Mammootty, Mohanlal and caste in Malaylam Cinema

This is NOT about the 'Thilakan' issue which is currently grabbing eyeballs in Kerala. I am far too removed from the workings of Malayalam cinema (MC) to comment on that. This are some perceptions that I and some of my friends have about MC. This is purely from an audience's point of view.

Art, it is said, reflects society. In fact, I believe it should reflect society. India, of which Kerala is a part, is as is well known, a caste-ridden society. How many films reflect this?

Let's look at MC. How many movies have we seen which have Ezhavas (the largest Hindu community in Kerala) as the main protagonists? The only one which comes to my mind in 'Kattukuthira'. What about other communities? Most films have a Nair or upper caste background. Many reviewers speak glowingly about the films of the Mohanlal-Srinivasan duo of the 1980s as being representative of the problems of the 'common man' . But how representative was this really? There is a subtle hint of Mohanlal being from an Upper caste and hence being more educated and slightly 'smarter' than Srini. Then there was this film called 'Aryan' which truly shocked me with its casteist overtones.

The other community whch has had some representation (romanticisation IMO) are the fisher folk. But how many 'mainstream' actors have had to courage to take on these roles and depict them without making them comic figures. Mammootty (Amaram), Satyan Mash (Chemmeen) and Kottarakara. Mohanlal tried once in 'Mahasamudram' and fell flat. Most of Mohanlal's films have had subtle overtones of feudalism and casteism. Even when he is a 'common man' in films like 'Sanmanassulavarkku Samadhanam', he is a 'Nair' common man who has lost his property due to court cases. Maybe uneducated, but Nair. And therein lies the problem.

Lal has often been feted for being the actor with the 'greater' range than Mammootty. True, he can portray comic roles and serious ones with equal ease. But his body language ( upper caste) never changes in any of his movies. Contrasts that with Mammootty whso ahs depicted a range of common men: From Amaram to Kazhcha to Rappakal. He changes his body language and his dialect according to the character. Agreed, he often falls flat in comedy and cannot dance to save his life, but I do not think he can be accused of having less 'range' than Lal.


Coming back to the point of art reflecting society, taking into account all the above, now whose films reflect society more?

Stupid HR People in IT Firms

Ok,let me first confess that this is an emotional subject for me. So please bear with me if I am rude. In fact, I intend to be rude. But I mean well.

IT's been showcased as India's biggest success story in the post-reforms era. IT's success story has meant that any number of private individuals and firms have launched IT courses at new engineering colleges(helped by the governement's policies on liberalising and privatising education), places where sometimes infrastrcuture is non-existent. The middle class takes bank loans to educate their childen in these 'cattle sheds' in the hope that their children might live better than them. IT firms, like most corporates recruit through campus placements. My grouse is about the kind of people they recruit and the kind of colleges from where they recruit candidates:

