What I didn't like about Dear Zindagi

It started with Queen, the story of a new age girl who goes on a journey of self-discovery and eventually realizes that there is more to life than what she had always thought of. Then it was followed by a number of other films concentrated on central female character and her abilities as an individual. Probably for the first time Indian Cinema is being brave enough to pick up the subject of Women Liberalization and Individuality. It is a good sign. But in an attempt to cash in on this popular thought wave, the latest addition to the series of films doesn’t seem to be striking that deep a chord. Yes, I am mentioning about Dear Zindagi. The movie has been praised and appreciated by one and all. Its motivational dialogues are doing meme rounds all over the social media and people are feeling a happy and positive sentiment about the film. All of this is fine, I don’t have any problem what so ever with the kind of attention the film is getting. My concern is a bit different and a bit counter intuitively sensitive.

It happens quite often that explicit glorification of an aspect results in implicit marginalization of another aspect. This new found and overtly celebrated women singularity is somehow coming across as discriminatory against men. I know it’s a difficult proposition. Even in today’s world, it is called and observed as a men’s world and only a minority population of women enjoy the real freedom. Those ways men shouldn’t be at the complaining end. Well, I am not complaining. I am just iterating the observation I have made which I believe is not healthy and should be taken care of more seriously.    

The film revolves around a confused young girl whose past haunts her in such a way that she fears commitment and therefore becomes indecisive about her choice in love. It is understandable. We all go through that kind of phase in our lives, although not necessary all our pasts are scarred. People could be confused and aimless despite there being no past incident influencing their sub conscious. But I guess it becomes essential in films to relate any eccentric behaviour of the protagonist with their past to make the story telling a bit less complex and less time consuming, Alia’s character in Highway, Ranbeer’s character in Tamasha are a few evidences of what I am trying to say here. 

So, sliding through the haunting past cliché, the story moves on to another cliché i.e. the introduction of a messiah figure, a psychiatrist played by Shahrukh. Again, the logic behind this cliché could be that story telling becomes simpler and in case of this film, it made the way for a superstar to pitch in, opening up marketing and revenue generation avenues for the otherwise low key film. Queen had scored big on this front as Kangna’s character managed to overcome her pseudo limitations by herself without the intervention of any guiding force.

Now let’s take a look at the so called life altering philosophies rendered as simple dialogues by Shahrukh’s character in the film.

“Albert Einstein Ne kaha tha: Pagal wo hota hai jo roz roz same kaam karta hai aur chahta hai ki nateeja alag ho”

Can’t be credited to the film if it was indeed said by Albert Einstein.

“Rona, Gussa, Nafrat
Kuch bhi khulkar express nahi karne diya
Ab pyaar kaise express karein?”

Sounded good and convincing when delivered by Shahrukh, however I could see glimpses of inspiration picked from movies like Taare Zameen Par.

“Don’t let the past blackmail your present to ruin a beautiful future”

Heard number of times before, however the idea portrayed is quite apt and relevant, but isn’t this something everyone already knows?

“Hum hamesha mushkil rasta kyu chunte hain zaruri kaam ke liye, kya pata asan raste se bhi kaam ho jaye?”

You see films like Lakshya and this philosophy is represented as just the opposite i.e. ‘Kab tak asan rasta chunte rahoge, kabhi to mushkilo ka samna karo’.

Moreover, the choice always doesn’t boils down to us, more often it’s the circumstances which puts us in making the choice. Barring people with affluent backgrounds, the majority of middle class makes choices out of compulsion. I personally believe in the philosophy of having the smart and simple way out, but the philosophy itself is quite debatable. It certainly is not a blanket solution for everyone.

“We are all our teachers in the school of life”

Yes, true, and so is our society, our surroundings and a number of other factors. Again, this is something everyone knows already and not worthy of being preached.

“Agar hum apni zindagi ka steering wheel apne haath me nahi lenge na, to koi dusra driver seat par baith jayega”

I couldn’t be sure of what does this even mean. Does this mean that we must take control of our lives as to make our own decisions, carve our own careers, and live our own lives? If that is the case then Shahrukh’s character should have refused to take control of Alia’s character’s life when she was in desperate need of help. Someone might argue that Shahrukh’s character did what he did only to help Alia’s character come to the realization of his grand philosophies and he was not actually sitting in driver’s seat, but during that duration of her treatment, Alia’s character actually behaved as Shahrukh’s character asked her to and the process might have left a lifelong impact on Alia’s character as to change her behavior forever. If this doesn’t accounts for letting someone else drive your life then what does?

