Ind vs Aus Test at the SCG - Jan 08

I remember coming across a glossy, glass-bound issue of ‘The Cricketer’ magazine at the British Council Library in Trivandrum years ago and not being able to take my eyes off the spectacular picture adorning the back cover. It showed a panoramic view of the Sydney Cricket Ground in floodlit glory. I wondered how great an experience it must be to actually watch a match, sitting in that magnificent theatre of a venue. This wish bore fruit for me recently as I attended the 2nd Test between India and Australia at the SCG. The game had its nerve-racking moments of elation and agony galore, but sadly it will be remembered for all the wrong reasons.

1882 was when a Test was first staged at the SCG. That great son of New South Wales, Sir Donald Bradman, recorded the highest first class score on this ground, 452 against Queensland in 1928. When my company hosted the Christmas dinner for its Sydney clients in November last, it did so at the exclusive Members’ Box room at the SCG. We had the ebullient Tasmanian Max Walker - former Test cricketer, footballer, architect, radio host and author as MC for the evening. Also present was Dean Jones. Maxie reminisced how in that very room Kerry Packer and the lads had sowed the seeds of World Series Cricket exactly thirty years ago. Over the years the SCG has witnessed many outstanding feats in Tests – Brian Lara’s first Test century of 277 run out back in ‘93, Allan Border completing his 10,000th Test run, Steve Waugh emulating the same later on, etc. Waugh played his last Test here, against India in ‘04. It was here that three of the all-time greats from three departments of the game, Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh had together hung up their boots in a Test against Pakistan, back in ‘84. Early last year, bowling legends Shane Warne and Glen McGrath had had their swansong outing in the last Test of the Ashes here. India had not fared very badly at the ground. The first visit of an Indian team to the SCG was under Lala Amarnath in ’48. Our only win though was in ’77. Then Bishen Singh Bedi’s Indians had beaten a depleted Aussie team under Bob Simpson who, at 41, was pulled out of retirement. In ’92 a young Tendulkar dashed off 148 not out here while giving support to the senior Ravi Shastri who notched up his only Test double hundred. Twelve years later Tendulkar again set the ground ablaze with 241 not out, the highest score by an Indian on Aussie soil as India ran up their record score of 705 for 7 declared. A bronze statue of Richie Benaud was inaugurated at the ground during the ’08 match in the presence of the great former captain himself. The Hill grandstand, The Walk of Honor, the tennis courts, the swimming pool, bars, all add to the charm of the ground. It stands beside the Sydney Football Stadium, another landmark in the city. The 2007-8 series saw India losing the opening encounter at Melbourne in 4 days and the Aussies were on a high. It was Ponting and crew’s 15th Test win in a row. After cleanly sweeping South Africa, Bangladesh, England and Sri Lanka, they were now looking forward to thrashing India twice to equal their own record of 16 consecutive wins set under Steve Waugh seven years ago. India had a new captain in seasoned warhorse Anil Kumble. He had won his first series as skipper, a home one, against Pakistan. Touring teams have found it tough to beat Australia in Australia. However the Border-Gavaskar trophy has been keenly contested in recent times. The Indian team boasted of five seniors with a combined experience of 568 Tests and who were on possibly their last tour Down Under. There was much to look forward to in the series therefore.

All roads led to Moore Park on 2nd Jan. The match attracted a crowd of 30,000 each day. VIP attendees on the first day included Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, former PM John Howard and Her Majesty’s Governor General Michael Jeffrey. ‘Serve from Merv,’ a series of ads on crowd etiquette featuring Merv Hughes regularly appeared on the big screen. Milo conducted tiny tots’ cricket practice and contests during lunch intervals. Volunteers of the Glen McGrath Breast Cancer Foundation had stalls set up in the park. Betting booths attracted the usual enthusiasts. The sight in the middle that greeted an early bird like me every morning was of the dapper duo of Ravi Shastri and Rameez Raja. These lookers in their trendy ties did their bit of pitch inspection as a kickoff to commentating for Channel 9. The sun shone on all days except some parts of the fourth day when it actually rained. I found myself seated in one of the concourses of the Messenger Stand and completely baked in the scorching heat before even noontime set in. I must say this is among the most unruly sections of the crowd, heavily Aussie and perennially reeking of Victoria Bitter. To me it was a study in mob psychology on the side that I chose to undertake. Let me tell you the Australian fan is a fiercely jingoistic creature who would not want any team to win but his. One has to see to believe the decrying and demonizing of opposition players. It is hardly healthy. Maybe matters are different in the more civilized sections like the Members’ pavilion but the truth is I would not have enjoyed the tussle from there. Here I could go primal, thump my applause of appreciation on the aluminum fence for every Indian boundary and wicket, sometimes even instigating my Aussie friends into insecure chants of ‘Aussie Aussie Aussie/ Oi Oi Oi!’ for no apparent reason. Insanely chilled beer and Sydney dogs – hot dogs slapped with coleslaw and considerable shavings of cheese - provided succor from the rising heat and hunger. Catcalls, wolf whistles, Mexican waves, rhythmic clapping, teasing of cops and volleying of giant balloons and balls lightened tedious sessions. Two suntanned blondes showing off in Oz flag bikinis garnered more attention than the men in whites at one point. The Indians who guarded the deep in my vicinity included Saurav Ganguly and Ishant Sharma. While the latter was taunted by the crowds for his boyish looks and skinny disposition (‘Hey Shaa’ma, wanna eat some lunch, mate?’ ‘Go back to high school kiddo’, ‘Stick-man!’) Ganguly understandably is the one they just loved to loathe. ‘Hey Gangoooly, retire!’ ‘Go back to Bollywood(sic)’ ‘Chaaa-ppell, Chaa-ppell’ and such war cries rent the charged air. Since the giant scoreboards and public address systems beamed messages warning patrons against racial abuse, some of the lads were curiously mellowed in their outbursts ‘I am sorry mate’, a bare-chested neighbor bloke with green and gold paint all over his face said to me, ‘your Dravid is a @#$% ’. This was when ‘The Wall’ was chiseling a painstaking fifty off 160 balls, like a born-again Boycott from hell. For once I almost concurred. ‘I didn’t pay for this, I came to watch Tandoori bat!’ yelled his chum, emptying a tube of sun cream on himself. As if in answer to his prayers Dravid got out and in strode the gladiator for whom the whole stadium rose as one man and applauded. A midget of a cricketing He-man, a towering genius with an overweight willow, there stood Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar - the subcontinent’s biggest icon for nearly two decades now. The Little Master has had a special bond with the SCG. Laxman’s century on Day 2, his third in as many SCG appearances, was the most brilliant innings of the match, resplendent with flowing grace and elegance. Tendulkar’s unbeaten 154 on the other hand was a study in patience and temperament. His 38th hundred, on course of which he completed 2000 runs against Australia, was followed by Hayden equaling the Don with his 29th ton. Hussey, a latecomer to Tests who had to score 15,000 first class runs before earning his baggy green cap, continued to make up for lost time. This man with the biggest average after Bradman, the Victorian they call ‘Mr. Cricket’ carved a ton yet again. The other centurion of the match was eventual Man of the Match Symonds who benefited from a bad umpiring decision to hit a career best 162, in the process retrieving his country out of the opening day doldrums of 134 for 6. There were fine bowling performances in the form of a five wicket haul by Bret Lee and four wickets by Kumble (twice) and Rudra Pratap Singh. Occasional bowler Michael Clarke drove the final nail in India’s coffin with a freak figure of 3 for 5, eerily reminiscent of his 6 for 9 at Mumbai in 01. The Pandora’s Box opened on Day 3 with the host team lodging a racism complaint against India’s strike spinner Harbhajan Singh – a case of the pot calling the kettle black! But the real pain in the neck for India was Jamaican umpire Steve Bucknor proving their bugbear yet again. Out of the 12 wrong decisions taken in the match by him and his English partner Benson, 9 went against India. Some of these were during the crucial final innings chase. Added to this was the aggression of the Aussie players who wanted to pull off this 16th straight win by hook or crook. Indian fans watched mouths agape as Ponting appealed over a grassed catch, prompted the umpire to rule a batsman out over a doubtful call and threw all gentlemanliness to the winds. ‘Team India c Benson b Bucknor’ screamed the Indian Express back home. The row reached its nadir when the ICC slapped a three Test ban on Harbhajan even in the absence of substantial evidence for his allegedly calling Symonds a monkey. India did its bit in retaliation, complaining about spinner Brad Hogg’s verbal insult of Kumble. They also demanded that Bucknor, the long serving umpire dubbed ‘Slow Death’ for the time he takes in signaling dismissals, be stood down for the rest of the series. BCCI suspended the tour. The tail wagged the dog as ICC considered the fervent plea and reinstated Harbhajan pending appeal, while relieving Bucknor of his Perth Test duty. The respectable Peter Roebuck writing in the Sydney Morning Herald implored Ponting to step down from the captaincy. At the Press Conference that evening the normally restrained Kumble could not help remarking wryly that ‘only one team out there was playing cricket’. This comment which harked back to the infamous Bodyline series made the local media dub the present one the ‘Bollyline’ series. One wishes that these unfortunate incidents had not occurred to mar a great match which saw 1606 runs being scored as 37 wickets fell. Looked at from that angle it was cent vasool for the paying public. One beacon that shines amidst the final day’s mess is the outstanding leadership of Kumble. The quiet maestro led from the front, scalping 8 wickets, which took his tally to 100 against Oz and 599 overall. His defiant, unbeaten 45 was worth more than his Oval century the previous year. I hold it in the same league as Shastri’s 48 in the Tied Test. But alas it was for a losing cause. The ‘Swamy Army’ went home a disappointed lot. It just was not cricket, this loss. Exhausted from all those days in the sun I soothed my tired bones by plunging into the sea at Bondi beach, the trusted refuge of all wearied souls in this part of roo country.

