One Dream I want to be true…

As a child, I have read all possible comics of almost all kinds of Super – Heroes, Both Indian & International, of which Batman was always my favourite, I have watched all batman films released till date, followed all animated series on Doordarshan, Cartoon Network and my admiration for this Dark Knight grew always, Then I was bowled over by the charisma of the sci-fi flick Matrix’s character Neo, These two characters have left a deep impact on my mind, I can never forget visuals from movies of these characters, which further propelled my dream to see our own epic Mahabharata and Ramayana to be made into a mega feature film, having a strong potential to enthrall audiences across the world.

I always would rate the efficiency with which the matrix trilogy and Batman Begins was directed, the scene in Batman begins where Bruce Wayne stands surrounded by bats overcoming his childhood fear for bats, with the dark score of Hans Zimmer matching the scene perfectly, and from the second edition of matrix where Neo does a fly away after beating down few agents, he soars high in the skies running through the clouds, a slow frame showing him descend down against the backdrop of a full sized moon, are scenes which never go out from my mind.

It’s not just action that would help us make our epics a mega film it would be the way the action sequences are choreographed which would leave an impact on the audience. Following are my thoughts for Mahabharata:

1) The film can be a trilogy or even more parts, directed LOST series style, let the movie begin on the war turf, the kurukshetra war ground with battle lines drawn, and sun rising from the mountains tearing the mist of silence spread across the ground. A conch blows showing a frame of shadowed Krishna’s headgear with his peacock feather fluttering in the wind, flags waving across the ground, a sword drawn out in air from the kaurava camp.

2) Next frame shows a shadowed image of Arjuna pulling out his bow and fires it across the ground which will then pave way for the opening titles, shown in a format of a Bow zipping across the screen and leaving behind the title credits shown from different angles in the beginning.

3) Then as the credits end the battle cry erupts louder and the images start getting bloodier, as one of the warrior slashes his sword across an opponent, blood spills and the camera view (CGI effect) zooms out to the eyes of Sanjay with a disturbed face, frightened to narrate the war events to his blind king Dhritrashtra.

4) From here the movie would stay focused on the characters of Mahabharata, pulling the audiences back to why a particular character jumped in for this epic war, narrating his part of the story, for example we can show the chariot of Bheeshma standing still, with other Kaurava chariots departing fast to battle the Pandava’s, as Duryodhana looks amazed questioning Bheeshma is he on the side of Kaurava’s or Pandava’s, on which he gets furious and answer’s back Duryodhana, “ Im not here to fight a personal battle like you, im here to fight for Hastinapur” from here the scenes flash back to events that brought Bheeshma to the war, even though he was suffering deep pain from within he chose to be on the wrong side, still fighting for the land he loved, for which he was committed to.

5) Coming down to the aesthetics of the movie, choosing of locales and using a mix of CGI and artificial sets all needs to be done very carefully as overdoing of CGI and artificial sets would kill the emotional side of the movie, the warrior dresses need to show the royalty of the characters still not too heavy and first of all should not look artificial, hair dressing of characters also would be important, accessories all would matter a lot.

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Cricket, Hockey & Ram

I have being reading news about how glorified cricket is in this country, with the nation already riding the wave of “CHAK DE” syndrome, with news channels going to the extent of crowning this movie as the motivational factor behind the turnaround of Indian sports, in football, hockey and cricket…

We again repeated the same mistake, sidelining our hockey heroes, who have justified their presence by retaining Asia cup hockey title. I was watching the final match of the tournament, and sad to say, the channel broadcast of DD Sports was far poor as compared to broadcast of cricket matches on any other sports channel.

At the end of the tournament during the felicitation ceremony where the Tamilnadu chief minister also was present to give away the awards, stood up with other delegates before giving away the awards for state anthem, I was surprised how come a state anthem is above the national anthem, and they played our national anthem at the end of award distribution ceremony. We would never give up our state based mentality even if ten other films like Chak de would keep moving us, the problem lies within our society, the fear of being banished from a group, caste, language is what keeps us away from breaking free of social norms, still having strong roots in India.

We do not love other sports much so obviously we would not hate them much, Indian team not performing at soccer tournaments, hockey events or even Olympics, we tend to use such words, “ apne bas ki baat nahin”, “apna bad luck hi kharab hai”, “Government kuch dhyan nahi deti dusre sports par”, it’s we as people, as audience who can make or break future of development of a particular sport, if we throng in large numbers for a hockey match, soccer tournament obviously the sponsor’s would follow, so would the pressure on government to provide good infrastructure to other sports as well. If BCCI is the richest sports body in the world, why not contribute some money for development of other sports in India. Chak De I believe was true enough to show tattered infrastructure for sports apart from cricket in India.

Also the Ramasethu issue has again sparked religious tension across the country, especially remarks from DMK chief Mr. Karunanidhi quoting Lord Rama to be a drunkard, well such statements made on any religion by a person justifying this as his personal view at a level where he is not just a citizen of our democratic set up, he is into politics which has the potential to disturb the already fragile social set up of India, we forget how such thoughtless words spoken by politician have made the citizens suffer it’s wrath in the past, be it BJP leaders blocking roads in Delhi and adjoining areas, or be it Mr. Karunanidhi’s party threatening TM bandh, it’s no religion’s loss or gain it’s the democracy that fails the citizens who are made a mockery of, showing them how helpless they are.

If we start questioning philosophies and existence of gods of different religion, we would be shaking up the very foundation of faith on which these religions are based upon.

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