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’

RIP #Flipkart, for you no longer exist for us....

With an intension of getting the benefit and convenience of online shopping, we (myself and my wife) decided to order some stuff from #Flipkart and placed an order for a lamp on 7th July 2015. The lamp looked nice and beautiful in the pictures on their app but the thing that attracted us even more was the dimensions of the lamp. We have this empty space besides our TV table that we needed to fill and the dimensions displayed were fitting perfectly, and to add cherry on the cake the price was slashed to 50%. How in the world could we have let this offer go?

But only if we had known that ‘Flip’ in #flipkart stands for the middle finger that they use blatantly to flip off their customers and ‘Kart’ stands as a symbolic representation of the speed with which they service the orders and requests, we would have got a chance to escape. We weren’t that fortunate and got into the trap. The product that was delivered to us around 2 weeks later looked like a toy and measured less than 10 times the size we had ordered and were expecting. It was a complete disappointment as this was not the first product that we were thinking of returning, we had already bought and returned a couple of products in last 2 weeks due to them being of low and sub standard quality. The obvious and first thought that comes to mind in such a situation is that we should have returned this product as well, but we were frustrated and were feeling cheated. It no longer remained a matter of just monetary loss, it had gone beyond that, the loss of trust, the loss of patience and even more than that. Did we deserve this kind of service from an e-commerce giant of India. What we experienced was completely opposite of what their so called innovative TV adverts claim. So we decided to put out our thoughts in public through social media and we posted our comments on FB and twitter. 

What happened next was even pathetic, we were contacted by #flipkartsupport on twitter, soon we received a phone call from their customer support and they assured us that they have confirmed from the vendor and vendor has that larger dimension lamp that we ordered in stock and we shall receive that in a few days. Around 8 days later delivery guy came, again with a small hand held packet which in no case could have had the 40 inch lamp inside. To avoid the trouble of unpacking and repacking, we refused to accept the delivery. 

This time again we were contacted by #flipkartsupport team and they are still looking into the issue. They took order details from us yet another time to probably sit on that for a few more days before they #flip us off yet another time. 

I have lost hope of getting the right product and/or my money and compensation for the time and energy we lost, but my wife is still hopeful therefore I am writing this as this must be happening to a number of people and a little awareness could still save a good number of people from falling in such traps.

Margarita with a straw - my view

English Vinglish, Queen and now Margarita with a straw, though different and distinct in terms of storyline, characters and other aspects, yet all these movies had something similar at their intuitive core. It might not be a conscious decision by director to portray the central character struggling hard enough to achieve desired social stature amongst stereotypical Indian mindset and hence a western exposure proves to be a life altering event, but this is something which is common to all three movies and it is probably also emerging as a new cinematic trend.

So, is it really true that an Indian woman need to have her passport stamped in order to feel existent and empowered? If it is true, then does this mean that majority of Indian women population which does not have any chance of exploring west stand no chance at all to acquire deserved social importance?

While it might be true to an extent that people in developed countries like USA and UK are more tolerant, accepting and are able to see an individual beyond her limitations, but it can certainly not be drawn as a universal law. All societies of world have all sort of people, otherwise these first world nations would have been free from menaces like racism and crime against women. It could just be a happy co-incidence that protagonist of our cross culture films happen to have their respective encounters with only a mature lot of people among all. Having laid down the base for benefit of doubt to director Shonali Bose, it is now just a question of whether she has been able to tell this story of a differently abled girl in an entertaining and thought provoking manner or not.

Margarita with a straw is a bold film with an intent to emphasise the need of equality for differently abled and their desire to be looked upon as equals, recognised for their abilities rather being sympathised for their disabilities. The scene where Laila flips the rock show judge for announcing her band as winner just because the lyrics were penned down by a disabled girl was really impressive and could have set the tone for what's coming ahead, but unfortunately what started as a promising tale of making a mark despite all odds soon turned into a monotonous timeline of routine carnal accomplishments.

It would be cruel to say that we don't expect differently abled to feel the same human instincts as we do, but the fact that entire length of film was kind of dedicated to only this superficial aspect of human experience just let me down. One of the reasons for this disappointment could have arisen from all the hype created for the film. When legends like Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan praise a film, it is quite normal to expect something extra ordinary from the film.

In the end, I would like to congratulate Kalki Koechlin for such a heart felt portrayal of the character Laila, though the minor hand gestures and physical limitations were not carried on consistently throughout the film, but Kalki did a fabulous job. The only other character that managed to equate Kalki was Revathi as Laila's mother. Indian cinema is finally seeing a paradigm shift towards experimental avenues, and hopefully Margarita with a straw is just a step forward.

5 things we might be doing wrong to our kids

No matter how exhilarating the feeling of becoming a parent might be, being a parent is not as easy as it looks. As the famous phrase goes ‘dealing with a baby is like dealing with a drunk person, all the time’ and despite there being innumerable books and internet material claiming to be guides to good parenting, probably none provides the exact solution for exceptional problems. Based on my personal experiences, I have tried to list down a few pointers about what we might be doing wrong, may be sub consciously, unintentionally, but if we somehow manage to overcome these trivial loopholes in our strategy to raise kids, it might make a lot of difference to their lives.

