Killa (fort) is a new Marathi movie we saw in a nearby theatre yesterday. Were pleasantly surprised by the sizeable crowd - by multiplex standard- that had gathered on a weekday. People of all age groups were present and there was a boisterous college crowd which is a sure sign of success of the movie.
Marathi theatre, once known for its vibrancy, is now quiet and its place is taken by Marathi movies. The spirit of adventure and experimentation is present plus two developments have helped. One, the new media and easy access to them and two, location of Film Institute in Pune. In the last two months, so many Marathi films have been made that each is bound to make a loss. However, builders, television soap makers, other businessmen - many non- Marathi- are now willing to finance Marathi movies.
Killa is about the growing up of a school-going boy. His father is no more and his working mother gets transferred frequently because she is honest and upright. The boy is therefore forced to abandon his friends and get used to new locale and company. He has come to Guhagar in Konkan and gradually makes friends with four naughty, not good at studies boys who abandon him when they arrange a cycle race and visit the nearby fort (actually at Alibag. I think there is no fort near Guhagar. This was an avoidable glitch.). The boy shows his displeasure and his friends are repentant. And it is time for the boy and his mother to shift to Satara.
A simple plot. Superb photography and natural acting make the story alive. It lingers in viewer's mind. Far better than action-packed Bond movies which do not let let your eyes flicker from the screen even once but are promptly forgotten the moment you are outside.
Killa won a special award at an international movie festival in Germany and was hailed by children there. The director, producer of the movie is from FTII and he has had to travel a lot because of his father's transferable job. He has said that he started and then the movie just happened before he was fully aware of what was happening.

Prarambh by Gangadhar Gadgil

Its size put me off. 500+ pages in oversize hardbound copy. A quick look showed boring stuff but when I began at the beginning it proved to be interesting. Gadgil has written on today's Mumbai, yesteryear's Bombay while it was being made. It is history of Bombay when the British rule was getting consolidated in the country. However, it is history written as a novel. That is a point repeated by Gadgil but it comes across as very plain writing for a novel. What we have is a mix of some real and some fictional characters that occupy an old period beginning from 1818 and ending with 1860/1870 and actual developments in it.
The protagonist is Nana Shankarshet. Gadgil is very partial to the British officers and their efforts in establishing the rule of law in Bombay. Some prominent Parsee traders, mainly Jamshedji Jeejibhoy, are also written about in glowing terms. Gadgil is overwhelmingly in their favour.
Khushwant Singh has written on Delhi and he presents the city as a courtesan writing about herself and her life. We do not have in Marathi any other book covering a city in a novel. So credit is due to Gadgil on this count.
However, there is plenty of repetition here. Some pet phrases of Gadgil recur sometimes in one paragraph! Tighter editing was necessary.
Amitava Ghosh's Ibis trilogy came to my mind. It has a far wider canvas and Ghosh is so much ahead of Gadgil in both imagination and research.
Gadgil cites Gilian Tindall's 'City of gold' on Bombay. Will someone cover the 20th century and update the history of Mumbai?

Office work
When did offices start employing women?
Who coined the term 'white-collar'?
What caused the decline of office work?
Are office design and layout important?
Virtual offices and paperless offices? Offices of the future?
Anyone who has pondered over these questions will find 'Cubed, A secret history of the workplace' by Nikil Saval (Doubleday, New York, 2014) an absorbing book. It packs a whole lot of information together. It also covers the reflection of office life in movies and novels.
The style of writing is slightly off-putting. I mean it is a serious book but too many commas and 'didn't', 'couldn't' etc. are used. Too much attention is given to office design. One is not clear about the secret part of the history.
All told, a meticulously researched, engaging book.

Change

It is everywhere and what goes up comes down.
How many things and trends have I seen obeying the above dictum?
Industries: automobiles, banking, construction, IT, telecom, web technology, education (yes, saw its transformation from public service to industry), retail trade, micro finance, financial services
Other organizations: NGOs, EPW
Ideologies: socialism, secularism, feminism, economic planning

Correction?

The Economist (23- 29 May 2015) carries a special report on India. It gives an accurate assessment of Modi's first year in power. The report repeatedly mentions that manufacturing sector makes only 16% contribution to the economy.

As per Economic Survey of 2014-15, the break up of gross value added is:

Agriculture 19%

Industry 31% and 

Services 50%.

So what causes the gap between industry and manufacturing contribution? Laypersons might treat the two as the same. But mining and quarrying, electricity, gas, water supply and construction are the other parts of industry and together they contribute the difference of 15%.

It is important to remember that Modi's Make in India refers to manufacturing and not industry. Increasing the share of manufacturing from 16% to 25% is proposed and it is a very difficult target.

labour market intermediaries

Human resource management and labour economics belong to the same area but they have developed in a mutually exclusive manner. A book I am reading recently: Work in the new economy, flexible labor markets in Silicon Valley by Chris Benner, (Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 2002) makes the connection very clear. Its treatment of labor intermediaries in IT industry is comprehensive and very informative. It reveals a whole new world which subsumed in the topic of sources of recruitment in HR management.

A short walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby

Travelogues get so boring. Balancing geographical and general information with characters involved and action is tough.
A short walk however does it admirably. The style of the author is deprecating and typically English - tongue in cheek. Reader's interest grows continuously and the end - it leaves readers wanting more.
Somehow I am always drawn to Central Asia in travel readings. Culturally it is close and also inaccessible now. Newby writes about his trip to Nuristan in 1956 with Hugh Carless of Her Majesty's Foreign Service. Hugh had gone to the region earlier but Newby was completely new and to his horror learnt that Carless also did not know anything about mountaineering. Still they persevered and climbed up to a short distance to Mir Samir - the peak they wanted to scale.
Evelyn Waugh has written a preface and Carless has added an epilogue. Fiftieth anniversary edition in 2008 is what I chanced upon in British Library and have enjoyed myself very much going through this much thumbed copy sans some photos