The Brothers Grim

When I crossed the first level of the latest Contra (Hard Corps: Uprising) I did what any self respecting gamer would do. I put down my controller, cracked my knuckles and yawned smugly. Had I been on a stage, I would have also said “Meh, this was almost too easy, not worthy of a champ like me.” As the machine serpent Boss dropped onto the sand, my character walked over to the end of the sand pit and hopped onto a waiting motorcycle. I leaned back, patting myself on the back, and expected to see a screen detailing my stats and the intro to the next level.

The scene, however, switched back to the carcass of the serpent, and I watched in sheer horror as a portion of the machine broke off and flew after me in pursuit. The fucking level wasn’t over! The serpent was a mini-boss! Screaming expletives, I grabbed the controller again as this new Boss activated a huge drill and punched my character into the ground. That was the moment it finally sunk in that I was playing a Contra game. Not just any other run-and-gun shoot-‘em-up, but a proper so-hard-it-will-make-you-cry-tears-of-blood Contra game. I know this game is hard, and I know I will win against the Commonwealth (the current Big Bad), but I wish I could have done it in two player mode along with the red soldier.

My first introduction to video games was an old dog-fighter from the 486 era, and the first proper console game I played was Mario (this was around 1994, just FYI). I played it on my elder cousin’s NES system (the one with the huge chunky cartridges with only one game each) and I was hooked by the bright colours and the cheerful soundtrack, and the Italian plumber’s journey to get to the princess was a large part of my early gaming experience. I loved the exploration, I loved the powers and I loved the sense of achievement I felt every time I discovered a new secret. Then, it got boring.

It might have had something to do with the fact that I could not, for the life of me, cross 1-4. For days, I tried every single trick I could think of. I would reach 1-4 with the fire weapon and a huge number of lives (I can’t recall how many, but definitely more than four, maybe) and then I would proceed to lose every single one of said lives to the evil green minion of Bowser. Rational thought and logic dictated only one course of action, and I quit the damm game. To take my mind off everything, I finally relented and allowed my younger brother to play the game. (There was only one controller, and there was no way in hell I was giving the little spider the controls, even for a second)

As I watched, his childlike squeals of joy (in all fairness, he was still a child then. I on the other hand, was born with the intellect and wit of a man who has lived the lives of both James Bond and Han Solo) as he crossed a level, discovered a secret and got his first 1-up by collecting one hundred coins, turned into tears of frustration. He too, met the evil green minion of Bowser on 1-4, and he too, was found wanting. For days, this situation continued and I watched my brother turn into a husk of a man. All joy was gone from his eyes, to be replaced by a hunger. Often, he would look pleadingly at me, asking me in unspoken words if I could help him somehow, help him overcome that evil green minion of Bowser, and all I could do was shrug helplessly. The evil green minion of Bowser was our Kobayashi Maru, and we were destined to face defeat at his hands again and again for all eternity (or rather, until we discovered the first warp gates the next week, but that’s a story for another time).

We’d almost sworn off gaming altogether, when suddenly, something wonderful happened. We were introduced to the joys of the second controller, shortly followed by the joys of a brand new game that featured Men With Guns And Explosions In The Background. The loading screen was dark and minimalistic, a black background with the name of the game written in a stylized techno-industrial font hanging above an image of the heroes and the menu options (which in those days usually consisted of a choice between single player and two player). Used as we were to the cheerfully happy synth sounds of Mario’s menu screen, the crunching opening riffs of Contra’s menu screen actually made our hair stand on end. So shocked were we by the sheer awesome of the few seconds it had taken for the menu screen to load, that neither of us touched a button, and that was when we got the happiest surprise of that week. The game demo started, and we found that both the players could play simultaneously. Clearly, this wasn’t Mario.

He looked at me, and I could see the gears moving in his head. “Finally!” his manic smile seemed to say, “Finally we can both wreak havoc on these unsuspecting pixels. Finally we won’t be at the mercy of overpowered Bosses! Finally, with you on my side, together, The Brothers Grim can lay to waste whatever the villains of this awesome game that I haven’t even played yet, throw at us.” I gave him a manic, crazed smile of my own as I high-fived him, thinking “Finally! The little monkey will prove useful!”

