Honestly, honest politicians do exist!

At a period of time when the politician is being branded no better than a pariah street dog, it is reassuring to know that there are politicians and politicians. While many of them are rightly seen to be corrupt and venal, there are a few elected representatives who have spurned the goodies in pursuit of honesty and truth. They travel by public transport, look into the most micro problem of their constituents and perform public duties ranging from the profane to mundane. All to good effect.

In what could be considered a healthy sign for democracy, it is not always the frill and fizz, the light and sound, that will fetch seats in the Lok Sabha. TSI’s list of 12 Members of Parliament, bears eloquent testimony to this fact. They are low profile, go about their work with an eye on detail and are awarded by their constituents who repeatedly send them back to the Lok Sabha as victors. It just goes to show one thing: while corruption is not a issue for the chattering classes, down in the villages, the Gandhian legacy of simplicity and hard work lives on. These meek have inherited the earth.....Continue

Calling all the countries

The year 2008 has not been peaceful, especially for countries like India, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and a few others. There was no month in 2008 that newspapers went without citing any terror activities; the latest being the Pakistan terror attack and 26/11 Mumbai attack.

During her recent visit to India and Pakistan, the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged both the countries to cooperate on terrorism issues. Terrorism affects not only the victim country; its effects are felt by many other countries that are not even on the terrorists' radar. Attacks on hotels (for instance, the Taj and Oberoi in Mumbai, Marriott in Islamabad and Jakarta, Serena in Kabul, Grand Hyatt and Radisson in Amman, Hilton in Taba) has recently increased. Such attacks not only kill the citizens of the target country but many foreign tourists as well. This in turn increases the inter-country tension and friction.

Modern day terrorist uses technology (among his armoury are Global Positioning System, satellite phones, international mobile SIM cards, fake passports and ID cards) that is tough for a single country to track.....Continue

IIPM Arindam Chaudhuri 4Ps Business & Marketing Business & Economy Kkoooljobs Planman Media Planman Consulting Planman Marcom Planman Technologies Planman Financial Planman Motion Pictures GIDF The Daily Indian IIPM Think Tank
The Sunday Indian

Life Post 26/11 - When horror negates art

Firoz Khan
Film maker and eminent theatre person

I have spent most of my life in Mumbai and never seen anything so ghastly happening here before. It was mind-numbing – the absolutely brazen manner in which the terrorists laid siege on major city landmarks, killing over 200 hostages and injuring over 200. Soon after the carnage, I went to St John Hospital where I was born. The wards spilled over with injured people, and for all of us it was a personal tragedy. It was the same when the city had witnessed the serial blasts of 1993 and the explosions in trains in 2006. But the scale of the latest senseless killings had no parallel anywhere.

One really fights for answers – but then what can be said about the unanswerable? Such horror completely negates the meaning of life. Where is the point in making a film or writing a play or any of a hundred other things that make life meaningful and relevant? For if everything can be blown up in a moment, how can one find the motivation to do anything at all? Even a simple mechanical activity becomes a challenge, as those who lived through America’s 9/11 know only too well.

Mumbai’s 26/11 has thrown up a very similar conundrum that will not be easily resolved; and that, if it happened again, would completely, once and for all, shatter the very idea of the old Bombay. Somehow this time I personally experienced such a sapping of creative energy, that I totally lost the will to do anything. And many other creative people have spoken of a similar sense of bewilderment. It was this sense of nothingness and nausea that pervaded my play “Tumhari Anita” in 1999. That had been our statement then on terrorism – this great bloody leveler whose sole aim is to crush everything bright and beautiful. But we were never cowed down, despite this overweening, deeply personal tragedy that sought to make graves of our minds even as the body count in hotels and other places kept mounting. Yes, so darkly absurd is this whole thing that one feels guilty even to think of “recreating” those blood-drenched scenes, to record, say, the incessant cries for help that the staccato bursts of intermittent gunfire throttled. When the real world hits you so hard, can any artist venture to recreate the horror? What does one do, how can one want to create anything, what is a creation worth if annihilation is ever imminent? And this time we saw a strange, new, horrific paradigm unfolding. Here we are – all agreed that life is the most supreme of all. All our democratic institutions are committed to enriching this life.....Continue

