Marathi biopic

 Watched Dr. Kashinath Ghanekar -a movie - recently on Netflix.

It is two and half hours long. So had to watch it in three parts.

Liked the first watch very much and then it was a downward journey.

Ghanekar was a superstar of Marathi theatre. He starred in Vasant Kanetkar's melodramas with flowery language and two plays by the duo: Ashrunchi zali fule and Ithe oshalala mrutyu  were very popular. Ghanekar acted in Marathi films too and they drew large crowds.

Ghanekar was a dentist by profession but his first love was acting and in the movie it is shown that he had to struggle hard to enter the field of acting. Once he started, he rose rapidly and became a celebrity. He could not sustain acting after that and fell prey to fame and substance abuse. Love of two wives could not support him.

The movie makes out that Ghanekar had a burning desire to win the approval of his father but he could not succeed. The movie also posits a rivalry between Ghanekar and Dr. Shriram Lagoo. It needs to be checked if these posits had any base in reality.

The movie is absorbing for its creation of the atmosphere on Marathi stage and movies in 1960s and 1970s. It has got very good actors to play the roles of Bhalji Pendharkar, Sulochana, Vasant Kanitkar and Prabhakar Panshikar. Full marks to the actors and their make-up men playing these roles.

Subodh Bhave, Nandita Patkar and Vaidehi Parashrami have done a good job. Patkar in fact, does justice to every acting assignment and has now become a sure fire performer.

The movie is good in showing Ghanekar's struggle and his landing a role in Ashrunchi zali fule. After that it loses steam and does not show why Ghanekar went to pieces. It simply shows that he could not do without fan adoration. It does not probe further.

A viewer is left dissatisfied in the end. However, the depiction of the period and the tragedy are disturbing.

Deep impact

 Tomorrow by Elisabeth Russell Taylor, 1991,e-edition 2018, Daunt Books, London, ISBN 978-1-911547-13-6

It is a remarkable book.

It is about a Jewish survivor of the holocaust. She was a young lady about to marry her sweetheart when Nazis reach her and her family. She is a member of a highly cultured, rich family which identifies with German culture rather than Jewish one. The family spends summer holidays on a small island near Denmark every year. In 1939, the rest of the family goes ahead to Europe while she and Daniel, her beau stay back on the island to complete their write-up with photographs of the island which they want to submit for publication. They are isolated and feel that the current trouble would not reach them. They are in lover's cocoon.

Their family sends SOS and asks them to return immediately. They do so and are caught. She is expecting. The lady loses her lover and family. She is sent to a brothel and a Nazi officer bangs her seven month old son against a wall "to teach you Jews a lesson". She survives, comes to London and spends her days as a maid servant with a titled family. However, each year she spends one week at the Danish island.

She keeps to herself continuously trying to come to terms with what has happened.

A colonel and his wife who has a mental age of a child are other regular visitors to the hotel where she stays. The colonel watches her and recognizes her powerful, beautiful mind. He pursues her and she rebuffs him.

She has given up hope and yet she keeps these annual visits because that was the pact with Daniel.

On the last day of her trip, there is a musical programme by a musician from South America. He has come with his young, beautiful wife. He is of course, Daniel. The protagonist listens to him and afterwards kills herself.

Old-timed style of writing. Details are presented slowly and so the beginning is boring but there is enough to make the reader persevere. Then the story proceeds quickly and ends even more quickly, leaving the reader disturbed.

What atrocities must have taken place during World War II!

Travails of childhood
Everyone in the square American family is busy. The lady of the house is the busiest and is also under job-related stress. The grand-aunt of her children who has come down from India does her best to help out. The taciturn LotH is not much help.
The most obvious chore the aunt can take care of is folding washed clothes and putting them in their proper place. Sounds simple? It is anything but in reality.
She makes four different piles of clothes to start with. This is problematic as the children's clothes are alike. The young grand-daughter has overtaken her brother in size. So size-wise segregation is difficult.
When the grand-aunt approaches the children to help her out, they have no time and they just ignore her. She then carries out the work on her own.
Making four piles is just the beginning. Each person has several compartments in individual wardrobes or chest of drawers. So undergarments, shirts, tops, trousers, nightwear, half pants, t-shirts, skirts, socks, bed linen, jackets etc. etc. must be segregated. 
Voila! She has done so.
The next day, the children start. "Where is my T-shirt?"
"Where are my blue shorts?"

"I want grey tights."

"For sports, I need my navy blue leggings/trousers."

Luckily their swimming gear is in another bag. They will overlook the simple job of keeping out wet gear to dry till the next swimming day.

They turn everything in drawers upside down to locate what they want. They come to the grand-aunt and show her where her mistake lay. "You got us all confused!" They declare.
Getting them to their Tae-Kwan-Do class in time is a supreme achievement of their mother. The grand-aunt had taken out these clothes last time and had folded them before their mother started shouting.

"You made a mistake. You have put his clothes in my bag." The grand-daughter tells her amidst laughter.

The grand-aunt wants to box her ears. The time they have taken to inform her of her mistakes could easily have been used to do the work which is their proper work. But no!

