Twilight Fairy

The “City of Djinns” doesn’t need any introduction. Neither the book nor the mystical city. William Dalrymple, born in Scotland, visited India around 1989 and stayed for 4 years during which he penned the book – ‘City of Djinns’. This book won the Thomas Cook travel book award. This is the story of one year in our very own city – Delhi, the city of Djinns. Djinns are supposedly another race like us, fashioned from fire, spirits invisible to the naked eye – one needs to fast and pray to see them.

William Dalrymple describes Delhi as “Full of riches and heroes, a labyrinth city of palaces, open gutters, filtered light through filigree lattices, choke of fumes and whiff of spices”. He unveils the ’seven dead cities’ of Delhi in his book, the current being the 8th. Some even count the number as 15. These are nothing but a representation of the number of times Delhi has been destroyed and rebuilt. There are pieces of history lingering in every such city. Different areas of Delhi, preserve different centuries, even different millennia. Punjabi immigrants (form the recent day Delhi), old majors in Lodhi garden, old city eunuchs speaking courtly Urdu, Sadhus at Nigambodh ghat (depicting Indraprastha – first Delhi from Mahabharat) all form Delhi. Indraprastha was invaded & burned and yet it rose like a phoenix from fire, like hindus believe.

WD’s landlady for these 4 years was Mrs. Puri, a sikh from Lahore, expelled during partition, lost everything, rebuilt from scratch (like most punjabi immigrants). Her husband who was intermittently senile (he went crazy since 1984 Sikh riots), firmly believed that Mr. William had kept some mules ‘upstairs’. WD’s book talks about his experiences as a foreigner in this city – unused to domestic help and traffic snarls, his trysts with MTNL (which he called ‘an empire dedicated to beuracratic obfuscation), Delhi marriages which go on throughout the night, festivals like Holi, Diwali, Id, Dussehra and the fervour with which these are celebrated. WD goes on to talk about the 1984 riots, the partition and how these incidents affected people. The account is interspersed with amusing wit where his sikh driver – Balwinder Singh – points out ‘eye candy’ on the streets (clearly something WD is totally unused to) or tries communicating in his limited english resulting in some humourous misunderstandings. WD describes Shahjehanabad – the city established by Shah Jehan. He also visits Karachi where they asked him about certain ‘gullis’, or whether the streets still looked the same as before partition, (through whatever was left of them in their memory). There he meets the author of the book ‘Twilight in Delhi’ – a very good and accurate account of Delhi before the partition. Karachi itself looked very similar to Delhi – reconstructed.

People in Delhi believe in a certain prophecy that whosoever builds a new city, consequently loses it. History vouches for the same. Pandavas, Prithviraj Chauhan, Feroz Shah Tughlak, Shah Jahan are all examples of that. WD moves on to describe Lutyens Delhi and specifically its architecture. He gives accounts of someone who had seen it being built as a child. Events like the persian massacres of 1739 and the British recapture of 1857 are woven into his historical account. He writes about Nadir Shah and the British Resident – Sir David Ochterlony – who lived like a Moghul. He beautifully highlights the cultural amalgamation that followed in terms of the architecture in this era in ‘Dehlee’ and ‘Hurriyana’. Till date, the British residency supposedly retains some part of the mughal architecture (the moghul ruins on which it was built). WD also happens to read the letters from one particular British Resident – 183 years later at the same desk at which the resident wrote them. He writes about Angloindians, who suffer the worst racial prejudices of Indians and the British Both.

His culturally rich, amply researched and historically lush account mentions a lot of aspects of all cultures that Delhi has seen – for eg. Kabootar Baazi – a sport prevalent in old Delhi, Eunuchs and the way they exist. He talks about historical figures like Shah Jehan, Dara Shikoh, Aurangzeb, Roshanara Begum, their related history and their associated establishments – Shahjehanabad, Aurangabad, Roshanara Bagh, Shalimar Bagh etc. He writes about how Aurangzeb ousted his favoured brother Dara Shikoh and crowned himself in Shalimar Bagh, beheaded Dara Shikoh and sent his head on a platter to an imprisoned Shah Jehan just before his prison meal. The barbaric nature of the Moghuls is clearly evident through several tales.

