Special 26: Con Banega Karodpati

Special 26 has received rave reviews for being a good thriller. But not much is being said about the skewed sense of right and wrong that the film is unintentionally reinforcing.

The film shows four cheats, Ajay (Akshay Kumar) from Bombay, PK Sharma (Anupam Kher) from Chandigarh, Iqbal (Kishor Kadam) from Jaipur, and Joginder (Rajesh Sharma) from Old Delhi, who pose as CBI or Income Tax officials and raid corrupt politicians and very rich businessmen to steal their ill-gotten gains. For a raid at a minister’s house, they take the help of sub-inspector Ranveer Singh (Jimmy Shergill) and lady constable Shanti Yadav (Divya Dutta). The heist yields them a rich haul.

Leaving Ranveer and Shanti at the minister’s house, the four make a quick getaway. Unwilling to talk about his black money, the minister refuses to file an FIR and is content with the suspension of Ranveer and Shanti.

Bristling with indignation, Ranveer is determined to bring the criminals to book. He makes some investigations of his own and appeals to the Central Bureau of Investigation for help. Waseem Khan (Manoj Bajpayee), an upright officer, is assigned to help him.

Khan makes it his personal mission to catch the four red-handed, even as they are determined to pull off one last big heist, their 50^th and biggest, before they can retire. In order to pull off their most outrageous caper, they recruit 22 graduates ostensibly for a “top-secret raid.” The four chors, along with the 22 recruits, are supposed to be the Special 26. Keen on catching them red-handed, Wasim Khan succeeds in infiltrating two policemen into the roster of new recruits.

But will the good guy outwit the thieves or will they retire in style?

The film does a very good job of portraying urban India of the mid ’80s. Ah, the glorious days, when they could not tap your phone through remote access but had to send a telephone linesman to your home. The props are all there, including the rotary phones, scooters, Maruti 800s, Premier Padminis and Ambassadors on the roads, the old currency notes, no-colour newspaper, the lack of skyscrapers, the lack of crowds outside the airport and the hoarding for Thril on a Best bus stop (Wouldn’t it have been more thrilling with the second ‘l’?)

We were planning to loot Rs 2 crore in 30 minutes, says Sharma. It didn't seem like all that much until I remembered that the film was set in 1987 when Rs 1000 meant a fortune, average salaries were in the 100s and the 4 anna was in its element. Sigh! The reality shows on TV have really spoiled us.

Special 26 gains much from the thin layer of dry humour that coats it. The sequence where Waseem asks his boss if he should start accepting bribes since his promotion and increment are taking too long and running the home front running is proving to be tough. In another sequence in which the four interview some potential candidates for their final scam, the candidates, when questioned, say that they want to join the Central Bank of India, because they are very honest and want to rid the country of corruption. One guy, told to speak English, answers, “I want to do India.” Another girl tells Ajay, “Milke ukhadenge.”

Unlike some of their recruits, our four chors have no larger-than-life motivation for what they do. It's just the means by which they earn a living. There is no guilt attached to their actions. Even though Ajay tells his ladylove that she makes him want to be a better man, the truth is that the said lady never really mounts any sincere protest against his method of making money.

Robin Hoods they are not. While they steal from the rich, they do not give the money to the poor. On the other hand, they do not splurge on themselves either. So where does the money go?

 

Nor was there any heavy-speak about why they did what they did, except for a wishy-washy explanation about how Ajay was keen on working for the CBI but failed the interview and the test.

The visual narrative goes out of its way to invest the four thieves with a sense of grandeur. The walks towards the camera in slow-mo, the corporate attire and the air of confidence and flamboyance, all key weapons in the tricksters' armoury.

The film begins well with a high-energy raid on the home of a minister. In fact, the heist sequences are the most watchable.

The director ruined his own show with the love track between Ajay and his bland love interest, Kajal Aggarwal. In fact, Divya Dutta with her cameo makes a better impression. She has very little dialogue in the film, but there is one line that she repeats thrice, each time underlying a different significance.

The romance totally marred the story. I guess they felt compelled to put it in, given star Akshay Kumar's lover boy image, but the cat-and-mouse chor-police game was far more interesting, and would have been even more potent without the baggage of the love story and the Punjabi wedding with the mandatory gidda.

Kher is outstanding, one moment playing the part of a law enforcement official to the hilt, secure in the righteousness of his duty, fearing no one, the next moment suffering nervousness and slouching for fear of being caught.

