At The Edge

  Zones of Assault by Ranjit Hoskote (born in Bombay, in 1969), his first book of poems, was published in 1991. From the book's back cover: This is also, at one level, a poetry of landscape, of battleground, foodplains and mountains. The vitiated coast of and near Bombay (where the poet lives) and a Central Asian terrains - inherited from Hoskote's ancestral past, which is Kashmiri - play a significant role in some poems. Reviewing Zones of Assault , in 1991 for India Today , Agha Shahid Ali , a poet who often traced his Kashmiri ancestry in his work, wrote: "Hoskote wants to discover language, as one would a new chemical in a laboratory experiment. This sense of linguistic play, usually missing from subcontinental poetry in English, is abundant in Hoskote’s work." -0- Two Women in Midsummer Two women in midsummer Sharing their loss In traditional white. Walls, their bricks baked brown, Relieved now and then By pictures fading into cool green remembr...

Societies prefer to learn from their failures rather than from successes. As the rise and fall of Indira Gandhi recedes into India's past, the true lessons of her rule are apt to be forgotten and people are likely to discover in her the various aspects of their own rejected selves, thus mythologizing the entire experience of her rule as the battle between the good and the evil, the progressive and the regressive, and the hard and the soft. - Ashis Nandy in his book 'At the Edge of Psychology: Essays in Politics and Culture' (1980) starting off the essay 'Indira Gandhi and the culture of Indian Politics' Nobody is more into the business of mythologizing in India than its film Industry. And yet. If we think about Films, Emergency years and Indira Politics, name of films like Gulzar's Aandhi (1975) and Sudhir Misra's Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (2005) come to mind. Most often, that's about it. And both these films in pure terms are not actually about p...

A poster of V. Shantaram's film 'Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani' published in year 1946 in Telugu film journal Roopavani. Found it in the archives of Centre for the Study of Culture and Society. Dwarkanath Kotnis, the Indian doctor who treated Chinese soldiers during the Sino-Japan war of 1938 and won the heart of Mao Zedong has been chosen in national poll in China as one of the top ten foreigners who made “exceptional contributions to the country in the past 100 years." The Internet poll organized by the China Radio International has the stamp of official approval as Jia Qinglin, chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, took a direct interest in it. ( more at Times of India dated 11 Dec, 2009)

I guess its customary for Newspapers to come out with these silly things at the end of the year. The following cutting is from Hindustan Times dated December 20, 1997. The odd thing is that the article didn't mention how gorilla became a cop. I wanted to know.

Came across this curious flyer recently. Television. Actors. Godmen. Lasers. Too good.

I wanted to laugh. At any given moment there are enough people who believe a country out to be run like a mob.We have a mob.  P. Chidambaram earlier represented Enron as a senior lawyer in India. (That should be enough. Still.) And at one time he was also one of the non-executive directors of British mining conglomerate ‘ Vedanta Resources ’ where he helped it in getting listed at LSE. And Chidambaram represented it in the Mumbai High Court until 2003, quitting because he became the finance Minister of India .   Vedanta's Bihar born 'Millionaire but only matriculate pass' owner now lives in Europe ( Arundhati Roy gave the address as : 'London in a mansion that once belonged to the Shah of Iran') and is believed to be very smart: "Anil Agarwal, Vedanta’s chief executive, who founded Sterlite in 1976, caused further controversy last year [2002] when he attempted to delist Sterlite in Bombay. At the time, Mr Agarwal owned 80 per cent of Sterlite’s shares and ...

and Manju Falls. Picked it off from the street.

The courtier is perturbed by what he hears. What type of a song is this. Vulgar. He asks the girl singing the song to explain. It a good kind of song. It's a love song of Radha-Krishan. Listen. Radha says to her friend: More angana mein aye aali, main chaal chalun matwali angana mein aye aali Jab aanchal hamra pakday, Hum has has unsay Jhagday Choli pay nazariya jaye, mori chunari lipat mosay jaye ' Bas! Bas! You will destroy the truth of daughter-in-laws and daughters of Mithila. Choli pay...uff!' Courtier walks away fuming. Mocking him, the girl continues singing. Courtier listens some more. Woh aur Bhay, morey paihya paray, Kahay mano baat hamari Woh aur Bhay, morey paihya paray, Kahay mano baat hamari Main aah baro mukh pher kahu, Main aah baro mukh pher kahu Nahi manugi baat tihari, Nahi manugi baat tihari Nahi manugi baat tihari Nahi manugi baat tihari Courtier walks out saying, 'Now I know. Now I know. Now I know why our women sing this s...

