Talaash... DD Nostalgia

Haunting notes of Hemant Mukherjee’s ‘Tum Pukar Lo’ tune albeit with other lyrics… Suresh Wadekar’s partially forgotten honeyed vocals… Stalwarts like Alok Nath, Vijyendra Ghatge, Beena, Dina Pathak, Pallavi Joshi, Moushami Chatterji, Avtar Gill, Sushmita 'Kitty' Mukherjee, Harish Patel, Asha Sharma, Nishigandha Wad, Sudhir Dalvi, Goga Kapoor (only artiste with a voice to match that of Mr Amrish Puri - agreed?) and finally, Neelima Azim.. Hrishikesh Mukherjee as the director (I nearly gulped! Hadn’t expected that)……long-forgotten names like Babloo (Background score)….and oodles and oodles of nostalgia…

Can you guess what I am talking about? Yes, it’s the DD oldie ‘Talaash’ that has made me take an off from office after having found all the 26 episodes thoughtfully uploaded by Rajshri on Youtube. I had very, very faint memories of the storyline. I had forgotten all about Alok Nath and the others, but did remember a train's whistle, Vijyendra Ghatge and Moushami (hence, the pleasant surprise of finding some long-forgotten, some still-famous names). Another memory was that of a scene where Moushumi lies across the back of a poor chap, to prevent her cruel father from lashing out at him with a riding crop. There was also a sense of a strong pull at the heart strings. And there was a sense of a mystery unsolved – a sense of having missed out the delicious denouement of a suspense tale.

I don't quite know how Talaash was re-triggered in the mind. Definitely, I was googling about something else and somehow came across this by doing what we researchers are paid (inadequately) to do  - cross-referencing. And then, as they say, one thing led to another and the rest is history :)

I can't really say it brought tears to the eyes.. not quite that, but truly, the sense of nostalgia and emotion were so strong that the heart was quite full. Those were the days, you know, those were the days....when railway’s first class coaches did not have AC, small towns hosted literary conferences, Hindi authors still existed and maintained diaries, family friendships forged relationships deeper than blood, village belles were truly innocent and filial feelings were so strong that sons gave up careers and marriage propositions and daughters spoiled their lives to avenge their fathers' deaths.

Based on the Bengali folk tale 'Sonar Kathi Rupor Kathi' (what a delicious name! I must read this...have already ordered the English translation on Flipkart) and with a Bengali director and crew, I had expected the story to be set in Bengal. Surprisingly, it wasn't - instead, a sleepy Rajasthan village near Udaipur is my best guess (though a Google search tells me Sarsawan is a town in northwest UP).

Whatever be the setting, after a long time I have come across a storyline that interweaves the threads of emotion with a tinge of suspense so well, has characters so real and layered that you relate with them instantly and deals with the core of human psychology in such a way that the greys replace all blacks. The acting is superb, the direction is masterly, the music is sublime and the storyline is strong and unusual. As an added allure for me, the protagonist even speaks in favor of forest conservation and against illegal lumbering!

And now for the plot. A Hindi author, Shankarlal, on his way back home from a literary conference, suddenly sees the name of a sleepy station and has an attack of memory-jog - wasn't this the same town that was mentioned in the postmark of the last letter he had received from his muhbola younger brother Sudhir, before the said younger brother disappeared? On an impulse, he rushes out of the train at this station, determined to learn the truth of Sudhir's whereabouts. However, the incident is not one, not two but nearly ten years old. Many old-timers are dead. Those who aren't, mysteriously clam up, driving Shankarlal to near-frustration. That Sudhir had somehow made himself unwelcome to the gentle villagers here, dawns on Shankarlal, who is befuddled by the growing incoherence surrounding the disappearance of his affable and gentle brother. Only one person seems to be the ultimate fountainhead of information - Sarsawan's own Woman in White, a sadhika called behenji - who is regarded as a goddess among the villagers but whose mood swings regarding Shankarlal and Sudhir are so abrupt and wide that female hormones cannot be blamed. Is Sudhir dead or alive? Did he deserve the mass hatred of the villagers? What actually happened nearly a decade ago? Will behenji enlighten Shankarlal? No, no. These questions, I am afraid, do not deserve answers here. They are the typical queries we review writers throw in for good measure to titillate our readers. 23 X 26 minutes is about the time you will require to see this DD masterpiece through. So go ahead, Youtube lovers!

