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Ali's Notes

Who was Gandhi?
I never knew Mahatma Gandhi till I saw Ben Kingsley play Mahatma Gandhi in that great film made on the life and times of one of the greatest human beings in the millennium about to mingle with the dust of the past. I belong to a generation after him, a generation which read about him, heard about him, a generation which was trained and taught to venerate and almost worship him as one more God in the pantheon of Gods we love to adore or are scared and therefore adore. For us Mahatma Gandhi (full name Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi) was an apostle of peace, one man who is said to have brought peace through ahimsa (but I always wonder about all those martyrs who were shot down in cold blood by the British brutes during a long and over-drawn war of violence). No, I am not an ungrateful Godse, or a hell-bent critic of Gandhi. But I could have if Sir Richard Attenborough had not taken the trouble to make a classic film like Gandhi with Ben Kingsley, till then an almost unknown theatre actor from Great Britain in the role of a life-time as Gandhi (for which he later won the Oscar).

The Gandhi I saw in Attenborough’s Gandhi was a revelation. The man’s early days as a victim of apartheid in South Africa, his early agitations, his being battered, bruised and humiliated, his decision to come to India and his great saga to free India from the clutches of the British empire which led to an awakening among the people, an awakening the kind of which the Indian people and the people of the world have and will never see again. His non-violent battle against viceroys and generals and commissioners and his battle of feeble but powerful words in the midst of Round Table Conferences held in London which he attended dressed in just a loin cloth (dhoti), risking his life, his entire frail life, till India won independence and till he was shot dead for all the good he had done. It’s all there in Gandhi. I cried to see and realise that India had a leader like Mahatma Gandhi, a man, an apostle of peace who would never walk the soil of Mother India again. We havea Gandhi or a Mother Teresa or a Nelson Mandela once in hundreds of years. We need many more human beings like them, not just a world of people, a world which goes on growing, the population, leaving the future in the hands of a devil, the species no one has ever seen till now. Population, yes population is going to destroy this great land, mark my words. Anyway, thank you Ben Kingsley, for bringing Gandhi straight into my heart, stay in my soul.

It’s not so good
All the films with all those big and still shining stars who have formed a system of their own, a system that is slowly but surely strangling the great industry nurtured and nourished by its founders and forefathers have failed with consistent regularity. The stars and their magic seem to have failed and fallen miserably. And the problem is that no leader, no organisation, no association, no combine has been able to stand up to these stars in their sometimes-shining, sometimes-not-so-shining, sometimes-not-shining-at-all lives. And the stars go on playing with their puny producers like a huge hungry cat plays around with mice till it finishes them and makes up his mind to eat them up piece by piece, deliciously. And no man worth his khandani izzat, his standing, dare talk to them because they are the very people who elevate them to the status of Gods and Godesses.

All the music directors, big and small, make so much noise in the name of music which is no music, by God. Music and music is just what is being neglected. Strangely and sadly we have reached a stage when music is not music but so many sounds put together, put in a box, and shaken vigorously by men who don’t know the sa re ga ma of music. There are almost a hundred music directors in the field but it is difficult to call any of them music directors like the music directors we had in the sixties, seventies, eighties and even in the dying stages of the nineties.

And the saddest part of the world we are living in is that we don’t have writers, good writers, able writers, writers who can deliver the industry from the enemies.

At times it seems like all is lost, that all of them have lost interest in surviving in the industry which gives them their roti kapda aur makaan. You can’t do this all the time, my friends. You can’t do it for long. Your day of judgement will come and then what will you say? How will you say that the industry that gave you so many opportunities was strangled by you step by step because you allowed that to happen? Will you answer? Do you have the guts?

Stop this sham
It is high time we called a bandh on all those condolence meetings (call them by any name, chauthas, uthamnas, antim ardases or masses) for the dead. No one cares for the dead once they are dead. Only the living who had made a good living and whose kin are still living and making a good living, matter. These meetings to honour or pay homage to the dead however great have turned into mere showbusiness where people come (if they come, if they have the time for the dead and the living of the dead before whom they have to show off their stark white clothes and mournful faces with light make-up. And then the priest rants on and on and the mourners wonder when he’ll stop because they have no time and then there are eloquent speakers who speak some of the most blatant lies about how “great a soul” and “the good man” was. The pandit rants louder in the laalach of getting some more money from the mourners. He is assuring them of a place for the dead in heaven above and the living get carried away, by his tantras and mantras as soon as possible because they have to go, rush, they have to go to their shareholders meeting and then to the club or Gymkhana to drown in the latest brand of whisky. The dead are reduced to bones, and dust and burned down to ashes. You try to find the soul in the body. There is no soul. The end of the body is the end of everything, no soul is destined to go to heaven or hell. It’s only one big act in a play. STOP THIS SHAM. STOP IT BEFORE IT TURNS BLASPHEMOUS, A SIN. Thoughts at the condolence meeting held for my late colleague RM Kumtakar. It was better if you didn’t have it, I heard him screaming.

