Realism vs. Affectation: The problem with Madras Cafe

If you like your cappuccino flat, then head to 'Madras Cafe'. No one is looking for a typical Bollywood film — and thanks, but I have been exposed to and do have the aesthetic sensibility to appreciate good independent films from anywhere in the world, so cut out the lecture about 'intelligent' cinema.

To begin with, the film does not have a spine. Again, you can go against linearity only when there is a strong starting point from where you take off and return to, and not this jumble of an excuse that tries to pass as realism.

The backdrop is the Sri Lankan civil war and the plot to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi. The main characters are not named, which is fine, but this is most certainly not the film that will stand out as one to trace contemporary history. The purported 'espionage thriller' would fit into a couple of sequences in any mainstream film. With digitisation, it isn't too difficult to get the war scenes right. And we have seen the decoys, the smuggling of arms in jetties, the sneaky meetings with contacts in foreign countries in several films.

That 'Madras Cafe' is being touted as a pathbreaker is more a matter of prestige, where a few critics who are forced to review masala try and reclaim their intellectual space by 'understanding nuances'. Fact is, this film lacks a text, forget a subtext.

It opens with a self-conscious protagonist, Major Vikram Singh, who is drunk and morose. He lands up at a church where the helpful priest listens to his Confession, which turns out to be the film. This is a most tacky device for a flashback. It takes us to what could easily be stock images from award-winning war photography, all shot in black and white to ostensibly project the historical moorings. That this was the 90s makes it just planned stark imagery. It does not convey the immensity of loss.

At the offices of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), a few men in suits and the token woman have a farcical conversation about trying to conduct a peaceful election, with the LTF (obviously based on the LTTE), the main organisation representing the minority Tamils.

The LTTE did have a turbulent relationship with New Delhi, which had sent a peace-keeping force. The BJP and other Tamil organisations want the film banned because the LTF and other leaders have been referred to as terrorists. In fact, when the makers — that is, actor-producer John Abraham and director Shoojit Sircar — have been at pains to say they are not taking sides. They aren't, except for the cheesy insistence on referring to "our ex-PM" constantly, like some mantra. The controversy certainly has grabbed attention.

Director Sircar said in an interview, "I didn’t want to make glitzy thriller like Ek Tha Tiger or Agent Vinod, which seem inspired by the James Bond template. I want to show that intelligence officers are ordinary people who live amongst us. It is only that they have to solve issues where national security is at stake.”

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Has it really gone away from the mainstream?

The reasons mentioned:

• The characters don't sing songs.

So? Army men and rebels do sing in real life. The music of revolution is a separate genre. Besides, there are background songs, probably one of the two saving graces of the film, the other being cinematography.

• The main characters are like ordinary people.

We have a hero who is some sort of Superman, who flies in and out of cities, even taking on a bunch of dreaded fighters alone. At the RAW meetings they ask for their 'best man'. The officers are caricatures; the guys initiating backroom deals are just what you expect; Anna, the LTF chief, could have been playing poker; even the female lead, a war correspondent with a foreign agency, seems to be on a lone mission to tell the truth and not be biased. Have you never seen all this before?

Major Singh's wife plays the pining woman who does not do anything else but wait. On one of his return home trips, they manage to get into bed. It ought to have been a letting go, a release of passion. It need not have been shown, but implied. Nothing. This was as robotic as much else. Even when she is killed, his remorse is barely discernible.

• There is nothing over-the-top.

If we can have just one man who can save "our national interest", then we better get some emotion out of him. This tomtoming about reined-in performance just does not work. The film has taken 'staying in character' to new levels. Once introduced, the characters do not alter their expression at all. John Abraham could have been a poster on a wall.

It is immensely amusing that the lack of any romantic involvement between the Major and the reporter Jaya is seen as an important factor. Seriously, this is how most interactions are in real life. Since she is the only one who has access, has contacts, has a purpose, she manages to announce that standing for the truth does not make her anti-national. Why she does not smile is a matter that ought to make us deeply concerned about such expat patriotism.

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The last 15 minutes do pick up momentum, never mind that although there was intimation of an assassination plot, the ex-PM was not kept in the loop. The RAW officer calls him up directly at the airport lounge asking him to cancel his visit, but does not even hint about the suicide bombers waiting for him.

In the end, the so-called national interest looks pathetic in 'Madras Cafe' because the police, the intel agencies, mainly RAW, the army, the secretariat all come out as effete and ineffectual, depending totally on one man they pulled out to conduct a major operation. Ek Tha Tiger should have been his code name.

