As Hussey and Clarke were killing the Indian bowling attack (or what was left of it) at the SCG on Day 3, three Australians on Bay 17:

“I want to see Sachin get the 100th century as the rest of the team crumbles around him.”

A typical 90s deja vu. These Australians love their cricket and respect a worthy opponent. And as some Australian friends agreed, that is why what Virat Kohli did was despicable and just doesn’t cut it in that country. Not just these guys who were chugging beer behind me. The security guy checking bags at the gates wanted Sachin to get that elusive century on Day 4. The taxi driver – an ex-barman from Adelaide Oval – regretted that Sachin missed it. But he did remind us that his team thrashed us. That’s how it goes around here. They’ll keep reminding you how great they were/are and how poor you were/are. But they also recognize a fighter when they see one. That’s why the little man commands respect to this day. There was collective silence for a second when he gifted Clarke the wicket and then there was a standing ovation. They knew that was his last innings in “Sachin” Cricket Ground. No?

But that’s it about the bitter taste of cricket. What made it one of the best trips of my life was the city of Sydney. Stunning. Beautiful. The city is vibrant the way a city should be. There is an easy charm about Sydney that grabs you by the neck when you travel through the city. It’s faster and infinitely more urbane than, say, Melbourne. It’s a lot like Bombay and New York City but unlike those concrete jungles – not that this one doesn’t have those – Sydney is also naturally picturesque. And that makes a hell of a difference.

Something has to be said about a city that has water flowing everywhere and allows for transport in a city already well connected by public systems. The ferries were a joy to ride- to take in the beauty of the city side in contrast with the suburbs. Sydney is also one of the most fashionable cities I’ve ever seen. A walk in the business district feels like someone’s summer/fall collection is out in the open. The business, the casuals, the trendy, the sporty – you can see it all, be it Saturday evening or Monday morning. There is a suggestion of some sort of effort to remove the ordinariness of daily life and that people here are actually living it up. It’s lovely to observe. The night life on George St. is a sight to behold. (in more ways than one!).

The conflict in one of the GRCA movies of the year, Crazy Stupid Love arises out of the cliched clincher about women, “Perfect combination of sexy and cute” and that’s what Sydney is all about. Plainly. A cosmopolitan outlook married to old world sensibilities in an incredibly good looking city. The Sydney beaches are an example. We took the 8km walk from Cooge Beach to Bondi, called the Eastern Coastal walk, that somehow eclipsed the whole Great Ocean Drive experience from Melbourne. The sights of waves lashing at the rocks, people enjoying a beautiful day in the beaches and absolute nothingness far out in the Pacific was stunning. Our final stop that day was THE spot in Sydney, seemingly virgin as we hardly noticed people over the two days we were there, called Gap Park at Watson’s Bay. At the edge of Sydney, overlooking the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Sydney skyline and the Harbour Bridge on the other. The Pacific ocean over the rocky pedestal completely overwhelms the beauty of the skyline. It’s a combination of “unmai ellam solla thonudhe” high and a “manidhar unarndhu kola idhu manidhar kadhal ala” feel.

Unfortunately the picture doesn’t do any justice to the place. Sometimes they don’t say a single word.

Filed under: sports, Travel ]]> http://gradwolf.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/a-bittersweet-sydney-memory/feed/ 9 Gradwolf IMG_3214 IMG_3251 IMG_3289 http://gradwolf.wordpress.com/2011/12/29/g-force/ http://gradwolf.wordpress.com/2011/12/29/g-force/#comments Thu, 29 Dec 2011 13:22:52 +0000 Gradwolf http://gradwolf.wordpress.com/?p=1273 Continue reading →]]>

“idha..paar…summa thirumal naaikar mahaal maadhiri ‘gudhula”

That’s Tamil. And that’s what Raju says, in MMKR, when he enters what’s supposed to be his own house (but actually Madan’s) gaping at the sheer massiveness. And that’s what some of us felt like when we entered the Melbourne Cricket Ground, popularly called the ‘G’, for the Boxing Day Test 2011. It’s simply massive and that’s an understatement. You can imagine why it is considered special to score runs here. This is apparent from the view from the top tier of the Southern Stand as you look down at the middle with a fast bowler charging in and Sachin Tendulkar on strike. There is some sort of a gravitational pull that makes you check yourself every time you stand up on your seat or take a panoramic view of the stadium. If this is what feels like at the top, what would it be like at the middle with a 100,000 odd pairs of eyes looking down upon you? A seat belt would be great! Here is Mahesh on the ‘G’ experience.