Tailpiece: Today’s Daily Telegraph carried a cartoon showing two monkeys. One of them has his lips smeared with white sun cream. The other says to him, ‘Get that zinc off. You look nothing like Andrew Symonds.’

(8th Jan 200

Review of Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat

You do not have to be an IIT graduate or an aspirant to that hallowed institution in order to enjoy Chetan Bhagat’s first novel Five Point Someone. Although the book is subtitled ‘What not to do at IIT’, the tag could have been applied to any college for that matter. Bhagat, an alumnus of IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad, works as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong. This novel came out in ’04 when he was 30 years old. This is one of the books I have most enjoyed reading in the last decade. No book has touched me so much since Ashok Banker’s Vertigo, another semi-autobiographical first book I picked up from a pavement bookseller in Bombay’s Churchgate. It was mid 90’s and I was a young marketing engineer in that city. I suppose it is the empathy factor that endears one to books so. Banker’s portrayal was the stuff of dark noir beyond my realm even. But the angst of youth with its attendant insecurities and also possibilities is what had me hooked. I have been following the reclusive writer’s fortunes ever since. One got to feel Bombay, raw and smelly yet strangely captivating in those mesmerizing pages.

Like Chetan Bhagat I too studied mechanical engineering, though not at IIT. I was among the golden jubilee year batch of students at CET (Govt College of Engineering, Trivandrum). We went through the rites of passage of freshmen and seniors. Our evenings were lightened by Remo and Chitra, Hawa Hawa and Guns N Roses. The campus had its share of the thrills and spills of any college - puppy loves, hardcore affairs, strikes, unrest and sabotages. Every festival from Holi to Onam provided occasions for riotous celebration. Picnics, jamborees and endless discussions at snack parlors over steaming tea and shared cigarettes complemented the clockwork routine of theory, labs, viva, university exams and supplementary retakes. We relished scrumptious five-rupee lunches with fried and curried specials at the college canteen. Internet had not caught on and mobile phone was unheard of. Our time at CET coincided with world events like the fall of the Berlin Wall and USSR, Rajiv Gandhi assassination, Ayodhya demolition, Mandela’s freeing and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Five Point Someone has its protagonists tuning in to the Gulf War which was televised like a soccer game, thanks to CNN. This book here is a tale of three friends who come together at IIT. It unfolds in the action-packed four year period from their entry to graduation. ‘Unputdownable’ is not a word, but I am sure this is how anybody who has been through the pains and pleasures of college life would want to describe the book on experiencing it. If you are out to slot it in a sub-genre, it would be yuppie fiction. Bhagat does to engineering college life what Anurag Mathur, another Delhi based writer, did ten years ago to Indians newly migrating to USA. That work, The Inscrutable Americans, is uproariously funny in the way only desis can write or enjoy reading. Much of the humor could be lost on a foreign reader however and that is perhaps its shortcoming. IAS officer Upamanyu Chatterjee’s novel ‘English, August’, which was filmed by Dev Benegal, had a charm resembling Five Point Someone one thought. The former is about a probationary officer’s travails in small town MP and not a college drama though. If we go back to the eighties, it is a film and not a book that comes to mind for a parallel. Arundhati Roy scripted an award-winning screenplay for In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, the movie directed by the man who was to be her life partner, Pradip Kishen. That 1989 movie is incidentally the one in which a chirpy 24 year old answering to the name of Shah Rukh Khan made his celluloid baptism. The story revolves around a group of friends, all students of the Delhi School of Architecture, the alma mater of Roy herself. It is interesting to note that although there are many books in English and the vernacular languages by Indian writers of a top quality, there are not many centering on colleges and universities. R.K. Narayan and Ruskin Bond had set high benchmarks, but for tales around much younger denizens, of the school going kind. Swami and Friends retains its luster and importantly relevance, even after nearly three quarters of a century. One can think of Malayalam movies like Chillu and the Mohanlal starrers Sarvakalasala, Yuvajanotsavam and Sukhamo Devi from the eighties and Nirram and Classmates from recent times for depressingly sweet college nostalgia. Tamil, it is possible, has superior fare in this department. Towards the fag end of our time at CET, a movie called Sooryagayatri was shot there. It was a potentially good theme of a widower, a successful doctor played by Lal, sending his only son to study engineering and it turning out to be traumatic. But the plot was played havoc with through some unimaginative treatment of it. The first half scintillated, the second meandered to such a laughable travesty that the movie quite naturally hit the trash can of film lore, in spite of a lilting song or two. These thoughts naturally arose since the plot of Five Point Someone also gives easily for filming – in fact a director called Ritesh Sinha is already on the job. A blurb review lauds FPS as the book version of Dil Chahta Hai. The writer repeated his magic with his second book, One Night @ The Call Center, another smash hit. This one is being filmed as well, by Atul Agnihotri in Hindi as Hello. It will be out by December of this year. Another remote comparison of FPS would be to Eric Segal’s Love Story from the seventies, the evergreen college saga that broke many a reader’s heart the world over and also spawned many clones.

