THOUGH MOST HINDI films are shot in Mumbai's northern suburbs, very few are set there. Chandan Arora’s Striker, narrated by the film’s protagonist Surya (Siddharth), traces 15 years in a pre-communalised Malwani.
Beginning with his journey as a young carrom champion, the film expertly captures a time in Mumbai when conversations in recreational spaces across Mumbai would revolve around the only two options for the youth — a job in the plastic, gold and stock market, or Dubai.
When he gets cheated out of his Dubai dream, losing a large sum in the process, Surya is told by the scammers to hustle it back as a carrom player. In exploring this interesting sub-culture, Arora eschews the conventions of a sports movie and approaches it as a gangster film to explore how gangsters are invariably groomed in these holes.
Essentially a coming-ofage tale, Striker is imbued with interesting sub-plots, all of which are novel and seem inevitable when abruptly moved on to the next one. Striker sounds authentic using many English expressions that are an integral part of the non-English speaking populace in the city; which is precisely why Anushka Manchanda crooning English lyrics in a song doesn’t sound remixed at all. One of the best soundtracks in recent times, Chandan Arora employs the music judiciously in the film. He also masterfully directs the film. The way he sets up his scenes, and cuts them innovatively, is a sheer pleasure. For instance, when Surya is playing a high-stakes game of carrom, his cocaine-addict friend Zaid (Ankur Vikal) plays spectator, and the gangster Jaleel (Aditya Pancholi) observes and distracts them both, before all hell breaks loose.
Siddharth is impressive as Surya. Padmapriya excels in her brief but challenging role as a Koli barkeeper raped by Surya, who she was secretly in love with and had sheltered. As do Vidya Malavade as Surya’s elder sister, and Anupam Kher as the moral voice in an increasingly communalised police force. The performaces that stand-out, though, are Vikal and Pancholi.
Befitting the preposterously loony & delightful characters he’s unleashed upon us, Pankaj Advani walked into the cinema-hall Friday night, veiled in a, yes, Burqa. Not surprisingly, the self-aggrandizing ploy didn’t work, at all; as the only straight-faced soul in a hall-full of hysterical communal film savouring, the maker of the film, playing the voyeur that his true calling indirectlyis, was a dead give-away.
It is to Pankaj’s credit that we have a true-blue genre Picchur (in this case, Revisionist Noir, I proffer), completely with re-imagined characters and a setting evoked with unusual realism.
For me, personally, Sankat City has been a difficult viewing experience, in its playing-out, and, the consequence, and on both the occasions. A lil’ explaining – first time around on Sankat night July 8th, I was busy trippin’ on a space, in my mind, the film occupies & operates from. I got over-enthusiastic to the point of taking great pleasure in spotting genre conventions that Pankaj relentlessly kept heaping on me, to the extent that I was scared for him if he can really keep-up with all the brandishing. Inadvertently, am sure I annoyed my neighbours in the cinema aplenty, a drunk fuck behaving like he’s already watched the film (which I hadn’t) & playing spoiler (répetition: inadvertent). My 2nd viewing was kinda spoilt by the presence of the director couple of seats away from me – damn, why don’t people get it, that I want to deal with the screen by myself, like EXCLUSIVELY, not having to bother with the judgments that comes with boisterous appreciation of a work of art.
The space am talking about are that of a most graceful policier, Claude Sautet’s Max et Les Férrailleurs [1971], and that of a prized possession of mine which happens to be an Interactive Video of a Raymond Chandler novel called The Little Sister. The former is about a Police Detective (Michel Piccoli) going undercover into the ‘belly of a gang of car thieves/scrap-dealers to lure them into robbing a bank, so he could catch ‘em in the act. The latter is the only toy I grew up with, a perverse pleasure in a video-gamization of a master’s poorest-written novel, and maan, you should play the book, ‘coz the game is practically a training school in the celebratory bread-breaking in the conventions of our this beloved genre. Owing to the Video’s interactive nature, I have never, like really NEVER EVER, reached its end, in effect having never read the novel, ‘coz there’re numerous ways to ride the ride, relishing its enchantment in what initially sounds like a pastiche of cheesy one-liners, but soon-enough confirms the wisdom of evolution & taste.
Sankat City, whose plot I refuse to dwell here on a hyperlinked PFC, made me want the film to never end, simply because the film’s team was walking the tightrope very deftly, with the confidence of allowing its purveyors the luxury to return to the Home Page, so to speak, whenever they tired of an (non-existent) exhaustion.
Kay Kay Menon’s and Anupam Kher’s posts had upped my expectations of the Long Takes in the film. I like my Long Takes to play like Long Takes, which for some inexplicable reason Sankat City’s numerous ones didn’t for me. Nor could I fathom why Kay Kay’s Guru was called Guru, of all names, when the rest of thems in the film were so very colorfully designated, more so since Kay Kay was made to play-it so very un-Guru-straight-like, but did play goofy more like the colored ones. I also do have a quaint preference for a non-broad-like play a broad-like femme fatale, and vice-versa etc. Curiously, I found myself (my neighbor’s fault totally) walking out of the film’s End Credits, and also overheard few other audience members, having thoroughly enjoyed Sankat City while, inadvertently again, humming Kaminey’s scorcher Dhan Te Nan. I suspect the same to have transpired while entering the hall too. what I did though is go find the first bar out of the cinema, get back home, play Ghoom Ghoom loopwise. Intoxicicatory! I would’ve also, for whatever loserly reasons, liked some melancholy, grim worldview of noir, but Sankat City refuses any. But again, it’s Pankaj’s film. And don’t we want more of thems!!
Am most thrilled with the film, when looking back, that though the writing must’ve been structured in a requisite 3 act nature (that a couple of our film critics oft use as a ‘problematic 2nd act’ stick), the film plays-out, in its first half, as a very charmingly elaborate unfolding of the events (Set-up, if you will), and in the second, as a wickedly-smart paying-off of every single damn thing that ever came-up in the first half. One must’ve really had a hard time with the Repo Man, to have honed Paying-off skills to such effortless heights. Brilliant! I say this ‘coz if we were to look at all the blockbuster fucks in Bollywood, the only solitary chose they get right are the pay-offs, however sloppy, amateurish, shameless, non-existent soul selling-out, plain whoring, but they do the paying-off, come what may, you & I notwithstanding, celebrated by the film’s audience, like, wholeheartedly.
p.s. my Pvt Eye. Exe CD had adorable utterances asking me such beautiful existential questions as “Where to next, Bud?”, and allowed me to choose wherever the fuck I wanted to venture, based on my own perception of self-worth. Dear dear Kamal Swarup, whose Om Dar-B-Dar is THE greatest Indian film ever made, generously taught me about something called one’s perception of their inherent intelligence, and what its allowances consequate into, and more crucially their lack-ofs. Pankaj seems to have tirelessly answered all those “Where to Bud?” questions to destinate into a sweet sweet spot he’s carved for himself in our hemisphere, a place called Sankat City.
Thanks Pankaj, for a wonderful experience at the cinemas. As a thank you note, I’ve taken a Shanghai Nights-like subversive dig aimed at you, whence opening this piece. Great going Bro, keep ‘em on, and of course, keep ‘em cumming.
p.s. 02. Strangely, Sankat City plays much better when viewed sober. Take my word, I should know.
The present decade has been the best for Hindi cinema in a long while. Nandita Das' Firaaq joins the list of outstanding débuts of the period.
Firaaq is a day in the life of Ahmedabad in the aftermath of the Gujarat carnage of 2002. An ensemble narrative, Firaaq is peopled with stories that happen to converge on a particular day, of the ones who return from what they presumed was an escape from the violence, and of the ones who prepare to forsake a city that has become unbearably persecutory.
An exploration of a sub-culture of survivors, and a prescribed indictment, Firaaq weaves intertwining tales of victims, mostly, and of their perpetrators; A young Muslim couple, Muneera (Shahana Goswami) and Hanif (Nawazuddin) returning to their ransacked home obsesses itself with attaching faces to a mob that might’ve gutted their home.
A 6 yrs old boy sheltered in a refugee camp desperately searches for his father.
A Gujarati housewife (Deepti Naval) atoning an all-consuming guilt of having refused sanctuary to a pleading Muslim woman, her husband (Paresh Rawal) who has participated in the pillage, and is now protecting his rapist younger brother.
An inter-faith couple (Sanjay Suri and Tisca Chopra) that is embarking on a move away from an Ahmedabad that is threatening their fragile co-existence.
An aged musician (Naseeruddin Shah) who’s defeated in his search for strength to endure inevitable hatred for the other, and his man-Friday (Raghuvir Yadav) who’s shielding the musician from the same.
Amongst its accomplishments, Firaaq is an example of superior direction of an inspired cast of performers. Special mention must be made of the youngest members hobnobbing with the stalwarts in the film – Shahana Goswami, Nawazuddin, and Sanjay Suri.
While all these few stories, culled from innumerable other scars, could’ve been independent of each other, Nandita Das and her co-writer Shuchi Kothari make them succinctly inter-dependent, and resultant on each other, in ways that are cathartic and poignant. Collaborative writing is known to be tricky; Firaaq's writing seems to be as novel as the end result is rewarding – the film was collabo-written by the writers over the Internet Telephony Service Skype. If that’s what sires enlightening cinema, so be it.