We entered everyday through Gate 5 that’s opposite Keith Miller’s stylish and imposing statue. Except for the 2nd innings collapse, we left the G confident after every single day’s play. It can’t get better than watching a flawless Sachin 73 with the kind of fast bowling that Mahesh describes here in this kind of an arena. The disappointment of his last over wicket on Day 2 was wiped off when a mildly tipsy Australian met us outside and spoke about how he is afraid of Laxman as far as Day 3 is concerned. Of course we know how everything ended and that’s that.

Melbourne is a city of co-existence. A lot of things occur, exist in harmony with each other here. Australians love their sports and Melbourne is obviously some sort of a capital city as far as that is concerned. There is MCG where cricket and Australian football are played and a few blocks away there is the Rod Laver Arena and the rest of the show courts of the Australian Open. There is a Hisense Arena and a new soccer stadium recently built next to it. This co-existence quality, as funny as it sounds, is also especially true of the weather. It’s sunny, hot, windy and cold at the same time that it’s almost always a gamble as far as your clothes are concerned. So you see some dressed like it’s summer or fall and some fully covered with coats and sweatshirts on the same sidewalk.

And amongst all this there is a sports based vibration around the Melbourne Park/Yarra Park area. A very Hindu concept of how a continuously worshiped idol obtains strengths of divinity with time could be felt here. So much of sporting history and so much of greatness showed, felt and observed over the years that the concept might well be true.

The love story here is that of Yamini(Richa) and how for her, it doesn’t matter if it is a peaceful harmless Karthik or the crumbling Karthik she is living with. It’s a love story set in such a heightened passion that it is no surprise that there is so much physical and mental violence in it. Even their first meet starts off like that. Their union really comes together only when they both feed off their passions(yes, that word again. That is it).

I am not sure if it is all calculated marketing but for now, the man Dhanush is everywhere. He was on UTVStars talking to some VJ day before and last night he was on Radio Mirchi talking about Ilayaraaja in Neenga, Naan, Raaja Sir. He’s having a rollicking 2011, what with Aadukalam and a National Award, Kolaveri going international and a film like Mayakkam Enna where I daresay he is even better than how he was in his award winning role. Karthik Swaminathan seems more suited to his milieu and Dhanush sits well in that world. It’s more natural compared to the methodical looking village youngster in Aadukalam. Richa had done her part but I sometimes don’t understand the choices of people like Selvaraghavan, Kamal for their heroines. Sometimes it is explained by bilingual aspirations but Raima Sen and Andrea in Aayirathil Oruvan? Richa here? Why, I can’t help but think how even a Sneha would have done great things with this role.

People call out Gautham Menon on his song picturizations all the time but I hope for once they do the same with Selvaraghavan. Absolutely ridiculous CGI in one and awfully tasteless “tribal dance” in the other. It wasn’t even “tribal”! I wonder if some Keralites would register outrage!

Also there is severe meta sensibilities to the film(I think). It is intensely personal so if you can spot it, great. And Selvaraghavan clearly cannot make any other type of film. This is really his only calling.

There is a poignant scene in Imtiaz Ali’s third film, Love Aaj Kal, where Saif Ali Khan’s Jai confesses to Veer Singh, played by Rishi Kapoor about how he can’t remain sad for long – “Main zyada der dukh nahin reh sakta“. There is a similar moment in Rockstar where Janardhan Jakhar(Ranbir Kapoor) childishly tries to get his heart broken, like it is usual breakfast order to-go in your favorite restaurant, because someone suggested it to him that that’s where great art originates from – pain. He is devastated because he doesn’t feel a thing, at no point realizing his laughable simplification. It won’t be a stretch to say that Jai and Janardhan are the same person in the sense that both need a whack on the head to make them realize when they are heartbroken and that they have a problem, only with Janardhan aka Jordan, you are expected to buy into this superficiality first (and a sort of parody on Imtiaz’s part) and his transformation.

