Udaan to Infinity and Beyond

Udaan is touching chords of nostalgia of growing up amongst adults and charming the young with hope in the eyes. The undecisive youth wants time and emotional support to pursue his/her dream career. Udaan is going to be more than teenage success in coming years, a benchmark for coming of the age film. Udaan is going to be our own The Catcher in the Rye, an expression for the teen angst.

Udaan was selected in the competitive section in the prestigious Cannes film festival. And the mainstream media and bollywood reaction: silence. Unforgivable! Such efforts need encouragement in an early stages so that Udaan could have good outreach to global audience. Mainstream media and bollywood fails us in great way. Now, when Amitabh Bachan likes the movie, everybody is hailing it as masterpiece. Udaan is a cinema based on real life and that has touched us in our lives. And people must watch it as its the voice and angst of mature teenager. I find ~uh~™ 's review enchanting and rational to support my view :

At 17, most people don’t know what they want to do with their lives. At 35, most people realize that they should have done something which they loved to do at 17. The rest, just a handful, takes a path of their choice. Udaan is about realizing that choice in life. Though, Udaan is definitely not one of those ‘protagonist is a winner’ tales, but just a hint of the force to win. As they say, an end is always the beginning of something.

Many people raise this question, ‘why should we watch a movie like Udaan and waste our quota for weekend entertainment, which doesn’t solve any problem, but just shows what we already know?’ or ‘ The story did not end properly’. Well, Cinema is a medium of expression by which a writer/ director expresses his feeling, makes a statement and leaves it to the interpretation, acceptance or rejection to the audience. The more real the story is , the difficult is to end it. Is there any ‘ending’ to real life stories ? As Satyajit Ray said – Cinemas of the world were not meant to change a society. The audience is. But Cinema has created sensible audience. What a cinema like Udaan probably does, it uses the language of cinema to educate and inspire many young Rohan’s to take off on the right direction, at the right time.

I don't know about other times. The motivation, self-realisation for energies happens more in company of friends than family these days. Thanks to the Indian family environment that averts risk tendency for more stable and well traveled path. Generally, we often seek jobs for position and prestige, not passion or drive. Our aversion for patronizing good cinema can be well understand by analogy forwarded by Bq on ours attitude towards study of liberal arts : [Source]

"Regarding education in the liberal arts, you have to admit there is a certain class element to those who chose to/are able to pursue serious study in its various fields. For example, someone who is a first generation college student, i.e. first in his/her family to pursue education beyond high school, would much rather choose a ‘safe’ field such as engineering or medicine or aim at clearing the IAS exam, simply because it makes the most economic sense to do so. I would even go so far as to argue that for a country to have a vibrant intellectual environment in the liberal arts, a substantial middle class is pre-requisite; the liberal arts being a more likely choice of perhaps the 2nd or the 3rd generation college student.

I’d imagine something of the sort applies to the US as well if you look at period such as the 60′s, when a new generation not only revolutionized the the popular discourse but also the intellectual one in various disciplines and departments across liberal arts colleges in the US. A generation, I would add, that was considerably better off than the previous one, considering most of them were born in the booming post WWII era. Now whether the second or the third generation born in India post the 1991 reforms demands better avenues for education in the liberal arts remains to be seen."

This movie reaffirms my belief that content is the king. Movies like Udaan are flying high and are capable of taking Indian cinema to infinity and beyond. The perspective of the dreamers are raising and there will always be several flights of 'Hope' in the sky!

Role of Media

1-  One grey issue needs our attention :  The real tragedy of the media’s surrender to the state is that journalists have stopped reading books, especially history books. Speaking at the Fifth Al Jazeera annual forum Robert Fisk laments the state driven semantics that take over and alter grave debates:  Journalism and 'the words of power' ;

2- Media does not act out of grief or out of some sense of compulsion at the death of any celebrity. Media is merely pandering to the lowest common denominator for commercial considerations as the stories that combine sex, glamour and death find a ready market. So its like justification of drug peddler for giving drugs to victims as given by media on defencing its coverage of sensational gossips and celebrity lifestyles.

3- Let me remind you, there is a public service broadcast also in this mob of news channels for serving citizens of this  nation. That is called Prasar Bharati.

B G Verghesse covers necessity of public service broadcaster in telling news :What ails Prasar Bharati ?

The “public” it serves embraces the entire diversity and plurality of India, men and women, aged and children, rural and urban, tribal and dalit, illiterate and elites, the differently-abled and disadvantaged, belonging to all regions and professing all the multifarious languages and cultures of India. Its role is to inform, educate, empower and entertain these many publics, not privileging any above all others.