As far as the relevance of the film is concerned, I personally feel, as many cinematic articulations of the Gujarat carnage and its aftermath is welcome; to invoke the Mitscherlichs, “there is no moving beyond loss without some experience of mourning.”
Let there be healing, instead of an inability to mourn.
Every filmmaker seems to have a Devdas in him. Emir Kusturica has made two Devdases back to back, in 1989 (Time of the Gypsies) and 1993 (Arizona Dream). While Time of the GypsiesArizona Dream is a full-blooded recasting of the Devdas affezione, where Johnny Depp is torn between his love for Faye Dunaway’s Paro and Lili Taylor’s Chanda. What’s even more interesting is that Paro and Chanda live-out their loves under the same roof, as mother & step-daughter respectively. could be described as a (sort of) Devdas sans Chanda,
Films conjure their own reviews, unbearably enslaved, by default, to the reviewer’s viewing experience. Dev.D seems to have proved the influence it’s had on its reviewers, and more importantly, on its audience. With the choice of this present film, Anurag Kashyap has liberated film reviewing from having to be about recounting what the plot of the film is, as much as he engrossed himself in higher pursuits other than mere plot. In what is an unique situation for an Indian film, Dev.D’s audience already has a fair idea of what the film is about. It’s the re-imagining of Devdas that’s being looked-forward-to, and Anurag provides a heady load of imagination.
It’s amazing how we’ve been tricked to consider monogamy only in terms of sex and marriage. What about love? Can love be monogamous?
Anurag Kashyap’s 2nd greatest triumph with his Dev.D is the successful exploration of an idea of love itself; in what’s till recently considered an oxymoron, a love that could be non-monogamous. It’s not even in the proferring of a satisfactory reply to the question that the film’s triumph lies, but in the juxtaposition of love in terms of monogamy, or otherwise. In Dev.D, the protagonists Dev, Paro, and Chanda trade accusations of being a slut. At different times in their lives the characters are sluts of the accidental and aspirational types. But mostly, an entirely new category – love sluts.
We all have a Paro in our lives. Some of us, stupidly, make the mistake of marrying her/him, thus contradicting the existence of Paro, pitting Paro vs Paro. Let her be.
Who’s interested in a Chanda that’s already a Chanda? You want her/him to become Chanda for you. Kalki makes you fall in love with her Chanda, when she looks at you with delight, having picked a name & destiny for herself.
A Dev who knows he is a Dev is as boring as paid sex, and its myriad derivatives.That’s where Abhay Deol’s graceful internalised performance towers over all the superstar Devdases and their child-actor avatars, who seem to know from the opening of the film that they are embodying an apparition called Devdas. [PC Barua’s 1935 Bengali rendition is an exception. In the paraphrased words of dear Ashis Nandy, PC Barua is a filmmaker who shot 20 tigers and about 30 films]
Kamal Swarup’s Om-Dar-B-Dar has a Devdas prototype at its centre, who hasn’t even had the benefit of a Chanda experience, when he comes back to find his Paro having moved emotionally to a very far-off place from his life. But it is at the beginning of the film, when he’s just managed to tell his Paro of his L.O.V.E for her that the original Emosional Attyachar plays, in a surreal trance-like circumstance in flourescent-lit Ajmer. And what a tribute Anurag pays to grandmaster Kamal Swarup, choosing to set the nation’s current anthem whilst Paro is duping herself into marital bliss and her Dev deluding his stimuli drowned in vodka.
Music director Amit Trivedi elevates Anurag Kashyap-Rajeev Ravi duo’s psychedelia with as much swagger as Clint Mansell, Goran Bregovic, Shigeru Umebayashi lent for the films of Aronovski, Kusturica and Kar-Wai respectively. The completely slo-mo feat Nayan Tarse is the closest Indian cinema has come to the high poetry of Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love (Tony Leung-Maggie Cheung’s melancholy swaying set to Yumeji’s theme by Shigeru Umebayashi).
The Pantheon:
A young PC Barua embarked on a journey that was to pioneer early Indian cinema. Armoured with a letter of recommendation by the Nobel winner Rabindranath Tagore, PC Barua apprenticed at the Cinecitta Studios in Italy in the 1920s. Returning to Calcutta PC Barua directed himself as Saratbabu’s Devdas in 1935, before casting KL Saigal in the film’s hindi version (where PC Barua played Paro’s stepson).
Bang in the film’s beginning, a grown-up Paro tells Devdas of his being earmarked by his father to go away for further studies. Devdas promises his Paro that he shall Not Leave. Quick wipes reveal Devdas repeating his resolve to his mother, father & brother, but every member insisting on his having to leave. Devdas promises Paro that he’s staying back, come what may, when the film’s soundtrack plays ‘Pardesi Tuje Jaana Hi Padega’ (or was it Musafir Tuje Jaana Hi Padega). Incredible that a film made in 1935 employed as much restraint and invention when the rest of the studios in India at the time were busy with their mythologicals, recreating theatre on screen, and learning the musical ropes.
Subsequent versions of Devdases seem to emanate directly from the present version, maintaining an unbroken chain for decades. Bimal Roy who was the cinematographer of PC Barua’s Devdases went on to make his own version 20 years later. Similarly, Dev.D’s screenwriter Vikramaditya Motwane served as the award winning sound recordist of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas. Between PC Barua’s Pardesi Tuje Jaana Hi Padega to Anurag Kashyap’s Mahi Mennu Nahin Karna Pyar & Chanda’s prophetic choosing of her own kismat, Devdas has come a long meaningful way.
It takes supreme confidence in the screenplay’s writing for a director to even dream a structure such as the one used in Dev.D. Anurag Kashyap’s greatest triumph with Dev.D is his smuggling a world cinema vibe and sensibility into a mainstream Hindi film, and delivering Indian cinema to where it was originally intended by the early pioneers, before a small detour (of several decades) derailed the process.
P.S. #1
Every film mentioned here are my absolute all-time favorites. Of course, Bhansali’s Devdas, and to a lesser degree Bimal Roy’s, disqualify themselves.
P.S. #2
As luscious filmmaking as Dev.D could’ve easily turned into yet another opportunity lost to oblivion, but for the efforts of the film’s producers UTV SpotBoy (Vikas Behl, Rucha Pathak, Manish Hariprasad), who’re fast turning to be the place to go to with scripts that might not want its vision diluted.
P.S. #3
Watch Dev.D however you want, much like the service Chanda offers her customers, and makes them pay accordingly. You watch the film sober, you want to get smashed in exhilaration after the film. You watch the film with a buzz, you experience a film that was made for you in any case. Either ways you’re fucked, nicely. A loveless, a sexless, intoxication-less life is a cursed one, really, very violent. Suit your own fix, be it smoke or booze or spliff or snow, or all of the above alongwith dollops of love & sex.
As far as our audience goes, I can’t be sure of adulthood, but India definitely achieves its puberty with Dev.D. Thank you Mr. K, i always knew you to be a pusher. You seem to carry too many envelopes around, what do you have for breakfast?
WHEN THE VENERABLE Roger Ebert visits India, he will imagine he knows the name of almost every Indian woman — Latika; if Danny Boyle is to be believed, there are 26,283 Latikas in Mumbai alone.
Slumdog Millionaire opens with a multiple-choice question: “Jamal Malik is one question away from winning 20 million rupees. How did he do it? A: He cheated. B: He’s lucky. C: He’s genius. D: It is written.” With a device as smart as this — a set-up whose inevitable answer will turn out to be ‘written’ (or destined) — the film could well go on to be about pretty much anything before circling back in its finale to remind us that everything was predestined. A choice left out of the prologue could have been ‘Option A answers all questions’. Well, mostly.
A story the whole world already knows, Slumdog is, not unlike its Oscar co-contender Benjamin Button, a film deftly constructed with a series of flashbacks intercut with one of only two events that are played out in the present — the interrogation after which the film hurtles to the 20-millionrupee question and the lovers’ reunion. I wonder why, though, this present is set in 2006, as the title card indicates?
Although there have been numerous documentaries and oriental exotica woven before, Slumdog is the first Bollywood film by a foreign filmmaker. Scant criticism for the film in the West and copious amounts in India has accused it of being ‘typical Hollywood tripe’ and ‘nothing more than Bollywood masala’ respectively. How does Boyle manage to get accused of making both a Hollywood and a Bollywood film at the same time?
A clever conceit, Slumdog is a cinematic tour-de-force that employs a realistic portrayal of what is essentially an uplifting fantasy (Hollywood likes uplifting, and Bollywood thrives on fantasy fare). And the secret? ‘It is written’. Whether we like it or not, films need to be written. And when they aren’t, more often than not they become fodder for the next generation’s spoofs.
Danny Boyle is enjoying a Jamal-like fortune with his film; a billion Indians are rooting for Slumdog to sweep the Oscars. Come February 22, India’s rejoicing billion may insist that the next season of Kaun Banega Crorepati be played live — it’s much more fun the Slumdog way, with its attendant opportunities to scam the show. And also demand that the brilliant Anil Kapoor reprise the Amitabh-Shahrukh role. Jai Ho.
Original of an altered review, published in Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 33, Dated Aug 23, 2008.
A Punjabi film with an English title, ‘Singh is Kinng’ is Akshay Kumar’s coronation film as Bollywood’s king. Or so is the overt attempt.
