The charge of the intolerance brigade

It is open season for intolerance in India. The way this word has been bandied around in the recent months, it seems like it is something readily tangible enough to be felt with the hand. Or smell it in the air at the very least. A dark cloud hanging over the land, casting a shadow of intolerance when it is not raining down hate and drowning an individual's freedom of expression.

Going by the orchestra, led from the front by the Delhi gangsters - the Gandhis and the rest of the congress whos-whos, fanned by an indulgent media, ably supported by the dazzling Mumbai Khans to the shrill accompaniment of the award returning intelligentsia, it truly does appear that India, the once shining beacon of tolerance, the fountainhead of secular ideals and the abode of freedom of expression is under attack from a particularly violent monster.

Intolerance has always been around. As a phenomenon, it is not unique to India nor has it gone up since the change in Government in 2014. I'm no historian but I'm willing to wager that there has been a steady, healthy level of intolerance maintained and handed down the ages. And that must be true to every nation, region and culture on God's earth. Opposition to the other voice/school of thought/faith is carved into the human DNA.

Intolerance is not an issue to me, the average, law abiding, tax paying, vote-casting citizen. I have been inured to it in one way or the other in most aspects of daily life. To the middle class, of which I'm an (Adhaar) card carrying member, freedom of expression has always come with the fear of retribution from the powers that be. Being at the receiving end of intolerance - be it at an individual or institutional scale - has been a way of life. The vast majority sheds no tears over stymied voices.

Who does this intolerant climate really affect?

Let's examine the shriller voices from the intolerance bandwagon that have willingly adopted the orphan child that intolerance till recently was. Ms. Nayantara "Nobody" Sehgal. A clutch of nondescript Sahitya Akademi awardees. Sharukh Khan. Amir Khan. And now P Chidambaram - our very own Einstein in a dhoti. In other words, the fear of intolerance and illiberalism has gripped only the cream of the cream. The top half a percent that are differently enraged compared to the common lot.

Assuming for argument's sake that this is indeed true - that India has indeed become what they say it has - this could percolate down and become an issue to me if the afflicted elite group had been the true voice of the masses, echoing our concerns, fears and aspirations loudly along the corridors of power. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't remember any of the Khans or the Nayantara Sehgals taking up the cudgels on key issues at any point in time on a similar scale as now. Nor has this group criticized the government (of any flavor) on policies all these years as eloquently or loudly as they do so now. And please let us not talk about Satyamev Jayate here. Or PC's track record outside of spouting Thirukkurals during the presentation of the annual budget. It is really sad when artistes start taking themselves too seriously. Page 3 spilling over to page 1 doesn't come to any good. How do I know? I come from Tamil Nadu where the path to power starts from the movie studios.

So what has happened that justifies this sudden, overnight groundswell in the intolerance brigade? Ah, the change in government. Silly me! There is a different cook in the kitchen and the soup tastes funny now. The way I see it, the elite have developed a taste for a particular flavor of secularism and tolerance. One that has routinely turned a blind eye towards most things inconvenient all along. One that was quick to announce that "terror has no religion" every time a radicalized peace lover blew up innocent lives. A brand of secularism that insisted on handling with kid gloves a particular group of the population with an eye on future elections. One that conveniently swept provocation under the carpet and focused only on the reactions. One that believed in falling trees shaking the earth underneath. But alas, we live in a democracy which sometimes serves surprises when one least expects it. And the elections of 2014 turned out to be one such occasion.The biggest intolerance that I can sense is the one towards the current government. A democratically elected one with a sound mandate.

The murmurs of restlessness arising from a pampered group that happens to suffer from withdrawal symptoms having been rudely weaned from a life of being close to the seat of power. This, in my humble opinion, is what is happening. Now that it has gained enough critical mass, this river of intolerance will ebb and flow right through to 2019. Till then, I'm using my Bose noise cancelling headphones. 

The commute Part II - The Pallavan Years

This is a series documenting my many commutes. Here is the first part. Reading that is not going to make this any less painful. Even I would recommend watching paint dry as a better entertainment option. But since you have decided to waste your time here, you might as well get some context and do it in a sequence.

Muthu rickshaw-kaar's demise pitchforked us into the world of commuting by public transport rather unceremoniously. I think I would have been in class V or VI when it happened. That quirky age where you aren't quite a kid but definitely not the grown up yet. Overnight we were in limbo. It was quickly decided that we would take the bus as we were definitely too young to cycle to school in T Nagar traffic. Same home, same school and the same distance but we were introduced to the parallel universe of the bus commuters.

