A recent issue of India’s  Outlook magazine covered the valiant efforts being made by some languages to survive and the threats looming over them. According to the report, this silent killer which does not attract so much attention takes away one language every fifteen days some where in the world. In India, the Mysore based Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) is at the vanguard of efforts to salvage Indian languages from extinction. Among the languages on death row are languages like Great Andamenese (7 speakers), Onge (100 speakers) and Ahom (150 speakers). The urgency for these languages is obviously great and efforts are being made to salvage the language and the culture associated with them for posterity even if the tribes which speak these languages seem doomed.

A couple of issues later a debate began regarding the need for these languages to survive and for CIIL to do the work it is attempting to do. An anthropologist argued that it made little sense tracking grammar and diction of a language that would soon be history. Wasn’t there any thing better to do? What after all would be the value of preserving a language if there was no one around to speak it? Another reader argued that this was not extinction but rather evolution. The big ticket languages like Hindi, Bengali and Telegu for instance would certainly swallow up a lot of the smaller languages but the languages themselves would survive in some form – albeit in a different avatar – much like Sanskrit or Latin surviving not so much in terms of the numbers of people speaking them but in they having contributed a large chunk of the vocabulary of the languages that live and that people speak. A third reader went on to say that even the major regional languages – the vernaculars as we used to call them are becoming irrelevant and with the gradual creep of English, even the so languages that millions speak are no longer the same – watch for example the gradual emergence and promotion of hinglish from a semi pariah bastardized conglomerate of words to the preferred form of communication of most.

This reader went on to include that the death and demise of any language and culture that did not serve commercial and business interests was inevitable and that eventually regional languages would be reduced to being the vehicles of ritualistic communication and nothing more – much like Latin chants or Sanskrit mantras. So are institutions like CIIL fighting a fool’s battle? Do languages have a right to live and thrive and a right to protection against extinction? Ever since Christopher Columbus first set foot on the white sands of Guanahani island in 1492 to “take possession” of the land for the king and queen of Spain, his legacy of erasing the language, culture and customs of the conquered has been derided a lot, but has nevertheless had no shortage of disciples to carry on with his ideology. And so main landers displace islanders and highlanders, the neo colonizer conquers lands politically as well as economically and displaces the defeated and all of those victorious stamp their cultural footprint on the dust of the defeated.Each extinction of a language means that a fascinating way of putting words together is no longer alive and that an intangible part of our human heritage is gone forever.

I remember the outrage of the world when the Bamian Buddhas were blasted out of existence by the Taliban. They had stood for two thousand years and more and were a symbol of our existence and our history. And yet as pointed out in the beginning of this article, every fifteen days a language that may be older than even the Bamian Buddhas dies out unlamented. And yet sadly our eyes shed few tears at this slow and silent extinction that is happening before our eyes

I was looking at this rediff report and, if you are the guy who wrote it, you need therapy. Seriously.

First things first, what’s this whole ‘battle’ about? Aamir Khan didn’t enjoy Black, and Mumbai Mirror tells us all about it:

I didn’t like the film. I found it very insensitive, it sends out very wrong signals. It was extremely manipulative. I could see the effort in the manipulation, and the art of the director is in not letting you see the manipulation. Most importantly, it was about a child who had these problems, an alcoholic person comes and says you have to leave her alone with me for forty days, and he slaps her around. I don’t know of any parent who’d agree to that.

Agreed, he has a point. But, Aamir, to be honest, an alcoholic teaching a blind child is a lot more convincing than a terrorist making out with a blind woman in Delhi. You have your take on things, and I have mine. My point is, opinions are like the human rear: everyone has atleast one on offer for the taker.

And that’s where it ought to end. A sane man, or a woman too (just in case this blogger gets bludgeoned for suggesting that women aren’t sane) would simply put the matter to rest and move on with life. No big deal, honestly. The guy who works his butt off all week, sweats bullets at the workplace, earns his daily bread and saves it up for Friday night doesn’t really bother with this ‘battle’.

