Finally made it to Jawan after SRK announced BOGO offer. What a Masala Express it was!
Jawan worked well for many reasons, the main reasons being its Multiple SRKs, each coming in different avatars. Jawan is a Jack in the Box puzzle of peeling an SRK only to find another SRK to be peeled, and he keeps on coming like matrix Army, in different variations and modulations. Even the antagonist VJS plays around with Red and Blue pill like Morpheus, when we are struggling to buy expensive Popcorn to keep the excited Kids pacified, making me wonder about Birth control Pill.
SRK is the USP of this film. If you missed his teddy Bear avatar, we get a sweet cuddling SRK. If you want more of his Pathaan, you get a Baldie who sounds more like Anniyan Vikram instantly changing his tone and tenor with his each dialogue delivery, from a caring citizen to Lover to Fatherly nurturer of his team, a Three-in-One Guy. If you wanted SRK for real, getting himself promoted to Mufasa from Simba, you got a stylish Oldie, who plays things subtle like a Hollywood Hero but still evokes awe with his macho mannerisms and stunts. So, for every Hundred Crore invested in the Movie you get a SRK, like failsafe Load balancers. You also get a Divine SRK as Disaster recovery Bonus wondering – “Who Am I?” A Super Star who rested enough and now on a rampage on Silver screens, treating us with satisfactory mini vacation.
From his opening line (“who am I?”), Khan draws us into wondering what relation the bandaged warrior liberating a village in a prologue has to the gruff baldie laying siege to Mumbai’s metro, and the prison warden clinging to a second chance at love. A one-man Cloud Atlas, Jawan is a puzzle movie where the star proves the puzzle; it’s a great showcase for Khan to play everything under the sun: godly badass, dandyish army vet, total sweetheart with a prospective stepdaughter. There’s ego involved, undeniably, but few stars in any cinema could model such radically diverse hats with this much flair. – Guardian
In fact SRK had so many avatars, my Kids got so confused that they took a selfie with Manish Malhotra cutout at Multiplex, after the movie. When asked why… they said it was the SRK who comes off after removing the Mask. Maybe it’s due to too much Popcorn as my Kid thinks Theatre is some kind of Hotel without a dining table, finally chiding me – for spilling so much popcorn, like a kid, once lights come up. But also thanks to too much de-aging Makeup / Technology which made young SRK look like Robot Rajinikanth. I am someone who always liked SRK for all his graceful Dil Se-ish wrinkles. Other than this episode it’s very difficult to point out any issues with this well polished Pot boiler.
The Movie looked like Atlee had a dream as an Editor of many Tamil movies and Hollywood references. Well, that’s his USP. If anyone mocks him about copying his inspirations, how would you explain Jailer and Vikram share the same story and still become blockbusters. Coincidence? or Just we don’t know the “History of source”. At least Atlee is copying references from many films.
The worldwide Movie Industry is becoming a Comic Book Theme park of Sorts as rightly lamented by Scorcese. I would not be surprised if the Multiplexes started attaching Vibrators in our seat to add yet another dimension to our adventure ride. For a change the movie looked more like Shankar’s rather Atlee’s with rich and unique action set pieces and the story on a Nation-wide big canvas. The way he has skillfully made a collage of so many narratives, acts as testament to his skills of getting disparate things together, like a Movie Integration Engineer. You may Mock Atlee or Admire Atlee but you cannot ignore him for the decade to come.
It’s good. But, What could have been better?
To improve Atlee’s career span for few more decades, Atlee could work on Original / improvised screenplay at least for every alternate ten minutes rather reminding us of all movies we have watched. It actually spoils his own meticulous craft of weaving a compelling emotional wholesome narrative, not many Directors of his generation could master. Every new Wave Director excels on a field like black comedy or action, but seems like failure on other Departments. Atlee is a rare Bull’s eye hitter, extracting the exact emotion as required. As an use case, I liked the portrayal of a lethal villain with Bane Mask and a Cheetah, conveying the deadliness in a shot. Money heist pulled off a perfect heist when it comes to such creativity with Masks. They just improvised on Guy Fawkes mask to an artistic form which become a statement by itself rather being a cheap copy.
The screenplay comes down as an abrupt jigsaw puzzle slowly unraveling by itself. But we have seen better Saviour dramas even from his Master Shankar himself, where we get intelligent cat and mouse chase and the flashbacks gets unravelled by the Chaser rather by simple cuts and edits. In Jawan such surprise elements comes sparingly with the narrative getting rescued by stunning action sequences and inimitable SRK.
The flashbacks are intense especially the Farmer’s plight and depressing Hospital scene. But the entire set up especially the Jail sounds like a Barbie land, without any realistic flavour. Shankar always keeps his set pieces very close to reality, which helps us gel with the screen. The puzzle does not connect all the Justice redemption flashbacks to the Protagonist well. Ramana did a very good job on this aspect where the logic was lucid enough and the investigation was also kept interesting slowly unraveling the core plot, with the direct involvement of the Protagonist at all occasions. The screenplay is just not fluid as it has too many stories to tell. Maybe Atlee needs to be a “Gentleman” Screenplay writer for cracking such saviour templates, as it does a beautiful presentation of the Jack in the Box storyline, slowly unraveling the Protagonist with the help of Investigator, in a believable make-believe world and at the same time larger than life on the slowly expanding big picture scenario, upgrading its extravagance rather just being an embellishment. Maybe there could have been better emotional investment for the supporting Characters, rather acting like screen cosmetic.
Is Jawan a Propaganda Movie?
Now there are lots of debate about what SRK endorses with this movie. There was even a Smart Alec Op-Ed on how SRK smartly milked up all sections of People and Parties with his commercial potboiler. To me, cinema itself is a mind(less) magic show fooling people with its antics or at the worst could be scam with badass aspirational intentions of hollow Stars dreaming to become haloed CMs or political encashment, by creating a positive mental imprint at our own cost. In Tamil we call as Sontha Selavula Sooniyam – Inviting Maleficent’s Black magic at our own call.
For example, I have cherished a Saviour Drama from Shankar – Gentleman which portrays the evils of quota system and how poor Brahmins are denied their opportunities, exposing the cleavages in the society with the help of lot of female cleavages and double entendres. Same Shankar is yet to come up exposing with the cleavages on evils of EWS Quota. So, Cinema could be just a visual social commentary at it’s best. Nothing changes except for a public mental imprint on the state of affairs. But Shankar is genuine master masala blender without any political aspirations, leveraging social issues for a mass connect as it glues everyone of us with a common concern.
Nasruddin and his wife lived in a small house and shared a small bed; they had just a single pillow.
One night Nasruddin’s head itched so badly that the itchy feeling woke him up. He scratched and scratched, but it didn’t do any good. “What an itch!” he thought to himself.
Then his wife yelled, “Stop scratching my head! I’m trying to sleep.”
“My apologies, dearest,” said Nasruddin. “Go back to sleep.”
Nasruddin then felt around until he found his own head.
“Ah,” he said to himself, happily scratching the itch. “That explains it. I was scratching the wrong head.”
The above story is dedicated to Quota Directors with a social message scratching others head to cure their own itch. But, the real damage to Tamilians’ psyche happens with movie stars acting like prospective CMs in real life by playing larger than life role in movies, trying to create a make-believe world that they can rule the world. Indian cinema in such cases could be the height of deceptive entertainment, if you don’t count the Political theater, playing on our minds like a Piano, slowly and gradually creating an alternate universe in our own mind, when the reality could be totally different and unpalatable. Modi is just replicating that “Pompous Popcorn act” well outside Cinema theaters and very well aware of its mass psychology swaying potential.
Dare hue log aksar alfazon ke peeche chupte hai. (Means) People who are scared often hide behind words
SRK in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil Movie
One Nation… One Movie… Mera Desh Chala raha hai!
