From not-a-review of Brahman Naman to a very selectively subjective overview of Bangalore Quizzing

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 —

The deja vu during Gozilla was Gamera

As a Kaiju movie fan, I liked the new Godzilla, but I kept getting this feeling of déjà vu. So I went back to the one movie it most reminded me of, Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (1995), and sure enough there it was. Or rather, there they were. Many instances of ‘inspiration’. Or perhaps it was Gareth Edwards’ way of paying tribute. Nothing takes away from the fun that Godzilla was, because perhaps there’s nothing much really to be read into except fodder for kaiju fanboys.

#1: The reason the kaijus woke up. Due to the change in the environment, especially radioactive material.

 

#2: The principle of ‘balance’. For every MUTO, there is a Gojira. For every Gyaos, Gamera was created.

#3: The most tenuous similarity of all from the scratching-the-bottom department – the use of flares to illuminate Gamera. Used to good effect in Godzilla.

 

#4: The Kaiju diving into the sea and disappearing. The last shot is almost replicated almost the same (excepting the couple of frames with humans in Gamera).

I have a feeling if I watch Godzilla again, I’ll find more such instances, but the rips are still a sometime away. Till then, that’s all folks.

Being called ‘Hitler’ is perhaps the best compliment a leader could get in India today

No one will admit it in public. It’s a question of political correctness after all. How can you forget the gas chambers??? But then in an era of fleeting superficiality and skin deep strong beliefs, that’s a just a minor detail to be ignored. That’s where people come from when Hitler comparisons are denied in public. But the truth lies between this show of political correctness and the ground realities. Because if Rahul Gandhi does persist in comparing Modi to Hitler, it could prove to be unproductive to the extent of making people see Modi in a new, positive light. Yes, Positive. Because when you look at the big picture, Hitler in India isn’t a hate figure, a demonised person, a villain. Actually the truth is just the opposite. And here’s why I think so.

 

To put things in context look at the situation prevailing in India today. Lack of a strong leadership, and an Indian’s search for the same. A rising sense of (misplaced) nationalism, jingoistic in its nature. It is exactly here that Hitler, in the opinion of many people, scores, especially youngsters. And that’s all people know, or want to know. Here was a man who loved his country, a patriot, a strong leader who made his nation strong again. A disciplined man with leadership qualities to be admired.

 

And we Indians have always been prone to ‘hero worship’ be it sportsmen or politicians, and especially of military leaders. And Hitler fits all these very many moulds quite nicely. And the little matter of the belief that Hitler was a man who solved problems, and just got things done. A man who brought order to chaos, who replaced shame & anger with pride. Just this much is reason enough. But wait, there’s more.

All that above is just the state-of-play today. But what of yesterday? How does our past history affect how we perceive Hitler today?

 

Again, our history once again reinforces the fact that Hitler was a good man. It’s a fact that today’s youth hero worships Bhagat Singh and Subhas Chandra Bose more than MK Gandhi. And remember, it was Hitler to whom Netaji turned to in the fight for Indian Independence. That makes Hitler India’s friend, even if it is – as it was – because he was the ‘enemy’s enemy’. So if Netaji admired Hitler, he can’t be all that bad. Many people still haven’t forgiven Gandhi for siding with the oppressor, Britain during the wars. For people who’ve read Indian history or rather know of all the theories and little trickles that went into making the larger whole, there is a strong and persistent view that had Hitler not weakened the British Empire through WW2, the British would have never voluntarily left India. This view finds its logical end in posts and books that proclaim that Hitler, not Gandhi, should be given credit for the independence of India. As an aside, when you have the time, also look up Savitri Devi, popularly known as Hitler’s priestess and how Hitler was for a while considered an avatar of Vishnu.

 

Back to the present and thousands of copies of Mein Kampf get sold every month at bookstores across the country. At last count there were at least a dozen editions that I know of, and there’s a new one every few months. It’s still a best seller in India. How would you account for this? The book’s literary merit? No. It is a rambling book, and a difficult read. I don’t think all those thousands of people who bought the book have ever finished the book. They only bought it not so much because they wanted to know more about Hitler but more as a token of their love for the man.

I could go on. About the restaurants that bear Hitler’s name. About how the whole ‘Hitler was racist’ doesn’t cut ice in private here, in India where we are as rascist as they come. About the movie(s) on Hitler. But as with the rest of the post, I will keep it brief and just enough to give you an idea of why I think that if someone is compared to Hitler, it may work in his favour. Why Adolf Hitler for all that he may be to the western world isn’t in India (necessarily) an evil man – but a hero, a role model, political correctness notwithstanding. I hope I’ve made enough sense to give you some food for thought.

Why are military hotels called ‘Military Hotels’?

