Mani Mangalsutra

This movie - Mani Mangalsutra - is first ever Marathi movie to be premiered in North America. As proud and supportive, I was for the cause, the movie was a let down. I have to write something about it, because Marathi movies need to put in a lot more effort in research and logic.

The movie ventured a comparison between married life and live-in relationships. However the examples were poorly chosen.

The story in short is as follows.
Two couples - First one is a young couple -
Shantanu and Swati - who have been living together for 7 years and the girl wants them to get married. But, the boy doesn't care about a wedding. His argument is shown to be based on the fact that a couple he was well-acquainted with, as a child,  never got married and managed to live happily.

This second couple - Savitri and Purushottam- is two generations older and yet they are shown to have been living together, without getting married.

The whole movie is a debate between these two points of view. Unfortunately however, the second example was not a live-in relationship at all. Purushottam couldn't marry Savitri because he had not divorced his first wife. His first wife leaves him because he is impotent.

The movie got mixed up in two entirely different issues- 1. Impotence and 2. The question of marriage.


One question I asked the director:
Purushottam's problem was impotence and not his bombastic thoughts about marriage. What if they had gotten married, and she had found out his drawback... Would the marriage have lasted as a life- long commitment?

I doubt. Well, his first marriage fails exactly because of that. Oh, Purushottam's character makes me so angry. He totally takes undue advantage of helpless Savitri. He makes an appearance of being the "ideal" gentleman, by never touching her etc... Such a hypocrite!

It would have been a valid comparison only if Savitri and Purushottam had an actual "relationship". A different and real example would have helped.


Think before you make movies people!

Longing for real education

As a child, I often dreamt of opening my own school one day. This dream has resurfaced. It is funny how the internet works. I was looking for music by Bhupen Hazarika, landed on a Bengali site that mentioned Shantiniketan, and there… I was dreaming again! :)

I am sure many of us were tired of rote learning and exams that made no sense on a deeper level. I was too. I remember crying and longing to go to a different system. I even fought with my parents sometimes, accusing them of forcing me to memorize the historical dates. However, the fault was hardly theirs. They, like every other parent of the day, wanted the best for their child, and saw no other option.

Similar thoughts have resurfaced in the recent movie ‘Three Idiots’… also, many international universities in the US and elsewhere are realizing the drawbacks of the “British” way of popular “education”. I am glad to know that I am not alone.

Lucky are those who escaped the clutches of standardized books and exams.

Well, I still have time to open this one “dream” school of mine! Investors wanted! :)

What better place to start yet another school, but Pune!

Creativity and "Template" thinking

I watched this video recently and my thoughts about creativity and its decreased use today, sprung up again. (Please click on the title of this post to watch the video) I have had a few thoughts and reflections after I read Ayn Rand’s books, which I have been trying to put into words, but it seems more  and more complicated every time I press the questions deeper into my brain.

I have come to realize that we are drawn to “templated,” simplified thinking today.  We simply try to modify or tweak what our forefathers did or have done and call it “change”, when what we really need is a totally new thought, a totally new solution.

What is all this blabber about? You may ask. What questions? What solutions?

Well the society as a whole is becoming more and more complicated because we have stopped questioning authority. We have stopped seeking real “out of the box” (as cliché as it sounds) solutions.

Take the law of “reservation” in India for example. We are merely implementing what Dr. Ambedkar did in increasing quanities, hoping the problem will go away. But all of us know deep within and it is not a solution. It is a “simple”, temporary way out of the mess.

Take the middle-east for example. We are still applying age-old “war” methods that seem to solve problems, but in reality solve nothing.

People are increasingly afraid to have their own opinions, ideologies or thoughts. We are increasingly dependent on social approval, simply because we are not trained enough, not bold enough to ask the difficult questions.

People who founded NATO, IMF etc… came up with these creative solutions to address the problems of “those” times. We are not doing the same in “our” times.

Any revolutionary, starting from Sant Dnyaneshwar to Isaac Newton, to Galileo, or Einstein, came up with brilliant ideas because, they truly wanted answers to questions. They truly needed to present a solution to whatever problems they may have faced.

Following templates is easy. But not a permanent solution to any problem.

I am sorry if this post is confusing. I just needed a brain dump! :)

GO ORGANICS!

Happy about this new development. I hope more and more farmers profit from organic farming practices and it is a win-win situation for all. I hope Sharad Pawar realizes the economics of organics. I am not against profit making, but profiting without harming our national health sounds better.

Battle against plastic

An interesting use:

http://epaper.esakal.com/esakal/20100324/5732827625753125836.htm

GM Foods and Our Right to Good Food!