More than anyone else Modi deserves an Oscar for running a compelling Show on National level canvas. Don Ko Pakadna Mushkil Hi Nahi… Namumkin Hai just became Modi Hai Toh Mumkin Hai. Movie’s teasers are replaced with Demonetisation and Midnight GST, with the screwed up public, scratching their heads, wondering – “Picture abhi baaki hai?” on how to handle this New India Tughlaq Sultan’s eccentricities. Audio launch happens with every state or Panchayat or Ward election where Modi speaks what people want to hear while doing what Adani likes. Mass moments happen with the help of Delhi Police arresting Modi critics for every silly reason one could imagine. Emotional moments with Bulldozers and engineered riots. Apart from this, bloody comic relief is handled with aplomb by Fringe outfits, Pragyas and Bidhuris. There are no antagonists to this story as Modi doesn’t like anyone else hogging camera space. Even if someone gotta fight him, he just fights in air – Mann ki Baat Mukt Bharat. Only guest appearances are allowed for World Leaders to create RajaBabu movie type photo lineups, where Modi guides them… to Dinner table. Overall, It’s a complete Paisa vasool propaganda sucking the taxes from public. Nobody could beat that.
Call him shahenshah ka shahenshah or Lol-lapalooza of entertainment, Modi is so much of an occupant of our Mindspace, like Israel occupying Palestine forcefully, Tamil Meme Makers have rendered all super hits in Modiji’s voice using AI, making a navarasa movie of it. No wonder Modi supports crazy atrocious, his unethical spy partner Israel, flipping India’s historical support to Palestine, instead of targeting Hamas, and Israel going greedy to capture Gaza making use of the crisis situation.
While Hamas is brutally keeping the war alive with the initial provoking, it’s now Israel’s Jews who always aspired for world domination through intelligence, irrespective of their own allies’ history of brutally crushing them in the past, now joining the same aggressors, showing their inhuman side to the poor Palestinians. If the “forever fighting race” in History, who have always exhibited tenacity, finding a way to win, but make it short lived victory with meaningless aggression, are calling themselves children of Light, they should have ideally lit a candle of Peace rather firing rockets pounding Gaza.
It’s sad, the Children of Light could not even rebuild their own temple even after stealing 91% of Palestine, even after amassing enough clout and resources to kill a certain race, with the help of the same ones who killed their own ancestors in their bitter past. For Israel, the lessons learnt from history is always Zero. They have always chosen to the intelligently vicious Path of backstabbing and betrayal creating a roadmap for self-destruction. Sincerely wish they adopt the Truth and Diplomacy mode which has always helped them in their past to be at peace with Arabs.
If Obama could erase Osama with a clean strike and nil casualties to the Public, Biden seems to be mimicking Toxic texan Bush, addicted to fireworks, singing forgotten hymns on the Mighty USA currently suffering from inferiority complex doubtful of its Big Brother / Bully status, who could only prove it’s supremacy to the world by killing innocent People around. It’s just wicked mockery – USA condemning Gaza Hospital attack, when the Gaza is dying a slow death with Israel’s ‘Method in Madness’ siege amounting to genocidal ethnic cleansing. If at all war happens at different places in Ukraine, Palestine, Taiwan etc, China will be the ultimate Winner riding from Chaos, toppling the World’s Supremacy Order. US might be already sensing its waning influence with Ukraine crisis and now at Gaza, for its stupid doublespeak fighting the occupiers of Ukraine and shamelessly supporting the bloodthirsty occupiers of Gaza.
Enjoy! Soothe your monstrous suffering inflicted by Modi with Modi’s melodies, the snake venom which could be both PR Poison and laughter Medicine. PS: The Video has been removed now. But search for AI Modi to have Fun.
Back to Movies.. Personally, I would happily listen to any genuine Movie crew without any selfish / political aspirations whole heartedly. But only time will tell their truth. Just a Jolly good Quote below, from brilliant Shankar to wrap this social messaging charade.
Journalist: Can anyone kill just for this?
Ramanujam ‘Ambi’ Iyengar: [as Anniyan] Do you do this out of the confidence that no one will kill you?
Journalist: Such a large punishment for such a small sin?
Ramanujam ‘Ambi’ Iyengar: [as anniyan] As if sin come like vest, in small, medium, large, extra large, sizes?
Anniyan Movie
[ Update 5th October 2023
Initially kept the above quote for fun on how social message films manipulate our emotions with ridiculous justifications. But looks like we got “Political Anniyans” in real life too, who can’t bear even a Mini-Kerchief size criticism from Journalists, when they just quoted the reality that, the Emperor got no clothes. Modi obviously should be ashamed of himself and course correct, rather getting offended on a piece of Opinion or media coverage.
Around 2019, Modi got his robust image where “Modi hai toh Mumkin hai!” got oomph factor with a tinge of reality, pulling out sick rabbits out of hat like Demon / GST. I don’t know if ten years of power makes people arrogant habituated to unquestioned subservience from the executive and from other pillars, that they go full throttle oppressing everyone around, making Jokers out of themselves. New India is going through “Dark Room” episode, a boogeyman, teachers use to control unruly Kids. But it got its own validity. They can’t keep going on that lie and it works till kids are ignorant and they start laughing at them upon maturity.
By 2023 end, BJP has successfully achieved the expiry of “Dark Emergency” scenario where none are going to fear Mo-Sha. They have maxed out the fear factor and if they overdo it, they will end up creating situations like uncontrollable Manipur / Kashmir crisis. If they dream on derivative positives like after effects of such Polarisation, it’s going to work out like reverse mandal Politics, where BJP is losing sleep to counter and still clueless as pathetic campaign weeps from Modi is sticking to the public mindspace. RG cracked it with a very simple code, Quota will be proportional to the demographics, irrespective of caste or religion.
There existed a good chance of Mo-Sha duo coming back after 2024, as INDIA alliance is a Juggernaut pulled from all sides and elected power only spoils / corrupts them further aggravating their selfish egoes. By burning all bridges with ED / IT / Intelligence fireworks – be it Executive, Judiciary, Honest Media and Public, Mo-Sha is entering their own “Political Death Well”, going nowhere but on a downward spiral. Sadly, Modi is just entering the Phase of “Modi hai toh Nothing hai!”. Personally, I will miss Modi’s decisiveness, energy and efficiency on rolling out schemes, however useless and backfiring they are. It is sick fun so far.
Kabhi kabhi jeetne ke liye kuch haarna padta hai….aur haar kar jeetne wale ko baazigar kehte hain” (Sometimes to win you must also be prepared to lose ….and the one who ends up winning the end game is called a Baazigar)
Baazigar Movie.
]
Propaganda and Atma Nirbhar Theater
Of late, Some Political Parties have taken Cinema too seriously investing a lot of money on Propaganda movies, so as to instill a fake pride, burning their own fingers and crony money, crying Mera Crony Money Jal raha Hai! They believe Rang De Basanti type movies helped them create unrest among masses. They could be right then, but currently, we don’t have a situation where a movie could make or break political situations. Earlier, we had an engaging government providing RTI and other schemes where People felt a sense of belonging believing they will also find a way out of corruption, along with their new found hope and prosperity. Now we have a situation of peeing ourselves on our own “prosperity” by voting ludicrously..
“We have one leg in the past and one leg in the future … that’s why we’re peeing on the present.”
Rang De Basanti Movie
The reasons why movies are just movies in Amrit kaal being… Firstly, People are immune to such silver screen emotional arousals nowadays, as Bollywood lost its respect with attacks from the very side it promoted once. The Social media generation, apart from creating memes to make fun of things around, are fighting for their own survival tackling Inflation and unemployment. If at all you think bad of Government we got it’s Master who will increase fuel price. If you still crib, LPG price will be increased. If Farmers crib on Crony friendly Farm laws, our usual Villains Onion, Pulses and Tomato will become costly helping out the “New India Hero Crony Billionaire Middlemen” to stock them up and inflate the prices. After all these blows, you might have forgot why you started cribbing. But the empty-purse-pain still exists. Sometimes, the best way to lessen pain is just don’t focus on the pain and start playing Tic-Tac-Toe with Bharat or India coins, a country naming game as if our country is someone’s pet puppy or watch Movies like One Nation-Gaddar election-One Begging Bowl. Essentially, every citizen is playing survival chess with the well oiled Mighty Government Machine powered by Crony electoral bonds working with full strength when he just gets a Pawn to his side to play. Purse-Mate!
