So What If I am Wrong??

My friend was narrating an incident last week. He is a typical middle-class guy. He was driving to work one day. One of the roads near his house is quite narrow and at any point in time, two 4-wheelers can pass with a little difficulty. Since there is no divider in between, traffic conditions on this road are necessarily dependent on self-discipline of the drivers on the road. So my friend was waiting behind a line-up of cars and other vehicles, while another car was trying to enter the road from the other side. An auto-rickshaw zoomed past trying to overtake all the waiting cars and essentially blocking the path for the entering car (from the other side).
My friend was a little annoyed and rolled down his window and asked the auto-driver what he thought he was doing. To this, the auto-driver said that if he hit my friend’s car, he (the auto-driver) would not suffer any damage (because the vehicle was not his), but my friend would end up spending a lot of money in fixing his car!! My friend realized the futility of talking to such a person and rolled up the window while hitting himself on his head for even bothering to talk.
After a lot of chaos, the traffic cleared up and my friend was driving and noticed the auto-driver chasing him. My friend ignored the guy and kept driving. At some point, my friend wanted to take a left turn and he switched on the indicator. The auto-driver drove his vehicle past the car hitting it on the rear bumper and sped away. My friend got down to assess the damage, when the auto-driver, after dropping off his passenger, came back and with a sneer, said to my friend, ‘Now, what do you say?’. What could my friend say? He simply cursed him and said that the country was going down the drain owing to people like him.
I was mulling about this incident almost the entire week. While work was pretty much uninteresting, discussions in the blog site were heating up. I was following some discussions on blogs on whether criticizing/ commenting on language, grammar or content of the blogs was right or wrong. Some obviously unethical practices were followed in one case and when people complained, I saw that the response was in the lines of – ‘Yes, it may be unethical. What can you do about it other than complaining to the admin. I will continue doing this. What will you do then?’. On comments on other posts, people were advised to keep re-publishing their posts till the admin got tired of deleting them.
I know this sounds terribly silly, but these discussions disturbed me to a great extent too. I was wondering about what we the people of this country were becoming!
The last straw came on Friday. I was driving back home. I am usually a fast driver, though very careful on the road. Since I was driving a relatively less familiar car (my brother’s), I was being extra-careful. At a very busy signal, there was a Corolla on my right and a Tempo on my left. When the light turned green, I started moving very slowly, when the Corolla driver decided that he wanted to be on the left and without any warning moved to the left (ahead of me). At the same time, the Tempo driver decided that I was too inconsequential to give way to and decided to move to his right. I had almost brought the car to a stop when the Tempo hit my left rear-view mirror and smashed it to pieces. I followed the Tempo, and when it slowed down at the signal again, rolled down my window and asked him why he had to hit a stationary car. The only answer he gave was ‘Po ma Po ma’ (‘just Go’).
I was thinking of all these incidents and when I entered the house, my eyes welled up before I could tell my mother what happened. My friend who had come to meet with me and was waiting for me, was alarmed on seeing me in tears. He thought I had met with an accident or something. He was even more astonished when I told him what happened. Of course he thought I was being a baby, crying over something as silly as a broken rear-view mirror.
I was beyond myself – not angry at anybody, but extremely troubled at how easily we brush away any criticism about our behaviour. This is just the opposite of what I have been believing all my life – ‘Forgive many things in others, nothing in yourself’. We wax eloquently about how bad and unruly all Indians are etc., and every time we utter something like that, we only mean all Indians except me .
When we complain on general trend of things, we always talk as though we are completely outside the system. We love criticizing someone or something along with everyone else, as long as we are not the ones criticized. We talk about the sportsman spirit, of the need to accept bouquets and brickbats gracefully and so on, because we are on the giving end of the criticism. Switch sides and you know who is being unsporting !! I have experienced this during a few appraisals where my team members, who were beaming while I appreciated their good work, start blaming everything – from the location of the their house to the customer’s attitude, as reasons for their poor performance in some area.
Whether it is the blogspace or the road or the workplace, getting defensive on receiving criticism seems to be the order of the day. I know I cannot change anything with this post, but I sure feel better writing it all down!! After all, I suffer from the middle-class mentality too

Three Music Fans..

