Half Baked - Sudhir Mishra's "Inkaar"

I have seen some of Sudhir Mishra's earlier work and have found his films interesting and not in classic bollywood mould. His HAZAARON KHWAISHEIN AISI (2003), was a provocative political drama while Chameli (2004), traversed Mumbai night life and Khoya Khoya Chand (2007) was Mishra's take on bollywood of 50's. Mishra is known for strong female protagonists, often the story telling is from their perspective. 

Inkaar, his latest film follows tradition. The film is story of two highly good looking, ambitious people in an cut throat advertising agency. The story is set in three days of 'investigation' of an allegation of sexual harassment by Maya. Doing a Roshomon the story unfolds from various perspectives. It's an intriguing technique and well executed by Mishra. The lead characters Chitrangada and Arjun Rampal have put in strong performances. 

But at the end Inkaar disappoints. It's such a let down. The film build up to a climax and one expects a climax, but it fizzles out. Sudhir Mishra doesn't know how to handle the hot potato of sexual harassment in offices. He starts out with garnering empathy with Maya, but half way down he thinks Rahul is right... while it is true that there is rarely a black or white in such cases but a clear outcome is expected or it's time wasted.  'Inkaar' somehow dilutes the main issue - that of sexual harassment at work - and ultimately becomes a love story. The much publicized sexual harassment fizzles out into a tame tale of jilted love and the promise of a reunion.

The look of the film is gorgeous..it's slick, it's smart - but somehow it seemed more a Madhur Bhandarkar film than a Sudhir Mishra. There was just not enough depth or analysis. The film is being promoted as being on sexual harrasment (maybe that's hot topic these days) but Mishra say's he has made a love story, "It is about urban relationships, in fact it's about love in the times of ambition. The background of a sexual harassment case was apt because today when men and women collide, men start questioning intelligent women who don't belong to them and at the same time women also fall prey to certain ambitions, so there are clashes happening at many levels." (see full interview here)

 
The film isn't doing great at box office too. Starting off on a poor note of about 1.65 Crores, Inkaar showed absolutely no growth on its 2nd day making about 1.75 Crores. The 2 day total of the film stands at a mere 3.40 Crores. It seems highly unlikely that Sunday numbers, if better (the chance of which is really thin) will be able to make up for the poor Friday and Saturday numbers. 

Home

This is the third book by Manju Kapoor. I have read her first one Difficult Daughters and was quite impressed with it and what prompted me to pick this one up at Ahmadabad Airport.

Home weaves a story of three generations of Banwarilal’s family. The books tries to weave in many themes, some which are explored well others just get lost. What Manju Kapoor successfully manages to tell is the relationships and complexities of women in joint family.

The novel starts with two sisters: one is attractive and the other merely plain-looking. The fairer Sona is married to the Banwarilal family while the unlucky Rupa is attached to a junior government officer of no consequence.

In the first few pages the story traces the lives of these two sisters before it finally makes up its mind and shifts focus entirely to the goings-on in the Banwarilal family. Some more episodes of manipulations and politics of the joint family, and of the tale, diversify into the second generation when Sona gives birth to children after ten bitter years of barrenness. The sister Rupa however stays childless, but in many ways remains much happier.

The plot then twists around these second-generation people, but not before causing a little perturbation to this critic. While most of the characterizations are finely etched, it is difficult to sympathize with any of them. The sisters are selfish. The husbands are lethargic. The mother-in-law is a sassy old woman. The family patriarch is too mild. The children are self-absorbed and conventional.

There were encouraging possibilities of developing some empathy with a second-generation son — the only child of a deceased Banwarilal daughter dumped by her drunkard husband back into the family after her suspicious death — but it is spoiled when he starts sexually abusing his cousin sister. However, in spite of many characters and the sub-themes of various lives, the novel finally lurches into a single strand and fortunately stays there.

The story that had started with the tale of Sona and Rupa finally finds its calling in Nisha - Sona's daughter who spends her childhood, scarred by incestuous abuse, at Auntie Rupa’s home. But it is her later pursuits in life - studying English Literature in an university, falling in love with a low-caste boy, forcefully standing up to her conservative family, despairing at being jilted by the lover, her courage in struggling with the meanness of life, her attempts at finding her place in an uninformed society that refuses to recognize the promise of her merits, her petty jealousies, unarticulated complaints and simmering frustrations that inevitably accompanies a life riddled with disappointments — that become central to the concern of the readers.

Home quite fascinatingly, if not very eloquently, shows the choking closeness and destructive limitations of Indian family values. It is a closet dark world where any hint of individual expression is swiftly trampled to death, to be substituted with deadened conformity.

Manju kapur has tried to put a lot of issues in this book which are commonly encountered in a joint family and are usually kept under the carpet to protect family honor and name. A lot of scheming and bantering usually goes on behind the curtains while maintaining the outer sham of a big happy family. The author has tried to bring some of those issues to the fore and due to this, “Home” does not remain a simple story of a Karol Bagh sari seller, but gets a more universal color and makes an invigorating family saga.

But despite the forlorn lives of its characters, Manju Kapur's novel has an undertone of humor that comes across effortlessly, an attribute that must be traced to the easy style in which Ms Kapur frames her sentences and to the uncomplicated narrative in which she structures her plots.

ONE BILLION RISING

ONE IN THREE WOMEN ON THE PLANET WILL BE RAPED OR BEATEN IN HER LIFETIME.

ONE BILLION WOMEN VIOLATED IS AN ATROCITY

ONE BILLION WOMEN DANCING IS A REVOLUTION

On V-Day’s 15th Anniversary, 2.14.13, we are inviting ONE BILLION women and those who love them to WALK OUT, DANCE, RISE UP, and DEMAND an end to this violence. ONE BILLION RISING will move the earth, activating women and men across every country. V-Day wants the world to see our collective strength, our numbers, our solidarity across borders.

What does ONE BILLION look like? On February 14th, 2013, it will look like a REVOLUTION.

One Billion Rising