“On this side of the college gate we make life to dance … and on the other side of the gate life makes us dance”
Rang De Basanti Movie
Secondly, People are kept busy by the Government engagements with Aadhaar PAN Ration linking exercises or Clean India initiatives creating a psychological Master-Slave behaviour edging on Stockholm syndrome. From UPA’s citizen empowerment era we are now reduced to Kartavya-era, reducing ourselves to no-questions-asked-duty-bound-slaves till we reach Amrit Kaal in 2047, that is… if we are alive to realise the Amrit/Vish-kaal truth then.
“Even now whose blood doesn’t boil, then that blood is water … the youth who doesn’t serve the country is a waste.”
Rang De Basanti Movie
Thirdly, Leaders across spectrum who act as catalysts for Movements and Protests, fondly called as Urban naxals by our Dear Leader, are caught in fear psychosis of enforcement and Law agencies. The Law Enforcement Agencies evidently even plant evidence in Laptops using Israeli Spywares. On an insignificant bit, even so called socially conscious Shankar’s Gamechanger movie, discussing about Indian Polls got silently postponed to sneakily appear only after the 2024 Polls. Gear up yourselves for a movie “bravely” talking about necessary Poll reforms, but only after the election gets over, obviously does not want to be a real game changer but more of a Dummy one cashing on mass connect with ex-voters. Enjoy your Political cold popcorn then. Remember “Sunil, Your Din is getting cold!” from Sunil Gavaskar’s Boss?
“Here you try to change the system and the system changes you.”
Rang De Basanti Movie
Fourthly, Most people are blissfully ignorant of who is looting them with taxes and stealing National assets, without realising they are in much worse situation than before, as they only hear sensational synthetic headlines like Cricketers’ BCCI antics / Chest thumping G20 Vishwamitra comedy enacting Mossad type dirty works, powered by Whatsapp University courses. Majority of people might even assume that such Farmer plight and poor hospital conditions portrayed in Jawan existed a decade back and they are now in Singapore, unless otherwise BJP exposes themselves by making a lot of fuss around Jawan / Dunki. BJP is acting tax thief for long and they know how to react when the scorpion bites, at work. So, In this fascist world, we are kept happy and proud, entertained by the Government at least until we feel hungry. If we are hungry, fascist Government usually ask us to just fry pakoras or just die silently… Shhhh… no dissent please…
“To the millions who have to go without two meals a day… God can only appear as bread”
Mahatma Gandhi as Quoted by MS Swaminathan
Lastly, nobody goes to a movie shelling out thousands just for a social message which could be read cheaply in twitter (not X) or Whatsapp. I don’t think anybody reads these loong blabber logs.
These people don’t fear death. Ajay used to say “Let death come… Anything for the country”
Rang De Basanti Movie
The below story is dedicated to our Nationalist Heroes with foreign citizenship and Agnihotris suffering with (P)Files problems, who got a knack of creating an unrestive narrative out of nothing and make a living out of it.
ModduNasruddin and his wife awoke to the sound of men quarreling outside. The shouting got louder and louder.
“I’ll go see what they are quarreling about,” said Nasruddin.
He then lit a lamp and went downstairs.
His wife heard him open the front door. Almost immediately, the shouting stopped. She wondered what Nasruddin had said to stop the quarrel so quickly.
“What happened?” she asked when he came back to bed.
“When I opened the door, one of them grabbed my lamp, and then they both ran off,” Nasruddin replied. “I suppose they must have been quarreling about my lamp!”
With that said, I also differ on the perspective of SRK milking his audiences for monetary benefits. If that sounds like contradiction, which I felt too initially, just compare the Rang De Basanti dialogues with Jawan’s to get yourself convinced. As someone who is thoroughly bred on South’s vigilant movies, where a solo Hero kills an Army holding Dozens of Guns but personally end up falling on the feet of Politicians for personal survival and favours, Jawan is certainly not the one milking our emotions for any selfish interests. SRK obviously had taken a lot of pain enacting powerful stunts / energetic dance moves and the Khan couple has poured in lot of money, to justify our hard earned movie tickets. Such sincerity cannot be attributed to milking the audience emotionally, but just to establish a pan-india massy masala connect, providing justice to the narrative.
“Even now whose blood doesn’t boil, then that blood is water … the youth who doesn’t serve the country is a waste”
Rang De Basanti Movie
Quintessentially Jawan is just Pushpa fighting from another end of Justice spectrum. So, I would not be surprised at all if the entire Bollywood takes a selfie with a Government Head just before elections like 2019, after giving us sermons on Voting wisely. Are we headed by a ridiculous Government which invites Film stars for the New parliament Building inauguration cautiously ignoring the First Citizen of our Country?
“Wish they live happily forever. May the insanity and the romance never die.”
Rang De Basanti Movie
Akhand Bharat or Celebrity Bharat?
Well, the reality behind Government inviting Celebrities for New parliament inauguration is not that the Government is ridiculous, it’s just that we are ridiculous enough to hero worship Celebrities taking their endorsements seriously but underestimate our precious votes. If at all we understood our value, the 50K Crore meaningless grandeur – Kartavya Central Vista, New PM Planes and New Parliament Building just to please One man – Modi, would have been non-existent. Any government afraid / ashamed of accountability would have spent such huge sum on Governance / welfare rather egotistic / luxury edifices, rather covering themselves behind celebrity veil. We Indians are not that rich enough to be spendthrift like Modi, when we are ranked 107th out of 121 countries on Global Hunger index. India also ranks below Sri Lanka (64), Nepal (81), Bangladesh (84), and Pakistan (99). Taliban ruled war ravaged Afghanistan (109) is the only country in Global South Asia that performs worse than India on the index. Maybe our rulers thought, Viswagurus should be on starvation / diet to shine as Vishwamitra, if we ignore political Pot bellies.
When we ask so many questions buying a Mosquito coil which burns for 5 hours, Why are we not raising questions when we elect a 5 year tenured Government? It can’t be put simpler than this.
It’s our Cinema tradition that Angry Young men sell BP pills very well, then partially retire to sequence their tweets, shamelessly supporting Fascist Government, to save their Panama err.. Pan India image. Swachh Bharat? …Present Sir! Shitler hailing tweet? Sure Sir! Election time endorsement of Dictator? Done Deal Sir! Don’t know about what future holds, but only side SRK has taken is to deliver a movie with social responsibility in an entertaining manner, staying apolitical- but also being loyal to his base, asking everyone to think before they vote. In a well functioning Democracy, you are your own Superhero. Make your Opinion matter by voting responsibly. The way he delivers it, he makes us feel like DDLJ Kajol and even the Political Parties behave like Amrish Puri with an acknowledgement to voters – “Jaa Simran Jaa”. Only SRK can do this in New India!
“There’s no childhood, no adulthood. One is as grown-up as one feels.”
– DDLJ Movie
Love always looks good at least until the climax… of course whatever you think as Climax… of course our Political Amrish Puris will make sure Simrans and Rahuls don’t get away so easily, even if they board Bullet trains. There are rumours of theaters getting booked for Ugram err… Salaar, compelling the theater owners to club Salaar with Animal movie distribution. The Bollywood blackmail is such that, If screen owners choose to screen Dunki, they cannot screen Animal. I am just a Cinephile who admire any decent movie. The way we have made our Movie industry politically dirty just like BCCI at the hands of arrogant political paternity, any cinephile including me is at loss of good and healthy entertainment.
“…I Bet You Ain’t Never Seen A Donkey Fly!”
Donkey, Shrek Movie
Quotes apart, it will do a lot good for the Dunki crew if they choose to release on non-competitive January 1st week with the monthly income demography helping them out in the first few weeks. It may be healthy for the Industry too, avoiding clashes like wrestling matches out of pure political Hombale pressures and bruised hitless egoes. Just a harmless plain opinion.
Nasrudin used to take his donkey across a frontier every day, with the panniers loaded with straw. Since he admitted to being a smuggler when he trudged home every night, the frontier guards searched him again and again.
They searched his person, sifted the straw, steeped it in water, even burned it from time to time. Meanwhile he was becoming visibly more and more prosperous. Then he retired and went to live in another country.
Here one of the customs offices met him, years later. “You can tell me now, Nasrudin,” he said.“Whatever was it that you were smuggling, when we could never catch you out?”
“Donkeys,” said Nasrudin.
The Propaganda Playbook – If thought corrupts language, can language corrupt thought?