10 Disturbing Divorces

1.  Australia and Ashes
2. Nitish Kumar and Sushil Modi in Bihar – will it affect Nitish’s next comeback chances?
3. Ms. Zeta Jones and Mr. Douglas – much as I feel that his dentures must have been artificial even in his youth – I really did like the pair
4.  Rupee and stability – sensex and its bullish rises – Manmohan ex-RBI Governor-Singh and his financial acumen...really, where are we headed with these nosedives? India’s nose has dived in global circuits – naak kata di yaar..
5. Safety and Mumbai – Shame!
6. Akshay Akki Kumar and the ‘100 crore club 2013’ – Mumbai hated happening dobaara...
7.  Communal harmony and Uttar Pradesh
8. The tuberculosis bacteria and the ease of its annihilation – a difficult-to-treat strain has reared its ugly head
9. Anna Hazare and demands for jan-lokpal?? Why is the grand old man silent??
10. Deepti, from her blogging L (A re-marriage is being arranged..all are invited)

Ten Insects!!

1.      Praying (Preying) Mantis - Asaram 'Bapu' :D

2.      Bee - Nitish Kumar, busily handling the mess Lalu left behind

3.      Dragon fly - L K Advani for hovering over the PM's chair for far too long!

4.      Ant – The disciplined Manohar Parriker

5.      The pupa of an unidentified insect - Rahul Gandhi

6.      Wasp – Arvind Kejriwal for his ‘stings’

7.      Mosquito – many contenders but Diggy Singh & Ajit Pawar win for making the most atrocious buzzes of late

8.      Jewel Bug - The beautiful Priyanka Gandhi

9.      Spider – Srinivasan, for weaving a fine web over BCCI

10.  Cockroach – Lalu Yadav takes the cake – seemingly indestructible, he awaits a comeback in Bihar; and spreading political dirt is his forte

No offense meant by the above post - a light-hearted attempt to check if Class Insecta Biodiversity could match India's colorful political scene. Entry nos. 1, 8 & 9 are not politicians in the true sense, but really, they appear political enough :D

The Seventh Horse of the Sun

To quote Maanik Mulla, 'A writer who worries about technique is one who has no clue what to write.' And yet, as I read Dharamveer Bharti's 'Suraj ka Saatva Ghoda' and watched Shyam Benegal's sublime rendition of it on celluloid, I found myself applauding both the technique and the content of Bharti.

About the technique first - this is the only attempt I have read/seen of writing a full-length novel piecemeal in the form of quite separate short stories! Yeah, each short story can stand by itself although when you look at the consolidated whole the novel emerges delicately, almost subtly. In Maanik Mulla, Bharti creates a narrator par excellence who links these short stories almost imperceptibly - by himself, just like beads of a necklace are linked by the thread running through them.

And the theme? Why it's love itself! Maanik Mulla would like you to think it's about how economic constraints dictate to love. But more appropriately, the story deals with what is not love. Or what love should not be. The love of Jamuna and Tanna? Jamuna and Maanik? Jamuna and her elderly husband? Jamuna and Ramdhan? Moving away from Jamuna, what about the love between Lily and Maanik? And what indeed about Satti and Maanik?

As he exposes how these characters react to love or what they think is love, Bharti takes time to expose his characters to us. Each character emerges with a depth and dimension that is thought-provoking. Case in points - the raw, earthy, heart-stopping sincerity of Satti who fights for her honour and is hurt not by rape but by betrayal........the pitiable selfishness and restlessness of the apparently promiscuous Jamuna in the wake of her failure in love...the bibliophile Lily whose love begins and ends in literature and whose pride yields her a child at the cost of a husband...the sensitive friend of Maanik in whose mind Maanik's stories create visions that make an author of him....Tanna, who jerks pity from your heart for the lamb-like helplessness of his succumbing nature.....Chaman Thakur, who only took pity on an Afghani orphan girl so he could sell her off when she grew up......