The four actors complement one another well. Unfortunately, Joginder and Iqbal have nothing much to do, except blend into the background and provide able support. Interestingly, not one of the four suffers any doubts or regrets in relation to the work they do.

Unnecessary time and footage is devoted to showing the modes of transport by which the four escape to their respective homes after the heist. Do these irrelevant pieces of information help the story?

How did the four, hailing from four distant regions, meet for the first time and decide to team up to pull off these con jobs? How did they go about their first illegal raid? That would have helped flesh out the characters and their motivations far better than Ajay’s insipid love story, Joginder’s joint family sleeping in the yard, Iqbal washing clothes while his wife nags, and Sharmaji’s hum do hamare chhe family with one more in the making. Unfortunately, the only thing known about their interpersonal relationships is that Sharma and Ajay share a warm father-son kind of rapport.

While the plot of the film, loosely based on the Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri robbery in the mid-1980s, works, there are a lot of goofups that ruin the total effect.

For instance, the mantri seemed completely shaken by one raid. I found that hard to stomach. What a blot on the high standards of our elected ministers! Had he no Swiss account? Was he so stupid as to keep everything stashed at home, in such obvious places as cupboards, false ceilings, car seats, in a niche beneath the deity and behind the book case?

Also, when we know that mantris care little about transferring senior police officers for their honesty and ineptitude alike, it was strange to discover that this mantri did not even know the commissioner of police looked like.

Also, the visual effects shriek ‘fake’ and Opera House seems to have shifted to Fountain.

I didn’t like the impression the film conveyed, that crime pays and how, and that the good guys, played by Manoj Vajpayee, are just a bunch of smart fools. Had the cops been corrupt, one would not have felt so guilty about cheering the thieves on.

I certainly resented being arm-twisted into rooting for the sheer audacity of the four chors, when my sympathy should very clearly have gone to the good guys, who had been gypped in spite of their hard work and intelligence.

I wondered, is our moral compass so off that when Ajay sends Rs 100 back to Waseem, saying that he will not take the earnings of an honest man, he seemed to rise in our estimation. So much so that he nearly dwarfed Waseem whose sense of honour and honesty is actually beyond question.

Unfortunately, everyone comes out of the cinema hall having a good time, not questioning the four phonies for outraging our morality. It just goes to show how willing we are to adjust our morals to suit the occasion, in a world in which the disclosure of yet another scam leaves us blasé.

Director Neeraj Pandey's debut film, A Wednesday, raised high expectations, which he let down here somewhat. The film is an above average thriller, hampered by the love story, but it missed out on the opportunity to take a moral stance. Today we are sufficiently deluded and disillusioned with the moral realities of today. We don't need our films to emphasise the rewards that await those who choose to muffle their conscience.

Balak Palak: A must-watch for palaks (parents)

It’s been a while since Marathi cinema came of age, but it reiterated its maturity with its willingness to tackle a tricky subject like sex education for teenagers. Balak Palak is Marathi for children and parents but the initials BP could just as well stand for Blue Picture, the means that four teenagers in a Mumbai chawl, the one-time bastion of conservative middle-class domicile, employ to enlighten themselves on a subject that is stirring their interest.


The film starts with a man who loses his temper on discovering porn stash belonging to Shlok, his 11-year-old son. Even as the poor kid gets soundly thrashed, his mother reminds her husband, Avya, to understand, not punish, the child’s curiosity.

Cut to a group of fast friends, boys Avya and Bhagya, and girls Dolly and Chiu, on the last day of their school exams. Bursting with expectations for the upcoming Diwali vacations, they return home to find their chawl caught up in a strange hullabaloo. Jyoti tai (Marathi for sister) and her family are leaving the chawl out of disgrace. The children overhear Pednekar kakoo, the neighbourhood gossip, declaring that those who eat shenn (literally Marathi for eating cowdung) deserve such treatment.

Unaware of what the phrase means, the children make the discovery of the meaning the goal of their Diwali holidays. When the dictionary fails to yield the answer and their parents angrily brush their questions aside or slap them for daring to ask, they contact Vishu, a no-good under-privileged classmate of theirs whose circumstances have exposed him at a very early age to the knowledge they seek.

