"Bobby Jasoos" (Hindi) Movie Review

You are Vidya Balan, lovingly called Bobby. You live in Moghalpura, Hyderabad, a pincode that has a density of over 100 people per sq.meter. Narrow lanes, dingy corners, claustrophic separator roads and noisy people. You have a doting mother and two younger sisters but your dad has an eerie coldness to you and doesn't treat you like the eldest child in the family - that regrettable male fixation thing. Still you pick a reputation as a quick-fix spy - someone who noses in on neighbourhood girls with "excusable" traits to help out reluctant bridegrooms or help aunties with "reliable" information. One thing leads to another and you soon become a sleuth to reckon with your own "adda" and assistants. One of them, played by the charming Ali Fazal becomes your unwilling lover and eventual supporter of all risky undertakings. One such undertaking, the riskiest one, comes calling in metastazing instalments from one Anees Khan, played with uneasy grit and intensity by Kiran Kapoor who comes in limousines and oozes out royalty unlimited. What does Anees Khan want? He comes and goes in a jiffy everytime but leaves Bobby with two brown envelopes, one gives cryptic details of the girls he wants Bobby to track down and the other envelope gives a hefty advance sum. The pattern repeats, Bobby succeeds in getting to the "X" or "Y" and the stakes get bigger. Then, at interval time, Bobby gets a doubt. What is happening to the girls she is ferreting out for Anees Khan? What if there is a twist in the tail, for the girls? What follows is a different drama with hugely unintended consequences and a cool ending.

Made by a debutant director Samar Shaikh, "Bobby Jasoos" is not a regular spy-thriller fare. It is a quirky, raw attempt at blending the genres of thriller with emotional drama and desi humour from the street corners of the bustling old city of Hyderabad. If you want to savor the charms of Charminar with a candid camera  that peeks into what a half of Hyderabad are all about - stuck in simple ways, hard living and countless paradigms of male stereotypes and "chalta hai" attitudes while eking out a honest day's labor, "Bobby Jasoos" serves you right. Vidya Balan is one woman too many in the film as she straddles many roles and costumes to come up trumps on her assignments - using innovative and sometimes bizarre ways of ensnaring her "target". There are emotional angles - the father-daughter angle between Rajendra Gupta and Vidya Balan and the romantic angle between Ali Fazal and Vidya Balan which make the film evocative amidst the distractions of a boisterous i-spy game played by Vidya throughout. The film's weaknesses lie in its treatment by Samar Shaikh. Director takes a flippant route to the protagonist's job description and makes mockery of how many folks get fooled by the maverick methods of Bobby Jasoos in getting to her targets - even as she covers humongous ground in uncovering them. She covers her constituency of Moghalpura better than what the local MLA does - covering the range of her target universe with her own sampling techniques - doing a census of an audition for a serial her aunts watch for smoking out the girls of the desired age-group or making elbow room in Spoken English tutorial classrooms to figure out the right birth marks of the girl. All that gets sometimes trite and outrageously irritating - because not a voice is raised in the neighbourhood against such antics.

Be that as it may, the redemption of the film lies in its many strengths - its starcast that is too perfect from Supriya Pathak, Tanvie Azmi, Kiran Kapoor, Vinay Varma (what a cameo by Suthradhar Agency's Vinay!) and the lovely pairing of Ali Fazal with Vidya Balan. Music, especially the BGM and the two cute songs uplift the film's dull moments. One of the songs, composed like a ghazal duet with an unusual rhythm stands out. Dialogues liberally sprinkle the notorious "Hurdu" slang of Hyderabadis with killer effect - "Hau", "Nakkho" abound enough to tickle you. Undoubtedly, Vidya Balan is the greatest strength of "Bobby Jasoos" as she effortlessly delivers a range of emotions with her spontaneity and charm. Neither obesity, marriage nor recent flops deters her confidence as she exudes perfection in her roles of a focused spy or as a misunderstood daughter or as a paradoxical lover. This may be an imperfect spy thriller by Samar Shaikh but "Bobby Jasoos" wins your hearts with positivity and sincerity to the plot. At 121 minutes, "Bobby Jasoos" is a family entertainer that deserves cosmopolitan adulation.
My rating: 3.25/5