But, pray tell me, why is rediff doing what I hoped they wouldn’t? Their piece uses terms like ‘battle’ and ‘adversary’, making it sound like they’re at each other’s throats. Hello? A didn’t like B’s flick, and B thinks A’s being dumb. Period.

I thought the writer was trying to be funny. Until I read this bit and did a double-take:

With such industry stalwarts fighting this bitterly, we must ask: whose side do you take? Tell us.

Oh, hell yeah, I mean - we must! How can we possibly go on with our lives without taking sides? Guys, give me a break. This is in all certainty TWI material.

So, a word of advice to my dear folks out there on rediff: think of better ways to increase your ad impressions. This is, with all due respect, lame. Not a lot of respect due there, eh? Tell you what, really, it doesn’t matter. Come December 21, and nearly all the guys who swore by Bachchan will queue up at the box-office for TZP.

- - -

On a lighter note, Mister Bachchan, would you please stop running into issues with the Khans? First SRK, now Aamir, what next, Salman? And then? Why leave the mini-Khans (read: the Fardeens, the Zayeds) or the micro-Khans (read: Jiah - a ‘micro’ if there ever was one)?

We do not have enough space for children in our entertainment industry, particularly in the Cinema industry. Mainstream or animated, movies belong to that genre is very very rare. When we make such movies, we easily resort on the Purana/epic stories and it doesn’t make much impact on children like the animated movies from Hollywood do. The examples are Krishna, My Friend Ganesha or Bal Ganesh of which the latter is said to be a good attempt on the animation part, but still failed to make a mark with regards to the animation. One rediff review said that these belong to the category of the 3D cartoons in Cartoon Network. Even though we have many creative artists, we fail to do something beyond the ‘ordinary’ in this case.

But the really funny thing is that we believe that the Hollywood had to resort on Cars, Robots etc because they don’t have story rich epics like we have. Prince of Egypt was made out of the story of Moses from Old Testament in The Bible. If they were to follow religious epics, they also could have made ‘moralistic‘ movies based on religious texts. Instead of appreciating that the Hollywood had made animated movies even from the raw themes like Cars and Robots, we find it as an excuse to justify the lack of creativity that we have here when it comes to the animated movies.

Also do we even realize that there was Walt Disney Pictures long before Pixar made movies? And they made animated movies even before the computer animation took place? No, they didn’t have to resort on religious epics to teach ‘morale‘ to the children. Remember Little Mermaid, Jungle Book, Hunchback of Notredam, Tarzan etc etc from Disney and Finding Nemo, Shark Tale, Incredibles, Cars etc from Pixar? Think how creative those were and how it entertained the children and adults alike all over the world.

I would say take movies like My Dear Kuttichaathan, the first 3D film produced by Appachan that made waves among children even when it was released for the second time. Take the children to a magical land like Narnia. Show some creativity. We have so many of such characters in the magazines for children which are quite popular in the print media. Why not make movies as such rather than finding an excuse by blaming Hollywood and being happy in the false pride?

                                                           

I met Sein Myint in a refugee camp, the only home he has ever known. He doesn’t remember much of his childhood except that he was born in a remote village in Burma. When he was still a small child, the soldiers came to his village and burnt the place down. They needed the land as the village stood in the way of a gas pipeline that was going all the way to India.

When the soldiers had finished, they had lost all their belongings. With just the clothes on their back, the family fled into neighbouring Thailand. Since then he has been living a tenuous existence as in the eyes of the world, without any papers or documents, he does not legally exist. The soldiers burned his Burmese birth certificate and though Thailand allowed him and many others like him to live in enclosed refugee camps, they did not issue him any papers or identity card.