Vishu happily assumes the mantle of a guru, offering to initiate them into the intricacies of what he refers to as dhichuk-dhichuk. They start by reading cheap editions of pornographic literature, then graduate to hovering outside the windows of newly married couples. When both methods fail, leaving them with only the faintest idea of what constitutes dhichuk-dhichuk, Vishu tells them there is only one way to get all the answers they seek. They must view a BP to complete their education.

I took the trouble of looking up the meaning of Susangati Sada Ghado, a beautiful song to whose rousing rendition the quartet hustle about the important task of collecting Rs 115, the cost of hiring a VCR, the device that revolutionised home movie viewing in the 1980s, and its partner, the video cassette.

The song invites children to keep good company, to listen to kind words and eschew impure thoughts, to never use their hands to do something that would defile their character. As the song builds up to a crescendo, the visuals of the film show the Five ‘Find-Outers’ reaching the climax of the evocatively named, Raat rani ki shaitani.

The tryst with the forbidden knowledge alters their beautiful friendship forever and changes the innocent equations between them. As they try to come to terms with the sudden awareness of their sexuality, Bhagya develops a crush on Neha, a collegian residing in their chawl, who has always been a ‘tai’ to them. Avya meanwhile imagines himself in love with Chiu.

The film offers a visually delightful look at life in the chawl, the sense of community that it represented, where doors remained open throughout the day and, whether for good or for ill, people considered their neighbour’s business their own. The chawl, which serves as a microcosm of society, is filled with its share of characters peddling sexist attitudes, reinforcing the myth that you are a bad girl if you dress in a certain way.

There were several moments during which the entire audience burst out laughing spontaneously, particularly when Vishu, using a geometric compass, etches the name of Sampada, the girl he loves, across his forearm. Unfortunately, spellings aren’t his strength, and so Sampada begins to look like Sanpada, a suburb in Navi Mumbai. Later Vishu advises Avya to love Dolly instead of Chiu because ‘Doli’ is easier to spell.

The imagined dance sequences, once a staple of Bollywood films of the ‘80s and ‘90s, offer a glimpse of the mindsets of the teenagers, as they seek to navigate tricky terrain through an imitation of what they see on the big screen. Incidentally, the film is set in the mid-1980s.

The sub-titles are superb, enabling even non-Marathi speakers to relate to the film completely.

The film makes a case for adolescents, who are driven by their curiosity to ask questions that make their parents uncomfortable. And yet those parents were once children themselves, but have forgotten what it once meant to have hormones raging, and to see the whole world differently.

At one point, Kaka Kadam, a strict yet paternalistic figure whose kids have flown the coop, observes the behaviour of the foursome. He attempts to warn Avya’s father and later Bhagya’s, both of whom fail to recognise that their children are growing and that they might now need to alter their parenting frameworks and gain their children’s friendship. Another time, when Dolly’s mother hazards the suggestion that they could consider answering their children’s questions, she is ticked off by the other parents.

In the end, Shlok’s father speaks to his wife about the need to find the Vishu among their son’s friends. She wisely tells him that today’s kids carry their Vishu everywhere with them, in the form of DVDs, CDs and the Internet. It was a masterfully written line, which caused an oh-so-wee upheaval in my heart. Am I prepared for when the questions start popping in La Niña’s and El Niño’s minds?

She adds that when the quartet was grappling with the great mystery, they were 13; their son is 11. Strangely, she says, over so many decades, curiosity only became two years younger.

At the rate at which Vishu has pervaded our lives, I wonder how much younger curiosity will get by the time today’s generation of little kids grows up.

My only grouse was that Shlok’s father, the Avya of the flashback, so quickly accepted the error of his position. Having built up so beautifully, the ending of the film was a little too pat and dry. Aside from that minor quibble, kudos to the crew for fantastic direction, acting, characterisation, music, lyrics and cinematography. And above all, for bringing up an important message without sounding preachy.

Sorry for the interruption!

I was surfing through the TV channels last week when I happened to catch sight of Doordarshan (DD), the only channel on our TV sets all through the ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s. 


It was weird yet strangely comforting to see the old and once-familiar fixture on TV. Nothing had changed. The sets were still the same. The production effects had remained unchanged. The quality of the programming was as it used to be 30 years ago. 

In the 10 minutes I spent staring at the screen, re-living the nostalgia for all it was worth, the mandarins at DD were gracious enough to show me that frame with the cartoon, Rukawat ke liye khed hai. Hindi for — Sorry for the interruption. 