It is indeed possible to partially buy into this especially considering the moments that come after. Imtiaz has been consistently brilliant in handling relationships. He extracts the fickle enthusiasm of the female and the ready vulnerability of the male like no other director in recent times. He does the same here with Janardhan and Heer with their initial ice breaker, the Kashmir sojourn etc. It’s commendable that he has gone out of his comfort zone with one character originally unrefined and the other enjoying the bouts of  pseudo-ghaati so as to say in Hinglish – unlike the mostly urbane upper middle class characters he’s dealt with so far. There is also lovely economical usage of non-linearity in giving us the story. We know Jordan is missing his music opportunities but we get the how and why only later. We know he was kicked out of his house and was MIA for two months, but we get the why and where later. This is especially important here because of the “growing up” that the characters go through in a brief period of time.

These moments individually spark. But it’s Nargis’s Heer that suffers from some terrible writing, acting and overall inconsistency. If the aim was to show a capricious Heer against a pained Ranjha, the mission has somewhat failed. It’s easy to buy into Jordan’s immaturity and later metamorphosis but difficult to do the same with Heer’s brash clowning around after a point. Jordan remains consistent with the core of his character even after the apparent transformation – when Heer tries to run away from him in Prague, he says, “chal aa teek se bye bol“. It also doesn’t help that this sort of makes the film longer than necessary by almost a third of an hour. It also made me wonder what if Imtiaz had just let go of Heer and explored something with Aditi Rao Hydari’s Sheena. I know it is a stretch and this is probably just a reason to see more of Aditi on my part!

But there are really only two things that hold the film together in these tenuous portions. One is not surprisingly, A.R Rahman’s music. I can’t remember the last time a director had so wonderfully integrated Rahman’s complete soundtrack into the film. It’s a carefully and lovingly put together soundtrack, everything from the background score, the leitmotifs and the lyrics and the placement of the songs. It’s an unabashed musical and songs are not necessarily “speed breakers”. Katiya Karoon and Phir Se Udd Chala were masterfully integrated into the film, especially the latter with the beginning during a wedding, the lyrics complementing Jordan and Heer’s sensibilities at that point and culminating with synthetic loops in a dance bar. Jo Bhi Main becomes the motif for Jordan the artist and Sadda Haq his angst ridden breakout moment. Hawa Hawa talks of his Heer sneaking her way out of her mundane life back into Jordan’s and Aur Ho paints  his momentous heartbreak coupled with artistic success. It’s an epic soundtrack and the film is worth a watch on the big screen just for that.

The second factor is Ranbir Kapoor. Ranbir may not have looked convincing in the trailers but he is cheerfully innocent as Janardhan and egoistically flawed as Jordan. The best part is he makes you buy into both the characters, the unlikable nature of the latter notwithstanding. Jordan’s music too shines through on its own accord in harmony with his situations but an equal part credit here should go to Imtiaz Ali, Rahman and Irshad Kamil. Ranbir’s first rate performance notwithstanding, the Rockstar cover art before the opening credits with Shammi Kapoor is one to die for.

Rockstar may not be the epic that it probably is in Imtiaz Ali’s head. If it doesn’t attract the box office, it can qualify as a noble failure. Imtiaz Ali does continue to impress with his eye for love stories and ear for music. With Rockstar, he has just about managed to keep his reputation intact, though a huge credit is due to the real rock star – A.R Rahman.

Nostalgia is denial . Denial of the painful present. The name for this denial is golden age thinking, the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one ones living in. It’s a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present.

When Paul lays bare the brutal truth, Gil(Owen Wilson) is yet to have hopped into the rabbit hole that takes him to Paris of the 1920s, his own wonderland. Gil, like most Woody Allen leads, is playing Woody Allen – his mouthpiece. And with this clearly in mind, you can’t help but chuckle when he says, “I am having trouble because I am a Hollywood hack who never gave real literature a shot“. But Gil is all for every kind of literature. The idea of transporting him to a 1920s Paris with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Picasso et al is like letting a kid into a ginormous play pen. The non-Paris world weariness that he constantly lives in vanishes as soon as he takes the carriage at midnight and as much as he is a misfit in that world(He sees insurmountable problem in “a man in love with a woman from a different era”), he flourishes because of his constant yearning for that fantasy.

