Dear FM, Please remove customs duty on Imported Books

As a compulsive book-buyer and an avid book-collector, I strongly protest the imposition of customs duty on imported books. Earlier, it used to be Nil duty on imported books but now we have to pay five per cent. This is quite absurd and ruinous for those who love books and share knowledge. One of the greatest good that India's first Prime Minister Nehru did for our country (himself being a book-lover) was that he said NO to imposition of even Sales Tax on books. Because he felt knowledge should move seamlessly and cross borders and nobody should think twice about buying books. Books never attracted sales tax or any other indirect tax. If the NDA government thinks that books should also follow the MAKE IN INDIA doctrine, it is making a grave mistake with regard to knowledge acquisition in particular, and book-buying in general. As it is, most books now imprinted by global publishers like Random House, Hatchette and Bloomsbury follow the simple INR pricing model where global titles are assumed at a static foreign exchange conversion rate. This is because these publishers play on large volumes which ensure the absorption of royalty to foreign authors, a higher currency rate etc. Imposing customs duty and getting GST through the backdoor on imported books will eventually hit Indian publishing industry growing at 30 per cent annually and is the second-largest in English-speaking world. Publishers like Pearson, Cambridge, Oxford etc have so many reciprocal arrangements with concessional pricing in South East Asia with India as a major hub - now a lot of that trade will shift out of India. That makes educational books a tad costlier for Indian students as well. Only an uninformed and short-sighted policy maker will take such an extreme step of bringing books under customs duty and nipping a booming book trade in the bud  - at a time when paper costs are high and digital trends are disrupting many publishers out of business. Getting customs duty on books is also a gross violation of a constitutional commitment that Jawahar Lal Nehru made  - never to tax books. You can tax imported items like Gold, liquor, cigars and cigarettes, even petrol and diesel, but please do not tax books and get GST through the backdoor. Start thinking like a knowledge-worker and do what it takes to create a knowledge-economy. Otherwise we will only be reading the glorious books of the past and history books. By the time you read this post, there will be a knowledge-intensive imported book that is waiting to be opened in the container ship in India or so many new imported books just released for purchase on Amazon.

 #CustomsDutyonImportedBooks #ImportDutyOnBooks #GSTonBooks #NehruVsModi #KnowledgeSociety #KnowledgeEconomy #IndianPublishing

All About Indexing Books

What can enhance the value and utility of a book, especially a Nonfiction book? A good cover, an enticing title, a blistering blurb, a lovely outer cover, or a Bata-price tag of X99 rupees? None of these, methinks. Index, be it subject index or name index, is in my mind the most important enhancer of value. A good index can make you curiouser about the book you are about to buy – and even after you have bought, it makes it worthwhile to ration your time to it in a world of unending attention-grabbers. I have been reading books since third standard, buying books on my own since sixth standard and building up massive collections with moonlighting income from writing and copywriting from my Intermediate. Having seen books galore for a lifetime, I find it puzzling to see why so many book publishers especially in India miss the golden rule of indexing. I can understand why indexing is not worthwhile in Fiction books –who wants to read names you are about to get introduced in racy narrative? But for nonfiction books, Indexing is well in order. And even in case of a memoir or an autobiography, one can introduce a subject index if no name index is desirable in the eyes of the author.

For busy folks and executives who thumb through many titles of professional interest, from architecture to markets, from bitcoins to espionage – an index can be a life-saver besides being a time-saver. Yet, I find that Index is amiss in the multitude of books that are coming out of India, by Indians and by Indian/Global publishers. It tells me that there is some uneasy reluctance or sheer laziness by both the authors and publishers about indexing the books. Let me give some concrete examples of why a good index can ensnare a browser of books at a bookstore to buy the book. Look at some of the books released in Non-fiction category recently. James Crabtree’s “Billionaire Raj”, Monika Halan’s “Let’s Talk Money”, Rasheed Kidwai’s “Ballot: Ten Episodes that have shaped India’s Democracy”. Only one book by James Crabtree carries an Index Page. The book is actually rotten in content, and rubbished by the reviewers but the index page has references to Andhra Pradesh, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, and an entire chapter on Andhra Industrialists. It becomes easy to cite the book and quote anecdotes and insights from the book when you have an index which runs to half-a-dozen pages. Remember, Index for a book also means respect for reader’s time and hence, professionalism. You may have reasons for not including an index – when you feel the contents are explosive and may lead to a lot of backlash and defamation suits, but those are exceptions like a Lewinsky report or a Rajneesh Chronicle.

