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The BlackBerry, the elite, and a question of civil liberties
• Date published: August 15, 2010
The Indian elite is known for many things good, bad and ugly, its ostrich syndrome being one. Any ill that does not plague it, simply does not exist. A liberalised socio-economic regime gives it all the privileges that it barefacedly demands; civil liberties always go to hell and stay there.
So when civil liberties activists raised the alarm after the Indian laws governing cyberspace and online activities came into force, no one took any cognizance of them. Street dogs after all are wont to bark. At every one, at everything. India Inc was gung ho about development, never mind what that means, and the media was dutifully reflecting this misplaced euphoria. Everyone used the Internet, the Internet made money for everyone, this way and that. Till one fine day.
The rule of the philistines
• Date published: July 19, 2008
• Originally published in M
One is amused and amazed at the fact that the terms ‘moral policing’ and ‘freedom of expression’ are much in the thick and thin of things these days. Is it because there is now an upsurge of conservative militancy? Or, is it because the world has not suddenly become a bad place; but that news travels faster now, and television and the Internet are there to blow things up? Look closely, you will know there is a little of both to it.
A decade or so back when Shiv Sena hoodlums plundered the offices of a small Mumbai-based newspaper called Mahanagar, there were few to take up the cudgels on its behalf. But today when the Star News office is pillaged by marauders of an unknown entity over what good journalists will not think of as earth-shaking news, it does have more people reviling the act. And yes, most would have seen the leftovers on television.
Officers and scoundrels
• Date published: January 4, 2007
Two drunk schmucks get horny in a bar, and try to fiddle around with a woman. (Commonplace behaviour, we might say, in a bar at least.) When they are asked to behave themselves, they turn violent. (Just as commonplace, we might agree too.) They are, thankfully, apprehended and detained at a nearby police station. And after a while, all hell breaks loose. For, a gang of their armed, pillaging, comrades land up at the police station and thrash the policemen black and blue.
The script might sound all-too-familiar; only that it isn’t from a sleazy Bollywood potboiler. This happened for real, and the schmucks in question are squeaky clean officers of the venerable Indian Army. Hmmm. Why am I not surprised?
Delhi rains: All talk of weather, no talk of climate
For the past one week, it has been the same story every day. It has been raining, pouring, making the city of Delhi a bigger mess than it was the previous day. The newspapers are full of photographs the following morning telling us the hell others have been going through too. Immediate problems beget immediate reactions. The civic bodies are to blame for the mess, we are told. And the blame game goes on.
Now, now, tell us something new, will you? While it is a fait accompli that the metropolitan disorder one has to wade through is only a clinical manifestation of the ineptitude of the Delhi government and its lethargic and corrupt civic agencies, it is a recorded fact that this has been the wettest August that the capital city has seen in 15 years.
The Poetry of Cinema
“We have reached a time when we must open warfare on mediocrity, greyness and lack of expressiveness and make creative inquiry a rule in cinema.”
His oeuvre rests on this simple rule, which lies framed in his study. On the wall opposite is a poster with a pigeon nesting on tangled strips of film. And for Buddhadeb Dasgupta, too, his concerns zoom through the mesh of life to explore the inexorable truth of life and living.
But, as Dasgupta himself says, “If creative inquiry is a rule for cinema, then a filmmaker never makes one in expectation of an award. But when one gets one, the feeling is good.” And this reaction comes after his latest cinematic essay, Lal Darja, was adjudged the best feature film for 1997.