Beeped Out

While watching Gangs of Wasseypur, I came across one of those rare comical scenes in an otherwise gritty marathon of a movie (in two parts) soaked in blood and gore, set in the badlands of Bihar/Jharkhand. The hero Nawazuddin Siddiqui flaunts a pager in a mofussil tapori fashion to impress his lady love Huma Qureshi.

I am sure many of the present day smartphone wielding hipsters may not have even heard about pagers. And many who saw the movie were seeing that matchbox like device for the first (and probably the last) time.

It was one of those electronic gadgets which died a premature death, thanks to the technologically superior mobile phone and a free fall in call and text message charges. The fact that one could  only receive messages and one had to call up the pager operator to send a message were major handicaps.

Back in the mid-1990s, it enjoyed a pride of place among the yuppies, almost on par with what an i-pad commands now. Company bigwigs and executives were doled out Motorola's pager sets (it had a monopoly in India) and it gave them a kick to wield them tucked to their belts. At public places a beep from a pager often used to draw admiring glances, often laced with envy.

However little did these executives realise that they were, in fact, falling prey to the first version of 'electronic handcuff' being applied on them by the corporates to ruin their free time and holidays. Later on that role was taken up by mobile phones, laptops, blackberries and i-pads. Remember Hrithik Roshan in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara?

The  introduction of mobile phones in the country did sound a alarm for pager operators, but the prohibitively high mobile phone call charges and handset costs was a cause of some comfort for them. Mobile phone initially was described as a rich man's toy and almost no communication expert back then saw it as a gamechanger in India as it later turned out to be.

The subsequent reduction in cell phone handset prices and call charges soon pushed down pagers to downmarket status. Pager beeps at public places started inviting scorn and derision.

I remember a pager dealer commenting in some magazine (don't recall which one) that earlier his clients used to be doctors, engineers, high class lawyers, but now he has plumbers, carpenters and automobile mechanics sign up as subscribers. I also recall a friend of mine saying, "If you have mobile phone, cool; if you do not have one, no problem; but if you have a pager, people will look down upon you."

Pager's death knell came when incoming calls on cell phones became free. After that it was a swift and steep slide to the e-waste bin of history.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Dad @ 96! Hrmph

At a time when Indian media's view finders remained glued to Arvind Kejriwal and his targets, I happened to come across a news item on India in a British tabloid The Sun, which of course is a telling commentary on why we seem to be always losing the battle against population explosion.

Ramjeet Raghav, a 96-year-old farmer from Sonepat became a father recently! Billed as world's oldest dad, he only bettered his own world record when he became a father two years back. In a country where life expectancy of men barely top 60, it is indeed an unthinkable feat.

In his photograph he has snow white beard and forehead ridden with lines. But surprisingly he seems to be  standing erect without any walking stick.

Sun in its typical tabloidese describes him as 'Randy' Ramjeet and 'oldest swinger in town'. What is more, his wife is 60 years old!

Ramjeet, a former wrestler, said a diet of milk, butter and almonds (thankfully no  chowmein) keeps him young and claimed he was even capable of having more babies! However, thankfully, he now wants his wife to get sterilised, as they now have two children and that too both sons! What more can one ask for in a patriarchal society?

The mainstream media in India seems to have given this story a miss. Even the nosey and chatty TV channels have decided to ignore it. A Google search on Ramjeet only throws up foreign sites such as Huffington Post, Daily Mirror.

Daily Mirror said he admits that his neighbours are more than jealous of his sex drive, saying: “I do it three or four times a night.” And can shame even 25 year olds in lovemaking. In case you thought it was an empty boast, his wife seconds it: “He doesn’t seem old to me, he can make love like any 25-year-old man, even better because he can go on all night, and he makes a wonderful father.” 

The comments section ranged from sassy (someone suggested he should have a relationship with Madonna) to anger over the plight of kids.

A country that is struggling to rein in its burgeoning population, this is certainly no flattering news.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Sweet Tooth For Barfi

Barfi is the new flavour of this festival season with film critics and YouTube enthusiasts having developed a sweet tooth for the movie by same name. They seem to be chomping on it with the same gusto as anchors of foodie shows on TV.

The movie whetted their appetites after it got selected to represent the country at Oscars. The movie makers in their pursuit for 'inspiration' have not even spared Korean and Japanese movies and quite unknowingly ended up providing a 'globalised' spot-the-original-scene contest for critics.

Plagiarism in Hindi and for those matter movies of any Indian language is as old as hills. Movie makers had no qualms in lifting themes, songs and their chances of getting caught was always as remote as noose around Ajmal Kasab.

Within India also this link is incestuous. A Tamil filmmaker may lift a story from Hindi movie, or a Malayalam film maker may lift it from Tamil.

However film makers over the years have become craftier about plagiarism. Gone are the days of lifting themes from just one film. Thus we had a movie like 1970s hit Love Story, based on Eric Segal's novel having 'inspired' many in India. The result was Ankhiyon ke jarokhon se in Hindi and Madanolsavam in Malayalam, which was also dubbed in Tamil as Paruva Mazhai. Now thanks to internet and satellite television, they copy scenes from dozens of films and that too not just from Hollywood.

But little do these filmmakers know that internet can be a double edged sword, as it has also made the viewers more savvy and hence their chances of not getting caught has come down drastically. During licence-permit raj days, very few could manage to travel abroad and even Hollywood films were hardly screened beyond metro cities. Hence they could get away with this daylight robbery on gullible film goers and those foreign filmmakers, whose themes were lifted, somehow were either unaware or thought it was not worth the trouble fighting legal battles amid India's heat and dust.

Lastly, the country's choice for Oscar entry for the Best Foreign Language category always ranged from intriguing to downright silly. So far, barring Tamil movie Jeans, only Hindi films have been chosen for that honour. Most often the chosen films have more to do with star appeal and marketing potential than quality of acting or theme.