This book also brings to light several interesting things to the unaware reader. Apart from the cultural, historical, architectural narratives, it contains things which I am sure many of us never knew. He mentions that the Britishers are to blame for diverting the ‘Jumna’ and laying in its place a main road so that the Mughal pavillions in Red Fort look out not to a source of water but onto a road – MG Road, one of the most noisy and polluted stretch of the Ring Road! WD also interviews Fakeerah Sultan Begum – the great grand daughter of Aurangzeb(!) who’s still alive and talks about Delhi as “her” city.

A ‘must read’ is a mild description for this book. More than a book, it is a time travel machine which takes you back several years and several centuries without never really leaving the present. It makes you realise that you were unaware of such treasures in your own backyard all this while. This enriching and informative book makes history look like an interesting dream where some bits are still fresh in my mind, bits where I experience the thrill of discovering something, some bits are sadly erased permanently and I am unable to recollect them and then there are still some, which I am trying to recollect, by digging deep through my memory. I want to know more by exploring whatever I have today. Something that textbook history could never achieve. Go ahead and read this book for accounts of Ibn Batuta’s travel adventures, Yunani medicine, Hakims, Hindi Gaalis!, Nizamuddin saints, Elusive eunuchs, Djinns which got captured, Kaurav’s capital – Hastinapur and many more interesting things while I take a copy with me to revisit Shalilmar Bagh, Roshanara Bagh, and Begumpur (On way to Mehrauli) where Mohd. Bin Tughlak had his palace. Not every city has a spirit of its own, but djinns or no djinns, Delhi does.

Spoiler warning – plot revealed

It was just by chance that I went to watch this movie. I was really not interested in watching P3 even though it had been given a good rating by the papers (journos really identified with it or what?)

Anyhow, my reservations had to take a backseat when we decided to draw a lot and select the movie for a team outing from office. The best I could do was to draw the lot myself, which I did. Few hours later, I was watching Page 3 at PVR Gurgaon.

The movie has no crisp storyline as such. The first half is just about a snapshot of the life of a P3 journo. Young and ambitious as they come, Madhavi (enacted by Konkona Sen Sharma), goes to all P3 dos, fashion shows, gliteratti parties, you name it. People are nice to her. Of course, they want good press. The movie shows life the way it is. Madhavi has 2 roommates – Pearl (enacted by Sandhya Mridul) who is no non-sense, practical and knows the way Mumbai works, and Gayatri (enacted by Tara Sharma) – a lost lass from Delhi, in Bombay to try her hand at movies. The plot reveals the superficial lives that social butterflies lead, flitting from one party to another, bitching about each other, screwing anyone and everyone who they could manage to “lay” their hands on (age no bar, gender no bar), air kissing, name dropping… the works. One can make out a lot of characters shaped out of known P3 regulars, be it the police office who’s more at parties and at filmsets than at his own thana or area of jurisdiction, the lady who writes novels on what else – sex, the gay fashion designer, the director with the casting couch, the hero sleeping with young, nubile, wanna be’s. But there are a few other people in this otherwise “artificial” mix, who are genuine, like the honest Inspector Bhonsle (Upyendra Limaye) who tries putting an end to crime in his own way, the journo Vinayak (Atul Kulkarni) who works in the same paper as Madhavi, but on real stories rather than superficial party dos, the odd socialite who does social work whether or not there are journos to write on her. The movie gradually proceeds with Madhavi’s love life blooming with the struggling model Tarun, pragmatic Pearl hitching a millionaire, so that she is served to rather than *she* serving ppl (as an air hostess) and Gayatri finding love in a successful hero who impregnates her as nonchalantly as he would swat a fly. Madhavi is gradually disgusted with all that has been happening.