Military Hotel. You know, the places where you get all the Ragi Mudde and Chops. The donne biryanis and spare parts. Basically and almost exclusively non veg fare is what defines a Military Hotel, or Miltry Hotel as people call them. Actually the full and proper nomenclature is ‘Hindu Military Hotel’. But what’s with the military connection? I’ve had a lot of people ask me that, and am putting it down here so next time I can just mail a link to this post instead of subjecting them to my voice and wild gesticulations.

 

Now all this here below is what I’ve learned from my uncle and corroborated by relatives and a few people of the previous generation. That’s the only citation you’ll ever get if you ask. If you have heard of an alternative explanation or anything to add on, I would love to hear it. Anyways.

 

One logical explanation I’ve seen do the rounds is that they’re called Military Hotels because they’re run by ex-servicemen. Logical, plausible, but not quite right. The actual reason, as I’ve been told, is that back in the ye olde days, and I’m talking about the early post-independence years and up to the early 60s, the only non-vegetarian hotels and messes existing had cooks who were non-Hindu, mostly Muslim. So Hindus who were from non-vegetarian households would eat at home. But when it came to eating out, it was more or less a non-option for reasons stated above. This was a problem compounded for Hindus who were supposedly (or rather born) vegetarian but had acquired a taste for non-veg, because without the option of eating out they had to make do only with the occasional invitation to a friend’s house or say, a stray beegra oota. Remember also, these were times when towns were smaller than they are now and everyone more or less knew everybody else and his family.

 

Enter the military hotels to fill this gap for both kinds of people. Any hotel that called itself a Hindu Military Hotel (to use the complete & original terminology; though the word ‘Hindu’ has since been become redundant due to association of one with the other and due to changing times) was clearly suggesting, nay announcing three things:
• That it is a non-vegetarian hotel
• That the cooks are Hindus, and…
• No beef.

 

But still, why ‘Military’? Apparently the general perception amongst the people at that time was that everyone in the forces, the military HAD to eat non-veg irrespective of who he was or what his background and choice of food was. So ostensibly many of these places popped up to cater to the non-vegetarian food needs of soldiers on leave and ex-servicemen who had to have their meat but who couldn’t cook at home, or eat at hotels with non-Hindu cooks. Yep. It’s quite as simple as that. But the reasons are not so simple, but sort of make sense once you keep in mind the social mores of the time that food joints started calling themselves ‘Military Hotels’.

 

So there you go. Enough food for thought I guess, for now. Bon appetite!!

Captain Gopi. Not!

I respect the man. Am sure he means well. Noble, honourable intentions and all. I’m not going to listen to the cynics and their theories, you know them as well as i do. And he is contesting from my constituency!!

We could do with people like him in the great Indian political morass. But really, what is he going to achieve? Will he win? No. Will be making a statement? Yes. But statements never changed anything. All he will end up doing is splitting the votes of certain demographics thus letting and enabling those that should not have won, to win. Knowingly or otherwise. Maybe there is some credence to those theories then.

Burnt offerings

Don’t be misled. It’s a story masquerading as a work of art. A comic book at heart, and a damn good read throughout. Charles Burns’ Black Hole. Set in suburban Seattle in the 70s, it’s about a bunch of teenagers. It’s about Chris Rhodes, the girl that everyone likes and who sheds her skin periodically, like a snake. It’s about Keith Pearson who loves her, but ends up instead with Eliza, the artist with a tail at the base of her spine. It’s about Rob, who has a mouth on his chest. Then there are all their friends, the normal ones and the not-so-normal ones. But the biggest character of them all in this book, the one under whose shadow we see these teenagers tell us their story is ‘the Bug’ – a disease that spreads through sexual contact and manifests itself in mutations like the ones mentioned above. Mutations and deformities, some subtle and hideable, but sometimes obvious, grotesque and downright repulsive. This story is about the people who have the Bug or are about to and how their lives change. About the ones who lead a squalid existence shunned by normal society because they have the Bug. But read the book, and you realise this story is more than just a parade of sexually transmitted mutations, in a smog of weed smoke.

The art is hypnotic, surreal, creepy, sensual, psychedelic and hallucinatory – sometimes all at the same time. It’s in black and white, but that only serves to add so much more colour to the narrative. The emotions, the reactions, the dreams and the nightmares, deformities, the fear and the loathing. This book captures it all, and throws at you so many questions, most of which the book does not even try to answer. And the ending just heightens this feeling. There may or may not be a moral and a message to this story. The Bug may be a metonym for AIDS or it may be not. It just might be a coming-of-age-story, or the usual teenager’s story about wanting to be yourself and to be popular and to fit in, but then it could be neither. It’s for you to decide if you want to give it an ulterior motive or look at it as just a damn good story. I would suggest, sit back and just enjoy the experience. Get ready to be sucked into the Black Hole.