Corruption - however rabid - is but one aspect of the way India has adopted capitalism, selectively & not wisely - if we go by the experts on this subject.
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Swaminomics/entry/neo-illiberalism-is-india-s-bane
Let us assume for a moment that 'neo-illiberalism' - as SAIyer puts it in this blog - magically ends and is replaced by 'text-book liberalism'. Will this lift the still vast sections of our poor - & that is a fair number - out of poverty? Will this make the benefits of growth reach the far-flung areas of our heterogeneous nation? More importantly, has there been any model/example with a country with >700M poor people being lifted out of abject poverty in a 'liberalistic' capitalist setup? Can SA Iyer & experts of his ilk blog this point?
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Friday, May 13, 2011
Source Code - When 'the what' vanquishes 'the how'
Source Code is not your run-of-the-mill movie, or is it? It has that characteristic ingredient of Indian films and food - masala, garbed well in true-Hollywood-style to make the end product look sauve and the audience feel intelligent. Like our own Amir Khan films do, some may argue.
A single-slider-on the film could look somewhat like this -
A. Star-Trekish theme of alternate reality, time-travel ('time-rearragement', ingenuous) revisited
B. Screen mostly inhabited by the yeh-mein-naheen-hoon & mein-kahaan-hoon hero
B. Doses of romance intermittently sprinkled
C. The usual-racial-suspects-red-herring-routine dropped along the way,
D. Will-the-misunderstood-beta-baap-equation-sort-out question dangled
E. Show a lab full of farily-ubiquitious techno-gadgetary (laptops, web-cams etc). add a dark-room, a time travel-dabba and a few military-attired-scientists-like-amigos and an amiga, to boot
F. Explode a bomb over & over again with different camera angles, camera shots and cameras, until..
G. .. you get into the final sequence and the inevitable twist..
For a sci-fi film that sends the hero ad-nauseum into the past , the makers just do not bother to let the viewers know 'how'. And when the poor protagonist asks exactly this to Scientist-de-chief, we are told that that is too complicated for the hero and ostensibly, the audience, to comprehend. And that, well, is that.
Nor do the makers really bother to explain why the project in the film and the film itself is named 'source code'. '8 minutes' may have been more apt, but less enigmatic..
Which is probably, why the film works, commerically, i mean.
A single-slider-on the film could look somewhat like this -
A. Star-Trekish theme of alternate reality, time-travel ('time-rearragement', ingenuous) revisited
B. Screen mostly inhabited by the yeh-mein-naheen-hoon & mein-kahaan-hoon hero
B. Doses of romance intermittently sprinkled
C. The usual-racial-suspects-red-herring-routine dropped along the way,
D. Will-the-misunderstood-beta-baap-equation-sort-out question dangled
E. Show a lab full of farily-ubiquitious techno-gadgetary (laptops, web-cams etc). add a dark-room, a time travel-dabba and a few military-attired-scientists-like-amigos and an amiga, to boot
F. Explode a bomb over & over again with different camera angles, camera shots and cameras, until..
G. .. you get into the final sequence and the inevitable twist..
For a sci-fi film that sends the hero ad-nauseum into the past , the makers just do not bother to let the viewers know 'how'. And when the poor protagonist asks exactly this to Scientist-de-chief, we are told that that is too complicated for the hero and ostensibly, the audience, to comprehend. And that, well, is that.
Nor do the makers really bother to explain why the project in the film and the film itself is named 'source code'. '8 minutes' may have been more apt, but less enigmatic..
Which is probably, why the film works, commerically, i mean.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Carnatic music - Morphing rapidly?
So, Shankar Mah. has come up with an online way of imparting classical Indian music tutoring http://www.shankarmahadevanacademy.com/. Well-intentioned, no doubt. And not the first such initiative - by famed artists - trying to keep the Indian Classical music candle lit up to increasingly Rehmanized & Indian-idolized generations.
Even while appreciating the zest to keep an ancient Indian art-form floating, connoisseurs cannot but notice the changes in how today, Indian Classical music - esp., Carnatic music - is rendered by performers, taught by teachers, learned by students and experienced by rasikas. It may seem anachronistic to go back in time & refer to the musical Trinity and, even farther back, to the founding father - Shri Purandara Dasaru - in the same breath as the online tutoring sites.
But, it is worth remembering them - not least - because it is their compositions that will be taught in these schools. And it is also worth remembering that, the krithis/lyrics that these saint-poets created were anchored in & inspired from their deeply-rooted beliefs in Bhakti (devotion) & Vairagya (dispassion/detatchment/renunciation). Music was a derivative to this belief. Music was an effect - the cause lied in their entrenched adhyatmika(philosphical) way-of-living.
Carnatic Music without these belief systems & way-of-living - in artists & audience - is like capitalism practised in a License Raj. It is crony. It will lose its identity in essence, while retaining the name.
But, the arrow of time moves on and so do the perceptions of art, philosphy and entertainment along with it.
In another 25 years, Carnatic music will change & morph into a different entity. So, when artists sing or play 'Telisi Rama' then, little will they know that they are eulogizing the power of yogic meditation focused on the moniker 'Rama'. But then, how many know that today?
Even while appreciating the zest to keep an ancient Indian art-form floating, connoisseurs cannot but notice the changes in how today, Indian Classical music - esp., Carnatic music - is rendered by performers, taught by teachers, learned by students and experienced by rasikas. It may seem anachronistic to go back in time & refer to the musical Trinity and, even farther back, to the founding father - Shri Purandara Dasaru - in the same breath as the online tutoring sites.
But, it is worth remembering them - not least - because it is their compositions that will be taught in these schools. And it is also worth remembering that, the krithis/lyrics that these saint-poets created were anchored in & inspired from their deeply-rooted beliefs in Bhakti (devotion) & Vairagya (dispassion/detatchment/renunciation). Music was a derivative to this belief. Music was an effect - the cause lied in their entrenched adhyatmika(philosphical) way-of-living.
Carnatic Music without these belief systems & way-of-living - in artists & audience - is like capitalism practised in a License Raj. It is crony. It will lose its identity in essence, while retaining the name.
But, the arrow of time moves on and so do the perceptions of art, philosphy and entertainment along with it.
In another 25 years, Carnatic music will change & morph into a different entity. So, when artists sing or play 'Telisi Rama' then, little will they know that they are eulogizing the power of yogic meditation focused on the moniker 'Rama'. But then, how many know that today?
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