The Story of the Mouse-Merchant - and Lessons for Telangana and Seemandhra/Andhra Pradesh

I am sure you all read the famous tale of the mouse merchant from Amar Chitra Katha series. In case you like me to retell, here goes:

Seeing a dead mouse on the floor, a merchant Vishakila says angrily to his son: "See that dead mouse? A clever man would be able to use even that as a means to increase his wealth. I gave a stupid fellow like you so many dinars, and far from multiplying that money, you have not even been able to keep what you had!". 

An enterprising onlooker asks Vishakila: "Sir, Can I take this dead mouse from you as the capital investment for my business?"

"Of course!"

Vishakila gives the onlooker, Gunadhya, the mouse, wrote him a receipt for it and left. 

Gunadhya sold the mouse as cat food to another merchant for two handfuls of gram. He ground up the gram and took a pot of water and sat under a shady tree at the crossroads outside the city. He offered the gram and the water humbly to a group of tired wood-carriers. Each of them gave him two pieces of wood. Gunadhya then took the wood to the market and sold it. He used part of the money form the sale to buy some more gram, and in the same way, the next day. He got some more wood from the carriers. He did this every day, and soon had enough capital to buy all of the wood-carriers' wood for three days. Suddenly, there was a great shortage of wood for a lot of money. He opened a shop with that money and became a merchant. He soon became a rich man through his own ability and business acumen. 

A few years later, Gunadhya ordered a mouse of gold to be made and returned it to Vishakila who gave his daughter in marriage. He became famous as the Mouse-Merchant because of this story. He became a rich man without having had no money at all.

                                                                                                           

Moral of the story? If you are enterprising and resourceful, you will convert a dead mouse into a golden mouse. If you are not and instead mess around, you can convert a golden mouse into a dead mouse. Wake up and smell the coffee!

#Telangana #AndhraPradesh #Seemandhra #KCR #Naidu #Entrepreneurship

How To Vote Intelligently

If you are in Hyderabad or anywhere else in Telangana, West Bengal, Gujarat, Bihar, Jammu & Kashmir, Daman & Diu, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Dadra & Nagar Haveli this is for you. When you wake up tomorrow, you have a historic opportunity to break records in the seventh round. No, not the seventh round of whiskey of vodka. But the seventh round to cast your vote.

If you are from Hyderabad, you are blessed twice, friends. You will have to vote twice. First vote is for the Assembly (Pink Paper). Second vote is for the Lok Sabha (White paper). Again, don’t get confused and ask for The Economic Times and Businessline because that’s what urbanites tell you – when they tell you, “ I read the pink paper” or “the white paper on business”. You don’t have to carry both nor roll them. By the way, you don’t have to carry even your mobile phones. You will be sent back if you are found with a mobile phone. Don’t bother passing it on to somebody you spot in your neighbourhood to do the honors. Take some identity card proof and do not forget the voting slip – someone would have given you the same before. If you haven’t yet got, don’t panic. Ask the volunteers of party offices camping outside the voting booth for verifying your names in the list. If you still can’t find your polling station and voter serial no. either visit www.ghmc.gov.in or dial the call center 2111 1111. Or, send an sms as “ SMS KYP to 9177999876.or identity verification, remember, 24 varieties of proofs are allowed from PAN to Aadhar Card.