One more observation is that, the Society / State which accepts / encourages or atleast hears out opposite voices and opinions, tend to have very high social indices. One could see Movies like Parasakthi(1952) providing an entirely different perspective of then status-quo becoming a Hit in Tamilnadu. Parasakthi’s dialogue writer become a 5 time Chief Minister for his wit and wisdom and excellent administrative and organizational skills, only to be rivalled by other tinseltown stars who exploited movie psychology to the hilt creating themselves a mass persona. Such movies thrived on the open environment created by the then Rulers, acting like Barometer for the Government to gauge the public mood rather keeping them isolated and enclosed, fooling themselves on masterfully putting a lid, like kashmir crisis where silence itself is becoming a strong opposition, making BJP tremble to conduct election.
The easiest way to propagandize people is to let a propaganda theme go in through an entertainment picture when people do not realize they are being propagandized.
Elmer Davis
Happened to watch Thuramukham a brilliant but slow moving Film, making for a painful watch where the entire family of two generations toil and even die for nothing except for making a very feeble resistance, but contributing to a larger cause of “Resistance for fairness and equality”. Seems like the movie got adapted from a Stage Play which worked across Kerala prior to the movie. Thuramukham stands as a testament to what made Kerala, “God’s own Country”, where there were many Gandhi-alikes biting the bullet to empower the future generations. No wonder Kerala is scoring very high on Social indices, by keeping that culture alive.
“It’s hard to change something that has been rusty since a long time. “
Rang De Basanti Movie
Looks like BJP wanted to make a playbook out of such societal evolution through Movies and heavily investing on it luring the Top filmmakers to incorporate Hindu Pride opposing Minority Villains, though the History and fact states otherwise. While some have been inflated Hits, most of them failed to attract audience failing miserably in Box Office. Kashmir Files was a hit because it was Political, just like Jawan, though very low on facts, obfuscating History just like BJP’s fake narrative on Pandits.
Movie is just a mirror to the society. Distorting the mirror does not alter the reality especially in social media era where everything becomes an instant Meme and potently travels virally as good as the Movie. After watching a goosebump-ish actioner Vikam movie, got diffused by a simple meme which stated, Vikram is just a story of how KH saves his own Grandson by killing his entire undercover team, who managed to dodge the establishment for decades. When someone talks loud of sanatana dharma, there is a simple meme which questions whether all castes will be allowed to enter Sanctum Sanctorum or will be disallowed citing lame reasons like Agamic temples. Maybe God did not exist before agamic laws got formed by the elites.
Only time will tell if BJP can make an Hallowed achievement out of Fake narrative films without any improvement on Social Indices, on the ground, like the South accomplished with their fruitful Movie-Society nexus, in pre-internet era.
Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.
Lysander Spooner
INDIA alliance – The Antagonist and Protagonist of the 2024-202X Elections!?
As a Congress sympathiser, the movie also made me think of their deficiencies leading to their own self destruction. Of course they were callous and Corrupt rulers. If Modi is comparable to Ravan abducting the idea of India, Congress at its best has acted like Kumbakaran, unaware of its own strengths, origins and ideologies, as if confused between Indrasan / Nidrasan. Maybe it’s because, Congress is also full of brahmanical elites just like BJP. Much credit for 2019 loss should go to the Brahman Group of Congress who were able to weaken the Party from within like termites, chanting “RIP / Om Shanti!” to the same party which allowed them to prosper. Of course there are exceptions to generalizations.
I still wonder how Modi in 2019 was so invincible then, looks pathetic now? What exactly has changed by now as Modi remains the same Mediocre Fascist Ruler helping Crony cause? Is it because half the Congress elites were busy killing Congress rather attacking BJP, secretly happy with it upholding brahmanical supremacy? Wonder how they have suddenly found a Leader in Gandhi palatable after a yatra? Wonder if they they think, walking make someone a greater Leader or it’s just a chameleonic / opportunistic sense of stars getting aligned at present?
The question that needs to be asked is whether Congress leaders, particularly those belonging to the upper caste, have had a change of heart or are overwhelmed by Rahul’s leadership qualities? After all, throughout the UPA years, particularly during 2010-2011, the caste-based census was a vexed issue, causing a lot of division and disquiet.
It is a matter of record that when the then law minister Veerappa Moily in 2010 called for the collection of caste/community data in Census 2011, his cabinet colleague and Union minister P Chidambaram had raised several “vexed questions” such as the issue of a central list of OBCs and state-specific list of OBCs and some states not having a list of OBCs.
The reasons for OBC-SC-ST social Empowerment will work for the alliance is multifold. Firstly, except for Minorities and Upper castes heavily aligned towards Congress / BJP , the rest are not amalgamated to a strong cohesive voter base fragmented by regional / casteist Parties, who may have a say in State elections but may not be so impactful in Union elections.
Secondly, it’s much better to talk about the Voters – the real vote base, than targeting Modi with “Chowkidhar Chor hai” type attacks, pushing him to cry hopelessly that no Party is mentioning him except for Himself with Modi’s guarantees. Modi’s lame defence of opposition alliance dividing Hindus with OBC quota is nothing but the case of Satan preaching Vedas, especially when he did the same division by enacting Economically weaker Section Quota exclusively reserved for upper castes.
Thirdly, Social Justice empowerment has really propelled South states with far better economic and social indices. It is very well the need of the hour. Focus could be on economically weaker sections and first generation graduates to uplift masses. This is very much similar to Indira Gandhi’s “Garibi Hatao!”, connecting with the masses.
Fourthly, Modi could come back strongly with “Chori Chori Chupke Chupke” attacks, like in 2019, making even SC spray Gangajal on him, transforming him to a holy saint winking at Kedarnath for cameras, just with a closed envelope (maybe containing secret overtures of a future BJ(M)P ) pressing for an apology from Congress in last minute. But when it comes to Social Justice plank, his only option becomes forming half baked Laws like Reservation bill to a appease his vote block., antagonizing his own loyal base of upper castes. Anyway, Merchants and SMEs are already a disgruntled base and the opposition just needs to nudge them with incentives.
Finally, this has the potential to make Congress grounded shedding its suave and elitistic outlook, a crucial factor when competing with a Maverick-PR-Beta-Modi, who could go to any extent to exhibit his connect / groundedness with stunts like cleaning the feet of sanitary workers and blowing it up with PR about it, to completely change the narrative.
More than anything else, Congress / INDIA alliance Parties are weak on creating “Political emotional Plank”. They have approached all elections objectively with Social Problems and Manifestos. With too much anti-incumbency and weaker sections getting even more weaker under BJP regime, INDIA alliance is handed out 2024 election on a Platter. Its up to them whether they will choose to be the Protagonists for next five years or Antagonists by fighting themselves for power and selfish interests. Modi might be right is calling out the next few decades as Amrit Kaal, where an United front of Asuras and Devas got divided once the mission of churning Amrit got accomplished. Now, its upto the alliance, whether they turn Indian Politics to Ganges of present or Cesspool depends on their own inactions prior elections and actions afterwards, as Indian Politics is running out of options. Apart from Congress, only few AK-types are promising but with small footprint to sway / impact Union elections. The Problem could be coming from the same mercurial and ambitious types who want to gobble up others vote blocks.
UPA brought in RTIs and Food security Bills. Wish they could have also instilled a sense of Duty / Participation among citizens for any resolution, at least a gram Sabha or signature exercise, rather just blind empowerment, making us demanding Cry babies, without realising our own accomplishments as a Nation. For making a winning narrative, Congress / INDIA alliance has a long way to go. More than usual Census and Quotas, there is a need to go beyond on empowering the socially backward. Social Justice movements are rooted movements establishing direct connect to the people. Congress is still perceived as elitist party, as Modi leverages to hit with coinages like “Lutyens elite” or “Khan market gang”, especially before elections. Unless Congress breaks it with a grounded approach like Gandhi did with Yatra and senior leaders kept a simple profile during it, it’s an uphill task for them to get the trust of the masses.
The best part of yatra – bringing out the simplicity of the Party leaders and tenacity of the Gandhis.
Can INDIA bypass Mo-Sha’s Election Jugalbandhi?