Akshay Kumar plays Happy Singh, a bumbling trouble-maker for the denizens of his village in Punjab. As much as everybody in director Anees Bazmee-land is a caricature, be it the villages in Punjab, Mumbai, South Africa (‘Welcome’), Egypt or Australia, they are smart-enough to make decisions to propel the film forward, thenceforth existing for the sole purpose of showcasing stars’ talents for comedy, romance, dance & action.
The villagers expressly banish a pranky Happy Singh off to Australia (to bring back a mafia King) ridding themselves of his antics while they don’t seem to mind substituting another deaded villager (the mafia king) in his place who Happy Singh is entrusted with bringing back to the village.
Sure enough, Akshay Kumar’s Happy Singh reforms the desi mafia in Australia, pontificates the worth of family & do-gooding, finds a mother in Kiron Kher, dances with mother’s daughter (Katrina Kaif), woos her, & ultimately wins her for himself joining Snoop Dogg in the film’s end credits for a reiteration of being ‘The Kinng’.
It is difficult to distinguish the comedians in the film as every single character seems to have been asked to resort to comedy whenever they deem fit, and/or when their co-actors’ comedy isn’t working well-enough.
Akshay Kumar definitely is the star of the moment having delivered more consecutive hits than any other in the last couple of years. But in all his career, evidently, Akshay Kumar hasn’t dabbled with a rare entity (in Bollywood) called Good Cinema (or just Cinema, as opposed to pickture), where the canvas is as big as his stardom deems he deserve but at the same time entirely plausible, written (not gags invented on sets), aesthetic, & tasteful.
Rajinikanth's stardom is built on Modesty - the more he's modest on screen (about his achievements) bigger is the audience's reaction insisting his greatness. Akshay Kumar sems to be treading a similar path; he doesn't feature in any of the action sequences, because he doesn't have to - people's memory of him as an action star is enough to fill-in, and enjoy the modest darling as lovable, desirable, touching, oh-so-cute!
Am reminded of the Golda Meir quote, "Don't be modest. You aren't that great." Akshay Kumar, with his obvious magical powers on screen, proves modesty to be the preserve of 'The Arrived'. He also proves that the films of the incumbent kings of Bollywood are as good or as bad as the ones he’s anointed his kingdom on, depending on one’s nostalgia-quotient.
Little do our Bollywood stars need be told that investing in well-crafted scripts and films would as surely account for the present generation's future nostalgia too.
Rajkumar Gupta: “Kaun Kehta Hain Ki Aadmi Apni Kismat Khud Likhta Hain?” thani: “Kismat agar khud likh sakte, to usey kismat kyon kehte!”
Anurag Kashyap is India's most provocative filmmaker. With his filmmaking, he creates avenues for scores of cinephiles to dream their cinematic dreams, and when that's not satisfactorily accomplished he angers them enough to want to better his offending efforts. That is, when the said cinephile does not resort to the shortest possible route to his directorial debut - namely the remake.
It is to Rajkumar Gupta's credit, and to the film's superior craftmanship, that i refer to his debut feature Aamir as cinema. Nevertheless, a COUNTERFEIT one, if you know what i mean. The password is Cavite. I might as well review Cavite, and nobody would recognize the difference. To be fair to the nobody, in as many words, Aamir is a copy of Cavite [pronounced 'ka-vi-th-ey].
Of course, one could attempt to girdle-up BALLS to say, that the film you're remaking is infinitely topical to the culture & society that you're setting-it in, than the original source you've borrowed from. But you don't say it. What you do say, in its stead, is that it is indeed a film 'written and directed' by Rajkumar Gupta. Actually, it need not be as traumatizing to be remaking a film that you thought makes good-enough fodder for your first feature. But the fuck-up in India is, owing to it's overbearing mediocrity, remaking a film, is a terminal disease, as worse as any that plagues our country. Because remakes have successfully rendered Indian filmmaking spineless, un-audacious, & impotent.
I want to watch a chase in a contemporary Indian film that doesn’t, with the exception of Black Friday, employ OST’s from either The Untouchables, Requiem for a Dream, or Kill Bill. Also, I do intend to invite a friend, Raja Sen, to subject him to a looped playing of the Summer, Winter & Hope Overture tracks from a Clint Mansell composed OST for Darren Aronovsky's Requiem for a Dream, for saying what he has about the Aamir Theme track that's resorted to to bail the makers out of the quagmire they ventured in remaking an indie-spirited film to a film that refuses to bother with the very reason the original film chose the protagonist as the victim.
In Cavite, a 2005 Philippines film written & directed by the film’s lead actor (Ian Gamazon) and it’s DOP (Neill Dela Llana), the protagonist Adam is terrorized into carrying-out a terror attack for a very specific reason. The makers of Aamir, probably to obfuscate the concentration of the counterfeiting, unwisely leave-out the mechanics that went into the choice-making of a victim. Watching Aamir one would wonder as to why Rajeev Khandelwal’s Aamir Ali was randomly chosen when any of the mastermind's cronies (who’re located ubiquitously close to Aamir’s constant re-location) could’ve carried-out, much more skillfully & efficiently, their desired outcome.
Rajeev Khandelwal’s feature debut, as the desperate Aamir Ali, deserves all the praise he’s receiving. It's a pleasure, and a filmmaker’s dream I’d imagine, to work with an actor who elicits the amount of honesty that Rajeev does. It’s a debut that dwarfs the other 5; Rajkumar Gupta as Director, Alphonse Roy as DOP, Anurag Kashyap as Creative Producer, Amit Trivedi as Music & Background Composer, and UTV’s indie wing UTV SPOTBOY as Producer. It is not in the execution (that’s commendably impeccable) but in the choice of having to bear an un-repayable debt, in the Indian context, owed to Cavite that the latter’s (latter 5) debuts are a-tainted.
One small (thani) review seldom dents the vast multitude of raves that are pouring-in. I wouldn’t be surprised if Aamir’s post-opening-weekend-publicity screams a Black Fridayed tag line, from one of the erstwhile non-believers. For a film to be Black Fridayed is to have it's title successfully changed [Black Friday – Do Yourself a Favour (Taran Adarsh)]. Witnessing Post-Bheja Fry developments, remakes don’t seem to hurt any of the remakers. Unfairly, it’s the audience that gets dumbed-down into celebrating the next half-decent original fare that any bloke delivers, further lowering our cinematic aspirations.
Original Posting and Comments ______________________________________ “India embraces the cinema of the whole world…In a future issue, I shall show why India is the creation of the whole world.” Jean-Luc Godard
It has been 14 long years since an Indian Film has made the Competition Selection of the Cannes International Film Festival. And that particular Competition Selection, Shaji Karun’s second feature Swaham (1994), happens to be the only instance for the decade of the 90s. Around the time, some of Shaji Karun’s well wishers, prompted by Andrew Robinson’s comparison of the debut features, pompously declared that “there are only two Indian films - Pather Panchali (1955) & Piravi (1988). Period.” What is common to both the films, & the probable reason for the latter film’s exaltation, is a certain institution that has consistently, for the last six decades, managed to play world cinema’s official conscience-keeper & harbinger of the evolution of cinema itself - the Cannes International Film Festival. Satyajit Ray’s debut feature Pather Panchali (1955) was showcased at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, in the Competition section where the film won the Best Human Document Award, while Shaji Karun’s debut, Piravi, made in 1988, premiered at Cannes 1989 in the Un Certain Regard category & walked away with the Camera D’Or Special Mention (for Best First film).
With Pather Panchali’s selection to Participate in the Competition section, & the subsequent feting of the film, Satyajit Ray discovered Cannes Film Festival for Indian Cinema, and consequently, the Cannes International Film Festival discovered Indian Cinema for the world. Not at all the case that Cannes was unaware of Indian Cinema before 1956; in fact 1950s is the most prolific decade as far as Indian films’ presence in the Cannes Competition section goes. India had entries in every single year of the Festival in the 1950s (see Appendix 1). But what distinguishes Satyajit Ray, & his Pather Panchali, is not much unlike a reading of Orson Welles’, & the Nouvelle Vague’s, importance in the cinematic pantheon. Film practitioners, before Welles debuted on the marquee, were born before the invention of cinema. They practically discovered the medium, & continually yearned to evolve the medium as they went along. Whereas, Orson Welles had a small archive of cinema to contend-with, be aware of, re-search, & partake to be influenced-by. The same is true of the Young Turks of the Nouvelle Vague who indentured at the Cinematheques, & Film-Clubs, while sharpening their cinematic skills analyzing and critiquing cinema of their times.
Indian cinema’s beginnings were marked with Mythologicals, & increasingly pre-occupied with the Nationalist Movement under the British Colonial government. This pre-occupation translated into having to make seemingly non-offending films that might get strangulated at the British Censors. It was only with the post-independent filmmakers that Indian Cinema was liberated from having to make socially relevant films under the guise of, what was considered harmless, Mythologicals. Satyajit Ray came from an awareness of world cinema, & its latest achievements, during his travels abroad & with his proximity with the Renoir-helmed The River in & around Calcutta. But filmmakers before Satyajit Ray aspired to belong to the mainstream that was brewing in the country’s commercial capital of Bombay.
