Highway - A Review

The expectations were sky high. Imtiaz Ali, Wife's favorite. Randeep Hooda, my favorite. Alia Bhatt's surprisingly perceptive acting skills and AR Rahman. Add to these, a glimpse of the storyline from the advert on TV and we were raring to watch this flick after epic disasters of volcanic proportions like Dhoom X, Krishh X, Yaariyan and other diabetic, discordant and destructive bolly products.

I only read reviews, I never write them. This being my first, I'll excuse myself for any theoretical blunders in the science and art of review-writing, 'coz I know none. Bollywood, along with my wife, has been a recent entrant into my life. So, I'll also excuse myself from the lack of historical perspective in what I write 'coz, I have none.

First, the story in a few lines. Alia is a rich man's daughter kidnapped by the opulence of fate by a seasoned thug, Hooda. Both, representing the mordant incongruities of modern day India, find their foils in each other and come to accept the highway as their new home. Thanks to India's bewildering  network of roads which remain perpetually unenforced, we get a 140 min spectacle to watch.

The presence of two independent forces bound by two opposed philosophies (hero and villain) has always defined mainstream Indian Cinema. The character, color and the cast of the fight between these forces made the lifeblood of the movie. Romance, Dance and Songs were meant only to pander to the "other" carnal instincts. The Hero and Villain theme was inconspicuously based on one primitive, indispensable formula. There should be an undisguised and barefaced distinction between the hero and the villain. Fair, tall, nice-smelling, woman, infant and child protecting, philanthropist, society before thyself, no-lust-only-love, mostly communist on the one hand and a dark, bearded, meat-eating, booze-guzzling, libido-pumped and  mostly capitalist on the other hand. When this cement-mortar wall sometimes gave in to create variety, the film was punched in the groin, smacked on the face, spanked on the butt and consigned to the "Art" almirahs of government media libraries to wither and perish under the weight of exile.

Highway, quite aptly, doesn't just create holes in this cement-mortar wall, it removes it completely. As a natural consequence, the "flock" pronounced the film dead at birth. Not many liked it. When I watched it in its release week in a city where despite its geographical disconnect from the Hindi heartland,  there is a substantial Hindi speaking populace, the hall was mostly empty.

Where did Imtiaz Ali fail? The waxed chest of Randeep Hooda, the 2 feet bright red party frock of Alia Bhatt (From Student of the Year), Priyanka Chopra's lascivious buttoning/unbuttoning of her choli, Prabhu Deva's hip thrusts and YoYo Honey's Punj-hin-glish rap. All these were missing in the movie to draw in the crowds. The average Indian male/female wanted all this and his share of nachos and popcorn to call the film a Blockbuster. So clearly, Highway isn't one. But there were tiny little things that the movie did seem to get right.

When it showed how Alia and Randeep breakdown in the course of their journey, it also showed how ridiculously hypocritical a society can become when its collective beliefs and dormant traditions are asked to face simple truths. It showed that when a traditional, theoretically spiritual and often emotional and hierarchical system is effortlessly invaded by the spirit and the beliefs of the new world, chaos makes presence. It also showed that what appears to be free in a modern, spirited and vocal democracy may not actually be free. Fraught in the timeless burden of virtue, family and tradition, it showed that a touch of freedom can unravel the duplicity and the deception of the morbid faiths that are often hailed as holy grails.

The movie showed, quite necessarily, to the new uber - cool of Urban India that more money doesn't always make a person more human. So, to judge a civilization on the basis of the gadgets it uses, the accent it wears or the power it wields is to judge a person's nature by virtue of his religion. As Hooda cracks his palm against the lurid moves of his crony, the movie showed that faith and rectitude are not Siamese Twins of growth and development. When Alia divulges the secret of pedophilia, the movie showed that debauchery and depravity are not the privileged dominions of penury and destitution. More often it is the other way round. So the movie questions, where, as a country and a society, are we moving?

The movie also showed that an Alia exists in each one of us. To love the journey as it unfolds and to forget the consequences of the destination.When you are in transit, you are in a state of suspended animation. A state of peaceful recess where you are bound just by the rules of the road. Your identity is swamped by the strident noises of the road. You are a nobody in the traffic of metal. You are on your own. Left to your own, to think of your own. The deafening intensity pushes you into an urgent anonymity and you then begin to regain a part of your self that you had lost under the constant surveillance of your earlier ambiance. You question your position and re calibrate your situation. Miracles might happen and this movie is about one such miracle.