It is noteworthy that Chetan Bhagat practices yoga – the dexterity of his prose and the suppleness of his style are ample proof of his mental equipoise. In 270 pages this promising young writer-techie weaves for us a fine tale, simply told and yet bound to bewitch the reader into having more helpings of the same. It will be unfair to dub him a chronicler of an IIT saga for the reason that the book has a universal appeal that goes beyond the immediate plot. It reaches out to all generations, especially to the younger one. The title has to do with the grading that students aspire for at the ‘insti’. It can be an obsession, a steeple chase that could end up as a nightmare. The grade is a branding that one has to live with for the rest of one’s life and screwing it up is simply not an option. Read the book and you will know how ‘Disco’ need not always be a place to let your hair down and boogie. Here is a keeper: ‘Calling an IIT-ian a commerce student was one of the worst insults the profs could accord to us, like a prostitute calling her client a eunuch.’ Without giving away the story I would add that there is even a moral to be imbibed at the end of it. It has got to do with where the heroes end up for all their peccadilloes. 

(July 07)

A Test Match at the MCG

Cricket, like most sports in Australia, is seasonal. It is played and followed with a passion though not a religious fervor as in the subcontinent. The game supposedly originated in the pastures of England but caught on quickly in Britain’s penal colony Down Under as it did in the rest of the Commonwealth. Having won a hat trick of World Cups and also set incredible winning records in international cricket, Australia today is riding the crest of cricketing glory. The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), built in 1853 and upgraded over the years, is the nation’s most famous sporting arena. It boasts of a tradition that goes back to the first ever Test in history. It was played there between England and Australia in 1877. The Aussies won it by 45 runs, with opener Charles Bannerman scoring Test cricket’s first century. The contest between the two nations came to be dubbed the Ashes from the 1882 Oval Test onwards, after a mock obituary appeared in an English paper over what it called the death of English cricket. For long it is one of the most keenly contested events in cricket. The first ever ODI was played at this ground as well. In 1879 MCG witnessed the first hat trick in Tests when Australian Fred Spofforth achieved it against England. Incidentally the first cricketer I met in Australia is also the holder of a unique Test hat trick spread over two innings and three overs – the phenomenally popular, big and burly Merv Hughes, now a national selector. He was book signing in the local Angus and Robertson boostore of his ‘Caught In The Deep’ an account of his other passion, fishing. I also had the good fortune to attend a Test match at the MCG last year.

If Lords in London is the Mecca of cricket, I suppose the MCG should be the Vatican or Tirupati of the sport. With a seating capacity of about 90000, the MCG hosts not only cricket but also Australian Rules football (footie), soccer and rugby tournaments. It was the venue of the 1956 Olympics and the 2006 Commonwealth Games. In 1977 a centenary Test was played between the traditional rivals and coincidentally yielded the exact same result as the first ever Test! David Hookes who died in a freak accident last year had had a fine cameo in that match. Indian fans would remember the ’85 Benson and Hedges World Championship final that was held there. India under Sunil Gavaskar emerged triumphant with Ravi Shastri taking home an Audi 100 car and the Champion of Champions title. It was Sunny’s last match as captain. In 1992 Imran Khan and his Pakistani boys lifted the World Cup at this venue, in the fiery Pathan’s swansong outing. The majestic ground is a proud landmark in the city of Melbourne and offers conducted tours to visitors during off event times. It is neighbors with the Rod Laver arena which hosts the Australian Open tennis in January. Impressive galleries, MCC members’ chambers in addition to cricket and football Halls of Fame are some of the highlights of the ground. Cricketers whose statues adorn the premises include Dennis Lillee (who had taken the most Test wickets here - 82), Don Bradman (who had scored the most Test runs here – 1671. The Don’s first Test century was scored here as a matter of fact), Bill Ponsford and Keith Miller. In my early pursuit of the game I have some fond memories of it from the 80’s. In the ’82 Ashes Test Australia started the final morning with their last pair of Alan Border and Jeff Thomson at the crease and needing 37 to win. The duo bravely battled on before Thommo fell to Botham, caught in the slips by Miller after the ball rebounded off Tavare! England won by 3 runs in one of the closest matches ever. In ‘85 during Steve Waugh’s debut Test, India felt the excruciating pain of helplessly watching rains rob them of an easy win – 67 runs were needed with all wickets intact when the last day was washed out. The Kangaroos are on extra high adrenalin when playing England, or the Poms. The reasons are obviously more than just cricket – there are psychological undercurrents akin to say India playing Pakistan. ‘Tonk-a-Pom,’ displays the giant electronic scoreboard before replays of English bowlers being hit for boundaries or English wickets falling. It is generally taken in good spirit. The hordes of English supporters, who tour along with their team and call themselves the Barmy Army, are countered these days by the Boony Army, local fans with the mustachioed ex-opener David Boon for their patron saint. A Boxing Day Test match at the MCG has become a regular fixture since many years now. The MCG however is not a stranger to controversy. A Sri Lankan friend told me that she simply stopped going there after her first experience many years ago – it was the match where umpire Darrel Hair called Muralitharan seven times for throwing! This ground was also the scene of an infamous incident in ‘81 when Aussie captain Greg Chappell had his brother Trevor bowl underarm for the last ball of a ODI match against New Zealand, thereby denying the Kiwis a chance to go for the six runs needed to tie. Richie Benaud, commentating on TV, instantly dubbed it the most disgraceful act in cricket history. India last played in a Boxing Day Test in ’03. Australia won then with Ricky Ponting scoring a double hundred. The only saving grace for us was opener Sehwag smashing 195 with five sixes in that 80 yards boundary where many a four are run. This coming summer the Indians will visit to take on the Aussies yet again.

