Monthly Archive for October, 2010

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Robot —The Review

Published on October 11, 2010 in Reviews. 82 Comments

Automatons created by humans to discharge hazardous and repetitive functions or as we commonly refer to them, robots have been a persistent motif used to explore various themes of deep significance—-like defining what exactly it means to be human (Philip Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”) or the conflict between rational thought and emotion (Kubrick’s “AI”) or the tragedy inherent in human beings attempting to be creators (“Frankenstein”), wherein their imperfections are inevitably reflected in what they make. To that rich corpus of art needs to be added “Robot” (Tamil: Enthiran) in which magical director Shankar, explores in visionary scale, all this and even more—-namely the story of Creation and the relationship between God and his most amazing product: Man.

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May I Make A Few Requests Pliss?

Published on October 10, 2010 in Bengal. 51 Comments

[This was an invited article in Sunday's Telegraph in their special Pujo edition. At the time of writing, the electronic version is somewhat garbled. So am cross-posting the entire article]

Pujo is perfect. But then as my geography teacher would say, perfection can always be perfected. And I know exactly how that can be done. Everybody just has to listen to what I have to say and follow through accordingly. Of course, I need to couch my “to-do”s as requests and gentle suggestions, since people are more likely to listen to me that way.

So here they are, my ten “requests” to the world, made with the noblest of intentions, which if honored would make this, the most joyous of seasons, even more joyous for everyone.

Well if not for everyone, at least for me.

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The Crores Go Blowing In the Wind

Published on October 3, 2010 in Politics. 142 Comments

As I watched the reactions to the Commonwealth Games, I was acutely conscious of how fast  the mood of the nation had changed. The same news anchors, who has been asking the nation “Is the Commonwealth Games something that India can afford?” two days ago,  could barely conceal their excited approbation of the event. The same people, who had been circulating stale Kalmadi/Dixit jokes till yesterday and calling for a boycott of the games, were declaring proudly how India had put on an “international” (in the 80s they would have called it “export quality”) event, doing mooh kala to all other nations of the world.

It was this metamorphosis that made me realize, once again, why corruption is eternally such a sunshine industry in this country. It is because public memory, driven by the echo chamber that is the popular press, is as short as two-month old’s attention span, where all that is needed is to “produce a good show” and everyone is happy and everything is forgotten.

Make no mistake, the powers-that-be have pulled off a multi-thousand crore heist, right in front of our eyes. If that was not remarkable enough, they have, in the end, made us stand up in our seats as a nation and applaud as they have rolled out with the bags. Even Danny Ocean of Ocean’s Eleven would be appreciative of this chutzpah.

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