BJP scored on the participatory aspect, by successfully transforming elections to “Dramatic Hungama”, making it a sort of Masala Movie like Jawan incorporating “Nationalistic Identity” politics poking a weak Pakistan, “Social identity” politics like stealing their respective Leaders, hitting their sweet spots and gain political mileage out of it, without even doing anything for the backward masses and lastly, “Proud Personal Identity” politics with exceptional ‘Toilet -Ek Prem Katha’ level PR and Door to Door canvassing with Beneficiaries on how Modi uplifted the poor to become Zamindars who are now rich enough to clean their orifices with the milk and honey flowing through the streets, originating from Namo’s head. Modi’s real masterstrokes happens just before elections where he cools various demographics, EWS Quota for upper castes and Farmers Income for lower castes. The way he swiftly rolled out after election rout in 2018 elections marks the excellent success traits of Modi, meaning Business. The way he creates an election time euphoria among his Beneficiaries, along with a heady cocktail of identity politics of various layers, is something the opposition need to replicate, with Door to Door canvassing on guarantees, if at all they fancy any chance to usurp BJP in cow belts.
INDIA Alliance might be doing well momentarily on the emotional political plank by pitching the Caste Census, but the issue is still yet to be reach the masses with a connect like a comprehensive Quota system ( now an old tactic needing better presentation on identity politics ) or how it will benefit the masses as a Union / Demography. BJP gave a refined touch to Elitist Quota system with economically weak coating. Also, Both UPA and NDA have recruited on their own strong belts so far like Laalu making Railways a Bihar Cultural center and Modi converting Institutions as Brahmins and Cow belt exclusive domain. Regional quota for Union jobs could work well for South and other states deprived of representation, of course with its own backfiring disadvantages in the cow belt. The propaganda for 2024 may yield more benefits if tackled at both national and localized levels to suit the needs of regional aspirations.
The secondary factors like BJP’s governance failures are well addressed with guarantees, but INDIA alliance is seemingly failing on emotional “Social Justice Plank”, which has worked very well in the south states and remain one of the strong reasons for its immaculate social indices. However Modi cries about the “evils” of the Quota when its for all backward classes, linking with Minorities and Delimitation, he still remains a Culprit pushing the “economically weaker section Quota” which does not essentially include the weak SC-ST-OBC groups, making them even weaker. As RG mentioned, Modi remains as an incapable failure on conducting Caste Census, owing to his Brahmanical Political system which thrives by leeching the bottom to feed the top creamy layer.
Reducing powerful election as a “Mass Masala Political Drama”, by showering vacuous political popcorns on the voters, like Women’s reservation bill which gets cold / stale even before anyone enjoys it, is not a failure of our Political System alone. As Jawan rightly points out the root-cause, “We” as Voters have not done our Job well so far. We have invested enough on juicy celebrity gossips but not on knowing our MLA / MP / Politics. We had enough time to peel Celebrities like Onions till they are reduced to nothing, but simultaneously unaware of how crony Middlemen make huge profits by hoarding Onions. We Hopefully it’s not too late for a turnaround within us. Maybe if at all we voted responsibly our Filmmakers will be busy with making “Shah Rukh – Ken – Khan” movies. Afterall, Entertainment is just Business and they just sell what is in demand.
I’m a soldier … and I can bet my life a thousand times… but only for my country … never for people like you who sell the country
I got introduced to ARR music with Leo Coffee Music which I assume he composed bringing in a fresh ring to our ears. I am fed on a staple diet of Light Music so soft and at times energetic but mostly makes one surrender to the Composer as if on a Loved lap with head submerging into his own Musical Universe. ARR brought in a refreshing stimulation to the musical environment I was brought in. If Ilayaraja is a divine sleeping pill, ARR is a digital wakeup alarm, awakening the nerve cells. This blog is not about any panchayats. I am just trying to get few things out of my System making myself light. It’s difficult to see an Artist going through tough times due to tough situations.
Even simple Yelelelo Ailesa sounded so western with ARR’s chorus in Jeans. When ARR was bringing in his genius, there were also other composers who gave us Gaanas unearthed from folks and my adolescent turned out to be musical medley of sorts, which keeps playing in my mind for long. The difference ARR provided is such that, when other Composers fed us simple and soulful Mother’s recipes, ARR opened up a Multi cuisine Restaurant dishing out different stimulating menus with each Album making me at least a dumb version of Music Student learning to understand on pushing own boundaries for the sake of my own listening goodness. Personally, I still like the formative stages of ARR in his first decade which fused up everything but still tasted Indian. Maybe as a Student I am far behind on grasping his Universe. ARR is well aware of such observations and rightly addresses such perspectives as generational gap.
There is a lot of controversy happening around the latest concert at Chennai. Though initially it looked like a poorly managed and organized Concert, it’s gettings it’s own political tones with vested interests Jumping around to achieve political milestones. This write-up is more as a Layman and not to come up with any political undertones. Let’s try to answer ourselves on Why and How of the Concert failures and why we are allowing such things to happen… always.
The Concert seemed to be poorly organized even for basics like Parking facilities with poor accessibility through just two parallel roads without any access to mass transit system. The location itself seems like a “Cheap” choice by the Organizer. Add to it the callousness of inadequate and poorly skilled “Volunteers” rather professionals to help out Audience. Even the seating Organization seemed cramped up without any regulating system like a Zoo cage. With the prior cancelled Concert, the concert goers might have noticed similar observations on inadequate arrangement. Similar mishaps have happened with their ARR Coimbatore concert too where the audience broke the barricades entering restricted areas. Maybe the Concert Organizer might have thought it’s just a matter of printing Tickets and leave everything else to ARR to mesmerize the crowd and cover up their own shortcomings.
I still don’t know how someone could oversell the ticket counts. Maybe they could have partly increased the audience count to cope up for the losses due to cancelled concert. But, the way its organized from the start, it sounds like a “money scam” by the Organizer rather an actual concert. The gender crimes mentioned around the concert makes it a complete failure and breakage of trust and confidence we have with ARR’s integrity. Ironically, ARR talks about the moment of losing trust of his listener on an Organizer’s youtube video released just before the Concert. Maybe it’s just coincidence or his instinct warning him in advance. One could sense his (edited out) frustration to get rid of the concert as its nagging with issues. ARR also talks about a shot in Maamannan where Vadivelu goes through Humiliation and looking towards his son for redemption. Hmmm…
I have personally attended ARR concert during his Baba scoring times and what a satisfying concert it was. The Sound system in the stadium was excellent and ARR and Blaze churned out lively music along with other Stalwarts and it was such a delight to the senses. I could still remember Sivamani wearing a Drum like T-Shirt and dancing around electrifying the audience. It was completely different from the Light music shows I was used to so far. All credits to ARR! The Concert sounds completely different from where you are seated. The far it gets livelier and merrier. You can check youtube live recordings of his concert and infer on your own. The tone of the concert has evolved a lot for last few decades. Now it’s more peppy with less of melody giving a Discotheque flavour. Maybe ARR is right about generational gaps and young ones breaking barricades instead of records… again.
So, ARR is quite right when he opines its 90% success form the concert execution point of view and makes himself responsible as People crowded there just for him and not for any greedy organizer guzzling money on his name. But the real question is from the organizing point of view, ARR is a GOAT for sure but whether he is a Bakra is still a question to ponder on. The entire concert is his own decision starting from the poor choice of venue till the Organizational aspects of it.
ARR being ARR has understood his faults and has initiated refunds for the people affected. Money alone could not buy peace of Mind for sure. But, from ARR’s point of view he is completely at loss from all sides due to his poor judgement and choices. More than money he has made his Concert Organizing skills doubtful. It’s quite tough time to go through, for an Artist who has given us a lot of love and IP assets for so long, ruining his reputation owing to his Management shortfalls. Let’s keep this in Mind, ARR is a genius Mastreao. But, He is not an Event Organizer. The buck should stop with his poor judgement and allowing such an inferior concert to happen under his watch and most of the blame should go to the Event Organizer.