The voting booths open from 7 am and go right till 6 pm. I don’t know whether early bird gets the worm but I have always found queues shorter when I go early. Infact, my father born before Independence, is usually the first voter in the booth. It gives a different kick, to wake early, have a shower, wear new clothes, greet morning sun, pray to God or Christopher Hitchens (if you are an atheist) and walk your way to the voting booth. That’s a routine we follow. If you have alternative plans for tomorrow, don’t even think of  it. Ask me. Offices are shut. Banks are closed. Hotels not open till evening. Cinemas are also, shut till 6 pm show. And, I checked with the box office, advance booking for “Anamika” and “Spiderman-2” also won’t open till evening. And IPL matches start later in the evening. So you have ten hours to do your own thing but first get the vote out of your way, get it inked and linked in with your social media presence.

And by the way, don’t worry about the EVMs – those beepy machines with the pink paper and the white paper as mentioned earlier. Don’t believe these machines can be rigged or booth-captured as reported in Pune etc. These machines are made by ECIL and Bharat Electronics and are both mechanically and electronically protected to prevent any tampering. The software used in these machines is burnt into a one-time programmable/masked chip so that it cannot be altered or tampered with. They can’t be hacked too. And remember, a maximum of five votes can be cast in one minute. Which means, even the presiding officer cannot enable the ballot for twelve seconds after every ballot is cast. With an electorate of over 814 million voters, there are 900,000 polling stations with lakhs of EVMs. I read somewhere that EVMs are not only tamper-proof and loud (not a single vote is accepted without a loud beep, audible even outside the polling booth) but they also save paper, about 10,000 metric tonnes of paper.

Back to the pink paper and white paper. Before you press the button corresponding to your choice of the candidate/symbol, wait for the green light to appear and a sound. Then after your press the button, a red light appears with another beeping sound – signalling that your vote is registered. Know this much, that it is no rocket science. When the EVMs are counted, election results are easiest to declare – within hours on May 16th.

I am no seasoned voter as I have just voted for six or seven General Elections and as many Assembly elections. But keeping these golden rules has always helped me cast a vote that makes a difference at the national and local level, even at the municipality level. My piece of unsolicited advice:

1. When you vote for the Lok Sabha, ensuring that you vote for the national party helps your vote to get counted amongst the national voting share of each party. Instead, if you vote for an Independent in Lok Sabha, the vote share gets fragmented and a clear choice is hard to come up. According to data from Election Commisison of India, the percentage of votes secured by Independents has been declining from 15.90 per cent in 1952 to just 5.19 per cent in 2009. This also clearly, corresponds to a fall in percentage of forfeited deposits of Independent Candidates in Lok Sabha elections from 67.54 per cent in 1952 to 99.35 per cent in 2009. Friends, clearly, voting for Independents in Lok Sabha is not an Audience Poll choice!
2. Vote with a clear conscience, without inducements, expectations and party affiliations and other considerations. Vote for a party that can make you see eye to eye with the next-gen also who must be more positive and hopeful than us. Not that we are not. But just in case!
3. When you vote for a party at a regional level, go for the one who is closest in your assessment and understanding – someone who matches performance, governance and clean record with fresh ideas.
4. In summary, nobody can influence or should influence who you vote for. It is a personal choice and a hard one at that, something that even your own family members can seldom agree upon. But if you close your eyes, and visualise the last five years and then determine what can change in the next five years with utmost honesty and sincerity, you will hit the right buttons. Believe me, in my own case, I hit the magic buttons every time since I was first eligible to vote except in the year 2009. I had been lucky to cast my votes for the winning candidate. This time, I am hoping I won’t even have to push my luck further.
5. Lastly, should  you use NOTA (None of the Above)? I am not an expert on this too. I will quote from Hindol Sengupta’s superb book : 100 THINGS TO KNOW AND DEBATE BEFORE YOU VOTE. He says,” No matter how many NOTA votes are cast, even if the most of the votes cast in a constituency are NOTA, a candidate winning the few remaining minority votes should be declared elected. Unless the law is amended to say if majority of the votes cast are NOTA, a re-election needs to be held, this does not solve the problem of corrupt candidates but not enough. As it often is in India, this rule does not go all the way. In short, Hindol says, “Use it. But remember it’s the beginning of change, not the end.”