“Safe feel karne ke liye pehle saare darr mitana zaruri hai”

It is quite contextual. To get rid of fear might not be the best idea always. It is the inherent fear which drives survival in most of the animal species and having evolved from our primitive selves, even humans cannot be devoid of fear because it is necessary for our survival.

“Jab hum apne aap ko achhi tarah samajh lete hain, to dusre kya samajhte hain, it doesn’t matter, not at all”

It might be true for enlightened souls like Gautam Buddha, but a practical and social human being cannot live in isolation. It actually matters what others think about us. People take efforts to enhance their image in front of others, especially those who matter, like our bosses who might appraise us based on what they think about us, like the father of the girl/ boy we love who might decide whether to allow the relation based on what they think about us and like a number of other people.

“Zindagi me jab koi pattern banta ya koi aadat banti dikhai de na, to uske baare me achhi tarah se sochna chahiye, genius is about knowing when to stop”

Even if the habit under consideration is for good? At one hand the person is preaching ‘Take the easy route’ and at other hand contradicting it by preaching that don’t get addicted to patterns. For Alia’s character it was easy route to always remain in touch with Shahrukh’s character and seek guidance whenever required, but it was told to her that this pattern needs to be broken down now, implying that whether you like it or not, now you have to take the difficult route of dealing with your situations on your own. This looked fancy and inspirational in the aura of the theatre, but actually this doesn’t make any sense. 

And now we finally come to the phrase which I found most disturbing and uncalled for:

“Jab kursi khareedne me itna choice hai to fir Jeevan saathi me kyun nahi”…..or something of this sort where an analogy was drawn between chairs and potential partners. Now in a film which claims to be the thoughtful and sensible cinema and has been perceived likely by most of the audience, an analogy of this sort doesn’t fits. More than being disgusting, it is inappropriate. You see, chairs are objects, and comparing those with guys is a way of objectifying the guys. Now if a similar analogy had been drawn comparing women to some object, it would have been thrashed and put down by almost everyone, but a derogatory objectification of men doesn’t rings any alarm, doesn’t raises any eyebrows. A person can buy and use as many chairs as she wants simultaneously without violating any moral obligations, but having multiple partners simultaneously is counted as infidelity. Now infidelity might not be a crime per se, but is it something we should inculcate in our uber cool life styles?

Moreover a chair could be bought for a friend, relative, neighbor and anyone else, but same could not be the case with guys. Yeah, I know, I am taking the analogy way too seriously and literally. The context in which it was used was probably not the same, but my point is that if there is a movie which is based on life altering philosophies and is worthy of people’s attention and appreciation then shouldn’t the creators be wary enough to handle each and every aspect, including the subtle analogies, in a more sensitive manner?

The idea was simple and noble, but somehow I could not relate to the execution. I can appreciate the intent behind the movie but not the sloppy dialogues which are spreading across as some commandments on the social media. I am a person of simple needs, for me, films like Anand and Bawarchi still outweighs Dear Zindagi.

A peep in future - Baar Baar Dekho

The concept that the film ‘Baar Baar Dekho’ (BBD) tries to put forth is quite simple and easy to understand but immensely difficult to implement. Those who have seen the British romantic comedy-drama ‘About Time’ would agree that BBD’s core is loosely inspired from the British film. Both films preach the central idea of noticing the minor details of life and celebrate those as they happen rather to keep wishing for ways to turn into some magnanimous life altering events.

The areas where BBD fails to strike a chord though are quite a many, and the main area I found as faulty was the way the protagonist comes to the realisation. Jay magically skips into future (could be an elaborated dream sequence, never explained in the movie whether he was dreaming, the Pandit was playing some sorcery or was it anything else) and gets to live a few snapshots of his future life (one day each), where he finds out that all the things didn’t go as he had planned. In his conquest to revert back to a more desirable future, he even tries to fix a few things in his life when he gets a chance to live a day in past after having witnessed his divorce in future. But despite his calculated measures, things seem to have fallen apart when he learns that eventually he would end up divorced, not loved, alone in his old age. This was the time when the hard realisation hits Jay. Having stated the reason for loving Dia as ‘because we are married’, ‘because we have a child together’ and ‘because we have 2 kids’ on different occasions, when Jay returns to a day in past, post his old age traumatic scene, was the first time he states the reason for loving Dia as ‘because you were my past, you are going to be my future and you are this very moment of mine’, beautiful, isn’t it?

