Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Baseball for an Indian in USA and cricket in China by an Indian

A nice anecdote by an Indian consul General in USA

A sixer, a sixer," I was shouting excitedly as the white ball soared high above the lights in the clear night sky and cleared the fence. I had stood up and was waving my arms. So were others all around me, standing, shouting, raising their arms. But some were turning to look at me, with a hint of incomprehension or irritation.

"Stop that, please stop that immediately and sit down," advised my American friend Paul, who had taken me to the stadium, no, let me get this right, to the ballpark. "You came to learn, not yet to participate, let alone use some strange lingo for a homerun. Cricket, I guess," he now said as I sat down somewhat shamefacedly.

I looked around. It was indeed a beautiful night and a beautiful sight. This was the ATT ballpark in San Francisco, a real zinger of a park, to use the American jargon, with tiers and tiers of seating all with a view of the Pacific Ocean.

There was a sea of humanity, a familiar and heartwarming sight to any Indian with all the imprinted cricket memories, but there was something unfamiliar as well. More than half the crowd seemed to be constantly eating or drinking: mouthwatering but mouth stink generating garlic fries, hot dogs, corn dogs, hamburgers, and gigantic Styrofoam cups of beer or coke.

There was a menu of options, not only in terms of food, but also as to how to get it- kiosks and stalls behind the seats, orders delivered to you, regular restaurants within the stadium, snacks brought from home and some more. True to the American spirit there were shops everywhere, even inside the stadium, all selling baseball caps, T-shirts, sweat shirts, refrigerator magnets and a hundred other trinkets with the logo of the Giants, the name of the baseball team of this city. Today they were playing the Pirates from Pittsburg.

Why had I gone to see this strange and incomprehensible ritual? Good question. To answer, I must go back a little in time.

"What do you think of Barry Bonds?" Paul had asked me one day when we had met during our morning walk.

"Who?"

"Barry Bonds. Don't you read the papers? He has hit 715 homeruns and equaled Baby Ruth's record."

"Baby Ruth? I don't follow this stuff. Baseball, I presume and not basketball?"

"You presume right, if I may be as British as you Indians are. But seriously you cannot be a diplomat in America, wanting to understand this country, without knowing baseball. We must remedy this." Paul epitomises the American speech-direct, frank and friendly.

This had eventually led to him making arrangements to take me to a game, a Giants game, and to educate me live on the field.

To be truthful, actually this was not the first time that I had been subjected to such treatment. My school day enthusiasm for cricket had gradually waned a long time back and after serving in many uncivilised European countries with no cricket, I was sent to Sri Lanka as deputy high commissioner, some years ago.

It was my early days as yet in Colombo and someone had asked me what I thought of Kaluvitharana's aggression. I was wondering as to which of the many Tamil outfits he belonged to. My interlocutor had said, "Mr Prakash, you cannot be an Indian diplomat in Sri Lanka and be ignorant of cricket."

It was a sound and strategic advice. Over time, in that difficult period in Sri Lanka, I had learnt that the one safe and happy topic to discuss with Sri Lankans was cricket, particularly as Sanath Jayasurya and Aravinda De Silva were trouncing us in the World Cup. Each time we lost, India became that much more popular and our job in the embassy that much easier! And I had become a cricket bhakta once again with some fervour and devotion.

But education is never complete, particularly for a diplomat as I was discovering. Cricket is one thing and baseball quite another. Today I was in this strange field, though recognisable from a hundred American movies. What I was recognising though were the peripherals, the food, the striped dress of the players, the round baseball bat, the noisy and festive announcements that filled the park from commercials, and above all the hot dogs, associated for us forever with America and the baseball game.

The rest of the game was a mystery with various comings and goings, sudden bursts of activity with a period of lulls and occasional sixes with plenty of balls being collected behind the invisible wicket, as there were no wickets.

"This beats me. I don't follow it at all," I complained to Paul.

"You can observe a lot just by watching. That is a direct quote from Yogi Berra," said Paul, chuckling. I had heard of the legendary Yogi Berra, a baseball player of yesteryears made immortal not for his play but for his most innovative ways of anguishing English.

"I actually want to understand."

"OK. Stop thinking of cricket. It is actually pretty simple. Come let me explain outside as we go for a beer," he said and this is what we did.

Seated again and with some enlightenment I wondered at baseball's similarities and differences with cricket. This is not the place to attempt a tutorial on baseball and I don't intend it. But a word or two on the philosophical and psychological distinctions between our national passion and that of America may be in order.

Historians of baseball do admit that it was brought to the new continent from England and thus owes its origin to cricket and some other English games. Why did it change so much and become this simpler, faster and shall we dare say cruder game-no disrespect for baseball or respect for cricket intended?