It took me back in time. I remembered those days from what now seems like an age ago when DD would often get its act wrong and the grownups would fume and wait for the problem to be rectified. There was nothing to do but wait. 

There was no remote control to be fought over, no other channel that you could turn to for respite. Nothing but DD across the vast expanse of television.

While the adults fretted and waited, we children would rush out of the house. The playing fields beckoned us. We used to play games like Hide-and-seek, Hopscotch (langdi), Blind man’s bluff, Dog and the bone, I spy, Leapfrog, Simon says (Shivaji mhannto), Cops and Robbers (chor police), Musical chairs, Human chain, Kabaddi, Kho kho and Lagori and numerous other games whose names I have to dredge out from the deepest recesses of my memory.


No special equipment was required for any of these games. All you needed to bring to the playground was huge reserves of energy and enthusiasm and whoops of delight and laughter. You didn't even need a playground. We got along mighty fine, playing in one another's houses, or on staircase landings. 


Certain games were the preserve of the girls. They included skipping sessions, cat's cradle, played with a long string looped around the two thumbs and fingers, Oranges and Lemons etc. Does anyone remember Fire on the mountain, run, run, run?


Chinese whispers was frowned upon by the boys that we grew up with, most of whom were the brothers of the girls. As a child, I often thought that the reason boys didn't like this game was because they were too competitive and they could not stomach the idea of a game in which there was no winner.
Boys had their own games which were generally out of bounds for the girls. They used to play marbles. Dodge ball (aba dubi) was another favourite of the boys. They seemed to derive some perverse pleasure out of assaulting one another with a ball, while trying to escape being hit themselves. The boys who were hit during the course of this game used to howl in pain, and forget the pain a moment later when they realised that the ball was now in their hands and it was payback time.


No one went home until they were called by their mothers at least three times, and then they reluctantly trudged home with the air of someone to whom a great injustice had been done.

We used to spend all our holidays and free time scampering about and frolicking. When we were exhausted from playing, we invented games. When it rained, we played noughts and crosses, snakes and ladders, carrom. Most of us had a pack of playing cards. Some afternoons, we enjoyed refreshing siestas. Other days we read — comics, novels, magazines. We expanded our minds. 


I am not saying there was nothing worth watching on DD. There were gems like Wagle ki Duniya, Giant Robot, Rajani, Malgudi Days, Jungle Book, Flop Show, Karamchand, Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi, Bharat Ek Khoj, Surabhi, Mile sur mera tumhara, the I love Lucy series etc that were very entertaining. 

Chhayageet and chitrahaar had huge fan followings. As did Sunday evening screenings of Hindi films and Sunday afternoon screenings of regional films. 



But generally there were so few entertainment options that we often sat through the News magazine for the hearing impaired. Sometimes we were so desperate for something to watch on TV that we used to sit impatiently through the warmup sessions that DD subjected us to. 

Remember that screen with the vertical colour stripes? It used to give way to a black screen and then a red dot which would re-cast itself, twisting this way and that, until it eventually revealed the logo of the channel. All this while the most mournful and depressing signature tune in existence played on.

But the best thing about DD then was that it shut off and said goodbye. It was not a 24-hour monster. It was like a travelling circus. For some hours of the day, the TV stopped being a piece of furniture and came alive. It showed us a few images, played out a few songs, then packed up and left. 

Leaving us with those black and white pixels dancing their crazy dance to the accompaniment of the heavy rain beating down upon an asbestos sheet roof. 


Because of that enforced selective viewing, we had a life outside the idiot box. 

We didn't spend all of our childhoods and growing years in front of it. 

We didn’t sit in front of the television, physically and mentally incapacitated, bored out of our wits, hoping that the next serial, film, cartoon or reality show would be truly worth watching. 

We had friends with whom we enjoyed boisterous playtime sessions. And today we have wonderful memories.

Thank you, Doordarshan, on behalf of all those who were children in the ’70s, ’80s and much of the ’90s. We made fun of you. We laughed at your inadequacies and your incompetencies. We bemoaned the lack of any good entertainment or education options. 

But because of you, we learned to read. 

Because of you, we learned to enjoy playtime with other kids our age. 

And because your programming was interrupted so often, we were able to step outdoors and get on with our lives. 

Zogwa: What an awakening!