Another music season has drawn to a close and I thought I had attended the last concert on Sunday evening, till my mother told me that there is one more on February 1st by one of my favourite vocalists in a neighbourhood temple. I am way too overwhelmed by all the music to write about the concerts or the musicians. Most days I find it difficult to sleep after the adrenalin rush I experience after a concert.
A change that I noticed in me as a ‘rasika’ was that I seem to have learnt to curb my urge to identify the ragam of any song within the first 5 seconds. In fact these days I don’t feel bad even when I realize I had wrongly identified the ragam of a particular song. My tolerance towards fellow concert attendees has also improved slightly. I still get irritated when people talk during the concert or walk in late and take their own time looking for seats etc., but the degree of irritation has gone down substantially compared to the previous years.
So looking back at the season, I realize that apart from all the music, the memory of some interesting rasikas I observed during the concerts has stayed with me. I may not be able to pick them from a line-up or anything, but I may not be able to forget their antics that easily. Without much further ado, I present to you the winners of the weirdest-rasikas-of-the-music-season contest for the year 2011-2012.
a. Ponytail Aunty : I am not using the usual form of address (maami) here, because the lady involved did not seem all that old. I am pretty sure she had recently attended a course on ‘How-to-pretend-you-are-enjoying-music-in-a-concert-while-ensuring-everyone-in-the-hall-notices-it-too’ or some similarly misguided course run by other veterans of attending music concerts. It was the first concert by TM Krishna (one of my favourite singers) for the season and the venue was a community hall. Thanks to the weather God, Chennai had forgotten to be hot and humid for a short while and I had settled down to enjoy the music, when I found my chair and the ground beneath me shaking. Fearing an earthquake, I looked around for some reassurance and found that my mother and aunt on one side and my cousin and niece on the other were shaking with laughter. They were point their fingers (subtly, according to them at least) to this lady with a high pony tail, in the front row (not the ponytail- the aunty!!). The woman seemed to be out of her mind – why else would one roll her head round and round without fear of it rolling away for good from the stem (neck)?? Now that I had seen this woman, I was having difficulty looking at the stage. The scene eerily appeared to me of the head getting slowly unscrewed from the neck. Throughout the concert I was fearing that the neck would give away at some point in time and I may end up with the woman’s head on my lap – a Tarantinoeque fantasy I admit, but I was really worried that it would happen. What made the sight more amusing was that there was absolutely no relationship between ponytail aunty’s head-rolling and the rhythm of the music. Aunty had learnt the art of rolling one’s head as if in appreciation but had started a few micro-seconds late and it was obvious to anyone, who cared to notice (like me) that she was faking the whole appreciation part!! Needless to say, I remember more of the lady’s antics than the concert itself!!
b. Wet Grinder Maami : This happened during the middle of the season. In typical stalker fashion, I was sort of following my favourite singer Sanjay everywhere he performed during the season. One of these concerts was at a marriage hall. After grudgingly paying Rs.100 per ticket for seats without even armrests and trying to settle down with as little discomfort as possible to take in all the music, my attention was diverted, this time by the lady sitting next to me. Now I was initially a little annoyed with this lady. I was resenting the fact that she seemed young (or at least only as old as me), yet coolly walked in late and disturbed all of us in the row trying to get to a seat next to me. However, as the concert progressed I had forgotten all about the intrusion, and this lady nudged my