MeA

Oxford University Press has just brought out a glossy hardcover book containing all the dialogues of 'Mughal-e-Azam' (MeA). It has a foreword by Javed Akhtar and an introduction by Nasreen Munni Kabir. Ms. Kabir has done a lot in recent times to bring interesting facets of the hindi film industry to a wide set of readers. I cant think of anyone who has done anything comparable now or in the past. MeA is a landmark film and an all-time favourite. Even the story of its making is fascinating to hear -what with the extravagant sets, the funding problems & delays and K. Asif's maniacal attention to detail . The film set a new high in the use of urdu in hindi film dialogues and this was possible because the dialogues for this film were jointly written by - not one, not two but- four leading writers of the time : Amanulla Khan, Kamal Amrohi, Ehsan Rizvi, & Vajahat Mirza. The book is a delight to behold and hold. On opening, it presents an 8.75" high and 21.5" wide view of four elegant columns of text. From left to right these contain the english translation of the dialogues, the roman script transliteration of the urdu to allow accurate reading, the rendering in devanagari script and finally the original rendering in urdu script. At the end the book recreates the magic with a set of large full-page colour prints of key scenes from the film. Strongly recommended as a collectors' item. It is priced rather steeply at Rs 1500 and that may put some people off but MeA fans may decide to forego other pleasures for a couple of months to indulge in a lifetime of evocative reading and re-reading. The book becomes even more attractive when one notes that it contains all the dialogues and songs including those edited out by the recent colour version of the film. Every MeA fan has his or her own favourites among the dialogues many of whom can be elegant, sharp and moving all at the same time. I cannot help reproducing my favourite which will need no elaboration of context for MeA fans: "Shahenshah ki in behisaab bakshishon ke badle mein ye kaneez Jalaluddin Mohammad Akbar ko apna khoon muaff karti hai .."======================================== " The Immortal Dialogues of K. Asif's Mughal-e-Azam"; 250 pp; Oxford University Press; 2007

July

July has many important dates for me. Mita and I decided to get married on July 7. The year was 1977 and that makes the date easy to remember: 07-07-77. We went to see a movie called 'See No Evil, Hear No Evil' in Priya (Vasant Vihar, New Delhi). This was well before Priya became a swanky multiplex. After the matinee show we should have just gone our separate ways (home for Mita and hostel for me; college had ended for both of us but I was still holding on to my room while I did my internship at the National Physical Laboratory, measuring the conductivity of polished silicon wafers). However we decided to go to Connaught Place instead, and have tea and snacks in Wenger's. (This was a restaurant over the bakery by the same name. The bakery is still around and popular but the restaurant has closed down.) By the time we decided to pay the bill and walk to Super Bazar to board route 620 it had turned dark and a drizzle had started up. Not the best time to be in CP. The market pretty much shut down at 7:30 pm those days, and the passages were taken up by unpleasant characters pushing drugs, among other goods and services. Somewhere during that walk we made up our minds.

July 6 became another important date for me when Amma died in 1983. I was in Bangalore with Mita. We were expecting our first baby. Vivek knew Ratnakar, the librarian at Raman Research Institute, who knew someone at Indian Airlines, the only domestic airline at that time. A ticket was organized for me to fly to Lucknow the same evening. It is not clear who actually paid for it. I merely paid back Vivek later. Sykes was mobile because he had a small moped. He gave me a ride right across town to the airport and Parvati took an autorickshaw to see me off at the departure lounge. I would never have made it without all of them. The flight took me to Delhi. I spent the night in a plastic bucket chair at the airport and took the connecting flight in the morning to Lucknow. When I reached home Amma had been cremated. It was hot and humid and not the right weather for keeping a corpse at home. Besides my father was not expecting me. He had not told me of the death. Valya had sent me the telegram on her own. I went to the bedroom and cried in her arms near the empty bed.