• IT firms recruit people from all backgrounds. For instance, B.Tech (engineers) people from any stream like electronics, civil, mechanical, chemical are recruited along with people with a B.Tech in Computer Science/IT. Now, how do you equate the two? There is no advanatge to being a Computer Scienec expert if you want to work in the It industry. Would IT companies not have to invest more time and money in training people from other streams? Wouldn't people from other streams get jobs in their relative fields? At least when the recession happened, IT firms should have started calling CS graduates (placed through campus interviews) before they called people from other streams. This way they could have saved money and time on training. I mean, supposedly, for these companies, profit is everything. Instead, some companies drew lots to decide which candidates to take! Also, they should have protected their own (CS graduates) during hard times, because people from other streams had other options. A mechanical engineer can always get a job in a company which makes turbines, but can a Software engineer get a job there?
• Now, to campus placements. HR from different companies scout for talent every year. Now there are two different types f colleges in India, well, at least in Kerala: 1) govt/ govt-aided colleges and 2) private colleges affiliated to one of the universites in Kerala. Most students in the first set of colleges are ones who have performed well in studies ( I do have problems with the Indian system of learning by rote and methods of evaluation, but that can be the topic for another post), have passed the entrance exam conducted by the goverenment and have got seats on merit(as defined by the government). So, you would obviously think these students have a better chance of getting placed. Well, you are wrong again! This is because govt/govt-aided colleges do not have properly functioning placement cells and can't be bothered to run around talking to HR people from different companies. You see, they have no incentives to do so. On the other hand, private colleges go all out to woo HR people because they can get more students in the next academic year if they say all their students got placed. More students=more profits. It is that simple! So, again the more intelligent students in Govt/aided colleges lose out. (Some students in private colleges are those who are able to pay the huge fees demanded by these colleges, some of whom are again merely doing the course till they get married or take over papa's business!)
• Now, some IT firms being very careful about their potential recruits set benchmarks for candidates to be able to apply for their firms. These benchmarks usually correspond to marks received so far during the B. Tech course. One leading IT firm for instance asks for 60% marks. A very good criterion indeed! But can marks alone be used to judge a candidate's intelligence? 1) Some universities give more marks, others less. It is like comaparing the Class 10 marks (in my time, now there are grades) of a CBSE student with that of someone who's passed the SSLC exam. The whole world knows that an average student can score much higher in the SSLC exam than a relatively more intelligent student sitting for the CBSE boards. 2) In Kerala at least the system of evaluation in engineering is that the student is evaluated both internally and externally. So what happens is that private colleges give more marks to their students during the internal exams so that even if a student scores a little less in the external exam, it does not affect his/her percentile much (and of course, the college can sell more seats based on the high scores achieved by past students). All things considered, can marks be a criterion then for judging someone?
• Many 2008 engineering pass-outs who got placed are yet to receive their Date of Joining. Many companies have not cancelled their offer letters and so these people live in the hope that the company will call them. This is also because these comapnies routinely send an auto-generated email to recruits telling them that they will get their DOJ soon. In fact, an HP company has started taking 2009 recruits without taking in all its 2008 recruits! Is this not cheating? Shouldn't the company at last have cancelled the offer lettters to 2008 recruits before it did this? Isn't that norml courtesty? What do these HR people learn in their MBA programmes anyway? The government of course will not take any action becasue it cannot and will not interfere in a company's recruitment process and moreover offer letters do not have any legal standing.
• I do hope some HR person will read this and think!

on corruption in India

yeah, I know this is one topic on which thousands of people have written millions of words, with no results so far. I am not expecting any results either. just trying to let out my frustration with some instances of corruption I know of personally.
1. There is this little peon in the Sales Tax Department whose husband is a clerk in another government department. Guess what, she has five houses to her name in a small town in Kerala!
2. Someone I know applied for a home loan some time ago. You'd think that with the recession and the government lowering rates and encouraging housing loans, that would be an easy mission. wrong! you need about 10 documents to prove who you are, who owns lands next to you, where your house is located(your house deed is not good enough for this..i don't know why though), etc, etc. The poor man ran around and got all the documents and gave it to the village officer and waited for her approval. He waited for about two weeks and was finally told that things were getting delayed because he'd failed to bribe the VO. So, he had to give her Rs 500. and so he waited in the hope that he'd now get madam's signature. but the approval never came. so the man went to the VO and asked her why things were again getting delayed. pat came the reply: "oh, the clerk is refusing to move the file". The man says,"but I gave u money. Why don't u order him to finish the work?" the VO replies: "oh, he won't listen to me. He also wants a bribe". so another Rs 500 is given to the clerk and all the documents are approved!
3. you would think things would be better in temples of learning(colleges, universities etc). wrong again! lectureships are sold for lakhs of rupees. in universities, only those people who have godfathers or who can pay can get in. For this, you would have to do teeny-weeny little things like buying groceries for your professor, driving his car whenever the driver is on leave etc.
I know these stories are a little long and you are probably tired of reading them. The point I want to make is corruption is all pervasive in our country. Rajiv Gandhi once said that out of one rupee spent on the people, only five paise reaches them due to corruption. I am sure that now, probably only 3 paise reaches the poor. Corruption is helped by bureaucratic red tapism like the ones I described in case 1. To cut the red tape, u don't have an option but to bribe public servants. This is precisely why even government peons live in bungalows. Politicians of course do nothing against this menace because a) they are part of the system and they themselves are corrupt and b) government servants are a huge vote bank in this country.There is no way this country is going to progress unless something is done to root out corruption.
I'd suggest one way to check corruption:
A law should be brought making it mandatory for every government servant(from the lowest to the highest ranks) to declare his/her assets at the time of joining service. Make it mandatory for them to declare their assets every years so that you know whether they have disproportionate assets. An agency should be established to check these assets. Also, these declarations of assets by government servants should be made public and brought under the purview of the Right to Information Act.
One slight problem though, given the level of corruption in India, what happens if the officials of the agency which is entrusted with checking these assets are themselves bribed by the very officials they are supposed to watch over?
I'd love to hear from you guys about your views on corruption.
p.s: This is not to say that all government officials in India are corrupt. There are a few who are committed to their jobs and who hate the very idea of corruption. But they are helpless to act against their corrupt brethren. But I'd still say that a majority of government officials are corrupt.

