Sparsh

I'm reminded of the well-known satirical novel by Robert Escarpit – The Literatron. I haven't read the novel but just a summary of its review is reproduced from eurozine article. It explains in subtle about how populism works.... I'm reminded of the well-known satirical novel by Robert Escarpit – The Literatron. The Literatron is more or less a machine for creating texts similar to a computer. The idea of its creators was to generate the perfect novel based on the best images from world literature. In response to the highest of expectations, the machine produced a bestseller – Virgin and Typesetter! When the Literatron was asked to compose a political speech the outcome was even more scandalous. After processing the entire history of political rhetoric the machine spewed out a series of gaffs such as: "This politics thing the more it changes the more it stays the same... There are no two ways about it, the clever people are the most stupid of all... All you have to do ...

The seed of post was sown when Joie de vivre commented in mine recent post that we live in the country where Logon ko democracy ka D bhi nai pata . She was absolutely right that Indians have a long way to go to understand the values of rights and duties of citizen. Personally, I don't have very strong belief in democracy but have a faith in swift and vigilant justice. Yet democracy seems to me as best way of giving voices to myself and the people. This is my naive attempt to understand the complex relationship of justice and democracy. Democracy is ethically right but intellectually void.-- Max Kislanski I once asked my father why people rate parliament above supreme court running on constitution. He replied me that constitution is made for serving the people not the vice-versa. When representative of people at Parliament veto supreme court verdict, they are abiding the rule of people only. I was silenced then. After many years, this memory resurfaces in studying Shahbano Case . ...

The result of 55th National Film Awards are out. And they are quite unbiased ones. National film Awards had also got bad name when Raveena had got it for Daman, Saif for Hum Tum and Karishma for DTPH. It forced me to compile and compose (not purely compose) recent development in Indian cinema through mine observations. We didn't start the fire, It was always burning Since the world's been turning, We didn't start the fire No we didn't light it, But we tried to fight it Billy Joel definitely should have written that song keeping in his mind about cinephiles unbounded zeal or passion or FIRE for cinema . Today,in the words of Margaret Mead, I will express myself: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. All the people involved in this project of educating people about cinema through making films and writing about it are those handful of committed people. Public acceptance can’t be th...