Just Jo – Page 12 – Just being myself

Book review: Bantaism

Bantaism I have a friend who used to text me (and other friends in our local friends group) Sardar jokes. He took great pleasure in sending those texts and we enjoyed reading them. When we met, he always had a few sardar jokes to share. He enjoyed telling each of these sardar jokes and if not us, he had always laughed out aloud on those jokes himself. Rest of us even began to carefully choose other topics to talk about, so we can save ourselves from the sardar jokes. 🙂 But Sardar jokes are just too good to skip. I think what makes them popular is that it has certain amount of innocence to it. Or furthermore, it has a bit of us or our daily life in it. Something that we can relate to. It is this side of Sardar jokes that Niranjan Ramakrishnan is exploring with his book titled, “Bantaism: Philosophy of sardar jokes“.

The book is a collection of sardar jokes with comments from the author on every single joke. Apart from the interesting and funny titles for each story (which are coined by the author himself), I found most of the ‘philosophical’ comments uninteresting and sometimes boring. The reason is obvious. You wouldn’t look for philosophy in time-pass jokes such as sardar jokes. But not all comments are boring and a couple of them does give you some philosophical insights. For example, look at the joke where one sardar in a lion’s costume meets another sardar in a tiger costume. The author draws a parallel to the BPO, call center jobs with this story which makes a lot of sense. Or the lesson on irreversibility with the story of ‘chicken vending machine’. And another one about the sardar who throws himself off the balcony thinking that his wife cheated on him. But considering the whole book, these are very few. Still, you could read the jokes alone if you wanted to skip the comments. If you are fond of sardar jokes and wanted to collect some in printed format, this one is just for you.

In a way, sardar jokes have reflected badly on Sikh community. The jokes have made us, the rest of the Indians, believe that all sardars are idiots or it is easy to trick sardars. But it also sheds some positive light that (though as a variant of idiocy) sardars are pure-hearted, innocent people. Our movies, especially Hindi movies, have always featured them on a positive light. The righteous, happy, pure and open group of people. The author in his introduction to the book treads on the same lines. Little does he mention (perhaps he didn’t want to ruin the mood-setting for the book) about the ‘other’ side of ‘sardarsphere’ that is totally in contrast to the image created by sardar jokes and Hindi movies. Prevalent practices of bonded labour, caste-ism etc in Punjab that Annie Zaidi had explored in her book, Known Turf.

One of the biggest advantage of sardar jokes is that it is crowd-sourced humor. You can tout one of your personal jokes as a sardar joke, just that you would change the main character to a sardar. The scope of sardar jokes is thus limitless. Most recent example of this would be Tintu Mon jokes from Kerala (the difference is that Tintu Mon makes fun of others whereas a sardar is made fool of himself).

Final word is that if you like sardar jokes, you would like this one because it has many popular sardar jokes in collection. But if you were curious to see what philosophy sardar jokes have to offer, well.. there isn’t much. Just enjoy the jokes and keep the book closed.

Title: Bantaism: The Philosophy Of Sardar Jokes
Author: Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Publisher: Rupa Publications
Price: Rs. 129

Things that pop on your face

Last week the social media was abuzz with the allegations of an advertisement video being racist. The advertisement is of Popchips snack that has Ashton Kutcher in four different get-ups. One of them has an Indian identity called Raj and he is a Bollywood producer. This has called for a racist allegation by an American of Indian origin Anil Dash and it ended up cooking up a controversy and the company finally pulled off the ad.

The whole drama has so much what-the-fuck-ness to it. I mean, advertisements always project stereotypes to sell the product and we do not always have a problem with it. Stereotypes are everywhere in the pop culture; be it commercials, cinema or music. Only when it goes over the top than usual that people notice and voice against it.

Anil Dash accused the video of being racist because the Indian character Raj is brownfaced and has a thick Indian accent(!). First of all, you would not take an advertisement such as this seriously. There are worse advertisements than this which project stereotypes in the worst manner. Second, there are other people being parodied in the ad, like a British youth or a Southern American hippie or a French fashionista. Southern Americans would have a better reason to complain because in American pop culture and Hollywood, they are always featured as homeless gypsies with a hippie lifestyle who live in mobile home parks. Or even Darl, the man with a fake French(?) accent have a good reason to complain because that is also a highly stereotyped version of men working in the fashion industry. Third, it is not wrong to feature an Indian brownfaced (a color which is generally associated with Asians) and with an Indian accent. So why would a techie like Anil Dash cook up such a controversy over such an ad? This guy is no dumb for sure, so what exactly could have happened?

