Mass Production

This one’s a long overdue post. I had thought of this hmmm… I think about 2 years ago. So we can say that this trend is almost 3 years old now. It’s about this explosion of south Indian movies on hindi tv channels. I was in love with the tamil movie annian. It was dubbed in hindi as aparichit and would premiere on zee cinema every now and then. There were a few others too, Kamal sir’s dasavataram was one such example. 

I was shocked to see that atleast 1 south Indian movie running at any time I surfed about the movie channels, that’s when I thought there was a change, the bollywood audience had grown an appetite for the mass movies of the south. However I could not push myself to write about it as I was a south Indian and I lived in Bangalore, I obviously liked to see those movies, but did the average hindi tongued like them? may they did, but I had to know for myself. 

Upon reaching Delhi I found that people actually enjoyed the movies of the south.  Be it the Action of Chiranjeevi and Sudeep or the romance of Nagarjuna and Surya, or the sizzle of Sada or Trisha, they loved it. People asked me about the names of stars from movies and I could actually see them like it! And that’s why the tv channels ran more and more dubbed south Indian movies.

Soon, one could notice more of Surya, Vijay, allu arjun, Darshan, Sudeep and Chiranjeevi pictures on hindi tv channels. That’s the same time when movies like Ready, Bodyguard, Rawdy rathod and the like came out that had nothing but crazy songs and unreasonably long fight sequences. This was an adaptation of the southern movies, the “mass” movies to be more specific.

 “What’s a mass movie?” I asked moms one day. 

“the ones that bring the masses to the theater” he said as a matter of factly.

“so are all Rajkumar movies are mass movies?”

He obviously was shocked. He cursed me for a little over 10 mins and then said

“see, there are 2 types of movies; Class and Mass. Hmmm… but I’m not sure how to explain… have you seen Jogi? It’s a mass movie, and have you seen Amrutadhare? That’s a class movie.” 

“ok.. so the one with lots of fighting is mass movie and the one with a sensitive story is class?”

“yeah maybe, somewhat like that, mass is what 2 and 3 wheeler owners watch and class is what 4 wheeler owners watch”

“haha.. mental you are moms!” I said and laughed off.. but that’s class and mass movies for you.

Coming back to the topic, we see a lot of such “mass” movies coming out from bollywood these days, since olden days, the mass movie of bollywood was mostly just a headless comedy that drove tons of people into the halls. But since the growth in popularity of Thalaiva and these numerous dubbed movies being liked by the hindi audience, maybe the directors of bollywood realised that it was about time they came to join the “mass” club.

All the best!

Theft at Gandhi's Grave

“Holy day or just a holiday?” I took pride in this poor attempt at cynical pun. Today was a holiday but still I wasn’t happy when I woke up, reason being my father had told me that we would be going to Raj Ghat to see Gandhi’s tomb and pay our respects to him. I wasn’t interested; my mom even resented the idea. 

It was hot but not far. We reached Raj Ghat in less than half an hour. The place wasn’t as crowded as I expected it to be. Not shockingly, Anna Hazare was also present, there was a small contingent of about 50 people around him, then there were tourists; local and foreign, a hoard of school children in Blue and white, and who could miss the loud and happy tamilians. 

The tomb was beautifully flower decorated for the occasion. I could say it was special because there was more than just the Genda Phool that you find everywhere in Delhi. People stood by the tomb, near the flowers, behind the torch and posed at a thousand more places in the 15 X 15 space. Momdad went ahead close to the tomb to offer the fist full of Genda Phool that they had bought at the gate for 10 rupees. I decided to stand this one out, I stood leaning to the parapet wall surrounding the tomb and looked at the crowd. Some offered flowers, some bowed their head and some just wanted to click more and more photos.

Just a couple minutes later I saw my parents panic stricken faces. My mom’s purse had been stolen. A girl had put her hand into my mom’s handbag and had stolen the purse while in the crowd paying respects. We were aghast. Spoke to the security nearby, and looked for the purse hoping to find it fallen nearby, but it was stolen, deliberately and consciously stolen.

I was angry, at mother for being careless, at father for thinking up this useless plan and at myself for not bothering to stick with my mother in a crowd. Then I was angry at the thief, she had stolen right in front of Mahatma Gandhi’s tomb! Such irony!!

It reminded me of a line said by an 18^th century poet, he says “No man can be patriot on an empty stomach” Ofcourse he died 69 years before Gandhi was born. But there was only 1 Gandhi(and there were many other great patriots in history who almost fasted to their death), but the saying holds good for the thief, she was just trying to make a living, steal in front of Gandhi’s grave or from a pretty dame, it was just an attempt to feed herself. 

We spent the whole journey back thinking of what was lost and talking about how we could’ve prevented it and how people have lost their conscience. Stealing in front of Bapu! 6 hours after the incident I was still thinking, not about our loss, but the Gandhi connection. How these values of truth and justice and honesty and everything has turned out to remain just a sound of humbug! I thought about the Irony again and again, Theft right in front of Gandhi’s grave, how ironic how ironic... I said that aloud once.. then silently again. Then it struck me.. this wasn’t ironic, it was symbolic. Theft at Gandhi’s grave.