The thing that disturbed me though was the fact that Jay could have taken the decision to profess his love for Dia as another calculated and precautionary measure to avoid his own miserable future situation rather than actually feeling the love. Moreover, whatever reaction came out of Jay was entirely based on those 4 or 5 days he lived in future. There could have been better days of his future which he did not witness, thus his character transition could also be a result of an unbalanced and biased foisting of traumatic experiences. For example, what Jay would have done if he had got a chance to live a day where he was being awarded some dignified award for his contribution to Maths? Or like Dia had found love in another man of her own related field of interest, maybe Jay was also with another woman Mathematician and was actually happy in his life, but all he got to see was that one small day where he was pathetic and sad, giving him an illusion of having made some big mistake.

And the final reason I found the core treatment somewhat unappealing was the fact that the film actually contradicts its own philosophy in a way. It clearly says focus on each day and each moment as it comes, because no one knows what lies in future, over calculated planning is futile. And yet Jay is characterised as being some kind of dick for living his own life as it came through. He emerged as a winner and hero only when he dictates his present actions (confess his love for Dia) to better shape (over plan) his future, for he gets a chance to peep into the future.

News or Views??

Just the other day I was browsing through random videos on Facebook when a particular clip caught my attention. It was a clip of a debate show on an Indian news channel. The panellists included a number of prominent personalities from various political backgrounds and inclinations, a few progressive feminists, social figures and news anchor who played the role of a so called moderator. The topic of debate was unclear as it was just an extract from the whole show, but it revolved around condition of women in India. Now, since it was a debate thus each one supposedly had their own right to take a stand and defend it, but quite often when topics like this i.e. topics with clear and morally intuitive demarcation of black and white are discussed, it becomes extremely risky for anyone to take stand for black and defend it. The clip wasn’t any exception either. There was 1 guy who wanted to put forth his views that he believed that women themselves were responsible for the condition of women in India, and he was literally shut up. The guy was embarrassed and harassed in the news studio and was even asked to offer an unconditional apology for putting forward his demonic views. That is when I realized the magnitude of deterioration Indian media has gone through over past few years. More than shocking, it is alarming and concerning. 

What used to be news channels a few years ago have now become views channels. 

With the inadvertent segregation of our natives into political regimes and sub regimes, even the news channels could easily be identified as belonging to one school of thought or the other. With the onset of a single point agenda for existence of such channels i.e. profit making, the quality had already gone for a toss years ago, but what is happening now is a completely different new low. 

Media houses are no longer for the purpose of spreading awareness and bringing out the events as they happen, media houses these days are spreading their own biased, unbalanced views and passing verdicts even before any case could ever see the light of law. This is not enlightenment; this is a dangerous situation to be in. 

People do not seek to look for any credibility certification before blindly believing anything they see on these news channels. Biased opinions are getting spread across large populations like a wild fire and even otherwise neutral people are finding it fashionable to stick a political standpoint. Probably at offices, tea shops, barber shops etc, it feels cool to be outspoken and propagate ones political views in a hard tone, and if those views are backed up by a so called authentic news piece then person in question feels the pseudo intellect. It reminds me of an episode of Friends where Joey mugs up an entire ‘V’ encyclopaedia to be able to contribute in the coffee house chit chat with his friends. 

Corporate media houses are becoming bigger by the day. Names that just used to be the known journalists a few years ago are getting a celebrity status now with their Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts attracting hundreds of thousands of followers. A few of them are audacious enough to insult anyone on public forums who crosses their way. News has become a big joke and there seem to be absolutely no freaking control over what or what not a news channel could telecast on their show. Army strategies against a terrorist attack are being telecast live in loops, giving crucial edge to terrorists watching the shows live. Unproven allegations are being put on people and they are being judged as criminals of some sort. Achievers and successful people are being ridiculed for any nonsensical reason what-so-ever. Jokes on celebrities from entertainment and sports background are found to be offensive but jokes on state’s Chief Minister and nation’s Prime Minister are found to be laughable and in good jolly spirit. All of this and much more is happening in the name of free speech. 

Freedom of speech – our constitution entitles us to it, no one can take that away from us, but the question to ponder upon here is………………Is freedom of speech a toy of rich and famous media houses?

Why communism is bound to fail....well in any non idealistic case

Communism in its purest form certainly looks a great social organisational concept on paper, but in practical terms, there are quite little chances of it being a convenient and successful model which could be adopted by large collection of populations. Why?

In order to understand why, we must first understand the group behavioural dynamics of individuals which could be best explained using the example of 'the prisoner dilemma'.

