Santosh Pandit and the perverse viewers

Santosh Pandit does not need an introduction among Malayali film viewers and netizens. In a very short span he has become quite famous (or infamous) for his tryst with film production, thanks to facebook and youtube.

Pandit’s (I don’t have any clue about such a Mallu surname) hit film ‘Radhayum Krishnanum’ is now a matter of wide discussion. By the way, let me tell you the word ‘hit’ only means that a film reaped revenues higher than the production cost.

I would not have bothered to discuss about Santosh Pandit and his venture as personally I do not feel this is a film that I would enjoy watching. What makes me write this is a recent discussion on Santosh Pandit in a leading Malayalam news channel.

The discussion is anchored by one of the celebrated female news readers of the channel. Apart from one person who has appeared in villain roles in a few movies none of the panelists are known to me and neither do I have any clue in what capacity they were there to discuss the issue. Santosh Pandit himself joins the discussion from a distant bureau.

There is a set of audience who claim to have seen Pandit’s movie. The question is why such a ‘sub-standard’ film became a hit. We are told that the film was made a hit by the viewers who have been rushing to the theatres only to abuse him. Pandit himself had said that he has been receiving innumerable calls abusing him for having shot the film. Audience cheers whenever the panelists come up with humiliating remarks about Pandit. They tell Pandit that the film was horrible and ask him not to make another movie.

As Pandit looks visibly uncomfortable at the mass tirade against him through the popular channel, one of the panelists terms him mentally ill. The participants applaud. Another panelist even tries to classify his mental illness.

Frankly, I could only find how perverted the panelists and other participants in the discussion were and how the channel was blatantly undemocratic. The anchor, who has been playing along with them, did not seem to have learnt the basic lessons of democracy.

Being a citizen of a democratic nation, Pandit has the right to use his money to produce a film and even don several roles in its production. Being a low-budget production, he has tried to market it through a cheaper medium like the internet. Now, it is solely the discretion of the viewers to watch or ignore his movie.

It is nothing but a perverse psychology that leads one to spend his own money to make a call or watch the movie only to abuse Pandit. Pandit has done no wrong to anyone by making a movie using his own financial resources.

Now another apprehension is whether this is signaling the doom’s day of Malayalam movie industry. But there are many who feel the hype around Pandit’s first movie cannot be sustained over time. If there are viewers who appreciate quality, good movies will be made.

Some find this as an indication to the displeasure of movie goers to the some of the super star-studded movies released in the recent times. In fact, if Pandit’s movie has become a hit it indicates that the number of perverts in the state is far more than we imagine.

Some corporate lessons

My husband and I, the other day, were attending the parent-teacher meeting at my son’s school. My son was not allowed into the room where we were discussing about his progress.

We were also told not to ever open his diary in which he evaluates himself every week. There are a few set of questions in his diary like how was my week, did I help anyone this week, did I keep my cupboard clean etc and he can also record his thoughts and feelings. The teacher herself never opens the diary before the children nor discusses about it. It is an exercise to evaluate oneself honestly.

Never open it before him or ask him why he wrote so in the diary, else he will feel bad about it, we were told. This reminded me of my own school days. None of our teachers ever cared about whether we could ever feel bad about anything.

I did my schooling in one of those top ‘result-oriented’ schools in my native town. I remember one incident when the geography teacher flipped through my notebook and found out the scribbling done my little cousin. He did not even ask who did that, instead publically displayed what he called was a ‘masterpiece’. The class broke into peals of laughter and the teacher took pride in his accomplishment of entertaining everyone at my expense.

That is what our school system does, trains children how to lose self-esteem and survive humiliations. Further, the teacher also will demonstrate how effectively you can humiliate others when you are in a position to do that. During our parent-teacher meetings, we would be summoned to the teacher’s room and were made to stand through the entire exercise as muted sufferers. The teacher will happily recollect all our wrongdoings ever since the last meeting. (Hats off to his memory!) Once out of the school, we should have come in terms to the fact that being humiliated, with or without reason, was quite normal and becoming fit for life was getting tough enough to survive them.

And certainly this is one big quality that will come handy in a corporate set-up. You might be a good worker or not, the boss has all rights to publically yell at you without even enquiring what you did was a mistake or not. You are not supposed to utter a word till the boss triumphantly walks away after showing off his ‘administrative’ skills.

But, in an office, one would have a few ways to get the humiliation out of the way. Dole out to your subordinates their share if you have any or booze over it till you get drunk. You can bitch about him among your colleagues or if you are not that type, simply swallow it.