The 2006-7 Ashes was keenly awaited by all since the previous year England under Michael Vaughan had pulled off the unimaginable by regaining the title after 18 long years, in a closely fought home series. Australia was seeking sweet revenge and they did it in great style, with a clean 5-0 sweep of the Test series. By the time the tour came to Melbourne they were up 3 nil and the series was already sealed. Tickets were sold out well in advance and all eyes were on the one statistical interest in the match, that of local St. Kilda lad Shane Warne completing his tally of 700 wickets. I found myself standing in a snaking queue under the summer sun for a book-signing by the blonde Warne the Friday before Christmas. The only specialist bowler among Wisden’s five greatest cricketers of the twentieth century, Warney had announced his plan to retire at the end of the series. He achieved his landmark of 700 victims on the opening day itself as England crumbled like cookies. On the morning as I watched Ricky Ponting at net practice I wished this Tasmanian would score a triple hundred and emulate Taylor, the last Aussie captain to do so, eight seasons ago against Pakistan. Punter disappointed as he fell for 7 the next day. Gilchrist who just one Test earlier at Perth had blasted a 57 ball ton, went cheaply too. Instead it was to be Mathew Hayden, holder of records for highest scores in Tests and ODI for his country, who would be my hero of the match. He carved a classy hundred and in the company of the colorful Andrew Symonds put on 279, the highest partnership at that ground in 38 years. Symonds, whose best till then was 72, bettered it by scoring a maiden century which he completed with a six. They both scored 150 plus and in the second essay England fell again like nine pins. Monty Panesar was a big hit with the crowds who cheered him on at every opportune moment. The gulls took their places in the green and flapped and flew frantically with the approach of the speeding red cherry. Green and gold dominated the costumes of the spectators though red and white were not much behind. On a sultry day when beer flowed like the Yarra River, Flintoff and his men were made short work of. Australia romped home by an innings and 99 runs. The relentless cheer and support of the Union Jack wavers were in vain. The Mexican Wave was very much in vogue during the match. Curiously this was banned soon after this Test match. Back at the ground for a day-night ODI a month later I could see rebellious youth risking the instigation of waves. They were chased around and escorted out by alert Victorian police. Teeny girls came in T shirts screaming ‘Save the Wave’. The scoreboard now and then cautioned of exorbitant fines for patrons daring to enter the green. The Test match ended in three days flat. I got my fourth day’s fee refunded! Warne with his five wicket haul and his patient knock of 40 won the Man of the Match award. He was chaired by colleagues as they made the victory lap. Pacer Glen McGrath and opener Justin Langer who were also playing their last series were given an emotional farewell by the crowd of 79000. Joviality reigned among the spectators even as they took the trams back home. Shouts of what I sincerely believe to be this country’s national anthem, a simple six word ‘Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi!’ rose to a crescendo. Boisterous youth headed to pubs for the celebration bash, singing impromptu ditties extolling the invincibility of the Australian team. As a neutral but amused observer, I could not but endorse that, saying, ‘Fair dinkum, mates!’

(Sep 07)

Review of Chak de India

1982 was when television came to Kerala in a big way. The black and white Keltron set became ubiquitous in most households. This was triggered by a major event in the country, the 9th Asian Games that New Delhi hosted. The Asiad was a feather in the cap for Indira Gandhi. Our athletes did considerably well. Kannur girl M.D. Valsamma stole the limelight with a record breaking gold medal in the 400 m hurdles. P.T. Usha was a relatively unknown entity, though she hung in there with a couple of silver medals. The most awaited event of all was men’s hockey. India was the defending Olympics champion, having won the gold in 1980 in Moscow. But it was in the face of an American bloc boycott which meant that traditional rival Pakistan was absent there. The Asiad final between the two subcontinent neighbors therefore assumed Himalayan significance. Everybody looked forward to it. As a schoolboy I remember booking my seat in front of the TV although I was not a keen enthusiast of hockey at all. What happened in the next 70 minutes will always be a blotch on Indian sporting history. India lost by 1 goal to 7. Most of the goals were slam dunks for Pakistan with the goalkeeper nowhere in sight near the goal. One almost suspected match fixing. And that is exactly what the buzz was for days to come. Mir Ranjan Negi the Indian goalie was fired soon after. Nobody talked about the sins of the forwards and midfielders who allowed Pakistan to make the charge, the blame was solely Negi’s. Angry mobs stoned his house and sent him glass bangles and mascara in the mail. He was socially ostracized. He slipped in to ignominious oblivion. That week’s Bobanum Molliyum, the cartoon strip that ran in Manorama weekly, had a cat making good with fish from the curry pot. The wise-cracking elder character philosophized, ‘What else would you expect when the kitchen door is left ajar like the Indian hockey team’s goal post?’ I did not hear about Negi until a quarter century later, even though the unusual name lingered in memory. When I did hear about him, this year, it was in the context of the movie under review. Negi never quit hockey. His redemption came 16 years after the Delhi debacle, in 1998. That year he coached the Indian men’s team to Asian Games glory at Bangkok. Still he was sacked! He further went on to pull out a bigger rabbit from his hat – he coached the Indian women to Commonwealth gold in 2002. This was an incredible real life story indeed of persistence and patriotism, a story that begged to be told in the popular medium of the reel. Jaideep Sahni wrote it and thus began the saga of Chak de India (Go India).

Shimit Amin is a young director whose debut work, Ab Tak Chappan (Till Now 56) of 2004 should easily give us a glimpse into his caliber. He is among the best things to have happened to Indian cinema in the last few years. The bespectacled and bearded Amin with his baggy cap and hurried air is a talent to watch for the future. If sleek editing was the highlight of Ram Gopal Varma’s highly successful Bhoot, this man it was who manned the editing table there. Chak De India was to be his second film.

