Green channel

It starts with a Mercedes careening wildly. Left, right. The radio switches between stations. There’s a struggle inside. It goes off road, hurtles off a cliff, and tanks in a lake. Saif Ali Khan, caught underwater between drowning and escaping, looks out and then to the camera. He explains, in all earnestness, how he got here. Pause for thought. This movie is the latest evidence of the thinking over at Yashraj. In their magnificent marketing minds, this new audience is done with unnecessary things like feeling, empathy, and common sense. It has no use for suspense. This is the new India. What it wants is style, Tashan. And what that means is bronzed bodies, and Kareena Kapoor happily drenched at every opportunity.

Tashan oozes everywhere, even in physical assault. “I’m going to rape you,” says Jimmy Cliff (Saif) to Pooja (a paper-thin Kareena) in one hair-raising encounter. She can only smile in admiration. “Oh Jimmy!” a female voiceover swoons, taking us back to the golden days of India’s finest screen rapist, Prem Chopra. It all means nothing, of course. But it’s done stylishly, and that’s what truly matters.

But here’s the thing. Tashan’s a pretty good story if it wasn’t for the varnish. It’s a revenge tale with riveting flashbacks and little asides that could have been beautiful sub-plots. There’s the magic of actual drama and comedy alive here. But really, who cares for these things, so why take them further? Loosely, here’s the plot. Anil Kapoor’s Bhaiyyaji, a stylish English-loving don who uses sports equipment to kill and maim, is betrayed by Pooja, his assistant, and Jimmy, his English tutor. Bachchan Pandey (Akshay Kumar) is summoned to find the girl. After they mess around a bit with Jimmy, Bachchan and Pooja flutter eyelashes. They turn against the don big time. All this is done pretty stylishly, with foreign dancers, and a useless firefight or two thrown in.

The details are irrelevant. A particular music video sensibility – quick cuts, booty-shaking – infiltrates the entire movie, with none of the continuity you’d expect. What else could explain Bachchan suffering the inconvenience of a bullet in the arm (the focus of that particular scene), and the wound vanishing thereafter? And what of Pooja, on her way to Haridwar to perform her father’s last rites, stopping by in Europe to work it in hot pants and a bikini? There’s also the supremely unfortunate cut where Pooja appears to have grabbed Bachchan’s crotch during a dance routine.

Only Akshay emerges shining from this nonsensical wreckage. His body slinks and melts when he’s sheepish, and stands erect and tightens when he’s angry. It is implicit that style can only take you so far - a fact that escaped Vijay Acharya (director) and the producer Aditya Chopra, who drop-kicked substance out the window when they conspired to make the Dhoom series.

After a quick incursion into Shimla, your dashing, jetsetting, and hopelessly inconsistent blogger was called to Dubai at a moment’s notice. So here we are then, looking progress in the face.

In the six months since I last visited, the pace of progress seems to have slowed. The papers are full of news about changes that aren’t cosmetic. Routine stuff like the price of cars and registration going through the roof, the push to get a very status-conscious people to use public transport. There’s news about a rice deal with India because of the shortage here. The price of vegetables has just about doubled (Which still does not explain how these guys can possibly pay Dh7.5 (roughly Rs85) for a packet of button mushrooms! You get the same weight for Rs25 in India), and other rising costs have forced schools to outsource bus services (It costs parents more). It’s somewhat alarming to see an entire class of workers squeezed out. I don’t know what the thinking is, but ’squeezed out’ isn’t an exaggeration. It has happened in the past once before in the 90s, when a rule was passed to cancel the visas of workers who earned less than Dh4000 a month (or something like it). A little later those silly comparisons with Monaco started happening.

Anyway, so this is what’s happening: road rage, murders, outrage at costs. I’ll bet the planners didn’t take that into account. They did the cosmetic stuff, and that’s more or less ready. The real stuff, the real change, that you can’t see but can only feel, is currently underway. I’m being opaque at the moment, but the next few posts will illustrate what I mean.

If you catch this in the next five-ten minutes, mosey on down to www.iplt20.com to catch an unedited feed of what’s happening on the ground. Two minutes ago Arun Lal gave two vastly different takes of his ground impressions. Since he hasn’t given a third, they’re probably editing the second take to show on tv later today. Good fun.

Not that it matters much, but blogging will be nonexistant for the next week. Out for a break.

Bummer. Resident Evil 5 will only be out in 2009. If you haven’t played RE4, do so right now. I mean right now. Drop everything else.

There’s a pretty good profile of George Clooney up at the New Yorker website. Here’s one delightful passage:

…he has taken the trouble to think his way into the mind of the person inching up to his restaurant table for an autograph, or the friend of a friend who has become a little dizzy in his presence. (“Your job is to find the best way for those people to hold on to their dignity,” he explained to me. “For a second, they have thrown it out. They got what they came for”—the autograph, the handshake—“but then they’re standing there feeling, God, that horrible taste in their mouth: ‘What now, how do I walk away?’ ” As Clooney described it, they have to be shown a path back to their normal selves.)

I mean, you really, really should read it. THe piece has an oddly poetic headline: ‘Somebody has to be in control’.

Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Aargh.

From the Rajya Sabha debate archives: 

SHRI DINESH TRIVEDI: I support this Bill. I was always opposed to politicians being in sports unless they themselves are sports people. But I have to change my views by seeing the contribution of so many people here. I think, only the people’s  representatives will take care and support whatever is good for the people and this particular Bill. I would like to compliment Hon’ble Minister but I would like to take this opportunity also to mention that this is a wake up call for the Government. I am not against the private sector but they can blackmail at the last minute the way the Hon’ble Minister mentioned about the West Indies game.

The debate was over a bill making it mandatory for private broadcasters to share certain sporting events with Prasar Bharati (that’s Doordarshan and All India Radio). It took place in March last year, when Nimbus refused to share its live feed of the India-West Indies games. This was the blackmail the minister spoke about - that a private broadcaster refused to toe the official line. Because of the bill, Nimbus was in serious trouble. Of course it didn’t help that Nimbus bid $612 million for the cricket rights, especially when they knew what the second-highest bid was. Now they’re up for sale, apparently.

Later today I’ll put up a few thoughts on the ICL. How it could work, and why it could still fail.

…Mrs Redmond remarked to her husband, “Mr Strange is going to be a magician, my love.” She spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world, because to her it was.

“A magician?” said Henry, quite astonished. “Why should you want to do that?”

Strange paused. He did not wish to tell his real reason - which was to impress Arabella with his determination to do something sober and scholarly - and so he fell back upon the only other explanation he could think of. “I met a man uder a hedge at Monk Gretton who told me I was a magician.”

Mr Redmond laughed, approving the joke. “Excellent!” he said.

“Did you, indeed?” said Mrs Redmond.

“I do not understand,” said Henry Woodhope.

“You do not believe me, I suppose?” said Strange to Arabella

“Oh, on the contrary, Mr Strange!” said Arabella with an amused smile. “It is all of a piece with your usual way of doing things. It is quite as strong a foundation for a career as I should expect from you.”

This is from Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, a book I had the good fortune to discover earlier this week.  I imagined it would take powerful magic for me to read fiction again.