"Gandhi landed in Bombay just in time for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. He was extremely loyal to Britain. British rule in India was not perfect but it did India much good. He took part in the celebrations, proudly singing ""God Save the Queen", and waving the Union Jack." - opening lines of Chapter 8 titled 'To India and Back'. Gandhi was visiting India after his first trip to South Africa where he had already started defending the 'Coolies'. After a short stay he sailed back to South Africa, this time with family. On reaching Durban, after not being allowed to get off the ship for days and with whites demanding that he be deported back, bravely walks out with an English friend but gets mobbed, passes out and is saved by the wife of a white Inspector of Police who takes him to her house. The crowd soon descends on the house asking that Gandhi be handed over to them. Realizing that the situation can get riotous, Gandhi put on the uni...

Manorama in Mujhe Jeene Do (1963). Probably the most famous eyebrows in Indian Cinema. Her arched eyebrows and puffed, caked cheeks from 'Seeta aur Geeta' are things of legend. Manorama was half-Irish and her real name was Erin Isaac Daniel. She started working in films in 1920s and appeared on screen regularly right till 1980s. In the 90s she did a cameo in Mahesh Bhaty's Junoon (1992) and in 2005 she had a small role in Deepa Mehta’s Water. Thus she had a release in every decade starting  1920s and ending with 2010. A no small feat. Manorama passed away on 15 February 2008. Manorama in a photograph published in year 1945 in Telugu film journal Roopavani. Found it in the archives of Centre for the Study of Culture and Society

Traditional Hindu blessing for women ' Shat Putra Vati Bhava ' (May you have hundred sons) also comes in a (lesser used) variation that promises eight sons - ' Ashta- Putravati Bhava ' - eight being a 'good' number for Hindus. Not good enough. If we are counting on blessings alone, the old 'blessings' need an upgrade - a beta version , fast. "A United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) study in 2007 said even if the sex ratio at birth were to remain at the ‘normal’ level of 950 girls per 1,000 boys until 2030, India is likely to have a female deficit of 25 million by 2030 in the marriageable age group of 20-49. More realistic studies that have factored in a limited and even further decline in the ratio have suggested the deficit could be anywhere between 29 and 34 million." - from a fine feature article ' The Lost Girls ' by Shreyasi Singh for Japan based current-affairs magazine The Diplomat . [Got the link via an email from Jason Miks,...

Jawaharlal Nehru and Kamla Nehru in their wedding dress. There is something strange going on at Doordarshan. On the occasion of Nehru's birthday, which is celebrated in India as 'Children's Day', they showed Sai Paranjape's Bhago Boot (2001). True to the old time-tested tradition of Doordarshan, that's all well and fine. I used to enjoy these kid movies shown religiously (often repeated) on this particular day . But this year, thanks to the digitalization and restoration of old archives, the film was preceded with a special presentation - an old reel having Chacha Nehru talking to a group of Kids about need for Children's cinema whose 'best judge should be children'. Between the clicks of camera, you could see the old man entertaining the kids with his famous talking skills. Rapt audience, which included his grandchildren - young Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi, he told the kids that American films are sometimes good but often they have too much v...

Dream Merchants, Politicians & Partition: Memoirs of an Indian Muslim (1997, Harper Collins, Pages: 152; Rs:95) by Iqbal Masud Born F G Jilani in late 1920s into a South Indian Muslim family, his father a officer in education department under British government and his mother a burqa wearing Khilafat activist puritan Muslim woman, the contradictions, as he recounts it, were present in his life from the very beginning. The memoir starts in early thirties with an eight year old Iqbal Masud, seated between his burqa clad mother and aunt, in the balcony of a theatre, and him almos t managing to catch Sulochana and Dinshaw Billimoria kiss on the screen ( in year 1935 talkie film 'Anarkali'). But the scene, at the last moment, gets censored out as his aunt clamps her hand down upon his eager eyes.    F G Jilani became critic-writer Iqbal Masud - Iqbal for his favorite poet and Masud his urf , a name 'adopted for various administrative and self-preservatory reason (the ...

On the last strains of the song, the camera moves up and away from spinning Sahibjaan and pans in on the background - roofs, other spinning girls, tawaif s of other Kotha s. -0- ' le leena dupatta mera ' I have often wondered about this. Majrooh Sultanpuri used the word ' le leena ' while the common usage would have it as ' le liya '. Is this Braj? -0- Choreography for the song was by Lachchu Maharaj. Meena Kumari was ill and in a lot of physical pain while shooting this film (and this film was in shooting for the longest time)  but there are only few scenes in which you can tell. Previously: Making of Pakeezah

video link Video: Nina Paley's awesome Sita Sings the Blues . Audio: 'Patli kamar hai' from Barsaat (1949). Music by Shankar-Jaikishan.