No amount of yelling works. The kids are thick-skinned in this respect.

The grand-aunt realizes the plight of her niece who has always maintained that everyone gives her advice without understanding her side of the story.

Missionary life

I am reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver right now. (Harper Perennial, 1998, E Pub edition April 2007, ISBN 9780061804816)
It is a long novel of some 470 pages and I am just half way through but it has caught me by the scruff of my neck and I am forced to think.

The plot involves Reverend Price who one day just leaves his parish in Georgia, USA and comes to a remote spot in Congo to spread the message of Jesus Christ. He brings his wife and four daughters along. The oldest daughter is sixteen years old and then there are twins - one of them with a deformed leg.

The priest's wife and daughters are doing their best to adapt to the new situation. The Reverend has promised them that after one year they would return. The narrative is by each of the daughters and slowly it reveals what a cruel man their father is. He was a soldier who fought in Indonesia and suffered brain damage. After coming back home he becomes a preacher who is fond of quoting the Bible - chapter and verse. He has lost the capacity to think and reflect. He does not understand his family's needs. He habitually strikes them and his wife and the daughters are punished by being made to copy portions of Bible for every wrong they commit.

The place in Congo where they land is a village and the previous preacher has left in disgrace. The natives are absolutely stoic about the preaching. They have a very flexible approach to religion. When an epidemic spreads during the rainy season and some infants are killed, they turn to Christianity and those who became Christian earlier, abandon it. The natives keep quiet in front of the Reverend who does not understand anything. His wife and daughter piece together what is happening around always after the event.
There is a plot by CIA to murder Patrice Lumumba and the Prices are advised to leave Congo. The Reverend would not listen although his wife and one daughter have fallen ill and must be brought back to America if they are to be saved. A calamity strikes. And so on.

Reverend Price is a mad man but missionaries have worked hard all over the world and met with little success. They have had to put up with immense hostility. Now of course, in the 21st century, they cannot do much but in the 20th, they tried hard. Those were innocent times. How frustrated they must have been. And how courageous to undertake something like this!

Communists tried the same thing with less conviction and for a shorter time. I remember my aunt who used to talk to everybody about the importance of bringing workers together. She had the cheek to ask the children of one acquaintance to switch off TV and listen to her! However, that experience made her admit that people resented her preaching.
Imagine going to remote rural places all over Maharashtra and talking about workers' unity! Farmers with their love for land were reactionary forces in Marxian scheme of things. So she addressed them and ignored their problems. Farmers are cunning people. They listen to everybody, pretend to be very foolish and finally do what they want to.
Later NGOs started mobilizing people. My aunt dismissed them. They offered money to people to attend their programmes while she and other party functionaries simply 'enlightened' people and influence them for mass action when their reading of the situation and the goal were all wrong. 
All that has faded now but in the process of nation building all such work was zealously carried out once upon a time.

An engaging book

Just finished reading Prof. Chandra follows his bliss by Rajeev Balasubramanyam.
Prof. Chandrasekhar is a renowned economist of the Chicago School. He has missed the Nobel Prize again and is forced to look at his family, his three children in particular. He attends a meditation session with his youngest daughter. He realizes that he had concentrated only on his work so far and neglected his family.
Very witty writing and the book has an easy flow which carries the reader along. Very enjoyable.
The author grew up in UK. Both his parents are high achievers. Rajeev chose to be an author to get over the intense trauma caused by racial tension as he was growing up.
This made me pause. The whole Western world is engulfed by anti-racial protests right now.
Its cost in terms of human suffering is incalculable.

Girl, Woman, Other

This novel by Bernardine Evaristo (Hamish Hamilton, 2019) is big but surprisingly light to read.
Its big size is because of many characters, mostly non-Caucasian women and their life histories in it and the style of writing.
While recounting their life's journey, these women comment upon every current, burning issue: racism, immigration, gender and feminism (now outdated). They narrate how they have overcome extreme odds in their lives.
The style of writing is elaborate with long sentences with minimum punctuation. A sentence typically extends to two or three lines and is then followed by a word or two on the following two or three lines. Small sections galore. A chapter is devoted to each woman. Trajectories of these women are connected.
It is a riveting, baffling, extremely clever book with a sweeping reach. It helps one to get a better connection with the world around.

Benefits of openness

The functions of British royal family are many. Providing a job to photographers and bit writers, entertainment to public and undertaking tours as goodwill ambassadors are the main ones. A whole publicity industry runs on them to provide fodder to both  starry eyed innocents and cynics.
The family has accepted that change will have to come to it also after the death of Princess Diana. So Meghan Markle was accepted into its fold.
Meghan is bringing about further and radical change. She and Prince Harry have declared that they do not want to live off the public exchequer. Wow! This is a deadly blow to the institution. Kudos to Meghan for her self-respect.
I bet Meghan was behind this move though Harry has also suffered from his membership of the family in the wake of Diana's split from Prince Charles. Any other British girl would have balked at the decision but not Meghan.
This is an example of openness and diversity leading to bold, good decisions.