The Men, The Mund and the stories from the Mallu Land.

Simply put the best of the journeys are the ones where you meet people. People with whom one can humanely identify and sometimes they do allow giving a sneak peak in their daily lives. At times me thinks that Indians have an amazing emotional quotient within themselves. A small train journey across the country, an afternoon bus ride, a casual conversation can lead an individual to unravel the most of his daily life to complete strangers like me. Meeting people can sometime change something within you, maybe it lets you loose the adamant inside you; maybe it leads to discovery of a world much bigger than one inhabits and many more such mysteries of life.

After graduating I had promised this to myself. Hell, if I ever make a film or not, whether I ever write a good story or not, whether I ever shoot a good picture or not, one thing that I would surely do and be honest with myself while doing that is – traveling and meeting people. Sometimes in the garb of film shoots, sometimes as a tourist, sometimes as a wanderer and sometimes till my pocket allows me to. To travel, to meet, to engage with people is an opportunity that a fiction writer would never let it go. It can give birth to his ‘characters’. Last month, my tryst in Kerala lead to meeting some such eccentric but everyday-life characters.


Warning: Some words are deliberately pronounced in the Mallu way.

A restaurant in Eddapally post 9 30 pm. Anyday of the week. A wiry man with a small bushy moustache, big eyes, semi-curly hair sitting outside the restaurant. Having a conversation in English in the Mallu land can lead to disastrous damage to the grammar and the sentence formation of an individual. The exchange would be sprinkled with amble amount of sign language thrown in and the most common words to be heard will be: OK, Esss (Yes) and Good. Infact, if it weren’t for the invention of the word ‘OK’, survival for a non-mallu in Kerala would be next to impossible.

Me: Dinner?
Man at Restaurant (gets up with a smile): Ess…

Me: What for Dinner?
Man at Restaurant: Ok...
He stares at me for a while, as if the sooner I utter the food item name, the faster the dish will appear. He gives an expression that says: “Hukum karo mere aakaa…!” I didnt know what is available post 9 30pm, so I look around.

Me (Sign of opening a book): Menu??
The Man at Restaurant smiles and keeps smiling for reason he alone knows.
Me: MENU???
Man at Restaurant (suddenly realizing): Esss…Only Chicken, Beef, Feesh, Prawns and Rice…
Me: Rice…Ok.
Man at Restaurant: OK…Egg Rice??
Me: OK
Man at Restaurant: (some sign language, which I cant comprehend and I choose to ignore)

A little later he brings as much Rice in a plate that could be eaten by half of Gujarat. I look at him and from underneath his bushy moustache comes his irritating smile.

Me: So much?
Man at Restaurant: Rice. Good for brain…OK
Me: But half of this will go down drain…OK?

Man at Restaurant: No problemb…! Give to the Temble people.


He smiles again. I look towards the intimidating rice plate and eat it for a while. I needed a camera there, thought of capturing his unique smile, but I didn’t have a camera then.

On another instance, when the auto rickshaw driver didn’t know English or Hindi, I had to bargain for money through typing the digits on my mobile.
I type: 100

Auto Driver looks at the numbers: “Ille, Ille, Ille..”

I type: 120

Auto Driver looks at the numbers: “Ille, Ille, Ille..”

I type: 140

He looks at the numbers and smiles, starts the auto rickshaw and there we go.
Between him, and me there was only one word that we knew: “Allepey”. Which is where the auto driver was taking me from Muhamma. There again I didn’t have a camera, thus from the next day, I promised that come what may, I would have to keep a camera with me.
Below are the few characters I met subsequently, when I had a camera with me.

The Dreamseller



The lotterywallah. Perched outside a public place in a small town or hanging near the busy market would be this dreamseller. Just 10Rs for a ticket. Buy one in the morning and results will be out in the evening. The lottery is sponsored by the Royal king of Bhutan. The prize money, well it ranges from 2000 to a princely 5 lakhs. Needless to say, he attracts a lot of attention in the wee hours of morning. From shopkeepers to drunkards, from fisherwomen to housewives – all try their luck here. He has a bicycle for himself. Thus the mobile lotterywala goes to its patrons and not the other way round. To pass the good luck around, he himself puts vermillion on his head for Cod’s blessings.