"It was a strange sight at Taihoku airport near Taiwan on the morning of August 18, 1945. Hot steam emanated from the body of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Clad in tight woolen riding breeches, tight belt, his body was blistered by hot oil from the plane that had crashed minutes ago. Strewn around Netaji were jewels, ornaments, gold and pearls donated by Indian for the independence struggle, which he was carrying with him on his way to Japan. Netaji struggled throughout the day and finally passed away at 10.30 p.m. on Aug, 18, 1945 and was cremated by the Japanese at Taiwan itself." from Hindustan Times, August 17, 1997. One of the rare instances in which P. N. Oak (March 2, 1917 - December 4, 2007) refuted and not propagated a 'crackpot' theory. In this particular case the theory was: 'Netaji is alive. He became a Sadhu, a hermit.' Oak created this vivid scene based on an account apparently offered to him by Colonel Habibur Rehman who was with Bose when h...

nanhee nanhee boondaniyo ki khanan khanan'khan khang'ree bajatee aayee, bajatee aayee dekho bhayee barkha dulhaniya barkha dulhaniya chhuk chhuk chhuk chhuk chaiyya, aaja daru toray gal bhainya aaj daru toray gal bhainya, chhuk chaiyya mai toh nachu tere sang sang sainya, ho sainya, ho sainya savan ka sandesa lekar niklee apnay ghar se jo koyee iskay pyar ko tarsay vahee navelee barse kare kare kare kare badarva kee jhanan jhanan jhan jhanjharee bajatee aayee hai dekho bhayee barkha dulhaniya barkha dulhaniya - rain song ' Umad ghumad kar ' from Do Aankhen Barah Haath (1957). And then there is saiyan jhoothon ka bada sartaj nikla . Her bow runs on single string of a sarangi. My lover turned out to be the king of liars . She  sings. A little toy drum follows her. Tied to her trailing pallu . All her movements are playful exaggerations - nakhra . Thugs, louts watch. She is a toy seller. When I was a kid, I actually had that toy fiddle and the drum.

Jumping Wells at Delhi, Frontispiece of 'Letters from India and Kashmir' by J. Duguid, 1870. The illustration is by Mr. H.R. Robertson, and engraved by Mr. W.J. Palmer, principally from the writer's Sketches. At the Kutub, and near Delhi, there are wells of various sizes, but on an average twenty yards square, surrounded by brick walls sixty feet high, of which forty are above the surface of the water. For a backsheesh men and boys - old men down to young boys - collected on the parapet, leap one after another into the air and descend in all kinds of positions. A moment, however, before they touch the water they quickly bring their feet together and their arms over their heads, pointed upwards, so that they enter the water in a reversed attitude to that of a header. The sensation caused by the sight of these men, with their arms and legs outspread and their features distorted by wild grimaces as they leap from the walls, surpasses any produced by Blondin or Leotard, ...

from a dead Geocities site from a previous post about Bees Saal Baad (1962)

Getting stabbed by Sanjuro Tsubaki (Toshiro Mifune) in iconic scene from Akira Kurosawa's 1962 film 'Sanjuro'. -0- Previously: Toshiro Mifune, Rashomon, Animals

'Romance of Kashmir' painted on the cover of a vinyl for Jab Jab Phool Khile (1965) Salvaged from a now dead Geocities site .

After the death of their poor mazdoor parents, young Bhola and Munni find themselves homeless, hungry and on the street. But then a kindly roadside gola (ice-candy) seller Kamla (Parveen Babi ) takes them in. A staple bollywood affair. But then, Mazdoor Zindabaad is a film from year 1976, the middle year of Emergency , and there is not one moment  in this magnus opus of sycophancy that lets the audience forget the great leader, her twenty points and her's son's five points. It was written directed and produced made by some guy named Naresh Kumar.He went on to make a film called Sone Ka Dil Lohe Ke Haath (1978) or 'Golden Heart-Iron Hand', a Chinese Kungfu film sounding title that some people would still use to describe Indira Gandhi. (Humble offering) 'Mazdoor Zindabaad' doesn't try to describe the great leader, it just sings praises of her great plans. And how? Kamla takes the bother-sister duo under her (and symbolically under Indira's) wi...