Seymour M Hersh, a reporter par excellence just released his book of memoirs. Lovely book but sans Index. On the contrary, a book of memoirs by AnandBazar Patrika’s impeccable reporter Suman Chattopadhyay - “My Date With History” is intricately indexed and makes you want to read fast and furious. What stumps me is that even global imprint publishers like Harper Collins and Penguin skip an Index when it comes to books by Indian writers. Take the case of the riveting book by a career intelligence officer Vikram Sood’s latest book on Insights on Espionage called “The Unending Games”. The book reads like a John Le Carre or Tom Clancy book full of irreverent digs into the world of spies from the Mossads to the KGBs of the world. But alas! No index! Giving an index means not just a big thumbs up to the visibility of the contents of the book but also aspiration to make it a global bestseller – to be lapped up by millions of readers outside the Himalayas. From what little I understand, most times, the decision to have an index page is either that of the author or both the author and the publisher. For the author, the reluctance comes not from shyness to put the referenced names in the Index page, but some contribution that is coming in as royalty from the publishers gets deducted from the author to the extent an Index is done. For example there are professional indexers and indexing software which cost a bomb and unless the author does the job herself or himself, the publisher may think it is an extra line item to the litany of expensing like marketing, promotion events of the book. A typical contribution from the author for indexing the book comes to $1000. So, one understands why there is a reluctance from Indian writers to index their works of non-fiction. But as much as you buy a good index service from professional software, nothing comes closer to having a good one than having the job done by the author herself – because the author (and the publisher) know best what is worth indexing and referencing. Cindex, Sky or Macrex are good index programs but despite that if one doesn’t know what to highlight in a book, even the best of such programs can hamper the credibility of a book, if the index is poorly done. Since I have a lot of publishing friends and writers in my feed, I wanted to highlight this aspect which is grossly under-exploited in the overall marketing and promotion of books. The next time you see a good book of non-fiction, remember to look up if it has an Index page after the acknowledgements page. If the publisher is serious about reaching a global audience for the book, chances are eight out of ten that there is a good index page in the book. Having an Index Page, sells a book. In this age of #hashtags and #keywordsearches. I rest my case.

#Indexing #IndexPage #BookSummary #BestsellerBooks #BookPublishing #Publishing #BookMarketing #GlobalmarketingofBooks #Booksellers #Authors #Publishers #IndianPublishers #Nonfiction #Fiction #HowToMarketBooksUsingIndex #Citations #BookBlurbs #ReferencingBooks #BookIndexing #IndexingSoftware #AuthorsAndWriters #IndianPublishing

Lessons from the Walmart-Flipkart Deal

Walmart's acquisition of Flipkart for $16 billion is the most exciting news for a variety of reasons and means a world for Indian Retail Industry. It is exciting because for a team of co-founders who braved the odds of running an E-Tail startup against all rejections, criticism and hardships for 11 years, this deal is the proof of concept that startups in India can not only succeed or become a unicorn (having valuation above $ 1 Billion) but get scaled upto a level that attracts the attention of the world's best investment bankers and giants like Walmart, Amazon (in the way its been pumping before and after the deal was announced) and Alibaba (who is also eyeing the Indian E-tail space). The deal happened to a company that is yet to enter "teens" but it will fire up the imagination and enthusiasm of millions of young people in India and South Asia to dream big in startups. The deal is also going to make bankers sit up and take notice as many of them are still unable to determine using conventional templates how to value and finance a company having negative EBITDA or higher cash burn rates. There has to be a way for project-financing bankers to participate in growth opportunities without collaterals. On the day of the deal announcement, Flipkart had accumulated losses over Rs.24000 crore (almost $ 4 Billion) but the ones who will make money from this deal will be Softbank (if they exit), Tiger Global, Accel Partners, Tencent Holdings and others who took risks. The deal is going to sizzle up the Investment Landscape too - with Alternative Asset-Class becoming worthy of Investment-grade by UHNWIs and HNWIs. OF course, not every deal will be a runaway success but we are at an inflection point today just as we were when we only had Templeton, UTI and Canbank and Indbank peddling Mutual Fund Schemes. The deal is also going to make all those Billionaires in India wake up to threats of their brick-and-mortar businesses without focusing on areas of impact - Artificial Intelligence-based Algorithms, Supply Chain connectivity, Top-notch managerial talent and Financial Innovation. And finally, the deal is just a scratch on the surface of the $750 Billion Retail Merchandise industry. Walmart is known to upend most of the Retailing oligopolies wherever they set foot and their move here will sure trigger agitations and backlash from existing stakeholders in India's vast Retail order but it is one of the tipping points for a host of reasons as above. There have been enough poison-pill reports by startup commentators in the last few years about whether India is going overboard with obsession over unicorn valuations and startup movements. This deal is an answer to all that fuss over valuations. The next time someone kicks their job to start up a company (even if it is not IT-related) or gets a campus offer from a startup or raising funds via crowdsourcing, respect them and wish them well - there is honor and promise in such risk-taking. Lastly, welcome to the benefits of Flexible thinking. We live in an era where a Tech-averse Warren Buffett has mended ways to invest in potential $ 1 Trillion tech companies like Apple. Follow the cheese, wake up and smell coffee! Congrats Bansals. #FlipkartDeal #WalmartFlipkart