The Pandit-Purohit of a local Polish Station


Fans of Maqbool will remember the incredible duo of Pandit-Purohit played by Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah. Asked by their senior inspector to be on a duty on a movie set, their day was made. Free tea, free biscuid and free enderdainment. Since they are told in the morning that they would be going to a movie set, they come in their crisp uniforms and trimmed moustaches. They are permanently found near the beverages stall, as if the Producer told them:
‘Gendlemen the bar is open’

The Naavi


The one who lives, sings, eats and drinks in his naav (boat). One can easily locate Mr. Naavi during the sunrise and sunset times, as if the Department of meteorology sends him daily to note the sunrise and sunset timings at the backwaters. The arrival of Mr. Naavi is signaled with a murmur-like Malayalam song that he sings for himself. With his fishing gear inside his naav and a song on his lips, he appears to be in sync with nature. Looking at him, I remember Ernest Hemingway’s ‘The Old Man and the Sea’.

The Shop of the Town



Believe it or not, I haven’t seen alcohol being sold like this ever before. It’s as if after a major drought, the government has sent a water tanker to the town for its thirsty people. Patience, outside the alcohol shop gets a new definition in Kerala. There is amazing discipline when it comes to buying alcohol. The lungi brigade is always found in hundreds but always in a single queue. Some shops also have iron-made small pillars outside for the queue to remain straight, the way Bus stands are in Bombay. By the time the clock strikes 10 pm, one can see some of the men who were in the queue now lying on the footpath or sleeping completely inebriated, hardly knowing which part of the world they are until the harsh morning sun wakes them up. So the next time one fights the election from Kerala, you know how to lure the men there. One of my graduation colleagues who now lives in Aluva told me to catch up around 4 pm and I thought that’s quite an odd time to meet friends looking at the heat in Kerala. She later told me that post 6 pm, once the wiry, lungi-clad brigade start lining up at the alcohol shops; the scenario for a girl changes from bad to worse. For more click on this BBC article passed by a friend.

The Men and their Munds.


What is a Mallu without his Mund? Pass through a village and you would find the men in their small little groups staring at you. Maybe waiting for the next Rally, a Union Congregation, a Minister, a Road Show or a Film Hero to pass. By the way, if a Mallu finds himself besides a non-Mallu in the Mallu land than one topic that they both would invariably come across is Mohanlal. Whether you have seen his movies or not, the Mallu will have hundred and one things to say about his ‘Supersdaar’: The latest I heard is: Priyadarshan and Mohanalal are buying a new IPL team!


The Best Character I met in the Mallu land.


Rafey. But I call him Scientist. His story is long enough to be a separate entry on the blog.

P.S: My favourite thing in kerala for the whole month was: Chud Vellum before lunch. For non-mallus, please find it out for yourself. ☺

Do not forget to vote for your genuinely favourite Bappida song.


© Copyrights 2009 www.bhaandgroup.blogspot.com. All Rights Reserved. Hardik Mehta

The ways of Water and Waterways in Kerala.

Click on the image to view large.




The tickets for a boat ride










© Copyrights 2009 www.bhaandgroup.blogspot.com. All Rights Reserved. Hardik Mehta

To the Game and its Master

Getting up in the wee hours, with the alertness that was always missing in the other early risings, the careful walk down to the living room that had the TV in the corner, the soft baby steps, a cat walk, so that there was no noise to wake up the parents, along, with my oft repeated self quote ‘am not superstitious but a little luck did no one any harm’ - then switching on the BPL television (most oft on mute mode) and looking at the half-fuzzy, out of focus cricket scores, sometimes a third of the figure eaten up by the top right corner of the screen, and a me almost bending under, a tilt of the neck so as so get a peak into the half hidden digits, then squinting the eyes, and various facial muscles put to good use to get the clear figure,
"what’s the score man!"

All of this reminds me of the best times I spent with the game. In addition to the rituals I indulged myself in on the D-days, what really added the charm were the colourful uniforms, the white kookaburra balls and the lush green Australian grounds.
Yes, that’s my memory of the Benson & Hedges series in Australia. And then came the worst, the struggling Indian batsmen against the giants and monsters like Merv Hughes, Craig Mcdermott and company. It was always a lost cause. Post 1985 series, we had consistently failed to make a mark in the Benson & Hedges series. Sanjay Manjrekar, Kris Srikanth, Ravi Shastri, Manoj Prabhakar and others were always struggling. Often their wholehearted shots wouldn’t even as much as disturb the birds, conveniently sitting, lazing actually, at the boundaries in the Australian grounds. The scores would read: 3/32, 4/27 etc.
Australian score cards always had wickets before the runs. And in times like those, situations would arise that figures like 3/7, 2/5 – would make it really annoying to first read those scores with half awake eyes, and then figure –

“Yeh runs kaunse hai… wickets kaunse… out of sheer disbelief of the situation”!