But it’s Adriana, played with an infectious charm by Marion Cotillard who doubles up as the one who feeds Gil’s passion and also as the voice of his epiphany. She plays Pablo Picasso’s muse, possibly forgotten by the pages of history, who befriends Gil in his adventure as they are both drawn to each other. It’s through her that he realizes the issues with the present and the past, when she faces a problem similar to his. The film is terribly meta like most Allen films are. But it works wonderfully because the setting is so beautiful with Allen in fine form. It’s Woody Allen having a crack at himself when Hemingway looks at Adriana, then at Picasso and says, “You can see why he’s lost all objectivity“. As much as it is Gil’s utopia and as much as the world he imagines was once real, the word that we are looking for here is – weltschmerz. It really should have been titled Weltschmerz in Paris.

Bridesmaids

While Paris is revered and celebrated in Woody Allen’s latest, it is just one of the several problems for Annie(Kristen Wiig) as she prepares to take Helen(a lovely Rose Byrne playing a not so lovely character) head on in their best friend Lillian’s wedding planning. As tolerant(actually I love them) as I am for romantic comedies and chick flicks, Bridesmaids comes with the added tag of Judd Apatow. He is only the producer here but his films usually have the familial sensibilities that I immensely identify with and it is no different here. It’s when Helen presents Lillian a trip to her dream venue Paris, as wedding gift – the knowledge of which was provided only by Annie – that Annie reaches breaking point and completely loses it.

The setting is predictably chick-flicky here(you need anything beyond the title for that?) – wedding, friends and best friends, protagonist with the job and money problems, protagonist with the awesome asshole vs not-so-awesome deserving gentleman relationship problem, ego clashes and the works. It’s not like if people could just talk it through that we wouldn’t have a plot or a film anymore. These are real problems that Annie faces as she finds herself penniless and friendless with new found high profile acquaintances and a big wedding looming large in front of her. But the writing here is much too refreshingly raw and gross in places that you leave the imaginary world of chick flicks and enter something more real but with the same people. The whole Annie and Rhodes arc is beautifully done, something a film like Bad Teacher missed with  its Jason Segel character. Honesty is what solves the problems of several people in Bridesmaids and that’s what comes through from the writing as well – “Why can’t you be happy for me and then go home and talk about me behind my back like a normal person?”

When the lovely Meera Vijayann asks you to write for her site, how can you say no?!

Not like I responded immediately. I was going through a phase of terrible form, so was happy with leaving everything outside off for a while. I hope some semblance of form has returned with this one.

So I wrote for her site(right now a blog but it’s surely getting there). Sorry for the cheesy obvious title here. I am not using it for the actual post. It’s about a film I fell in love with the first time I watched, ten years ago. A film I discovered from a recent watch that it is still as fresh as it was in 2001. So here you go: Ten Years of Dil Chahta Hai.

It’s not often in Tamil cinema that you get to see a film that combines genres so well and at the same time grazes the mainstream scene just long enough to have a lasting effect. A celebration of Tamil cinema, pulp and pop culture, Thiagarajan Kumararaja’s Aaranya Kaandam does all that to form an intoxicating mix that you could continuously chew on even hours after the movie watching experience without losing a tinge of the taste.

Thiagarajan Kumararajan absolutely loves cinema. And Tamil cinema even more so. It is also quite apparent that he has the utmost respect and admiration for those two interminable icons and arguably the last of the mega stars of Indian cinema – Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan. It’s not just that one joke involving them that’s bound to attain cult status over the months and years to come. There are repeated references, both veiled and obvious, to their personalities and works that moves the script or develops a character. But we’ll get to that later. Even from the early scenes you can sense how fully formed the script of this movie resides inside Kumararaja’s head. The early sequences, mostly silent, with Jackie Shroff’s Singaperumal and Yasmin Ponappa’s Subbu and the subsequent chatter amongst Singaperumal’s thugs aren’t one off. In fact nothing in this film is one off or hangs lose by itself. It’s one strong, smooth thread that’s has its i’s perfectly dotted and t’s neatly crossed. It’s not complex in the mind bending way either; when you are writing a script, you can’t get more legible than this.

Thiagarajan Kumararajan the director doesn’t disappoint either. The staging of some of the sequences speaks volumes about how deftly he’s managed to handle the various genres. Early in the first half there is a sequence where Pasupathy(Sampath) and the other members of the gang are on their way to make a deal and things between Pasupathy and Singaperumal are already strained at that point. The whole sequence happens inside a car with a hilarious bet involving speakerphones and in no time some hard truths emerge. We find ourselves laughing one instant and in the edge of our seat the very next second.It’s one of the several brilliantly executed scenes that stands testimony to the title of the film and the deceitful nature of the story.

