Friday, January 16, 2009

THE DELHI MANIFESTO

I have got a mail from the Nitesh;It was a manifesto about Indian cinema and cinephiles.;
Content---
Our manifesto is up on Indian Cinema, do read it chip in your support and spread the word. The more we can gather over the months will help in the cause of seeing cinema in the right direction.
Original Link
THE DELHI MANIFESTO

  • Our cinema screen has become an ill-constructed, and conventional portal to a world we aspire of, rather than a mirror, which reflects us.
  • Our emotions are guided by leitmotifs placed deftly, and religious beliefs exploited.
  • Our spirit of inquiry has become dead and we have been reduced to mere receivers in the process.
  • Cinema and television has replaced interaction with imposition of thought. Its thought. An artificial, fake and ill-created thought, a manifestation of our needs to escape ourselves.
  • The medium has become a symbol of cheap entertainment, devoid of any examination of the form, and a victim of our collective need to create personalities, perfect alternate universes, and images of our aspiration.
  • Our criticism has become trivial. Stories take precedent over the intrinsic qualities of the cinematic medium.
  • Our film lovers are snobs, indulging in their wholehearted pseudo-intellectual diatribe, condemning the ignorant, and the ignorant have become so used to a cinema that’s meager that they are satiated with films from the West.
  • Our parallel offerings remain strictly entrenched in the tradition of the mainstream, and hence, are versions of the same, rather than its replacements
We reject a system that encourages the above, despite its realization, and seek:-

a) To incite discussion on the possibilities, limitations and viability of the application of the auteur theory as a critical prism.

b) To use criticism and our theories to both champion and strive for innovation and cutting edge in form, form and content.

c) To attempt a formulation of a pure love for cinema, a middle ground between the pseudo intellect of the snobs, and the ignorance of the unknowing, and attempt to mobilize their film loves to this new ground.

d) To attempt a critical theory that moves beyond the supply of the story and the statistical rating points.

e) To observe, notice, and champion upcoming films, filmmakers, and technicians, who remain obscured in the looming shadows of commerce and a faux parallel cinema.

f) To champion cinema that creates dissonance, repulsion, interpretation, confusion and discussion rather than loud claps, whistles and scrupulous satisfaction

g) To work towards a film love which adopts a middle ground, to reinstate the cinema director to his deserved position, to celebrate Indian cinema of the past and the present, to examine its potential, we propose ''The Delhi manifesto.”
- A Delhi Suburb, 1st Jan 2009

SIGN IN:-
People who agree and think we are in need of a dire change.In the way our cinema, our social realm functions, support us.Leave a comment with your name/profession/country to add to the list and spread the word.The vote of support is open to the world.

Signatories

1) Supriya Suri
2) Satyam
3) Kshitiz Anand
4) Ronnie Sen
5) Anuj Malhotra
6) Ankit Choudhary
7) Indranil Kashyap
8) Srikanth Srinivasn
9) Nitesh Rohit
10)Himanshu Rai
11)...

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Being Himanshu Rai

You cannot imagine what it feels to stuck into the body of Himanshu Rai. It is like burning desire to become free from the clutches of emotional attachment. To carve a niche for something, neither fame nor money. It is constant pursuit to search for true meaning of life. The abstract feeling of escapism with the relations, materialism and world. Something inside is pushing me to rebel against mundane and sensible.

On seeing images, videos or natural beauty, a feel of transformation through barriers of time and space is achieved. The characters of the image get me hooked to their life through emotions. I rise and fall with their hopes, dreams and struggle.

We have become vast in our information about past and future but our present has become limited somewhere during this process of discovering time. Time experience becomes relative and feeling of pulse/second arises i.e. I became time conscious. When you are trapped in a remote situation, there is loss of sense of time and place in mind. An urge to run away or hide emerges from inside. Sense of what a wonderful world just sublimes away!!!

I was born in Neverland, traveled far in Bohemia, searching for Terabethia and want to die in Utopia. My body is rigid at one place but my sub-conscious(soul) wanders like Yayaver [A Hindi word, meaning an avid traveler.. or rather a person who is constantly on move ] in divine space filled with ideas. I am in Transit world traveling through time and universe. This world is cruel place where bullets are more exchanged than ideas. People preserve dead but ignore the living around them. Just want to say: Good bye cruel and chaotic world filled with everything but for whom ? Cosmos only.

From pages of diary--

Zerkalo(Mirror) : I am watching mirror at this moment of late night. Chaotic hair style, rough beard (facial hairs), untrimmed mustache and philosophical gesture adds charm in it. I am amazed by the sharp smile which seldom appears on my face. I look deep into my reflection of my eyes and feel the unlimited potential in myself. Now, the mirror takes me through it into deep and uncorrupted part of my soul/consciousness.

I am thrilled by thundering of ideas with a tinge of vanity inside chaotic mind. Then a sudden vacuum appears. Solitude inside me suddenly grows infinite in the silence. First vanity, then feeling of nothingness appears in mirror. I do not become mere observing protagonist but converts into the butterfly of chaos theory. Walls of time surrounds me before a feeling that we are more than a speck of sand in the universe.