Just after the launch of this ad series, the CEO of Popchips seems to have said “As a social brand, we’ve had a lot of social engagement. Now, it’s time to take it to the next level with an ad campaign that would provide more reach. [via]” Clearly, like with every commercial, they were looking for more reach. Shortly thereafter, Anil Dash popped up with his allegation that had supportive voices from an Indian origian rap group. Let us look at what Mr. Dash said about the company and it’s people.

“The people behind this ad are not racist. They just made a racist ad.” If that is not enough W-T-F-ness, there is more. Mr. Dash spoke to the CEO whom he calls “sincere and contrite”. He also made a generous gesture that the comapny doesn’t have to pull down the ad but give an explanation of how the process failed. But Mr. Dash who lets the company go scotfree doesn’t forgive the person who acted in it. He said Ashton Kutcher should “personally apologise”.

So what does this drama tell us? The company wanted to get people talking about them and it seems that some people like Anil Dash helped them ahieve the goal of getting enough publicity. That is how people down here in India also got to know about Popchips. Without spending a penny on advertisements outside the U.S., Popchips is now a known name. They can launch any time in India now. Thanks to the social media.

By the way, before alleging the foreigners of being racist, Indians should have a look at their own racist/regional/casteist attitude.

And even more, by the way, why is Ashton’s video is called racist and Shahrukh Khan’s is not?

Adapting to the Indulekha model

Indulekha is a brand that has been churning out so many TVCs recently for their product range. The first series of their advertisements featured popular mini and big screen actors, which was followed up by another series that had ‘reality TV’ sort of feel to it. Their latest series even has a theme and name – uLkkarutthu – and contrary to the direct selling strategy, they have adopted a model that is ‘seemingly’ progressive and feminist in the outset but is pushing certain politics which seems to be the trick of new age marketers and advertising gurus to keep them in business. More on this advt in Kafila and Nalamidam. And do watch the first video of their series here before you read further.

I was thinking what would happen if other businesses have started adopting the Indulekha model. Imagine a barber who cannot afford to have men who do not cut their hair. This will certainly threaten his regular business. So what he really needs to ask for is business but in the new age, he cannot be too direct with it so he has to push certain politics to market his service. And here is what happens when he adopts the Indulekha model.

Nel nome di Cristo

Everything is powerful as long as it is in the powerful hands. The powerless are deluded by the powerful to think they have the power when they actually don’t. That is why we remain happy with our version of democracy or the predictions of India becoming a super power in 20xx. That is also why when the clergy teaches us of the greatness and acceptance of our version of religion makes us happy that we are part of something great, while we actually do not have any role in it. The powerful plays it all – politics, religion, race, caste and what not. And the powerless are only meant to nod their heads and fooled to believe that by doing so, they are playing a larger role. The powerful knows how to work their way though and that is what this news tells us of the fishermen, whose husband/brother were killed in cold blood by the Italian marines, forgiving the accused ‘in the name of Christ’.

There seems to have been a concentrated effort from day 1 to save the Italians of the murder charge. First it was Mar. George Alanchery, the newly crowned Cardinal of Syro Malabar Church, who told the Catholic news agency in Italy that he has instructed the Catholic ministers in Kerala to intervene in the matter. Then came two Italian priests to visit the families of the deceased, which the Church calls ‘a spiritual exercise‘ but believed by everyone else that it was for an out-of-court settlement (why else would two Italian priests come all the way from Italy to pray for the deceased, which doesn’t happen usually unless the deceased are rich and powerful, I wonder). Two Italian ministers followed with their visit to India to find a settlement. Later, the Central government claimed in Supreme Court that the Kerala police doesn’t have jurisdiction to probe the killing, which was slammed by the honorable court.

When all these ‘diplomacy’ through religion and state did not work, the Italians made an offer that the families of deceased could not deny. Even there the religion and faith had to be involved to work the powerful’s way through, so they worked with a couple of influential priests (good work, Fr. Churchill and Fr. Wilfred!) to come to an out-of-court settlement. So the settlement was that the families would state their forgiveness ‘in the name of Christ’ duly signed in a stamp paper and in return they would get Rs. 1 crore each. One of the families’ counsel Jestin Poulose said they had no faith in the government, so the “next best available option” was to at least secure the compensation. Though it is said that the murder case would continue, it wouldn’t be difficult to guess what will happen to the case now with the families have applied to withdraw the petition.