Sein Myint’s loss of identity and lack of papers is more than symbolic. When he entered Thailand, he was a small boy and was enrolled in a minimalist school in the refugee camp that provided education until the 10th grade. With little access to books and other tuition, Sein Myint nevertheless passed his examinations. But he does not have a pass certificate as the certificate requires a name and place of birth to be entered and the refugees do not have papers to prove that their names are what they say they are and where they were born. They cannot prove that they are Burmese citizens and they obviously are not Thai subjects. Without a high school certificate, there are no hopes of any further education if he could at all get out of the camps legally which he can’t. Which means that after all this education, he can only do stray menial jobs or clerical work at the camps.

The situation of the women is more awkward. Presumably to avoid any claims to citizenship at a later date, pregnant women who are migrants of this nature are promptly deported to Burma. Any one who escapes detection and somehow gives birth to a child in Thailand is in an awkward situation as the baby is deemed an illegal migrant at birth and is liable to be arrested. Attempts to go back to Burma aren’t very helpful either, as the Burmese too deny the minimal facilities available to the women if they do not have the requisite identity documents.

The question of identity is always an important one but perhaps nowhere more so than in the case of people who are stateless – those who are in desperate need of papers of some kind to prove who they are, what their name is and where they belong to – the most elemental of all. It is an eye opener to sit and meet with people like Sein Myint - flesh and blood humans like you and me and realise that in the systems and databases of this world, they simply do not exist – they have never been born, never went to school, never worked and in short did none of the things that define the life and existence of almost all of us.

Their birthplace has been obliterated under the pounding of jackboots and when their time is up, there is little room to speculate that their deaths will be recorded any better. The whole life of a stateless person may begin and end without any record of their ever having lived except in the memories of their loved ones. That is a frightening and a very, very sad thought at the same time. The ubiquitous birth certificate, high school certificates and other papers I routinely take from granted have suddenly become very important, for it is a shuddering thought to think of what it might mean for me to live life without them.

Look at us. In the mirror. Born in the city I live in now. Born, in fact, just a hundred steps from the house I live in. Mum born in a city too. Pa in a village, but has no memory of it. Moved to a city before he could know the face in the mirror. The typical city family story. No village to go back to. This is home.

India is home. I shall not leave my land. Daughter of this soil. But how many villages have I been to in twenty six and a half years of life? Perhaps I know concrete and dust better.

P. Sainath broke the mould. Taught abroad but returned to the soil. Not to pen family fictions but facts about our villages, our debt-ridden farmers. So that folks like me, critiquing the circumference of a chapati or taking various kinds of bread for granted, may think a minute of where it all started. The hands that sowed the seed that grew and ripened, became a necessity, was taken for granted, bought every two weeks and gobbled up without a prayer – those hands toil in sun and rain and know the soil beyond its spelling and use in inflated phrase. So of a sunny winter’s day I travel on a thought to the scape of a village through the self-indulgent, entangled city of my mind.

Do I need someone to tell me though, that this airy-faery broomstick flight serves no purpose? I’m still caught in the zillion reasons that are spurs to activity in me from dawn to dusk. I have not breached the limited bounds of city life.

Watching M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village at midnight, I thought perhaps it is not so simple (certainly not so deadening). The seemingly un-negotiable wood divides the perfect village community from the dens of vice – the towns. In fact, the village is constructed outside time. Hoping to retain or create a virtuous and crime-free world, the villagers paradoxically create a violent myth – evil creatures with the ability to harm, haunt the forest – to prevent villagers from entering it and being exposed to the corruption of the towns. We see, however, that the dichotomies are upset thoroughly. The idea of Utopia, as someone has said, contains the seeds of Dystopia. The forest is negotiable, the myth turns into horrible reality when it is found that the source of terror is a villager. The townsman is kind. And the time-warp dissolves.