T Nagar to Valluvar Kottam on Pallavan presented us with three options: Route nos 9, 10 and 26. Appa advised us against trying the forbidden fruits of the 47 series buses that could have been a tad quicker but definitely much much more crowded by the time they were in T Nagar. Instead he bade us to take the ones that started out from T Nagar which meant that if we timed our departure from home, we could even get a seat. 

Buses for routes 9 and 10 used to be parked on a side street by the main bus terminus premises. Route 9 - T Nagar to Parrys Corner - wasn't a bad option: they plied on Thyagaraya Road (through Pondy Bazaar), made a left on Nair Road at Holy Angels and went straight through to Thirumalai Pillai Road to our school. Route 10 - T Nagar to Parrys Corner (via Hell), by comparison, was truly a headache. Not only did they have TATA buses which were inferior to the Leylands, (Driver abuse a constant, the Leylands somehow managed to age much better than the rattling Tatas.) but right after Panagal Park, this bus would take us past Ramakrishna School on Venkatanarayana Road on a detour through Boag Road and Maloney Road, serving hitherto unknown parts of T Nagar and thus wasting precious minutes. We always boarded a Route 10 bus with a bad feeling and it never disappointed us. 

Route 26 - T Nagar to ICF, the third option, was easily the best. Route 26 was the poor, country cousin of the more prestigious routes plying to ICF like the long-haul 47A. But it had the best drivers and conductors of the three routes. One of the conductors spoke in chaste Tamil and surprised me one day with clean English too. And the driver that he usually accompanied was a gentleman by PTC standards and never swore. But the cherry on top was the fact that this took the shortest route of the three: Panagal Park and straight through the shaded G N Chetty Road to Vani Mahal, left on Thirumalai Pillai Road and onwards to our school, bypassing the early morning Pondy Bazaar traffic altogether. But the frequency was low and the timings weren't quite convenient. But if we did end up taking 26 on a morning, we would be sure that there wouldn't be a late marking on our diary that day.

The world of bus travel truly was educative. First off, it taught us the value of time. How, together with time and tide, PTC buses waited for no man or a kid running late. Quite unlike Muthu rickshaw-kaar who only used to clang his bell if we delayed him but never actually left without us. Then came the art of managing the fellow commuters who made it clear to us that we - the school going future of the society - were truly a menace. If their looks could kill, there wouldn't be a guy typing this drivel out. Not without reason though. For we used to carry heavy bags loaded with books and notebooks that recorded our educational transactions. Oh and also a lunch basket. And the adults those days thought that a seat was truly wasted if only a kid was seated on it. They would always ask us to "adjust" which meant that two and a half men would have to hang from a seat meant for two. Again, I don't remember being sandwiched between creeps. Just the garden variety, annoyed office goers. Then there were the mornings when we would doze off on the bus. If we happened to do that while sitting, there would be more than one passenger that was standing nearby willing to call us out as unworthy of being students and how we had shamed Indian culture.

Then there was the art of getting your "pass" - the monthly season ticket - either punched or ticked by the conductor. For some reason, many conductors staunchly believed that it was beneath them to do this part of their duties and would ask us to do it ourselves. Good luck fishing out your pencil box from the depths of your schoolbag to get out a pen with curses raining all around! Good times. On more than one occasion, I have intentionally not checked it in the morning (and evening) and saved bus fare on later evening trips on that route. Yes, I'm evil, so shoot me. The Tamil Nadu Govt, sensing our troubles, then introduced the "free pass" wherein we were issued a photo ID that we had to carry and produce on demand by either the conductor or the ticket checker. On the flip side, the annoyed passengers had one more reason to be enraged by our presence on a seat: free boarders. As I said, good times.

No story on a Chennai bus commute can be complete without a mention of the ladies special. When we were still in T Nagar, we were pre-teens and it was acceptable for two boys to board a ladies special service. After all, we had neatly parted oiled hair and vibhoothi on the forehead to vouch for our character. Although this was a big deal - less crowded and hence possibility of scoring a seat went up a notch, and fewer swear words used by the conductors and drivers (not that it bothered us one way or the other) - I was somehow totally uncomfortable by the whole idea of traveling in a bus reserved for the opposite sex. Did it make me feel any less manly than my pre-teen self felt entitled to? Was it my lack of interaction with girls of our age that made me feel awkward? I can't tell. But I remember becoming totally self conscious as soon as I boarded and would head right to the front of the bus to occupy the space by the engine and the driver. For some reason that seemed to help my situation. But these rights were taken away after we moved to Adayar and I was officially a teen. That meant wearing pants and that was the act of crossing the threshold for admission. There have been days when we were running late when I would strategically wear my uniform shorts (instead of full trousers as mandated by the school) to allow myself to board these buses together with my brother who still enjoyed the benefits of being a pre-teen. Since I was a late bloomer and also vertically challenged at that time, my costume didn't raise too many questions at school apart from the usual teasing from friends that lived within a mile from the school.

