Raanjhanaa: A Passage to India and your Heart

FILM REVIEW

Sanskrit plays, Hindi literature and Indian cinema have for long been about something for everyone. Around a decade ago Indian cinema witnessed a clash between the underdogs of Indie and Indie-like productions and moguls of mainstream. Stories no longer had to take a backseat and they didn't have to make way for entertainment alone. Today the audiences have changed, and even for mainstream cinema, story has started mattering much more than it ever did in the history of Indian cinema. Let’s face it, Guru Dutt’s masterpiece 'Kaagaz Ke Phool' too was a massive flop. And yet for the first time ever Indian cinema is attempting to find a middle ground. Our film Industry has truly come of age.

Raanjhanaa is not just a film. It is a film event. It is the wet dream of the quasi-right wing fundamentalists. At the same time it is also a wet dream of the left wing fundamentalists. Better still it is the wet dream of adherents of a million other ideas in between. Wait…. that makes it every Indian’s wet dream! It is therefore safe to say that Raanjhanaa is all of India in a nutshell. It is a reflection of our times. It doesn’t tell you how we’ve reached here. Every other movie does that today. But it gives you a sense of where you are now, the good, the bad and the ugly. And yet it manages to stay a blissful romance. 

Like all Hindi films, it has something for everyone, but the packaging is undeniably different. It promises amusement and entertainment to the intellectual. It serves the same entertainment to the professional seeking enjoyment over the weekend. It bedazzles the lower middle class student. And makes everyone think, reflect and even cry. Raanjhanaa mocks everyone but does not offend anyone. It has characters from real life. Non-villainous police carrying out orders, the Tamil bureaucrat carrying out the orders from his superior, by-lanes of Benaras, Ganga, small town romance, clash of religions over marriage, the innocence and practical cunning of the Banarsi Pandit, parents trying to be the best parents they can with the irony of complying to social norms, the damsel-in-distress Muslim girl, the angry and empowered Muslim girl, the kurta-jeans wearing JNU romantic, the tongue-in-cheek portrayal of intellectual groups of JNU who discuss socio-economic issues on the most mundane things ever, allusions to Safdar Hashmi, you name it! The film asks you whether it’s fair to dismiss politics before understanding its dynamics. Then it dismisses it! Still it leaves the loose end as if it were saying that this is a possible end. You can change the end if you want. It tells that the power of youth is an asset when in control. But if its directionless it can break an entire generation. 

Among all things, it is a drama on a grand scale. Is it unfair then to call it an epic? Dhanush makes a statement with his performance that actors from the South need not be typecasted in the North. Perhaps it will break the barriers of the rightly accumulated contempt in the Southern industries regarding the Hindi film industry. The show however, is stolen (to our surprise) by none other than the lovely Sonam Kapoor. With this film, she has finally proven her mettle. All in all the film is a sheer joyride.

In case you’re wondering why the film is called Raanjhanaa, all you need to do is to go over the story of Heer-Ranjha. (Relax, there are no spoilers here.) The writer-director duo Himanshu Sharma and Anand L. Rai have taken care of the smallest of details in the story to make it as real and as believable as possible. Sometimes these details are heard in the ambient sounds, and can be seen in out-of-focus areas of certain shots. The duo are certainly the new badasses in B-Town. We expect more from you.

If you want to see what it is to be a human being in this great subcontinent, you must not miss this one. If you want to go to the movies to have a great time this weekend, you should still watch the film.

(P.S.: We know that in real life kurta-jeans-gamchha donning smart student leaders do not get the love of their life as easily, as portrayed. But hey it’s just a movie! Right?)

Rating: 4.5/5

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~The RED Indian~

Education 2.0

Pune: In the era of technology, evolution of socio-cultural paradigms and human race as a whole sprinting forward at breakneck speed mankind has offered itself, amongst other newly evolved ideas, the practical implementation of  imparting education through modern classrooms. “Back in the Nineties this idea, though spectacular, seemed like a trend of the west. It seemed rather far-fetched for Indian students like me.” says Manoj Azad an IITian and an employee in the IT department of Barclays India Wealth Management Services in Pune. Manoj, a local resident of Magarpatta City, adds that the very notion of modern classrooms, fully equipped with a multitude of technological amenities have made technology a crucial part of the education system today. 

