Thursday, March 12, 2015
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Monday, March 02, 2015
Marathi Literary Meet in Punjab Creates Buzz
The 88th Marathi Sahitya Sammelan (literary meet) is to take place next month at Ghuman, Punjab. The choice of location has aroused quite an amount of curiosity. This is the first time that the annual meet is taking place in such a far away place. Everybody is anxious to know what happens to this mega event in a land where Marathi speaking population is scarcely available.
Organizing the literary meet out of Maharashtra is not a new development. This has happened earlier also and the Sammelans at Indore (Madhya Pradesh), Belgaum (Karnataka) or Vadodara (Gujarat) in the past have left their mark in cultural life of Marathi speaking populace. One meet was held even in New Delhi. Actually, the demand for United Maharashtra, a separate state for Marathi people, was made in such a meet at Belgaum. Still, the meet, which will take place in first week of April, has created a sort of buzz in Maharashtra.
Ghuman is situated in Punjab but its claim to fame is the samadhi- the memorial - of Sant Namdev, the 13th century saint poet who went to Punjab and spread the message of Bhagavat Dharma. Even though venerated by Punjab's population for almost nine centuries, it was almost forgotten place for Maharashtrians.
The initiative to hold this meet at Ghuman came from Sarhad, an NGO from Pune and its head Sanjay Nahar. When Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad, the organizing body for the meet, finalized this location as the next meet, everyone was puzzled. How will a meet, focused on Marathi language, be successful in a land where Marathi was not spoken for centuries and is not spoken even now.
However, the sarpanch and other functionaries from the village in Punjab visited Pune more than once and assured their full cooperation. Their gestures have shown a renewed cordiality which has made everyone yearn to go that land.
However, there is some roadblocks in the way. The Marathi publishers have decided to boycott the event saying that nobody would buy their books in Punjab where hardly anybody knows Marathi language. This threatens to be a major headache as large chunk of Sammelan’s revenue comes from the fees collected from the publishers to set up their stalls.
Nevertheless, Marathi literary meet has an extraordinary place in the cultural arena of Maharashtra.
Monday, December 08, 2014
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Raj Warns Party Workers; Will It Work?
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray on Saturday warned his party cadres not to indulge in indiscipline or face his wrath. He cautioned them not to put up banners on the leaders’ birthdays and advised them not to chase vote politics.
Thackeray was speaking in Pune after deliberating with the party workers for three days in view of the two subsequent debacles of his party in Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. The meet was attended by the party workers, functionaries and corporators.
He said, “Don’t chase the votes for the sake of votes but connect with people as one among them. Think yourself as not party functionary but as common person. It is not that people have deserted us but you have failed to connect with the people. Now is the time to do constructive work.”
Thackeray kept himself off from criticizing any party while referring to the party’s poor performance in recent elections but took potshots on Nationalist Congress Party saying that the leaders on NCP’s posters are like ten-faced Ravan. “Anybody who puts the hoardings for wishing on birthdays will face axe the same day and he will not be in our party,” he said.
He said, “I have analyzed the reasons for the outcome and I will reinvigorate the party in Pune as well as in other districts. However, don’t indulge in indiscipline or infighting. Otherwise, those people will face the action. The party has a certain frame and none of you should cross that frame.”
Thackeray also announced the email connectrajthackeray@gmail.com for the party workers to directly communicate with him and appealed them to convey anything.
Now the question remains: will it work? It will be amusing to see!
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Shiv Sena Begs for Respect
Friday, October 24, 2014
Kaththi – A Dope of Entertainment and Advocacy
When you buy a ticket for
Vijay-starrer, it means a roller coaster ride of comedy, emotions, romance and
of course, action. Kaththi does not make any exception to this and fulfills the
demands of the Izhaiya Thalapathi fans. The movie is executed in the best
possible way for such an entertainer, much better than Thalaiva.
Kaththi has message, not logic;
it has entertainment, not banal stuff; it has performances not artisanship...overall,
it is a Diwali present to be enjoyed without much hesitation. Most importantly,
it has characters who I could find around myself unlike the Bollywood garbage
where all characters live in some foreign countries and try to act like any
other Hollywood actor had done in his latest flick. In Kaththi, as in all Tamil
movies, individuals are not fiber or foam personalities, they are persons in
flesh and bones who would react to the situation as anybody living 10-15
kilometers from me would. It is Indian way of living, no doubt about it.
The storyline is as old as it
could get. One is forced to think - had Dadasaheb Phalke not made a
mythological movie, he would have settled for something similar. A
fugitive criminal taking up the cause of
his look alike in forced circumstances spans the narrative of the 166-minute
movie, direected by A. Murugodass. In Thuppaki, he infused dose of Patriotism.
In Kaththi, he ventures into the realm of activism. There was no need to hint at
the communist ideology of the main character. But the director might have
thought that only communists are activists or all activists are communists.
The activist and the criminal
both advocate the case of the poor farmers who get a shoddy treatment by
police, administration and corporate. The villain, played by Neil Nitin Mukesh,
heads a cola company whose swanky office is seen numerous times. For some
strange reason, the director has not named the company and even the court
mentions it as MNC – nothing else.
The movie raises an important
question – who has the right on the underground water? On one side there are
farmers and on another multinational giants who are all bent on bending the
rules and exploiting the resources, throwing law to the wind. In a unique
style, the protagonist recounts a plethora of statistics and there is even a
faint mention of Vijay Mallya. Kaththi or Kathiresan, played by Vjiay, says in
front of media persons, “A beer producer borrows Rs 5000 crores and fails to
repay it. Neither he nor any bank official commits suicide. But a farmer taking
loan of Rs 5000 commits suicide.”
What adds interest to the plot
and narration is super performance by Vijay. He steals the show all the way in
both roles, and in one of the roles, literally. His voice modulation in Jeeva’s
character is specially notable. He has even managed to utter few lines in
Bengali in the start of the movie.
However, the movie has taken a
beating on comedy front. Even though the plot has places where audience cannot
but laugh or smile, at least, but it could have been better. A bit of Santhanam
or Vadivelu would have been preferable.
Samantha does what all actresses
are meant to do – be ready at the spur of the moment to entice, enliven and
ensnare the main actor for dance and song sequences.
Personally, Kaththi is
the fourth entertainer of the year for me which proved value for my money. The first
three movies being ‘Rama Madhav’, ‘Poster Boys’ and ‘Punha Gondhal Punha Mujara’.
