All spinal-tapped out...

Alternatively, the title of this post could very well be Who the hell is MJ? - Volume 2. But that would take away from the point of this particular post and so it would not be a very good title after all. Now MJ was always in the business of blowing people’s regularly and consistently and even after his death, “let me tell you, cousin, business is booming”.

But that’s not what this post is about; it’s actually about my back — one that’s reputed for its constant propensity to leave me in tremendous pain. Today was dif—... Apologies, it’s tomorrow now, so, yesterday’s back issues were different. Markedly so. The last time my back got this sort of treatment was... well, I don’t remember really. Enough foreplay now, I think.

I’m still recovering from the countless chills that travelled up and down my spine like it was the goddamn Bandra-Worli Sealink, as I watched This is It last night. As I’m sure a gigantic majority of you, dear readers are aware it’s the posthumously edited film containing footage of MJ preparing for his 50-date O2 Arena engagement in London. Now the first thought that entered my mind was that it was either going to begin or end with the “real story” of MJ’s demise and honestly, that would have sucked. Big time.

Fortunately though there was none of that. Only rehearsals and the build-up to the the mammoth London tour. If it’s just one city, I’m not sure if it can be called a tour or not. Hmmm.. something to think about.

Anyway, I won’t go into too many details, so I’ll keep it short. I think it’s fair to say that IF he’d lived on to actually perform the kind of show he was planning... I realise that’s a huge “if”, but stay with me. If he’d actually performed even one of those shows, I can guaran-damn-tee that it would have been the finest live performance ever ever ever witnessed anywhere on this planet. (Sorry Till, Cristoph, Oli, Richard, Flake and Paul... I can’t wait to get my mits on your newest album though, if that’s any consolation)

Where was I? Ah yes, let’s just put it this way, the kind of budget the show had and the way green-screen (chroma to some of you) was being used all over the place and music videos were being created on a whim... well, it’s a kind of Roland Emmerich, Stephen Sommers, Ridley Scott and Peter Jackson project with William Gibson, Anne Rice and Haruki Murakami ideas... And obviously, the music is banging!

I’m gushing, I realise. You would too if your spinal column had been turned to jelly over the course of around two hours or so. Jelly-fic! The kind of attention to detail the man paid was something that really shines in the film or maybe the film’s made to look like he was hands-on. I don’t know. I especially enjoyed the bits where he was communicating and sharing ideas with musicians on how to mix it up with songs, by singing the parts for them, whether “bum-ba-thish-thish-boo-doo-ba” to the bassist or hitting one of them high-pitched notes for the incredibly talented Orianthi Panagaris (in picture) to work out a guitar solo. Not once did he cheapen his music to chords and notes and octave this and bar that. His tunes were always beyond all that.

What was weird though, was his repeated “God bless you”s, but then he was always supposedly a bit kookie. What I felt also was that this massive routine that was being planned — though visually and aurally fantastic — would probably get a little old by the 12th or 13th show. Once you’ve seen it and been mesmerised, would it hold the same awe the next time around? Maybe they had different routines planned. Maybe they expected a new set of 20,000-odd people to turn up to each show.

What was downright bizarre was how someone in that level of fitness, was found as such a broken man when they found his body. There’s no way that person could be the same MJ. Note: I am not supporting Joe Jackson’s theory about the use of body doubles. And at the same time, MJ was one of the only people onscreen who wore full-sleeves throughout the documentary. You never get to see his arms. Which leads me to believe that a) he may have been cold (Thank you, Chim-tee) or b) his arms were covered with injection marks, which would seem logical.

But, now’s not the time to discuss all that. I hear the film’s in theatres only for two weeks. Go watch it. You won’t be sorry. Just as I’m not sorry that I’m not ending this post with some lame way using the phrase “This is It”.

Chamone!

P.S. - Also saw the trailer for the upcoming 2012 and well, that did a whole different number on my spine. There’s a special place in my heart for disaster films and this particular one is shaping up very nicely to occupy a little corner in that special place.