I never cared much for Shah Rukh Khan until last year when two die-hard fans of his at home, my biwi and beta, made me also a King Khan watcher. The last SRK movie I had been to was Anjaam in 1994 at a Bombay theatre. I walked out of it during interval time. Now I saw the rest of it, setting perhaps a record for the longest time taken to see a movie – 12 years! (in the process I also discovered that Anjaam is more a Madhuri Dixit movie than a SRK one). So when the Australian media announced that “India’s Tom Cruise” is coming to shoot in Melbourne, there were a handful of reasons to go have a dekho. This we did, in the spring of last year when the cold had not quite left the city though summer was around the corner. Don had been released and well-received. Khan, pushing 41, was as popular as he was at any time in his filmi career. He is a remarkable man, known not just for his histrionic abilities but also for his values, hard work and an abundance of energy rarely seen in many successful people, artists or others. The fact that he signed up for this Amin film, even if produced by the house of Chopras, was intriguing in itself. This was to be a film without song and dance and all such formulaic interpolations that go with Indian cinema’s derogatory ‘Bollywood’ label.

Shimit Amin and his brand of brave new filmmakers have to be saluted for daring to be different. To make a SRK movie sans a glamorous ‘heroine’ would be unthinkable to many established movie moguls. On top of that the theme is around the game of hockey – the national game as we occasionally remind ourselves, but a poor and neglected cousin of that colonial legacy, cricket. Junior level B league cricketers are well off in compensation than the Indian hockey team regulars. To be a woman and take up this sport is indeed a dual labor of love. In the movie we see girls coming from disparate backgrounds from a cross-section of states. They are there in the team for different reasons – if one was forced into the game to uphold the khandani maryada, another endures verbal lashings from unsupportive parents. The greatness of the movie is in the fine etching of the girls’ characters. They are distinct and well defined. They do not blur out in a faceless team pantomime. Even to the uninitiated, the technical finesse of a well-shot sports movie seems evident. The music that revs up the atmosphere for us is praiseworthy. The story is linear, no-nonsense and predictable from the word go. Still Chak de India is enjoyable at multiple levels – patriotism minus jingoism, a re-look at the way minority communities are treated in our society, an appreciation of a great sport, attitudes vis-à-vis women and sports as well as women playing sports in the country and finally a good old locker room drama. SRK fans can see it as yet another great addition to their idol’s oeuvre. Mir Ranjan Negi makes a cameo appearance in the movie. He plays the coach of the Indian men’s team led by Kabir Khan that tastes defeat at Pakistan’s hands.

To me it evoked many fond memories – an immortal Hollywood classic like To Sir with Love (adapted into Tamil by Kamal Haasan as Nammavar), for one. On the flip side there were a couple of occasions when the dialogue got avoidably corny – when glorifying women or going hyper with nationalism, the latter perhaps justified since the movie’s release was coincident with India’s sixtieth birthday. Would the movie have been good if SRK was not in it? What if it had, like the leading ladies, a newcomer hero too instead? The answer is debatable. But that would be an enormous risk that hardly any producer worth his salt would take. I would rate Chak de India as a good movie. My four year old did not dig this stick flick though.

(Aug 07)

The Books of Sudha Murty

Mrs. Sudha Murty is the chairperson of Infosys Foundation, the charity and social services wing of Infosys which was established in 1997. She also teaches computer science to post graduate students at an engineering college. Mrs. Murty is married to the Chief Mentor of Infosys, Mr. N.R. Narayana Murthy. They have two children, daughter Akshata and son Rohan. Sudha Murty, who dropped the ‘h’ from her surname so to carve an identity separate from her illustrious husband’s, was born in Shimoga in Karnataka in 1950. She secured first ranks for her electrical engineering degree and her MTech in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. She was the first woman to enter the Tata firm Telco as a development engineer. This happened as a result of her dashing off a letter to no less a luminary than J.R.D. Tata, challenging their policy of not employing women engineers. At the Foundation, she initiated an ingenious movement whereby all government schools in Karnataka can avail computer and library facilities. Last year the government of India awarded her a Padma Shri for her outstanding social work. She famously supported NRN monetarily in the days when he quit a secure job with PCS and started Infosys along with six other colleagues.

An avid lover of books, music, drama and potboiler Hindi movies, Sudha Murty likes to read about archaeology, anthropology, computer science, logic and mathematics. She has written twenty books in English and Kannada in addition to many columns. These include nine novels, four technical books, three travelogues, three works of non-fiction and one collection of short stories. Her books have been translated to all major Indian languages. Women and women’s issues form a central part of her novels. Prominent among her books are,

Dollar Bahu
Mahashweta
Sweet Hospitality
Wise and Otherwise: A Salute to Life
How I Taught My Grandmother to Read and Other Stories
The Old Man and His God: Discovering the Spirit of India
The Magic Drum and Other Favorite Stories

Dollar Bahu (Dollar Bride) which tells the tale of NRI marriages was adapted as a Hindi serial for Zee TV and had a successful run. In the writer’s own words, ‘It is the story of a mother-in-law who thinks the Indian daughter-in-law is not as good as her counterpart in the USA — the Dollar Bahu who lives in the golden land. The mother-in-law craves to be with her son in America and later when she herself spends a year there, she realizes that the problems most Indian-Americans face in the USA are similar to those back home and that the grass is not always greener on the other side.’ The novel is essentially about middle-class Indians’ aspirations to get rich on money from USA, often through a son.

Mahashweta is a touching story about a young girl’s battle with leukoderma, the unjust stigma imposed on her by society and how she braves it. It reveals, on the side, the skin-deep nature of relationships which comes out in crises.

Wise and Otherwise: A Salute to Life is a delightful collection of fifty anecdotal essays on her life through which Mrs Murty shares with us her experiences as a teacher and social worker. Often times, simple and nondescript people have influenced her and given her invaluable insights into life and it is their cause that she champions in this book. Chapter titles include ‘Powerful politicians and unsung donors’, ‘O teacher I salute thee’, ‘Unwed mothers’, etc.

How I Taught My Grandmother to Read and Other Stories was written specifically for children, but it is equally enjoyable for adults as well, due to its profound message. The stories teach us lessons in simplicity, patriotism and the importance of love and friendship. This book also provided the inspiration of a 40 minute film called Meri Pahli Chaatra last year.

The Old Man and His God: Discovering the Spirit of India is about people’s generosity and also selfishness in times of natural calamities like the tsunami. It is also about the constant struggle that women have to undertake to be heard and the story of young professionals trying to find their feet as they climb up the corporate ladder. As she goes about her philanthropic work with the villagers, slum-dwellers and the common people, Mrs. Murty listens to them and records whatever she encounters. The book consists of the accounts of those struggles and the tremendous saga of survival. The curious title story is set in a village in Tamil Nadu. The protagonists are an old man, his wife, and their god, living their lives in a simple temple. The lesson is about achieving peace and contentment even when one does not have anything.

