Brahman
Naman. Also known as Netflix’s first Indian film.
And
fast becoming a Rorschach test that tells you more about the viewer and
reviewer than about the film itself.
Do
note that some of the words I have used below are harsher than they should be and
maybe unfairly extreme. That is intentionally intentional. You are free to take
offense, if you think I’m referring to you. I don’t think I am.
The
only people who can genuinely claim to truly ‘get’ Brahman Naman are the people
who actually quizzed in Bangalore in the 80s. They have their own reasons for
doing so. That said, here’s the kind of people who like the film, or will claim
to even if they really didn’t:
•
Quizzers, mostly Bangalore quizzers
•
People who want to be considered quizzers or Bangalalorean because both are cool
to be
•
Quizmasters who will now mine the film for future questions or fundas, as they’re
called
• People
who attend quizzes (I won’t insult them by calling them quizzers), especially
from other cities and have seen Bangalore’s (serious) quizzers for what they
are and Bangalore quizzing for what it’s become
•
People like me who are glad we left regular quizzing but still in Bangalore and
can still wash it all down with some sense of nostalgia and misplaced loyalty
to the sport I once loved (yes, quizzing is a sport!)
So
is this film about quizzing? I think not. It’s just a way-in. A convenient Macguffin.
Not least because the writer Naman Ramachandran used to be a Bangalore quizzer
in the 80s. But there’s no way he could’ve cut to the triviality and futility of
it all if he hadn’t quit quizzing (I am assuming that because else as they say,
the (quiz) lovers cannot see, the petty follies that they themselves commit.
The
film is basically about hormone-driven college boys trying to get laid. But in
between doing that they have to do something right? With the starting point
that they have to be nerds, not jocks, as all high school movies have shown us.
In India, can’t make them a team of master debators. Or chess players. Quizzing
fits the bill quite well thank you.
Now
coming to the protagonists – the quizzing boys themselves. The closest comparison
I can find to the quizzing boys in Brahman Naman are the geeks from Big Bang
Theory. While it looks ostensibly like the show is celebrating geek culture,
like BN does to trivial pursuits, the reality is that BBT is merely giving the
world to laugh at those geeks and their social awkwardness where even a waitress
who’s not been to college can get the better of physicists. Same with BN. The
world isn’t laughing with these unlikeable quizzers. They are laughing at them.
Laughing would be stretching the truth a tad bit too much. Because it isn’t that
funny.
Yes,
the world is laughing at you quizzers, and not in a good way. And saying you are
not even worthy of their pity, leave alone a shred of sympathy. They’re saying
you’re sex-starved fuckers, if by sex they also mean ‘no life to speak of’. Yes,
Naman would still be a thoroughly unlikeable person even if he didn’t quiz, but
it is his quizzing that gives him misplaced sense of superiority and makes him
a bigger douche, and a more insufferable arsehole. The problem is not with
quizzing, but with the fact that he has made quizzing the cornerstone of his
identity. Because that’s the only thing he’s good at perhaps. Some of the
nicest people I know who quiz and are good at it would still be nice if they stopped
quizzing, because they don’t define themselves by the “quizzer/quizmaster” tag,
and most importantly, don’t wave the size of their fundas in other people’s
faces at every given opportunity.
Brahman
Naman would not be that much enjoyable for anyone who doesn’t get the subtle real-world
connections thrown in. That the Calcutta quizmaster is actually De Rack o’Brain's father.
Or that a Celsus funda thrown about on a train journey is a tribute to a kind and
gentle old military officer. That in the character of Henry, you can see shades
of an equally good, if not-so-gentle man. I am sure there are so many more I am
missing. But then, I wasn’t in Bangalore then, and definitely didn’t do quiz.