Water Wars in JNU, Delhi

They say the next world war will be fought over water. well, I have news for you. The next world war has already started right here in Godavari Hostel, JNU!Delhi is facing a water shortage and in all my years in JNU, I think this is the worst water crisis we have ever had. Since I live on the second floor, apparently due to less pressure, water does not reach our floor. Complaints to various university authorities led to the usual stony faced response of there being not enough funds to buy a new pump. So, we had no option but to reconcile ourselves to the fact that we were going to have to store water. So, every one on the floor bought 3-4 buckets. As it is, even when we had regular supply of water, we only used to get water twice a day for one and a half hours each. The boys' hostels of course have water supply 24 hours a day because, yes, you guessed right, boys stand united for common needs and will create a ruckus if their demands are not met. You cannot expect the same of girls. they'd be too busy pulling each other down even when it comes to genuine, common issues!
Well, anyways, there's this girl on my floor who is obsessed with water. She bought a bucket as large as the waste baskets we seen on the roads and has kept it permanently filled in the bathroom. She takes about an hour and more to take a bath. Which means the rest of us wait for madam to come out so we can also fill our buckets. Of course, by the time madam comes out of the bathroom, the water supply is over.
So we are going all out for revenge. We are going to teach her a lesson in human behaviour and some manners. The rest of us are going to use 'her' bathroom one after the other so that she will not be able to use the bathroom when there is water. We will do this for a coupla days so that she realizes what the rest of us are going through.
The water war begins today.

Scrabulous
I have just started playing this game and its got me hooked!i remember playing scrabble as a child but once I got back to India, the small town I lived in had no game shops or even book shops. but I managed to survive on the huge collection of book my dad had and the ones he kept buying for me.
I heard of scrabulous after reading the newspaper reports about the scrabble owners' lawsuit against the people who made scrabulous.
I have not played against real people yet. have mostly confined myself to playing against the comp. But somehow the comp always seems to have better tiles and can get away with words I have never heard of!:(
now lemme get back to my game!
cheers

the fall and fall of indian television

i had gone home recently to kerala and so got to catch up with all that passes off as entertainment on television these days. I was shocked to see a programme called splitsville on MTV. While I know MTV does not really have a reputation for showing sensible programmes, this one really takes the cake. what we have here is a group of girls fighting it out in various ways and the winner gets a boyfriend(she gets to choose one of two men sponsored by MTV). The girls are judged for certain qualities (supposedly) by the boys. it's sickening to see the way the girls drooled and bitched to get the attention of the boys. don't these women have any self respect? i'd have understood if the boys were worth it at least. they aren't by a long shot: one is not good looking (i am being diplomatic here) and the other one is DUMB. and you should see the way they strut around. their behaviour towards the girls is condescending to say the least! how can such shows be allowed on television? cant these girls find partners on their own instead of fighting it out on television? and most of them need to get some dressing sense. i think such sexist, chauvinist programmes which depict women as these helpless creatures who need a man at any cost need to be banned. would welcome any comments on this.

the IPL hungama and the Gandhis

the IPL specatcle is upon us. I am not going to dissect it. Just a couple of thoughts about 2 issues that caught my interest:
1. The 'slapping' incident'
IMO, Sressanth and Harbhajan should be banned for a few matches. These two have escaped time and again thanks to the jongoistic Indian media. I have always believed that the Australian team's complaint of racial abuse against Harbhajan was not without grounds. the way the Indian media went to town about the 'rude' Austraians and 'meek' Indians was sickening, to say the least. it only shows that we, as a people, are not sensitive to racial discrimintaion and abuse. More on this later.
2. The 'first family' at Eden Gardens
What were the Vadras and Rahul Gandhi doing cheering for Kolkata(at least that is what news reports said)? Don't these very people boast about their loyalty and the 'sacrifices' they have made for India? How come they had no qualms about supporting Kolkata against Hyderabad? Are Bengali votes more valuable than Telegu votes? Wasn't their support for Kolkata inherently a divisive gesture because millions of Indians trust and look up to the 'family' so much! ??