jawans in an ambush, the biggest attack by them to date. The government and the Naxals have declared open war, in which for now, the government seems to be on the backfoot.

So, at a time that the Naxalites have become, officially, the biggest threat that this country has ever faced (J&K terrorism pales by comparison), with them having a presence in a quarter of the country, with their tentacles reaching out into urban centres as well, you would expect the symbol of the Naxalite movement to be satisfied. At least, the last thing you would expect him to do is to go hang himself…

But then you got to ask yourself – was he a Naxalite anymore? Maybe in his last moments he would have muttered to himself paraphrasing Marx who once famously said “If that is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist”…maybe he was aware that no matter what he did, the media and the society would fail to spot the difference between what he believed in and what the Naxalites today believe in.

The Naxalism that arose from the simple need to fight for dignity slowly became a movement in which violence, not justice (which is an abstract term anyway) became the priority for maintaining momentum. It became a movement in which poor must remain poor in order for having a raison d'etre for the movement.

If an insurrection goes on for too long, it begins to look like what it intends to supplant. Maybe that's what Kanu Sanyal saw and realized.

When Naxals make pacts with dodgy politicians and when they start to blow up schools, when Naxals become the tipping factors in elections by way of fear, when they begin to claim glorious victory by killing CRPF men who have been pushed to be cannon fodder, maybe he realized that it was a war for its own means – a never ending war in which the people to be killed will be the ones whom he wanted to give a different life all those years ago…

Maybe the end came for him much before the noose tightened. Maybe at the end he had had enough of the power that flows out of the barrel of the gun…

Maybe its time to mourn him as we mourn those great visionaries who dreamt big and tried to live upto that dream, no matter how much the rug was pulled under them.

That takes courage…so does preparing a rope for yourself…

RIP Kanuda…

del.icio.us Tags: Kanu sanyal,naxals,naxalite,revolutionary,homage,tribute,india,communism,history,insurrection,suicide bomber,west bengal,media

Of Defiance and Death – Pinter’s Nobel speech..

G had recommended the Nobel acceptance lecture by Harold Pinter. I got around to reading it after a while…

And boy was it a read…there are some things you read once in a while that sends your blood coursing down your views and leaves you throbbing awake, with all all your senses pounding away…This article did the same for me, having read words of such power after a long time.

The words turn from being dreamy and philosophical at first to savage and bitterly laden with irony by the time it comes near the end. It does not end on a sweet or hopeful note, which is the best way it could have ended…and it has a poem by Pinter which I had not read before, termed “Death”…beautiful!!

The best antidote to banal and tabloid reporting that besieges us everyday…an article for keeps…

Read it here

Of course, an added reason I like this article is that one of the poems that has affected me profoundly is cited here - “I'm Explaining a Few Things” by Neruda…the power of the words in that poem seem tailor made for the article…

A hurray for Pinter…you are sorely missed…

del.icio.us Tags: Harold Pinter,nobel,nobel speech,article,anti-war,protests,Neruda

India sold for 500,000…

I remember a childhood story that i remember affected me profoundly. The story was of the Koh-i-noor diamond and how we lost it to the Britishers. The Brits were the ‘bad guys’ who looted the best things that this country had to offer and how they obscenely display the Koh-i-noor, something that they stole from us.

It was a story told with much pain, a pain which I could articulate later as born out of impotent helplessness. At that time, I could just sense the injustice of it all. I could sense the wound. The pride of India, stolen and displayed openly by the thief. If only we were powerful and could force the Brits give it up, how wonderful that would be, i used to fantasize. I used to fantasize, Hollywood style (or rather Mossad style) of a crack team of commandoes who would steal back the diamond.

I guess i retained a bit of that boyhood fantasy till very late. If some part of it still lived somewhere inside, the following news pretty much would have killed it off…

Tipu Sultan’s sword sold off

The implicit belief of my boyhood fantasy was that no Indian, if given a chance would let a part of his history and legacy be sold off like a cheap trinket. By Indian, I mean us as a collective. The government of the people, as a custodian of the country’s pride…

In spite of having ‘grown up’ i.e. resigned myself to the ‘practical world’ of adulthood, a part of me that never let go of the boyhood fantasy has collapsed with dismay over the almost non-importance of the event for the public, let alone the mandarins in the parliament. It merited a single column in most newspapers. IPL’s cheerleaders get more space.

A part of our glorious history – that of resistance agaisnt the Britishers (Tipu was the last king to defeat the Britishers), a legacy of the perhaps the greatest threat against British rule (before 1857), a symbol of what we have learnt to be proud of (remember the serial ‘The sword of Tipu Sultan’?), is sold off to the highest bidder at an auction house in London and we do nothing!!! and worse, we are still happily doing nothing. And even worse, we have already moved on…

Tipu’s sword was taken (stolen by the ‘bad guys’ remember?) from his dead body when his capital was overrun in the Third Mysore war. The captured sword was taken a symbol of triumph to London and 150 years later, we get a chance to get it back to where it belongs. But we let it go into the private collection of somebody rich enough to display it among his/her other trinkets.

A government that sits back and watches millions of rupees being spent on as useful as their own statues (sometimes complete with handbags) is not able to spend a few million on getting back what is rightfully ours?

In 2000, Vijay Mallya bought another of Tipu’s sword amidst much fanfare, as if he was doing a service to the country by keeping it in his house. Why not make it public property? Why was it not demanded? (I would not be surprised if this is the same sword that Mallya bought, which it is, according to some reports)

Which is all a collective failure, a failure of our pride to galvanize us in demanding the restoration of dignity of our past. We just don't care enough. Perhaps we don't seem to feel that it is important enough. Our so called present ascent to a world superpower (superpower of outsourced work, mostly) gives us more pride, not a supposed colonized past.