So long then. Happy Voting. Happy Record Voting. And here’s wishing all of us better times ahead.

Single-Screen Theatres Vs. Multiplexes, again!

Deepak, Odeon join the growing list of theatres in Hyderabad losing out to the incessant march of Realtors tearing down buildings for flats. Deepak theatre in Narayanguda used to be a flop movie theatre - it was always getting renovated and remodelled and we used to occasionally watch movies but never got the limelight of stand-alone theatres like Shanti 70mm and Sudarshan 35mm etc.

Odeon complex sprung up relatively new in the RTC X roads but even three theatres in a portly campus hasn't helped them to make profits. Whats happeening to the single-screen theatres? As 80 per cent of all movies I ever watched were in these kind of theatres - the whistles, the papers splintered, the Rangoli on the floor adjoining the screen, the curtain-raiser and the curtain-closer, the non-discreet tring tring sound of the can opener pinching the cool drinks at interval time, the vent-out of feelings and emotions which is hardly visible in multiplex screens (where everybody is "dignified" and watch movies with a stiff upper lip).

I have mentioned in an older post about the long list of theatres pulled down for property development. One major issue facing these single-screen owners is the low rentals. Last week, I watched "Gabbar Singh" at Devi 70mm and was amazed at the high-quality of sound, visual grandeur and the elevation not to mention the ecstasy and the madness of 1750 people. Between the three segments of ticket prices, the theatre collects Rs.49000/- per show at an average of Rs.28/-. And for this, the management gets an approximate rental of Rs.3 lacs per week, sometimes lower at Rs.2.30 lacs. This is the theatre rental in a prime area of RTC X Roads which is the heart of Nizam area. In the plush single-screen theatres of Kukatpally, the rentals are close to Rs.1.50-1.80 lacs per week. So, in a year of 52 weeks, the rentals come to Rs.1.56 crs. Thats the income of these theatres. You will be aghast to know that these rentals are not even close to what Marriage Halls earn in a day. Even if the marriage halls are vacant for 150 days in a year, they give better rentals than Cinema Halls.

No wonder, cinema hall owners with vast acres are merrily converting their properties for development. Sudarshan 70mm, near RTC X Roads, already converted into Housing complex is charging Rs.1.00 crore for each flat. What ails the single-screen theatres is a combination of many factors - 1.Apathy of film Producers 2.Slab System of Rentals (which encourages big-star movies) 3.Fear of falling occupancies - which makes them hang on to poor rentals 4. Falling patronage of A-class crowds 5. Low Financial Reserves to recreate Multiplex Screens. For e.g the owners of Sangeet 70mm had a gala time for so many years, but eventually they lost out to multiplexes and had to seek huge loans and capital to begin the ongoing work on multiplex in Secunderabad. On the other hand, Tivoli/Lamba complex was created as a fine multiplex lookalike with better planning and fiscal management.

Single-screen theatres wont fully die down but unless they have better vision and planning and help from Film Producers Council, the writing is on the wall. I can't resist ending this piece without rendering an old joke about Deepak cinema. One day, former Chief Minister late T Anjaiah was passing by Deepak theatre and saw the board "Under Renovation". He remarked to his Secretary who read the board - "Oh I see, its an English movie."

The Economics of Movie Industry

Lets be honest about it. Even though "Businessman" is a hit, it is helpful to understand the context and the scenario emerging in Tollywood. I am no blind fan of any superstar or megastar but would like to take facts headlong and not have sentimental leanings. What is an industry hit? What is a superhit? These definitions easily get smudged. An industry hit means a movie that has made money for the producers and the distributtors but not liked overall by the public. If the public like the movie unanimously, then its a superhit. By all counts, "Businessman" is an industry hit but whether it is a superhit - it is yet to prove. Which is why, despite liking the movie, what I am surprised is when Film heroes give interviews on every channel and every day more regularly than newsreaders in order to make the public believe that it is a superhit. That, I am telling, is an unhealthy trend.


