Dil dhoondta hai...

I have been fortunate enough to meet and observe at close quarters, the legendary lyricist and poet, Gulzar (real name Sampooarn Singh Kalra) on a few occasions, thanks to my wife’s Ph.d on his poetry. The first time was at his residence on Pali Hill, Bombay in January 2009 when we had to record an interview. We reached at the appointed time and were informed by his secretary that he was in a music session with Vishal Bharadwaj and we would have to wait for some time As we sat in the waiting room we were totally taken aback when Gulzar himself appeared a few minutes later and apologised for the delay due to the extended session. Once Vishal left, we were led into his drawing room which also includes his study (consisting of his library and his study table –with which he has been often photographed) and the interview went off well over a few rounds of chai. When it was time to leave he presented a big box of chocolates for my daughter and came till the entrance of the house to see us off. Obviously we were greatly touched by his humility and simplicity. Since then we have met him at different places Delhi, Jaipur) and at different locations (Diggi palace at Jaipur, India International Centre and the India Habitat Centre at Delhi) and I have come to know different facets of his personality. To start with, he is incredibly sharp and agile for someone who is 79 years old. This is partly because he follows a strict schedule of sports (playing tennis) and writing every day. He is no ivory tower poet who writes as per their whims and fancies. For him writing is a 9 to 5 job (similar to our regular office job) which he carries out with full dedication. After that it is time for his tennis. Secondly, he keeps himself occupied with some sort of literary activity or other. Be it  writing lyrics, poems, releasing books (in Hindi and Urdu),participating in literary festivals, attending plays based on his works Salim Arif, receiving awards or just playing with his two year old grandson who stays close by.

Obviously the general  public is more aware about his film lyrics but apart from the same he a formidable collection of poems and short stories to his credit including a unique  genre of three line poems called Triveni**. Some of these are really outstanding. Sample these

‘Bheega bheega sa kyon hain yeh akhbar

apney hawker ko kal sey change karo

“paanch sau gaon bah gaye is saal”’

And,

‘Kya pataa kab kahan sey mareygee?

Bas ki mein zindagi sey darta hoon

Maut ka kya hai, ek baar mareygee’

As far as the films are concerned, he has given us some outstanding lyrics starting from ‘Bandini’ in 1963 (Mora gora ang lai le) and has been  at his best while dealing with relationships. He was at the top of his prowess in the 70s and 80s. My personal favourites include songs from ‘Khamoshi’ (1970), ‘Anand’ (1970), ‘Aandhi’(1975),  ‘Mausam’(1976), ‘Gharonda’ (1977) and ‘Masoom’(1982) some of which he also directed. He had the capability to beautifully express emotions with unmatched brevity and simplicity

‘Tum aa gaye ho noor aa gaya hai

Nahin to chiragon sey lau jaa rahee thi

Jeeney ki tumsey wajeh mil gayee hai

Badi bewajah zindagi jaa rahi thi’

-Tum aagaye ho, ‘Aandhi’

‘In umr se lambi sadkon ko

Manzil pe pahunchte dekha nahin

Bas daudti phirti rehti hain

Hamney toh theharte dekha nahin’

-Ek akela is sheher mein, ‘Gharonda’

Post ‘Maachis’ (1996) however some critics feel that Gulzar has not written anything significant and there has been a steady decline in his writing. The imagery which was so effortless earlier on seems forced and convoluted and the writing laboured, as in Kajra re from ‘Bunty aur Babli’(2005). To some extent this is true but even now the earlier spark shines through some of his work whenever he keeps the lyrics simple like in ‘Dil to bacha hai jee’ from ‘Ishqiya’(2010) . However, the credit should be given to him for remaining relevant even after spending over 50 years in the industry which has seen so many changes. From Chaiya Chaiya, ‘Dil Se’ (1998) to Beedi, ‘Omkara’ (2006) to Challa from ‘Jab Tak Hain Jaan’ (2012) he has been consistently giving us chart busters.