IIPM Arindam Chaudhuri 4Ps Business & Marketing Business & Economy Kkoooljobs Planman Media Planman Consulting Planman Marcom Planman Technologies Planman Financial Planman Motion Pictures GIDF The Daily Indian IIPM Think Tank
The Sunday Indian

Dawood’s underworld and Mumbai attacks

While nothing has been said overtly about the role of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim in the attack on Mumbai, intelligence sleuths in Delhi say he played a key role. They are pretty clear that Dawood played an important role in transporting these terrorists to Indian soil, and claim there is evidence.

The fact is Dawood, who was used by ISI in engineering the 1993 blast, is completely in its control. Talking to TSI, O P Chatwal, an ex official of CBI, who spent a good part of his career investigating 1993 Mumbai blast and trying to extradite Dawood, said, “To do what ISI says is the only option left with Dawood. It is his compulsion and it is increasing by the day.” When, in 2003, US declared Dawood a notified terrorist, his options depleted considerably. “Pakistan government can cry hoarse that Dawood is not on its soil, India has definite proof of his whereabouts in Karachi and has handed them to Pakistan,” Chatwal adds.

US had put Dawood’s name in the list of wanted terrorists following revelations of his connections with Al-Qaeda. The Dawood is not the old don of the 1990s anymore. He is now an inseparable angle of ISI-AL Qaeda-underworld troika.

Well placed Intelligence sleuths say that a meeting was convened between October 15 to 17 at the Dhulikhel resort, 30 kilometers off Kathmandu. Called by the ISI, Dawood’s representative participated in the meeting. The meeting allegedly also involved operatives from HUJI, a terrorist gang based in Bangladesh, and SIMI. The meeting was apparently called to discuss the modus operandi of terror attacks to be carried out in India.....Continue

IIPM Arindam Chaudhuri 4Ps Business & Marketing Business & Economy Kkoooljobs Planman Media Planman Consulting Planman Marcom Planman Technologies Planman Financial Planman Motion Pictures GIDF The Daily Indian IIPM Think Tank
The Sunday Indian

Pro of a con

After raising expectations with his debut directorial venture ‘Khosla ka Ghosla’, Dibakar Banerjee’s latest release “Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!” is definitely not the best of his work. “Oye Lucky!...” begins by showing a teenage Lucky Singh (Manjot Singh) who hails from a lower middle class family living in the by lanes of Old Delhi. His father (Paresh Rawal) has a mistress and is not keen in supporting his family financially, so Lucky looks for alternative routes to the luxuries of life. He becomes a small time thief and starts pinching anything and everything he can lay his hands on. Soon, the grown-up Lucky (Abhay Deol) starts robbing for Gogi Bhai (Paresh Rawal again), falls in love with Sonal (Neetu Chandra), then suddenly wants to give up crime and settle down with his girlfriend. Then he comes in contact with Dr Handa (Paresh Rawal once more!) who cajoles him into his dream project.

The subject of a thief’s life drags and the director leaves many questions unanswered. In the beginning, his modus operandi is intriguing as he steals with style but soon it becomes too repetitive to be believable. Post interval, the movie loses its pace leaving only the beginning and end worth watching.

Abhay Deol, being the underrated Deol that he is, steals the show yet again and his performance is commendable. Paresh Rawal, is good and does justice to all three characters but the need for that triple role is incomprehensible! Manjot Singh as the young Lucky deserves a special mention. Dibakar yet again manages to depict the real Delhi, which most of the Delhiites can identify with and thankfully the humour is mostly situational and not forced, unlike what one gets to see in comedies these days. Watch the movie only for Abhay Deol.....Continue

IIPM Arindam Chaudhuri 4Ps Business & Marketing Business & Economy Kkoooljobs Planman Media Planman Consulting Planman Marcom Planman Technologies Planman Financial Planman Motion Pictures GIDF The Daily Indian IIPM Think Tank
The Sunday Indian