Air Chief Marshall Idris Hasan Latif - A complete life of 95 years!

Air Chief Marshall Mr Idris Hasan Latif is no more. I have been privileged and fortunate to know and handle his finances as far back as in 1996 when I was a greenhorn in Financial Advisory. When I was handpicked to handle him, I shuddered. The first time I met him and his learned wife Madam Bilkees Latif at the bungalow which is now Saakshi TV Headquarters, I was floored by his hospitality, his congeniality and his charms. Wonderful imported tea, foreign cookies and elaborate spreads used to greet me every time I met him. Even though his office was a stone's throw from my office @ Karvy, meeting him meant comprehensive, nerve-wracking preparation and unmissable punctuality. All those meetings steeled my greenhorn ways into becoming Pro at work, very early in my career. Everything from writing out his name to the way you spell had to be spick n span. You put an extra "S" into Hasan or you miss the AIR CHIEF MARSHALL in reference, you get a glare that will shame you. Taught me a lot about professionalism, importance of name as wished to be written by a client, knowledge as a conversational input and the relentless need to be punctual as well as expedient. He kept minutes of the meeting as detailed as I and was cordial but firm in reprimanding on slippages in service. There was one complaint made against me for some shares not being dematerialized for which Karvy was not the registrar. Once again braced me up for pacing my speed of followup and expediency. Mutual Funds were just about to take off those days but somehow I felt despite the frenzy for Morgan Stanley Mutual Fund, I must not give Mr Latif the application and hardsell. I used to tell him, " Your portfolio has the best of the bluechips that is the envy of even fund managers. Don't sell it now. Sell it when you think you won't have time and energy to manage yourself." Neither did I tell him to put money into many of the Fixed Deposits marketed aggressively by Karvy which went kaput later. Mr Latif appreciated my advice and my convictions in simplifying but not over-complicating the portfolio with needless risks and diversifications. His family way back in the nineties itself was a global family - sons and daughters in China, US with foreign citizens as daughter-in-law and sons-in-law. He had the most exquisite artifacts sourced from all over the world from days of travel in Airforce to the days of being a French Ambassador.

His command over languages, English, French, Hindi, Urdu, Persian and bits of Telugu was inspiring. Years later, it inspired me to learn French when I was working for a french bank BNP Paribas almost the same way he taught himself when he moved to Paris. He used to maintain a lovely collection of books most of them coffee table books and inspiring biographies. Some of the less-important ones were kept on the staircases dotting the steps. He maintained pets, mostly cats and dogs and plenty of birds safely protected from the canine creatures in a separate aviary in the backyard of his house. Madam Latif always greeted me to acknowledge my presence and perhaps moved away to do her chores, of which I later gathered were mostly writerly. Her books on cooking and remembrances of things motherly have been iconic best-sellers. Throughout their lives, Mr Latif and Mrs Bilkees Latif were never apart from each other and even to the parties and rendezvous events, they were in it together, mostly seated in the first or primordial row.