The movie showed the inevitable exigence for women in society. As they are raped, brutalized, buried and snuffed out in this corrupt and venal world of ours, they play an imperceptible role in circumscribing the limits of misdemeanor, criminality and immorality in society. A goon with a scathing tongue, a contempt for decency and a history of violence, it is out of his love for his mother that Hooda remains sane in his vitals. He retains an iota of civility, fallibility and emotion purely out of his memories of maternal love. Whereas Alia, ravaged as a child, earns disbelief and incredulity from her mother who warns Alia to stay hush about her cannibal uncle. Women, as mothers, are the conscience keepers of society. As we kill and decapitate more of them with impunity, we are only making the country a more decrepit place to live in. The movie, as it is apt, tells us a thing or two about how important it is today to protect our women, our future mothers.

In the end, yes Imtiaz captures in vivid images and great detail, the fight between the good and the bad that forms "The" element of Indian Cinema. But I'm sorry Imtiaz, you failed to create the inconspicuous wall. Well you couldn't anyways. The evil, the monster this time was in each one of us, the silent nacho-munching, soda-flushing urban multiplex fan. We gaze at women as if they could be gleefully fondled with. We, on the other hand worship Goddess Durga. We treat women at work like they are wartime spoils while we protect our wives and sisters at home. We stage dharnas for laws to protect women but also are loathe to the fact that a women wishes to work after marriage.

In this hypocritical society, Imtiaz, your film had to fail.



 

The naming ceremony

"It looks like a pig from the front"

When split second reactionary impulses of the human brain are instantly transcribed by the tongue into audible creatures without fear or falter of post-transmission hostilities, you can be sure my wife is around. It's a completely different thing that what actually is blurted makes complete sense. It's about the fact that every unexceptional, ordinary, pedestrian mind is given to a phenomenon called "instantaneous juxtapositioning". Your nervous system considers various real, live and incarnate impulses affecting you like, mood, temperature, libido, hunger, pain, anger, presence of friends, bosses, in laws, bowel condition, bladder condition, etc. and makes corresponding adjustments to your world view. Consequently, this canvas, projected by your mind becomes decently palatable by every other unexceptional, ordinary, pedestrian mind around which also processes similar inputs. So, most views settle around the best average mean that is most acceptable and sensually comfortable. The problem is here is that "most acceptance" and "sensual comfort" do also bring in factual contamination and conceptual scum that alters the absoluteness and actuality of the fact in front of each of those unexceptional, ordinary, pedestrian minds.

This makes my wife, an un-ordinary representational genius, also an impromptu evaluation-cum-sentencing apparatus with a live- with-my-judgment-or-act-deaf attitude.

It was the usual eat-work-eat-work-eat-sleep routine. A silent, peaceful, floater-ed evening walk to the neighborhood store. We didn't have a vehicle for ourselves. So we were carrying the vegetables back home. Man proposes and wife disposes if the prevailing and customary convention in our family. I didn't want to act crazy and break the rule. So I said, "Why don't we put in a lakh and a half more and go for the Ford Ecosport?" 

Disaster Ensued.

Next morning, we were traveling to Office in our employer provided car, when I caught sight of the vehicle I was talking about last night. The white flag - waving doctor, sitting in the left side of the brain was telling me, "brother, to recover from yesterday's disaster, you need tantric healing and psychological counseling, permanent damages have been made to your psyche. Why do you want to rake up the issue again? Want to be beaten in to beetroot batter?" The blood - sucking opportunist in the right side of the brain was telling me, "Beetroot and Batter are not more important than your libido and lust for that car. Go ahead. Convince Her. Your bones might be served tonight like almond cookies to the neighbor's dog by your wife today. But doesn't matter. You might end up being awarded the "Death for having tried to convince wife - Best Sacrifical Goat" award, posthumously. Be a martyr, man. Be passionate about your convictions!" The opportunist's ideas sounded unsafe, unhealthy and threatening. But they also showed hope. So, I went for it. 

"That's the Ford Ecosport! Doesn't it look good?"

There was silence through out. The quiet rumble of the engine beneath our butts and the stifled honks of scooters outside, were my only companions. The driver was blissfully disconnected from the developing spectacle. I was caught within a four walls and a few inches of a hungry hallucination that seemed civil and sympathetic till now. The sweet smell of a tempting dish met her. I was getting ready to be devoured, when the  impromptu evaluation-cum-sentencing apparatus comes out, "It looks like a pig from the front. If it ends up in our garage, we'll call it Piggu." I breathed.

Long Time

"Time and Tide wait for none"

The virtuous innocence of this sweet little verse makes it a tender classroom maxim repeated over and again before and after noon in schools all across the globe. I realized that this apparently "like"able quote languishing in the many trivial corners of most sixth-graders' essays can unleash a crazy feeling of godforsaken desertion only today, when I'm on the hem of turning Thirty.