The only question to be asked here – would China (with similar history and the supposed competition to our ascent) have sat back and let their legacy be sold off? Of Mao or of Sun-yat-Sen? How many of us would say yes to that, I wonder? Something to ponder on there…

I guess Tipu fought for the wrong country…

 

del.icio.us Tags: Tipu Sultan,sword of tipu sultan,auction,india,history,1857,first war of indepenence,legacy,indian

Movie channels ki maut. But a Requiem for them? Nah...

I remember the time, not very long ago (a few years at the most), when my first task of the morning was to scan the newspaper supplement to check the various movie listings for the day, map the times in a mental timetable and religiously sit during the allotted time in front of the TV, with snacks in tow. Some of my memorable moments with cinema have happened this way.

But something has changed. The change seems very evident to me in the last month. This is a time when I have been at home for quite some time, thanks to my summer project being in Delhi. This is at a time when I can sit at home at leisure and watch movies on TV (the number of movie channels have gone up too in the last one year).

Except, I don't.

Maybe its the laptop effect coupled with my ever increasing movie collection. But I think that there are deeper reasons.

The main thing is time. Why would I want to take 3 hours to watch a 2 hours movie? When you have acquired the taste of watching a movie uninterrupted, why would you want a break in the narrative and needless to say, a break in the flow of the movie every 20 mins or so? I get enough ads to last me a lifetime when I watch a cricket match anyway. I don't think I need to be more informed in order to exercise an informed choice. And more and more people are getting exposed to this taste of watching movies without breaks.

And its not just me. The pace at which we are working, the pace at which we need to work, is increasing for everyone and this pace is filtering down to the teenagers as well. Between juggling an information overload from which we need to filter out meaningful knowledge and relaxing to get our mind de-stressed, why would we let ourselves be a captive tool for advertisers and have our time wasted in addition?

This is a reality that advertisers and Movie channels need to wake up to (especially the Zee movie channels who easily double the viewing time of a film - I wonder if anyone, even bored housewives, watches them anymore).

The reality is not only of laptop toting young and not so young consumers who have separate hard drives for movies (a exponentially growing tribe). DVD libraries like 70mm and DVD Express are gaining popularity with their excellent collection of movies (especially foreign movies - something that is not easily seen on regular channels). There are various models in the pipeline for the DVD rental business, but its a dynamic, constantly changing business. The only thing sure about this business is that they are going to topple the conventional movie channels in the time to come (atleast the current format)

The main turn of tide will occur because of a deeper reason. That of choice. The movie channels had a merry run because of the ever increasing hunger for entertainment and few alternative outlets. With movie halls becoming more of an outing rather than a regular feature due to the ever-rising ticket prices, they filled a vacuum recently vacated by VCRs and magnetic videos and not yet filled by DVDs. They dished it out and we took it.

Not any more.

The movie channels in their current formats would be on their way out soon. I have good memories of its early years. But now, they just eat up my time and deny variety.

Off with their heads, I say.

END OF POST

Borderless - one of the best Ads ever

If I were to rate Airtel as a mobile communication service provider, I could fill a page with my rantings.

Their network seems to fail suddenly and as has happened with me, it happens just when you need it the most. Your ring tone is changed without your approval, which means that you are charged without your approval as well!!! You get a bill which seems inflated and you don’t remember making so many calls and the call centre rep always passes it on in a daymare replay of a Catch 22 situation. And just when you are planning to pay online a day before last date, their website develops glitches. As is very apparent, that’s about a 360 degree circle complaints as far as Airtel is concerned. Maybe i stick to it only because the other service providers are even worse!!!!

However, one thing that no one can take away from them is the fact that they make some of the best ads on TV...quite thought provoking and quite attention arresting. To tap into the human need of communication and turn that need into some of the most beautiful ads, Airtel according to me, can attribute a good part of goodwill that people have about them to their ads that touch a place deeper than a certain cute dog ever can.

Their latest ad is a case in point.



This can be easily termed as one of those 'ads with a social message', which it is and it’s a great marketing tool at that, which is one way to look at it. But...

If we just look at the ad from a purely aesthetic point of view, it’s fantastic in its ideation and execution. The ad obviously points to border between the Palestine and Israel but the way it has been shot, it can just be any place - from Kashmir to Cyprus.

And what is amazing about the ad is that it has packed all the subtleties in about a minute and a half. The way that the older boy cajoles the other way to pass on the wall using sign language, the way that the other boy is hesitant at first because obviously he has been taught to suspect the other side, the way that innocence wins out in the end and the glee on the faces on both the boys when the ball is kicked back.

And then the coup of the ad.

The spontaneous movement towards the fence and how when the smaller boy gets stuck in the barb wire, the elder boy lends a helping hand. The expression on their faces when they actually stand defiant of the barb wire, small rebels who just want to play with each other, is simply overwhelming. And the voice over says “There’s no wall, no barrier that can keep us apart, if only we talk to each other”. At that moment you want to forget that it’s a marketing ad. It becomes a classic in its own sense.

To the tune of the Airtel tune, composed by A R Rehman, the camera starts panning out, moving upwards, the two boys start playing football in the no-man’s land, between the barb wires, as if creating a small peaceful country of their own.

You realize after seeing a few times that a lot of thought has gone into making this ad. A point in fact is that football is taken to be the sport which has a much more of a global language than cricket, a sport that an Indian marketer might have been tempted to take as a theme. But taking football made it universal.

It’s these small things that make this Airtel ad possibly one of the best ads ever.

Hats off, Airtel!!!