Further, he focus on the difference of commercial and public broadcaster:
Commercial broadcasters are perforce dependant on ratings and necessarily compete for audiences that relate to the advertising that sustains them. They therefore primarily woo the “customer” and not the “citizen” who, for the most part, still lives below or perilously above the poverty line. The public service broadcaster's duty on the other hand is first and foremost towards the citizens of India, many of whom live in remote or backward areas, experience myriad difficulties and exploitation, speak “minority” languages and dialects and seek knowledge and empowerment to fulfill their varied needs and aspirations. There is no other agency to fulfill this supreme obligation. A nationalized broadcaster, serving the Union government of the day (for even the State governments and panchayat institutions have been deliberately excluded) simply does not fit the bill.

Reputed Journalist, P Sainath puts that responsibility if media is - to signal the weakness in society. That remains a minimum duty of a decent press. A society that does not itself, cannot cope. The focus is on the spectacular. The long term trends that spell chaos does not make good copy.

The 400 Blows

This is mine 400th post on the 'Sparsh'. It’s an eve of expression and celebration for me. I have a long journey of “unlearning" prejudices to gain insight of human nature. Also, the explosion of the blog phenomenon has exposed youths like me to a multitude of opinions. I had read, written and discussed about social, economic, and political opinions of importance and enjoyed sharing views on cinema.

I read several bloggers but follow ritually for new updates on these blogs : Nimmy, Nimmy2, Indianhomemaker, Rashmi Bansal, Atanu Dey, Devinder Sharma, TheSouthAsianIdea, Prof Abi, Sameer Bhat, anindianmuslim , Winds From The East , Calamur Harini, Vikram V Garg, Diptakirti, aPocRyPHaL, Anu, The Rational Fool, Nita, The Religious Policeman, kufr, Roshmi, Jaya, Santosh Desai ,  joie de vivre and Rajjo;

I read and like works of these Public Figures : Osho, Nadeem F. Paracha, Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens , Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, P. Sainath, Namit Arora and Pankaj Mishra ;

We as a whole shun social scientists but there is a deep urge among many to understand what is wrong with our country and society. There is a need to examine deeper causes because denial and inertia are easier than rational, analytical debate. We need  writers who can bravely give voice to what people had been wishing- but not daring to say for many a year. I aspire for that role.

I love Internet as it has been able to blow lid on the cheating systems set in pre Internet era. Internet gives me blog space to publish my views without any censor. Internet is a wonderful place and offers endless opportunities for individuals to connect with the rest of the world. So why restrict yourself to the boundaries of ours geographic region? Step out and explore.

I enjoyed writing all these four hundred posts. I view each blog post as a blow to the moral fabric of society by an individual. I am in the search for the elusive individual buried behind the cultural , national, colonial and global sentiment. This blog is now a crazy obsession, its about finding a new instrument true to the one's spirit. I will write more and more till there is passion and curiosity kicking inside me...

Religulous

I have became a big appreciator of Bill Maher for his commentary on various social, political and religious issues. Here is his brilliant take on apocalyptic vision of religion in the must watch documentary Religulous:

It seems peaceful, but this is where a lot of people believe the world will end. The irony of religion is that because of its power to divert man to destructive courses, the world could actually come to an end. The plain fact is, religion must die for mankind to live. The hour is getting very late to be able to indulge in having in key decisions made by religious people. By irrationalists, by those who would steer the ship of state not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken. George Bush prayed a lot about Iraq, but he didn't learn a lot about it.

Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It's nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it are intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction. Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don't have all the answers to think that they do.

Most people would think it's wonderful when someone says, "I'm willing, Lord! I'll do whatever you want me to do!" Except that since there are no gods actually talking to us, that void is filled in by people with their own corruptions and limitations and agendas. And anyone who tells you they know, they just know what happens when you die, I promise you, you don't. How can I be so sure? Because I don't know, and you do not possess mental powers that I do not. The only appropriate attitude for man to have about the big questions is not the arrogant certitude that is the hallmark of religion, but doubt. Doubt is humble, and that's what man needs to be, considering that human history is just a litany of getting shit dead wrong.

This is why rational people, anti-religionists, must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves. And those who consider themselves only moderately religious really need to look in the mirror and realize that the solace and comfort that religion brings you actually comes at a terrible price. If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence, and sheer ignorance as religion is, you'd resign in protest. To do otherwise is to be an enabler, a mafia wife, for the true devils of extremism that draw their legitimacy from the billions of their fellow travelers. If the world does come to an end here, or wherever, or if it limps into the future, decimated by the effects of religion-inspired nuclear terrorism, let's remember what the real problem was that we learned how to precipitate mass death before we got past the neurological disorder of wishing for it. That's it. Grow up or die.