Aaranya Kaandam is the part in Ramayanam where Raavanan abducts Sita after deceiving Rama and Lakshmana. But this Aaranya Kaandam’s central conceit is not the same. The sequence is very much there but it lies in the fringe and the major players are playing out their more important wars in front of it . But what surely didn’t escape was a suggestion of the chastity of that minor Sita character in that minor “abduction” scene when there is are throwaway glances between her and Ajay Raj’s character(I forget the name), who is built up to be the ultimate woman stealer(or just a bragger). In all ways possible. This is extremely anachronistic but I suspect it to be a deliberate choice. Another tongue in cheek deliberate choice is possibly Ravi Krishna’s casting as Sappa. It’s a masterstroke but who am I kidding, Ravi Krishna as a movie actor/star was a big joke when it happened few years ago. But as Sappa, there is some sort of harmony with respect to the character on screen and the kind of  awkward, neglected actor we always saw in him. But really, no offense, this is a compliment.

The film has a strong grasp over the Tamil pulp and pop culture. Rajini and Kamal take home most of the honors with Ilaiyaraja not far behind. You hear popular Tamil songs of an era gone, constantly through radio or a music system or TV. They form a background score by themselves for a lot of key scenes. The streets and lanes of Chennai are somewhat virgin in their look and feel. And as if to prove that he sets his films in his own world, Kumararaja adds in a shot of Bigil and Son of Gun’s auto rickshaws(Kumararaja wrote the dialogs for Oram Po). There is a dialog from Subbu that goes,”Bayam pola..aana dhairiyam vandhuduchu”, which is really a very clever play on the veeram line from Kuruthipunal. It’s Subbu again who turns to Baasha for her tale’s denouement. This is not just tribute. This is actual genuflection.

It’s difficult to spot flaws in the first viewing. And this is a film that deserves at least three viewings. From the top of my head I’d explore the Subbu-Sappa angle more. Our gaze lingers only long enough to keep our interest up on a particular character’s storyline but if there is an extra bit of reel wasted, it’s probably here. Also there is more to be explored in Subbu’s story and her role as the real Sita of this Aaranya Kaandam. Until then keep chewing. But even if you’re done, the aftertaste ain’t going anywhere.

The name Vincent Vega, one of the several names of a character used as the narrative device in Dum Maaro Dum, may remind you of Pulp Fiction but then you later realize that there is nothing to it. There is no correlation within those several names. They are just that – names. Rohan Sippy prefers to play it straight like that and he does so throughout the film. It’s not only the direction or the presentation but even the actors are mostly cold throughout, except for maybe Prateik Babbar’s Lorry. And it’s not  a bad thing.

The coldness allows Rohan Sippy to follow a narrative that is dispassionate and gives him (and us) a choice to sit on the fence without getting involved and observe the proceedings as an outsider. This is especially true of the second half where the story proceeds linearly, with the first half giving us the three main arcs/characters of the story and their backgrounds. These characters are inherently good people, victimized by their judgements but not portrayed as people who turned evil because of that, like you’d usually see in a film involving drugs and crimes perpetrated by drugs. So Rohan Sippy doesn’t feel the need to explicitly show their grief and say,”please care for these people” and just shows us snatches of their life and its changing ways through a period. The common thread running through them is their failed love stories and this bit he overdoes with Abhishek’s Vishnu Kamath.

The colour palette used to present Goa is rather refreshing. I missed the first half of the opening credits but from what I saw, it was snazzily done. There is Goa and only Goa but you don’t see the sea at all. Even the little bits shown is painted with a hue of yellow in the background mingling with land almost saying the real action is happening beyond the shore. In the narcotics trade, mobs, sex and murders in the name of drugs. There isn’t much of drug taking shown but what little is shown is done conventionally but very very colorfully. The huge set piece of introducing each of the three main leads that forms three quarters of the first half is interestingly done and Rohan Sippy deserves much credit for it. The whole lead up of Bipasha’s story and the way postcards get appended on her wall showing not only the passage of time but her meteoric rise was tastefully done. If this was neat, the closure for her story was entirely unnecessary and stupid in an otherwise cleverly made film.