Abruptly, with Satyajit Ray’s subsequent films, after the spectacular debut of Pather Panchali, Indian Cinema’s & Cannes Festival’s courtship went through troubled times. Ray chose to showcase his films at the other, equally prestigious, film festivals of Venice and Berlin where he consistently won Top Prizes through the rest of his illustrious career. This period in the 60s also coincided with the inception of India’s premier Film School, the Film & Television Institute of India (FTII), in Pune. FTII graduates, over the years, were successfully able to bring into being the country’s New Cinema. Whatever went wrong, these films hardly managed to garner international film community’s attention. Does this development question its makers’ aspiration itself, or if it was a gross misreading of the barometer of cinematic acceptance, somebody need answer someday. It is no surprise that the first generation of New Indian Cinema filmmakers were mentored by Ray’s contemporary Ritwik Ghatak, who himself went un-noticed for his contribution during his lifetime. It is ironical, on the part of the Cannes Film Festival, that posthumous retrospectives of Ritwik Ghatak & Gurudutt adore the Cannes sidebar screens while no interest was shown in them when they came out of the times these films were articulating. To exaggerate, Cannes Film Festival has about 200 awards up for grabs annually, instituted in the names of prominent filmmakers from around the globe. But none, amongst the multitude of prizes, happen to exist in an Indian Filmmaker’s honor.
It is even more surprising, again on the part of the Cannes Film Festival, of the desperate courting of Bollywood in the last few years, purely as a cosmetic value for their sidebar events, as if to threaten that this insult shall be meted out until such time we practice a genre of films we seem to be suspect at - Truly Brilliant Films. Not to be left out, Bollywood has equally been requiting of Cannes’ gesture by showing-up for the events and misleading an already irresponsible Indian Media whose self-image hasn’t warranted that it demand, encourage, & appreciate raising the bar for Indian cinema.
I shall not endeavour with plausible excuses, on behalf of either the festival or Indian cinema. But what I shall, is pick 3 films that were to have been flirted-with vigorously by the festival in question, & at any rate by a conscientious cinema-seeking audience, that were not to be;
1. Devdas, 1935 PC Barua’s original Bengali version, with the director playing the lead, & one Mr. Bimal Roy serving as Assistant Cameraman. 2. Om-D-B-Dar, 1988 Kamal Swarup’s audacious filmmaking, of a childhood reminisced & a future waxed prophetic. 3. Kaalabhirati, 1989 Amitabh Chakraborty’s (in collaboration with DOP Sashikanth Ananthacharya) experimental deliberation, (cinematic) magic-making.
Godard shall be invoked again, as he shall also not go unblamed. It is, in a sense, all his fault. In his days as a film critic, Jean-Luc Godard, while preparing for his first feature A Bout de Souffle, in June 1959 wrote a piece for the Cahiers du Cinema magazine (issue # 96) titled ‘note on India’. He starts the piece by saying “pending a more detailed analysis” he would suffice it with passwords, and ends the piece by declaring, “India embraces the cinema of the whole world” and that “In a future issue, I shall show why India is the creation of the whole world.” I wish Godard did write, in the much-promised ‘future issue’, about the subject that unfortunately was never broached again.
I doubly wish Godard were talking about India (Indian Cinema) as opposed to what he actually was talking about - Roberto Rossellini’s acclaimed 1958 feature India, set in the country of the same name.
Appendix 1 - Complete list of Indian entries in the Cannes Competition section: 1. 1946: Neecha Nagar (1946) - Chetan Anand 2. 1952: Amar Bhoopali (1951) – V. Shantaram 3. 1953: Awaara (1951) - Raj Kapoor 4. 1954: Do Bigha Zameen (1953) - Bimal Roy 5. 1954: Mayurpankh (1954) - Kishore Sahu 6. 1955: Biraj Bahu (1954) - Bimal Roy 7. 1955: Boot Polish (1954) - Prakash Arora 8. 1956: Pather Panchali (1955) - Satyajit Ray 9. 1956: Shevgyachya Shenga (1955) - Shantaram Athavale 10. 1957: Gotoma the Buddha (1956) - Rajbans Khanna 11. 1958: Parash Pathar (1958) - Satyajit Ray 12. 1958: Pardesi (1957) – K. A. Abbas; Vasili Pronin 13. 1959: Lajwanti (1958) - Narendra Suri 14. 1960: Sujata (1959) - Bimal Roy 15. 1962: Devi (1960) - Satyajit Ray 16. 1964: Mujhe Jeene Do (1963) - Moni Bhattacharjee 17. 1974: Garam Hawa (1973) - M.S. Sathyu 18. 1976: Nishaant (1975) - Shyam Benegal 19. 1980: Ek Din Pratidin (1979) - Mrinal Sen 20. 1983: Kharij (1982) - Mrinal Sen 21. 1984: Ghare-Baire (1984) - Satyajit Ray 22. 1986: Genesis (1986) - Mrinal Sen 23. 1994: Swaham (1994) - Shaji N. Karun
Appendix 2 - Complete list of Indian Award Winners at Cannes: 1946: Neecha Nagar (1946, Chetan Anand) - Joint Festival Top Prize of Grand Prix du Festival International du Film 1954: Do Bigha Zameen (1953, Bimal Roy) –(Joint) International Prize 1955: Boot Polish (1954, Prakash Arora) - Naaz (Special mention to a child actress) 1956: Pather Panchali (1955, Satyajit Ray)- Best Human Document OCIC Award - Special Mention 1957: Gotoma the Buddha (1956, Rajbans Khanna) – Best Director (Special Mention) 1983: Kharij (1982, Mrinal Sen) - Jury Prize (Cannes’ 3rd top prize) 1988: Salaam Bombay! (1988, Mira Nair) - Golden Camera (Best Debut Feature) Audience Award 1989: Piravi (1988, Shaji N. Karun) - Golden Camera - Special Mention (Joint Winner) 1991: Sam & Me (1991, Deepa Mehta) - Golden Camera - Special Mention (presented as a Canadian film)] 1998: The Sheep Thief (1997, Asif Kapadia) - Cinefondation Award (2nd prize, Short Film)1999: Marana Simhasanam (1999, Murali Nair) - Golden Camera (Best Debut Feature) 2002: A Very Very Silent Film (2001, Manish Jha) - Best Short Film (Joint Winner) 2006: Printed Rainbow (2006, Gitanjali Rao) - Kodak Short Film Award Young Critics Award (Joint Winner) Small Golden Rail
Appendix 3 - Complete list of India on the Cannes Jury: 1958: Krishna Riboud (India) (short films); Jury President: Marcel Achard 1982: Mrinal Sen Jury President: Giorgio Strehler 1990: Mira Nair Jury President: Bernado Bertolucci 2000: Arundhati Roy Jury President: Luc Besson 2003: Aishwarya Rai Jury President: Patrice Chereau 2005: Nandita Das Jury President: Emir Kusturica
Here's a review of the recently released Big-Budget Bollywood film Tashan, originally published in Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 18, Dated May 10, 2008 __________________________________________ OVERSEXED, UNDERAGED These Bollywood big-budget affairs like Tashan can't distinguish film scenes from their spoofs at award ceremonies, writes THANI
TASHAN’S WRITER-DIRECTOR Vijay Krishna Acharya says, “Writer F Scott Fitzgerald once said, ‘You don’t write to say something; you write when you have something to say.’ I am a staunch believer in those words.” While Acharya seems to have done terrible justice to the craft of writing with the Dhoom films, here he does much superior injustice to direction. Bad writing begets bad films.
Saif Ali Khan plays a call centre accent-trainer who’s hired to work on gangster Anil Kapoor’s English. Kareena Kapoor plays Anil Kapoor’s secretary of sorts, who first traps Saif in love, then elopes with 25 crores of Anil Kapoor’s booty. This particular predicament, necessitates the existence of Akshay Kumar’s wannabe shooter who’s hired to recover stolen money from the lassie-on-the-run. Akshay’s bait-cum-guide on the road trip is Saif, who naively made plans with the femme fatale. Fair enough. Interesting even, for a film’s premise. But it is the indifferent manner in which Tashan’s makers go about the same that renders it terribly irritating.
Soon enough, the twosome of Saif and Akshay find Kareena and bond-into a threesome over the course of a ridiculous goof-ball journey before they eventually are ready to smokeout baddie Anil Kapoor, if only to redeem their own bad lives.
A particularly tasteless sequence from Tashan has Kareena Kapoor teasing Akshay Kumar’s Kanpur-thug by making him dry her undergarments, and subsequently getting Saif ’s accent-trainer to playact a rape of herself. All this, and an extended song and dance too, transpire as the stars appear in various stages of undress.
Bollywood, when it comes to representation of sex, continues to be like an over-sexed kid with an underaged demeanor — awkward, fearful, vulgar, guilty and covert. These Bollywood big-budget affairs can’t seem to distinguish film scenes from their spoofs at award ceremonies.
Watching Tashan is like watching Tashan, its sequel, and its prequel — all three films poorly written, executed and enacted. Tashan culminates with an overlong action sequence picturised on sets straight out of Roberto Rodrigues’ Once Upon a Time in Mexico. The sequel, Tashan 2, is about recovering money for the baddie, even though the idea seems to have been finishing him off. And the prequel, Tashan 3, consists of Akshay’s and Kareena’s teenage love story, in anonymity.
Akshay Kumar’s brief seems to have been to act like Akshay Kumar as portrayed by Southern star Vikram; Saif ’s to play Saif from the previous decade; Anil Kapoor’s to emulate Amitabh Bachchan from Aag, and Kareena’s to continue acting like her look-alikes, Paris Hilton and Dani Woodward.