Mr Latif was also a raconteur and sharp-witted but never slighted the guest. Those days, I used to drive an LML Vespa. And he had already few cars parked at the front of his house. For all others his guard kept the door closed for business disposed from inside but for me he instructed my Vespa be driven right inside and parked next to his cars. His kindness and goodness bowled me over and taught me that treat everyone with respect and dignity of a human being. What is small today can be large tomorrow. Years later when I met him, he told me he sold all his shares plonked into Mutual Funds and he is quite happy with the returns. He appreciated the thought that I told him that one day Mutual Funds will be as big as shares and until the variety improves, stick to your stocks. We met a couple of times   later after he moved away from that sprawling bungalow on Road No.1 to a place not afar on Road no.2. But I will always admireAir Chief Marshall Mr Idris Hasan Latif for the things he taught me, the way he treated me when I was small and for the opportunity to learn. I wish he ascends to Jannat in peace and happiness from a life so richly lived. One of the privileges of being a Financial Advisor is the free entry pass you get inside the lives of the rich, the famous and the most successful. Air Chief Marshall Latif Sir was all of that. A lot of the ninety five years of his life has a load of lessons. I hope his children will put his life's work in publishing domain.

#AirChiefMarshallIdrisHasanLatif #IdrisHasanLatif #BilkeesLatif #CitizensOfHyderabad #LessonsOnWealthAdvisoryFromClients

Actress Krishna Kumari is no more.

Sad to-  know of actress Krishna Kumari’s passing at age 85. In the history of Telugu Film Industry, Krishna Kumari will remembered as one of the most glamorous heroines in the B&W era making her presence felt in a range of plots from social to folklore to mythologicals. Acting in over 100 films, her strength is in projecting her classical looks into any role which demanded feminine grace, virtues of patience and generosity. What she lacked in versatility of her contemporaries like Savitri and Jamuna, she made up sheerly by her good temperament and immaculate dressing. From NTR to ANR, from Kantha Rao to Krishnam Raju, she was always ready to pair opposite anybody unmindful of her dizzy star power – which even overshadowed her own sister Sowcar Janaki who sprung into films much before her. Winning State Awards was easy for her because of the soberness she carried on screen and one never second-guessed whether she had any mirth off-screen except for those adventurous Janpad films she got paired alongwith Kantha Rao and Rajasree. The twist of history in Tollywood reveals that Krishna Kumari emerged like a dark horse (actually not dark!) when the film industry had an embargo on actress Jamuna after her tiff with NTR. The boycott lasted about five years enough for Krishna Kumari to double down on as many roles, meaty as well as one among the three heroines. Industry heaved a sigh of relief that there is a good alternative to Jamuna. But the gap was short-lived and Jamuna bounced back with her memorable performance in “Gundamma Katha”. Nevertheless, Krishna Kumari created an identity for herself in the South Indian Film Industry with a good mix of pace, initiative and tactfulness. The late NTR was so smitten by her that there is a rumour that both of them wanted to marry but NTR’s wife wouldn’t approve of it. That’s why some of the most romantic hits like “Bandipotu” etc came in that era.

It goes to the credit of Krishna Kumari that her feminine grace and dignified performances ensured that the most magical musical output of the golden era came as lilting songs featuring herself and heroes serenading her. You name any of Krishna Kumari’s films, and scores of melodies and superhit songs count – be it “Vagdaanam”, “Constable Kooturu”, “Kula Gotralu”, “Lakshadikari”, “Bharya Bhartalu”. Women in the 60s and 70s universally identified with her roles and the mesermerising music and the multi-star cast that usually earmarked her films ensured she is enshrined in our memory. She was also keen not to appear older or diseased in her films, a facet that kept her glamor quotient high even if it didn’t aid her career greatly after the nuanced Jamuna staged a comeback and other heroines like B.Saroja Devi, Kanchana, Vanisri etc surfaced. The best part of Krishna Kumari’s life and career is that she kept her dignity throughout, staying closer to her blood sister S.Janaki. Her part in elevating a heroine’s character without qualms and skin show is what is her greatest legacy. Also, if you go through her entire filmography, you may just find very few films like “Sampoorna Ramayanam” where she is seen as aged widow of King Dasaratha. Her obsession with only appearing in fairy tale visuals and happy frames is what makes her the original fruitcake in Tollywood. She reminds me of the Shakespeare quote and I would hence say: Some heroines are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them. Krishna Kumari is a heroine where Tollywood thrust greatness on her.