It’s very heartbreaking to see people getting mishandled both by the Organizers and the unruly Mob leveraging the situation to their advantage. This has happened primarily due to overselling of tickets. Whatever lame reasons the Organizers produce on their behalf this is a criminal offence in First World standards. Unfortunately, we are third World like US cop explained audaciously, as our lives being just worthy of few Dollars for our petty human value. Now, why did this Cop made such a comment? Sadly, if I would have died on accident in India, I will not even be worthy of even those dollars. Ask people who suffered on Riots? Personally, there was an accident in Chennai where my Middle finger got almost cut off at GST road, organized by a criminal On-call-Driver who was giving me problems from the start that he was not interested in Driving at all. I had to drive him the whole way. He stopped the car midway and asked me to check the engine on a busy GST road and while closing the door I was hit by a Van. While I was rushing towards the Hospital on car packing my finger, the Van driver followed me and scolded me as overspeeding is not his fault. I should have filed complaint against both the Drivers. But you know how our Police works!
Let’s contrast that with western world situation, When I had hit and scratched a rear Car bumper in US, I had to follow SOP, pull my car to kerb and give my insurance details for the victim to claim and undergo any other police proceedings. We will remain third world not just on economy but in terms of Human value also as long as we don’t regard ourselves with dignity and self respect. So far how the Tamilnadu Government brushed aside such grave allegations as “normal” aberrations shows what we are…Poor Third World! It actually takes Political VIPs to get humiliated in our country to even do a harmless transfer of the people who should be answerable. Hmm… But we are proud G20 Leaders. Our pride will be restored when the US cop apologizes and the same pride will remain unwounded even if multiple molestations happen in the crowded concerts.
To understand ARR’s side we need to see how he reacted for a concert accident involving his Son AR Ameen. Let’s question ourselves who would be answerable if ARR or his Kin suffer for some Organizer’s mistake with a stage mishap? Upholding his integrity, ARR reacted to both the situations involving a possible grave accident to his Son and mismanagement of his Concert, in a similar pattern. You could see clear laments on the lack of infrastructure / people not following rules. Painfully, it sounds like ARR and Concert Audience are on the same Plane getting beaten up on Professional front for no fault of theirs, except for their decisions to organize concert or buy tickets. This is not to defend ARR, but Poor ARR could only be blamed for hiring such a greedy Organizer and everything illegal should have taken its course with the evil Concert Organizer, lawfully. But unfortunately, even the TN government is trying to hush this up as ARR is involved, rather acting on the Organizer, ending up damaging ARR even more. Overselling of tickets is a criminal offence and they have not even bothered to pay Corporation tax on Concert tickets. How can we leave such people escape unscathed when they have inflicted such miseries on us?
I do carry the risk of being insensitive and supportive to ARR. We are allowed to bark at the wrong tree just because it yields fruits, but unless otherwise, we punish the abuser who actually hit us with a cane, we will never progress further. Concerts / ARR are going to be there in future. Only our habits to question the wrong things and moving towards positive resolution will help us in the long run. Why don’t we make a video of such molesters and help identify the Culprits? Why don’t we ask right questions at the Organizer and capture their apathy. I have seen hours of concert on Youtube but why not videos on the issues to tackle it later or atleast name and shame as SM is good at that?
Let’s hope better sense prevails over our community as a whole and focus on taking the Organizer to task rather distorting ourselves with political agenda. As Public it’s our choice whether to make scapegoats out of Celebrities without root cause analysis or let proper Justice prevail over so that we have better concerts and our Kith and Kin are safe attending such concerts.
What are the various options of timepass for an heavily unemployed guy… He started thinking about it… How about gazing at sky for stars, counting them for a positive statistic, rather getting depressed with the dwindling bank account balance. He actually started doing it. The problem with miracles is that it just never happens. We need to create miracles out of our own imagination. And it happened. While ruminating on his worrying financial future, he somehow identified a bespectacled figure in the sky.
Unfortunately, he had to rely on aerial aspects rather on his own technical prowess of late. Now, he is not a very confident person as he was earlier. Gone are his shiny days as technocrat where he could churn out components and innovative frameworks, even if not put to use at-least helped him derive Job satisfaction. Unfortunately, jobs at his motherland was still elusive compared to back to back Job assignments he used to get abroad. Now, he only had his rustic inner self to hold on as walking stick to climb the seemingly steep career mountain to survive his family. He many not be the confident person but whenever he thought of his career / finance, he crazily looked upon the sky to derive any worthy belief supporting his weak inner self. So, the bespectacled cloudy stuff while worrying on his finances reminded him of his own Father and his past survival as lower middle class guy. Maybe he will be there for him watching from the skies?
Your Friendly Neighbourhood – Cloudy Man
“The mind is everything. What you think you become.“
Buddha
The Lord’s Piggy Bank
As if his Father is not enough to carry on his burdens, He appointed God as Partner on his earnings. Maybe it’s loosely based on a comedy where the thief steals after making God as Partner as safety insurance. The revenue sharing was based on a novel idea. He will throw all the stolen money on the floor of the temple. Whatever falls into the Hundi, the piggy bank hole meant for devotees to donate, belongs to God. God’s Piggy bank had a small hole and maybe God is not so greedy or he is just making sure nobody gets their hands into it. On the similar veins, He appointed God as his Partner sharing his profits proportional to the Hole in his Piggy Bank hoping to outsmart the Lord.
“When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn’t work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me..”
Emo Philips
He then climbed the Mountain, after huffing and puffing to reach the Lord’s abode to issue his Appointment Letter as Partner. But the Lord turned out to be what he is… just great by having a large mouthed piggy bank opening / Hundi hung high enough that no one can take from it but can only drop offerings into it. But much to the disappointment, the Hundi, comes along with a Board indicating all that goes in Hundi does not belong to God but as a Corpus fund. Don’t know if Gods are genial while sleeping, but certainly his so called trustees who could perform a daylight robbery on him erecting a simple Board. It’s just like Modi’s masterstroke. If the opposition called themselves as India, let’s rename India to Bharat. Ideally he should have renamed it to Brahm-Hindustan to uphold his fascist Brahmanical supremacy. If China is creating border problems, let’s park the Akand Hindu Rashtra near Russia far away from China.
“I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up – they have no holidays.”
Henny Youngman
Somehow such crazy inspirations and his belief on his Father and Lord Partner pushed him towards performing his corporate comedy or at-least try… well… why not… Once again.
The Trek to assess Hundi. * Pics are for illustrative purposes only.
You are sadly (dis)Appointed…
Fortunately, ( or Unfortunately? ), he cracked an appointment after going through Marathon interviews of his supposedly Superior followed by his own Superior followed by his own Superior followed by Office Boy and Admin. Everyone had different shades of questions. One said the different JDs he got as part of Job opening does not mean anything, maybe only the salary matters. One said he will mould him to whatever Apology Savarkar or Skewered Shawarma whichever pleases him, when he himself sounded like a stylish immature kidor as PB Mehta describes – a thuggish crybaby reminding of his own Sarkar Head. One stated the Organisation is a frugal retail shop, not a fancy IT Firm and atrociously declared he alone has the rights to preach inside the Org, however illogical and unequal it is, just because he holds the Purse. Wonder who gave the purse tphim. All he needed to loosen his purse strings was few donut shaped charts on absurd resource utilization with subservience to bourne supremacy. The Chief Powder officer aiming to keep his fire pow(d)er high and dry, boasted it as an elite company (of assassins? Or whatsoever). Hopefully he will not kill himself out of habit. So, it was a warm half hearted welcome to the elite-Ops club.
Truth is singular. Its ‘versions’ are mistruths.
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
No Big Deal, because even I don’t know or understand!
He entered the Office like a well dressed Bakra in formals, as he could not take his Kids’ welfare casual. The Office proved to be a great one, simple and frugal but very functional. It had desk and Chair and most importantly dining table and small pantry with a smart Admin serving good Coffee. The HR induction threatened him not to get political ideas as they are quite ethical but was proud to compare Europe’s GDPR with India’s PDP when actually both acted like antonyms in reality with PDP hiding the wolf in it with the sheep hide in the guise of National security empowering the Government to spy on what it wants unrestrictedly, So much for their Government and Corporate ethics. The tech induction was impressive and he was rest assured the company’s vision is in right track and a safe career if he does not ruffle any feather or get into rough weather.
Enter the Chameleon.