The Art of Un-fucking a Situation...

... and sometimes just watching a sufficiently fucked scene crumble
(That’s part of the title too, but too long to fit, you see, so I had to bring it down here)

Anyway, I don’t have a lot of time to luxuriate on each word and sentence and roll it around in the batter of excessive prepositions and punctuation marks before throwing it down here, so I’ll cut right to brass tacks. People around me don’t think I’m a very good listener. Perhaps not, but the reasoning is what I find peculiar.

It’s the theory that when they tell me about a problem or come to me with one, I’m reluctant to just listen to it and make the right noises (the hmmms, ohhhs and awwws expected, presumably) and would rather take the time to think up a solution — maybe not a very good one, but a solution nonetheless. Trying to un-fuck the situation. That doesn’t always go down well but such is life.

Problem-solving and of course cancelling out the fornication that a situation has undergone are two things that one deals with regularly in most walks of life. As I only know about how these two things are done in my walk of life, that’s gonna be my point of reference from here on end. I’ve seen people around me who are very very good at problem-solving in my workplace. Whether it’s the problem of a lack of stories, a rapidly-evolving event that’s hard to keep tabs on or the problem of there being work to do, but preferring to be a lazy bastard and dawdle or stand around chit-chatting (so as to do the minimum work possible), I’ve seen some brilliantly fucked situations being un-fucked.

So much so, that I consider it an art to un-fuck a situation. It takes an artist to take a potentially bad scene and paint it in different colours and end up brightening up the whole scene.

Then again, at times, it’s worth watching the spectacle of chaos and enjoying the sight of everything falling apart. Just as it happened last night and a new Chief Minister was picked for the state around a whole half hour after the last page of the newspaper was ready to go to the printers. Changing one of the main stories on page 1 brought to us the realisation that it completely contradicted a story we had on page 2 and at that time, nothing could be done to change it.

So whatcha gonna do?
a) cry about it?
b) yell at everyone about it, but in effect do nothing?
c) call up 9,412 people in the span of 13 minutes and get a new story?
d) kick back and watch it crumble?

(Answers on a postcard or in the comments section)
(I love these abrupt endings)

Whether tis nobler in the mind...

To be mainstream or alternative, is what you should have been pondering. For you see, Hamlet, my good fellow, you messed up and messed up big time. The question of being or not being is trivial. You have to be. Without being, you may as well be dead.

And people who aren’t, are almost guaranteed of being forgotten as soon as they are off the page and out of the mind. The page, in this case, is not necessarily an actual page — of the paper or virtual variety. It could be in a relationship, for all you know. You may be forgotten without a second though by someone you considered a friend, if you choose not to be (by be, I’m not sure exactly what I mean, but vaguely, being something... something memorable).

Being forgotten is one of the worst things around; far worse than being written off, I’d go as far as to say. To write someone off is to claim that what they can offer is not worthwhile, but to forget, is almost to make it seem like it never was.

In the true tradition of The View, I digress.

Returning to my point, To be mainstream or to be alternative? That is the question. For something as vast as this, let’s narrow it down and keep it simple so the most of me and the least of you understands. Let’s look at the blogosphere. I concede I’m a fairly unremarkable blogger. The sight of someone saying, “Yes, that’s what I was thinking” when they read the contents of a post I’ve blasted up on this here site, comes as a happy surprise to me and makes me smile. But for the majority of the time, my blog slips under the radar. Fair enough, it is not your usual pack of rants... ermmm... most of the time.

And I can assure you that you are some of the minutely few people who take the time to read it. Even fewer of you take the time to pick my rants to the roots of their origin (not saying I’m dying to be interpreted or anything). This is not a blog that racks up 40 plus hits a day.