Friday April 11th 2008. Fame Adlabs Multiplex, Andheri, Mumbai - The 11.15 p.m. show.
Dan In Real Life is essentially a romantic comedy (romcom), albeit of the much-abused feel-good variety, a genre who’s abuser & the abused is ironically the very same entity – Hollywood. Television’s Steve Carell & French thespian Juliette Binoche star in this film about a widowed-father-of-three-daughters, & a good-parenting columnist, finding love in a least likely source - his younger brother’s girlfriend Marie (Binoche). The first indicator of this love, you’ll notice, happens to be an unlikely one too.
Film opens with Steve Carell’s Dan shaking his morning l’ennui off the bed, & starting the day with sorting clothes for/from wash. One particular curious piece of clothing, belonging to one of his daughters, seems to disturb Dan no end, considering his being a responsible single parent &, according to the 15 yr-old owner of the thong panties, a monk. This 2nd daughter of his, & the actor playing the role, for the rest of the film, bears the misfortune of mostly shown her posterior first, seen through Dan’s POV, before settling elsewhere. The father is carting his three daughters (17, 15, & an indeterminate-aged little one) to his family’s annual get-together in Rhode Island.
The lengthy prologue of the film would move into ‘film actual’ only after Dan meets, & spends hours talking to, the intended paramour in Marie (Juliette Binoche). As soon as you get to the point in the film where a supposedly crucial conversation between the protagonists is taking place across a diner/café table, music starts blending in, their time starts lapsing with numerous dissolves, of course you don’t know what they’ve been telling each other, and you know you’re not watching a real film. It’s a romcom, for who's ever sake.
It is here, while Dan/Carell is driving back home that this love’s first indicator, a novel one, pops-out; a ticket for reckless driving (for endangering other motorists) that’s warranted by, usually & in this case, an Unbearable Lightness of Being. This device is milked a couple more occasions in the film, whenever there’s doubt about the protagonists’ resolve vis-à-vis one other. By the close of the film, Dan/Carell ends up without a driving license, happily so.
Dan’s daughters terrorize the father, as daughters usually, I couldn’t be too sure myself, tend to. And the rest of the family members seem to be doing their own thing, while Marie/Binoche & Dan/Carell play-out their mutual affections secret from the rest of the unsuspecting family. Boyfriend Brother loses the girl as the girl’s now interested in the other brother (Dan) Who Is The Copyrights Owner Of The (Saccharine) Lines Used In The Seduction Of Marie. When all seems lost, it is indeed Dan’s daughters who urge/advice the father to Go For It (aka Go for the Girl). A la Anupam Kher from Dil Hain Ki Manta Nahin & Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayange, for the benefit of Aamir Khan & Shah Rukh Khan respectively.
Dan In Real Life, and films of the kind, can be construed of as being fun to watch, as far as they don’t get annoying. One such annoyance brings us to the curious case of (a nude) Juliette Binoche. Dan/Carell tumbles into Marie’s bath, while she’s at a face-wash, expressing his resolve to fight not only his attraction for her but also her own for his hurt self. The 17 yr-old, his eldest daughter, has pushed her way into the bath too, seemingly to talk to Marie, forcing the father into hiding in the bathroom. The teenager makes a monologue, every now & then egging Marie/Binoche to get further in her preparations for her shower, letting her father bear the brunt of an alternating cold/ hot/ steam shower while in hiding in the bathtub behind a useful screen. The teen promises not to look, & urges Binoche to get on with her shower while she shall continue her pointless (s)talking. Binoche joins us, who have been with Carell in the tub behind the screen, with her clothes on. The persistent laddie now asks Binoche to get rid of her clothes, to which the beautiful Juliette Binoche duly obliges, peeling her clothes off while Carell’s Dan seems to be least interested-in, & as audience members, & admirers of the actress, we are praying she refrains from doing this to us. There need not be so much grief associated, for an innocent audience member, over an actor’s disrobing for the camera.
Now we have the Amritrajs. I’ve always taken great pride in, & keenly followed, the exploits of the Amritrajs – Vijay, Anand, & Ashok. Their mother, a Dravidian, had a curious theory concerning her sons’ dark-skinnedness, & what she was hoping to achieve through their marriages. The good-humored lady spoke about how she was bringing fair-complexioned daughters-in-law into the fold, hoping to dilute the family’s skin-color over the subsequent generation. I don’t know of the others from the (family’s) next generation but the one seen in action yesterday (Prakash Amritraj), shows no sign of dilution in pigmentation. It’s indeed fortunate for Indian Tennis that there seems to be absolutely no signs of dilution in talent either, witnessed in Prakash’s braveheart effort in the Davis-Cup tie. Steve Carell, (who somewhat looks like a Caucasian version of one of the Amritrajs - Hollywood producer Ashok Amritraj) & the film’s makers display their attempt at diluting Dan in real life’s patently TV format, & the lead actor’s un-mistakable TV behavior by casting one of the actresses (Binoche) that has come to exemplify the cinematic in cinema. While the con seems to have been the make believe that Ms. Binoche has walked into this present film straight from her similar personifications in Leos Carax’s Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (The Lovers on the Bridge) & Louis Malle’s Damage from the previous decade, it doesn’t quite pay-off what with the whole film playing like an American Sitcom. Majority of the film is set in interiors, mostly in the Living Room, reiterating the impression that America lives in its living. It is strange though, that so much of American TV is made to exist in the living, beamed to millions of livings, but rarely do the livings on these TV shows possess a TV. In Dan In Real Life the hierarchs (matriarchal, patriarchal, fraternal, & sometimes the filial too) are all control freaks, colonizing every waking moment of the participants of this annual ritual, summoning each one’s presence in the living where all of them appear to be a-living.
The film’s unsuspectingly lengthy epilogue is laced with the columnist’s column - not unlike some films existing for the sake of the film’s poster – the first time we are made privy to the goings-on in Dan’s columns that have now bagged a syndication deal.And while they're at it, why wouldn’t a romcom make use of a wedding, of its couple, over its end credits where musicians play for the extended family to soak-in the proceedings, before inviting the couple over next year's 'Control' gathering.
Friday April 11th 2008. Fame Adlabs Multiplex, Andheri, Mumbai. It’s 1.15 a.m. now. The New Link road. There are cars lined-up along the multiplex’s lane, like they usually are, but, in retrospect, shouldn’t have been in the first place. There are about 20 other cars but it is a Black Hyundai Accent that seems bizarrely curious. It is, reportedly, a first – for the car, for the investigating cops, probably for the perpetrators, & definitely for the unfortunate owner of the car - who’s me, i, moi. The car’s been bonnet-jacked - a car stripped of its bonnet, while the rest of the machine seems, at this juncture, intact. Maybe the worry would’ve been entirely different if the vehicle weren’t to start or be mobile, but being de-nuded of its bonnet (a frontal abode of crucial functions, protruding parts that were never meant to be exposed) feels violated. A couple of hundred meters’ drive between Fame Adlabs multiplex & the nearest Oshiwara police station was a humiliatingly harrowing journey, feeling naked (while fully clothed), having only a very transparent glass windshield for cover, trying to understand the nature of a crime that belies, as yet, comprehension.
In columnist/tabloid-reporter style, i solicit any spotting of a TsaiMingLiang-like scene (am thinking of the crude transport of a mattress in I don’t want to Sleep Alone) of a few (human) beings carrying a not-really-a-pocket-sized-article of a car bonnet, you would be rendering a great turn in letting either the Dans in real life know of the same, or let the reviewer know of the same on his review/ blog/ mail. The Oshiwara police, I must say, were very amiable, as much as the cops from Joon-ho Bong’s Memories of Murder, working the nights & being as helpful as is possible, considering they haven’t heard of a bonnet-jacking, until now. I wish I had the strength to proclaim my address, the site of the automobile’s location, & dare thieves to meddle with my vulnerably stripped Accent. Instead, i only could come-up with reviewing the film, in exactly the same manner it fared-out for this audience member, during the course of whose playtime a car’s life changed irrevocably, & it’s owner has no clue what else is in store for him.
Here's a review of the recent released Indian-English Film Love Songs, originally published inTehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 14, Dated April 12, 2008 __________________________________________ QUITE OFF-KEY Barring one scene, much of the film is a tiresome burden to bear. Mallika Sarabhai would do well to refrain from watching herself, writes THANI on the film Love Songs
JAYABRATO CHATTERJEE’S Love Songs — Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow reminds me of two French films: Christophe Honore’s Love Songs and Claude Lelouch’s And Now, Ladies & Gentleman. Honore’s Love Songs is a film about a lover expected to mourn his girlfriend’s death at a time when he’s realizing that he didn’t love her enough in the first place, while Lelouch’s film is laced with soulful songs punctuating an endearing romance between a singer (singer-actress Patricia Kaas) nursing a badly broken heart and a master thief (Jeremy Irons) on a reform spree.
Jayabrato Chatterjee’s Love Songs is a film about three generations of adults falling in and out of love. It is not clear, though, as to why the film calls itself Love Songs. Jaya Bachchan’s character Mridula, narrates entire chunks of the events in the film to her grandson, Rohan (Prithviraj Choudhary) and his paramour, Tara (Deol Basu), as if she was reading aloud from a letter. They huddle together in a hug in the film’s finale to form the publicity poster. “Love Letters” would’ve been a more apt title.