The problem with Rohan Sippy is that he does not know when to stop. He overdoes ACP Kamath’s backstory so much to the extent that the film gets painful to sit through in the final portions. There is no visible payoff with most threads tied up so it really boggles the mind as to why the reel is still running. There is an attractive shot towards the end, from the angle of a dead body before cremation with shards of fire flying around about to erupt into a sea of flame (though technically, I think, there is something wrong here!) and that’s where things should have ended.

Filed under: movies ]]> http://gradwolf.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/dum-maaro-dum/feed/ 4 Gradwolf Dum-Maro-Dum http://gradwolf.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/our-own-world-cup/ http://gradwolf.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/our-own-world-cup/#comments Sun, 10 Apr 2011 15:17:38 +0000 Gradwolf http://gradwolf.wordpress.com/?p=1092 Continue reading →]]>  

This was supposed to be one of the thousand post-world cup blog posts but then by the time I realized the din has subsided and decided to write, the cauldron was already empty. Everything that needs to be said has already been said by people far more knowledgeable and in much more articulate write-ups. And everything that need not be said has also been done. What’s left? Maybe some good old cricket nostalgia from Bombay.

We had our own World Cup. I am quite obviously exaggerating, but we had a one day tournament(not an ODI tournament, the whole tournament itself lasts only a day!), with all the officers quarters(apartments) of my dad’s bank in Bombay participating in what could be called T10 matches. The defending champions usually get a bye and go straight into the semi-finals. The others played their draws and we had about eight teams – Sydney, Uttara, Decor, Karthik, Apna Ghar, Manish Nagar, Mulund and Ghatkopar!

Uttara was the team I belonged to and we had our nets at the Shastri Nagar corner park. At times when I did not make it to the playing eleven(which was most times!) the only joy was from keeping the cricket bats in my house. Nets were at sharp 7 AM and we would be at the building lobby at 6.45. It wasn’t always the traditional nets but more like playing 4-5 overs matches among the seven or eight of us who turn up. The premier bowlers for the team were M and V. The practice always started with them taking their run ups and me struggling to read their yorkers. P used to get a look-in with his spin and more often than not was successful in getting ahead of me in the selection. There was a funny incident with me throwing the ball, hitting P’s face and S uncle admonishing me for almost injuring his Ravichander Ashwin level of mythical figure that was P. I won’t forget the unbridled chutzpah with which P walked away from me that morning. S uncle was our captain.

S “uncle”! You did not think this was a kids/youngsters event, did you? This was basically for the potbellied uncles and middle aged officers of the bank. Though I just referred to it as our very own World Cup, it had rules more on the IPL mold. Each team was allowed only four kids/youngsters/sons of officers. The rest were all supposed to be officers. In other words, bank employees. So you can imagine the selection woes, yes? Yes. A set of undoubtedly unfit men with paunches resembling the laughing Buddhas in their mantelpieces mull over the selection of four out of seven or eight 14-24 year olds. Sounds familiar? Well of course. M and V select themselves for their all round capabilities. C gets in with his sheer pace and R plays if he is not busy with exams. P and I took care of the 12th man duties for the most part unless someone was injured.

It won’t be a stretch to call the Bhavans College ground our home. Maybe not just for our team but for all the five or six teams around the Lokhandwala area. It turns into a lazy Sunday getaway for the families and since it’s relatively more accessible, we get a bigger attendance. There was one other ground in Juhu, somewhere behind the ISKCON-Chandan cinemas area, and one more in Mulund. The Mulund team were like the 1996 Sri Lankan team. Frankly, I did not even know that the bank had an officers quarters in that part of Bombay. We all thought they were the minnows we never had and the next minute, they had won the tournament. They had a father son duo that pretty much played like how Jayasuriya and Aravinda De Silva did for their 1996 team. Total jolt. Inspired by Mulund, another supposedly-nonexistent-until-then team of Goregaon came into the picture. Goregaon were still the trademark minnows. They hardly could find eleven players and most of the kids in their building were eight year olds[sic]. So they turned to subterfuge. Imagine if Kevin O’Brien was actually some rugby player from England? They located this burly young man from their neighborhood and got him into the team as the pinch hitter, their only saving grace. He was brought into the team under the pretext of being Mr. Kale’s eldest son. Of course, Mr. Kale had only a tiny son and a daughter. The mystifying aspect of a lesser known Goregaon quarters only contributed too well to this deceit. The only problem was making sure Mr. Kale nods with reassurance if someone had to stop him and remark,” Abeyaar Kale, tere bete ne toh Wagmare ke over mein kya shandaar chakka maara“, and our Kale had a heart big enough to do that.