Post interval, she decides to do meaningful journalism like crime reporting, instead of smiling plastic smiles whilst watching the plastic lives of social butterflies. She gets trained under Vinayak. Just when she thinks that things are becoming more meaningful, she discovers that her model boyfriend has been screwing a gay ‘makeup man’ friend of hers. She takes this in her stride along with all the other things which disgust her. One fine day she witnesses a blast. The misery, helplessness, blood, gore, bhaichara, all affect her deeply. She realises that life is not a party and blurts the same to the police officer who she encounters as a cover up journo in a P3 party. One night when Vinayak is out covering other cities, she gets a tip from an informer. She ropes in the inspector and goes on to expose a child abuse scandal involving a major tycoon, who happens to sponsor her paper. Needless to say, the news never makes it to the paper, the proof gets destroyed and she gets sacked. Life moves on, and she learns that one must “try to change the system while being a part of it”.

The acting is generally good. But the actor I like most is Sandhya Mridul. I found her better than Konkona Sen. Atul kulkarni is also good. Boman Irani (as Madhavi’s editor) is wasted. Soni Raazdaan looks awfully old. There are lot of P3 types who play themselves like Suchitra Pillay, Dolly Thakore etc. Upyendra Limaye is also good and there were times when the audience started clapping/cheering. I also liked the driver bunch who keep talking about their saab/memsaabs.

The soundtrack is good. I registered only 3 songs out of which one was pure torture to the ears, referred to as “truck driver” song in the movie. A deep, thought provoking “Kitne ajeeb rishtey yahan par” – has been sung by Lata Mangeshkar and an utterly melodious “Maar daala, Huzoor-e-aala” – has been sung by Asha Bhonsle.
The movie can make you cry and make you laugh. Basically shows what life can be all about. Overall rating – eminently watchable.

Gurinder Chadha has all the characters from ‘Pride and Prejudice’ . She has tried to indianise everything. So Elizabeth Bennet becomes Lalita Bakshi. Her elder sister Jane becomes Jaya (pronounced as Joya by her love interest), Mr. Bingley, the love interest of Joya becomes Balraj, Liddie (one of the younger sisters) becomes Lakhi, Mary (yet another younger sister) becomes Maya. Lalita’s best friend becomes Chandra Lamba from Charlotte Lucas and last but not the least, the sloppy, weird relative trying to woo Lalita metmorphoses (into an ugly creature nonetheless) from Mr.Collins to Mr. Kohli.

The first scene shows Aishwarya Rai trying to sit pretty on a tractor. Typical case of the beauty and the beast. Here one should note that the sister no. 2 in “Pride and Prejudice” (Elizabeth) is a trifle less good looking than the others (if I remember correctly), but clearly here, the situation is quite different. Gradually the story moves towards the great indian wedding taking place where Lalita and her sisters happen to meet the best man (Balraj) and his phoren friend, Darcy. Of course how can one forget Balraj’s sister who generally behaves like a “cunt” in Balraj’s own description of her. The story has Lalita disliking Darcy right from the beginning because he seems to prefer “high standards”. Meanwhile she falls for another firang she happens to meet in Goa – Wickham, who happens to know Darcy & tells her stuff about him, which makes her dislike him further. Equally or rather more infatuated with Wickham is Lakhi, who’s just a desperate teen out to impress guys. Jaya and Balraj are getting closer to each other in every way imaginable. No, the movie is all prim-and-propah!! Forget any intimate scenes, one doesnt even get a glance at the actual colors of the swimsuits these ladies wear. I am surprised we didnt have the typical bollywood scene of two flowers touching each other to signify that love is blooming. In between the comical character of the plot, Kohli, arrives and is all set to woo Lalita with his sloppy ways, only to be rejected by Lalita but accepted instantly by Chandra, Lalita’s friend, as a ticket to a better life. Here I must mention that Sonali Kulkarni as Chandra, looks quite horrible in indian attire that this movie made her wear. One is finally relieved when she starts wearing westerns in firang land.