I can’t remember the last time I have felt this distressed and disturbed on watching a film. I am talking about the Marathi film, Zogwa, which is a scathing indictment of the devdasi system that has victimised an untold number of youngsters in past decades. The film makes a mention of the superstition that perpetuates this heinous practice and debases thousands of innocent lives.

The film centres on the lives of Suli, a young girl, barely out of her teens, and Tayappa, a young man, who are forced into this inhuman system by others who are older and supposedly wiser.

For Suli, the ordeal starts with the discovery of matted hair. For Tayappa, it is the passing of blood in his urine. Conditions that could have been rectified by medical aid, if not common sense and home remedies, cause them to become entrapped in the web of fear and exploitation that the larger community, which benefits from it, and other zogtyas, who have made their peace with it, encourage.

And so Suli and Tayappa are both married off to goddess Yellamma. The families, buying into the belief that letting their children be married to goddess Yellama will guarantee happiness to the rest of them, become willing participants in the farce. They also fear that the goddess will curse their family if they fail to dedicate their child to her.

Caught up in a world in which superstition is everything, the families go back to their lives, while Suli and Tayappa begin to accept their doomed existence. Their days are now spent earning a living by performing song and dance routines in praise of Yellamma.

But that is not all there is to it. The vermillion on their foreheads, the mark of a zogtya or zogtin, is their undoing. From now on, zogtins like Suli must be prepared to be propositioned by the males in the village. Not for them the sanctity of marriage. Should they ever find a man willing to take them away from the stranglehold of their lives, they must expect to be kept.

Sexual exploitation is the hell they live in day after day. Dedicated to goddess Yellamma, they are exploited as devachya randa (Marathi for god’s prostitutes), available to any man.

For the zogtya, the male victim, it means living a life of humiliation and gradual and inevitable neutering. They live their lives not as men anymore, but not as women either. They gradually lose all pride in their manhood until they reach a stage when the touch of an attractive and sexually vibrant woman arouses as much feeling in them as it would in a stone.

Zogtyas are expected to be sexless, to have no desires of their own, but to willingly offer themselves for the service of the community, read – lecherous males.

Tayappa, like other zogtyas before him, initially refuses to accept his new reality. Later, however, when he is humiliated and rejected by his own family and the village, of which he once formed a favoured part, he willingly walks into the welcoming embrace of the zogtya community, the only place where he can hope to find acceptance and understanding.

The sense of abandonment that you get from the two protagonists is dismal. Assimilated in the ways of the zogtyas, Suli and Tayappa allow themselves to feel at ease in the companionship of others whose fates they share. But the sense of comfort does not last. They are still a trifle rebellious, not yet completely overawed by the zogta culture. The voice of reason, in the shape of the village teacher, More Master, who tries his best to educate the zogtyas about the evils they give in to, also helps to strengthen their resolve.

As their journeys wind down the same path, Suli and Tayappa reject the debasement of their zogtya reality and seek to escape its smothering and inhuman confines. And so they turn for comfort to each other as man and woman.

Tayappa, in particular, makes a brave yet hopeless attempt to assert his masculinity, even to cling to it, in spite of the saree and other accessories of a Hindu married woman that are the only garb he must wear. This causes him to be further ridiculed by the villagers and belittled by his own family.

Interestingly, the first time we see Tayappa, he is dressed up as the bride of Yellamma, his face a mask of resignation. Over the course of the film, he gives way to his new reality, knowing well that nothing can undo his circumstances. So well does his body language reflect his reality as a reluctant female that when he wears male clothing towards the close of the film to signify his breaking away from life as a zogtya, it startles and delights the viewer.

In the final sequence, Suli and Tayappa are defiantly standing off against the belligerent and angry zogtya community that is determined to quash the rebellion and the romance by castrating Tayappa. The atmosphere is taut with tension. Sitting on the edge of my seat, I found myself wanting to cry out physically, calling on Suli to pick up the bamboo sticks lying on the ground and hit Akka, the head of the community, who sought to restrain her.

The makers of this film have done a fantastic job of bringing the devadasi system into focus for mainstream audiences. The film is a visual treat, as delightful to the eyes as a Konkan village in the monsoons. The riot of colour that assails the screen is enticingly rich and leads you right into the lives of Suli and Tayappa, making you feel for them and resenting every slight against them.

Zogwa is indeed an awakening, not just for Suli and Tayappa but also for those of us who go through life thinking that we’ve got the rawest deal.