The Magic Drum and Other Favorite Stories is an assortment of stories that the writer heard as a child from her grandparents and later from her friends around the world. These are timeless folktales which she has loved and also recounted to many from the younger generation at various times. This collection reaches it out to many more of her readers. The tales include those of kings, misers, wise men, foolish boys, a princess who thinks she was a bird, a coconut that cost a thousand rupees, and a shepherd with a bag of words and many more.

As readers we sincerely look forward to many more illuminating outputs from this great educationalist and entrepreneur of our times. More power to Mrs. Murty’s pen!

Review of The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman

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A flat world is a connected world. We owe this buzz largely to an American called Thomas L. Friedman though. It is an interesting story. Friedman is a reputed journalist with The New York Times who has three Pulitzer Prizes in his kitty. He is widely traveled and has written internationally acclaimed books like From Beirut to Jerusalem, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Longitudes and Attitudes - on some of the burning topics in the world today. The book under review ‘The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century’ came out in April 2005. It became an instant non-fiction best seller. Friedman was suddenly the Pied Piper of Globalization. The genesis of the book is a meeting that he had with Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani in the latter’s Bangalore office. After explaining to the journalist how what he saw in Bangalore was the creation of a platform where intellectual capital could be delivered from anywhere, Nilekani summarized, ‘Tom, the playing field is being leveled’. Friedman rolled that phrase in his head for a while and then it struck him that what he heard was nothing short of a message that ‘The World is Flat!’

The book is an enquiry into how this flattening has been happening, the world over. It is divided into five sections dealing with flatness vis-à-vis the world, America, developing countries, companies and geopolitics. In this context we are told, the incidents of 11/9 are as important and 9/11. If you are wondering what the former date is, well that when the Berlin Wall fell – 11/9/89. Friedman identifies ten flatteners. They are, apart from the above two, the rise of Netscape and the dotcom boom that led to a trillion dollar investment in fiber optic cable, the emergence of common software platforms and open source code enabling global collaboration and the rise of outsourcing, offshoring, supply chaining and insourcing. The name Infosys appears in at least 15 places of the 500 page book. Wipro figures an equal number of times. Because he refers back to the interviews with Nilekani, Friedman mentions him in 10 places. But then you will encounter Wipro’s ex-president Vivek Paul as frequently as you cruise the book. The importance of China can never be stressed enough in this globalization age. Time magazine in a recent cover story dubbed the twenty-first century as ‘China’s century’. In 2004 Walmart alone imported $ 18 billion worth of goods from its 5000 Chinese suppliers. No wonder the writer devotes his attention to the dragon country as much as he does to India where his quest began. These two mammoth economies, both liberal yet still in developing stages, virtually represent the offshoring hub of the world. The potential they together hold is even more enormous. Yahoo, Google, Blackberry, blogging, podcasting, VoIP and SoIP are today passé. The revolutionary iPod is now ubiquitous and we are awaiting iPhone. If you want to hear all about how they came about, go for this book. Picture these: Drones flying in Iraq for the war are remotely directed from Air Force bases in Las Vegas. Homesourcing, or women working as reservations agents from homes in between cooking, babysitting and exercising, was a successful idea of JetBlue Airways. A call center operator in Bangalore gives directions to her American customer over phone as though she was in Manhattan and overlooking out her window, ‘Yes, we have a branch on 74th and 2nd Avenue, a branch at 54th and Lexington….’ it goes. Accounting firms in Hyderabad prepare tax returns for American businessmen. An Indian links up with an Israeli company to transmit CAT scans via internet so that Americans can get a second opinion from an Indian or Israeli doctor. Fiber optic cables under the sea connect Bangalore, Beijing and Bangkok with the developed world. Friedman spices his account with tidbits like this one on what he would tell his daughters, ‘Girls, when I was growing up, my parents used to say to me, “Tom, finish your dinner – people in India and China are starving”. My advice to you is: Girls, finish your homework – people in India and China are starving for your jobs.’ In a flat world, he says, there is no such thing as an American job. There is just a job and it goes to the best, smartest, most productive or cheapest worker – wherever he or she resides. Friedman also ponders on the flip side of globalization – the Bin Ladens using the possibilities of the flat world to further their nefarious agendas (Refer sub-section ‘Infosys versus Al Q-Qaeda’). His yen for high drama is evident in chapter headings like ‘The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention’. It states that ‘no two countries which are part of the same global supply chain, like Dell’s, will ever fight a war against each other’. This could be a flawed argument. Critics call his rhetoric ahistorical. Shashi Tharoor points out that Friedman loses sight of inconvenient hillocks in his sweeping celebration of the flat world. Has the world really moved from one dominated by superpowers to one dominated by supermarkets, asks the diplomat. Can we wish away the fact that of the three billion people entering the global market, most live under $ 2 a day?

The publisher describes Friedman’s book as an update to his earlier work The Lexus and the Olive Tree (The luxury car here is a symbol of modernity while the olive tree represents one’s yearning for cultural roots). While the first book was intellectually heavy, The World is Flat is a lighter read. It is intended for the layman. The author is no economist or technologist but an outstanding journalist who keeps his eyes and ears wide open. In fact he is like a curious child constantly asking questions and getting breathless in his narration of what all he discovers in response. This is the kind of book I would buy for my father – a non-technology person who however cannot avoid using internet for his communication every now and then.

(Feb 07)

Review of The Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor

Dr. Shashi Tharoor was in the international headlines last year when he ran for UN Secretary General. Although he gracefully bowed out of the race by October, the suave and articulate Indian diplomat had won more hearts at the end of the campaign than other contestants. Who then is Shashi Tharoor?

Shashi Tharoor was born of Malayali parents in London in 1956. His father Chandran was a manager with The Statesman newspaper. When Shashi was two, the family moved to India. He went to schools in Calcutta and Bombay. He secured his degree in History from the prestigious St. Stephen’s College in Delhi. Proceeding to the US on a scholarship, he acquired an M Phil and PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University in Massachusetts, by the age of 22. He joined the United Nations in 1978 and has been working with the organization ever since. His work took him to Singapore and Geneva besides New York. He became Executive Secretary to the UN chief Kofi Annan in ’97. He further rose to be the Under-Secretary General in charge of Publications. His UN efforts have been lauded especially during the Boat People crisis in Singapore and the ethnic conflict in former Yugoslavia. He continues to work tirelessly for international peace while living within the framework of the world body. In ’98 he was named by the World Economic Forum in Davos as a ‘Global Leader of Tomorrow’. Separated from journalist wife Thilottima, Tharoor lives in Manhattan. His twin sons Ishan and Kanishk study at Yale. He is passionate about cricket although he never made a mark as a player of it. He once quipped with characteristic humor, ‘I wanted to play cricket very badly and I did exactly that – play very badly’.