The Necessity of Blasphemy - 3

“Those who cannot attack the thought, instead attack the thinker.” (Paul Valery 1871-1945)

A true questioning spirit is always introspective in nature, not accusatory. Verified doubt is scientific and it lays the foundation for merit-based trust. The advantage of a questioning spirit is that it is the opposite of an inquisition. Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against errors and dogma. Voice of reason asks for the justification of each a religious doctrine that is proclaimed as true without proof. This creates a conflict in the society as people wants to be in their comfort zones of tradition. It is falsehood alone which needs the support of religion. Truth can stand by itself.

The Judeo-Christian tradition began with the Hebrews but the goal was to extend the "faith" to the entire world over time. Judeo-Christian tradition has taken civilization back many years when scientific records and journals were destroyed in the name of being blasphemous. Christianity has a long history of persecution of non believers. And West has came through Dark ages through Renaissance, Reformation, Scientific Revolution and Age of Exploration. Despite major challenges to Roman Catholic dogma, however, enlightenment occurred in Europe.Today, Christian Theology - excluding those fundamentalist churches whose aim is to reassert doctrinal truths - has likewise softened many of its ontological claims, due to increased exposure to both scientific insights and the contrasting theological claims of other faiths.

Dissent is taken as disloyalty and infidelity in Islamic nation these days. And, such reformers are forced to exile and degenerated as declared a ‘blasphemer,’ ‘liberal apologist’ and an undercover [CIA, RAW, MOSSAD] agent. Like, Egyptian Farag Foda, who was killed by an Islamist group in 1992, or those of the Sudanese scholar Mahmud Mohammed Taha, who was hanged in 1985. Pakistan’s outstanding, moderate Islamic scholars, Javed Ahmed Ghamdi, has had to fly out of the country into a self-imposed exile. Ghamdi was facing a number of threats from certain puritan and violent Islamic groups. His sin? He stood out as a mainstream Sunni Muslim scholar who banked on reason and an interpretive take on the Quran, eschewing the myopic literalism of the puritan groups that espouse a violent, political view of Islam.

Today, progressive countries like Malaysia and Turkey are developing due to western education. And the Arab culture, the cradle of Islam is lacking any scientific development. A simple question of liberal mind : why are liberal Islamic (Malaysia and Turkey) or non Islamic nation moving forward while strictly Islamic nations are being left behind? And the answer lies in the concept: “the resignation of the mind.”

Koran should be openly, freely and publicly subjected to the kind of historical and philological scholarship. There are hundreds of [Koranic] psalms and hadiths urging Muslims to value war and to fight. It doesn't mean that all Muslims literally follow them. Instead of taking decision based on the logic, experience and prevailing circumstances, when we see through the eyes of a Koran only things go wrong.

When same book is quoted again in both ways to inflect war on non-believers (infidels) and proving Islam as religion of peace, something is wrong with the book only. The contradictory teachings are not discarded and taken with the matter of absolute faith had damaged the image of Muslims everywhere. The same religious text is interpreted in two different ways. Some interpret it to preach peace while others interpret it to preach hate and both the sections are convinced about their interpretations. When people are mere loyal to the words in the thousand old year book, there will be wrong done in the name of good also.  Those defending religions has got fair share of  rational education that led for this ability to question own’s logic, experience and prevailing circumstances.

When everyone wears their religion on their sleeves, making callous remarks such as comparing gods, and that "my god is better than your god", the kind of mockery and insults thrown around that is bound to warrant irrational responses, even if they are thrown about today by careless groups seeking to provoke. There is oft quoted verse “There is no compulsion in religion”. From the behaviour of most religious people, it seems that there is supposed to be compulsion on everyone to follow what the upholders of religion want them to follow.

Today, there is an urgent need for creating an environment in which people feel free to ask questions, and in which diverse reactions are tolerated, is essential to social debate and paves the road for the acceptance of diversity that is so desperately needed in all our societies. A firm ‘no’ to all forms of bigotry and discrimination – religious, ideological, regional and sectarian – is an imperative. Until theologists had to saw the questions raised by Blasphemer as a challenge, not as a threat, the problem of religious conflicts is not going to be solved.

 Hence, I will end my essay on the necessity of blasphemy with words of Rational Fool who concludes correctly about religions : It's disingenuous, therefore, to claim any religious origin for scientific advancement. Crediting Islam with Algebra, or for that matter, Christianity with the Copernican revolution, is like crediting the Czar with the Bolshevik revolution.