** A Rupa Publication, 2003

The Google Story

Over the past few years, Google has become such an integral part of our lives that it is now

difficult to imagine browsing the internet without visiting the Google site at least once .It has

become our default one stop shop whenever we are searching for  information in any field—be it

sports, cinema, current affairs, technology etc.(When a friend recently asked his daughter to find out

the number of keys on their laptop she was using, she promptly logged on to Google to find the

answer!).However, like many others I often used to wonder to how do these guys make any money? What is the story behind the unusual name and the minimalist home page design which has remained almost unchanged since the company was incorporated in 1998 by two Stanford Phd students Sergey Brin and Larry Page? What is the secret of their famed work culture which combines fun and work in just the right proportion?  Answers to these questions and many other insights about the incorporation and the spectacular growth of the company can be found in David Vise’s excellent bestseller –The Google Story, published by Pan Macmillan. It also give us a look into the way renowned US universities like Stanford, Harvard and MIT encourage their students to incubate innovations (Jerry Young, the founder of Yahoo was their senior at Stanford) and guided them to convert their ideas into a tangible product which can then be monetized with the help of venture capitalists who are always eager to put their money on the next big idea.

 Larry and Sergey came from very diverse but strong academic backgrounds and hit off instantly when they met at Stanford in 1995. By 1997 they had a working model of a search engine ready and they called it ‘Pagerank’. Initially they wanted to sell it to the other existing search engines including Yahoo. Unable to find a suitable buyer, they decided to take a leave of absence from the Phd programme at Stanford and start their own business. Rest, as they say, is history.

 Eric Schmidt (former CEO of Novell) who joined the company in 2000 to handles the day-to-day running of the business completes the triumvirate which runs Google today. The way he ended up joining Google makes for interesting reading as Larry and Sergey were reluctant to hire someone to look over their shoulders but the venture capitalists wanted to strengthen the management as they planned to scale the business. Along with the growth including a path breaking IPO in 2004 came various lawsuits and intense competition from the grand daddy of Silicon valley-Microsoft which had (and still does) lagged behind Google and Yahoo in the search space on the internet. Infact, the only discordant note in the book is the continuous attempt to show how the ‘good’ guys at Google have always managed to keep ahead of the ‘bad’ guys at Microsoft and how Google is now the attracting better talent than Microsoft. Some of the quoted instances maybe true but as the recent launch of me too products by Google  like Google + (to take on Facebook)and the Nexus tablet (to take on I-pads) have shown , in the cut throat competition of high technology one needs to constantly adjust one’s moral compass as per the changing scenarios.

Clash of the worlds

Like many other correct thinking people, the recent incident of gang rape of a young girl in a moving bus in Delhi, has shocked me into numbness. The outrage over the incident just refuses to die (rightly so!)and even as I write this ,the unfortunate girl’s death in Singapore (flown out by a beleaguered government as a last ditch effort) is bound to lead to another round of protests, debates and analysis. The rising incidents of violent crime in our city has set me thinking that one important point seems to be have been overlooked by most of the so-called experts. I call it the clash of the worlds. Let me explain in detail. In the last decade, thanks to a liberalised economy, we have seen an unprecedented growth in the living standards of the middle and the upper middle class leading to a mass urbanisation of our habitat. This success has come at a cost but having paid the cost this stratum of the society wants to enjoy their hard earned money to the maximum extent. With banks ready to offer attractive loans, more and more people are getting sucked into a spiral of a highly consumption oriented society. However, in all the excitement there is another world at our periphery which we have completely ignored. This is the world to which the benefits of an open economy have yet to reach (inspite of whatever our economists might say about the trickle down effect).Due to rapid urbanisation we are slowly devouring their land and since no one paying attention to the rural economy they are left with little option but to head to the urban centres to seek a livelihood. And what do they find when they do end up at our doorsteps? The urban lifestyle which at first appears so  glittering and appealing from far proves to be nothing but a chimera and however hard they try, the entry doors have been firmly shut on them. They are condemned to live in another world from which they can definitely see our world with envy and frustration but can do precious little else. Each and every time they try to be a part of our world they are thrown back with such ferocity that they are scared to make any attempt in future. However, such is the imbalance between the two worlds that sooner or later there is bound to be a clash between the two and when ever that happens we are bound to see some pretty horrific incidents. (A similar theme has been wonderfully covered in Arvind Adiga’s prize winning The White Tiger) Obviously, this is not to justify these horrible acts but only an  attempt to make people realise how important it is to restore the balance between these two worlds, between the haves and the have nots . I know it would be naive to think that if we do manage to somehow address this issue   there will no longer be incidents of violent crime. There are many other reasons as well for such incidents and the perpetrators do deserve the harshest of punishment. However, to make our world a little safer, we need to prevent this clash between the two worlds for greater is the imbalance between the two more will be the probability of the two clashing which will manifest itself in some form of violence or the other.