I would theorise and surmise that unlike the leisurely feudal classes of England who played by courtly rules, the men who had set out to win an untamed frontier wanted to just pitch and hit, not bowl with elaborate motions or bat with a 'straight bat'. 'Baseball is 90% physical, the other half is mental,' to quote the famed Yogi Berra.

The eminent sociologist Ashis Nandy has argued that cricket may have been invented in England, but is essentially Indian in temperament. It is a game when an individual is also battling fate apart from the opposite side. Hence a Tendulkar or a Sehwag getting out on the first ball and sitting out for the rest of the innings.

America's spirit is to reject fatalism, to get up if there is a failure and demand a second chance. And a third. Hence the practice that in baseball there are nine innings and in each one a batter (simply a batter, not a batsman) has to get out thrice to be truly 'out'. Many choices to prove your worth. And unlike the aristocratic English or the consensual Indian, there can be no 'draw', one side has to win, one side has to be vanquished.

I reflected on all this as the game proceeded and after nine innings ended in a climax with a score of 5-3, which to me looked suspiciously like a football score after the penalty knock out.

"Is that it? The game is over in three hours with five runs?" I asked Paul.

"What else? How long does cricket last, a whole day?" he asked ignorant of the irony of his question.

I did not answer him directly. Instead I told him a story well known in the foreign service of one of our ambassadors who had set out to organise a cricket match in Beijing some decades ago.

This ambassador was a great cricket fan and no mean cricketer himself. So was the British ambassador of that time in China. Both of them decided that it would be fun to have a friendly match between the British XI and a Commonwealth XI with Indians, Australians and some others. The task of fixing a stadium by talking to the Chinese authorities was given to the Indian ambassador, whose persuasive skills were superior.

He was received with the due courtesies and formalities in the Chinese foreign ministry who promised to help the diplomats with a ground.

"From what time to what time Your Excellency?" the Chinese official asked.

"Well, er... let us say the whole day."

"What? The whole day? Surely cannot be..."

Our ambassador, himself a great cricket purist, explained patiently that what they were planning to play was an abridged and corrupted version of the great game, which the classicists were not happy with. It was normally played for five days, he explained, with a rest day, but they were just playing a friendly match in this simple version.

The Chinese official thanked him and said a decision would be conveyed. The decision never came. It was hinted later that a game of this nature, so decadent, taking five days, if it permeates even by accident, would corrupt the Chinese system so totally that it could not be permitted.

Why Omkara blew my mind?

A superb piece of article on Omkara. Read on and I am sure if you havent seen the movie yet, after reading this article you would be in the theater watching this brilliant movie.

O
mkara blew my mind.

I can't remember the last time I said that about Hindi cinema, something I am force-fed once a week, on average. Vishal Bhardwaj's film, however, is a superlative-exhausting work of passion and tribute, skill and style. Spellbinding stuff.

Here, in no particular order, are five reasons I love Omkara.

Language: The words, the words. Soiled with heartland grime, the dialogues come at you with a superb realism disarming to most of us used to synthetic (at best; usually just trite tripe) often-familiar Hindi screenplays. Vishal, insistent on writing his dialogues himself, has drawn massively into his Uttar Pradesh upbringing and scripted a masterpiece -- the words are raw yet poetic, abusive yet literate, mundane yet metaphoric.

Transferring the Bard into bhaiyya-speak (no offense, Bhardwaj bhai) is as uphill as tasks get, but Omkara manages with a flourish, displaying deft nuances while sticking extremely close to the source material. The metaphors and idioms are magical, and there's a consistent strain of wry humour running through the lines.

And I'm immensely, even selfishly grateful they haven't bowed down to market strains by toning the dialect down into more-comprehensible Hindi. Spending considerable time explaining dialogues to a bewildered Parsi buddy, I was glad to have been exposed to enough of the flavour and tone of the words up in Delhi. While the feel is as pure as it gets, a massive part of the country will not follow most of what is said, even listening intently.

OmkaraMaybe the reason the film isn't doing too well here but efficiently abroad is due to subtitled prints. Honestly, even while relishing the lines in the theatre, I couldn't help but lip-smackingly think how great it would be to savour the words on a well-subtitled DVD.

Loyalty: So sue me, I'm a purist. A fervent Bard lover, I wasn't a huge fan of Maqbool. In my opinion, the director went too far out on a limb, and his denying the ghost and the witches muddled up the final act. The film was very well-crafted, Pankaj Kapur and Tabu were superb but that's about it. Anyway, I digress.

As plays go, Othello is my favourite among the Tragedies, largely because it features Shakespeare's finest character, Iago. Bhardwaj too seemed to find little wrong with the original, for even while he transposed it into a completely different time and setting, he's hardly wavered from the script.

Othello: Was not that Cassio parted from my wife?

Iago: Cassio, my lord! No, sure, I cannot think it,
that he would steal away so guilty-like,
seeing you coming.