Once we moved to Adayar, we had to take the 47 series of buses that were until then forbidden. There was the workhorse 47A (Besant Nagar to ICF). But the excalibur was the 47V (Thiruvanmiyur to Ambathur OT) - a limited stop service that truly did shrink the distance from the southern suburbs to the western industrial badlands of Chennai. But it would be inappropriate to not mention 47G (Besant Nagar to Korattur) that was right inbetween the other two. The one small problem was that many of these buses skipped our school stop, which was a minor one, and would only stop at Valluvar Kottam - a few blocks away. We had to walk all the way back and more importantly, we had to cross Kodambakkam High Road which was nearly impossible in the mornings. So we would get down when the bus stopped at the red light at that intersection and save ourselves many precious minutes. Besides the risk involved in this method, there was another issue. A couple of members of the faculty - my math teacher Mrs. MS (who traveled from Thiruvanmiyur) and Geography teacher Mrs. H (from Besant Nagar) - traveled on these routes. Since they faced the same issue, they would also alight at the signal. Although two athletic boys were any day more suited to pull this stunt off smoothly than two saree-clad ladies in their middle ages, they were adults and more importantly teachers. And I was in both their classes! There was always the risk of our stunts reaching the ears of the school principal. But as members of the bus commuting fraternity, there was an immediate kinship established: the Pallavan ring of trust, so to speak. Honor among thieves. Omerta. They never once complained about us to the school management and would even help us get to the sidewalk safely right after we got off at the red light.

After a couple of years of doing this, we changed schools and entered the world of pedaling to school. Through the verdant IIT Madras campus roads. Will be back with more of that. 

Thoughts on Thoongavanam

Through the 90s and even the early 2000s, a Kamal Hassan movie brought with it big expectations for me. Though that has faded significantly in the recent years, I still keep my eyes and ears open whenever his movie comes out. So when a friend of mine reserved tickets for Thoongavanam, it was showtime.

For starters, I went in with a clean slate in that I hadn't (still haven't) watched Sleepless Night, the original movie that this is based off. And given his recent movies, most of which I have sidestepped, seem to be fanning his already big ego, I kept expectations to the very minimum. Kamal the actor in the hands of good directors was definitely watchable. But Kamal the philosopher-director-preacher working with his usual suspects? I'll pass. Actors starting to take themselves seriously leaves such a bad taste. I'm looking at you Amir Khan and Sharukh Khan.

This is a suspense thriller involving good cops, bad cops, drugs (and flour) and drug lords. At the center of it all is a kidnapping which basically drives all the action. After watching this movie, two questions crop up in my mind. Why Sleepless Night? I'm not sure why this movie needed to be remade in Tamil. I mean what was so inspirational from the original to warrant a remake? Second question: Why cast Kamal Hassan? I don't believe this movie required Kamal. Period. The very fact that most of the movie happens in one night took the wind out of the sail since this severely limited the scope of acting that an actor like Kamal is (still) capable of.

Since I don't have the chops to do an insightful review, here are some quick thoughts thrown in in no particular order.

1. The movie should have been made like a 60-m dash but felt more like a 800m race. It was at least 30 minutes too long. One part slack editing and one part stretched out screenplay made it sag through many sections losing to impose a sense of anticipation.

2. Kamal's persona and the concomitant quirks burden the movie on many occasions. Some of them have been shoehorned in to the narration which adds to the sag.

3. Perhaps it was the make up to suit the role she was playing or I need to visit the eye doctor. Trisha looked pretty at the audio launch event but looked ...err...manly? in the movie. While on Trisha, what was with her Tamil and dialog delivery? Sounded like a female robot.

4. This movie required a serious villain to maintain the pressure. (Note, I haven't watched the original and not sure if this is a faithful reproduction) Prakash Raj, who must be on Raj Kamal International's speed dial, dumbed this role down with out of place comedy. In my opinion, Sampath, the other minor villain, would have been a better choice.

5. Hot nurses? In discotheques? Generously locking lips with strangers? Happens only in movies. I mean in Kamal movies. If on the other hand, that girl is really a nurse in some hospital, someone please break my left, small toe nail right now!

6. Too many actors have been thrown in to the mix but end up playing little, blink and you miss type roles. It turned out to be a distraction to me.

7. The kid was really cute and cracks the most genuine joke towards the very end.

An OK film. Definitely no edge of the seat stuff in what should have been a taut thriller. And there is a giant Kamal cloud hanging over it.

I expected to watch a thriller with KH in it. But make no mistake, this is a Kamal movie with a few thrills patched on.