The man who changed Bombay to Mumbai

Like many others I have also been taken by surprise at some of the tributes being showered on the late Shiv Sena supremo, Bal Thackrey making him out to be some sort of a statesman and his death a great loss to the nation. I also noticed some prominent Industrialists and Bollywood personalities taking part in his funeral. To me, however, he will always be someone who changed the cosmopolitan, outward looking, vibrant and multi-cultural city of Bombay to the bigoted, inward looking and deeply divided city of Mumbai. It has to be said that a series of terrorist acts in Bombay have played a role in this decline of the city but if there was one turning point which shook the foundation of erstwhile Bombay, it has to be riots of 92-93. Shiva Sena was at the forefront of systematic targetting of Muslims and their properties and they were openly exhorted by Bal Thackeray’s inflammatory editorials in the Sena mouthpiece ‘Samna’. The Srikrishna Commission, which enquired into the riots, clearly implicated the Shiv Sena and Bal Thackeray but it was sad to see that very few people seemed to bring this up during discussions up on the various TV channels post his death. Also, Muslims are not the only minority which have been at the receiving end of Shiv Sena since its inception in the sixties. South Indians, trade unionists, Dalits, people from Bihar/UP have all been targeted by the Shiv Sena at one time or the other. All of this in the name of ‘protecting’ the livelihood of the local Maharashtrians. But if one was to scratch a bit deep we will find that these minority groups were only being used to create a bogey to first scare and then seek retaliation from the innocent Maharashtrians, the main motive being to grab political power at whatever cost. Even when they did come to power (along with the BJP) what concrete step did he take to uplift the living standard of the common Maharashtrian? Did they open any special educational institutes for providing quality education to local Maharashtrians so that they can compete with people from other states in open competitive tests? Did they bring in any scheme to encourage entrepreneurship amongst the locals? No. The only solution they could come up was to push for reservations for the locals in competitive exams.

I am not against changing names of cities per se. After all, Madras was changed to Chennai and Calcutta is now Kolkatta. But nowhere has the implementation been done by the use of force and intimidation as was done in the case of Bombay by Shiv Sena. Any signage or usage of Bombay (however unintentional it may be) was (and still is) met with an immediate threat or intimidation by the Shiv Sena. Poor Karan Johar had to apologise to Shiv Sena for using Bombay instead of Mumbai in his movie ‘Wake up Sid’.

So, the question arises, where do we go from here? All is not lost. We still have pockets of Bombay in present day Mumbai and it is now upto the people of Mumbai to reclaim the lost glory of Bombay from these goons.But do the people still have the strength to brush aside the divisive machinations of Udhav and Raj Thackrey ? Only time will tell but I am not too optimistic about it.

What’s in a name?