elbow and pointed at a maami sitting 2-3 rows ahead. Something seemed seriously wrong. I had come for a vocal concert, but off-stage a dance performance also seemed to be in progress. This lady was not just rocking from side to side*, but was sort of spinning on her axis – well, not exactly spinning, in case you start imagining a scene straight out of exorcist, but she was making circular movements with her upright body, waist upwards, with her waist and legs as the axis of rotation. Her movement reminded me of the grinding stone of the old fashioned wet grinder, moving round and round while grinding the rice to a batter. While I was wondering what all this drama was about, the lady next to me was tch-tching in sympathy, murmuring (rather loudly) to me that the maami seemed to have some serious physical ailment that made her restless. I did my duty as a daughter and pointed out this woman to my mother who was sitting next to me and continued listening to the main concert. In between I checked to see if the maami was still sitting up or if fatigue had taken over and she had fallen down. Her performance was going as steadily as the main one, with the only difference that her performance was off the main beat!! A strange thing happened during the ‘tani avarthanam’ – which is the part of the concert where the percussionists play their instruments for a while. Since this is the part of the concert where rhythm, rather than melody takes over completely, I was worried about Maami’s health and my sanity. Suspecting the worst, I looked at the maami. But she had stopped moving and after a while she slowly stood up and left the concert, thereby allaying my suspicion that what she was suffering from was an advanced form of Parkinson’s disease and that I may have to call for an ambulance at any time.
c. Uncle Bob : This happened last week. The venue was the same as the previous one and the singer was again Sanjay (I told you I was stalking him!!). It was a free concert, so we did not complain much about the bad chairs. This rasika, who I will only call Uncle Bob was sitting 2 rows in front of me. He was not blocking my view of the stage as he was sitting to my right. But I was aware of Uncle putting his hand up all of a sudden, like an over-eager student putting up his hand to answer the teacher’s question. The hand would wave for a few minutes and then would go down. I was left puzzling what I missed in the singing, because the hand always seemed to go up at unremarkable parts of the singing. After a while, unfortunately for me, the seats to the left of Uncle were vacated and he moved to my direct field of vision. In between curiosity got the better of me and I observed Uncle Bob for a while. His friend (or someone) seemed to be sitting a few seats away from him and Uncle would suddenly want to show him how music was to be enjoyed. So while his hand shot up and did its thing, Uncle would be looking around to see if he was being noticed and admired. He probably attended the same course as Ponytail Aunty, but his takeaways from the course seemed to be different. Interestingly, when Sanjay was dishing out really wonderful music, Uncle would be distracted, looking around the hall and at people walking in and out. And suddenly as if a thunderbolt had struck him, he would be reminded of his duties as a rasika and put his hand up, totally oblivious to the fact that the entire hall had erupted in applause and ‘aahaas’ and ‘sabash’ a couple of seconds ago, while he was busy looking at the door to see who had entered. Like an actor who keeps up his lip movement after the playback singing has stopped, Uncle Bob, managed to show his faux signs of appreciation at irregular and irrelevant intervals.
As the season ends, I realize that these 3 rasikas unwittingly offered additional entertainment. Since it came for free and like every true Indian, I like anything that comes for free, I thank these nameless people for making these concerts memorable in more ways than one
* which by the way is a pretty normal audience reaction in these concerts, and obviously, by pretty normal I mean I tend to do it at times too!