Whatever way you choose, the next day when your boss behaves as if nothing happened the previous day, you are expected to be a better actor.

Now if you try to make your point clear to your boss during his tirade, be prepared to be looked upon as the rebel in the lot. If you don’t want to suffer this ‘torture’ anymore and decide to quit job, you will be stamped as the ‘loser’, coz if you have to climb the corporate ladder you need to have the right attitude and the right attitude is – keep your self-respect at home before coming to office.

Jobs, Anna and the media frenzy

First Anna Hazare and then Steve Jobs; it makes me wonder how media and social media had taken these two people to a level nearest to God in the recent times.

Media has always been doing this - turning its eyes from real issues and going after the sensational ones to fill in columns and airtime. Media will have a few excuses too - competition, reader/viewer preference and commercial value. But the independent social media was witnessing nothing but a duck syndrome.

First it was Hazare. There were not many serious attempts to learn about the proposed Lokpal or Jan Lokpal bills, their merits and demerits, checks and balances and their exact role in curbing corruption. Instead, media reserved huge space and time for Hazare and his indefinite fast. It was not so keen to educate the masses; instead it covered the fast like a live cricket match.

Through social media, there was a hurried attempt to widen support base among the users. Hazare was there in almost everyone’s status message and it was considered ‘fashionable’ to support the cause. Majority of them looked upon Hazare as the ‘Messiah’ who had just descended from heaven to wipe out corruption from the country.

The show was over with Hazare breaking the fast and none seemed to be bothered much about corruption thereafter.

Then came Steve Jobs. Media had its first round of celebrations when he quit as Apple head due to illness. His death was the ultimate loss for science and technology, at least the media made us believe so. He was compared to Edison and Einstein. Steve stole the pages of almost all the Indian papers not for just one day but for more than a fortnight.

When Apple customers in the US mourned the death, it was ‘uncool’ for any Facebook or Twitter user in India not to join them, whether he has been a user of the company’s products or not. For at least one week no one dared to think about any other status message or tweet, lest he should be looked down upon as a technological ignoramus.

The world has seen several scientists who have worked their life out for new inventions and discoveries. Some got known and some remained unsung. Steve Jobs or Apple did not invent anything new, they just made the existing products simpler for the user and they cleverly marketed them.

However, in India Apple is not a leading brand in mobile phones. There are cheaper devices to download and hear music and ipad is still not the leader in tablet PCs. Then why was the Indian media getting frenzied with Steve Jobs?

Comrades, please give America a break

Very recently I happened to watch a vernacular TV channel backed by the Communist party airing a programme on Iraq war (yes, the very same war that led to the ouster of Saddam Hussein) and America's "fossil fuel thirst". Come on guys, it has been ages since Saddam regime was toppled and he hanged. Why should the channel still harp on it and warn its viewers (read Communist voters) on the impending danger of American imperialism.

From times when the words like 'globalisation' and 'liberalisation' were first uttered in India, it has been an ideological pursuit for Communists to use them synonymously with 'American imperialism' and 'colonisation by multi-national companies' (American monopolistic companies as in the local dialect).

In those times, the common man too shared the fear attached with these 'futuristic thoughts' as the country itself was not sure how the reforms would shape up. Now couple of decades later when we realise that India was one of the foremost economies to benefit from globalisation, can't you stop this comrades?

During the last decade, we saw emergence of several domestic companies going global and growing phenomenonly into multi-national giants. While the US IT and ITeS companies set sail to countries like India in search of cheaper labour, our companies set shop in the US. Just ask a call centre guy who serves American clients in his made-up nasal accent. The moment his Indian accent lurks out, the white man on the other end will shower abuses on Bangalore for snatching away their jobs.

Post-recession, the employment data in the US has not been giving much hope. And that's why we saw, President Barack Obama hurriedly flying down to our commercial capital, scrambling up whatever he could and showing off '$10 billion' worth virtual deals to assure his countrymen that he was doing something about unemployment. It not just employment, housing, real estate and industrial data have not turned impressive in the US.

Unlike the erstwhile USSR, which would wear on the cap of super power till it got scattered into pieces, exposing its hungry millions, US is an economic super power and mostly the power resides with its corporate giants.

That does not mean that the US is finished. Ups and downs are part of any capitalistic economy. But Communists, at least give America and the Iraq war a break. There is no dearth of issues to fill up your airtime.