#KrishnaKumari #Tollywood #TFI #GoldenEraHeroines #TeluguFilmHeroines

"Arjun Reddy" (Telugu Film) premierre on Television

"Arjun Reddy" is finally telecast on Television Premiere yesterday. I dreaded how it will come across on TV because it was rated "A" when it released. Amazon Prime has no qualms about releasing profanity disguised as class wrapped inside a "Cult " film. But TV Premierre had to show a sense of responsibility higher than that. The original version released in theaters had almost eleven censor cuts with few minutes of mute in an unusually long film for a modern-day version of Devadas. I realized that from the day the sensational posters of the film got released that here is a film that is going to rock by catering to the youthful audience, the hostel variety. While I have been reviewing Telugu films, unofficially, since 1991 (while I was still a sophomore), I have never seen so much curiosity raised for a film like "Arjun Reddy" ever for a film review. Many of my kin and kith and fellows on FB have texted in multiple ways to ask me to review the film. I did see the film and followed all the heaps of praise that it garnered but I didn't want to review the film because of many reasons. One of the main reasons is that I wanted the boy to do very well - Vijay Devarakonda - I have interviewed him for Telugu360.com (https://www.telugu360.com/interview-with-vijay-devarakonda/) and have high respect for him for choosing different scripts and carving out a niche for himself in a star-struck tinsel town without any Godfathers.

After completing the full run of a powerful show at the Box Office, and later, winning plaudits at Amazon Prime and finally getting aired on TV yesterday, I thought it makes sense to see the film for what it said and what it stands for. With all due respects to the makers of the film and the crew and the team, I personally feel "Arjun Reddy" is a freakish, once-in-a-lifetime intense account of a love story with a poetic ending. Any other interpretations would make us read more into it than what the director Sandeep Vanga Reddy himself never intended us to see in the first place. The film was aimed only at the youth audience, the go-getter generation who will their lives their way, stray occasionally, fall again and get themselves up even if they lose a phase of life or parts of themselves. There is no message here for the society because the character of Arjun Reddy is so intense and real that the story is told in tell-tale fashion with riveting authenticity of a self-obsessed medico who falls in love with a college junior and later loses her, loses himself to take to drugs, loses his way in home, practices as a surgeon, loses his grandmother - the only other lady who empathized with him, finds his father's affections again, re-spots the love of his life just as he embarks on a holiday, and finally rejoins with her and the unborn baby to lead a happy life - just where it started all over before marriage.
My issues in interpreting the film have got nothing to do with issues of a live-in relationship or consensual sex the hero and the heroine carry on in their lives but the contradictions that abound in the narrative which the director conveniently side-steps while giving us an impression he is honest. Every director dreams of a honest film, if he is not honest about his motives and objectives, what is a director for then? But in this film, the director creates situations and characters which do not lend consistency. Let me come to come to the facts straight away.

