It was fantastic!

One year after coming back home from IGIDR, it is surprising to look at how my perceptions of the two years spent there have changed.

As soon as I had arrived, when anybody asked me how my experience in Mumbai was, I would say that it was good for the most part but add a qualifier to convey the fact that it was not all easy and pretty. I would occasionally talk about how, when we all started off, all the people there were the diametrically opposite personalities of each other and that we took time to get used to having each other around and some more time to find friends. Sometimes, I complained about how I was always sleep-deprived because of the amount of work there was to do and at other times about how the institute is isolated from the city and there was not much scope to explore Mumbai.

But now, when I occasionally talk about the place, all I can say is that it was simply, wonderfully, abso-blooming-lutely, fantastic! I probably have only distorted memories of the time spent there. I am now immersed in work and memories of IGIDR comprise only of bits of the kind of conversations and incidents that can only occur within the confines of a university campus that is away from civilization. This is probably also the memory I will guard in my mind for the future.

I couldn't help typing this out when I realised it has been exactly one year since I came back. This is especially for all those friends of mine who are still studying or about to graduate- take it from me, you people will be talking this way about the places you now complain of. Yes, I know, how bizarre!

..and the Bheja Fry for me, thanks!

(I'm still vegetarian...the title is just me trying to be witty)

There was one particular aspect about the movie Bheja Fry that I found simultaneously heartening and realistic. The protagonist of the movie, Bharat Bhushan, is an incorrigible dimwit, a smug bore, a cuckold and yet, there is just one relationship that has remained intact despite all these personality disorders. The man has a "bestest friend" who completely shares the former's passion for watching cricket and empathises with his love for Bollywood music and his tendency to display his meagre singing abilities at the most inopportune times and places. I particularly enjoyed watching the chemistry between the two characters when they are completely tickled by each other's pitifully dull jokes even as they are trying to help another man who is in serious trouble.

I found this depiction refreshing because, for once, two men were shown to be thick buddies and there was no sacrificing of loves or lives by either of them to make the audience understand just how deep their friendship is. The said best friend is not just a lame sidekick to the protagonist whose only role is to make the male lead look good, as is the case in most of our fillums. On the contrary, Bharat Bhushan is full of praise and admiration for his friend's abilities as a tax officer while the friend does not really reciprocate any of this reverence.

The reason I am even writing about how two grown, uninteresting men are shown to be friends in a realistic manner in a movie is only because I think that very rarely do we get to see something like that. Bollywood, over the years, has slaughtered every kind of relationship between people and stuffed it up with its own fluff comprising of imaginary and in some cases, ghastly emotional upheavals and excessively complicated situations. The relationship between the male lead and his best friend has been vicitm to this kind of treatment very frequently. Given this context, I was surprised to see how the two friends in the movie are like some of the people I see and know. In everyday life, for a lot of people I know, to go out and help a friend in need while there is an important cricket match being aired on TV is the ultimate testament to one's concern for the friend's wellbeing . There have been other movies, such as Dil Chahta Hai that have succeeded in depicting warmth and bonhomie among male characters without leaving the audience cloyed by the end. But these are only the exceptions and not the norm. Well, at least it looks like there is some hope of watching men in movies discuss cricket or Bollywood and give each other imperfect advice and spend less time saving each other from getting electrocuted, drowning, being thrashed by 12 dark-skinned and bald men etc.,.

That leaves us with the question of the relationship among saheliyaan in movies- but let's not even get into that just yet!