                                                              With the release of his flick ‘Skyfall’ last week, James Bond has completed his cinematic journey of 50 years which started in 1962 with Dr. No. My earliest memory of a James Bond movie goes back to a suave Roger Moore in Moonraker which I saw during my school days in Chennai. Much later I saw Octupussy on television essentially because it starred two Indians, Kabir Bedi and Vijay Amritraj. From any self respecting Indian’s point of view, it is a terrible film-full of stereotypes (from fakirs to Rajas to elephants) and quite obvious that it was made primarily for a western audience. Then early this year I bought the book Quantum of Solace, the complete collection of James Bond short stories (Penguin) by Ian Fleming (who created James Bond in 1953 with the book Casino Royale) at the World Book Fair in New Delhi. It contains several stories whose titles are the same as that of some of the James Bond  movies including ‘From a View to a Kill’, ‘Quantum of Solace’, ‘The Living Daylights’, ‘For Your Eyes Only’ and ‘Octopussy’. The book was resting on my shelf amongst the huge stock of books backlogged for reading at an appropriate time (which never comes!!) but before watching ‘Skyfall’, I decided to read the short stories and also see how well they had been adapted to the big screen (from the five stories mentioned above, I have seen 'Quantum of Solace' and 'Octopussy'). Imagine my surprise when I read these two short stories and realised they had nothing in common with the movies, except the title and James Bond (and he is not even the protagonist).

In the film ‘Octopussy’, the title is taken from the name of the character played by Kristina Wayborn, a wealthy woman who leads the Octopus cult and is based out of Rajasthan in India. She switches sides towards Bond (from the exiled Afghan king, Khan who is in cahoots with a renegade Soviet general to explode a nuclear device in Europe) in the latter half of the movie and helps him to destroy the king’s palace in India. The short story from which the title has been taken could not be more different. The main protagonist of the story is Major Dexter Smythe who enjoys a retired life in Jamaica till one day James Bond is sent to bring him in because of a wrongdoing by the major, many years earlier when he was working for the secret services section in-charge of cleaning up the German hideouts at the end of the war. The major stays in a villa on the beach in Jamaica, and over a period of time, becomes very fond of the fish in the sea including an octopus whom he feeds lumps of raw meat. To understand what happens after Bond’s arrival and what role does that particular octopus play subsequently, you will have to read the story which has quite a bizarre ending and absolutely nothing in common with the movie having the same title.

In the short story titled Quantum of Solace the protagonist is Philip Masters or rather his wife Rhoda Llewellyn, a former air-hostess. The story of their marriage and subsequent separation (which forms a major chunk of the story) is narrated to James Bond by the colony Governor one night after dinner. The Governor coins the term ‘Law of the Quantum of Solace’ while explaining the deterioration in the relationship between Philip and his wife. There is a small twist in the end of the story but again it has got nothing to do with Bond who is merely a listener in what is essentially a love story (read it and judge for yourself!)

The movie ‘Quantum of Solace’ has been shot as a sequel to ‘Casino Royale’ (in which Daniel Craig made his debut as James Bond) and finds James Bond trying to bust a secret organisation called Quantum whom he holds responsible for the death of his love, Vesper Lynd and battles a businessman Dominic Greene (a member of Quantum organisation) who is planning a coup d'état in Bolivia. Again no similarity with the short story.

I am sure that same is the case with the other three short stories in the collection.So then why was the title of these short stories given to these movies even though there is not even a semblance of similarity between the story and the movie. I do not think that many James Bond movie fans recall or have read any of Ian Fleming’s James Bond stories (who died in 1964) and am sure they could have found a better sounding name than 'Quantum of Solace'! My guess is that by using the film title from Fleming’s short stories they are paying tribute to the creator of one of the most iconic characters of our times and at the same time attempting to maintain a link with the originals stories.  

Forgotten partnership

I have been reading a lot of obituaries of the well known producer-director Yash Chopra whose sudden death on October 21^st came as a shock to many as he seemed to be in good health just a month earlier when his 80^th birthday (on 27^th September) was celebrated with much fanfare in Bollywood, including a one to one session with one of his favourite actors, Shah Rukh Khan. However I found it sad that none of the journals/newspapers/web-sites seemed to remember or mention the strong relationship which Yash Chopra had with the doyen of Hindustani film lyrics – Sahir Ludhianvi till Sahir’s death in 1981.