Assume there are 2 prisoners X and Y caught by police for a minor crime which could land them in prison for a maximum term of a month. Police however believes that these 2 are also involved in a more serious crime as well, but there is no evidence, so police must strategically get them confess. Police decides to interrogate them individually in separate rooms and puts an offer for them. Each convict gets a choice to either stick to the minor crime in which case he is bound to face a months term or to defect against his partner for the bigger crime in which case his partner will have to serve a term of 1 year and he will be set free. But each prisoner is aware that the other must have received a similar offer. So there could be one of the 4 outcomes now. 1. They both stick to minor crime, 2. X defect agains Y but Y remain loyal, 3. Vice versa of 2 and 4. Both defect. Now as a group it is in their best interest that each keep sticking to the minor crime cos they know there is no way police could ever prove the charge for bigger crime and thus being loyal to their partners or the community they belong to, they both or the community will be better off, each serving just a month, but here is where the theoretical, on paper logic starts to drift away from the implications of the practical implementation of the concept. In most cases an individual human being is hard wired to put his own interests above the interests of others and in this particular case, there is also a threat attached as a repercussion of being loyal to the community cos there is no guarantee that ones loyalty would be reciprocated in a similar way. This when couples with yet another set of complex parameters involving human thinking and decision making becomes even more difficult for communism to prevail.

Prisoners dilemma had just 2 key players and yet the situation had just 1 in 4 chances to have turned out in favour of community. Imagine a similar situation with a larger population of millions of people, the probability of things turning out in community's favour would be dramatically low in that case.

My choice - a beautiful mirage

India has always been an emotional country, thus it has mostly been driven by public sentiments more than anything else, but of late India has also been emerging as a land of controversies, futile controversies to be precise. One such controversy that caught majority’s attention recently was the one observed as the public’s reaction to Deepika Padukone’s promotional video ‘My choice’ for Vogue Empower Initiative. I personally found the video quite artistically done, visually very strong with even stronger content. It was a straight forward but still hard hitting declaration by a voice that ‘It’s my choice’. 

Vogue Empower - My Choice Video

This is the blessing and curse of the true creative content; it could be interpreted in a number of ways, especially in a country like ours where people are so used to accepting any nonsensical garbage in the name of art and creativity provided it is not left open ended and to people’s imagination, provided it has just one clearly defined meaning, however absurd that might be. 

Many people interpreted the video as Deepika’s individual selfishly opinionated voice i.e. an individual’s voice, and that triggered a flood of opinionated (selfish or otherwise) messages over entire social circuit. Few stood up in favour of the video, quite a many against it, there were even a few messages directly targeting Deepika in particular. A few people also interpreted it as the voice of elite educated women, but if that is the case then the entire purpose of putting the video together should fail.

I interpreted the video to be the voice of women in general and not any individual’s or elite groups’. There were a few lines disturbing but understandable and in totality the video was bold and powerful but misguiding to an extent, misguiding because if the core of something is women empowerment in the context of India, then the very basic criteria of advertising or spreading the message was not met. Amongst the vast women population of India only a handful of women were seemingly targeted as audience for the promotional video. Also, I failed to gauge that how and why a bunch of self proclaimed social awareness creators should hold the power of speaking on behalf of entire women population without any evidential substance to support that each woman or at least the majority of women agree to what was said, but if it wasn’t the voice of women in general then the soul of it i.e. women empowerment doesn’t holds much meaning, right? Well, it’s up to you to think and decide.

So if it wasn’t an individual’s, groups’ or entire women population’s voice, then whose voice was it anyway? Here I feel comes the pitfall of branding in picture, where spreading the message kind of takes a back seat and propagators and propagation’s desired effect becomes more important. It’s not new for business houses to camouflage their branding under the skin of something apparently more novel and stirring. 

A similar video called ‘It’s your fault’ created by AIB floated around 2013 and enjoyed a more acceptable response from people. It was not exactly same as ‘My choice’ but was certainly on similar lines with similar message at the core. Why is this disparity then? Well, where at one hand ‘My choice’ is direct and brutally blunt take on women’s existential freedom, ‘It’s your fault’ was more of a satirical and sarcastic take on the same issue. It worked positively because, besides the satire, the general note of the video was passive rather being aggressive; it did not challenge the pseudo social authority whereas ‘My choice’ was a rebellious declaration, with an ‘I give a damn’ attitude underlying; it directly challenged the moral rule book and social taboos. At a subconscious level people always feel scared of rebels but enjoy mockery even if it is intelligently sarcastic, designed to convey any controversial message.     

AIB - It's your fault video

On final note, the only sentence from the entire transcript that I found unworthy of being a part of otherwise poetic brilliance is this following line:

‘My choice; to have your baby or not’

I could not relate to the usage of word ‘your’. Of course it is each individual’s choice to live the way they wish, have babies or not, but in this pursuit of claiming what’s theirs, I don’t think it is necessary to even unwittingly disown the natural responsibility and ownership of a baby. A baby could never be of any one person’s alone, so this would have been more impactful for me had it read as:

‘My choice; to have a baby or not’