The translations are almost literal, even as the characters bark into mobile phones and watch showgirls dazzle policemen. The changes are but superficial, as the telltale handkerchief takes on the avatar of a precious cummerbund handed down from generations past. Not finding much individual use for Duke, Antonio and members of the council, Bhardwaj rolls them all into his wily Bhaisaab.

Conversant with the play, it's a delight to watch Vishal take the familiar moments and play them his way, piling on scene after scene straight from the play, but each given his own quirky twists and styling. The challenge doesn't lie in the changes, but in staying true.

It's often audacious just how neatly the script references Shakespeare, and the film's end is ruthlessly, beautifully loyal.

OmkaraThe players, and their choosing: While on beauty, it is impossible to not be mesmerised by Kareena Kapoor, who looks her best as she fittingly plays Desdemona. 'That whiter skin of hers than snow and smooth as monumental alabaster,' as the dark Moor described his bride, is positively luminous in Kareena's Dolly Mishra. Her character is one of the hardest to essay, as she goes through love and awe, fear and bewilderment, defiance to her father and submission to her man.

Kareena doesn't have the lines, but she has moments demanding powerful use of expression, and she delivers. Conversely, even as she proves what difference a director makes, Vivek Oberoi's Cassio is tragically cardboard, as if daring someone to make him act. This results in an unexpected (I'm assuming) effect, as we lose sympathy completely for Kesu Firangi, beginning almost to root for the cripple.

And what a marvellous cripple he is. So much has been written about Saif Ali Khan's Langda Tyagi, and so much it inevitably falls short. Suffice it to say that it is a bravura performance, and he crucially achieves the rare fine line: he overwhelms yet utterly disgusts; we are incredulous in adulation of his detailing; we will him to die.

Omkara marks Saif's emergence into the very forefront of his acting peers, and we gleefully applaud. He's so, so wonderfully loathsome, right down to the tiniest detail. And he has the finest, finest lines, each worthy of being on a t-shirt. His only competition there is his wife. Konkona Sensharma, always a great actress, is steadily piling on the brilliance. She has but a few minutes, but they are glorious and vital.

Othello is a tricky role, a leading man eclipsed by the villain. Yet the Moor is a brooding and compelling character, and Ajay Devgan does valiantly with his material. Omkara strips Othello of the racism, exchanging his black skin for surprisingly inconsequential half-Brahminism. Ajay's best bits are when restrained, and while there is a bit of a seen-that feel to his character, by the time the film is over, you realise just how unflinchingly solid he's been.

Naseeruddin Shah has no histrionics as Bhaisaab, but tons of the quiet dignity his character demands. A warm hand must also be reserved for the excellent Deepak Dobriyal, whose Rodrigo (here Rajju) turn is precious and integral to the narrative. And finally, just where did Vishal find that terrific old lady?

OmkaraSights and sounds: Omkara is a slow film, a poetically drawn out work that mercifully doesn't try to rush itself. The violence, while rampant, remains atmospheric -- it is there for effect, as a backdrop, to pretend that the film has pace. Cinematographer Tassaduq Hussain -- whose short films made as a film student in the US thrilled Vishal -- has framed the film deliciously, each shot neatly boxing in light, shadows and high drama. Samir Chanda's art direction is masterful, the sets evocative and realistic, exaggerated enough to be theatrical while detailed enough to be convincing.

Enter Bhardwaj the composer. This is a fabulous soundtrack, as Vishal's irresistible folksy tunes fit tidily into the film, enhancing and never once interrupting the lazy narrative. The theme song is used unexpectedly, during the first fight scene -- and it is this maverick, almost slapdash fashion of filmmaking that makes Vishal thrilling to watch. Even the two full-blown dance numbers work well, Beedi serving almost as an interruption to Iago's devilish thoughts, and Namak often pacily interrupted, relegated to background score. Best used is the Jag jaa song, and Vishal's weaving it into the narrative is inspiringly good.

Creativity: For all his loyalty to the Bard, this is such an original take on Shakespeare. Lines from the original manifest themselves sporadically here, and not always in dialogue. Iago is the green-eyed monster, Saif's character is unmistakably shot with green-tinted light; Omkara plays the black Moor, emphasized by his shawl the colour of midnight. It's how perfectly the filmmaker decides to incorporate these touches that make this his film.

Oh, but then there's also so much all Vishal's own. Something that stood out for me was his take on good and evil. Bhaisaab, the kind of warlord who casually orders trains to turn around, bears more than a passing resemblance to Mahatma Gandhi; Iago, the articulate embodiment of all evil, is here called Ishwar.

Omkara is a very special film, the kind that comes around rarely, making you instantly long for a repeat viewing and the filmmaker's next project. One hopes it won't be long. Salutations, Vishal Bhardwaj, and thanks for the film.