In all this while, Lalita has begun to like Darcy but later realises that Darcy for some reason dissuaded Balraj from his Joya. Wickham kinda lures Lakhi into eloping with him and Darcy helps Lalita get her back. This gets him not only brownie points but he also scores a hit. In the end we see Darcy/Balraj getting married to their Indian sweethearts.

The indianness factor figures high on Gurinders list, but it keeps clashing with the fact that this is supposed to be an international movie and the soundtrack is completely in English. Not even a single Hindi/Punjabi song. Moreover the songs sound weird (at least to my accustomed ears) on hearing english lyrics being mouthed on familiar hindi tunes. The background score mostly seems to include only professional western classical singers and their voices just do not gel with most of the indian faces in the movie especially so in “A Marriage has come to town”. Though “No life without wife” and “Show them the way” are still tolerable. Ashanti’s stint in Goa is also not impressive, where she struggles to blurt some heavily accented Hindi in her otherwise English song. Maybe the international junta would have a different take on the musical score. I dont know if there’s an english musical score in “Balle balle, Amritsar to LA” – the hindi version of the movie. It would sound quite drastic to have proper English songs in a hindi dubbed version!

Though the movie does have the masala from typical bollywood movies, Ash’s acting is nothing great. In fact it looks quite artificial. The expressions she makes are not spontaneous. I didn’t go there expecting another spontaneous and very natural Jess Bhambhra from “Bend it like Beckham” but this cold, unnatural, non-spontaneous act wasn’t expected either. She was better in “Taal” and “Hum dil de chuke sanam”. The humour is also a little lacking in this movie considering that it’s a Gurinder Chadha movie. The scenes with Kohli are replete with slapstick comedy, but that’s that – it’s slapstick. The nagin dance by Lalita’s sister, takes everyone by surprise, the audience in the movie itself as well as that in the hall. Overall a masala movie but I would have rather waited for it to be shown on cable than especially checking it out.

After a long time I got to watch a movie in a hall. I went just because it was one of the much talked about Ramu movies, which are ‘zara hatke’ as the papers call them, but going by the way Ramu had disapointed me with ‘Bhoot’ I was a little apprehensive. (That’s another story altogether, but lemme mention that I laughed my way through ‘Bhoot’, and I wasn’t alone in doing that). I was already aware of the basic plot thanks to our papers and the hype, but I tried emptying my mind of all prejudices and watching this movie with a clean slate.

So as we all know Saif Ali Khan (SAK from now) is a smooooooth operator, charming his way into young nubile things…err their hearts too. His modus operandi involves shocking PYT’s by saying the actual thing he intends, feigning jest when it suits his convenience and teasing them with the real thing once in a while. He does the same with Urmila Matondkar (Ummmm.. ok Um from now). Um is supposed to be this PYT (pretty young thing, in case you were still trying all kinds of abbreviations) who seems to attract males like magnets. Ramu tries showing this by showing a forgettable character – a neighbour trying to be fresh with her, when his wife is away. He also shows that Um seems to be pretty adept at judging what the guy *actually* wants, but somehow this judgement or intuition of hers is very shortlived the moment SAK steps into her life. She shuts out all the little warning signals that her brain might have ever sent to her. It makes one think that Um is actually a dumb blonde in disguise. Anyhow, so SAK initially gets the same reactions as her neighbour, but does the smart thing of obliging Um by saving her handbag from a thief and now swishes into her life. Um is the typical bait for him, who thinks that SAK is gonna marry her sometime soon, even though he lives out of a suitcase, 3 days in delhi and 2 in bombay (she never bothers abt the weekends).