What perturbs me most is that the fact that it isn’t racking up those kinda hits after being around since 2007... doesn’t seem to bother me all that much. A lack of killer instinct? A false pretext of being the alternative to the mainstream? I’m not sure. I do know that I struggle to write for an audience. My boss knows this. But surely, a few more hits wouldn’t kill. Throw in some Bollywood, some “how fucked up the world is” or alternatively, a dash of “how pretty my morning is and everything around me too”. That’ll get more hits,... (maybe).

But where would that leave me? Would I feel any happier? You can bet your entire life savings — for most of the readers who come to this here blog, that isn’t a whole lot, so let’s change that. You can rob seven banks and beat up an old woman on the way and bet your entire bounty that I would not feel an iota of a difference. Why?

Why? Because The View lets me pepper you, the readers with this kind of a pointless and meandering tirade, with zero accountability for me to bear. Ultimately, the reading of this stuff is your burden to bear. And I wouldn’t cha-...

(You see? I don’t even have to complete my blog. Being in the alternative bracket of genre-allocation kicks ass!)

The Power and the Glory

Power or being powerful is not something one would usually tend to associate with a 77-year-old man. That being said, neither is the concept of glory one that would be generally associated with the Jewish, during the holocaust. And yet, Sunday gave me glimpses — albeit possibly played up by my own mind in one case or completely fictitious, as in the other case.

Sunday was made of glimpses of these concepts demonstrated by the demographic or sociographic (I think it’s a word and if not, as usual, I’m making it one) in question. The second reference I’ve made above is pretty obvious, so I’ll start with the first. I’ve seen this guy on a number of occasions on television. In fact, innumerable times. I finally got to meet the man in the flesh just over 24 hours ago. But I digress. The point is he’s been called a “weak Prime Minister” and “soft on Pakistan” among other things and the old boy’s never raised his voice at even opposition parties, leave alone being rude to them (publicly).

On Sunday, all it took was one sentence from him, in his usual calm and composed tone and style of delivery to turn a “weak Prime Minister” to someone who in fact controls the power that is India. The exact statement follows, reproduced in its entirety as delivered by the man, when asked about Pakistan blaming India for terror on Pakistani soil.

He said, “We are not in the business of exporting terror and the government and people of Pakistan jolly well know that these are false accusations.” An unremarkable statement in itself, but it had to be seen to be believed. The expression turned stern, the teeth seemed to be almost gritted and the stress on the word “jolly” made it almost seem like what he was actually saying was “They know goddamn well that we aren’t the ones who are fucking spawning these sons of bitches and Rahman Malik (Pak Interior Minister) can shove his allegations where the sun don’t shine.”

Of course that sort of language isn’t something you’d hear from Dr Singh. Oh no. That’s the sort of talk that’s comfortable at home in what forms the second of these concepts I’ve been ranting about. The glory of the Jews in Inglourious Basterds.See, I told you the second reference was bleeding obvious. Naturally, I was always going to go and watch this film. It was Quentin after all.

CAUTION: HERE BE SPOILERS. STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN AND WANT TO SEE THE FILM. THERE ISN’T ANY POINT IN RUINING IT FOR YOURSELF

Now, before I went to watch this film, I’d heard numerous tales of how it was a very gory film and there were scalpings shown with all the lurid details Quentin is capable of conjuring onscreen. That’s alright. I figured it’d be an interesting enough setting to try out his idea of stylicised violence.

To hell with the violence though, the last time I saw/read anything that rewrote history about WWII was Philip. K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, which told a tale about a time where the Germans, Italians (Eye-talians, according to that man Pitt) and Japanese won and took over the world.

But the way SS officials were depicted as intelligent and shrewd people (not insulting their intelligence in anyway) and the fact that they still end up losing (with Hitler getting his visage blown to shreds) at the hands of the Jewish uprising was... well, something I never actually envisioned watching an onscreen fictionalised depiction of. Never. This isn’t a film review so I want talk about the sublime nature of the reams and reams of dialogue in the film. I won’t talk about Samuel L. Jackson. I won’t talk about Harvey Keitel or Mike Myers either.