The film takes a considerable while before we figure who’s who, and what they’re doing in the film. Mridula (Jaya Bachchan) is a matriarch who has raised her daughter Palaash (Shahana Chatterjee) as a single parent. When her daughter’s marriage is falling apart, Mridula becomes the target of unintended abuse and is allowed no time to deal with her own life and the secret love that the daughter could be a by-product of. When Palaash dies, it falls upon Mridula to raise her daughter’s son, Rohan, as a single (grand)parent all over again, and it is for him that past events must be made sense of. Om Puri plays Aftab Jaffery, Mridula’s lost-andfound love from a remote past, who is unhappily married to a ghazal-singing alcoholic (Mallika Sarabhai).
The best sequence in the film is the one in which young lovers Rohan and Tara are going up the stairs of the Coffee House in College Street in Kolkata where, for the solitary occasion in the film, its visuals, soulful music, and background score fall in place. The rest of the film is a tiresome burden to bear.
Mallika Sarabhai would do well to refrain from watching herself in the film, to avoid descending into chronic depression. The same could be said of the others too, depending on where the actors have decided to pitch their acting bar. The cinematography is very functional and Usha Uthup’s music resonates only in places where songs make sense in the film.
It seems as if there aren’t enough competent practitioners of meaningful cinema for starved audiences in India. __________________________________________
Why isn’t a MURDER being called one? Even as news-media, across continents, is ‘Breaking News’ of developments on 15 yr-old Scarlett Eden Keeling’s Murder with a 24×7 vigil, the case continues to be reported, almost unanimously, & appallingly, as the 15 yr-old’s being ‘drugged, raped, & left to die on the beach’. The attestation till date accompanies reports that clearly contradict Goa Police’s complicit cover-up yarn, & inspite of the erring Goa Police themselves registering a case of Murder (on Saturday 8th March 2008).
This insistently negligent reporting reeks of a recent precedent, in the ways of manipulating (or reserving judgment for) the public imagination of the extent of a particular crime. In January 1999 in Delhi, a Hit-and-Run-Case that killed 6 people was registered against Sanjiv Nanda, grandson of Indian Navy’s (former Chief of Naval Staff) Admiral S.M. Nanda, and son of yesterday’s Lt. Commander, & ironically today’s accused ‘Arms Dealer’, Suresh Nanda. During the initial investigations the case was being headlined as ‘Nanda Hit-and-Run case’. Very soon, out of coercion and/or corruption, the case started getting itself called ‘BMW Hit-and-Run case’, clearly refracting from the identification, in the public imagination, of a Nanda as the accused. The ‘Hit-and-Run case’ has been, almost, closed owing to the lone survivor of the accident changing his deposition to remembering the erring-vehicle to be a truck & not a (BMW) car. But, in a triumphant deliverance of Poetic Justice, the Father-Son-Nanda-Duo are, as of today, committed to Judicial Custody in a case relating to alleged tampering with evidence to influence the investigations in defence deals (on charges of receiving kickbacks in the controversial Barak missile deal).
For the sake of authenticity, & as a mark of respect to the departed Scarlett, I shall insist on the case being referred to, as it must rightly be, as the Scarlett Keeling Murder Case.
As has been brought to our living rooms, ‘On-The-Hour, Every-Hour’, the Scarlett Keeling Murder Case seems to be about a 15-yr-old Brit tourist girl’s death, in mysterious circumstances. Scarlett Keeling’s dead body was found on Anjuna Beach in Goa, exactly 5 weeks ago, at 6.30 in the early hours of Monday the 18th of February 2008. Goa Police, in the local reigns of Anjuna Sub-Inspector Peron Albuquerque, declares the cause of death to that of drowning. Fiona MacKeown, mother of Scarlett’s, & 8 more kids, exploring Gokarna in neighboring state of Karnataka, is informed of the (accidental) demise of her eldest daughter. 43-yr-old Fiona doesn’t buy the Goa Police story of a Death-by-Drowning pronouncement & ventures to view Scarlett’s remains one more occasion. Overcome by grief, Fiona, nevertheless, manages to make pictures of the numerous wounds, numbering 50, all over her daughter’s remains - legs dotted with red marks (indicating injury caused before death, as anything after death wouldn’t ‘redden’), and Scarlett’s “genital area showing large red marks around her bottom and down both sides of her inner thigh”. The battered body, & the knowledge that Scarlett’s a “strong swimmer” convinces Fiona of the death being a case of murder (& torture), beyond any reasonable doubt. In trying to pursue the investigation of what obviously is a murder, it is only when the grieving mother threatens to release the graphic pictures of a battered Scarlett, addressed to the Chief Minister of Goa, does the Government relent a 2nd autopsy - a full 17 days after Scarlett’s death – on the 6th of March 2008. Post the second autopsy, conducted by the doctor who signed the first one, Dr Silvano Sapeco, it emerges that there were indeed about 50 wounds on her body, & that there are signs of struggle resisting torture& death. Dr. Silvano Sapeco also revealed, in a TV Hidden Camera, that he suggested the strong possibility of murder in the 1st autopsy too. But Sub-Inspector Peron Albuquerque intervened in the findings. Goa Police, after having already made desperate attempts of cover-up, by this time, picked their candidate to take the fall (deservedly or otherwise), in Peron Albuquerque, who anyways has a questionable record with passing off a 2005 murder (another one?) as drowning.
Meanwhile Scarlett’s death figured in debates in both the Indian & British Parliaments. While the Union Minister for Tourism Ambika Soni seems to have assured thorough investigation into the case, she “ignored CPI(M) member Brinda Karat’s suggestion that her ministry should support the demand for a CBI enquiry into Scarlett Keeling’s death in Goa.” Now, why would our Tourism Minister do such a thing? Indian Tourism’s ‘Incredible India’ mantra managing to attract only half (about 5 million tourists a year) of what smaller, neighbouring centers (such as Singapore) draws seems to have been one of her many concerns for India Inc?
Saturday 9th March 2008: Goa Police registers a case of Murder. But continues to find excuses for stalling & covering-up the investigation. Having picked-up 28 yr-old Samson D’Souza, a waiter at the Luis’ Café in Anjuna (where Scarlett was seen last before hurled to her rape, torture & murder) & one of the accused based on eye-witness account claming he was seen raping Scarlett, the Goa Police, bizarrely, orders an ‘Ossification test’ that would ascertain Scarlett’s correct age that might have been lied about in her passport. Now, what the Goa Police is saying is that the prosecution, if Scarlett’s age turns out to be 18+, would have to essentially acquit the said Samson D’Souza. Acquit of what? Consensual sex? When found raping the victim? And why invoke an ‘Ossification Test’ that’s exclusively reserved for un-identifiable/ unclaimed bodies? Scarlett’s identity never was in doubt; turns-out, the killers could vouch for the same too.
Fiona trades accusations with the Goa Police, State Home Minister Ravi Naik (under whose fiefdom the State Police Force figures), DGP B S Brar, & the faceless-and-tentacled-Drug-Mafia-in-Goa. The Government tries to pressurize the Centre to keep Fiona from re-entering Goa as all-of-a-sudden “Goa is supposed to be not wanting people with criminal background”. Fiona’s having done a year’s time in jail for knifing a man’s neck seems to be coming in the way of seeking justice for her daughter’s murder. And for her “negligent parenting”, would warrant jail time in India too.
Three arrests are made, one after another, by the Goa Police. 25(?) yr-old Julio Lobo (dubbed as Scarlett’s ‘Indian Boyfriend’) seems to be the 1st arrest. Barman Samson D’Souza the 2nd one, & on the 13th of march 2008 the third arrestee Placido Carvalho (AKA Shanna Boy) at which juncture Goa Police claims to have solved the case. Newsmen, imaginatively, headline stories in the first person “I Killed Scarlett Keeling” apparently admitted by Samson D’Souza while the very same stories don’t bother to carry anything of the sort quoted by the barman. According to Goa Police, Samson D’Souza is supposed to have raped Scarlett twice, assaulted her, dumped her body & left the crime scene when a man walking with a torchlight was spotted by him. Placido Carvalho, a drug dealer who gets media’s promotion to that of a ‘businessman’, is held on charges of ‘supplying’ drugs to Scarlett on the fateful night.
The Goa Police refuse the benefit of the doubt, if we were willing to confer on them, & insist on inviting upon themselves a ridicule-ous imbecilic tag when as late as yesterday, the 23rd of march 2008, they haul Scarlett’s boyfriend Julio Lobo for a medical test that would “ascertain whether he is sexually active“ in the words of Goa Police’s Superintendent of Police Bosco George. What would this accomplish for the Goa Police, especially when the 25 yr-old has himself stated, on many occasions, that he’s been sexually active. The earlier Ossification might actually come handy here, if only ossifications can ascertain how long since an individual’s been sexually active!