One fine day, SAK requests her to accomodate a (ghastly looking) friend for some hours before he hops in to a flight for HongKong or some place. She obliges. The guy turns out to be some slug from the underworld and he conveniently gets killed in an encounter, with the address of Um’s place in his pocket. Needless to say, Um is now under full suspicion. To top it all, she does nothing to defend herself, as she has been expertly brainwashed by her BF. During this sequence, Ramu uses the usual Bhoot ploys to create alarm in this situation, by throwing normal everyday sounds at the viewer suddenly in an attempt to scare him. Things like the doorbell ring, the phone toot, the pressure cooker whistle now seem to do be laden with a sinister air.

Um is taken into police custody and has some tough time being the ‘apsara talkies’ as she’s called by the jail goondi. Her cell mate tries to give her an intro to jail life and in doing so warns Um of a certain goondi who bites off ears. Very predictably, she herself turns out to be the ear biting menace, Ramu you are getting really predictable now. And as predictable as you are again, we are spared any ear biting scenes.. c’mon that mention is just so that the jelly baby that Um has become, quivers just a little more.

SAK, the smooth criminal that he is, in the meanwhile pretends that he’s trying to save Um somehow. At the same time, Um has been taken under the wing of the actual Ma of the jail, who’s respected not only by the prisoners, but even the police ‘Ji’ her. She’s the only one who tries to drill some sense into Um’s brain (realises that Um is a dumb blonde in disguise ) and introduces her to the hard reality. After several such moves from SAK and Ma, Um finally realises the true character of SAK and now plots revenge. No, we are spared any durga avatars or the like thankfully, to synonymise with the change in character. The only thing that Ramu shows is Um cutting off her Rapunzel locks (wonder how they stayed as set and curly as ever, after staying in a prison with an ear eating monster for months) to around shoulder length. Wonder what she achieved with this.

With the help of Ma, Um manages to escape the jail and heads for Delhi where Ma has everything set for her. Loads of cash, gun lending goondas, a secluded place (read chandni chowk in delhi), swanky cars, they all are at her beck and call. Suddenly a lower middle class girl like her, who’s not even supposed to be able to afford a cell and a deo (that’s the reason the police gave for suspecting her) finds herself driving mean machines.

Now Um follows SAK as closely as possible (much like the pug puppy in the hutch roaming ad). She watches him rolling in cash and in bed with his new girl friend. She watches him dealing with the trigger happy underworld dadas. She follows him around in an unusually barren Connaught Place and on an empty Shanti Path. She follows him a lot around PVR Saket and watches over him at Buzz. Having meticulously planned his death, she waits for the opportune moment and strikes. SAK suddenly finds one of his loyal friends murdered but doesnt suspect anything. A little later he finds himself in a soup with the underworld. Again, he suspects someone from his own clan rather than the delicate Um. All this while, the police has been tracking Um’s moves and as is traditional, always misses her when she’s closest. Due to her pug puppy habits, they manage to uncan the gang of SAK’s underworld slugs. In the meantime, Um manages to suitably bump into SAK when he’s in the thick of things and offers him help, the selfless lover that she is. At one of the encounters that the police has with SAK, he is enlightened by them that it is Um who’s been plotting revenge all this while. SAK and Um have a confrontation where Um again feigns fear and agrees to do as he bids, but later turns the tables on him. She manages to take him to a secluded place somewhere in the hills in some godforsaken place, where no human ever turns up and executes the death sentence she’s planned.


All in all an eminently watchable movie.