It is here that some of us step in. City folk with some stereotypes of the village lingering in our congested sub-conscious, but with most physical barriers down. If Shyamalan’s village people sought to reach the city, we might want to travel toward the village. We might want to realize that we inhabit parallel worlds that pass us by as we flip the pages of newspapers. And if the dichotomy is crumbling already (what with migration and development), then we might see some day, that they aren’t parallel worlds at all. Just one country, one world, with a thousand criss-crossed strands enabling us to stand outside ourselves or may be to just peep into the lives of others. And may be that would make it a wee bit easier to embrace the meanings of India.

If you are familiar with this blog and my musings over the past three years, you would have guessed by now that I’m one of those “anal” people who get very irritated by callous use of the term “Indian”. To me India is a Republic. We have a national identity based one a constitution. Not based of the fact that most of our skins have a similar tan or we have a Hindu past.

Since when did “Indians” start becoming an ethnic indenity? Don’t get me wrong. Rasicim is bad and Malaysia will pay the price for mistreating people based on their origins. You cannot go around claiming to be “Truly Asia” when you are practising and encouraging government sponsored systematic rasicim.

Malaysia, treat your citizens right. They too are Bhumiputras. This bhumi belongs to all of us. How far into history do you want to go?

For the week ending 26/Nov/2007.

- - -

B S Yediyurappa - for being fooled by the same man demon twice. How desperate can you get anyway, to form a government? A coalition with the likes of Devegowda?

Incidentally, BSY also picks up the 2Fast Imbecile Award too, for his lightning quick T20 style innings at Vidhana Soudha. Eight days, a new record, breaking the previous-best thirteen days by Atal Behari Vajpayee as Prime Minister. Interestingly, it was Devegowda who took over from him.

- - -

Misbah-ul-Haq - for being airborne while in the crease. Don’t they teach you how to ground your bat, back in - the democracy that was - Pakistan?

Wasim ‘butterfingers’ Jaffer - for not being able to hold on to his balls, or atleast, the ones that come in his direction.

Atul Wassan - for everything he’s ever said on television, and what he continues to say, including the absurdly uncreative ‘yeh catch tho Geoffrey Boycott ki maa bhi pakad leti’ comment.

- - -

John Abraham - who nobly insists that he wants to promote football, although one wonder’s how he will with this statement: ‘When youngsters see the football in my hand they should think it’s cool.’

Right, and we thought soccer was played around the feet. Mea culpa.

Also, this is what the Goal actor had to say:

“But if you want to know, I want to make football the new favourite game of the country. I had hoped to get every smoker and his wife to watch ‘No Smoking’ and to convert some into non-smokers. What’s the point of being a celebrity if you can’t influence minds in a positive way?”

The ‘new’ favourite game? Dude, it has been, and will be cricket till thy Kingdom come, for sure. And what exactly was your plan with Dhoom? Murder the streets of the city at night? Well, it’s working in Bangalore, atleast. Thanks again, o ‘influential celebrity’.

- - -

guru_boys2000@yahoo.com - for allegedly threatening an attack on the visiting Paksitani cricket team. Um, blokes come all the way across the border to get beat, and you drive them away? Who the hell are you anyway? Shoo!

The Pune Police - for picking up a random Bangalore techie and charging him with defaming Chhatrapati Shivaji, and releasing him fifty days later, after picking up the ‘real’ culprits.

Pity, really, and I don’t want to be at the receiving end of the cops, so I’ll stop here. Yerwada jail doesn’t even have WiFi, and GPRS in that part of Pune isn’t as reliable.

To be honest, I didn’t really expect much from this director’s flick ever since he gave us Chocolate, which is probably the biggest rip-off in the history of Bollywood, I might add, not just the Usual Suspects bit, but the entire album is testimony to Pritam’s thieving capabilities.

But Vivek Agnihotri surprises me with Goal. Indeed, there are factual errors. Yes, it’s dramatic. And it might be the worst football flick to hit Bollywood. But - credit be given where it’s due - it somehow works, without evoking many yawns.