All these characters are actually part of the same full-length novel. But Bharti divides their stories into separate ones - each story overlapping the other - each story hinting at the other - each story looking at the others from a new angle...until finally at the end the kaleidoscope merges to show one pattern...

Shyam Benegal's take on the book is so honest and so beautiful it makes you want to pinch yourself so you'll know it's no dream. The transition from book to movie is so effortless that I could make out no difference in the tenor. Especially the camera effects in the motion picture bring out the inherent linkages between the stories more poignant, more outlined. Several scenes and dialogues are repeated albeit from different camera angles. Scenes missing from one story are suddenly found in the middle of another. The actors act awesomely. The music becomes the motion picture and could well have been the part of the book itself. And the climax is something the book could have appended to itself.

Bus....that is about all I reveal of this mesmerizing piece of literature. Saying a word more will spoil the fun.

10 more interesting quips

1. Today I found hair sticking to the bottle of my anti-hair fall shampoo.
2. I fought with my husband because he wasn't spending enough time with me.
3. One man's shoe is another man's shoe-bite.
4. Religion and Science have one thing in common - Classification.
5. An autobiography is longer than the same fellow's biography.
6. A pair of lesbians use the WC without worrying about hygiene.
7. A braggart is called a faker in both English and Hindi.
8. "Don't show off your modesty."
9. I'd give the last drop of my ink to write like Agatha Christie.
10. In Scrabble, it P(3)A(1)Y(4)S(1).

Achoo! Excuse me

And are you excused? No, sir, in these H1N1 ridden days, you are not excused at all if you perform the sneezing act in full public view. So punishing is the accusing glare you get in return of a sneeze that you are tempted to learn sneezing inwards.

Two Hindi idioms are vying with each other in my mind today, each claiming to be a better describer of the situation these days. I had first decided to choose one of them, but on second thoughts, here come both, each presenting a different standpoint.

One goes – ‘doodh ka jala chhachh bhi phook phook ke peeta hai’ (someone whose got burnt by drinking hot milk will carefully sip buttermilk as well). The other one is – ‘gehu ke saath ghun bhi pis jata hai’ (along with the wheat grain, the chaff may also get powdered in the hand mill).

The first one describes how we – the virus-phobics can get easily scared by an innocent allergic sneeze as well. The second one is from the point of view of the non-H1N1 microbes – since people are on a sanitizer drive, so many innocent microbes have to say goodbye to the earth as well.

So this is the situation in a nutshell – after the heroes –the plague and the small pox, it is time for the underdog influenza to rear its ugly head. I am reminded of Hrishikesh Mukherji’s ‘Anand’ yet again. Remember Anand’s dialogue – “These doctors give long names to simple diseases. If I tell you I have a common cold you are not likely to be impressed, but if I name a long-winding title like say, ‘lympho-sarcoma of the nose’, it will appear to you as being something grand.” It is essentially the name of the fictitious disease that is striking me. It is indeed lympho-sarcoma of the nose and the upper respiratory track – this swine of a disease.

The better half of the world – Mr. America – might have come up with a vaccine against the viral monster, but who knows the tiny tot will not mutate under our noses before the first batch of the vaccine is dispatched?

Then what is the answer to it? A total shut down? Public information boards like ‘No sneezing or coughing’ or ‘Sneezing in public is injurious to health’ on cross-roads? Ayurveda and Homeopathy? Baba Ramdev’s yog-sadhna? The N-95 masks and the 70% Iso-propyl alcohol based sanitizers? A hope that the virus mutates itself into oblivion?

Try your might, Homo sapiens, the H1N1 is here to stay. Just hope for a globally warmed winter this year.