The hero is shown to be fiercely independent in the first few minutes and gets punished by the Dean of the medical school. He doesn't see any girl but the only girl he falls in love with, his junior, he goes over-protective about her, dotes on her, ensures her projects are finished on time because a lot of it is done out of his promise to be a Guardian caretaker as promised to the girl's father. And then it becomes consensual relationship. But he never shows any remorse that he has breached the trust given to the girl's father nor disclosed it when he has violated it first time (or every time!). Forget his own ibby-jibbies, he fails to even convince his father to go and talk to the girl's parents at a crucial juncture and mumbles to explain why his "father-in-law" is upset with him. While a decent relationship exists between Arjun's brother and grandmother, both of them fail to rein him in to fall in line with control of emotions and anger and suffering. If the hero is really so attached to the grandmother, the grandmother would have never told him, "All suffering is personal and let him suffer." Neither is she ever in a mood to counsel her grandson, neither is he in a position to ever listen to anybody - a lot of everything that greets the hero is self-inflicted. And a lot of problems that the hero gets in his life are all coming from lack of self-awareness and self-control. When you lack self-awareness, you live like an animal without any sense of good or bad, and then you rely on your instincts which without an overlay of received wisdom or avuncular guidance to rein them in, it leads to more and more disastrous consequences. This is what happened to the hero in the film: in an attempt to create a modern paradox of a Devdas, we see a hysterical control maniac who wants everything his way and doesn't use reason or sage counsel to help him. At a crucial juncture when someone tries to molest his love, he chases down the culprit to assault him into submission but later makes the same offender stand guarantee to ensure no further offenses happen. How bizarre!
Yet another gaping hole is when in an important moment, the hero's friend Ramakrishna is the one who introduces the hero to weed, coke and drugs. However, we find it is the friend who keeps bailing the hero out of trouble most of the times. If your best friend is the one who introduces you to drugs and then bails you out every time you land in trouble, is he your best friend? Which friend will make you lose your marbles and then stand by you each time you try to find your way? Then the hero in a bid to fortify the love of his life makes remarks about others commenting on fat air hostesses but he himself picks a fat girl as a roommate to ring-fence his girl from others' attention. The episodes about his medical practice are another thing and would have led to public outcry had the owner not belled the cat later. Is that a good example to the students again? And admitting to it, would it absolve the breach of trust earlier? All along, the hero plays such a bully in reel life and protects the girl but fails to build self-confidence in the girl so much that she doesn't retaliate at moments when they were about to get separated or she was about to get married. Can communication be so bad and yet the girl walks out on her marriage, to take care of the pregnancy. In another instance, the hero goes home after learning about the grandma's death and lectures to father that life is all about reaction to birth and death 90 per cent of the time and the ten per cent is all about those events of life and death. How silly! Is that all the wisdom the director wants to project about life? Is that the essence of life? Is being available to greeters of death the only thing that matters?

On the whole, I somehow couldn't relish watching the film though I enjoyed the narrative of the film in its full-blooded intensity and staggering length. If more commercial films are attempted with the tell-tale honesty of director Sandeep's approach, we will have more stories to experience immersively. In that sense, make no mistake, Vijay Devarakonda's performance is the performance of the decade, Ramakrishna's characterization is one of the most entertaining ones as a side-kick to the hero, and music by Radhan is one of the most enchanting scores to listen to. But the film has a disturbing straw to its narrative which makes you think which way the boys and the girls can stray into in ways which can affect your peace of mind. The director has done well to highlight a meme that infected the protagonist but it is a dangerous meme. Could any other director attempted this story differently, in more responsible ways? Like Shekhar Kammula or Nandini Reddy or Tharun Bhascker or Indraganti Mohan Krishna? I like to think so. The real test of Sandeep Vanga Reddy's mettle as a director is to immediately make his next film and then we will know whether "Arjun Reddy" is a freak film or the director has managed to shake off the experience of a character like Arjun Reddy in his memory.
Finally, the film grossed over Rs.50 crores in theatrical run and managed to stump everybody's projections. Does that make it a cult classic film? Is it like "Shiva" and "Sholay"? I do not think so. A cult film usually changes the perception of how movies are made by showing a new perspective, taking or style. A classic film is one that is universally acclaimed by all family audiences. A cult classic film is endearing to all family audiences and is clean U rated. "Shiva" was a cult film but not a classic because a section of audiences did not like the degree of violence in the film. But it was neat for all ages. Ditto for "Sholay". "Arjun Reddy" would be a cult film because of the way it let the mind of a director focus with a single-minded narrative of a character as real in flesh and blood as Arjun Reddy who is full of contradictions, surprises and shades of grey - that interval bang, for example of a hero pissing in his pants out of incontinence is a master stroke which no hero would ever dream of attempting. But Tollywood has talked about many cult films in the last two decades and every time a movie was hailed as a cult film, they said the industry is going to change for good. They said it when "Shiva" was released. They said when "Sitaramayya gari Manavaralu" got released. They said it again when "Pratighathana" was released. They said the industry has evolved when the film "Aithe" another cult film got released unleashing a new director Chandrasekhar Yeleti. They said it when "Anand" and later "Happy Days" got released. But cult films only last as long as the next style or signature of a newly-minted director is not yet in sight. But a classic film like a "Mayabazaar" or a "Shankarabharanam" or a "Sagar Sangamam" or "Athadu" or "Mutyla Muggu" they will remain in limelight forever. Unfortunately, "Arjun Reddy" is not a classic film because a. it is not a "U" certificate film and b. it is not a classic film, as simple as that.