The plot is rather similar to Harimohan Paruvu’s ‘The Men Within’, except that - and this is an act of cinematic bravery in Bollywood - it’s based on football and not cricket, and based out of UK. Shaan (Arshad Warsi) is the captain of the Southall United Football Club, in a community that’s as British as the Old Pakistani Consulate area in Dubai. Yes, they’ve got Pakis, Bongs (east-Pakis?) and Indians who come together to unite in their passion for the game. Asians in the UK. Supposedly, victims of racism - or so we’re made to believe. Well, atleast that’s the driving force behind Southall’s thirst to win. It’s not about football - make no mistake.

And we thought, they were actually trying to save the ground. The Southall Chairman, in an ‘emotional’ moment, dies of an attack while Shaan is driving him home. Shaan sees the body go still, stops the car, the corpse’s head turns around, and the smart-ass midfielder is absolutely convinced that the man is dead. He didn’t feel the need to check the wrist for pulse, or anything of the sorts. Just breaks into tears, the director screams ‘cut’, and the next scene - the funeral - is already halfway through. Wow. How convenient.

Suddenly, the folks realize that they need a coach. Enter Tony (Boman Irani), who - for some ‘inexplicable’ reason - is trying to hide his identity. He agrees - after a few minutes of persuasion - and gets to work immediately.

So Shaan’s family is small and content. Wife Jenny runs a restaurant that fries Kababs, although spice has little place in the joint. Sister Rumaana (Bipasha Basu) is rather attractive, just out of college, a medical degree, and the new physio for the Southall team.

What the team need, however, is a striker. So, Coach promptly walks across to Aston and throws in a desi carrot or two, nearly saying ‘join us son, for here is where you belong’. To whom, you ask? Why, Sunny (John Abraham), of course, who is ridiculed - or he thinks he is - because he’s called a Paki. That’s bad enough for him to throw a few punches. But the striker isn’t joining yet, he needs a team, not a circus, he says. And that’s that.

Until, of course, Aston pick their team and Sunny’s name doesn’t figure. And folks capitalize on the racism issue. Colour. Coach makes the kid sweat for about 10 minutes in the rain, and he’s convinced. Southall it is.

Right, so with the new striker in place, Southall start winning. Football is a team sport, I heard? So one, good striker makes it a winning team? Heck, whatever. Marks to Agnihotri for making this ridiculous idea look a tad convincing on screen, and more marks to John and Arshad for making the viewer believe it all. All in all, worth a watch.

And the flaws, criminal ones they are. If only Goal had remained a ‘football flick’, we’d have loved it. Instead, there are shitloads of factual errors. Professional footballers, for the record, do NOT get drunk every night. Man United’s dressing room isn’t open to the general public, and is certainly not open to a Old Pakistani Consulate Southall soccer team. Paki girls don’t call their brothers ‘Bhaiyya’ as much as they’d call them ‘Bhaijaan’. A hairline fracture to the nose doesn’t result in fatality.

And hey, what was that? A tournament that lasts atleast seven months? Because - at the start of the it - Mrs. Warsi goes, “I’m pregnant”. She watches the finals with a stomach and a half. Right. And I’m President.

Yes, there is the typical Bollywood overdramatization too. Background score sets it up, Coach mumbles a few ‘inspirational’ words, and everything was done to evoke patriotism minus Vande Mataram going off in the background.

And the dilutions. A Qawalli, as absurd as it gets. The sub-plots. The father-son-relationship that ‘drives’ the climax. Chak De was that subtle recipe which had the right amount of ingredients, blended together extremely well. Goal, in contrast, is EVERY possible ingredient chucked in.

In spite of the drawbacks, if you are still recovering from the OSO-Saawariya trauma, then go watch Goal, atleast to bring back some faith in cinema. For the men, there’s the option of watching how Bollywood makes a mockery of soccer. For the women, there’s John and there’s testosterone.