During vacations the game and me used to be the best of friends, inseparable duo. The early childhood days in Bombay – the one bedroom hall flat was my Eden gardens! I used to constantly bowl at the two chairs, lying not so conspicuously in the hall. They were joined such that hitting the ball at their legs, that is bowling to their legs would have the ball go in different directions – depending on the spot of the leg that the ball was hit, all this, meaning the two chairs were my batsmen. And when I wanted to bat and enjoy the game, the vintage ball-in-the-socks-tied-with-the-ceiling was the best method. And when I fell sick or invariably got my leg injured or sprained, and was restricted to the bed, to stay in touch with the game, I would play the ‘Book Cricket’!

Turning the page of a thick book and getting the even page number as the score of the batsmen. I had my own unique set of rules and regulations for this form of sport. Eg: If the page number was 190. Then the last digit 0 meant the batsman is Out! Those tough book cricket days came as an unsuspecting, unusual companion to rescue. My favourite Book or I might say ‘collaborator’ used to be super thick Banking Examination book that my father used to read during his Banking Exams days.
I wonder how any of the kids didn’t like tear away all the pages numbered –digits ending with ‘0’; oh, we hadn’t been exposed to the phenomenon of ‘match fixing’ as yet.

Being the only child then, I did everything; I played my own tournaments; did my own commentary, organized my own world cups, and had my own winners. Of course India had to win in almost all of them, but when it used to be Wasim Akram bowling, I would allow him a 5-wicket haul! I shamelessly copied Wasim bhai’s style even while bowling in school grounds, for years to come! Like the young Andy Kaufman's wall in Man on the Moon.

There was a time in the early 1990’s, when India was playing dismally. I remember the 1992 world cup, only 5 points. 2 for beating Pakistan, 2 for beating Zimbabwe and 1 for the rain-washed match against Sri Lanka. Rest all matches were lost. Mark Greatbatch, Brian Lara, David Boon, Andrew Hudson all collectively assaulted the Indian bowling line-up. In those times I blocked myself, as far as I could from the stats floating around and indulged myself in my own drawing room cricket tournaments, cups and series, where I was calling shots, doing it all to make India look a little better in my mind. The game was so much a part of me; nay the game was me. That’s where my heroes lay and they were failing me.

Post 1996 World Cup, life became too busy with academics and I couldn’t follow the game as closely. Perhaps I grew up and stopped letting India win in my mind and the joy it brought along, Perhaps I was mature now:
“Hardik these things don’t happen simply if you make them happen in your mind”. Or perhaps India started performing great esp. around 1996 World Cup.

It’s been years since I followed cricket, but I sincerely thank god(and the Kochi sun) for giving me a strong headache on the 24th Feb 2010. I didn’t go to work and thankfully the Master chose that day to show the world, yet again what he Is capable of. That one milestone that only the most deserving one could and should reach. A double hundred.
Again like the movies of my childhood: Ajooba:
“yeh talwaar wohi shahzada nikaal sakta hai, jo iska haqdaar hai!”.
That sword stuck in Shammi Kapoor’s kingdom. And how amidst an emotional chorus of crying women did Amitabh Bachchan pull out the sword. Fans of Ajooba will remember this.


That night I thought about all the brilliant innings that he has played and fought so strongly for India. Fought for grown up kids like me who would not want India to win in their minds but win on the grounds. Maybe if he had started playing these innings in that early 1990s phase then I would have never left the game the way I did.
A writer said an amazing line about Sachin: “He may not play in the finals, but he will make sure that India reaches the finals” I thought about this one innings, perhaps the best, or one of the many best innings that he has played.

