MADE IN HEAVEN-2...

MIH season 2 has upped the ante from the last season. It’s grander, harder-hitting, and reeks of all things lush and plush.

MIH 1 was intrinsically raw and earthy, aiming to establish the base for the very real, flawed principal characters of 2 wedding planners and their team, giving the viewers a peek into their background stories, the reasons, and the explanations.  The second season lets them bloom and shine and the new additions to the star cast, esp. Mona Singh enhance the flow of the narrative.

Each episode focuses on a wedding and addresses a relevant contemporary issue (obsession with fair skin, caste prejudice, polygamy, domestic violence, etc.) The entire wedding planning team’s personal lives’ complications are interwoven beautifully with the main theme.

MIH 2 is enriched with high production quality, haute couture, the glossy, slightly wayward, unconventional lifestyle of the rich and their myriad issues, while also scrutinizing sans any judgment, the prevailing social dogmas, the biases and the hypocrisy.

The main star cast of the previous season outperforms each other. In Shobhita’s carefully cultivated persona of a well-groomed lady (Tara),  we see a social climber striking it rich with the top industrialist scion, Jim Sarbh (owning his role with aplomb.) She reveals her vulnerability and inner conflicts as well as her sharp claws.

Arjun Mathur as Karan represents the repressed gay community hiding in a closet for fear of filial and social censure. Legal acceptance has made little progress as the general mindset remains archaic treating LGBT as a freak lot. Case in point is the new addition to the cast, a real-life transgender who is ostracised unapologetically by the majority.

The voiceover at the end of each episode by the MIH photographer Kabir is deep and reflective, unraveling the myth of an emotion called love and a ceremony called marriage. 

MIH takes ingenious digs at the high society with their Pandora’s box full of skeletons, simultaneously reflecting upon the aspirational middle and lower middle-class India, the so-called 'wannabees' who envy and despise the elites in equal measure. 

Sound complicated? Well, that’s MIH for you.

Kudos to the magic of accomplished directors to pull off complex relationships, many of which may still raise eyeballs in middle-class society. There’s substance in style, soul in gloss, and bleak reality lurking beneath the ‘oh so beautiful’ exterior of MIH. It’s funny, it’s thought-provoking, it touches you at some base level, and challenges your sensibilities to mull over the cruel world we are living in! A world where anything different from our established and understood code of conduct is viewed as ‘deviant,’

Any cons, if I get down to dissect an otherwise compelling web series, are the excesses in styling, in set designs, in the ostentatious veneer, in graphically depicting gay sex, in the frequent use of the f… word without so much as batting an eyelid. (How it’s being normalised in all OTT content!) I wish the titans of show biz realise that being understated is an art too, and, at times, subtlety works just as fine!

Eye candy it may be but there’s enough bite in the shiny, multi-layered world of MIH and its characters to make it binge-watch worthy! 

AGE OF EMOTIONS- Connected without Internet!

The Internet era  commenced in the past decade or so and has become an integral part of our lives. Modern everyday life is intrinsically dependant on internet and if per chance the connection is lost for sometime, we feel as if life has been sucked out of us and there is nothing worthwhile to do. 'Net connection aaya ki nahin' remains the topmost query. When it gets finally restored, we have a sigh of relie!..Jaan mein jaan aa jaati hai!!

I wonder how we survived in the 80s and 90s without such frills. Regimented TV timings with a couple of channels, a standard fixed phone line, and barely any knowledge about the virtual world, we lived merrily in a self-contained manner.

We read books for knowledge, scoured newspapers for political news, heard radio for latest songs, went to the theatre to watch latest movies, sent letters and greeting cards to our friends and relatives to keep in touch.

Binaca Geet Mala, the top 20 Bollywood songs on Radio Ceylon, helmed by the man with a sonorous voice, Ameen Siyani, for aeons was the coveted program whole of India listened to earnestly.

Chitra haar on TV was awaited with bated breath, the songs played in it were discussed the next day in schools. People cursed if the electricity went off perchance during that time and they missed a couple of songs. Amitabh's songs were icing on the cake and his movies were a craze on the big and small screen both.

The onset of colour TV and VCR in mid-80s was an entertainment revolution. Poor quality VHS tapes were lapped up for the sheer thrill of watching movies at will in the comfort of their home. The whole family gathered in the living room to watch the magic unfold.