Something similar to what Superstar Krishna did many years ago. When it is becoming clear that Natasekhara Krishna was not likely to get a best actor award in any awards, and there was a title "Superstar" poll in a filmy magazine called "Jyotichitra" (now defunct), all the fans of the matinee idol - about five lakh copies of the magazine - were bought and everybody unanimously voted for Krishna as the only Superstar. I remember this distinctly as it happened during the time I was growing up on movies. Consequently, Krishna was voted "Superstar" and the title became a permanent prefix to an actor who despite his goodness and discipline may have never won an award for best actor. The ongoing saga of superstars vying for the next top slot is similar to that in scale and influence. By drumming up that a movie is a hit, nigh, superhit, they are trying to influence similar type of verdicts- by painting the town red with records, getting guys like RGV to drool over the movie etc. This is not a healthy trend.

Now lets come to the topic of number of prints and collections commensurate with them - are they enough? This is the question everybody is asking. Here I have a diferent take. Yes, collections have definitely undergone a sea change. It is not enough for a movie to run for 50 days or even a month to make money. This is because, cinema prints have also got the benefit of technology. Today, there are broadly, two types of cinema prints - UFO Cube format and the regular print. One format which runs on hard-disk equipment (like a CD Player projector) which is aired on both old-world theatres and multiplexes like Prasads at a cost of Rs.10,000 per week. That means, the same equipment can be used around RTC theaters, Kukatpaly theaters, etc. at a staggeringly low cost. The other format of the print costs less than Rs.50,000. So, gone are the days when a single print used to cost Rs.5 lacs or even Rs.3 or 2 lacs apiece. So, technically, if a film is released with 2000 prints, it is correct to assume that the cost of prints are Rs.12 crores. (2000 *6 lacs each). So, let it be abundantly clear that a film print is no longer exorbitantly higher which can deter a distributor from making more available to an area. Now, I come to the point of the movie's economics and the costs of distrbuting versus bidding costs. You can make helluva money on a movie with more prints and it is not necessary to make it run for 50 days or so. So collections do matter because film print costs have more or less become a lower notional almost variable cost. The only point I want to make is dont chase records and dont tom-tom about the collections in the same breadthy. Agreed, by tomorrow Republic Day, most of the distributors in some areas will make 100% of their bidding amounts from "Businessman" but think everybody has made money. The higher you bid, the more you stand to lose if you dont work out the economics well. The trick in distribution lies in bidding well and not get carried away. Once you bid well, you have the technology to recover the money faster. For example, Kukatpally and Dislukhanagar distributors have made their money almost but UK distributors have lost money in "Businessman" because of over-the-board bidding. But I hope you appreciate the nuances of distribution and the follies of records.

Hyderabad Literary Festival ends, Literally!