The jobless, their agony
Have you ever realised or experienced the pain of being jobless? Have you ever suffered the agony and pain of not having a job inspite of being talented, sometimes much more talented than those with jobs and the good money which can buy all the good things but peace? These are some of the questions stabbing me after going around the industry and finding more and more people without jobs. I sometimes see an entire slum of helping hands, day-dreamers, junior artistes, dancers and assistants and other ordinary workers waiting for jobs more anxiously than for anything else. It’s a serious state of affairs. It kills you slowly, day by day, kills you, kills them. So what do we do?

She’s sweet life
A few days ago when I had no clue to which way my muse (my only treasure) was going I heard this sweet female voice on my phone. She said her name was Vani, Vani Tripathi. She told me she was an actress. There was some magic, some miracle, some mesmerising power in her voice which made me invite her home immediately, as soon as possible if possible. I expected a bright and pretty woman who would make me blush, the typical woman of meaningless today. I didn’t know what kind of a woman I’d meet, but I kept waiting for her because I love meeting people, new people who can train me, advice me, teach me, make my life better, meaningful.

I kept waiting for Vani like a little boy waits for his favourite aunt who brings him gifts, a better gift every time she came. The next morning she breezed in and said “I am Vani. The first few lines I spoke to her like I speak to any new face I meet. Three minutes later she changed me, yes she chained me to some of the most noble feelings, she made me remember all the good things of life, all the good things in love, pure love. I realised there was hope, there was life, there was light, there was love of a very special kind bordering on the blessed (this feeling is better than that thing called love), there was a way to live a good life inspite of all the ordeals which are the order of the day, the style of our times, there was a way to drive away all the disillusionment, all the depression, all the disenchantment. You had to just be lucky and privileged to have one Miss Vani Tripathi with you. So what if only for a few minutes.

I had given up my hope in God when it came to creating girls like Vani. Vani gave a major part of my faith back to me, my faith about miracles, about God’s goodness, about aesthetics. Life has been a miracle, a fascination for me ever since I met Vani. I don’t want this miracle, this future to end. Don’t do it, Vani.Miracles like you happen once in many million years. Let it keep happening.

I promise to tell you more about Vani soon. I want to tell you about her because I am sure she is the kind of Vani (voice) that must be heard in the interest of a better living on earth because it will be too late when you realise there is no heaven, no paradise in the hereafter. So make the best of being here. Take the Vanis of the world as your guardian angels. She changed me in three days. She could do anything. She can, yes.

Let’s see what bhavishyavani has in store for the miracle between Vani, me and the world. Who the hell says life is a bore? With Vani around how is it possible?

A new beginning
And as we are all set to step into the next millennium (let’s call it the millennium when many millions of hopes are fulfilled for many many millions to thrive on them) let’s take the latest look at Madhuri Dixit.

The pundits and her admirers and their advisors have already started seeing the beginning of a new beginning for her. Some have started saying she is growing in beauty, charm. Some others are busy waiting for the day when she will announce her plans to quit, pack her bags and fly off to America where her two sisters and brothers have already settled down. And yet some others say she is facing the best of the time that is left and is trying to make as much money as possible and then say farewell to all the praises, the paeans and the glory. Madhuri however has other plans. She still feels she has not done justice to the actress in her. She still feel she has not really done the kind of work that will be remembered, the kind of work a Meena Kumari, a Madhubala, a Waheeda Rehman, a Vyjayantimala, a Nutan or even a Mumtaz did. She is still waiting for some great opportunities. She is willing to wait. She is willing to make sacrifices. She is willing to work hard. But where are the men who will offer her the opportunities? How long will she wait? Time doesn’t wait still even for numero unos and queens here.So Madhuri will have to ask time to be kind to her. Some of the greatest buman beings have done that and succeeded.