Before embarking on his own with Daag in 1973, Yash Chopra used to produce films jointly with his elder brother  B.R. Chopra (under the banner, B.R Films) and together they gave us some great ‘socials’ like Dhool ka Phool, Dharamputra and Waqt. Sahir was the de facto song writer for the brothers he gave some memorable songs for these films-Tu Hindu banega na Musalman banega , Tere pyaar ka aasra chahata hun (Dhool ka Phool), Main Jab Bhi Akeli Hoti Hoon (Dhramputra), Ai meri zohrajabeen and the prophetic Aage bhi jaane na tu (Waqt).

When Yash Chopra decided to direct his first home production, Daag (Under Yash Raj films), the obvious choice for writing the songs was Sahir and he did not dissapoint.The movie’s music was a big hit with songs like Mere dil mein aaj kya hai and Jab bhi jee chahe. Sahir continued to write for all films directed by Yash Chopra subsequently –Joshila, Deewar, Kabhie Kabhie, Trishul and Kaala Pathar till his tragic death in 1981. Most of these movies like Deewar went on to cement Amitabh’s reputation as the angry young man and the soundtrack of these films (which was excellent otherwise) got overshadowed by the towering phenomenon of Amitabh. However, one movie which stands out mostly on the strength of its songs is Kabhie Kabhie which remained one of Yash Chopra’s personal favourites. The story itself was partly inspired by Sahir’s life (who had an affair with Punjabi poet Amrita Pritam but could not marry her because of her family’s reservation regarding his religion). The title song of the film Kabhi Kabhie mere dil mein khayal aata hai was adapted for the film by Sahir from one of his poems from his collection –Talkhiyan published in 40s. Amitabh essayed the role of a poet and Rakhee, his college sweetheart who subsequently gets married to Shashi Kapoor under parental pressure. The combination of Khayyam’s excellent music and Sahir’s powerful lyrics gave us one of the best soundtracks of Hindustani films. Also Amitabhs’ soliloquy - Kabhie Kabhie in his baritone voice remains unforgettable.

Yash was a fan of Sahir’s poetry even in his college days and used to carry a copy of Sahir’s poems with him. When he came to Mumbai to join his elder brother B.R. Chopra (for whose films Sahir was already writing songs), the first person he wanted to meet from the industry was Sahir. Before his marriage, Yash used to stay close to Sahir’s residence and they became good friends. Sahir was not an easy person to get along with but such was their friendship that Yash Chopra would change the music director as per Sahir’s likes and dislikes. Yash Chopra always wanted to work with S.D Burman but since Sahir had fallen out with S.D Burman post Pyaasa, the three of them could never work together.

Being a huge fan of Sahir, I once toyed with the idea of interviewing Yash Chopra regarding his relation with Sahir. I did make some feeble attempts to get in touch with him without any success. Looking at his excellent health I thought I had enough leeway to meet him and record the interview. Unfortunately, waqt proved otherwise.

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Despair

One time I found myself in despair was in 2005 when I was asked to leave the company I had joined only 4 months back. Looking back now it was a wrong decision on my part to join that company (one man show or what we normally refer to as a 'lala' company) but I guess that time it was my immaturity that forced me to quit a decent job over a heated argument with my superior and take up a new job without really finding out much in detail about the company I was going to join.

Since the termination came so quietly and suddenly one cold winter evening in Noida, it took some time for the same to sink in. After crossing the toll gate on DND I halted my car on one side and started thinking how I was going to break the news to my wife, my ageing father and to the rest to the family and friends. Don't know how much time elapsed before the DND patrol car forced me to carry my thoughts home. My wife quite understood but it was tough on my retired father for whom an employee getting sacked was a new and hard to comprehend phenomenon.

The next six months were spent in doing the rounds of placement agencies, scanning job sites and newspapers , appearing for interviews and keeping myself  motivated to do all those activities day after day. Ultimately with no success coming my way and the meagre resources fast depleting, I seriously started considering taking up a job in a call centre / going to my cousin in Dubai to try my luck there. Eventually fate decided to reimburse me for all the hard work put in and on one fine day I ended up with not one but two appointment letters in my hand. Obviously being in no position to negotiate on the remuneration front, I accepted the better of the two offers but it surely felt good to be back in business again.

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