Agam was born on July 13 the same year. Mita had gorged on chana dal the previous night at Vivek’s house (she had moved in there while I went to Lucknow) and had vomited it all out on the floor. She and I cleaned up the muck using lots of newspapers. Vivek and Lakshmi had just got married themselves and must have been scared to see what they were getting into. Mita started having pains the next morning and I tried locating Dr. Leela Pai using a public phone. She moved around a bit those days between her home, her clinic and several hospitals and there were no mobile phones around. I got lucky the first time itself and she asked us to move to St. Philomena’s Hospital right away. She came in soon after we checked in and Mita was wheeled away. I scootered down to Parvati’s office nearby and she came back with me to provide support again. Agam was born a little after noon. Parvati handled him before Mita or I. She brought the little bundle out to give me a quick preview before he went to the nursery where I would be seeing him through a large glass window for the next few days. He looked very small and wrinkled. Not at all like the babies I had seen before, and not at all like the pretty baby he became later.

July 4 was always an important date for many people especially those associated with the US but it became important for us when Shivam started becoming a part of our lives. Since my ‘GK’ was good enough to include the Independence Day for the US, I never had a problem remembering this date. Normally I find it very hard to remember birthdays and anniversaries. I had known two Shivams before this but they were both boys and in fact I know no other girl by this name. I have to take the next opportunity to find out how she came by this name.

July 5 joined the list of important dates this year. It was important enough by late afternoon when we took delivery of Mita’s new Honda Jazz. This was her first new car since she had been using hand-me-down second-hand cars all along. Also this was pretty close to her desire to own a ‘red Toyota’. She had mentioned that several times in college and later. Red Toyota may not be the same as Blue Honda but it was close. We drove the car to the Sai Aangan in the blistering heat and took the Prasad from the lone priest present. Mita bought and offered a coconut, some flowers and a couple of incense sticks. A little girl was chatting with the priest, no doubt angling for more and more of the Prasad that he was packing in small paper bags for the evening. She came up to Mita and asked for her name. Then she asked Mita about my name. Finally she offered to give us some water from an earthen pitcher in Sai’s recreated kitchen. I guess she just wanted to play with the long-handled metal can used for the purpose. When we came home and parked the new car we took out the old Accent and parked it on the road outside the condominium. There was no place for it inside anymore. As luck would have it the broker Mita had spoken to earlier showed up before sundown, paid in cash and drove the car away. It all happened very fast. I felt something funny inside as I saw the old faithful (-six years and so many memories-) vanish down the road. Later that night we settled down in bed to watch Andy Roddick take on Roger Federer at Wimbledon. That is when Agam called to tell us. Apparently there had been an email from Shivam a little earlier but since I had not checked my mail it really was a surprise from me. And what a happy surprise! I had vowed to go to Tirupati but with all that is happening at home after my father’s hospitalization that will have to wait a bit. I did log on to TTD’s e-services and make a donation next morning.

Eggs, sugar,and pizzas....

This weekend the Economic Times had a piece by Vikram Doctor on the use of eggs in Indian cuisine. He made the interesting point that the domestic hens the world over are probably descended from the wild indian fowl and it is therefore strange that many people in the country shy away from eating an egg. Even an unfertilised egg. The piece also had curious references to indian sweets made from eggs. I was not aware of these. In particular I liked the idea of the Moplah sweet called mutta mala which is a string of batter fried egg yolks. The theme of food continued to resonate in other pieces in the newspapers that day. There a was this piece in the Hindu about a book called The Romance of a Naxalite written by Vineet Aggarwal a police officer. This is based on his experiences in Gadchirauli in Maharashtra. What caught my eye was his comment that people in that area are so poor that sugar and salt are luxuries for them. They leave their food exposed to ants because they say that after the ants have spent time on the food in large numbers the food tastes sweet from secretions that they leave behind. The theme of food recurred in another unusual piece the same weekend in the story of the lady who has come up with an unusual approach to track down men who do not fulfill child support commitments and vanish by changing their home and city so that they cannot be traced and held to account. She reasoned that these people would be too lazy to cook and too scared to be recognised to go out to eat. She further reasoned that such people would be too irresponsiblt to eat healthy and must therefore be ordering pizzas from home. She is trying to convince pizza chains to allow pasting a sheet with the photographs of such 'scofflaws' on the pizza delivery boxes - presumably so that the delivery boys can identify them and report to the police!