You might have heard about Yahoo shutting down Geocities . Yahoo acquired it in January 1999 and after 15 (10 of them under Yahoo) years of hosting  all kind of pages (a lot of them having funky .gif images hammering in 'Under construction' messages and in between they offered most arcane information about most obscure topics ) they finally shut down the service on 26th October 2009 .  Around 7+ million public web pages and 8+ million images (according to Google), gone leaving internet with lot of dead links and broken images (thanks to hotlinking) and 404s. On 26th I spent some time randomly browsing through (and saving ) some Geocities sites, stumbled across this 'sean connery on moon' image and remembered what a delight these pages used to be. In pre-blog days (and in some cases even in clatter of blogs) it obviously had some of the most labored upon user generated online content, labour not just of working with HTML and creating all those gif files. -0- P...

Once in a while I get an opportunity to rub the fact into the face of my Indian friends that I am a Kashmiri. The conversation usually ends with, 'Yeah Yeah so why didn't you seek asylum in Amreka while you had the chance?' Only a week ago we read about: "Chinese Embassy in Delhi is issuing separate visas to Indian passport holders from Indian-administered Kashmir. Instead of stamping the passport with a visa, as is the norm with Indian citizens, Kashmiri students and businessmen traveling to China have had their visas stamped on a separate paper stapled to the passport. [ News Link, Asia Times ] That make me wanna go, 'Only with a passport! Only with a passport!' like Chaplin's 'communist' boy. Rubs the fact into the face. Today was one such day. The front page of morning paper carried the news that 'Made in China' globes sold in India depict Ja...

Created this collage of Heroines mostly using various Vintage Indian film posters (most of them hand painted) found in the incredible Picasa gallery of Praful. Update: Here's the link for this image in size 5120px × 3956px, 3504KB. Download now Enjoy!

"Can a Bullet skip on water like a rock can" Yes. But only under a certain condition: You have to be walking on water at a pace of 3 miles per hour. "Curse of maa kali on gandhi family" Assuming this one is about the Gandhi family. The curse is:You will rule India.  "guru dutt+colin farrell+hanuman" Had it been '-' we would have got a tail at the end. But not sure about summation.

The Baital-Pachisi, or Twenty-five Tales of a Baital is the history of a huge Bat, Vampire, or Evil Spirit which inhabited and animated dead bodies. It is an old, and thoroughly Hindu, Legend composed in Sanskrit, and is the germ which culminated in the Arabian Nights, and which inspired the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius, Boccacio's "Decamerone," the "Pentamerone," and all that class of facetious fictitious literature. The story turns chiefly on a great king named Vikram, the King Arthur of the East, who in pursuance of his promise to a Jogi or Magician, brings to him the Baital (Vampire), who is hanging on a tree. The difficulties King Vikram and his son have in bringing the Vampire into the presence of the Jogi are truly laughable; and on this thread is strung a series of Hindu fairy stories, which contain much interesting information on Indian customs and manners. It also alludes to that state, which induces Hindu devotees to allow themselves to be bur...

video link Video: Television series "Vikram Aur Betaal" (1988) from Ramanand Sagar  Music: "Under Pressure" (1981) by Queen and David Bowie

alternatively titled: 'What to do if nothing else works?' Ride a horse -single handed, ride a bike on a high wire - let your hair blow into the wind, play with knives ( and springs!), do trapeze, break that wall with your head, and when you have completely lost it, be a ' chiddi maar ' - killer of birds. So now you are a Super Hero.ClapCalpClap. -0- Image: A page from Pratishodh ki Jwala (fire of revenge, Raj Comics ), the first of Super Commando dhruva. dhruva started in Circus just like 'Robin - The Boy Wonder'. Parents get killed and so on. After many successful adventures he ended up playing 'Robin' to Nagraj.

11/26/08 Hindu Muslim Sikh E'sai Sab ke Dil Ka pyara Superman! Malegaon ka Superman video link  (Update: Upholder had to remove the video because of: a copyright claim by NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation). But I found a trailer and a clip (and then the film). Read on) SUPERMEN OF MALEGAON Directed by Faiza Ahmed Khan A documentary partly produced by KBS (Korean Broadcasting System) and NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) . The documentary is about the making of a movie called " Malegaon ka Superman ' directed by Shaikh Nasir. It tells the fascinating story of a ragtag crew of people from Malegaon (in Nashik district of Indian state of Maharashtra) who set out to make a 'Superman meets Bollywood' kind of flick in their own town on a shoestring budget. The above clip is their final product. The rest of the documentary covering the making has also been uploaded but sadly it has a Japanese voice over. The director of the film, Faiza Ahmed...

video link Gandalf meets Shahenshah