Neighbours dropped in on weekends to enjoy watching the evening movie together, sharing a Cuppa and having gupshups.

School diaries, slam books, autograph diary, greeting cards and titbit memorabilia were a huge hit amongst teenagers. They gave an outlet to our expressions of love, joys, friendships, pain, regrets, anger etc.

Buying greeting cards used to be an event. While sending it to friends was a customised activity (as per the occasion and the mood), buying Diwali or New Years cards for relatives was done in bulk and in a standardised manner. The one with the best handwriting in the house was accorded the esteemed task of writing inside the card and the addresses on the envelopes. What used to be a fun activity in childhood became a mundane chore later on.

With friends, however, it remained a sweet something, to write well and pretty, with different colour pens, decorating with stickers and glitter, drawing hearts and flowers, smileys etc.. It was as personalised as one could make it.

Photo albums were much treasured and a symbol of pride. A limited number of photos could be clicked in each reel and hence no indiscriminate click! Click!

Digital cameras and then smartphones with sharp cameras have led to a deluge of photos in a virtual world but scant ones in hard copies.

Technology has been a boon for Generation Y getting information and entertainment at the snap of their fingers. This digital onslaught on an individual's life is complete and absolute. Any personal preference to be a passive spectator and watch the circus from afar is scoffed at and one is pulled deep into the vortex of silliness and superficiality.

In this scenario, life without Internet for many is a suffocating experience.

Telling my kids about our non-Internet days elicits a curious and puzzling response, almost quizzical, wondering about the staid, dull life of their parents! When I go nostalgic and reminiscence about the age-old charm of LP records, they point out Spotify to me. Their sweet enlightening ways apart, I regret the growth of 'too easy, too available' culture where subtlety sleeps soundly and in-your-face, omnipresent, forever stalking Internet mafia lurks all around!

Can you escape their encounters? Not unless you wish to be labelled pre-historic by Internet gurus!

As a member of a generation which has witnessed both sides of pre & post Internet life, I find the obsession with Internet frightening. For all its advantages and benefits, our complete dependence on it and our weird, painful wail in its absence proves our slavery to technology rather than mastering it!

That said, the right to choose the availability, the limits and the extent, should lie with the users only. What good is something if it can be taken away by the government in power at will? 

The perils of Internet shouldn't outshine the thrill of it!

ROCKY AUR RANI KI PREM KAHANI~ mediocrity in a fancy garb!

A potpourri of every conceivable hot topic and a concerted effort to tick all the right boxes by tackling contentious issues like patriarchy, misogyny, body shaming, racism, elitism, cultural differences, and whatnot, Karan Johar went overboard with Rocky aur Rani. The essence is lost and the tutoring & preaching at regular intervals aren’t impactful at all.

Realism has never been his forte and over-the-top blingy sets, thousands of dancers in designer clothes gyrating to forgettable songs make for stunning visuals. Some redeeming features, a few laughs, a hummable melody, and veterans’ presence make for a decent viewing at best. Certainly not the entertainer of the year it's touted to be.

 Something was amiss and the flick didn't catch my fancy despite me being a hard-core Bollywood masala movie fan. 

Could it be that I was suffering from the Oppenheimer hangover? 🤔

From sublime to ridiculous, the journey was definitely arduous.

The Legend of Kishore Kumar

The Legend

Of

Kishore Kumar

He lit up the rainbow of hindi cinema with a voice so close to the divine creation, there was no raga of life left untouched by the warmth of its soul-stirring embrace. 

So eclectic in its outreach, Kishore Kumar’s repertoire was life itself performing in a theatre we all sat spellbound – celebrating all that we love, or mourning the loss of love and perhaps, even the loss of our innocence in that treacherous cesspool of life’s betrayals. 

There was always a song from Kishore Kumar to capture the essence of life in its myriad shades.

When melancholic, Kishore Kumar easily slipped into the deeper pathos – woh sham kutch ajeeb thi, without losing the dignity of the man suddenly imperiled by the pain of disorientation. When ecstatic, he was so full of effervescent charm laced with the racy young leap of desire for romantic love – yeh sham mastani, madhosh kiye jaaye.

His chutzpah came with a modulation of voice differently textured within the same metre – ek chatur naar, badi hoshiyaar, almost designed to serve as a delicious tease to strip a moment, layer by layer, for the bare truth to appear without affectations.

Remembrance.

Kishore Kumar.