1. Play by their rules: Play by their rules, or no rules to be specific. Babies and toddlers often enjoy and celebrate simple and modest games like peek-a-boo, or make funny faces, or throw the ball but in our attempt to keep them amused, we end up thinking that kids are like adults and hence have a mature thought process and may get bored, just like we get bored doing any activity again and again. Thus, we try and change the game and offer variety. They might not be as neophiliac as we might think and are pretty much rudimentary in their approach to have fun, thus they can continue for hours playing the same game, repeating same things again and again. This is just based on observation though, and there is no fixed formula, they could be quite adventurous as well. The attention span of kids is very short, therefore it is best to continue providing them what they want unless they themselves move out and demand something else. Doing same activity for longer duration only helps enhance their focus and ability to concentrate.

2. Don’t scare them even if you need to: Babies and toddlers might get into tricky and troublesome physical situations. It could be putting their hands or head on or in the toilet bowl, or sitting or moving just around the edge of the table, getting hold of some dangerous tool or any other such situation. Where at first hand we should always avoid them getting into such a situation, but nevertheless even if they get into one and we happen to observe them from a distance, we generally shout out loud in the fit of the moment and scare them. Giving them a shock from a distance would never help, on the contrary it could make things worse like make them fall, make them hurt themselves or at the least make them cry of fear. This might also have implications at their subconscious minds which we might never come to know about. It sounds difficult, but why should we practice something which can do no good, but has potential of doing much worse to our kids? I don’t know the ideal way to deal with this, but probably a more composed approach is required. In one of the episodes of Koffee with Karan, Shahrukh Khan once said some really meaningful words related to this, he said “If I see a speeding car coming towards my friend, I might shout and warn him, if I see a car coming towards my family member, I might run and push them out of the way, but if at all I see a car coming towards my kids, I won’t shout, I won’t push them, instead I would stand in front of car and make sure it doesn’t gets pass through”. No matter how idealistic this might sound, but our children deserve this level of attention and pampering from us.

3. Don’t make promises you can’t keep: We Indians are habitual of creating unnecessary hoaxes to keep our kids away from certain things or activities, or simply to pacify them on certain occasions. We often make fake promises to them just to keep them content, and very conveniently forget about those promises. The problem here is not visible with an immediate effect, but it certainly keep on piling up and might result in long term breach of trust. Our words might keep on loosing the credibility as our kids grow up and in the process we might end up creating an unbridgeable gap between ourselves and our kids. Well, making promises is not difficult, but keeping those is, so ideally we should only promise what we could fulfil. It doesn’t matter to kids whether we are promising taking them to Disneyland or getting an ice cream for them, as long as we stick to what we promise. We all have busy lives and owing to continuing imbalanced working life styles, we find it easy to get away from demanding situations and keep on postponing promises. It really breaks kids’ heart when they don’t get that promised remote controlled car after having so many imaginations of playing with it.

4. Be flexible with what and how they eat: It is commonly observed that babies and toddlers tend to play with food and try to eat everything else. Like anyone else, kids are inquisitive too and for them this experience called life and the perception of universe all around has just begun. It is normal for them to explore everything including their food, and exploring comes best through the sense of touch for them, and hence all the mess. Don't be too much worried about how they eat, whether they spoil their clothes, or they spill the food. It is also normal for them to develop a liking for certain kind of food eaten in some particular peripheral arrangement, like having only potatoes while watching cartoon. This could be improved by disguising other food forms in the form they prefer and by engaging them in something more interesting than cartoon while they eat. Associate their food with little stories and actions, like my son reacts very positively when I give him a bite while making helicopter sound and making a round hand movement. This is time consuming and requires patience and probably that's the reason we normally choose to take a short cut and offer kids quick and junk food thinking that they will eventually start enjoying all kind of foods but we forget that this actually results in kids getting finicky about their food choices. So, even if it's cumbersome to feed the kids the right way, it shouldn't be avoided because all of it seems worthy enough when we see a smiling healthy kid not dependent on junk food and having the same variety as we do.

5. Don't feel embarrassed: There might be a scenario where our young ones don't behave appropriately in public places like malls, cinema halls, restaurants, and no matter how hard we try to control their behaviour they just seem to be unstoppable, and among all the public admiration that it attracts, we just feel like melting down out of sheer embarrassment. Well, there is no reason to be embarrassed at all, firstly because people around really don't care and at the max they might just be sympathising with us, and secondly because our actions resulting from our embarrassment might have even more severe impact on our kids than we might imagine. It must be understood that kids don't cry or create a scene for no reason, they mostly do so to exhibit their discomfort, and in this process if they are made to feel as the source of shame and shouted at then it won't solve any purpose rather it will bring more discomfort to them and the scene would just escalate. There is no routine remedy for such situations and such situations require different treatment every time, but feeling ashamed and blaming kids is certainly not one of those. We must remember, kids learn from us, we are their biggest role models, so we should always treat them the way we want them to treat us.