A Separation

I have this habit of searching for movies that are critically acclaimed (and here I must thank RottenTomatoes, Roger Ebert and Amazon user reviews) and then watch them. It has been many years since movie watching ceased to be merely for mindless entertainment. You can call me a movie buff or a movie fanatic (if my comments have irritated you enough!!). Anyway, this search becomes very frantic near the end of the year since many ‘Best of the year’ lists are out by this time. Then when the Oscars draw near, I try and ensure that I have covered as many of the nominated movies as possible before the actual ceremony, so that I have formed my own opinions about the movie before they are coloured by the awards announcement. I was looking at Roger Ebert’s best films of the year list and read about the Iranian movie called ‘A Separation’. I have watched about 3-4 movies from Iran and liked almost all of them. Ebert’s high praises and my own experience with Iranian movies prompted me to watch this one last week.
From what I have seen at least, most cinema from Iran have very simple plots. The pacing is not what you would see in Hollywood manufactured blockbusters like the super-hero movies, disaster movies or the Almighty-American-President-setting-out-to-save-the-world type of movies (although this has morphed in recent years to the Simple-American-saves-world-from-disaster type). The pace is languid, the people are ordinary, the stories are commonplace and the emotions – very real. As you must have already guessed, I found ‘A separation’ satisfying in all respects.
The film begins in a small court room where a couple – Nader and Simin are seated in front of a judge. They have been married for fourteen years and have a teenage daughter. They are in the court-room asking for a divorce. Simin, the wife wants to leave the country because she does not want her daughter to grow up there. Nader, on the other hand, wants to stay back on account of his old and ailing father, who is suffering from Alzheimers’s disease. Both of them have their reasons for wanting what they want. The judge thinks the issue is too trivial for a divorce and orders them out of the court. Simin moves out and goes back to her parents’ house, but not before helping Nader find a maid who will help him take care of his father. The maid Razieh is pregnant and takes up the job for the money, although she has to travel quite a distance to come to work. Razieh is also deeply religious and God-fearing. These points of the story take place within the first 10 minutes of the movie. There is a small incident in between, which gives rise to the central conflict of the movie (which, by the way, is not only about the divorce of a young couple). Nader, Simin, Termeh (their daughter) Razieh and Razieh’s husband – Houjat become the primary players in an emotional plot involving misunderstandings, mistakes and some minor secrets.
So what is so special about this story, you ask. Like in real life, there are no good or bad people. In fact, Asghar Farhadi – the writer and director of the movie has ensured that all the characters are sympathetic. No one is to be blamed. Whatever a character does, he/she does it out of good intention. But what may be good for one person, may turn out to be not so good for another. Termeh (the director’s daughter in real-life) is the moral compass of the story. She sees her father as a hero in the beginning and refuses to leave him for her mother, even though she knows that Simin is fighting this battle on Termeh’s behalf. But towards the end, Termeh (and we, the viewers) are not so sure any more. The moral standing of each character in our minds, keeps shifting and it is to the director’s credit that when the credits roll, we, like Termeh are not sure about what is right or wrong anymore.
A word about the cast. The acting is uniformly excellent. And I have to say, Iranians seem to be one of the most beautiful people in the world! The actor who plays Nadar resembles Pawan Malhotra, but looks younger and better. He did a great job of a playing a the role of a man with conflicting emotions. Same goes for the lady playing Simin. The girl playing young Termeh, plays her role with sincerity and in the end when she is tears, I was feeling a little emotional too. The actress playing Razieh needs a special mention. She internalized her religious nature, respect for her employer and refusal to take accusations about her honesty and emoted extremely well, without going over the top at any point. The kid playing Razieh’s young daughter is cute as a button and the kid can act too. Even the old man playing Nader’s father did a great job, although he had barely any lines to speak.
My mother loved the movie. Both of us were talking about how our movies today are becoming more and more about people who live nowhere, have problems that don’t happen to everyone and solve them like common people would never do!! You can interchange actors and would not notice any difference. There is no concept of place or culture etc., that would make these people real and relatable. And I am not talking about the Cine-Madurai movies in Tamil that have followed the success of ‘Subramaniapuram’ with youngsters chopping off heads like my road-side coconut vendor slices coconuts. That is not what I mean by real. Morality tales are becoming scarce in Indian movies. And by this I am not saying Hollywood movies are doing any better. Our stories had complex moral questions in the center of them before the attack of the NRI movies started. The character Razieh is one we do not find much in today’s movies from any country. Religion is used to show why a character behaves differently from the rest, or as a plot device to show fake national unity sequences etc., but rarely as a device that governs a person’s moral compass. And I saw that happen in a film after a long time.
There is supposedly a strong Oscar buzz surrounding this movie this year and I wish it wins one. I, for one, would highly recommend it to any kind of audience.

A kute luv stories - Part 23

She come in to the class but she not look at me. My hart is beeting and crying. Why she not luking at me? She looking at Aryan always. Aryan rich boy. He come with his mummy in car. I poor I come in daady’s cicle. I goed to her and tell her – Myself Anand, yourself?
She starring at me. ‘My name is Priya’.
Then we becamed very nise frends.
Everyday I give my card rice and she give chapathi. Together we eated seprately.
One day, I went her house. Her mummy showed me her small age pichers. She looked so nice. When her mummy not looking, I stoled one picher. In that picher Priya wearing pink frock. She looked like Kareena Kappur. I hided the picher in my pant packet.
In the evening when I went home, my mummy changed my dress and gave me muruku. She cleaned my packets and saw the picher of Priya. I told her lies – ‘Priya gave it to me to remember me of her always’ – like that I told.
My mummy did not dowt me. She only laafed. Then I kept the picher in my book.
Monday I went to skool. Priya was already there. We talked about ‘Ra One’ movie. I singed ‘Kolaveri’ song. And priya was clapping. Suddenly someone calls me. It was Aryan. When I turned, my book fell on the floor. And Priya’s picher came out.
She shocked. ‘Why you stealed it? You dirty robber boy!!’.
I did not know what to do. I started crying. I told her ‘Priya, I luv you. Always I think of you.’
She was angry and said ‘But Aryan…’
I told ‘That day when you joined the school, I was praying like anything that you shud also join I-A. When you came in only I liked you so much. Will you marry me?’
At that time, Aryan also came nearby. He said ‘Priya, I will drop you in my car.’.
Priya was crying and walked with him.
But when she reach near the car gate, she turn and look at me. And then she look at Aryan.
Cicle or car – what she will choose?
…To be cont..