{I hear the filmmakers are wrangling for a tax-free certificate. Perhaps, they should try one from the Sri Lankan government too.}

There is no need for realistic cinema to resort to affectation. Some critics are glad that this film was made at all. Have they never watched the movies of the 80s, of Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani, Saeed Mirza, not to speak of regional cinema? Have they not been exposed to the subtle performances of Balraj Sahni, Naseeruddin Shah, and Amitabh Bachchan too in a few films.

Each genre requires different skills, but at the centre of any film is the ability to connect. 'Madras Cafe' does not. It ends where it began: the drunken Vikram Singh has revealed all, and is guilty about his wife's murder and that he could not save "our ex-PM". His beard grown long, was there some mirroring of Christ in his slightly hunched form? Creating this aura around him makes him worse than mainstream; it takes him straight into mythology.

Finally, he brings out a crumpled sheet from his pocket — given by his father-in-law when he got married — and reads out from it: "Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, where knowledge is free..." What has this Tagore poem got to do with his predicament? He has been sozzled for a few years. He has been visiting the church, the priest has seen him all this time.

Why now? Because there has to be a denouement. A flat cappuccino.

© Farzana Versey

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Images in collage clockwise from top left - Anna; the ex-PM; Major Vikram on his way somewhere; with Jaya, the news reporter.

Who moved my 'journalistic space'? The Age of Twitter Set-ups

Why the hell is ‘journalistic space’* being taken over by micro-blogging? Why is it that when one person breaks wind there, a whole bunch of people queue up outside the loo?

Hmm…I had just finished my morning adulations, and ignoring the Toffee-nose of India (TOI), I went to the stapled sister. I like Mumbai Mirror. I like mirrors. Now, in the midst of all the light frothy gossipy stuff it mentioned a “corruscating review” about a recently-published “social Bible”. It did not specify whether it was the Nobu or the Antillia version.

What follows here is a reaction to the responses to the riposte to the review and the rejoinders to the remnants that remain of the righteous rumblings.

Since those who do not read my blog are not acquainted with those who do not read everything else, I will have to introduce the characters that are not there and what they did not do.

An author Soul Setter, henceforth referred to as Setter because I want to sound like a Goan, wrote a book, a social Bible, if you must, called 'Getting To the Top of ITC’s Everest in a Chartered Plane: Ten Rules for Being Moses'. The Setter has friends and clients. That is his business – to make clients feel like friends and friends become clients.

It is simple enough. Learn to get all the Gifts of the Magi without being Christ. Or, if the atheists prefer, how to lay eggs without being a hen.

A lot of people might have bought Setter’s book because they were friends and clients and wanted to read about how they were making people.

Then, what is the problem? Setter is popular among the television channels and is always on panel discussions. He is a marketing guy and many of the big companies would like to see him talk about the state of the nation while he is selling their soap suds and hotels.

According to my sources – okay page 2 of the paper – the Setter read that “corruscating review” and went into “an indignant, inelegant splutter”. Fine, the couple of examples I read weren’t exactly nice, but then wasn’t the review “corruscating”? Setter was blinded. Hurt. Setter could not control. Setter blurted out: “So @me-churma (name changed) reviewed my book for a magazine no one reads. Am not surprised! He is supposedly an unemployed economist for an unread mag!”

What followed is truly weird. A news magazine that we read for taped conversations, excerpts from the editor’s book (oh, no, will leave that for now), and four-page essays by Oliver Twist asking for more Mao jumped into the buzz. It went full-throttle into an excavation expedition and besides Shivaji’s personally autographed copy of Adil Shah's memoirs, they found tweets from the time of the Cripps Mission. Standing apart were those about the Setter controversy. It turns out that a month before the “corruscating review” appeared, Setter had praised the magazine – let us call it Craven – addressing its senior editor with the shining words: “and by the way I love the way your magazine CRAVEN is doing in the journalistic space*…super stuff…” (italics mine)

This should tell us that Setter is a bit displaced. He needs to shout, as he has done by typing the name of the mag in all-caps. However, I do not see any disparity in the two comments. He loves (or loved) the magazine in a confined space to which he supposedly has access (remember the chartered plane and all?). He is telling us that not everyone has that access. “No one reads” clearly means he is not No One; he is Someone. He is also hoping it goes unread. This is Setter Subconscious. The personal attack on the reviewer is because he assumed a slight directed towards him.

I have not read the book (extracts, yes), but did go through the review. It seemed like the reviewer went into the deep dark woods to figure out a bonsai plant.