Maybe it’s wrong to compare Goal with Chak De, but I will - sue me - and I tell you, while Boman-SRK comparisons can be made - because the Parsi actor has dome brilliantly well - the overall product is a couple of notches below Shimit Amin’s masterstroke. Arshad’s honest performance and John’s eye-candy help it along, but a hit it’s not.

And Bips, as she rightly self-proclaims, is very sexy. Ergo, watchable.

The Uphaar tragedy judgment may have left a bad taste with the family of the deceased, but a deeper look into the case proves that when people get together and mean business, they do achieve whatever they are after, no matter what lobby they are against. It is important to understand that the Ansals, being convicted for negligent homicide and not murder, are after all being convicted when they could have too, like most influential households, gotten away without any punishment. The punishment for two years for the death of fifty nine people may seem rubbish especially when the same judicial system offers a punishment of five years for killing an animal, but if we take a more holistic view of the incident, this sentence may paint a very different picture. It does mean that those responsible are being made to pay for their negligence. People mock the judgment, saying its easy for anyone to be involved in so many deaths and still get away just two years (a disgusting twelve days per person killed) , that too after ten years of walking free. Though if one thinks about it, one would realize that no one has the courage to act according to these notions. No one can risk two years of ones life for anything. Spending two years of their life in prison any time of their life is a deterrent enough for most people to ensure that they follow all rules.

It is sad however to look at the other part of the story. The story of some of those responsible who died during these ten years and who died without facing any punishment. Note that the same media that is so disapproving of the judgment today, made, no reports whatsoever when those involved died and hardly any reports during these ten years. It would have been one hell of an obituary, “Mr XXXX died yesterday of a heart attack. Mr XXXX is accused of negligent homicide and killings of fifty nine people. May his soul rest in peace”. Judicial system we all like to say has flaws, but the flaw is human. It involves people. People like you and I who have a life to live and too many things to remember. Failure of the judicial machinery in this case is a result of amnesia that we in our country are so amenable to. These ten years media reported the event about ten times. The new age tech media, including this blog, talked about it even lesser. So lets face it, we are all party to the failure. We all have a short memory. We all will forget it again.

The families have said that they will appeal for a more stricter punishment in the higher courts, but its important to understand that the Ansals will, in any court of law, face a case of death due to negligence and thats what it actually was. What the families could and should appeal for is for the Ansals to serve the sentence and not get away by paying a fine. Rich people should not have the luxury of committing crimes and walking free. This post in no way discourages the families to go the higher courts. On the contrary, it urges people to sit back and think over what they have already achieved and how to document the series of events that led to this judgment. The well known lawyer KTS Tulsi together with the families of the victims worked together as the Association for the Victims of the Uphaar Tragedy and stuck to their task for ten years. They suffered threats and were lured by the enemies but their grief was far too much to be appeased by either of them. Full story of AVUT on tehelka. The people involved in the case have made a strong statement that they believe in the judiciary and will fight to get justice, even if it means that the criminal spends his last one night in jail.

When in search of an answer, you first turn to God. In which case, you turn to Google. I tried to figure out, in the last twelve months, who’s the most popular amongst India’s big three from the Indian internet users.

This link suggests that it’s Tendulkar, hands down.

Ironically, the only time Dravid extracted more popularity from the Little Master was when he resigned as captain of India! Shows what it takes to get the crowd away from Sachin.

GoogleTrends also suggests that the only city he loses as Mr. Popular - to Ganguly - is Calcutta. Bangalore, however, still has Tendulkar ranked higher than Dravid. It figures - the Bongs are more loyal to the son of their state than the Bangs are.

Personally, I dislike Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar for one simple reason: he makes blogging difficult. I mean, you’ve written this awesome piece on why he should be kicked out, you go to CricInfo and hunt for his stats, you spend days tweaking them to sell your absurd idea of leaving him out, you refine your blog posts, you get people to proof-read it, and just before hitting ‘Publish’, lad walks out cool as a cucumber and scores a 90 or two.

A waste of time, effort and draft space on the blog, I tell you.