I am not even bored by gazing a familiar face again and again. But the feeling of being just a stalker in present haunts me to do something. Everything will be lost in time. Only infinite and zero will prevail in future of nothingness....

Sunday, January 11, 2009

2009 in Blogworld

Y2K +9=2009
I finally woke up on blog-land to wish my readers happy new year. All of us human suddenly go into mass hysteria about a 'much talked and less known event' (like Y2K),then one by one recover from the impact.Same rule is applied for this new year celebration also.

About previous year: What might have been abstract, the remaining is perpetual. A wonderful void in professional life..

New Year 2009: No Resolution or Commitment for anything. It is well said that things which matter most should not be at the mercy of those things which are of least value. I am fighting with me for priority list of important things. Only an idea to start a new blog to gather interviews,speeches and thoughts of parallel India/World is in my mind. Technology can only provide time and cost saving solution but its about old habits. Even after the advent of newer technique, the implementation fails due to lack of will power. Knowledge can be generated by gathering of information both tacit and explicit.Wisdom is one more step ahead of knowledge.

"Facts and data are the fundamental building blocks of intelligent thought and action, but in themselves, have little value until first, they are vertically integrated into patterns of useful information, and then second, these patterns of information are further vertically integrated into useful knowledge. Value rises exponentially with each degree of integration, and sometimes -- when accompanied by a bit of experience and intelligence -- a bit of wisdom can result."[ref.]

Also,I will revise 'Sparsh' to edit grammatical mistakes and to remove the traces (in heaps) of copied sentence. I will try to be more neutral because hate/love can blur the just decision. No bollywood bashing from now on as sarcasm is veiled violence. And for change of mood: Life has a way for rewarding those that back themselves.

Word of the Year---
P2C2E : Process to Complicated to Explain.
I feel B.H.U. tender process reflect the true meaning of the word.

For readers, Never suppress your curiosity while searching about a topic. It may be about latest trend in fashion industry or issues like global warming. I had ventured into various web links of Wikipedia until becoming mentally exhausted,not bored. Be Diverse, Dynamic and Distinct in life. Just do no walk the line,follow the middle path.....

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Wah Kanpur,Ahh Kanpur!-3

For reading the series of: Wah Kanpur,Ahh Kanpur!-1st and 2nd.They were on funny side of life at Kanpur ,this one on the reality side...

This is an edited compilation of discussions on online forums;
"Kanpur is a microcosm of what most of India is like in a nutshell; The vast majority of people are too caught up with making with their economic and caste problem and a little time to realize the importance of basic civic sense (keeping the city clean,obeying the law etc.). The solution to the problem, like the rest of India lies in uplifting the poorest sections of society(which also form most of the population!) through education and health care. Its sorry to say but few most educated residents of city for don't pay tax or electricity bill, etc but still Kanpur belongs to one of the largest revenue generating cities of India.Shamefully amazing....

No city in India, however big,is completely free from basic/infrastructural problems.However,most cities which have now become big players in terms of economy etc. took some bold initiatives. The reason why they are now on the world map, though, is that they've all taken the plunge, and gone ahead with liberalization and transparency in governmental system,despite their problems.

First and foremost reason for that is insufficient power supply, secondly the corruption. But this will require what most of us already know...selfless and capable politicians (i.e. visionaries).Do anyone has known what People from non-Hindi belt think about UP and Bihar? They talk about both the states in the same breadth. When you will leave your city (also state) for the job location to Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai or Hyderabad, then you will realize we are behind them atleast 10 years in infrastructure facilities.

Literacy rate of Kanpur is 77.63% which is well above the national average.Kanpur is home to several educational institutions which have made it a popular educational center. IIT Kanpur, Harcourt Butler Technological Institute (HBTI), C. S. J. M. University, Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture and Technology, and GSVM Medical College are few top colleges from the city.I feel especially bad for IITK, since it has the potential to support high-tech start ups, but it is isolated in its ambitions. But they are national or state level colleges hence nothing solid is achieved for city on local level. Hence, devastating un-utilization of human resources.Only coaching mandi was successful new venture established by young entrepreneurs few years ago.

When too Tier-I cities are now fully packed,the IT and BPO companies are turning to Tier-II cities for educated manpower and more opportunity of growth. Many Indian cities have already established themselves in software and call center businesses, and it is too late for Kanpur to enter this race. Kanpur could be an especially bright prospect for industries in areas such as Electronics, Photonics and Biotech (because it has been an industrial base in the past,and because of its proximity to research institutes like the IITK, IITD, ITBHU, DRDO, HAL etc.)...which unlike software are not yet well established in India. But no place can lure industrialists with a 10 hour power outage a day.

The problem is power, water, transportation etc. will all have to drastically improve and huge amount of investment is required. Where do we get the money from ? (unless the govt. takes action immediately); Subsidiary problem like Road and Airport also exists here. Highways are slowly building and CNG buses has reduced air pollution level. Flights to Delhi were started but was closed because of lack of passengers. Air Deccan closed its service and Indian cricket team still travels by road from Lucknow airport to Kanpur for cricket matches. Airport is not to worry fact for Kanpuriyas. Hum nahi Badlenege attitude at its zenith...