In 1994, on the day when I was playing holi with my friends in the building, the master was asked by the then captain Mohd. Azharuddin, to open the innings for India. The first time he was asked to open, in a match against New Zealand at the Auckland ground. The Master had started hitting the ball in his style. My father called me from our third floor flat:
“Come up, India’s batting has started”
I was still busy with the group of friends. My father again shouted from the window:
“Tendulkar has come to open the innings. 2 fours in the first over.”
“What!!!” exclaimed the group of friends.
We stopped playing and rushed to our respective homes.
2 fours in the first over in the pre T20 era and the age of Ravi Shastri’s 23 (65 balls) was a revelation.

That day I saw one of his best innings. Firecrackers were bursting on Holi, no we’d not confused the festivals, it was the Master’s 82* in 49 balls. I can never forget the way he approached the ball, the way he would come in position and hit that flashing straight drive, from right under the bowlers nose, the ball zoomed past. That square cut, you could almost hear the ‘knock’ sound of the kookaburra ball. The going on back foot and the lift over the mid-on and the amazing hook shot – the blitzkrieg of the genius. From that day he always opened the innings for India.

I can never forget the way he welcomed an aggressive “talking-too-much-to-media” Shoaib Akhtar in the 2003 World Cup. Six over thirdman. Youtube terms it as a “shot of the lifetime”.

To all the masters whom I started following off lately including Abbas Kiarostami, Michel Gondry, Micheal Haneke, Emir Kusturica, Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog. Sorry sirs – I forgot The First Master - My Childhood Master.

“No one like my Sachin.”

I feel extremely sorry for he had to make a 200* to make me realize how important a man he is for my game and how great an impact he had had and continues to have on our lives.

Time to play some cricket.
Phir dil do apne game ko…


Happy Holi to all the readers. Ironically aaj bhi holi hai...!!


© Copyrights 2009 www.bhaandgroup.blogspot.com. All Rights Reserved. Hardik Mehta

The ground realities of My Name Is Khan

(Sorry for going off road from the "Road, Movie" diary)

Inside a single screen theatre in Ernakulam on a weekday. The Balcony is Full. The Stall almost. On screen Rizwan Khan with all the gimmicks that his cynics often blame him for: “Very Bad…Bad…” Seeing SRK I thank god that the normal masses do not follow the cynics. They see him doing “Very Bad..Bad..” and instantly applaud. A little later, more gimmicks follow: More applause. Clearly Shah Rukh Khan is a man loved in Eranakulam. I was genuinely surprised. In the land of a thousand Mohanlal and Mamooty fan clubs, here is this Mr. Ham being applauded for the gimmicks that most of the Bombay-Delhi India is done with and tired. When I go to restaurants, food stalls, bus stands, railway stations, airports – half of them do not understand hindi at all, and here in this theatre, not just enjoying they are loving him.

Outside the theatre there is a banner – The Shah Rukh Khan Fan club of Ernakulam welcomes you to My Name is Khan. Amazing isn’t it? And then the news: MNIK doing better business than 3 Idiots overseas. To be frank, I (like the cynics) wasn’t clearly enjoying the movie. Yea, it had some good moments, some genuine moments: like the “Marry me…” Needless to say, it’s over-the-top, exaggerated and all that. As Kajol asks SRK: “Marry Me!”. The young woman behind me sighed: “Wow, how sweet!” Ha. Remember those two women who had come out blazing all guns on Kaminey and how pathetic they found the movie. But watching Shah Rukh Khan do that sunrise scene, it made me smile and made me thought of this star who still can make people fall in love, even after so many clichéd, stupid and god knows what kinds of movies he has done. As my friend will tell you: “no one can love like shah rukh khan”

Aseem Chhabra in Mumbai Mirror says: “MNIK is not at all a crossover film”. I think Shah Rukh Khan and Karan Johar are crossover, their films aren’t and the films need not be also. Was K3G or any other of SRK’s film crossover? No of course not. Its only the Indian diaspora who watches it. That’s the way it has been. Forget crossover K3G toh ghar ka bhi nahi tha. Son coming out of helicopter and all that you know more. Infact many are not fond of all Karan Johar films being based in US, like as if he stays more in LA than Khar-Bandra. But shooting in US and making his stories happen there make him crossover? No. Yes. Maybe. But his films, No. Never. Infact I have never liked a single film the writer of MNIK has written. Sorry lady. You just don’t work for me. And add to that Dharma’s new pathetic animation film trailer: Cootchi Cootchi Hota Hai. Disaster written all over it.