What's in a song?

Yesterday I was at a concert by one of my favourite Carnatic vocalists, called TM Krishna. My mother was with me for this concert and was whispering at the end of nearly every song that he had not sung any Tamil song so far. It’s a thing with the Tamil audience. Although we appreciate the fact that most of the songs sung in these concerts are bound to be in Telugu or Sanskrit, we expect/hope that the artist will sing at least one Tamil song. The concert was nearing the end, and TMK had already announced that he would be singing 2 more songs. Someone in the audience asked for a song by Subramanya Bharathi (or Bharathiar as he is popularly known), since it was his birthday yesterday. TMK obliged with one of my favourite songs by the poet, called ‘Chinnanchiru Kiliye’. He sang the song in a set of ragams different from the usual way it is sung. All the way back, my mother and I were talking about this song.
Bharathiar was known for his patriotic poems mostly. A very forward thinking person, he wrote poems about an independent India even before it became a reality. Bharathi was also a believer in the equality of women and men and spoke openly against casteism. We are talking about the early 1900s so it is easy to understand how revolutionary these thoughts were at that time. There are numerous sources about the man and his life. So I am not going to go into a lot of details here.
People interested in Tamil poetry have an emotional attachment towards Bharathi and his poetry. Although I never studied Tamil as a subject in school save for one year when I learnt the alphabets, my mother ensured that my siblings and I were taught the language at home. I was fascinated by some of the poems (or at least what I could make of them) by Bharathiar at a very young age. Some of these poems were used in Tamil films too.
Bharathiar wrote extensively on both nationalism and on religion. His favourite deities were Shakti and Krishna. And on Lord Krishna (or Kannan), he wrote various poems. Unlike any other poet, Bharathi imagined Krishna in multiple forms – a friend, a child, a daughter, a servant, God, a lover (male and female) and so on. This song I mentioned above is written treating Krishna as a daughter. I am not very good at translating poems since the beauty of any poem is not just in the meaning but also in the words used and the feeling it generates cannot be fully replicated while translating from one language to another. You can check this thread for an approximate translation.
This song represents a lot more than just a song for many of us. I remember my sister’s wedding. My senses were still dulled and the fact that my sister was getting married had not struck me at all. And then she walked out all dressed up for one of the ceremonies and my aunts were singing this song and all of a sudden it hit me – my kid sister who had been a child till then, was going to leave the childhood behind for good!! And tears welled up in my eyes. My mother who heard the song started crying too. For many years, every time she heard the song, she would immediately start thinking of my sister or me. Today the song reminds her of my little niece and gets emotional every time! I cannot sing the song without feeling a little emotional myself.
I have held my niece often from the time she was 10 days old and I cannot believe how beautifully Bharathi has captured the feeling of holding/hugging one’s daughter (‘Unnai thazhuvidilo Kannamma Unmatham aagudadi’ – When I hug you, I feel beyond myself). And I understand the feeling of bursting with pride when anybody praises my niece and Bharathi has experienced it too (‘Mechi unnai ooraar pugazhndal meni silirkudadi’ – When people praise you, I get goosebumps).
The song is so close to my heart that I am extremely possessive about it. I find it difficult to brush it aside as a ‘nice song’ or ‘nice lyrics’. The only version of this song that I can admit as being close to what I feel about it is the violin version by the genius Lalgudi G Jayaraman. So when TMK sang a technically perfect version of the song, my intellect was telling me to nod in my appreciation and my heart was telling me that this one shares the words with ‘my’ song, but it was not the same. The words were there, the tune was good (though not the same), but the emotional prowess that the song has, was missing.