More events fuel the investigation, of Scarlett’s Murder:
1. Michael Mannion (AKA Masala Mike): Fiona, having gathered of Masala Mike’s presence at Luis’’s Café on the fateful night, & his subsequent flight, requested his coming back to aid the investigation. Meanwhile Placido Carvalho (Shanna Boy) names Masala Mike in his deposition as a witness to events at Luis’ café. Goa Police issue a look-out notice alerting Airports & Ports for Michael ‘Masala Mike’ Mannion. Masala Mike is supposed to have earlier spoken to a British Scribe about being witness to the rape & assault of Scarlett by his friend (Samson D’Souza). 35(?) yr-old Masala Mike arrives in Goa on the 17th of March to record his deposition. A Gist of the deposition would be that Masala Mike is a “witness to the events preceding the homicide of Scarlett Eden Keeling, British National, on the morning of the 18th February 2008”, a friend of Prime Accused Samson D’Souza, & staying as a guest at Samson’s house along with Samson’s wife Cecile, has known Samson from 6 yrs ago when he was here earlier. A British National, a carpenter by profession, Masala Mike’s been in Goa since 1st of February 2008. Having arrived at Luis’ Café with Samson at 8.30 p.m. on 17th February he hung around till 3 a.m. when Scarlett ‘fell over’ in front of the café, on the sand. Scarlett’s helped into the café by the shack’s owner Luis Coutinho. Scarlett’s supposed to have been “in an inebriated state”, wearing a red vest (Scarlett was found in a Bikini Top) & a blue shorts with ‘italia’ written behind them. According to Masala Mike’s deposition, Scarlett was overheard talking to Luis & “She said she had no money to get home with a taxi as she was living in Siolim. I suggested to those present in the bar that we organize a taxi for her and I offered to pay for it. But this suggestion was ignored.” The others present at the café, according to Masala Mike, were Samson D’Souza, Placido Carvalho (Shanna Boy), Luis Coutinho, Murli (who worked at the Curly’s bar), & another Brit by the name of Charlie. Masala Mike then goes on to say that at 5 a.m. Scarlett was being taken by Murli, who assured Mike that the girl would be safely dropped at curley’s. Masala Mike spots Samson walking out of the café. While taking a piss-break at the parking area, around 5.15 a.m. Masala Mike observes Murli leaving on his two-wheeler, while the vehicle’s lamp throws light on Samson perched over Scarlett, trying to rid her of her clothes. At this time Masala Mike says, fearing for his own safety, he left the place on his scooter. Reached Samson’s place, not having a key to himself in, waited for Samson, who returned at 6 a.m. & both of them went to bed, with Masala Mike waking up at 11 a.m., called his partner in England(?) narrating the events of the night where a teenager was violated. Later, when he reached Luis’ café he is supposed to have heard of a girl’s dead body washing-up on the shore. Description of the piercing on the lower lip confirms the identification, in Masala Mike’s mind, of Scarlett. At some point he is supposed to have been threatened, & asked to leave the place. Masala Mike obliges the flight the 23rd of February.
2. Scarlett’s 35 page diary makes appearance: Goa Police, in a search at boyfriend Julio Lobo’s premises, find a 35 pages’ diary that Scarlett kept along with her belongings. The diary is immediately made copies of, & claimed to be in possession of almost every news group that’s been covering the Murder. But it’s amazing how every news coverage on the diary uses the very same few entries that have supposed to reveal Scarlett’s ‘craving for drugs, drink & sex’. The very same entries & very same conclusions, verbatim, across correspondents, news groups, & continents. But there must be more to this teenager, revealed in the 35 pages than the little that has been handpicked. The last entry supposedly illustrates the confusion in her mind, & her death-wish in “Dear Diary/ I rele rele rele don’t know what to do. I wish something big would happen to make my decision final.” This last undated entry (she was using a school-book for her diary) is accompanied by a stick-drawing showing a human figure dangling from a hangman’s Death-By-Hanging rope, & followed by Julio’s name, address, email, and phone numbers.
3. New Autopsy & Forensic Lab reports: Forensic Experts’ final report on Mar 22 confirmed the cause of Scarlett’s death – Homicidal Drowning (drowned by holding Scarlett’s head underwater for between 5-10 minutes). Additional Drugs were pumped-into Scarlett’s body after her death by Goa Police, conclusively proving, along with the earlier abominable practices, Goa Police’s desperate attempts to cover-up the case. Dr. Silvano Sapeco (in-charge of both the autopsies) is now being discredited for something he wasn’t responsible in the first place; a senior Police Officer is quoted as saying “only when a forensic doctor keeps the cause of death reserved can they give new insights into the cause of death. But in Scarlett’s case, Dr. Sapeco had clearly stated that the cause of death was due to drowning. So, he can’t give any new insight as an afterthought”.
4. Julio interviewed: Julio Lobo, the 25 yrs old boyfriend of Scarlett’s in whose care Fiona had left her daughter finally was interviewed by a British Newspaper. In his interview Julio claims to have known Scarlett’s age to be 19. Julio is facing charges of rape (for unlawful sexual relations with a minor). He recounts his seeing Scarlett for the last time – on Feb 17th 2008 Sunday when he dropped her on his bike to a vegetarian restaurant in Anjuna called ‘Bean Me Up’ at about 8.30pm. He says “She was due to meet the rest of her family in Gokarna the following day and said she wanted to spend time with her friend, Ruby(16), whose family run the restaurant”. Scarlett & Ruby were supposed to have gone out & returned to ‘Bean Me Up’ at 1.30 a.m., when they appeared to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Ruby went to bed, and Scarlett was next seen about one & a half hours later in Lui’s bar on Anjuna beach, again in “an intoxicated state”. Julio also says that “She said she’d call me when she was ready to be picked up.” But the call never happened, till he heard about her death, subsequently sent a text message to Fiona who was in Gokarna where Scarlett & Julio were supposed to meet the family.
There has been harsh criticism for Fiona “for neglecting her young daughter”, “setting a bad example with her bohemian lifestyle”, “Irresponsible parenting”, to relegation of blame by UK Daily Mail’s columnist Allison Pearson – “Fiona MacKeown, the mother of Scarlett Keeling, the 15-year-old girl who was raped and murdered in Goa, seems less like a grieving mother than an avenging tigress. Maybe so (referring to Goa Police’s dereliction of duty). But isn’t there an even better chance that Scarlett would still be alive if her own mother had not abandoned her for several weeks after an argument and recklessly continued her own holiday? Instead the blonde teenager, as tempting as a ripe peach, was left in the care of a 25-year-old tour guide - a local man she’d only recently met. I don’t know what they call that in globe-trotting hippy circles. Back here on Planet Parent it’s known as dereliction of duty.” To even some appalling comments such as “All at the UK taxpayer’s expense” by a Michael J Lee, from Sheffield.
Fiona, as much as I find it difficult to understand your critics’ indiscretion I do also have a few questions that might as well be put away-with to be able to single-mindedly pursue Scarlett’s Murderers; a. Why don’t you talk about your past that the Goa Police seems to be intensely pursuing & rid them of the time it would take while they might as well be using the same, un-covering Scarlett’s Murder (when they are not busy covering-it-up). b. You, Fiona, have always maintained the presence of a bigger consortium behind Scarlett’s Murder, even when Samson D’Souza’s & Placido Carvalho’s arrests prompted the Goa Police to claim the case solved. You have gone to the great risks of accusing Goa’s Home Minister Ravi Naik to be involved with the Drug Mafia, along with the Police. Why then refrain from naming (if there are any you have reasons to name) the ‘others’ you vociferously have maintained from the beginning. What sort of names have you had in mind when you were confident that the Police had got the “wrong guys”? c. There is a pattern of selective recounting on everybody’s part here. According to Julio’s accusation (who conveniently claims to have believed Scarlett to have been 19), you, Fiona, seem to not acknowledge that Scarlett & Julio have been living under the same roof, & that they spent-time/stayed together even when they visited you in Gokarna, in Karnataka. And also that the week of her demise was not the first time Scarlett was left in Julio’s care-of.
As far as the selective recounting can be kept to nil, there would be hope to un-cover what’s been humiliatingly brushed aside as a case of ‘drugged, raped, & left to die on the beach’. Because, young Scarlett’s death has hardly been selective.
It is very un-believable, of a section of the news media that fails to ask questions that are begging to be asked. What is the point of the Exclusives that star-journos manage when they leave gaping holes un-negotiated, in the space of the same interview/piece they’re filing for News’ Breaking? Asking questions barely qualify as accusation, especially when one’s serving in the capacity of the ‘asker’!Here are some questions, I have, that scream to be asked: 1. Masala Mike: a. Why did you come back? When is it that you decided to come back? Though you seem to have earlier expressed your desire to depose, to a British Journalist, you finally came back only when a lookout notice was issued in your name by the Goa Police, rendering it impossible for you to leave the country. It turns out that the lookout notice was issued after Placido Carvalho’s naming you as a witness at the Luis’ Café. Now, it doesn’t look a co-incidence that Placido Carvalho named you as a witness. Placido had procured an anticipatory bail much before his arrest. This seems to match the time Goa Police took to figure the fall-guys, as speculated by Fiona & a British Legal firm. It is curious that you use the not-so-common expression for being intoxicated - ‘inebriation’, while describing Scarlett’s state when she entered Luis’ café on the fateful night. Because that’s the same exact expression Placido employs too, in his deposition. In fact there’s no mismatch at all, in yours’ & Placido’s recounting of the events of the night, to even the timings staying in-sync. b. You talk of how Scarlett wasn’t carrying (enough/any) money to take a taxi to Siolim, how you offered to pay for the taxi but that the offer was ignored by your ‘mates’ at the café;since, by your own admission, you possessed a scooter why wouldn’t you yourself see the minor girl home to the barely 15 minutes drive to Siolim? Because, after 2 hours’ deliberation, & much else, at the café it was Murli who was dropping Scarlett to Curley’s, on his bike (wasn’t Scarlett wanting to go to Siolim?). c. You carefully avoid the subject of drugs, & deny any knowledge of, when asked. Why? To start with, unfairly or otherwise, your alias (of Masala Mike) sounds like a hash dealer’s. In any case, I would be interested about the origin of your curious alias. You never talk of any of the group at Luis’ as running/dealing drugs while it seems to be common knowledge as to what kind of businessman Placido Carvalho was! Nor do you talk of the owner of the shack, Luis Coutinho, & the certain Charlie. d. You claim to have seen & spoken to Scarlett for the first time only hours before her death. And Scarlett is supposed to have discussed her drugs-intake whilst talking to you at the bar area (3 drops of LSD, two Ecstasy pills and cocaine). How is it that you are not aware of what Scarlett’s conversation with the rest of the congregation, in the approximately 120 minutes that she spent there, was like? You also mention how at one point you warned the others that the “girl was still a minor”. What were you warning them against? e. Mike, having come back for the crucial deposition, & joining the ‘SUPPORT FOR FIONA MACKOEWN!’ group on Facebook isn’t good-enough! Ask yourself if you’ve presented all that there is to be told, as a crucial witness that was sought, in the investigation of a Murder you attest to have witnessed the beginnings of.
