Bangalore’s curfew

Every night, by 11.30 pm, all the pubs and bars in Bangalore shut down. They are required to by law. Everyone agrees it’s a stupid law. Across the world, adults are free to party for as long as they want to. At 3 am, 4 am, 5 am in any progressive city, in any country, you can get a drink. In India, Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta have a healthy night life, with pubs and bars open up to 3 am or later.
This law is supposed to cut down the crime rate in the city. If it was such an effective method, how come cities known for their high crime rate, like New York, Chicago, etc., haven’t adopted it?
Also, for the short time that the pubs and bars are open no one is allowed to dance. Yes dancing is a crime in Bangalore.
These rules have been in place for quite a few years now. Bangalore is used to having the police enter a pub by 11.15 and kicking you out. It is used to the police carrying away amplifiers (and sometimes DJs) from a pub in case they play music beyond 11.30.
Once Bangalore was like any other modern city. You could party till 2.30, 3 or even 5 am, depending on where you went. It was called the pub city of India. The crime rate wasn’t any higher then than it is now.
It’s been 4 years or so since the new ‘shut down by 11.30 pm’ order has been in place. Oddly no one has ever protested much against it. There have been stray articles in the papers. There was a token protest by partygoers. A TV channel covered the issue once. In 4 years that’s all that has happened. It’s obviously not enough. Why is it so? What are we so busy with that we can’t fight for our rights? Would a city like Mumbai tolerate such a law? Are we in the south too docile, too timid, too accepting? Or do we just not care?
Bangalore’s answer to the 11.30 rule is the after party. It begins once the pubs are shut. People buy their individual liquor, gather in someone’s home, and the party goes on.
The after party is not a real answer. It’s a make-shift solution. The real solution will only come from making the authorities abolish this absurd rule.

Reality check

How did the second World War start? One day when Hitler was trimming his mustache the queen of Austria pinched his bottom. A surprised Hitler fell and broke his ass in two. Hitler was very angry. He brought out his Panzers and the Luftwaffe and attacked Austria, Poland, Russia, France and all the Jews in Europe. In 1972 Churchill hit Hitler on the head with a huge speech about blood and sweat and defeated him.
Who was Fakruddin Ahmed? Fakruddin Ahmed was the prime minister of India during the 14th century. He was so named because he really liked women.
What is a quark? A quark is the worst kind of street thug you can find. Quarks usually hang out near bars in Cox Town and are very dangerous. The best way to deal with a quark when you see one is to lie flat on the road with your hands covering your ears. Quarks are fond of ducks since they quack.
These were the kind of answers some of my classmates used to write in school test papers. Our teachers would read them out loudly in class, much to our amusement.
But what’s really funny about these answers is the fact that they could be real. Scientists now believe the workings of the human mind are weirder than was earlier thought. They claim that each of us could have a different reality.
We do know that different people see the same thing differently. For instance, for a neo Nazi, Hitler is an infallible demi-god. For you and me, he’s an evil clown. But is it possible that for some Adolf is a hot waitress in a topless bar in Berlin? Can our realities be so different that each of us is living in his or her own universe? Some scientists are suggesting that it’s possible.

I like Bollywood movies but…

In an old Hindi movie a girl’s father announces, ‘Aaj Innispettor Gullu gaana gayenge’. Gullu doesn’t even pause to clear his throat and launches into a song – ‘… Happy burday to you, happy burday to Suniiiita….’ The rest of mankind has birthdays, Bollywood has burdays.

In one Amitabh Bachchan movie his horse falls in love with a bronze horse that’s part of a statue. And the two elope – the real horse and the bronze statue horse. The other part of the statue - a bronze general – is left dangling in the air.

In the movie Anand a man dying of cancer (Rajesh Khanna) sings songs and acts irritatingly chirpy throughout and keeps calling Amitabh Babu Moshoi. This is a landmark film because for the first time the villain and the hero don’t have a fist fight (but that’s only because the villain happens to be a cluster of cancerous cells).

If someone ever acts in one Hindi movie as a villain he’s going to spend the rest of his Bollywood career as a villain.

A Hindi film’s idea of acting is this - when the hero loses his father or mother he quickly rushes up to and sits on the nearest bed and turns his face away while covering it with his open palm and says something that sounds like ‘agggllluuuuu’.

For women, a Hindi film’s idea of acting this - at regular intervals the heroine calls out to her dad, ‘darry’ and pouts. Halfway through the movie she tells darry she’s in love with an orangutan who also happens to be a police officer and is bearing his child and wants to marry (rhymes with darry) him. At which point the Dad says ‘Munzoor hai. In fact Sunita, I quite fancy Inispettor Bundar myself.’

One Hindi movie was titled ‘Katilon ka katil’ (translation: The Assassin’s Assassin). What might that movie have been like.

Everything about a Bollywood movie is loud. The clothes they wear, the audiences, the acting, the songs, the characters, even the speakers in the theatres are all shrill and loud !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All Bollywood ever makes is musicals. Even Bollywood thrillers have songs – guys chase each other in fast cars, shoot at each other, chuck bombs etc, but all the while they’re singing, ‘Roop tera mastana, hey look out! Grenade! …Pyaar mera diwana….’.

In all Hindi movies when they’re happy or sad or depressed or celebrating something or getting married or divorced or growing corn in the fields or babies in their beds or making love or war or picking their nose… they sing.

In movies from any other country they act.

The moral side of movies

I just watched Life of Brian, a Monty Python film.

(Monty Python is the name of a popular, off beat and hilarious British TV show from the 70’s that was famous for its madcap, irreverent humour. The Python cast later started making films. Needless to add, copies of the films are rare.)

I nearly died laughing – the film is stomach-achingly funny.

What probably also helped the laughter escape my throat so freely was the knowledge that the DVD was pirated and therefore cheap. Like the hundreds of others that I’ve watched.

I know that’s against the law. But these are the alternatives. 1. DVD libraries - too expensive (Rs. 100 to 150 for a day versus Rs. 80 - the cost of a pirated DVD). Plus they are mostly stocked with bad Hollywood movies and insane Bollywood movies. 2. I could pick up original DVDs on trips abroad – but the economy has taken care of my ‘in-any-case-too-few’ trips. 3. Local movie channels – a viable option if you’re willing to wait for a time span of say, eternity.

I’m not the only one who ‘s never taken the alternatives above seriously. Almost everybody I know watches pirated DVDs.

Isn’t there a moral dilemma involved here? Honestly, no.

In a country like India we break the law all the time. We bribe cops and officials, we break every traffic rule there is, we buy movie tickets in black, we buy smuggled electronic gadgets, we were using iPhones in India long before they came in here officially, parents pay donations to schools for their children’s admissions, engineering and medical colleges practically run on these donations, cops pay off someone higher up in order to be posted in lucrative circles where the bribe money is substantial.

Our elders advice us, ‘Get the job done and move on even if it means paying someone off. Why do you waste your time thinking about these things, you idiot?’

Part of the reason there’s no guilt attached to buying pirated DVDs (or downloading movies from the Net) is that we’re Indian and we somehow believe that the law is meant to be bent at convenience. The other reason is if you don’t, you’re going to miss out on truly inspiring art, glittering gems from the masters - Kurosawa, Tarkovsky, Vittorio De Sica, Truffaut, Godard, Fellini, Eisenstein, Bergman, Kubrik, Werner Herzog, Fassbinder, Louis Malle, Pasolini, Wong Kar Wai, Majidi, Makmalbaf, Abbas Kirostami, Emir Kusturica, Almodovar …. And so many other lesser known but generously talented directors from all around the world.

It will take a lot of moral fibre to say no to that.