Shashi Tharoor would still have his legion admirers even if he had not had any of the above mentioned achievements. The reason is that he enjoys a towering stature in another sphere of activity – writing. He is one of the foremost Indian authors in English, with awards like the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize to his name. As busy as his work schedules are, he squeezes in time to write his books and innumerable columns by night and on weekends. A compulsive reader and writer, Tharoor quotes Bernard Shaw to explain his urge, ‘I write for the same reason that a cow gives milk. It is there inside and it has to come out.’ He contributes regularly to the New York Times, The Hindu, Newsweek and many periodicals. A selection of these was brought out in book form as ‘Bookless in Baghdad’. A lot are archived in his site www.shashitharoor.com. Among his books the acclaimed ones are the novels ‘Riot: A Love Story’, ‘The Great Indian Novel’ and a study published during the golden jubilee year of our independence, ‘India: From Midnight to the Millennium’. His ‘Nehru: The Invention of India’ is an objective examination of the life of India’s first Prime Minister. Tharoor who visits his native Palakkad village every year, once teamed up with artist M.F. Hussain to pen a coffee-table book titled ‘Kerala: God’s Own Country’.

Shashi Tharoor is a die-hard fan of P.G. Wodehouse. While in college he headed what was the only Wodehouse Society in the world at that time. The society ‘ran mimicry and comic speech contests and organized the annual Lord Ickenham Memorial Practical Joke week, the bane of all at college who took themselves too seriously.’ A cursory reading of his books would reveal the wit of Tharoor as quintessentially Wodehousian. This should set the context for The Great Indian Novel. The clever title of the book alludes to its literal translation, Mahabharatha. The epic credited to Ved Vyasa is definitely great, thoroughly Indian and one hell of a novel. Comprising 100,000 verses it is the longest poem in the world. This modern day retelling that came out in 1989 is 400 pages long and rip-roaringly funny from cover to cover. The Himalayan intellect of Tharoor undertakes not one but two ambitious projects at one stroke. He endeavors to recreate the epic Indian tale as well as a broad but irreverent history of twentieth century India. It is breath-taking in its scope. Mythology and history blend in a heady concoction, a parody of the Mahabharatha peopled with an assortment of freedom-fighters, politicians and events. Vyasa becomes C. Rajagopalachari. Mahaguru Gangadatta or Gangaji, the leader of the masses, undertakes the Great Mango March. The effete Lord Drewpad who maps into Mountbatten, has a wife whose best friend is the blind Drithrashtra who is Nehru. The latter day Pandu in Netaji Bose perishes while on an escapade with his paramour. Only they are on a two-seater plane and it crashes. There are limericks thrown in for good effect. Mohammed A H Karna the founder of Karnistan, Jayaprakash Drona, Shakuni Shankar Ray et al add to the motley cast. Krishna is a lungi-clad, tea-swigging South Indian with the attributes of V. K. Krishna Menon. The autocratic villain is Priya Duryodani. It is curious that Tharoor’s doctoral dissertation was on the first reign of Indira Gandhi from ’66 to ’72. That thesis, which became a book called ‘Reasons of State,’ had drawn praise from the likes of K. Natwar Singh. The comedy reaches a crescendo where the decadent Maharajah of Kashmir is entrapped into signing the agreement for accession by India. Another kichdi novel with a pan-Indian sweep that comes to mind is Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’ which preceded this book by almost a decade. Rushdie however had employed magic realism. The leitmotif in both is fun, unlike in another political satire, Orwell’s Animal Farm. Tharoor’s father was an exponent of Ottam Thullal. It seems that the son, who is as good a Xavierian and Stephanian as they come, inherited a love of the lampoon from the dad. I devoured The Great Indian Novel while on a trans-Pacific flight some years ago. I relished it so much as to not want to read another book for days, just so as to let the sweet taste linger. It should not be a different experience for all those who empathized with Tharoor when he said, ‘You can take me out of India, but you cannot take India out of me’.

(Jan 07)

Review of ‘India Unbound’ by Gurcharan Das

In order to see the picture, it is said, one ought to get out of the frame. This possibly holds true for Gurcharan Das, the former CEO of Procter and Gamble India who spent many years in P&G’s worldwide HQ in Cincinnati, Ohio as part of their Strategic Planning group. The perspective he brings into his thinking, as is evident from his erudite work India Unbound, is unprecedented as far as writing on Indian economy and business goes. In the words of N. R. Narayana Murthy, ‘I do not know of any book that describes the impact of India’s economic policies on her growth during the post-Independent India as analytically, logically and vividly as this one’. Das, a Harvard Business School alumnus, author of three plays, a novel and innumerable newspaper columns, quit his corporate career at the age of 52( in ’95) to concentrate on writing and consulting. India Unbound came out in ’00. It lucidly traces the growing pains of Indian business from the pre-Independence era to the global information age. In the process Das offers, as the blurb says, a ringside view of the economic and social transformation of a nation. Das does to Indian business what V.S. Naipaul did to Indian politics via his India travelogues or Romila Thapar to ancient Indian history.

Das traces the transformation that has come over the years in the attitudes of the Indians vis-à-vis business. Earlier on we had collectively frowned upon money making and emphasized heavily on intellectual learning that seldom translated to wealth generation. The dichotomy in the middle-class mindset is elucidated in the chapter titled, ‘Ranting in English, Chanting in Sanskrit’. Das is fair and impartial in giving the British Raj its due for whatever good the colonial legacy has bequeathed us and says that we cannot conveniently gloss over it. V. K. Krishna Menon once said that India is rich though Indians are poor. It was a matter of time before we tapped the rich resource potential to make the needed transition from impoverished to prosperous. And none have striven more in that area than the Tatas and Birlas – our own counterparts of the American Rockefellers and Carnegies. Das marvels at the acumen of the biggest member of the ‘zero club’ Dhirubhai Ambani – dubbed so because he started from absolute scratch. He also traces the success story of Infosys under the austere NRN who epitomizes ethical corporate behavior. The Nehruvian approach to industry, taking after the Soviet/ Stalinist model, nurtured the public sector institutions which turned out to be white elephants. Corruption was inbuilt in the license raj system which was abetted by politicians who had vested interests in doing so. We were finally left with the choice of shape up or ship out in ’91, the arguably the most important year in free India’s history.