The event had its own mythical figures and ego clashes. The Dadar branch chief manager’s son was supposedly the emerging Shoaib Akhtar of Andheri. Well, at least the West. He was rattling stumps at every park and he was not yet our friend. Then there was the ego clash with Sydney. You don’t lose to Sydney. Sydney was the quarters exclusively for chief managers, executives and everyone else above that scale with their sons and daughters married off and living elsewhere. That means they are all people in their  late 40s or early 50s. You don’t like to lose, with a relatively younger team, to a team full of senior citizens. But that fateful day did come. It even turned out to be the finals. You wouldn’t hear the end of it even five editions later.

Much like the 1996 semi-finals against Sri Lanka. Mostly like the finals of 2003 against Australia. On that day, the younger brigade of Team Uttara flocked at my place. V left after the first innings. C left after Sachin got out. I resigned to study for my board exams at around the halfway mark of the Indian innings. On the night of April 2nd 2011, in a moment of laboriously searched for silence, I am sure their hearts harked back to that day even if just for a second. Even if today they exist only on my Facebook friends list and not on the floor above.

(On the subject of what this win meant, do read @cornerd‘s post here)

It begins with the rains. The rains that are so integral to and synonymous with Bombay. It’s several emotions at the same time with the sky opening up, falling down, shedding tears but also cleansing the souls and washing away the sins. The rains that people of Bombay miss and dread at the same time, revel in and complain at the same time. It is this dichotomy in lives and characters and people that is presented beautifully in Kiran Rao’s Dhobi Ghat.

Raju was the dhobi who used to visit our apartment in Andheri, which is far far away from the universally familiar localities in the stories of Dhobi Ghat – Mahalaxmi, the town areas, Colaba, Mohammad Ali Road etc (In the book I am reading – Saadat Hasan Manto’s Stars From Another Sky, he refers to Malad as the “village” outside Bombay! That’s around 1940s I guess). Raju used to visit our building around 9 PM. And often, he used to finish collecting/distributing the clothes and then sit on our couch and talk about everything from politics, cricket, the local areas, Andheri and occasionally even his life and family. When I saw Munna being lectured by that lady in her house, it reminded me of Raju. It reminded me of that unspoken liberty, comfort and space for each other that develops between two people no matter which social strata of society they come from. A limited one  of course. That is something very Bombay. You see that between Munna and Shai, Munna and Arun, Yasmin and Arun. It’s captured with accurate precision in a seemingly throwaway moment, when Shai runs into Munna and his friends at a cinema theater. If you’ve lived in Bombay, you experience it all the time.

The remarkable feature of Dhobi Ghat is that it’s not just a check list of things that define Bombay. You can probably single out at least one film every year for that. Yes, Kiran Rao does check a few things off like the Ganpati Visarjan, Ramazan time food, Chowpatty, the Irani chai-bun maska at cafes etc. But she goes a bit further by recording those existential themes too. Nobody knows who Yasmin is. Yasmin might not even be from the real world. We see a lot of Bombay through her eyes, from different angles as an outsider. Arun derives his creative juice from her. This is another trait that won’t go amiss in that city. No matter the size and population of the city or the feeling of loneliness that it engulfs you in, you’ll always find yourself in a microcosm. No matter your apathy or interest in gossip or voyeuristic longings, stories of people around you manage to fall in your way, more often than not unconsciously. It’s to Kiran Rao’s credit that she treads this path subtly with a character that could be anyone’s imaginary friend.

Sidvee here articulates on Bombay and Dhobi Ghat in ways only he can. Do read.

I think the video above is making its second appearance in this blog. Forget the cliched song and instead, focus on the images. If you notice carefully, you’ll see the same set people in some of the photographs. Nothing defines Bombay better than that. And in films of recent times , nothing defines Bombay better than Dhobi Ghat.