So,
if this film is really not about quizzing then who spending so much time on the
quizzing aspect of it? Well, you see, quizzers have a way of making everything about
themselves. Especially in the closed, and uninviting sub-culture that
is Bangalore quizzing. And they have to make everything about themselves
because it is their raison d'être. Everything is a funda to them. If a thing cannot
be used as a question in a quiz, then it is useless and not worthy of their
attention. I used to be there. And professional – read serious – quizzers have
a way of making it all about themselves and when not comparing each other’s
funda to see whose is bigger, have made the whole quizzing scene unwelcoming.
And
like any person who has done quiz, I have to make this about me. I used to do
quiz very regularly till a few years ago. And like that virus which doesn’t quite
leave your system even though you had chicken pox when you were a kid, the
keeda of being a quizzer still hovers around in your system somewhere and you
have to go back to get that fix, because the quiz is on a subject you like or you
know for the quizmaster is not going to show off but instead ask decent
questions and about arcane trivia. The whole scene is unwelcome, but a few good
men who still remain make it bearable.
I
used to do quiz in the pre-facebook era and before email quizzing groups became
commonplace. Before it became “cool”. Before being a geek was ‘cool’. By which
time then ‘quizzer’ had become a badge of honour and people were queuing up call
themselves quizzers.
I am
fortunate, nay blessed, to have quizzed in a time when a kind old man – one of
the best, greatest people I have had the pleasure of knowing and spending time
with – embodied the spirit of quizzing as a welcome social activity and as a
sport played with true spirit of sportsmanship. Not superstars and quizmasters
who use quizzes to overcompensate. A great great man, thinking about whom,
still brings tears to my eyes. I have sat next to the man as a scorer during
one of the last quizzes he quizmaster-ed and have seen with my own eyes and
heard with my own eras, in the shaking voice of an old man he kept reading out well-phrased
questions from a page he held with in his shaky hands. I am fortunate to have
quizzed then, not with today when some questions are either copy-paste tracts
of gibberish enough fill a full ppt slide slide (in 8 points, arial) or sometimes
show an image with the question being eloquently articulated in two words, ‘Put
Funda’.
I am
fortunate to have quizzed with – and participated in quizzes by – a man who
made quizzing fun, who used his vast store of knowledge to tell us more about
the world around us and used questions – that were easily work-out-able to tell
us about things worth knowing, and – not as sadistic instruments of torture and
as mechanisms to show off intellectual superiority and vastly superior
knowledge (read wikipedia surfer) to assuage his insecurities.
I
am fortunate enough to have done quiz in a time when a quizmaster would measure
the success of his quiz by the number of full points and generous part-points
awarded not by the number of questions unanswered. In a time when a quizmaster
would be happy to see his question answered and not revel in making a poor
newbie feel like an ignoramus. Being a quizmaster was a responsibility to be
taken seriously, not a privilege to be abused.
Fortunate
enough to have quizzed in a time when the QMs quizmaster’s decision was final
and not when they are being browbeaten into awarding points to a particular answers
only because a participant thinks so, or even worse bludgeoned into taking back
points already awarded because the answer was just not acceptable to a
particularly senior participant. Because you see, you have to show off your bigger
funda go one-up on the quizmaster himself with a ‘better answer’.
I
am fortunate to have quizzed in a time when newbies were most welcome and made
welcome by veterans who wore their seniority with grace. In a time when not
every quizmaster was expected to have attended every quiz in India in the past
two decades lest he commit the cardinal sin of repeating a question that was
asked in say, a quiz in Indore in the second week of August 2003. If a QM does
commit that sin now, he will be suitably punished with ample scorn and a
disparaging remark from the veterans of today with that most loaded of insults,
‘repeat question’ or even worse ‘cheap funda’.
Are
all quizzers that bad? Of course not. But most of them I think have left the
scene or have just given up like me or maybe I don’t know for sure because I’m
not a quizzer anymore or maybe, because it is just hard to spot them amidst all
the ‘whose funda is bigger’ brouhaha going on and the one-upmanship so
prevalent now, indulged in by people who I presume go home to their
refrigerators with one hand holding their laptop as they cycle through their
question slides. A good funda – that no one has spotted yet or one that you’ve
created – is as orgasm-inducing as a brazzers siterip, you see.