Why do we all wake up in the morning and go about our various businesses of making money? The basic answer that is common to all, rich or poor, young or old is FOOD.

Food is a basic necessity and the  RIGHT of access to good food is quite fundamental. But most of us seem to ignore this fact until we encounter health issues arising from bad food consumption.

I have been living in the industrialized world for more than a decade and have been consuming the so called “advanced” products with fortified ingredients. The basic question is why were the vitamins extracted from the food in the first place only to “fortify” it more vitamins?

The corporations have been having their way because we - the consumer – have stopped asking basic questions in the name of “progress”.

In the face of the current debate in India about promoting genetically modified products, the basic question is – is there a real need to genetically modify eggplant/brinjal? What is really being achieved here.

To be honest I have been consuming the GMed brinjal and it tastes quite awful. This is one of the many vegetables that I enjoy eating when I visit India.

The following statement on this website seems baseless – although I am not a specialist. It does not address the costs involved in measures of long term health, let alone the actual cost of hiring hi-tech people and acquiring the hi-tech instruments to produce the GM crop.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Now-Pawar-bats-for-GM-crops-to-meet-food-security/articleshow/5584530.cms

“Conventional technologies of agriculture are inadequate to meet the formidable challenges. The most compelling case for bio-technology, and more specifically transgenic crops, is their capability to increase crop productivity, lower production costs, conserve bio-diversity, efficient use of external inputs, and improvement of economic and social benefits and alleviation of abject poverty in poor and developing countries,"

Please watch the documentary “Food Inc.”

One thing that the US is doing wrong and other countries shouldn’t follow is “Use complex solutions to solve a simple problem”.

Example in the documentary it shows that if cows were to eat simple, regular green grass on pastures, they wouldn’t be infected with e-coli. It acts as a natural cleanser. Instead the industry chooses to add more “anti-bacterial” material to the “fodder”.

Where is common sense? (My Hindi friends will understand) --- Ghaans Charne! :)

Konkan Bliss

This beautiful, untapped countryside of Maharashtra gave us a week of peace and quiet - A great get-away from smog-filled Pune. Konkan has been blessed with a unique combination of Sahyadri Mountain Range and the ocean. It is simply a treat for the eyes.

Obviously, as some of you might have guessed this blog is not about what is fine and dandy! :) There is so much potential for developing tourism in Konkan in a very environment friendly way!

1. Plastic – it s curse to our generation. The unsightly presence of plastic garbage on the beaches hurts not only the eyes but also the heart! I usually do not speak unless I have a solution in mind and here are a couple of ideas – anyone out there reading?

• a. Make cloth bags from waste produced by tailors. Sell these cloth bags of various sizes at a cheap rate… make them available in every shop and store and corner of Konkan. Post signs to re-use these bags. 
• b. Provide filtered tap water at every petrol pump. Travelers can fill up their bottles or cans whenever they fill up petrol in their vehicles.

This will curb the use of plastic to begin with.

2. Ban the sale and use of plastic.

3. Every beach should have a ticket window with garbage cans by it. Every beach should charge at least 5-10 rupees per person. This collected sum should go towards keeping the beaches clean and free of trespassers-- On some beaches we weren’t able to relax by the water... because there were people driving their SUVs and cars at full speed on the beach… some people were running a para-sailing business… which is great.. but unfortunately the para-sailing was being done using a motor vehicle instead of a motor boat.

4. Use of re-cycled newspaper bags is also important.

5. Food should be served in “patravlis” (plates made from leaves) if there is a need to use disposable plates.

6. Food and drink should be allowed only in designated areas of the beach and garbage should only be thrown in assigned garbage containers… A fine of 5000 Rupees should be charged to offenders. – The “beach police” should be in-charge of this.

7. The villages should also get a cut from the proceeds of the beach and this money can be used for the upkeep of the village streets.

8. Composting should be made mandatory for organic waste of every temple and every household in Konkan. It is imperative that people of Konkan wake up and take this task up seriously. We saw people of restaurants and temples throw the organic waste into the sea which is brought back on the beach with waves.

Simply keeping the villages and beaches clean and free of plastic, would help increase the appeal to international tourism.

9. We also witnessed a number of toilets built right on the sea whereby the waste goes directly in the water - Here is an idea to fix this - please visit the following link: I am sure it is very cost effective and easy to implemet. Common sense goes a long way.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/04/haiti.SOIL.toilets/index.html

Some ideas for local businesses:

Selling organic products will be great business:

10. Currently kokam, avala, jambhul, karvanda etc... products are being sold in plastic containers and use preservatives and unnecessary chemicals. It would be nice to buy all-natural products containing no preservatives.

Instead of plastic the either glass or following type of containers can be used.. they look nice, and give a feel of home-made.