Dear Santa Thatha

Hello Thatha,
I hope you don’t mind me addressing you in this manner. In Tamil, Thatha means grandfather. It can also mean ‘Give’ (Tha) repeated twice. Since this letter is essentially a wish-list, I thought this mode of address would be most suitable.
I wish I could be broad-minded and selfless like women winning the beauty pageants and ask for world peace or eradication of poverty or terrorists turning to peace lovers from December 26th 2011. However, from what I hear about you, I guess you already know that I am not a selfless person. I am one of the many people who are in equal (or unequal) parts God and Devil (and this idea definitely did not come from the song in the tamil movie Aalavandan*).
This list may seem silly to you Kris** Thatha, but do not doubt my intentions. As much as possible, I will give you options to pick from in each item of the list. The choice of picking the easier (marked E for your convenience) or tougher one (marked T for your convenience) is up to you (and I hope you see the goodness behind this idea and give me prorated extra points for being a good girl). The easy options may at times seem a little cruel and mean – again, the intentions are purely noble and (mostly) selfless. Here is my list:
a. Good roads that don’t dissolve in rain water in Chennai (T) (or) special magic car that can spot potholes underneath the puddles and can grow wings and fly at those spots alone (E).
b. Drivers with common sense who understand that cars are equipped with low and high beams and that low beams work most of the time (T) (or) a super powerful torchlight (that is more powerful than the stupid halogen lamps some of the morons on the road use for headlights), that I can use to blind the offenders for a microsecond at least.
c. Good eyesight to people who walk past me when I am waiting in a queue for the lift or to get my coffee as though I don’t exist (and much as I would like to think of this as proof of my exercise regime working, I know this is not true) (T) (or) the mental fortitude to push past them in exactly the same fashion and pretend they don’t exist (E).
d. Good conscience to people who spit and eject other bodily fluids on the roads (T) or a magic spell that I can utter which will have these people slapped on their faces every time they even think of such a thing. (E).
e. Good sense to people who spend 5 full minutes in front of the attendance swipe machine thinking that staring at it will shame it into changing the swipe-in time to 10 minutes earlier than the current time (T) (or) installation of Smart attendance machines that will kick the person away if he/she spends more than 1 second in front of it or will sense the person’s attendance based on biometric data.
f. Make me immune to spelling and grammar mistakes, love stories written by 10-year olds (T) (or) embed Spelling and grammar lessons in each person’s DNA before they are born (E)
g. And lastly, make me thick skinned and more accepting of faults in others (T) (or) Give me a magic wand that I can use as a vigilante to mete out justice to the wrongdoers and cleanse the world of evil (E).
Eagerly hoping you are real.
Love
Me
*A song that goes in badly translated English ‘Equal parts God and Beast – I am a mixture of the two’
**I know your real name since I have watched ‘Miracle on 34th street 4-5 times.

The Wire

Probably as a result of watching umpteen movies while growing up and the trauma resulting from watching even those movies starring stellar actors like Vijaykanth, Ramarajan, Satyaraj and other such horror-heroes, by the time I turned 25 (that should be less than a year back!), I have become very picky about watching movies and television shows – to the point of being called snobbish by my own mother (- I wonder about this usage though, why ‘own’, do ‘rental mothers’ exist?). I have become increasingly as intolerant towards pretentiousness in art as in life. I have stopped treating movies as ‘just entertainment’ and thought of them as art. This of course does not mean I enjoy watching neo-realistic nonsense movies that think showing paint dry is art. Like I said I can’t stand pretentiousness anywhere and can stand snobbery only when it is mine So much for being just!
Anyway, this post is not meant to be a sample of my obsessive navel-gazing (and contrary to what people may assume by that term in the context of Indian movies, I am using it in the usual sense of the phrase!). I have said it before and I will say it again – thriller/horror and comedy are the most difficult genres in art. With the deluge of entertainment we are faced with every day, impressing people with art – especially movies and television shows is becoming next to impossible. I am very very sympathetic towards the creators of today and totally understand their helplessness, but as a viewer I can not help being underwhelmed by most of their efforts.
I can’t believe I have written almost 3 paragraphs as prologue, so let me start the topic here at least. In my quest for good movies/television shows/ books, I am grateful for any recommendation from people who share at least some of my interests in them. Two years ago, my cousin had spoken highly about a HBO show called ‘The Wire’. She had heard about the series and had ordered the first season through Netflix. She was hooked and could not wait for Netflix to ship the remaining seasons. So she purchased the remaining seasons, just so that she could finish watching them as soon as she could. Recommendations don’t come better than that!
I started watching ‘The Wire’ about 3-4 months back. This was when I had just finished watching the last season of Dexter – another awesome series about a ‘good’ serial-killer. The next season of Dexter was to start in November and I did not want to wait between episodes to know what happened next. I was thinking of ‘The Wire’ as a filler. And boy, I was hooked!!
The series is centered around Baltimore, Maryland. There are 5 seasons in total with each season focused on one aspect of the city. Each episode has multiple story-arcs and the narration shifts between them almost seamlessly. Rather than talk about the actual plot(s) of each seasons, I think I will just list down some of the features that I found impressive and loved. (With this constant urge to put everything down in bullet points, I wonder if I can really talk in paragraphs!!):