Laurie Baker RIP

Laurie Baker's death was reported early this week in all the papers. This was sad news. I remember coming across an article in 'Inside Outside' which had pictures of his work. This was in the early eighties and my first exposure to a different kind of architecture rooted in local material and construction practices. Affordable architecture tuned to the local climate and living habits. It was eye-opening for me. He must have died a disappointed man because while he won awards and acclaim and was so obviously doing the right thing his style never caught on. Not in the metros, not in the smaller towns and not even in the villages (-where people tend to copy the city-dwellers to the extent that they can afford it). The rising prosperity has probably pushed back the raison d'etre of Baker's work. Maybe the scare of global warming and the increasing need to conserve energy and stay green will bring him back in fashion. I would like to remember him from this piece in The Hindu http://www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo9908/99080300.htm

For Hindi Film Fanatics...

Oxford University Press has just brought out a glossy hardcover book containing all the dialogues of 'Mughal-e-Azam' (MeA). It has a foreword by Javed Akhtar and an introduction by Nasreen Munni Kabir. Ms. Kabir has done a lot in recent times to bring interesting facets of the hindi film industry to a wide set of readers. I cant think of anyone who has done anything comparable now or in the past. MeA is a landmark film and an all-time favourite. Even the story of its making is fascinating to hear -what with the extravagant sets, the funding problems & delays and K. Asif's maniacal attention to detail . The film set a new high in the use of urdu in hindi film dialogues and this was possible because the dialogues for this film were jointly written by - not one, not two but- four leading writers of the time : Amanulla Khan, Kamal Amrohi, Ehsan Rizvi, & Vajahat Mirza. The book is a delight to behold and hold. On opening, it presents an 8.75" high and 21.5" wide view of four elegant columns of text. From left to right these contain the english translation of the dialogues, the roman script transliteration of the urdu to allow accurate reading, the rendering in devanagari script and finally the original rendering in urdu script. At the end the book recreates the magic with a set of large full-page colour prints of key scenes from the film. Strongly recommended as a collectors' item. It is priced rather steeply at Rs 1500 and that may put some people off but MeA fans may decide to forego other pleasures for a couple of months to indulge in a lifetime of evocative reading and re-reading. The book becomes even more attractive when one notes that it contains all the dialogues and songs including those edited out by the recent colour version of the film. Every MeA fan has his or her own favourites among the dialogues many of whom can be elegant, sharp and moving all at the same time. I cannot help reproducing my favourite which will need no elaboration of context for MeA fans: "Shahenshah ki in behisaab bakshishon ke badle mein ye kaneez Jalaluddin Mohammad Akbar ko apna khoon muaff karti hai .."< " The Immortal Dialogues of K. Asif's Mughal-e-Azam"; 250 pp; Oxford University Press; 2007>

Barbarians at the Gate...or Liberators?

The March 26 issue of Newsweek carried some reassuring bits of information on private equity firms. Apparently an Ernst & Young study has found that PE firms double the value of their acquisitions in three and a half years. Also, a Citigroup study has concluded that over the last ten years companies acquired by PE forms have shown annual returns averaging 14% which is much more than the 8% delivered over the same period byy firms comprising the FTSE All Share Index. Finally, a Nottingham University study has found that employment at companies acquired by PE firms dips by 5% in the first year after acquisition but rises by 21% after four years. Clearly PE firms do a good job for their shareholders. I wonder if there is a study that looks at the way they treat employees of the companies they acquire? For instance how many of the acquired employees are around after 1, 2 and 3 years and how does this loss look at different levels of the organisation acquired? After all the total number of employees may remain unchanged or even grow but this may arise from new hires replacing those let go..