His reporting Manager’s first task assignment was to go through an Architecture “Bible” document, which he could not understand the head or tails of it. It sounded like a Muniyandi Vilas Restaurant Menu Card, Don’t know how much of bloodletting it took to frame that document. The lavish Menu was like it had everything without caring for how much the Diner’s purse carries. Of course it had its own history and revisions like the layers of Mona Lisa with its own Da Vinci type code. Unless you understand the history you cannot understand the Document. When you understand the History of the Document, and figure out whether Mona Lisa actually cries or smiles, you will be obviously become the Corporate Neo-Convert baptised to the new Religion – “How to burn company cash in 30 seconds without burning yourself”.
“The Night Is Darkest Right Before The Dawn. And I Promise You, The Dawn Is Coming.” – Of course by burning cash.
“No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: he is always convinced that it says what he means.”
George Bernard Shah err… Shaw
The Tech Bible which changes colour like Corporate Manager Jesus.
The Reporting Manager was very cautious to call the Architecture Document as Bible. Nothing should change or deviate from Bible or one will be punished to walk in the water till they drown. It was quite funny how he was able to correlate a Document which provided us a way of life and faith and did not change for 2000+ years and still holds good for future, compared it to a Document which should ideally change and innovate, with the technology going through a paradigm shift every 5 years or so. It was lot more fun when it got changed for every roll-out to accommodate for the insufficiencies of the Partner Developer. Maybe its a writ from the “God of Cost-cutting” – You can only withdraw money using Demand Drafts and not NEFT/UPI. “Yes… My Lord, as long as I get my Salary!”
“I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me . . they’re cramming for their final exam.”
George Carlin
Knowledge transfer – Just a cake walk on Water!
The sky gazer was supposed to help a team on uploading files to cloud without any access or knowledge of it. His peer who was already in a sour mood for scheduling early morning 10 AM meetings and pokes to join, decided to stay silent. His loyal subordinates from Partner Firm followed his path of silence for the mails, making him wander Pillar to Post just to understand the issue. Weekend was followed by Peer’s sick Leaves and measured silence from everyone else that progress could not be made. The Reporting Manager exhibited Polymorphism rather genuine steps to expedite, making him cry “OOPS!”.
There was another discussion on using file or API calls without throwing light on the quantum of data for a week, pushing the star gazer to spell out what they wanted. Assuming its a guge data, looks like they have already decided to take a rudimentary file approach and chunk the data manually instead of simply paginating the API call. Wonder how they will convince every intelligent system delivering APIs to give them files. The underlying problem seemed to be that, one wrong decision getting snowballed into a bigger wrong decision, as they try to cram everything into a prototype they believe doing fine if not future ready. A proper resolution could be rewrites, which they are lazy and procrastinating.
The sky gazer completely lost hope of doing anything useful with the setup. It sounded like a very novel way of unwelcoming Team member as he might have crossed the sacred rule of scheduling early morning meetings and raising questions on their Noah’s ark built with a large hole at the bottom to facilitate their drainage.
“Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.”
Mark Twain
He has worked across various implementations, seen the best and worst, amazed at the implementations being done like a reinventing networking company’s amazing Architectural turnaround or apparel company for the skinny types’ robust implementation and also disappointed at few places. In most of the situations, he must have felt like a blind man trying to figure an elephant by touching upon various parts, but this is the first case, irrespective of his shortcomings, the implementation seemed as if built by three blind men / team hoping that they will be never be discovered on their shortcomings with the so called madly authoritative IT Governors. The ray of light came in that, though he could be rustic, at least he is still good enough to build good enough implementations.
Atleast building in On-premise Stone is better than building castles in the Cloud?
The Knowledge transfer sessions were more like an interview where he was supposed to figure out solutions with their own Biblical err.. technical components. The approach was as if how dare someone can question or criticise them. Also came a veiled threat from the Polymorphic reporting Manager Chameleon that Early Morning Rising Peer is the go-to guy who knows everything, and not documentation like any mature company will do. He got further warned on any other infringement of bypassing early riser will even lead to firing of everyone in the meeting. The sky gazer was the only guy in that meeting who could get fired by that chameleon as others are from well to do Partner Firm, who seemed to have upper hand on everything including the poor chap who acted like cheaper version of Donald Trump – “You are Fired!”. Maybe their partners are experts who have seen through the entire charade as Divine comedy and navigate well. The below quote aptly fits them though.
“An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.”
Neils Bohr
Writing the Access imposition X times…
The access to the Servers and Code went through a large SDLC cycle where even the Corp ID’s Department / Reporting Manager attributes become faulty. It was made even worse as the Service Ticket will be closed as per the temperament of the Service Engineer and another ticket need to be opened up even to continue the conversation to update the attributes. He again lost hope of navigating the access maze and just stayed stuck. Now, he started enjoying the warm unwelcomeness in every aspect of it. Killjoy!
“I think Smithers picked me because of my motivational skills. Everyone says they have to work a lot harder when I’m around.”
Homer Simpson
You will get used to Corporate BS if you just manage to stay long enough.
Meet the Maverick – Mad child playing with expensive lego bricks.
The useless Sky gazer got assigned to useless Project that was about to be rewritten due to various data and scalability issues. After multiple interrogations he understood nobody followed the so called Architecture for the reference component, the chameleon wanted him to treat like sacred Bible. The rollout was just a development of convenience by the Partner Firm milking a clever acceptance from the early morning Peer, who always had someone who has resigned to blame and the blessings of Architecture team.
“Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.”
George Carlin
The useless Project was led by an useless Maverick Man-Child having shades of eccentricity throwing tantrums in heavy proportions. The project become a three pronged headache, fix the data errors, fix the scalability / performance issues and do everything with a disjointed architecture as the Company seemed to be rich enough to buy three products doing the same thing and the design was as if writing a property will allocating work asset to those three components to please everyone around, rather making it work.
If you want to survive Corporate IT just get used to the perspective!
Fortunately, at-least one among three technology product, a good and simple tech sibling was mysteriously found to be bad for some reason or other nobody cared to know and got abandoned out of the will. So, it was a tussle to squeeze work / property share between two components a cutting edge and a legacy one. It got further complicated by the Partner firm as they had more legacy developers rather cutting edge tech cloud developers. When he raised the resource plan mismatch with the proposed design, the Chameleon hushed it up claiming it as Team Secret. He still wondered why do they do vendor-lock-in by developing on a proprietary language rather choosing easily portable language across cloud or on-premise like Java… who knows it could be just another team secret. All-in-all it sounded like he was brought in as a low shelf life contractor to cover their sins with the new entrant’s justifications and thought process.
“I choose a lazy person to do a hard job, because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”
Bill Gates
So, the implementation was factually a design driven by the Developers’ availability instead of any design or architecture. But, their designs were made to look cutting edge. How? Just put a small box for legacy layer having a lot of “hidden” functionality and make the cutting edge tech look big enough with the biggest box for anyone trying to understand. It was like a creating three cots for a person to sleep, but with its own size shortcomings and the architectural decision was to cut the leg of the Person as required to fit him in the cot. If he still whines on why three cots instead of one, just cut him to three parts to make use of the cots, as cost justification matters more than anything else.
The Big Bang Idea
As if the issues were not enough, the eccentric Maverick manager came forward with an idea, to kick out a legacy product and adopt the tech sibling who was thrown out for mysterious reasons. It actually sounded like good design, but to convince the team where everyone had an agenda of their own, is like climbing Mount Everest without Oxygen supply and blood flow. In any Organisation, there are two types of people / role-play responding to the Management, one who strictly adhere as Master-Pleasers without trusting their instincts or skills, like the chameleon Manager and the other who make noise and fall in the bad books but still tolerated for their skills and performance like the eccentric. The Sky gazer is someone who neither had the courage to break rules nor the “talent” and will to be Master’s lapdog licking around and lingering there, as hapless fresh entrant without any foothold of accomplishment. He was just trying to get access to understand the mysterious pandora box. He decided not to take any stance but organise a discussion together and allow them to fight and arrive at a conclusion.
“Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?”
Edward Bergen
When the Big Bang is not so Big Bang.
Putting everyone to Bed.