The problem for people like us is that everyday we find little bon mots, and not all by bon vivants, which Setter claims to be, and we often do not know the context. Recently I came upon some exchange between the Diva and other divas about maids. Suddenly, out of nowhere, another best-sailing author’s name cropped up. Let us call him Chattan Bang. It transpires that he was being sarcastically awarded something for watching films with his maids.

Now, Chattan really likes films and his latest watch is The Dirty Picture: “The movie breaks so many new grounds, and opens the door for Indian biopics.”

If it is breaking so many new grounds, where will there be place for doors?

He is so taken up that he even gets patriotic: “Few Indians make me proud of being Indian. Vidya Balan is one. She isn't just an actor, she is an artist. Superb performance.”

I am told the boobs and midriff prosthetics are not made in India.

Then, this: “If a dog keeps on barking your name, he makes you famous. The dog, however, remains a dog.”

And the bark remains a bark, no?

Unless you have a dog named Google, like Setter does, who can find the doggie doo even in coruscating darkness.

Pakistani circus comes to town!

A Pakistani commentator has come up with a Pavlovian response to how Indians salivate over Pakistan’s misfortunes and are not all smelling of roses. To make this rather simple point, he moves from the dog in the science lab to sci-fi to Biblical metaphors.

Ejaz Haider’s column in The Express Tribune mentions his educational qualifications – a seemingly mandatory thing these days in some publications – which should tell us that he is all grown up and doing tickety-boo. So well in fact that he expects “scientific inquiry”, unlike aforementioned dog, from Indians in the World Wide Web. He forgets one basic tenet of the W word, and that is anonymity and the possibility of fake Indians and fake Pakistanis faking emotions to elicit fake critical faculties of columnists who are educationally well-hung.

His one-line tenet is that Indians pounce on any Pakistani for “putting things in a (sic) perspective”. He believes that his country is masochistic because while Indians can openly be critical of Pakistan, Pakistanis cannot do so in Indian newspapers. I think he should do a bit of research on internet behaviour. As I have already stated, Indians and Pakistanis rarely appear as themselves. Pakistani commentators are quite coddled in India, even if they write about some sidey actress and Nwaaz Shrif’s hair implant. All those Pakistan diary type items often talk the usual lingo of exotica which makes it rather charming. The same applies to Indians who discuss “daily life” or Bollywood or “peace initiatives”, the latter being the biggest-ticket event.

Before I am accused of doggie behaviour, I must add that Mr. Haider has rather magnanimously acceded that India does have its moments:

India has its strengths, without doubt. We need to emulate them, no gainsaying that either. But for Indians to embark on an exercise, every time a whistle is blown, to prove India is the best thing to happen this side of Eden is to ask for willing suspension of disbelief at a level that defies even disbelief.

Just a bit of semantics here: When you defy disbelief, you are a believer. Ergo, suspension of disbelief ought to be a dribble of saliva.

He then comes to the point:

There have been comments upon comments in this newspaper by Indians about, among other things, corruption in Pakistan. Something like the 2G scandal in Pakistan would have given the Indians a field day. Try placing a comment on the Radia tapes, a scandal which, alone in its spread, is enough to eclipse Pakistan’s collective scams over 63 years, or even offer to write on it in an Indian newspaper, and you would know what I am saying.

One moment. Corruption is endemic to our societies. However, it is a huge exaggeration to say that in 63 years Pakistan has not had a scam of this dimension. Is the reference only to the monetary aspect? How many tapes have been ever released about Pakistani politicians or Pakistani military leaders? India is also a larger country in every way. I don’t understand the need to compare and sound so insecure about being ‘eclipsed’ in this field. Having said that, who has stopped any Pakistani from writing about the scandal in a Pakistani paper? Why must a Pakistani write about this in an Indian newspaper? It might be noted that part of the scandal is the blurring of it in the mainstream media, so even if a Tutu columnist tried, s/he might not get in edgeways.

A few days ago I was asked by the people concerned when I would resume my ET column and the next sentence mentioned the Radia tapes. I was surprised that no one had written about it and when I said that I had already had my say on the subject, they told me they’d like to use a shorter version. I agreed, provided I could edit it myself and it would clearly state that it is an abridged version. It is still not up. It is about several lobbies, as I have often critiqued in both the Indian and Pakistani media about both India and Pakistan and several other societies.

However, while Pakistani newspapers might publish some views, are they open to ALL views? I have faced criticism for other opinions about ills in Pakistani society as I do from Indians. And, most amazingly, one reviewer of my book ‘A Journey Interrupted: Being Indian in Pakistan’ even mentioned that I had misused the hospitality! Pakistan or Pakistanis had not sponsored the book nor had India or Indians or even my publisher. This was an insult to the several Pakistanis I had met and they were the first to rubbish such a thought; it only revealed that when you talk to and quote real rebels, people who have been imprisoned, literally or otherwise, instead of part-time jingoists, you are not quite ‘with it’. These remarkable people are considered outsiders even today by their own smart-ass commentators.

