Live enjoyment in Peepli

The LIVE word can be construed as live as in live matches or live as we live our lifes.

Peepli Live, most of my friends comprehended, it will be a bore. So what if Aamir Khan is promoting it, it need not be a good movie? And why not Aamir Khan should promote it? He is the producer. When you watch the movie, you realize, you required Aamir Khan to promote this movie? There are interactions, press conferences, you need a face to represent the movie. The posters do reveal a lot about the movie, a poor rural family, few mikes hanging from the top, media swarming from the top, LIVE word in frame and a handpump. So what if the whole caste and the issue is pasted on it? You have little or no idea, how its going to play? One of the rare posters, which captures and narrates the real characters of the movie and summons it at appropriate places.

Take a dig at the other poster pictured below. It a tempu, the mass transporter of rural India. In my native place, it is known as bhoond (Punjabi word for honey bee). It is distastingly painted black with some part of it yellow, may be the front hood or the top part. But the sight of tempu is the same in any part of our truly majestic India, people are hanging from all sides and their daily wares.

Peepli Live is one of the rare movies of Bollywood, which was running without (count it), a named and famed director, no famed actor, no famed actress, no dream sequences, no dances, no item number, no burning issue, no action, no romance, no melodrama, no crying, barely music (definitely can be defined as antonym of musical). What the movie contains? Just the way India was and currently it is progressing. A very nice written and delivered script revolving around a very small incident but a very big issue for India. We should learn to laugh at ourselves that is what director has tried to aim. If you feel ashamed, do something about it? Until then keep laughing at your plight.

Peepli Live is a satire on farmer’s suicide. But I believe, honestly, it is a satire on media and our political system or perhaps the way our country is being run. The moot point the director raises, a farmer may not till his/her land, may not require money/food. All they want is the respect for their lands. We are not able to provide them with a single way of existence, aim, mission, vision and dream of our life.

Media star characters are brilliantly brought to the front. Perhaps a spoof or original cut-outs of Barkha Dutt of NDTV and Chaurasia of AajTak (don’t know if this fellow has switched employers, well must have, we all do). Media is the most creative industry in India. They can make and create a movie and an issue with nobody. This is what they have depicted in the movie. They are trying to address an issue of farmer suicide. Yet it is the last thing, on their mind.

Every character plays to his part with such elegance and poise. The media personnel as they are hogging like dogs and spewing like donkeys. Natha, the real face of the movie, has barely one or two dialogues. But his expressions make his character. I have no idea what is happening in my life, why is it happening and what I am supposed to do about it? Just listens and barely responds. Raghubir Yadav, one of the finest actors in India. The wife, as women are (oh sorry as rural woman are), always screaming and abusing their husbands and in laws.

Politicians and IAS officers, as they are in real life, we are only here to show and project that we are trying to do things. The only beneficiary in the name of WE the people is me, me and me. The handpump in the picture below is granted under the Lal Bahadur Shastri scheme by the District Collector. Natha does ask for the fitting expenses but that is not part of the scheme. Nobody talks about his loan or his land in possession of the bank.

Finally the amma, whose only working limb is her tongue and she uses it to perfection to abuse at every opportunity and appropriate time anybody who comes in front of her. Especially her bahu (daughter in law) with kulta, naaspiti, karamjali, abhouri, naagin, daayein and yes there are few prefixing family relations too.

The ending does not possess a happy ending like a typical Bollywood masala, boy hugging the girl’s parents. Such movies never have a happy ending, instead it creates another level of disruption with no conclusion.

Conclusion or no conclusion, do watch it in theatre and definitely finds a place in the selected DVDs section.

BATTLE OF THE SEXES

We have some very interesting conversations and discussion in our office. Knowing the fact that Capital Markets are not in an upbeat mode, so the topics generally range around the society and our magnanimous county, India. Today the topic of discussion was the man and woman and the treatment of both the sexes towards each other, the society and other related things we could squeeze in the limited time in office.

Before we start, I as a male, believe female is the fairer Sex and they are a superior sex over male and have definitely a superior status in the Society. A male is banished from all the luxuries of life, right from the time he is born. He is used as a cushion throughout his life, first by his mother, sister, then second stage of girlfriend to wife (all the women they meet in between), then comes the big thunder in-laws and his daughter. Why a man always finds himself being cornered is a simple question? A man cannot survive without a woman and he learns to live with her tears. So you know, a woman only dumps all her things on the next man she finds, father, brother, boyfriend, husband and son and at times on daughter-in-law also (albeit the mode may be different).

At the centre of the discussion are two women and two men. All aged between 25 to 30. Women were two fair looking females with their Corporate Suits and there files open on PC. Men are two typically Indian males with dark wheatish complexions standing with the screensaver dancing on their PCs.

The whole setup signifies women are more committed to the work than men. Men are laid-back but can be doubly productive than women, if required so. Women are always attentive. So why the hell are men privileged? Said the fairest of all, who has a sibling sister. I said you don’t understand that women are privileged. She has never stepped into a kitchen. There goes a small sample, both men are good cooks but from two women, only one knows how to cook.

I know there are too many issues dealing around women especially in a country like India. We need that get into it. Right now we are talking about mind-sets’ of sexes.

She said, “the society was sad to my family when I was born. No boy, you have second daughter to my mother. My parents said, so what beta ho ya beti, in today’s age it makes no difference.”

Believe me, whatsoever one may call it. But it does make a difference. Indian society is still backward, may be we have not moved much. As the economy and the status of an average Indian improves, it may not make a difference. But parents know that daughters accept name of somebody else and son shares their name. Bull shit, yeah somehow I also feel. But still it is one thing, which is slowly and slowly losing its value. Second is they can call their son anytime they wish or seek to, but not their daughter. This is again bull shit, she countered. Ask your parents and youngsters like me, think about yourself when you will be 55 – 60 years old.

Vansh kaun badhayega, said the other female. She is not that stereotypical types. Its just another bent of mind of Indians. There are set of Indians who feel so. Common man, your lineage is not that brilliant to be carried forward. Everybody will be equally happy even if even your filthy mind-set is not taken reproduced or taken forward.

I, somehow, can really relate to all such things. My father is the only educated person amongst his siblings. He has quite open views about women. He always made me wait for things but not my sister. Unlike my relatives who showered everything on their sons’. I never ever felt under-privileged rather enjoyed it. Men have to learn and live with this in future. Our unthought and unsound commands should always be debunked and scoffed at and woman should get those rights.

In Punjab, it is really important for a man and a woman to bear a SON. Come what may? Bhroon hatya (female foeticide), I don’t know if any of my uncles/aunt have done so. Many of them do possess the potential for the same. It is the way women look at women, which is deteriorating the society not because of men. Education is one thing which can really bring in the change. We need to really educate our women, that they should appreciate their existence. Without them, this world will be more peaceful but very dumb. Women make the world around us beautiful.

Somehow I always wonder, why I have seen so many versions of women while men have so less to reveal/conceal about themselves. May be God has created man and woman like this.