I was saddened by reading this stanza on a social networking website about Kanpur. It quotes -"Does any Kanpuriya remember 'V.N. Prasad'? In two years he very much transformed the city from a dead city to a rejuvenating one. It was he who started vision 2010 involving citizens and leading industrialists. Suddenly Moti Jheel was a favorite place to spend evenings and weekends. The deadly roads across the city which claimed scores of lives were re constructed. His honest approach made things possible. But within one and a half year he was transferred. 3 million plus people of Kanpur lost a battle to only say a score of politicians who got V.N. Prasad transferred from the city. Reasons? B’coz Prasad didn’t let the evil politicians get control of tenders for roads and other infrastructure projects in the city. The whole city kept shut and didn’t say a word. No amount of agitation and protest was done. Why? Because have stopped saying NO to nonsense happening to them."

In summary, Kanpur needs responsible citizens and political leaders. But do not want to spit about 'much talked, nothing done' situation of industries shutdown at Kanpur. Did anyone of us know about Aravind Adiga, the prize winning writer of "The White Tiger" ? This article was written by him in 2005 about the pollution status for TIME Magazine. Kanpur was again on the world map but for wrong reasons. Nothing has changed much since then....

Mention about Gutkha Problem in the next post....

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Wah Kanpur,Ahh Kanpur!-2

Whats in the name? Really if you agree then read further from previous post about Kanpur...

The turning point in the history of Kanpur came when it was made one of the most important military stations of British India. It was declared a district on 24 March 1803. South of were the British infantry lines and the Parmat parade grounds. Indian infantry occupied the space from the present Chunniganj to the Christ Church College. The Companybagh was laid in 1847 and the construction of the Ganga canal was commenced in 1854. In 1862, Brits built a church called All Souls' Cathedral in memory of those killed in 1857 mutiny; renamed the Kanpur Memorial Church, it still stands at what was the north-east corner of Wheeler’s entrenchment. The marble gothic screen with the famous `mournful seraph’ was transferred to the churchyard after independence in 1947, and in its place a bust of Tantya Tope installed at NanaRao Park. The British contributed to charitable causes in the city by building the "Ursula Horsman" Hospital, the "Hallet" Hospital, Harcourt Butler Technological Institute and by protecting the Allen Forest (now a Zoo) . Most of these are now renamed, though a lot of residents still call them by their old names. The distortion of names is most visible at the railway crossing bridge next to the Railway Station, where the now-closed Murray Company is conveniently called Mari (Dead) Company.

'Philkhana' ground is unique name but current generation does not know about it due to lack of proficiency in Urdu. 'Phil' stands for elephant in Urdu language. Elephants serving in British army were host of that place. 'Somdutt plaza' is named after 'Som Dutt' who was cousin brother of 'Sunil Dutt'. Great connection na...

About something more unique trivia is about 'Naveen Market'. It was named after famous Hindi poet and writer:'Bal Krishan Sharma 'Naveen'. If you have heard about this rebelling stanza from his works-"Lapak chatteh jhoote pathe jis deen dekha mane nar ko, socha kyon na aag laga doon iss duniya bhar ko, Phir socha kyon na tentuaa ghont doon us jagpati ka, jisne yeh ghrineet swaroop diya apne hee kreeti ko".

Name Trivia:
Forget about name change of Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Bombay or Calcutta. For those interested in the World's Most Useless Knowledge, Kanpur can hold a record of being the city, which has changed the spelling of its name the maximum number of times! Between 1770 and now, it has changed a whopping 20 times – thus averaging a mere 11.24 years per change. For those with absolutely no work, the list runs as follows: Cawnpoor, Caunpour, Caunpore, Cawnpour, Cawnpore, Kawnpore, Cawnpor, Cawnpour, Kaunpoor, Khanpore, Khanpura, Khanpore, Caunpoor, Khanpoor, Kannpur, Cawnpour, Caawnpore, Cawnpor, Cownpour, Cawnpore, Kanpur!!!!

Numerologists, who make their theories to fit history, have claimed that the name Cawnpore is most suitable for industrial development and Kanpur for progress in education. Wah!

I do not roam around the industrial area in Dadanagar but had surfed on the lanes of Aryanagar in the evening for chick watch. Coaching institutes at Kakadev or Rave has provided now better alternatives to spend your evening season in bright mood. Greenpark Stadium and sports hostel have been in highlight more often for mismanagement than facilities. Kaif, Raina and RP Singh are talents of this sports hostel only. Greenpark (never seemed green atleast in my time span) became infamous for entrance of dogs in the international cricket matches.

Hostile marketing and versatile bargain technique in Sheeshamau is place to venture for ladies. I prefer Rahmaani Market above all for shopping. Oh, How can i forget about mentioning Gumuti? I was confused first that they were pan shops; Then get the real picture that they were railway crossings..

Anyone know about this kanpuriya phrase, then please explain meaning of it:"Jhade Raho collectorganj, hataata khula bajaaja band". Folklore can go like unending myth but let me take a halt for next post...

Well do you know:Where did Massachusetts Institute of Technology opened it’s first Media lab outside USA ? That is Kanpur.