I am back from my vacation…sigh..wish it could have lasted longer..am back to the grinding schedule. I reached Delhi on saturday and after a zombied saturday, and a partially zombied sunday too, I finally went to watch Maqbool at the 34th International Film Festival at Siri Fort Auditorium, Lodhi Road. Had gone with my sis and we just managed to reach on time, all courtesy Twilight’s abilities to calculate the shortest path (NOT using Djikstra’s alogrithm) to Siri Fort Auditorium . Of course my sister’s resourcefulness in getting the 2 of us in, with 1 delegate pass also counts. So here we were in the heavily packed hall with no place to sit. I spotted 2 empty seats right behind me with a note saying ‘Reserved’ stuck to them. I pointed them out to my sister and was just contemplating another bout of ‘resourcefulness’ when I saw some hostess ushering someone to those seats. Now it isn’t everyday that I come across big shots or celebs..so when I saw that the ushered in was Milind Soman, my heart gave a squeal..My head tried to explain to my heart that it isn’t really such a big deal.. after all they all are just normal ppl like us and I *have* seen better bods than that..it’s just hype..but my heart told my head to shut up and ogle in an unladylike manner, which my head promptly did but it wasn’t long before my head wrenched off from it for the sake of *my* dignity. In the meantime, the lady on the stage started thanking all kinda bigshots for making the movie possible and on the stage came.. Irfaan Khan, Pankaj Kapur, Bobby Bedi, Tabbu etc.. again, my head told my heart, ’see they all look so normal like everyone else in the hall’ and this time my heart nodded *its* head in silent agreement (getting twisted, are we?).

Finally we spotted a few seats empty in the left wing of the hall. We reached there and realised why they were empty. Getting into and out of that row was a torture! There was *just* no leg space. But then beggars can’t be choosers, so we strived to get in. The first two occupants simply came out to let us in. The next two, stood up to let us pass by. The next two kept sitting and after a major mishmash of legs and thighs and limbs, we disentangled ourselves and settled ourselves in the next two seats. phew..

Now that I could get my bearings, I looked on and the next thing I know is that the CEO of my company comes down the aisle with his wife and chooses to sit right next to us! The whole exercise followed again and when they were crossing us (we had of course stood up, in fact my sister stood *on* the seat!), I greeted him with a ‘Hi A, I am from XXX’ (where XXX is the company which employs me). He tried blinking in the dark and after not being able to make out much uttered some polite sentences and then we settled down. It took me a little more time to get rid of the overwhelming feel that comes with such an out of the blue coincidence and by that time the lady on the stage announced that she would not stand any longer in between us and the movie..so the movie started.

Tabbu as usual managed to look nice and she is one of those rare bollywood heroines who manage this without any skin show. Irfaan Khan was intense and expressive. The Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri duo was great as always.. The story is supposed to be an adaptation of Macbeth but I had absolutely forgotten the story line to be able to compare anything to the Shakespearean version. So I saw the movie as any normal movie goer would. Of course, my sister had this as well as all points like script, lighting, camera, picturisation etc in mind. The movie was all about the underworld, the way it gets you to the top at times and throws you down just when you think you have made it, it shows all typical underworld stuff like treachery, blood, gore, jealousy, loyalty, anger, and of course mistresses and mujras. It lasted longer than we thought it would and by the end I just wanted it to finish soon. It was getting too heavy a dose for me though the movie is quite good. After the movie finished, my sis met a couple of her friends who had worked in the movie (behind the scenes) whilst Milind Soman signed autographs for his fans. I decided against giving him bhaav by not taking his autograph, though it would have hardly made a difference to the huge ocean by the absence of this one tiny droplet.

Just as we were coming out, a lady with a mike suddenly popped it in front of me and a light somewhere focussed on me and I realised I was being asked how I found the movie. I saw that the mike bore the logo of Zee news on it. I said something like ‘It’s quite a good movie but a little heavy’ and scooted out. Right behind me was Milind Soman and obviously all the news crews barely managed to *not* topple him over with their equipment. ‘Their goes my shot in the drain’, I thought. Later I kept nagging my sister about how if she would have replied to my barrage of questions throughout the movie about how it is similar to Macbeth, I would have been able to give a loooong and elaborate answer which would have increased the probability of my shot being telecast to an all time high. But then this much of excitement was enough for a day. We also saw Irfaan Khan roaming around callously with his arms around ppl’s neck! But by then the feeling that all these ppl are also quite normal like us had sunk in to quite an extent. We set out for home although my sister wanted to stay and watch another movie. Whoa!