Last week's Th Hindu carried a cover story on the Jaipur Literary Festival - making it out to be the biggest in Asia-Pacific of its kind. I was contented enough to just be at Hyderabad Literary Festival just for a day. The setting was impressive and Taramati Baradari was the perfect venue - quite and picturesque with vast spaces full of greenery and hillocks and tombs to comb. What was missing? Probably the buzz and the energy levels. JLF sees a galaxy of star writers and super-star agents but HLF is just beginning and you dont expect first year to be a tour de force. And in Hyderabad - you don't expect book-hungry loves to turn up like eager-beaver birds and hunt for autographs  or surround a much-published author giving tips on overcoming the writer's block. I was lucky to spend a few meaningful moments with long-time friends and better-published writers than me. We chatted up on books galore and publishing trends across the world in that brief session over a mild coffee. I figured out that most of those who turned out as audiences were retired teachers, literature students and academicians. Writers of reckoning were few to be spotted - the ones who came and went were Indraganti Mohana Krishna (director of "Ashta Chemma"- quite a reader and a sensible film-maker ), Saed Mirza, Vidya Rao, Gulzar Sahib and Pavan K Verma ("The Great Indian Middle Class"). I met an interesting lady who is a big gun at  one of the leading publishing houses of an MNC in India. We discussed the best books to read in 2011 and seemed to agree on the increasing trend of seeing Indians writing more about stuff that Indians love to read. We hit off a common note on quite a few trends shaping the Rs.10,000 crore big Indian Publishing Industry. My  acquaintance gave some dope on what are the new themes to work on in Indian Publishing. I mentioned that I anticipated this trend five years back - like in MTV, Indians want to see more of Indians. No wonder, you have more Indians writing on everything from business biographies, health mattes, spirituality, fiction and other matters of nonfiction that have a general appeal. Out of 80,000 titles published in India, the trend is still not reached a stage where Indian books outnumber foreign books - but it is desirably on the upswing. I was nevertheless happy to interact with some friends and new contacts to discuss bibliophilia - amongst other things why and where a mafia works in some capitals of the country, why Ayn Rand still sells more books than any living author today, how to write e-books that can be sold as downloads for the 50 million Amazon Kindle users worldwide. HLF, was not that bad and if only the venue was in the heart of the city, the turnout would have been impressive. I hope this is just the right beginning that will get Hyderabad literal, literally!

New Newspaper

Hyderabad which got a new English daily "Indian Horizons" (quite below-par) will see a grander launch of another English Daily from a media house with some great talent - the team that built up DC and Hindu. Its launch is set for around July 15th. Watch this space for more.

Who are the 3 Idiots? Not Chetan Bhagat!

After the infamous run-in with the producers of the movie 3 Idiots, many would have written off Chetan Bhagat - the writer of the story that inspired the movie ("Five Point Someone")... Not only is Chetan Bhagat bracing himself for the next novel after "The 2 States of My Marriage" but he is laughing all the way to the bank. Sources from his publishers tell that after the successful release of 3 Idiots, Chetan Bhagat's books are in terrific demand, more than they can cope with. Already, he is the undisputed paperback king of India, but after this movie's release, even in Hyderabad, there's demand for 22000 copies  of Five Point Someone against 5000 copies available in various bookshops. The shortfall continues across pan-India. Whatever happened to the short-selling    by the author, Chetan (www.chetanbhagat.com) also made  neat capital out of the movie.  

And now, In-Train magazine!

In-house magazines and In-flight magazines, we heard. But In-train magazines? Sounds new and exciting, right? A Hyderabad-based company - Intellium Media Consultants Pvt.Ltd has started India's first In-train magazine for the South Central Railways, released on 11th December, 2009. The magazine called  "Shades of Life" seems a promising new magazine, distribted freely to passengers (not for carrying) in AC Coaches of trains criss-crossing the South Central Railways. Considering that the SCR ferries over 20 lakh passengers every month, its a monster of a market too big to ignore for any publisher. The magazine is slick, finely produced with elegant editorial content and glossy pics with 200 gsm variety. Looks like Railways and Reading are finally going together decades after writers like Ruskin Bond, Winston Churchill, Jim Corbett, Khushwanth Singh enjoyed the experience of reading in the Great Indian Railways. Next time, you are in AC Coach, don't forget to ask your copy of "Shades of Life" and do drop in to give your feedback. I hope this gets bigger and better across Pan-India Railway network in due course.

"Adhurs" Movie Review

"Adurs" is not all that "bevars" - an in-form NTR, in-shape two cuties, a bevy of comic villains, stylish settings in Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bangkok and Rome all these to prop up a hackneyed Hell0-Brother Story. What can render an otherwise life-less script from a Director VV Vinayak who usually sizzles in screenplay is a career-best performance by "lover boy" Brahmanandam. Entertaining even for KCR! 13.1.2010