It’s always exciting to see someone break character. Like Metallica writing Mama Said or like Bangladesh beating India at cricket or to extend the metaphor, like Stephen Sommers making a chick-flick (The Mummy Returns was not by the way, a chick-flick: Ed) or like Franz Kafka writing a joke book. And these two incidents were some of the finest breaks of character I’ve seen in a while.

A convenient escape route

I think I’ve heard the phrase “violation of sovereignty” a fair few dozen times over the last 20 or so hours. The context is Pakistan’s response to the Kerry-Lugar bill passed by the US Senate that “aims” to create better ties with Pakistan. This bill that is to be debated now by Pakistan’s national assembly, promises $1.5 billion every year for five years to Pakistan as a grant.

As always, take a few moments to catch your breath and re-read that last part. That’s right. A country with debts of $1.4 trillion is now set to hand out grants to Pakistan. I don’t believe I need to go into any details about the fact that that country is today not only known as, but also widely acknowledged as the the World Terror Hub. Places across the world are known as World Technology Hubs or World Tourist Hubs or even World Heavy Metal Hubs. I’ve never known any country to just sit there so brazenly about being called the World Terror Hub. It could be argued that they want to get rid of terrorism just as badly as the rest of the world does, but I just don’t see it.

From that slight detour and back on track, the US Senate passed the Kerry-Lugar bill, which has apparently been amended since it was first tabled. Among some of the conditions, of which there are a fair few, the most important part I saw was that the US would only commence the cash flow once the following conditions were met.

• The Pakistani military or its intelligence agency — ISI — ceases to support terrorist groups that have conducted attacks against the US or its coalition forces in Afghanistan or the people of neighbouring countries. (The ISI has long been known to support terror groups and this fact came out into the mainstream when a leaked British defence ministry document in 2006 substantiated just how the agency was behind the 7/7 serial blasts and other such attack. As for the attacks on neighbouring countries, Pakistan is in this wonderful position where it can condemn attacks on one hand and yet, fund people to do a 26/11 and then dilly-dally with the prosecution process. I doubt they’ll agree to this one.)
  
• Pakistan prevents Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Laskhar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammed from operating in its territory, including cross-border raids into neighbouring countries. (I’m sorry, but I just don’t see that happening. Cross-border raids into Kashmir are unlikely to ever stop.)
• Pakistan dismantles terror training camps across the country including those in Quetta and Muridke (A section allegedly chucked into the bill by an Indian lobby. Read below for details on this section)
• Pakistan strengthens counter-terrorist and anti-money laundering laws.
• Pakistani security forces do not “materially and substantially” subvert the political or judicial processes of the country. (Vague vague vague. What is the defining characteristic of a material and substantial subversion? How is it different from an immaterial and unsubstantial one? And at what degree of subversion does the difference lie?)
• Pakistan continues to cooperate with the United States in an effort to dismantle supplier networks that relate to the acquisition of nuclear weapon related materials AND provides the US to direct access to Pakistani nationals like A.Q. Khan who are associated with such networks. (A.Q. Khan is one of Pakistan’s most valued resources. I cannot believe the country would allow anyone direct access to him. Just as they haven’t given anyone any access to Dawood Ibrahim for years and years, when the world knows he lives in Pakistan. Also he’s not even a Pakistani national)

Certain political leaders and sections of the media have taken to referring to this particular bill as a “strait jacket”, which is designed to prevent Pakistan from harming itself or others. Further, parts of the media also believe that the Pakistani government has been ignorant to the contents of the bill or has surrendered to the American diktat.

A matter of hours (I don’t believe it got to even days) after voices in Pakistan blamed India (or the BCCI) for the latest match-fixing conspiracy theory surrounding the former’s loss in the Champion’s Trophy, more voices emerged from within Pakistan blaming an “Indian lobby” for having pressurised the US into including the clause about “terrorists in Muridke and Quetta” (as I had mentioned above).