2. Julio Lobo: a. You claim to have had ‘feelings’ for Scarlett, & that you thought Scarlett loved you till being shocked by what her diary revealed; questioning herself if she was with you for the money, favors, trip to Finland etc., and consequently wondering if you were with her for the sex etc. How is that you claim that Scarlett lied to you about her age being 19 when, according to Masala Mike’s account, her age seems to be the very 2nd thing she reveals to strangers (after her name). b. How is it that you don’t mention any of the names accused in the Murder. As a local, & a tourist guide who arranges exotic specialty sightseeing trips, you must be acquainted, or more, with the Samson D’Souzas, Placido Carvalhos, Masala Mikes, Murlis, & Luis Coutinhos. c. You claim to have dropped Scarlett on the night of her murder at 8.30 p.m. at the ‘Bean Me Up’ restaurant, meters away from Luis’ café, where Scarlett was seeing her friend Ruby, with the instruction that you’d pick her up as soon as she calls for you. Having received no call while she could have (till 5 a.m.), & never being able to afterwards, you go asking around for her only in the morning. Weren’t the two of you to leave for Gokarna to join Scarlett’s family, the next morning, according to your own narration? Or was it just Scarlett, in which case were you people exhausted of all/any ‘Sweet Nothings’ to accompany your farewells to, on her last day here in Goa?
Why is it that NOBODY’s (Fiona, relatives, boyfriend, witness, Police, news media) talking of a most crucial detail in the unfortunate series of events that have led to young Scarlett’s Murder? That Sunday the 17th of February 2008 was the last day Scarlett was going to spend in Goa. Little did young Scarlett know that the same day would end up being her last, anywhere on this planet.
As chronicled by a British Scribe (Tom Rawstone of the Daily Mail), Fiona made plans to go to Goa on a holiday for 6 months for the whole family, consisting of Fiona, her 47-year-old Boyfriend Rob Clarke, & 8 children (the eldest Halloran, 19, remained at home in Devon). Goa was chosen as holiday destination as Rob Clarke had been there several times before. This was the first time the family was ever traveling beyond Britain, and the trip was a Christmas present to themselves. Having reached Goa in November the family spent couple of months in Anjuna, before heading out to explore different parts of the country, with a motive to, maybe, come back to settle down. Scarlett chose to stay back, in Goa, owing to reasons unknown (probably out of attachment for the boyfriend Julio Lobo & wanting to stay non-nomadic while the family figures the next abode.
On the 14th of February 2008, Fiona’s eldest offspring, & Scarlett’s (biological) brother Halloran met with a serious life-threatening accident while crossing a road (freakishly at 6.42 a.m. while his sister’s dead body would be discovered at 6.30 a.m. 4 days later). It is only on the 17th of February that Fiona informs Scarlett of the accident, & the decision Fiona’s made to return home to England. Hence Scarlett (& so did, obviously for me, her Murderers) knew that February 17th would be her last day (& night) in Goa, as she would leave for Gokarna with Julio, to join the family. Allegedly, as Julio was “feeling ill” & “decided to stay home”, Scarlett “teamed up with a 16-year-old girl called Ruby for one last night on the town”. Scarlett has been continuously, & speculatively, painted a hedonistic picture of an overgrown, over-sexed, alcoholic, drug-addicted, & in the words of a columnist Allison Pearson “as tempting as a ripe peach”. Sure, Scarlett is as desirable, & falling-in-love-with-able as a Natalie Portman personnage from Closer, inhabiting the body of a much younger girl. But isn't it very much possible that the ‘inebriated’ state Scarlett is claimed to have been found-in could be the result of a farewell she was bidding a geography she probably fell in love with, before resuming a “difficult life” on the “field” back in Devon. And am making a strong supposition that Scarlett’s Murderers, & witnesses of the violation, knew as much about her last night in Goa before she was to leave the place, for good. In the light of this new motive, Scarlett’s death becomes a definite case of pre-meditated, pre-planned Murder.
Now, it must not be difficult, for the investigation, to map Scarlett’s last hours before her death. The hours between 8.30 p.m. and 1 a.m. that was spent with Ruby [whom a British Daily had the good sense to track down in South of Spain & talk to] when the duo’s supposed to have hopped pubs & shacks; the hours between 1 a.m. & 3 a.m. when Scarlett was supposed to have been by herself; and the hours between 3 a.m. from the moment Scarlett was led into Luis’ Café to the time of her death. It's baffling that none of the autopsy reports have bothered to ascertain the exact time of Scarlett’s death (a process that’s been in place for decades) while we only know of the time when the dead body was discovered – 6.30 a.m.
It must be very much possible, & ensured of the same, that Scarlett’s entire duration in Goa, of 2.5 months, is mapped. And the leading protagonists’ time too. There could very well be, as Fiona’s been confidently insinuating, the devil himself who emerged from the shadows to unleash his havoc before receding back into the dark. The devil, or a bunch of devils, that probably was looking to take-on the sense of beauty, freedom & desire Scarlett represented, before this particular bird would make her flight back to where she came from.
Given the extent of the desperate Cover-up of Scarlett’s Murder, I wouldn’t be as surprised if there exists a Video of Scarlett’s death. A snuff film, of a young life, violated, tortured, & snuffed-out.
I make the Black Dahlia reference, in my enquiring if Scarlett’s Murder investigation is going to turn into ‘Scarlet Dahlia’, as this present case is scarily approaching the layers beyond layers of Corruption Practices that rendered the Black Dahlia Investigation a long-standing Un-Solved Crime of the previous century. The Black Dahlia Case also involved a beautiful young girl, 22-yr-old Elizabeth Short, who was tortured (for about 48 hours) before rid her of her life, drained out of blood, cut in half, & her body curiously displayed for a mocking view, for the on-looker/investigator. The case took more than 50 years for solving, while it officially is yet to be unanimously acknowledged as SOLVED. It turns out, according to Steve Hodel who cracked the case, that the investigating Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD) officers were on the payroll of the Abortion Lobby that was protecting one of it’s own – father of ex-LAPD officer Steve Hodel & the Murderer of the Black Dahlia, the Black Dahlia Avenger Dr. George Hodel.
Steve Hodel’s guiding light, & now his very own investigative philosophy, that he’s termed Thoughtprints, has been that “Our thoughts connect us to one another and to our actions”. He goes on to say “In all of our actions, each of us leaves behind traces of our self. Like our fingerprints, these traces are identifiable. I call them thoughtprints. They are the ridges, loops, and whorls of our mind. Like the individual “points” that a criminalist examines in a fingerprint, they mean little by themselves and remain meaningless, unconnected shapes in a jigsaw puzzle until they are pieced together to reveal a clear picture.” “A collective of our motives, a paradigm constructed from our individual thoughts, these illusive prints construct the signature that will connect or link us to a specific time, place, crime, or victim.”
Now, seen, & understood in this new light, nothing seems to be a co-incidence; even Samson D’Souza & Masala Mike reaching Luis’ Café at 8.30 p.m. which is exactly the time boyfriend Julio drops Scarlett at the meters-away ‘Bean Me Up’ restaurant in Anjuna on the fateful Sunday night of February 17th 2008.
I do wonder what our esteemed Intelligence Community (R.A.W and I.B) is doing about this present case? What they are advising our politicians who, in cases of this nature, seek the Intelligence’s intelligence.
Mr. Rakesh Maria, this present case, of Scarlett’s Murder, needs your Goan counterpart; a counterpart not in your rank, of Joint Commissioner of Police (Mumbai Crime Branch), but your resolve to deliver justice, & in your righteous anger.
Fiona, do keep your fight to put young Scarlett to rest, at a place where she would be Scarlett again. And hope that people who can make a difference do come forward to make the difference.
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of Truth and Love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it, always." - A Mahatma Gandhi quote, succinctly chosen by Steve Hodel for his un-masking of his own father as the 'Black Dahlia Avenger'.
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