Why are we obsessed with songs and dance in our movies??

Often when you are reading the Newspaper, few simple lines can trigger unprecedented, explosive reactions. It happened me few days back, when I read Pakistani Director Shoaib Mansoor ruminating that song and dance routines should have been phased out by now in Indian Movies. His statement was “Ab tak inhe zabardasti ke naach-gaanon se jaan chuda leni chahiye thi (they should have got rid of unnecessary dance and music by now). When I read it, I began to wonder if he is out of his mind or something. Wait… Did I read his name properly? Was he an Asian or some film director from the West, who could probably make such statement? I mean, such statements are palatable to my ears when I hear it from a European or an American film director, pointing out the ludicrous logic of placing a song say, happening at a train in gorgeous New Zealand where the previous frame ended in a train running near Gummudipoondi. I looked at his name again printed in black. After googling his name, much to my dismay, I found out that he was born in the fertile lands of the banks of the river Indus, the cradle of Indian Civilization.
Why are we so obsessed with song and dance in our movies?? As several film critics have analyzed about the presence of songs in movies in umpteen articles, I would like to take a common man approach to understand why songs are and will be an integral part of Indian movies.
Ask any lay man, in the streets why songs are there in the movies. He would simply say that movies run because of songs. There is a large element of truth in it. Most of the damp squibs that came to the screens became watchable because of songs. How else can you explain the success behind movies like Gemini, Thiruda Thirudi.?? Let me make this clear, When I talk about songs, I am not including any of the mindless puking gaana numbers which have no relevance whatsoever to the movies. Before I start venting my fury any further, let me turn to the interesting facets of songs in movies.
Songs, since ages have been the traditional Indian way of telling stories. Our folklore is full of such larger than life, awe-inspiring stories which can easily dwarf contemporary masterpieces like Lord of the Rings. To a Western movie goer , songs may seem illogical and foolish. But to an average Indian viewer they connect with the viewer in an non intellectual plane. Songs in Indian movies are emotional templates which grow in the hearts of the viewer. Let me take an instance which I had already mentioned to explain this. There is this scene in the movie Five Star, one of my favorite movies. The protagonist, an average south Indian yuppie in his twenties, is sitting in a train currently at Gummudipoondi enroute to Madurai. .He sees a pretty girl sitting opposite to him. He is so smitten by her. He observes the way she cusps her hands to eat food. He looks at the small morsels of food hanging at the corner of her curvaceous archery of her lips. He looks at the small twirls of her golden chain nestling in her neck. A mild humming is heard, and in the next frame the protagonist is seen admiring her in a gorgeous looking train with plush sofas in picturesque New Zealand.
For every average middle class Indian, West has always been the ultimate pinnacle of his dreams. Youngsters living either in Mahim or Virudhunagar or Gangtok have their exotic fantasy stories, set either in the breath-taking mountains of Europe or mostly in the El-dorado of Indian consciousness, United States. So, it behooves to construct dreamy sequence only in the West. The viewer who is sitting in the cosy air conditioned comforts theatre, props up either his big time crush in the place of the heroine or herself if he doesn’t have any, picturing himself as the hero on the screen. For few moments the viewer is able to live out his dreams in the perfectly built template of songs. In fact to make the dream setting authentic-wherein lies the director’s intelligence, the protagonist is seen wearing the same jeans and t-shirt in New Zealand as he was wearing in the previous frame in Gummudipoondi.
There is not just the romantic template available for the viewer. There is also one for you to vent out the angst and misery of break -up in a dwindled relationship. If you are one of those people who wanna take your libido and testosterone hormones for a roller-coaster, there are plenty of templates made exclusively by Mahesh Bhatt’s production house. However if you are a south Indian and prefer to have a local vadapav instead of burger, you ought to look at several desi Malayalam Templates. There are also varying templates for parental love, friendship and last but not the least, templates for the purest of all emotions, devotion for the divine. Indian movies like our own big Indian thali, have something or the other to offer for everyone.
However, not every director think so much before flying off to West. Most of the Indian directors nowadays find it as a ritual to go to Europe and make the hero dance naively in the middle of the road like a clown to senseless, jarring beats, much to the amusement of the local folks. This phenomenon has resulted in promotion of exotic locales amongst wealthy Indian movie viewers who decide to visit the place for the star value. Realizing this phenomenon, tourism ministries of various European countries have begun to give special promotions to directors to lure them to shoot the songs. Probably, Shoaib Mansoor would have thought of such mindless songs shot abroad when he commented about the songs.Having written so much about these songs, there are also people who wait for songs in the screen simply to vent out the bottled up feelings of discomfort caused by the freezing temperatures.
I am neither a Nostradamus nor Bhejan Daruwallah . However, without the help of any tarot cards or whatever, I can prophesize that no matter people wait for songs either to go on a short sweet trip to Eden or just piss off their frustrations for having the bought the expensive ticket, they will remain forever in our movies.