Now, Pakistani political parties are asking for the US to make further amendments to the bill before the national assembly in Pakistan can debate it. And there you have it folks, by using the most convenient escape route known to Pakistan for the past 62 years, which is also known as the “Blame India” policy, the country to the northwest seems all set to get itself out of another sticky situation with the rest of the world. And it’ll probably get its grants too. And continue to shoot the shit out of our citizens.

Appendix: The last time I recall hearing this “violation of sovereignty” thing so many times was when India was about to sign the Hyde Pact, also known as the 123 Agreement in 2006. In the face of many parties that disagreed with a lot of the conditions — including one about giving the US access to all India’s nuclear facilities, I think — a no-confidence motion was called, resulting in the trust vote and that infamous “cash for votes” scam.

One could well say, “Well India was indulging in the same antics as Pakistan is, right now. It’s exactly the same thing.” And while one may be partially correct, the facts are as follows: India will be spending $100 billion on American technology and Pakistan will be getting $7.5 billion... as a grant. That makes it a completely different thing.

A Nation Built on Sweat...

A Nation built on Blood
A Nation built on Dreams
A Nation - A Nation!
A Struggle - A Struggle!
A Weapon - A Weapon!

— Sepultura - Sepulnation

I’m feeling patriotic today... I don’t quite know why... It’s not that jingoistic, chest-beating and making an anus of myself kind of patriotism. I didn’t just finish watching Lagaan.It’s not Independence Day or Republic Day... Hell, it’s not even a dry day. Well, now that I know what it ain’t, let’s look at the amalgamation of what it is...

As with most things I blather on about, the reasoning is manifold. Part of it is the fact that I’m just happy, in general. Another contributing factor is that I recently read the rant of an ungrateful sod (I refuse to name you. I have dignity), selling out his country, in a bid to earn sympathy and dare I say it, friends (?) to a bunch of strangers — who are probably going to think, “Oh no, what a hell-hole India must be... poor guy”. How much or how little sympathy he got is none of my concern, but that letter did make me look around and appreciate my country for what it is.

Another potential contributing factor could be the fact that the elections are just around the corner... and watching people whip themselves into a frenzy with campaigning, bringing down their opponents or trying to win the faith of citizens is just... well, it’s a trip. Then of course there’s the feeling of dazed exhaustion at the end of a hard day’s work (No, I’m not claiming I’ve paid my “dues” or any such shit) in your own homeland, where people treat you (unless you’re a film actor, cricketer or dynastic politician) like you deserve to on the basis of what you’ve done. Actually done. Not who you are or who your daddy is.

Then of course, there’s the buzz I still have from last night. There’s a Guns ‘n’ Roses video I remember watching where Slash busts out a solo of The Godfather Theme and everyone in the audience is spellbound. I recall getting a similar vibe through the way popular culture defines Jimi Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock ’69. That’s kinda what it was like watching Motherjane’s Baiju belt out a Carnatic Music-infused version of Vande Mataram — India’s National Song, for the uninitiated. And for the even less initiated, it’s not to be confused with the National Anthem. Ever.

Yes, I’m aware that I don’t need to hear National pieces of music for my love for my country to be realised. And yet, I sat there last night with my heart thumping like a bass drum as I heard every strain and note of that song resonate inside me. We’re by no means, a perfect Nation. Far from it. I dislike most of my fellow Indians

whom I meet on a daily basis — that’s never a good thing. But every country has its problems. The bureaucracy and corruption are two of the major problems we have, but we’ll find ways around it... We have no other choice. We’ve got major problems to resolve. And we’ll do it. We don’t need the Commonwealth Games, a Cricket World Cup or an Obama approval to prove we’re a serious country.

But, I digress as always.

Sigh, what a rendition of Vande Mataram that was..
What a performance...
What a band...
Sigh.

As for the aforementioned, ungrateful sod, I doubt I’ll be hearing from him any time soon. I’m an Indian after all. With the things he’s said, he’d either have to be really shameless or really stupid to talk to this Indian again... Hmmm.. Now that I think about it—...

Jai Hind