I would have rated the film 2.75/5 if I have seen the film first time. And while I feel happy for the boy Vijay who has stormed the bastion of Tollywood (and all the aged and dynastic heroes who are pissing in the pants for the audacity of the new age youth icon Vijay Devarakonda), I hope he selects responsible scripts in future to consolidate his career.

"The Post" (English)

In the twilight years of his career, director Steven Spielberg has been trying to tell different stories in different genres. The latest film "The Post" is quite an exciting story - the story of how rival newspapers tried to pip each other to the post (pun unintended) in publishing "The Pentagon Papers" (the papers which reveal damning confessions about how the American public in particular and the world at large was led to believe that the Vietnam war holocaust was fought without a cause. Playing the key roles in this episode is Meryl Streep as the legendary Katherine Graham, publisher and owner, The Washington Post and Ben Bradlee, the famous editor, The Washington Post. In approximately 115 minutes, Spielberg gives a riveting account of those episodic moments in his typical fluent but linear style of story-telling, though following the same drumbeat routine - a prologue of a war where an element of reporting takes out a chunky box of classified information by subterfuge and the narrative afterwards as to how two of America's most vibrant newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post trying to assert each other's snoopy adventures get to the finishing tape by reaching the source. And finally, the brilliant climax where a celebration of the Freedom of the Press ushers in with a dramatic Supreme Court verdict and a lot of maudlin moments for Kat Graham and Ben Bradlee.

On the whole, the movie is absorbing with all the details that Spielberg narratives reconstruct - the excitement of how newspapers worked in the times when nobody else , not even the Television was breaking news by the minute and mobiles and internet were unthinkable and the humongous pressures that newspaper editors and publishers went through during the worst Presidency years that American media has ever seen. The good part is the vividness and the emotionalities retained without too much fussing, aided by persuasive and nuanced performances by Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. Music by Speilberg's favorite composer John Williams is piercing yet non-invasive - the director and the music composer have shared so many lifetime's work between each other that they don't need to make an effort to fall in sync with each other - once again proved by the output of BGM in the film. The ending is a bit dramatic and formulaic with self-congratulatory glances exchanged by the two protagonists- Streep and Hanks as if they have done iconic expose. All they did was to publish papers and re-interpret history of several presidencies before and during Nixon's tenure  as to the true motives of the Vietnam's war. Spielberg's strengths have been in story-telling but his weaknesses are in ignoring the larger pictures that emerged later on giving some post-script insights.

For instance, more than 3.5 million people were killed in the Vietnam war and over 58,000 American soldiers died during the war leading to devastating economic consequences. No cursory mention of the same is made except just dramatizing the efforts to reach custody of the secret papers. Do those who followed the  war know that those war years are what changed the economic landscape of the world forever- Nixon was forced to abandon the Gold Standard as the dollar took a beating and hyperinflation rose? There were two books written by the protagonists - "Katherine Graham: A Personal History" and "Yours in Truth: A personal portrait of Ben Bradlee" which give exquisite insights into the effects of the War and the fallout on the American economy as well as on the Foreign policy (of which nothing has changed). This being a limited excursion into the adventurist spirit of a noted American publisher, Spielberg can be excused lapses of interpreting the larger unintended consequences of historical blunders but in my view, it is a golden opportunity missed by the director in enhancing the reportage value of the narrative. Was "Platoon" a better film than this on the Vietnam War? Unfair because the anecdotes depicted are totally different but just a food for thought whether Spielberg has the objectivity of an Oliver Sone in re-imagining political potboilers. What we can take home from the film is the general depreciation in values of Press Freedom and an unhealthy uptrend in generating "fake news" and whataboutery. Two golden lines from the film will resonate with everybody who values press as the fourth estate to keep an eternal vigil on democracy: "The principal duty of the press is to safeguard the interests of the governed, not the governors". And "The only way to assert the right to publish is to publish it." A good film to watch if you care about   some of these lofty ideals which are becoming rarer than rare-earth metals. Spielberg could have also used a narrative to mention the episodes which later led Warren Buffett to bite into the shareholding of The Post and later, much later, how Jeff Bezos took hold of the venerable newspaper just as it was about to fold up.

My rating: 3/5

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