Thirty. I find the number strange and confusing. This confusion is a result of the shock value that the number packs. More than shock value, "Thirty" also packs with it, snooze value. Thirty, to me, represented baldness, back pain and bladder problems. Not because I had examples of thirty-something convalescents in my family, it was because 30 was an age that was too distant and too dystopian for me to believe in. Thirty years was always like a pocket of sand at the oblivious Horizon, in the middle of the ocean, too far and too unlikely to turn up. I was comfortable with the thought of thirty, tossed, pitched and mummified in the hindmost stratum of my brain.

So, I did.

I had forgotten about this thought until I started to feel "thirtyish". It's a feeling worth describing. You wake up with a slight sensation of discomfort in your right shoulder/knee/back/elbow. This sensation serves two purposes. One, it wakes you up. Two, it smacks into your head the realistic thought that "Son, you are approaching thirty, so don't try funny things like Rappelling or Mattress-WWF even if your childhood chum challenges you today". You get out of bed and look at yourself in the mirror to see that a few more strands of protein have gone extinct on your head. You pretend that it's not balding but only a problem with the barber who tends to be excessively desirous to own those particularly rickety filaments of hair that grow out of the balding zone. Understandable. You use the comb to conceal the scandalous revelation. You fill your mug of coffee and the mug reminds you of your distinctive eminence and place of prominence, [read: incessant obligations and relentless complaints] "World's best Husband/ Universe's most hard working employee/ Most struck-dumb listener to a wife, Ever!/ Most efficient Nappy changer ever to have lived on earth/ etc." Filled with pride, you plan to wake your wife to share your thoughts, when you realize that there's still a few micro seconds to go and if you still plan to wake her up, a cannonade of scorching slander follows. Filled to the brim with content, having received the daily dosage, you walk to the balcony only to see human beings younger by decades, stronger by miles and smarter by ages whiz past your unenergetic, insensitive and bear-like body towards schools, playgrounds and colleges. You feel low. So you look at yourself again. You can't find your feet. You rub your eyes and focus and re-focus. No outcome. Your feet are just not there. You might be imagining that your jasmine-light body is floating thin air. False. Use your hands to squish the inflated bloat in the centre of your chassis and then your feet come into sight. Fat. Unregulated and shameless. This is thirty! You have arrived. 

The Museum Toy Train

This amazingly skillful and outlandishly perceptive tree grew from absolutely no where to avoid death both by water and by cement construction. It was at 45 degrees with the ground and its reflection in the water added to the character of the click.




As I ambled across the lush green lawns of this meticulously maintained museum, the playful shrieks of the school kids whizzed past in the air. Then suddenly, this humble giant comes into my view and after few minutes of toying with my camera, I manage to scrape out a reasonable angle.




The lone symmetric structure in the entire built up areas around the Gandhi Sagar Lake. And with it being in the evening and people rushing by all around, it was tough to get the structure into the frame. But it finally happened. I soon realized that the overhead electric cables crept in.

Dormishness

The two lettered evocation seemed to work as the happily dis-engaged man began to twitch in his seat. With an unconscious sense of complete rebuttal, his forehead, now a complex assemblage of furrowed wrinkles, wafted along with the tightly sealed and lightly stifled frown on his lips. As he tried to open his eyes, I stood there watching him break the shackles of sleep and arrive to the call of his senses. He saw me and perhaps as his countenance would suggest, was embarrased. He promptly returned my greeting with one which was inflected with a sense of caring and serving, "Sai Ram?". He essentially meant, "How may I help you?"

I fished out the pale - yellow receipt voucher that was given as an admission certificate at the check in counter from my pocket and handed it over. The man felt his right pocket and tapped it twice. He did the same with the left one. He couldn't find something. He turned back to his armchair and in a great sense of relief and happiness, picked up his spectacles which came off consciously or unconsciously during his session of coming back to life. A few seconds into scrutinizing that poor piece of paper, his tightly clasped lips let go of a few intensely rarified and extremely fortunate words which finally came to see daylight. "Seedhe jaate raho!"

I obliged. As I kept walking, I reached the T junction where the three cemented roads heading out in three perpendicular directions met. There was no road that would take me straight. So I chose to choose the cheesier path. The one between the Western Canteen and the Seva dal office. It was just a walkway with no road. It was a path I often frequented as a child for the cemented roads often clocked melting point temperatures at noon. And without footwear, I used to gingerly hop all along the road from Kulwant Hall to the T junction and this mud path used to give me some respite. The diabolical feeling of consummate helplessness that rushes through your body when your feet land on fierily incandescent material and you have no cold land in sight is worth experiencing, unless you take it too seriously. My feet, however, this time around were snugly buried in split grain suede birkenstocks.

