Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein & LTTE Prabhakaran

I think political opponents and their deaths are the opposite of what Wilde had to say about relative’s deaths

“Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.” – Oscar Wilde

Whereas, political opponents can always be depended upon to know how to live & when to die very timely deaths.

I mean just when George Bush’s popularity ratings are on a downward swing you have 9/11 & the Iraq war as Weapons of Mass Distraction to help the king of the White House climb up the popularity ladder. And then again as American death counts mount (I mean we all know Iraqi, non-white deaths don’t matter like in the words of General Tommy Franks “We don’t do body counts”) and the mood in America chills, we have the capture of Saddam Hussien — to help stem that flood of criticism about the oil rat pack that was scourging the Iraqi countryside.  And then some more months down the line, when it seemed Uncle Sam’s love for Halliburton, Veritas Capital, Washington Group & Environmental Chemical was hitting too many headlines, we have the hanging of Saddam Hussein.

But then wars serve very useful purposes. Apart from ensuring that a lot of private companies profit from “Wars of Terror” & “Axises of Evil” they also help the politicians — the companies backed to power — soar heights of popular adulation from well-meaning, but misguidedly patriotic citizens.

In India, we played the same Blame Game – Game, Set & Match!!! Feb 1999 – Pakistan begins occupying posts on the Indian side of the LOC. Elsewhere in the country, the AIADMK withdraws support to the NDA government tottering on the brinks of hell. And just when things seem to be going really bad, we employ our own “Weapons of Mass Distraction” and have the brainwave to “Attack Pakistan” as late as July. Never mind, that no had given a damn about Pak for all those months they had happily been occupying India’s LOC posts. Our politicos can be trusted to fall on the time-worn game of “Blame Pakistan” for everything going wrong in India. If one doesn’t watch out we’d soon have a uber-sober Vijaykanth blaming Pakistan for the Cauvery issue or maybe Rajinikanth blaming Pakistan for the non-take-off of his pet inter-linking-rivers theory.

Even the announcement of LTTE Prabhakaran’s death in a way seemed well-timed (May 13, 2009-Last phase of elections; May 16-results; May 18-announcement) – almost as if someone had orchestrated the safe completion of the election process in India; almost as if someone had feared the drastic effects of Prabhakaran’s death on the pollscape of Tamil Nadu (the strain on DMK-Congress ties, Jaya’s electoral advantage).

And now with Osama Bin Laden,

The Independent reports:

“The successful mission to kill Osama bin Laden will give a much-needed boost to President Barack Obama’s flagging popularity ratings. The world leader, who stressed his personal involvement in the events leading to bin Laden’s death, has seen his popularity with US voters fall significantly since his election to the presidency in November 2008.News of bin Laden’s end came little more than a month after a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that only 17% of Americans regarded President Obama as a strong military leader.”

Need I say more?

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Dasavatharam or an overdose of Kamal

The most irritating thing about Dasavatharam was seeing Kamal Hassan in every frame. It being his magnum opus film in no way justifies the fact that the whole film is Kamal, Kamal and nothing but Kamal.

The irritating things about the movie:

Kamal‘s ego. The scene in which social activist Vincent Poovaraghan replies, “Yes. I am a world-class actor” to the villain’s “Who do you think you are? Are you a world actor?” is too irritating for words. K S Ravikumar films have the trademark of K S Ravikumar appearing in at least one shot. But K S Ravikumar crooning about Kamal in the last song Ulaga Nayagane….”You have to be a UN member…You have to get an Oscar award…You have acted in thousands of roles….You are a world actor, world actor, ” Shucks! And K S Ravikumar trying to dance with scantily-clad girls! Too ignominious!
Missing links. Where did Kamal get his cellphone? How did the villains get the number and call Kamal in that scene when Kamal is standing in front of the police station? And containing a bio-weapon with plain NaCl or common salt is plain stupid for a movie that’s trying to be scientific (but fails nevertheless)? And how does a scientist (Govind), who spent most of his adult years creating a bio-weapon for the US so that it can kill millions of Innocent civilians, suddenly develop a conscience and want to save people in India (which he left for a well-paying job in the US)? And many people feel the US itself is a terrorist nation, so why protest the sale of the bio-weapon to a terrorist nation? As if the US is spending billions of dollars on bio-weapons for peaceful purposes.
Pathetic make-up. Kamal is a great actor and without any make-up in Michael Madana KamaRajan we were able to differentiate between the four Kamals. Here the make-up artist didn’t too a good job (Try watching Nutty Professor, you can’t recognise Eddie Murphy in any of the five characters). The faces looked artificial and kind of mummified.
Manmohan Singh, George Bush & Karunanidhi on the same stage? I don’t think so! Donning the role of George Bush and trying to outdo Sivaji Ganesan’s Navarathiri was such an immature attempt at the Oscars. I think Kamal would be better off, if he followed Aamir Khan’s non-special effects style.
Ten roles & a haywire script. Kamal had decided he’d do 10 roles. He decided he’d play a Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Sikh, Muslim & atheist. He also decided he’d be a tall guy and a short, old lady. So the script is just plain confusion, with the director and script writer trying to fit in all of Kamal egomanical demands.
Too many issues. Kamal Hassan tried to talk about bio-warfare, globalisation, imperialism, terrorism, Shivites vs Vaishnavites, religion, the butterfly effect, chaos theory, discrimination against Dalits, caste feelings, lethargic functioning of the bureaucracy, sycophant government officials, corruption in the govt ranks, the tsunami, ….its just too much packed in three hours.
The Indian anthem being played when Govind lands in India with the bio-weapon. Why the national anthem? When nothing in the film has anything remotely to do with patriotism.
Hiroshima, Nagasaki vs Pearl Harbour. Its so stupid when Christian Fletcher tells Shingen Narahashi “Remember Hiroshima, Nagasaki?” and he retorts with “Remember Pearl Harbour?”. Its so stupid and doesn’t make sense.

What I did like about the movie despite all this, was the subtle criticism he dared make about the present system:

• He says that both God and science betrayed human beings during the tsunami. In his own words in the last scene, “I didn’t say I don’t believe in God. I only said it will be nice if there was one” (Meaning that God is not there. Why quibble about it?). And that the stone (Vishnu statue) is just powerless. As it didn’t save Vishnu followers (including, the skeletal Ranagaraja Nambi) and got cast up on the beach due to the tsunami not its own powers.
• He says that people have always killed and got killed in the name of the God in India. Even before Christianity or Islam made its entry to India, people were killing each over communal riots.in this case Shivites vs Vaishnavites.
• When he’s protesting the sale of “bio-weapons to venture capitalists,” his boss tells him not act like a unionist. I liked how he showed that industrialists try to buy off people with unionist tendencies; when his boss tells Govind he will be paid hundred thousand dollars to go with the tide; and when Vincent’s men are bought off by the sand-mining industrialists here.
• When he hugs the sanitary workers (most probably Dalits) and the sanitary workers are surprised that he’s touching them.
• When the old, mad woman hugs the dead Vincent and they tell her not to touch him because he’s from another caste. But the old woman rejects what he says, leaving us with the question who is really mad? The old woman who embraces a stranger as her son or the Hindu fundamentalist, who thinks touching someone from another caste is sinful?
• when he shows the rampant sand mining taking place on the Palar river bed. He has imitated real-life activists in portraying the anti-sand mining group
• when he shows the blind faith and prejudices people have due to religion
• when he makes a hit at Vaiko and Vijaykanth. In the interrogation scene, Balram Naidu questions Govind’s loyalty towards promoting the Tamil language, to which Kamal replies “Telegu people (Vaiko/Vijaykanath) like you will promote the language for their own benefit.”
• when he criticises Jayendra Saraswathi. When Balram Naidu wants to interrogate people in the Hindu religious mutt, he asks “Are there not criminals in mutt?” (A hit at the recent murder case in which the acharya was arrested and many brahmins protested the move)
• when Kalif’s dad tells the govt officers not to think “every Muslim is a terrorist”. Kamal of course phrases it in his roundabout way as “don’t think everyone who prays to Mecca is a terrorist.” I feel there’s too much of branding going on. Just because the US govt, UK and other European countries didn’t like Communists; Communists were bad and terrorists. Now the new villains are Muslims. Because the US would love to occupy the oil-rich lands of the Middle-East, the natives or Muslims become evil and terrorists. Even the BJP and RSS get votes using the same platform that “Hindu Rajaya must be born, after killing all the Muslim terrorists in India.” In Gujarat, I guess the Modi govt was partially successful, but it was interesting to note the subtle criticism the film makes of the Gujarat riots and the more than 2,000 Muslims killed in the riots.

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