The industry and the economy did a volte-face, thanks to the visionary steps of the then FM Manmohan Singh (not to mention the contribution of CM Chidambaram and his Secretary Montek Singh Ahluwalia) under the patronage of PM Narasimha Rao. The ushering in of reforms spelt magic for the economy. The ForEx reserves shot from USD 1 billion in July ’91 to USD 20 billion in just one year. Inflation came down to 6 % from 13 %. Industrial licensing was virtually abolished. MRTP control was lifted, paving way for the automatic entry of foreign investment into companies in 34 industries. In spite of the failure to de-regulate power and telecom sectors, FII had shot up to USD 3 billion by ’97 (ironically enough, by that time, the Rao government was thrown out of power for all their reforming effort).

Das studies some of the revolutionary contributions to Indian industry during these 50 odd years including M. S. Swaminathan’s green revolution, Verghese Kurien’s white revolution, Sam Pitroda’s single-handed turning around of telecom and creation of the ubiquitous PCO, etc. His broad purview ranges from Kanwal Rekhi’s epoch-making business ventures in the Silicon Valley to the inherent flaws of Indian democracy with its caste manipulations to the increasing influence of Indipop on MTV. On the whole India Unbound is a book worth not one but many readings. A more recent work of his, where he takes his exposition further, is ‘The Elephant Paradigm: How India Wrestles Change’. It is more scholarly and a bit more philosophical in scope. This reviewer did not find it as easier a read as the first book.

(Apr 05)

Review of ‘Good to Great’ by Jim Collins

Jim Collins is a teacher and researcher based in Boulder, Colorado. Five years ago he coauthored an international bestseller called ‘Built To Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies’ with Jerry Porras. In it the authors identified 18 visionary companies and set out to determine what is special about them. All the companies were at least 50 years old, very famous and had outstanding track records. Their brand images were the best.

Collins and Porras compared these companies with 18 second rank ones who were successful nevertheless but who never quite became great. Walt Disney Productions for instance was compared to Columbia Motion Pictures. The authors instantly exploded the myth that these great companies all started off with great products and/or charismatic leaders. In fact most of the visionary companies did not fit into that model. The writers’ study led them to an interesting observation. This was an adherence to a core ideology, an active indoctrination of the employees in to an ideological commitment to the company.

Built To Last is no doubt a great book, but as Bill Meehan, the MD of McKinsey’s San Francisco office told Collins, ‘unfortunately it is useless’. Bill’s reasoning was that the companies written about in this book were great anyway and they never had to do an effort to turn themselves into great, from good. This inspired Jim Collins to undertake a research, which eventually took five long years. The result was an astounding bestseller, appropriately named ‘Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make The Leap …And Others Don”t’ which came out in ’01. The book still sells like hot cakes.

The highlight of this work is its insistence on data – tons and tons of data were unearthed on all the 28 companies featured in the book. Collins and his team of researchers sieved through 1435 companies and finally narrowed it down to a list of 11. The companies are Fannie Mae, Walgreens, Wells Fargo, Pitney Bowes, Philip Morris, Kimberly-Clark, Circuit City, Abbot Labs, Gillette, Kroger and Nucor. They have 11 direct comparisons and 6 unsustained comparisons in the book.
There were thousands of pages of interviews with key people that also contributed to the study. All the good-to-great companies, it was found, had a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted people to think in a disciplined manner. People did not matter so much as ‘right people’. In other words, people are not a company’s greatest assets, the right people are. It also meant that to ensure the company’s health it needed to periodically get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off it. The benchmarks on which the identification was made was not lenient by any yardstick – all 11 of the companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world’s greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck!

According to Collins, ‘some of the key concepts discerned in the study fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.’ That is a fair enough assessment when we consider what the conclusions are. In a concise manner they encompass critical areas of management strategy and practice. In summary,
• Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.
• The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.
• A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results.
• Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology.
• The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.
Good To Great should have been written before Built To Last. In many ways the former is a prequel to the latter. G2G is an eminently enjoyable read for anyone, and certainly so for industry folks.

(Jan 05)

Review of movie ‘Mangal Pandey: The Rising’ by Ketan Mehta

My own Ketan Mehta favorite is the 1980 work Bhavni Bhavai. Mehta’s most celebrated work may have been the later opus, Mirch Masala (1986). Both of these had Naseer Shah, Om Puri and Smita Patil in key roles.

Now in 2005, as the maturity of a committed craftsman in Mehta reaches its pinnacle with The Rising, only Om Puri from that crew remains – that too as a mere voice over. Anyway in the works of serious filmmakers, actors are incidental and so I will not harp much on the impact of Aamir Khan playing the lead in this movie.

One cannot deny that the talented Khan’s comeback after four years of hibernation, combined with a carpet-bombing marketing strategy (after heavy hyping, the movie is simultaneously released in as many cinemas as possible, to rake in maximum moolah before the junta could spread an opinion around) must have saved this film from the fate of a similar historical that bombed recently, Benegal’s Bose – The Forgotten Hero.

But let me leave hype aside and view the film on its merit. Assisted by an international unit, Mehta furthers the globalization agenda set forth by Shekhar Kapur some years back by matching up to the best of Hollywood in directorial merit.

The jarring notes are the songs, literally and figuratively. A Marathi model for a wet nurse and Amisha Patel in a role that reeks of tokenism, are incongruous caricatures in an otherwise ok cast. Also the Rani Mukherjee character ended up being superfluous. Channel Four’s Farrukh Dhondy who scripted the film may take the flak here. The likes of A R Rahman are better kept off such biopics. Classical fare, a la the Pandit Ravi Shankar score for Gandhi would have made more sense in an epic like this.

The vidooshak-like ‘achoot’ (untouchable) with his ubiquitous broom is evocative of the folklorish Bhavai. (The sutradar was deftly employed by Mehta many years ago through Raghuvir Yadav in Maya Memsab as well). The sets and costumes are a labor of love. The tension is sustained commendably well. It is debatable if the film is about Mangal Pandey’s heroics or his special relationship with Captain William Gordon, bhang and all.

The treatment of the latter is subtly handled and in the bargain the Tatya Tope/ Nana Saheb axis angle gets sidelined. Anyway one can rate this movie high. If The Rising helps bring about an attitude shift among desi viewers toward historicals, it would have achieved something indeed.

Tailpiece: Closer home, the picture is not rosy either. The last time they made a quality historical in Malayalam (Elavankod Desam), it proved to be such a disaster that the producer took the director (K.G. George) to court for damages.

(Nov 05)