The best part of conflict arrived when the proposed discussion was assumed to be for adding an additional sibling to the property will even without any discussion / clarification by the chameleon and Co. The apprehension had its reasons. There was a lot at stake as the resource allocations and everything about the most important component of the Project – Money… will change, where ultimately, they will questioned on their decisions.. So, the property will panchayat got assigned to the “Lord of the Purse” on whether to adopt the thrown out sibling or just go with the legacy darling. Funnily, the thrown out sibling was already bought and kept aside sparingly used and was also logically the rightful heir to the design, if designed carefully. The Lord of Purse was given enough dog whistle by the chameleon and Company, that a new component was getting added which was falsely assumed to cast a deep hole on his purse. Lord of the Purse angrily replied that he wanted to put everything to Bed at rest as if he is running no-questions-heard-or-asked-Corporate-Zombie-Hospital.
“Sometimes I spend the whole meeting wondering how they got the big meeting table through the door.”
It’s Not me / May be it’s Me
Praise the Purse Lord!
I “swear” to Mother friendly God!
Now, the eccentric Maverick Manager got into his synthetic anger mode for no reason. He questioned the reason for opening the discussion on third sibling’s adoption as the entire discussion should have been discussed without naming the third tech sibling. He derived a genial reasoning that all the anger of the Lord of Purse was because the third sibling was named. Maybe we should have called him Pariah so as to adopt him unknowingly, out of empathy or sympathy, accommodating it with a minute box in the Powerpoint. The logic illustrated was out of the world. Only corporate IT could do such miracles, like Elon musk renaming twitter to X made it look anew and profitable, if still not working make it Why… err… “Y ” or “?”. Jai Hindustan!
Don’t know if Lord or Purse’s “Putting it to Bed” retort triggered / aroused the eccentric, he started calling out consummation in a very in-dignified way and lamented how come everyone acted like a King but they were essentially babies need to be fed with… documents, which nobody asked except for him. He then assigned the sky gazer to create more documents with more boxes, where the Lord of the Purse could put his money into, to avenge his sorrow. The choicest abuses were reserved for the so called Property Will – Architecture, in reality just the customary one which nobody else really bothered and efficiently circumvented.
“If A equals success, then the formula is A = X + Y + Z. Where X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.”
Albert Einstein
This Blog “Document” is complimentary.
Blame it on the Cloud.
The sky gazer felt like laughing out loud on the loud and empty logics on display. But the after taste of eccentricity and swear words started weighing heavily on him. He just “resigned” to fate as counting stars seemed as better useless Job than solving this property share where everyone is preying around like vulture for the corporate fortune. The real Losers on this episode was the Corporate fund and then the Sky gazer who got deprived of month’s salary citing non-existent policy as return of vengeance from his Chameleonic reporting Manager and Co, who could not make him toe the line.
He could just blame everything on the cloud, as in retrospective it was just a laughable Circus he got pulled into. Except for the resignation act none was his doing. But what good is holding a Job without any sense of self-respect or dignity? Afterall all brown skins are not born thick enough to withstand abuses. If he entertains such swearing nut cases, it’s only going to get aggravated. The clueless management seem more inclined towards such authoritative and egoistic “governance” without even knowing what is happening under the hood. As such, there was no logic burning millions on IT investment, but cautiously saving on his peanut salary. Maybe this is just Corporate version of better being Sorry than staying safe. When such decisions explodes its going to be sure big bang like Meteors on Dinosaurs. Maybe Karma has its sweet way of financial balancing.
For any Tamil-Filmy-Japanese Guy… You know what is Karma…? Well I know better about you trying to suck upon controversies for publicity and end up burning as much bigger controversy. And that is called Karma.
“A man is accepted into a Corporate for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.”
Modified Mark Twain Quote
The age of Cloud-Mine
Choosing freelance consulting is both of blessing and curse. It’s a curse where you need to work on limited resources compensating for the instability of the career, it also richly rewards with a lot of exposure to different companies, their best practices, turn around moments and also their pitfalls. There was a leader of conviction who did not sway to any open source or cloud ecosystems, but chose to perform a proper checklisting of the features required and tallying it with RoI. There was a Principal Architect who got pissed off with the so called configurable products and sluggish performance and was taken aback with the simplicity of POJOs – The plain old Java objects performing better and chose to rewrite everything in On-Premise JEE framework, “boldly”. There were few meticulous companies which tracked resources and allocation better than JIRA with a clear vision of what they want without flashy namesake projects. The best thing to learn on short term consulting is that you get to rub shoulders with the greatest who are yet to be discovered while getting your own sweet independence and time to change diapers of babies while putting up with your spouse on housing chores.
“No one will need more than 637Kb of memory for a personal computer.”
Bill Gates
Unfortunately, in star gazer’s Motherland, of late, except for few eminent personalities like Harsh Goenka, none provided a proper Final settlement citing some lame reasons like making you sign NDA on last day or swallow PF deductions. But Karma has always had a funny way of turning around this company culture. A company which withheld PF was running a 30-40% bench and bleeding on ransomware calls due to cost cutting. It’s NDA imposition competitor is still working on low level projects as glass ceiling can never be shattered by small minds.
“Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.”
Bill Gates
Recently, the city of Birmingham declared bankruptcy, trying to replace a SAP system with Oracle and burning their fingers. This proves a point cutting edge tech has nothing to do with data management and if at all cutting edge need to be employed, it has to happen where the data transfer happens around. Bankruptcy is reserved for people who acquire teacups for the want of better tea. One thing as a Consultant one frets over is that, he can never change things for good. If he does… he is just trying to flip a Dosa/ pan cake stuck on a hot tawa without a “spatula” of in-house accomplishment, just ending up burning his own fingers. But, he can always mail and leave the rest to Karma and take bed rest.
“If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.”
Bill Gates
The CIOs tend to get caught themselves on the trendyish cloud-webs they find fascinating in the consumer centric world. You got enough sexy and glitzy forums aptly scheduled at Las vegas to gamble around with company funds. First of all, there is no clear idea on how to use the cloud and the project cost with the increasing data management. Secondly, they forget that Cloud is just a startup laboratory for their IT experiments. Once they have a matured technology solution which will stand for a decade, it’s much more profitable to move to On-premise creating an in-house micro services setup. Thirdy, they don’t have a clear exit plan for Cloud by writing in native code like C# rather than Java or any other portable language, and then wasting resources by jumping around cheaper corners finding shoe racks to stuff their data in. They should have kept portability to On-premise, Quantum of data and exponential billing in mind for their implementations.
“Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.”
Bill Gates
Ironically, by investing on the Cloud Vendors who are supposed to to be the “cheapest” solution providers, CIOs also made them the world’s biggest revenue generating Firms. We need to ask ourselves who the ultimate Bakra is if we create our own IT apocalypse with irrational hiring and investments and vengeful firing methodologies.
“I can understand wanting to have millions of dollars, there’s a certain freedom, meaningful freedom, that comes with that. But once you get much beyond that, I have to tell you, it’s the same hamburger.”
Bill Gates
Whoever opined “Money can’t buy you happiness” obviously had far too much of the stuff.
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Moving Survival Mountain
While the crazy sky gazer could not figure out the corporate rat race, at least he figured out the reason for bespectacled Father figure in the clouds. He started utilising his Mom’s pension amount inherited from his Father as the last lifeline to survive his family. Ultimately, his Father’s savings helped him like Naai Sekar’s Magic Box, when the sexy Corporate Trishas and Nayantharas flying high on the cloud left him high and dry, depriving him of his well earned salary, squeezing him to stress out. Maybe he is oh-so-tasteless.
“Now I’m a spent firework; but at least I’ve been a firework.”
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
He then turned desperate for any cloud signs or magic looking at the sky to calm himself with an imaginary rope to get out of the froggy well with despair pulling the legs of Hope finding a way out. On a Super Blue moon day, he at-least got a sign if not salary. He queried his daughter nearby, “What do you see in the Clouds?”
She replied, “Mountain!”
The Moon Rise. Moonu Moonu Moonu Unnoda Love Sceneu
My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
PS: This is just an imaginary post not subjected to any Non Disclosure agreements, just like never credited salaries of Idiots who still find hope in hopeless Corporate Culture, drafted by ego heads treating themselves as fascist Religion, and religiously followed by Corporate Minions without understanding one day they will be on the receiving end of the same atrocious toxic inhuman culture they helped to groom.
If this correlates / resembles anything in reality, it’s just coincidencidental incident or incidental coincidence like the numerous synthetic coincidences leeching on Blogger’s blood and life.
Timepass Politics 