At the end of it all, it seems that in Catholicism, some Christians – especially the white and Italian Christians – are holier than their Indian counterparts. I don’t see why otherwise would the Catholic clergy in Kerala work so hard to secure the two foreign marines accused of murdering their own community members. All these while Sr. Abhaya is still seeking justice.

(Photo courtesy: India Today)

The Weekend Tamasha

Two news editors. One from the television medium and the other from print. One takes a chance at roasting the other, probably because he is from a different medium and is hosting a show on the rival television channel. The other gets defensive. He goes emotional about the ‘great’ thing he is doing, called journalism, and takes the chance to go overboard with his past stories of his adherence to the ‘truth’. One gets frustrated that the other is being given a chance in his channel to do a bit of marketing for himself and his paper. So the one also goes overboard and gives a few lines of marketing about his and his channel’s commitment in presenting the two views.

This is more fun to watch if you couldn’t yet figure out what exactly is going on between our government and army, both of which has a leadership of saints of our times. My dear fellow Indians, eat this crap. You need it. For sheer entertainment or for your tea-time (or bar-time) intellectual vomit.

PS: If the video above doesn’t give you enough entertainment for the weekend, checkout how Hindutvavaadis are wasting their bandwidth to vote Modi to be in TIME’s 100 list and how liberals are trying to vote him out. If you don’t have any better thing to do on the weekend, you can join them in the game.

Live to fight, please!

I couldn’t watch the photos of a 27 year old Tibetan, Jampa Yeshi, burning himself to death without horror. But even though Yeshi’s intent by setting himself ablaze was to bring attention to the Tibetan protest against China, my first reaction was, why? The reports say that over 30 Tibetans have set themselves ablaze in the last year, and what good did it bring?

The international community has so much ‘sympathy’ towards the Tibetan cause, and occassionally blames China but they wouldn’t move a finger against the Chinese. India, being the ‘kind’ hosts that we are, also wouldn’t do a thing against the neighbor because despite being the projected ‘super-power-in-20XX’ we don’t want to get into trouble with the powerful Chinese. Plus we have Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh to look after. So nobody, except the Tibetans themselves, are interested in the cause. Perhaps except some individuals and some human rights organizations. If Tibet had oil, perhaps ‘some’ would have shown interest but that is not the case.

So what good does the ‘attention bringing suicide’ do to help the Tibetan cause? Why let the youth of a country kill themselves when it is clear that it is not helping the cause? If you want to fight for a cause, you should live to fight for it. Not die to protest, because your voice would fade away in a few days. I can’t believe that the protestors had prevented police from taking young Yeshi to the hospital. And the Tibetan leader saying that the boy ‘took an appreciative step’! If this so called Tibetan leader Dorjee really thinks it is helping the cause, he should set himself on fire to set an example. Or ask his family members to do so. Would he dare do that? Is this the message that people like him and Dalai Lama are sending to the world? Do they think they can change the Chinese oppression in Tibet by letting or encouraging their youth to burn to death themselves? is this what the Buddhist preaching is all about? Please, let them young people live. And fight.

(Photo courtesy: MSN India)

From sculptures to idols

There is a hill called ‘Kalasa Mala‘ at Akathiyoor, a beautiful village near Kunnamkulam in Thrissur. Malayalees would know this place from the popular Malayalam movies such as “Thoovaanatthumpikal” and “Bhoothakkannaadi”. Kalasamala is a popular shooting location for movie industries outside the state also and I have heard an interesting story about the place when I was there.

Once a Telugu film production team came here for shooting and their art director created a temple set. The crew had left when the filming was over but the temple set they made for the film had stayed. A few days later appeared a kal viLakku (multi-layered lanterns made of stone) in front of this temple set and people started flocking to the temple and rituals were begun. Some youth in the village brought this to the attention of the Panchayath and it is said that the higher authorities had to interfere to remove the movie set.

Now on to the topic of this post. Something happened recently that reminded me of the movie set incident at Kalasamala. Almost an year back, I saw some sculptures made of plaster of paris lying on the road side at Jagathy, in Trivandrum. I walk through the place every morning and these sculptures seemed to have been discarded by somebody, probably a north Indian vendor who sells such plaster of paris sculptures from house to house (it is a common sight in Kerala). These sculptures were of Ganesha and Ayyappa. After a few days, I noticed that the sculptures have been put straight; now on a sitting posture. Few more days passed by and there was a garland of flowers on both the sculptures. Then one day I spotted a set of incense sticks with a fresh set of garlands. Clearly, somebody has been doing a pooja with the sculptures. This continued for many months and in the last week I noticed that somebody had erected a sheet roof on top of the sculptures. Now it has the shape of a small temple.