Maverick- The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Work Place- Book Review

India has produced several mavericks who derided conventional theories and charted their own road to success. Whenever I think of the word maverick, Prahlad Kakkar comes to my mind. His profile and the diverse stuff along with the balancing act never cease to amaze me. This book however talks about Ricardo Semler, CEO of SEMCO SA of Brazil, a true maverick in every sense who broke all the traditional rules surrounding a Pyramidal organization and brought in an anarchist yet democratic way of running a company. I have read quite a lot of business books and most of the time the writers- the CEOs themselves-have an uncanny way of presenting their stories with such personal touch that one begins to feel that you are having a long intimate walk with the CEO who is sharing all his personal beliefs and values and leaves you with a smidgen of inspiration for you to aspire the skies and fulfill your dreams. While I started reading this book with this assumption, I however realized later that this book contains more than a modicum of inspiration and I’m –modest, you see kind of vanity which you see in most of the business books written with wacky titles. It talks mainly about the hypocrisy seen in most of the pyramidal organizations where the bosses talk about every employee being a part of family yet operate their companies in such a way that not even a single employee feels that his company is his own and get a sense of responsibility in the well being of the company. I have seen this while interacting with several colleagues of mine and also with friends from other IT companies. He paints a beautiful metaphor to understand inherent problems in the pyramid structure. To quote those meaningful words for the benefit of those who haven’t read the book,

The pyramid, the chief organizational principle of the modern corporation, turns a business into a traffic jam. A company starts out like eight-lane super highway- the bottom of the pyramid- drops to six lanes, then four, then two, then becomes a country road and eventually a dirt path, before abruptly coming to a stop. Thousands of drivers start off on the highway, but as it narrows more and more are forced to slow and stop. There are smash-ups and cars are pushed off onto the shoulder. Some drivers give up and take side roads to other destinations. A few-the most aggressive- keep charging ahead, swerving and accelerating and bending fenders all about them. Remember, objects in the mirror are closer than appear.

He talks about several rudimentary issues which are prevalent in work place, which clearly reflect the hypocrisy. Employees in most of the companies are frisked and his bags are checked whenever he leaves his office. It’s a routine in my office too. How can a family frisk its family members? What message does it convey to the employees? We don’t trust you. SEMCO, he writes, is a truly democratic company where employees have no dress code, decide their own salaries and participate in every form of decision taken in the management. He further modified the traditional structure with an organization structure based on fluid concentric circles. Under this structure, all employees have one of only four titles. They are: Counselors, who are like Vice presidents in conventional companies, Partners, who run the business Units, Coordinators, who comprise the first levels of management and the rest are called as Associates.

Though few of these ideas might not suit a country like ours, the author however asks us few compelling questions. Do we feel any iota of stake towards the company we work? Wait, We need not go to the extremes. I don’t mean to say that we have to embrace a’ la Japanese way, wherein employees sing the company’s anthem with full pizzazz every morning before they start their work. However, we can bring in a sense of ownership to every employee who is working in his firm. His company shares every single piece of vital information regarding the company to the workers and they get an opportunity to raise their voices in the decisions which affect them and their company. When he talks about sharing the information with workers, he writes a beautiful line about information asymmetry. He says that whenever managers try to hide information, they retain a sense of power that comes with the masking of the information.

Information asymmetry runs very deep into the consciousness of our Indian society. This subject is one of my favorite economic topics. For the uninformed, information asymmetry can be defined in simple terms as the advantage one gets over the other over hiding of information. Most of the rigging problems that plague both the corporate India and the country as a whole can be attributed to information asymmetry. Only after 50 years of independence, we realized the importance of sharing information through the RTI Act. However several red tape issues continue to dwarf the huge difference RTI act can make to the society. Coming back to the book, the book talks at length about several seemingly small issues which have the potential to bring a huge change in the way workplaces are perceived. He talks in detail about hiring process in the company wherein experienced co-workers interview the future employees along with the manager. What incredible sense of ownership will it create when it gets implemented in companies!! Few ideas do sound at times like director Shankar’s ideas for a better society. Sample this. Employees determine their own salaries. Employees can fire their boss. Though one might easily dismiss these ludicrous, one has to understand the extent of the democratic involvement of the workers towards their firm. I’ve never heard of such passion and commitment towards the firm, wherein every employee feels inspired to work for his firm.

Indian managers can take a lesson or two from this book. I seriously recommend this book for all aspiring management students and voracious readers alike.

God, A Myth???


Few days back, an old friend of mine, who had brought the book God Delusion by Richard Dawkins went gung ho over the book and started to employ all the intellectual gyan he gained from the book to belittle me and my spiritual notions. As expected, I lost the battle of the brains while trying to prove against his arguments over whether God really exists. It was obvious. I am nothing when compared to the geniuses of the British Biologist Dawkins. After he left my place, I didn’t become curious to read the book, I was left wondering what the fuss all about was!!What does he try to prove? And above all what is the need for such proof? Is it a paean on the superiority of human intellect and all its sophistry? Does it signify the beginning of a dangerous trend that God is no longer beyond the realms of human understanding, but a mere illusion created to fool the gullible masses??