• I have never seen any movie or tv show with so many African-American actors in major roles as this show. And the roles they play are not the token ones they play in mainstream movies/shows nor are they the stereotypical portrayals (family loving, loud, gun-toting lowlifes etc). Of course the series has African American gangstas, but it also has the Greeks, Polacks participating in crimes and contributing to the ruining of the city. In that sense it is an equal-opportunity show!! Whatever the reason, I found this a very refreshing change.
• Memorable characters : It has been more than a month since I watched the last episode of Wire and I still cannot forget most of the characters. Full credit to creator David Simon to have created unique characters among the good and bad guys. Avon Barksdale, Omar Doolittle, Stringer Bell, Kima Greggs, McNulty, Daniels, Prybylewski, Lester Freamon, Bunny Colvin, Burrell – it is amazing how I am able to recall most of the character names without much effort after so many days. Excellently etched, completely rounded characters who, like real people are in equal parts good and bad.
• Language : The lingo is supposedly authentic street language and for the uninitiated, a little difficult to understand. I had to watch the entire series with the subtitles on. Although I watched the first few episodes by myself without troubling my parents, there were a few that I watched in the living room when my father was present. He was not actually shocked but sort of tired of only hearing colourful language and some form of the f word repeated at the end of almost each statement  by every character . Yet, the fact remains that the language spoken by the characters adds to the authentic and gritty feel of the show.
• Story, Editing, Screenplay etc. are just fabulous. I have not seen anything like this so far – not even in movies.
• Idris Elba : I consider myself fairly old fashioned in many ways. I rarely describe men (or women for that matter) as ‘hot’. I do describe many actors as cool and for me the actors I like most are those with a high degree of effortless coolth – like George Clooney (before Oceans 12), Robert Downey Junior, Samuel Jackson, Kevin Spacey (often, not always). I reserve terms like dignified and classy for actors like Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington etc. However right from episode 1 of ‘The Wire’, I could think of no word other than ‘Hot’ for Idris Elba, who plays Stringer Bell in the series. I am embarrassed to admit, but I still cannot think of any other word to describe this guy. Maybe it is his role of a cool, confident, suave and ruthless gangster that made this impression, maybe like my mother says, I have this weird (according to my mother) fascination for African American actors (only) or maybe I am just normal ) In any case, when Stringer Bell was killed in Season 4, a part of me died (and later resurrected after my mind consoled it that while Bell may be dead, Elba is very much alive!!). I admire this guy!!

While I can go on and on about Idris Elba ‘The Wire’, a word of caution here. The series while wonderful is not for everyone. It is not a ‘wholesome entertainer’ meant for the family. It is dark, gritty and very realistic – which means that it does not end with all the cast members posing for a photograph with fake smiles pasted on their faces. The fourth season is particularly heartbreaking because it is about the school system and hence about how the children enter the criminal system – Kids who start out innocent and are constantly let down by the system, teachers who cannot be described anything less than God’s messengers who fight against all odds to try and keep the children away from the criminal life that their parents are pushing them towards, the politicians who see everything only as a means to stay in power. While one of the best seasons, this was the most depressing of all.
In the last episode, I was hoping for some miracles – hoping that all the children that we were introduced to in the previous system succeed in fighting the pressures of the world to succumb to the life of a criminal, hoping that they would realize their potentials and start believing in themselves. The ending is beautiful, sad and true to the spirit of the series. There is hope and there is despair. Some kids make it, many don’t. The last 10 minutes of the final episode is a montage of scenes showing the fates of different characters of the series and many of them mirror the lives of other characters at the start of the series – the (mostly bleak) message being that while the players change, history repeats itself over and over again and not always in a good way.
The only side-effect of watching ‘The Wire’ is that the bar is set very high, and it is highly unlikely for me to find any other TV show that is better than this one!! Highly recommended.