I see a scope for Kalasamala issue to repeat here and if it is not nipped in the bud, it is going to be a very sensitive issue in the future. This is right next to the road and is blocking the footpath already (as you can see in the pictures below). If there is going to be a complete temple erected in the name of these two sculptures, which was junk in the first place, it will create traffic blockade and misuse of the public property.

About watching movies

I’ve got to read an article by Roger Ebert through a Google group of movie buffs. Mr. Ebert’s article was titled “Why I’m so conservative“. Not in politics, he says, but in his thinking about movies. Basically he is saying that he likes watching movies in projection theaters than in digital format. That got me thinking about my experiences of watching movies in cinema halls and why I would prefer a home theater experience instead. (Disclaimer: This is about my experience in watching movies in theaters in India and I mention that particularly because somebody said that the theater experience in USA is different from that of here).

The experience of watching movies on a big screen is different. It leads you to a new world, an amazingly wider world of reality and fantasy. But watching a movie in cinema halls in India is just that – watching, and not enjoying. It depends a lot on the projector, it’s operator, the crowd, the atmosphere that the cinema halls gives you, the screen, sound and so on. If one of them fails, you would never be able to appreciate a movie for what it is.

In some theaters, they project a 70mm movie in 35mm on a 70mm screen. Sometimes it goes out of focus, scenes slightly blurred. When you watch a 3D movie, which is supposed to give you a more real cinema experience, you can see some folds and dirt marks on the screen and so you end up constantly reminded that you are ‘watching’ a movie. Sometimes our good old ‘film editors’ in the projection room do their own cuts and edits. So you abruptly jump between frames or scenes. Audio in some theaters, even the ‘good ones’, turns out to be just ‘noise’ sometimes. The ambiance that the movie halls provide also matters in enjoying a movie or giving your full attention to it. In some theaters, you’d wish they had a better cooling air conditioner and in some others you wish they had a heater. Then there is the crowd. Some would push you to the sides of your chairs and some would play games to win the space for arm rest of the chair.

You think multiplexes are good, but they are a vast abode of bored people. Some of the problems mentioned above apply to multiplexes too (or at least the ones I went to, in Bangalore). And if you are watching a Hollywood movie, you are doomed. People would laugh out aloud even at the silliest joke in an English movie which does not usually happen when they watch regional language movies. You would be left wondering if the joke was something that you did not understand because of the language. I’ve felt it as if the multiplex audience, while watching English movies, wants to convince others that they do understand the language (which is – understanding English language – considered as a sign of education and intellect in India). So you would end up hearing laughter outbursts every now and then with a semi-loud chatter. As an aside, it is largely in two types of places that I have seen people trying to convince others, mostly strangers to them, that they do understand the language and appreciate cinema – in multiplexes and film festivals.

When I watch a movie in my laptop or at home theater, none of these problems affect me. The only thing I really miss is the screen size. There are many advantages to watching a movie at home. I can adjust the light and sound as I like it. That gives me a feeling that I am also being a part of the movie presentation. Ebert says, ‘projected’ is good. I think it is eery. It gives me a feeling that somebody is hiding behind me to control what I see. That doesn’t feel free. When I was a child, I used to look behind to the source of light that came to the screen (I admit that I was just curious back then, than being frightened). When the movie originates on screen, it is like a gift that somebody’s offering you, from right in front of you. It’s a call, that says, ‘come, let’s take this trip together‘. And when I am at home, and have the freedom to control the presentation of a movie, I’m also being a part of the movie. That makes me feel good.

When I watch a movie at home, I don’t have to control or hide my feelings. I don’t have to be socially conscious. I can weep if I want to or laugh out loud when I want to. I don’t have to wipe my tears before people see it. I don’t have to worry about people seeing me weep like a baby. If it is a DVD, I can read the sub-titles at places where I did not understand the spoken language (even if it is English). I don’t see pause and rewind as an advantage though; I think it’s a distraction. When it’s just me and the movie, the line of distance between us is blurred. Sometimes I can touch a character. Or can just stroke them to console.

I’m not saying that all cinema hall experiences are bad. It’s definitely worth experiencing to watch a commercial masala movie in a full house packed with people laughing and clapping and passing on comments. But there cinema doesn’t go beyond the level of being a medium for entertainment.