Ask me, it seems very funny. No, I am not trying to deride his theories. I am aware that I am nothing in front of those great geniuses. What really puzzles me is how can one use intellect to understand something which is way beyond human intellect. The intellect may find seemingly plausible arguments to prove that God doesn’t exist. But the very fact that the argument stemmed from the intellect makes the argument sound foolish.

Which now brings me to the question, what is God? Vedanta Treatise, a book which I will recommend seriously for everyone in India, gives a brilliant analogy to understand this seemingly mythical concept. Lets rewind the time by several years and think of the childhood days when we learnt Algebra. Most of us, would have solved sums like this:
Solve:2x + 3 = 6. Most of us, at the advice of our punctilious teachers, write the first line of the solution as:

Let the solution be x. 2x=3 =>x=3/2. We know the fact that the answer is not x, but simply assumed to be x, helping us to find the true value of x. Think about God in the same plane. Our great ancestors, whenever they were confronted with so many mysterious phenomena in the world, found a simple answer by assuming the solution to be a fictitious super-powered entity called GOD. They realized the fallibility of the human race, whenever they were struck by natural disasters like Typhoon, Earthquake and floods and assumed God to be omnipotent. They realized the vastness of this planet and it seemed obvious that God should be omnipresent. They realized that there were many incomprehensible phenomena present in the world and assumed God to be omniscient. Bingo!! God; The Omnipresent, Omnipotent & Omniscient.

Our country, INDIA, since ages, has been a country obsessed with millions of Gods. If we were to give a holiday in our country for every God’s birthday, we would probably have vacation through out the year. (Sounds so delicious, isn’t it??) Jokes apart, I feel proud to hail from a country which has been the pioneer in bringing spiritual transformation to humanity. Our folklore is full of bountiful Avatars, traditions, festivals etc. We have Gods in every imaginable form. The great ancestors made patriarchal, powerful male Gods, mirroring the society in whole. When humans evolved and began to accept the weaker sex in the mainstream society, they also made female Gods, reflecting on the changes. Gradually, they made Gods out of every human creature in this Earth.

All these, however were mere assumptions, en-route to find out the real solution within. This is exactly where things get hazy and confusions began to seep in and that’s primarily one of the reasons why we find books like these in book stalls, along with oodles and oodles of books about God, religion & spirituality. These assumptions were made with a purpose: To find the actual meaning of God.However, most of us are so caught up and lost in these multifaceted images and traditions that we forgot to find out what we set out for.

Infact, to make this arduous journey to find out the truth easier, the concept of religions came. The word religion comes from the term re+ ligare, meaning, that which binds oneself again. I know this meaning would seem like a joke, considering the innumerable divisions religions have created among mankind. Bitter it might be, this is the truth. Religions were(are) mere signposts which helped us to find out the true path. However, we got so much obsessed with our signposts that we began to fight over which sign post is better, rather than moving forward in our journey.
Infact, one interesting thing about our ancestors is that they have been environmentalists too. They must have been prescient enough to realize that Oliver Ridley Turtles would be in danger in the 21st century and so they made Vishnu metamorphosing as Turtle Avatar. The significance behind making Gods out of fishes (Matsya Avatar), turtles (Koormah Avatar), pigs (Varaaha Avatar) should be understood in the present context where scant regard and utter apathy is given towards other living beings of the ecosystem. Its indeed saddening to note that despite all these traditional reverences in our country, it stands among the top in annihilating these members of our ecosystem.
We have been, instead, obsessed with questions over whether Gods (or Avatars) existed? I don’t know whether Gods lived in the Earth like humans. I am not going to discuss that further. Reams of literature have been written already. The main point is, are we understanding the significances behind these Avatars? Politicians ruling us, who talk about Ram are happily ignorant of the stories that he was a noble ruler who listened to the voices of the masses. Rather than debate over the plausibility of these epic stories, why don’t we treat these as parables, which inculcate values which are resonant with the contemporary society we are living in.

These Avatar’s lives are full of profound knowledge. Take Lord Krishna, for example. Many of us have seen his picture, wearing a peacock feather in his crown, playing flute among cows. These seemingly innocuous symbols contain world of knowledge. When, we see a peacock feather in his crown, it is a subtle remainder to all the politicians to carry their positions of power as light as a feather. Rather, we flex our moral muscles and ask questions over his seemingly philandrous nature!!
I know, I haven’t answered the question Is God, A Myth?? Had I written an answer, it would simply mean I am an idiot. And if you have come so far, reading this, wondering what my conclusion is, you are an idiot!!