Are
there no good people left in quizzing? Of
course there are. There are gentle folk, gentle giants, Bangalore outsiders and
people genuinely worth knowing outside of quizzing, trying to keep the spirit
of quizzing alive, but all their voices in a quiz are lost in the clamour for
that extra half point by the “serious” quizzers who I presume go home to their aquariums
with the score sheet in hand.
It
hurts. To see quizzing become what it has become now. Unwelcoming. Intimidating.
It was always a sub-culture, but at least it was inviting. And I hope it will
be sometime in the future. And again may Bangalore be genuinely worthy of the
title ‘Quizzing Capital of India’ not because of the quantity of its quizzes,
but because of their quality. Not because it has a few of India’s best
quizzers, but because it so many of them. Once again, may the points flow
generously and may the flow of new people to quizzes increase. May all the good
quizmasters once again share their knowledge with us all through good questions,
and make us better informed about the world about us.
— End
of rant —
Flashforward a couple of years. We have shifted to Gulbarga. I am in my second standard. All grown up. Grown up enough to make my own bows and arrows from branches, twigs and twine. Old enough to walk on my own all the way to school, and take my sister along with me too. But she is still Duryodhana and I am whoever catches my fancy. My class has enough dushasanas and ravanas for me to fight with. There’s also new games like kirket and football to play now, and trees to climb and fall out off. And there’s now a new box at home called TeeVee for dinner-time entertainment. Thus the hindi lessons begin by professor Doordarshan. One fine sunday, my father tells us we’re going to a film, Maya Bazaar. What’s it about? I ask. Not that it mattered. Well, it’s about Abhimanyu, and Krishna and Ghatotkacha my father says. Ghatotkacha??? Let’s go! And so we do. Film starts. It’s black and white!!! Not a new film. And it’s in some strange language that I cannot follow. Turned out it was the Telugu original. But none of that mattered once the film hit its stride and Ghatotkacha made his appearance. There was magic! And fights! And Ghatotkacha becoming big and then small. Yay! Opening his mouth and all the food jumps right into his mouth. And the song, ‘Hoho hoho ho ho…..’ brought much glee (vid below). Having been brought up on stories from the puranas and mythology, and the staple reading being Amar Chitra Kathas, this was like the best! I remember sitting transfixed and clapping my hands in glee. So what if it was Telugu? I knew the story inside out, and my father kept interjecting now and then with some additional info. Ah. The joy. Ghatotkacha spiriting away Shashirekha. Then changing to her form and taking everyone for a ride. Lovely.
The story is simple. The Pandavas are in exile. One of Arjuna’s wives Subhadra and her son Abhimanyu are staying at Dwaraka with her brothers Krishna and Balarama. Now Abhimanyu and Shashirekha, Balarama’s daughter are in love with each other having been betrothed in their childhood. But times have changed. The Pandavas are paupers and Revathi, Balarama’s wife is no longer kicked about marrying her daughter off a pauper’s son and instead pitches for Lakshmana, Duryodhana’s son and the prince of Hastinapura, exactly what Shakuni wants. As any husband with a naggy, greedy wife Balarama agrees and anyways Duryodhana was always his favourite disciple. Realising what’s afoot, the trickster Krishna makes sure the miffed Subhadra and Abhimanyu are taken through a particular route. Enter Ghatotkacha! All angry and miffed at seeing two intruders in his territory. A battle ensues – flying arrows and all – between Abhimanyu and Ghatotkacha till Subhadra intervenes after Abhimanyu is defeated and the men realize that they are cousins, brothers. Ghatotkacha being Ghatotkacha agrees to help and with his retinue proceeds with due alacrity to Dwaraka to sabotage Shashirekha’s marriage to Lakshmana Kumara. Much fun and joy ensues, including a hilarious scene where Shakuni gets a taste of his own medicine in dice and Lakshmana Kumara quite simple some bitter medicine. Lots of mirth and joy ensues for the viewer. And of course all ends well with the lovers united.
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