I must have walked a mile. And as the last lump of my energy that I had gathered by reliving my memories faded away into oblivion, there it was, the A1 dorm. It was of a relatyively newer construction, but the essemtial formula remained the same. Some, seven thousand square feet of perfectly ventilated and well lit living space. Memories of my previous visits started to kick in. The dormitory created in me 'dormishness'. A legendary feeling of nostalgic laziness. But why laziness?

The abode of Peace

I landed at the great being's abode , Prashanthi Nilayam after a grueling 7 hour journey by bus along the sometimes inhospitable terrain of Southern Andhra Pradesh. To my utter astonishment and later, displeasure, it only dawned on me at arrival that I had indeed taken the longest possible route to arrive at my destination. Self appraisal kicked in at its deceitful best and I blamed the ticket collector at the Cuddappah bus complex for the folly. Then, a strong sense of foreboding broke into my senses and assured me of a certain break down in the very particular bus that I would have boarded if I had chosen the shorter route. A mind full of guile can go distances to prove itself innocent, I thought. No more resentment, I had to indulge in the sanctity of the place ASAP, for time was running out. I had a mere 30 hours at my disposal to rake in whatever I could, whatever I wanted.

I checked in, as a 25 year old, unmarried male with one piece of luggage, a rucksack. Allotted the A-1 dorm at the North West-ish corner of the ashram, I walked along the imposing brick and mortar structure of the performance cum drama center, Poornachandra Auditorium, on the left with the red and yellow barricades that skirted the place along the greyish white balconies made of portland cement and its solitary escort, the bright red fire engine, that always stood there, weathering the heat of time and circumstance, with no signs of budging from its designated place. The master had decided.

Lord Shiva and Ganga, cast for perpetuity in the larger-than-life iron contraption stood stuck to the colossal wall of the auditorium. Riveted in the about 40 feet structure, like immortal custodians of time and space, they stared along into the nothingness of the moment, unflustered, unperturbed. They are here to stay.

As I walked past, the chirping of the birds had just started. The little ones, perhaps awake, waiting for their cuisine were singing in gay abandon. Slowly, the shrill was picking up and as I walked, I could see the flocks of birds, the parents, swiftly fluttering far away in the sky towards their little ones, concievably with food in their mouths.

Past the auditorium, as I walked along the concrete boulevard with the residential complexes on the left and the Southern Canteen on the right, the effervescently intangible scents of baking bread swept my senses as they smoothly jostled me into those forgotten days of foolhardy brawls over food tokens and lost footwear in childhood. Now I stand, at least a few metres tall, a hundred and eighty pounds, stubble on my face and a friable heart. Where am I moving?

I come across a sevadal member as my vision spanned across my left from one residential complex to another. He was pleasantly reclined in a duralumin armchair, dressed in an immaculately starched squeaky white kurta pajama. He must have been a man in his early fifties. Under the shade of the tree and the faint breeze blowing across his face, the silence of the place calmly slid him into a siesta. As his blue scarf with the Sanathana Dharma emblem emblazoned on it flickered in the breeze and the spectacles slithered down his nose, he seemed to be in utter paradise. I quietly muttered in a hushed tone to coolly muscle him out of his skumber, "Sai Ram".

A brief repreive

I always thought I deserved a break. So, I fled. From this blood thirsty, ever hungry, voraciously gluttonous and shamelessly guiltless baboon called life. It keeps sucking from us. Doesn't it? Sometimes air, sometimes blood, sometimes emotions. It does hurt. So all hard working mules out there need a break. So did I. So do you. Think about it. I thank and I fled. Thank god. Thank me. Thank you. Well, Ok.

Now for the sensible part of it. I was on a pleasure trip across my state. Incidentally, at a time when the state is bursting across its seams with fervent emotions of statehood and regional identity, I got to visit all three major regions of the state. Rayalaseema, Telangana and Costa. Relentless.

The descriptions of the often miraculously captivating incidents and simply spellbinding moments that I came across during my sojourn shall follow in later posts, but let me assure you, the trip was only a notch above boring. Nothing like the Zumanji game actually happened. It was the routine saga like the scrupulously choreographed sequence in the recap portion of the Indian soap serial. I went, I saw, I came back. Ala Alexander the great. And a bit more.

But for the real part, the trip was spiritually rejuvenating, socially energizing and quite admittedly, a true break from the hullabaloo at home. I spent some time with the dark, often misunderstood and mostly incoherent speeches inside my brain. I sat with them over coffee inside the 3 tier AC compartment of the majestic Indian Railways, chugging along since time immemorial, with no sign of retirement for about 2000 kilometres. The speeches wouldn't budge. So wouldn't I.