Now coming to the more controversial part of the film. There is no point cursing MNIK for its stereotypes and caricatures. Guys, really what are you trying to compare here. Vishal Bharadwaj and Karan Johar. Please open your eyes. Big movies have it in them to stereotype and make caricaturized characters. It a part of the propaganda: “please the crowd”. And hello an indepth cinema critic will even tell you how Mr. Bharadwaj has stereotyped so many times in his movies too. I have heard it and have accepted that from one of my professors. By the way, what the hell was Danny Boyle doing in India with that god-knows-how-many Oscar winner film? Combining the wonderful ingredients of child prostitution, forced begging, Hindus slaughtering Muslims, Bliinding of kids, Cricket betting all into one delicious dish called Slumdog, like a Hot Dog. We need to understand the psyche and the concept of shelling millions of rupees in a single movie and how they see the film’s reception by audiences worldwide and then view them in a particular context. Some small magazines, weeklys or one independent person writing on blog has no weight against MNIK, Slumdog or any such big Foxy movies. There is a huge sum of money put in for “crowd pleasing” – whether it is India, world or any target audience. Forget big movies, do not festival filmmakers only make their films for festivals almost depriving the lesser intelligentsia. Like telling them: “oh no no..it aint for the masses.”


And at the outset, let me just clarify before those intellectual bricks come in to hit me. Supporting over the top commercial movies doesnt mean supporting the likes of wide spread disease like Wanted. One cant even take or sit collectively for 15 seconds of Wanted and the deadpan Salman Khan, The movie is extremely gross and Prabhudeva almost finds new lows as a film director. Wow! What a start. But then statisticians will tell you that it was the highest grosser of 2009. That idiot spectacled trade analyst will come and throw figures at you the way Salman throws women all around him. Anyways statisticians are more harmful than critics. Not that critics are any less harmful. That Times of India lady saying: Rizwan is better than Forrest. Ma’am even Forrest hammed big time. So what are we trying to compare here. Let SRK be SRK and let Tom Hanks be what he is. Indians, in their mid 20s or late who have grown up and then went abroad to settle for a ‘better’ future have seen him doing all that and more. But he essentially works. He defines the term bollywood song and dance. Aamir doesn’t. He cant pull it off the way SRK can.

(P.S: I got pissed off on seeing that basketball player as Obama in MNIK, at least Forrest Gump tried their best with visual effects making Forrest meet the President. Not ‘at least’, it was real good.)

Part of the problem is also that many of Indian critics are actually so westernized in their approach and consume Star World and the likes that somehow no one’s sensibility appeals to me except probably Rajeev Masand who I think is a way better critic and analyst than all his contemporaries. The rest either suck up to stars or behave like intellectual sobs or worse: hardly know anything about movies or moviemaking.

Sometimes I wonder whether understanding the commercial films and the way they work is understanding one's own country and the audience’s demand or the way they have been watching movies over the years. But then never bow to the demand else you end up in a nowhere land. As every good director will tell you, that make films for your own self. If you like it, people will like it. If the Dardene brothers makes those wonderful music-less movies, they are brilliant and I love watching it, but in my growing up or hearing and telling stories, music has been an essential part, so whenever I will tell stories they will have to have the musical way of telling it, which brings me to My Name is Khan’s music: It is brilliant. Full stop. Any further arguments would be treated with furious anger and vengeance.

As Great Bong will tell you about Slumdog and I quote: “This crowd-pleasing is done through punching together as many stereotypes that Westerners have about India as is humanly possible” In the same way what’s wrong if My Name is Khan doing that for Americans targeting us who have never been to America or wont be in their lifetime.

The point of the matter is: Remember folks (and these are just my views)
Point no. 1: Great cinema is about grey shades of a character and not about just Black and White and Big Cinema is about Good and Bad, Black and White. Zyada sochoge toh pachtaaoge.
The way Rizwan’s mother explains him. Simple enough, eh?

Point no. 2: Shah Rukh Khan is what he is. As the film comes to an end in the Ernakulam theatre (thank god!), the crowd applauds again and I am surprised again. They all love it. Maybe! I love the music, no doubts. Shankar Mahadevan is my hero.

© Copyrights 2009 www.bhaandgroup.blogspot.com. All Rights Reserved. Hardik Mehta