On the flip side Pakistan, and India, choose their favourites. Interestingly, these ‘vocal critics’ become the flavour of the ‘opposite camp’. So, my criticism of certain aspects about Arundhati Roy sounds offensive to Pakistanis! Talk about co-opted cocoons.

Of course, Mr. Haider is all praise for the Indian’s pride in the state, unlike Pakistanis who talk about doomsday. That’s because they have been hearing the Americans go on and on about a ‘failed state’ so often that they feel like doing a little mirror job. But, when optimistic Pakistanis see the good side, they are considered wimps and fools. Besides, questioning the status quo is always good.

Finally, Mr. Haider sounds quasi ominous and forgets grammar:

Meanwhile, I have said India and Indians a number of times here; the circus is about to hit town!

I am sure you have told us: the circus is about to hit town. The problem is that having said it so often, we mistook the messenger for the message.

PS: When you assume Pavlov’s dog is on your mental leash, it can turn out to be quite a bitch.

Doing me...

“Ma’am, we would like to do an interview.”

“About?”

“Just you, y’know, stuff.”

“Have you read the book?”

“Nooo…”

“Seen it?”

“Yeah. Cover looks cool.”

“So what will you ask me?”

“Stuff about your likes and things.”

“Hmm…I don’t have any likes and dislikes.”

“Aww, c’mon…if you are free we will send a photographer for a shoot tomorrow at your place.”

“What does a photo-shoot have to do with this book?”

“Oh, just stuff. Ambience, etc.”

Sure. I was getting the hang of it. Everybody I spoke to, including the serious types, told me I should go ahead.

I imagined myself curled on the sofa in the living room with the Indian flag in the background, holding a tasbeeh (prayer beads) in my hand while I gazed at a picture of the crescent and moon as a model airplane sat at a table beside me – all to convey the title of the book.

I have refused to give many interviews, some of the nature above. Even at the launch I was told a girl wanted to talk to me about the Partition. “But,” I told the person organising it, “there are people, I cannot just hole myself away.”

“It will take only five minutes.”

“Five minutes to discuss the Partition?”

Then I was told to name five books on the subject. I said not now. Fine, I was branded arrogant.

It really isn’t about arrogance, but not playing just about any game you are expected to.

One interview I did give, a fairly long one; it wasn’t carried. Wish the writer had checked with the publication about how ‘legit’ I am among certain media people!

I gave one more, this to a small web portal. The reason? It was new, the intent seemed right. I forgot all about it till I was told yesterday. It appeared in August and they have used the picture from this blog! Thankfully, they have removed the leopard eyes; if only someone had thought of taking out the half face too.

Talking of conducting interviews, I recall how much time one spent. Before the first big solo interview I did, the editor had asked me to prepare a questionnaire. I did. 60.

“How much time do you think he has?”

“As much time as it needs to finish these,” I said.

It was not meant to be cocky. If you want to probe a mind, discover something, then you have to give it time. He did. Of course, I did not stick to that structured questionnaire. And, yes, I did not know a darn thing about him. There were no search engines. I just called up several people to find out, read a bit – all this in a few hours and between completing another piece. This is how most of us worked.

I have been accused of being too hands-on, that I should delegate transcription and research to someone. I don’t know. Maybe it is possessiveness; maybe it is just replaying and rediscovering new things along the way.

Why am I talking so much about this today? A review has appeared. (I would not have known but for well-wishers who sent me the link. Thank you…)

Now, about reviews let me tell you about the one in a prominent publication. It was sent through a booktracking agency. As I read the words, they sounded familiar. I was shocked to realise that it was completely plagiarised from another review. With one original line - it said you should not buy the book. It would have been fair enough except that the full review preceding it was very positive!

A few days later, I clicked on the link and, poof, it was gone. Caught out.

This is intriguing. Why would any writer do such a thing? It wasn’t like s/he was getting a scoop, or it was a news story or something topical. It isn’t about a must-write-about thing.

Another point: When people say you are making generalisations, would they be kind enough to write out the words instead of adding dots?

I was telling this to someone and she said, “Enjoy it. This adds to the enigma.”

And here I thought enigma was a lonely hunter…

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If you want to read the interview and the review, just click on the words. The latter gives quite a peek into the ‘characters’.