Khusboo Ramchandani, a first year student at Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication (UG) supports the idea. “Even the so-called boring subjects have a have become appealing as the general experience of studying in a modern classroom is more interactive.”Khushboo’s colleague Aastha Srivastava says, “Access to the Internet, and online text is a huge advantage. A professor or teacher as skilled as he or she may be, cannot be expected to know everything. A quick query over the internet, on a big screen that everybody can see, always helps.”

Aditya Akash, a third year student at Symbiosis School of Law comments, “Certain subjects are best explained with the help of examples and evidences which are otherwise difficult to produce in normal classrooms. In modern classrooms however this is achieved easily.” One can relate to Aditya’s logic. After all it is virtually impossible to become a learned student of Chemistry without conducting experiments in a laboratory. “It would be laughable, if I were to say that I’m a Surgeon but I’ve never performed surgery in my life. I therefore require a practical surgery session and it is a lot better if I’ve had an Audio-Visual session prior to my actual session. This saves time and other hassles as opposed to viewing a dissection when performed in a crowd, performed by a Professor.” says Mayank Nair of Armed Forces Medical College.

Raymond Kurzweil

The government and NGOs too seem to be looking at the advantages of technology for providing quality education in parts of the nation where the former isn’t easily accessible. In a remote corner of the state of Bihar, at Chamanpura village of Gopalganj district in Chaitanya Gurukul Public School was founded in 2009 by an ex-IITian, Chandrakant Singh. Bereft of electricity till date, about 450 children, both boys and girls, are imparted lessons in physics, chemistry, mathematics and computer through Skype, video conferencing and Internet. 

Deepankar Kapoor, a senior third year student from Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication (UG) however chooses to state otherwise, “Having experienced education in a fully equipped modern classroom for three long years I would say that there some huge gaping holes in this system. With the introduction of Internet as a medium of education and assignment submission both in and out of class students has become lazier, due to the copy-paste culture. Air conditioners will put you to sleep no matter how hard you fight with your physical instincts, after a hearty lunch. Staring at a virtual projection has an adverse effect on the eye-sight as opposed to a good old fashioned black board or whiteboard.”

Everything said and done, Raymond Kurzweil the Dean of the Singularity University, funded by NASA and Google, and the spear-header of the Singularity movement has already stated that due to the exponential growth of Artificial Intelligence over the past decade, it is speculated via mathematical calculation that AI would surpass human intelligence by the year 2023. Human technology is learning faster than the human mind. It seems only apt that technology aids us in our learning process. Welcome to Education 2.0.

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~The RED Indian~

The Red Indian is Born!

Over the last few years blogging has emerged as a great weapon for people who want to make a point. It is like the mighty sword of the legend – the Excalibur – that has been pulled out of the rock, not by King Arthur but by the changing times and technology. It is a weapon for people with a vision; people shaping their vision; people who want to bring about a change; people who want to suggest changes; people with revolutionary minds, all from an intellectual point of higher criticism. Basically blogging is a boon for the intellectual world. On your weblog page you can be YOU! You can speak your mind without fear or being “politically correct”. Discussion is always healthy. For it is the central idea of “Humanity”. Entire ideologies, that run nations today, were formed by something as small as this (i.e. making opinions, discussions and considering its level of universal appeal).

However, today mankind is far more complex from what the early ‘Homo sapien sapien’ was. What appeals to the masses today may not always be the truth. What may appeal to you may not always be for your personal or common good. For such is the cunningness of the Human Mind. I write mind with a capital ‘m’ because the Human Mind has a persona of its own. Let it be by itself and it detaches itself from heart. It forgets compassion, ethics, righteousness, moral obligations, even courage and weighs all situations by mere logic. Sometimes logic and proportionality aren’t enough to judge a situation.

As I said before, blogging is a weapon for the intellectual world and more so for the intellectual community of India, because there are more intellectuals and opinion makers in this nation than anywhere else in the world; and each opinion is as varied as the other. ~The RED Indian~ will try and capture the spirit of this great nation, it’s citizen and the spirit of all those that find their origins in this ancient country. At the same time I will also add my personal thoughts, opinions and my personal experiences. I am open to everybody who thinks that I am wrong about something. If you really push me, I can also deliver a decent argument. This is my first attempt to write a blog. So bear with me if a make a few mistakes or display my naïveté here and there.  My opinions aren’t rigid. They may change if I find reason to the point somebody makes in the comment section.

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~The RED Indian~