We got our digitized asses handed to us less than three minutes into our first game. We got them handed to us again, less than five minutes later, and again, and again, and again and again… Clearly, we lacked teamwork and clearly, it was all his fault. I explained to him again and again, and screamed instructions to him as he haplessly flailed around, trying to watch my back AND shoot the afimchis (Hindi for junkie/drug peddler, we had assumed that the guys carrying sacks were drug peddlers since all major Bollywood villains around those times were usually drug lords) heading for him. Things would get more and more complicated when it came to the weapons. It made more sense for me to take the Spreader (that’s what we called the scatter-shot gun), and for him to take the Rapider (ditto for the rapid-fire) since I was awesome. However, exactly why would he need to take F (we couldn’t come up with a name for that one) which to our inexperienced minds was the second most useless gun in the game, was something I was at a momentary loss to explain. (Interestingly, as I became a better player, my weapons of choice shifted to R and F, because an extremely skilled player can do an obscene amount of damage with them. In later games, I would take R as often as I could and leave the S to him. There is a Zen lesson in there somewhere.)

On our umpteenth try, we did manage to break down the wall and proceed to Basi 1 (the letters and the resolution of the game was such that the 1 looked like an I, and so, in our confused minds, Base 1 became Basi, which in hindi means rotten. On our discovery of Base 2, which became Basi-2, we changed the name of Base 1 to Basi 1). Our first reaction was sheer exhilarating joy, which only became brighter as the realization dawned that we had done it together. We cheerfully hollered and scampered around like little monkeys, high-fiving each other as we recounted our wondrous exploits of marksmanship and awesomness on a level that takes less than seven minutes to cross on a good run. Then, as the next level opened, we scrambled to our controllers and started shouting at each other, exhorting the other to simply kill, kill, kill.

We died several times in that level, and we tried again. We crossed that level and we reached Waterfall, home to arguably the worst two-player mechanic ever. We killed each other countless times, jumping and falling stupidly, and I had to reprimand him several times for jumping unwisely (resulting in my death), and jumping too late (resulting in his death). Finally, we reached the top and defeated the Dragon, and jumped through the wound in his chest to reach Basi-2. (In our later runs, he would take the power of invincibility and run across the flaming bridge while I jumped behind him. He’d take the harder route up so it made sense for him to have it. He’d also take the S before the final jumps and set up the M for me, it was one of the few levels I was content to be the side-kick)

Basi-2 is one of my least favourite levels of all times. Its not so much the game mechanic, its mostly the music and the colours. That and the fact that its also one of the least interesting levels in the game for me. We did finally take it down as well, although the bubbles in the Boss battle (you know what I’m talking about) did cause a lot of discomfort. Thankfully, by this time, our teamwork had progressed to a point that we didn’t even have to watch out for each other, we knew that the other was taking care of the enemy just as hard as we were.

I could go on and on about each and every level, but it is literally more of the same. The Brothers Grim face a challenge and beat it down together, whether by force of arms (Snow Field, Alien’s Lair) or by heroic sacrifice (he would have to die in Energy Zone for us to continue, it was impossible to time the damm jumps to avoid the lasers) and subsequent rebirth (he’d take one of my lives in Hangar. The more we played, the more we killed and blew up, the better we became at it. From a couple of squabbling little kids, we became The Brothers Grim, and that is why playing Contra with my brother is one of my happiest memories of all times. Playing Contra with him was one of the first times I was playing something with him, not against him. All questions of sibling rivalry, ranging from the mundane (whose favourite cartoon do we play) to the ones that were truly important (who gets the bigger portions of Maggi) were forgotten as we hunkered down to defeat the evil forces of Red Falcon, and the glory of victory and anguish of defeat was shared equally. This was the beginning of The Brother Grim, and those were some of my happiest memories of my childhood.

As I fall to the sheer number of troops the Commonwealth has mustered, as I fall to the machine serpent and that weird thing on wheels, and as I scream and rage at the screen in Singapore as my bullets tear apart the waves of enemy soldiers, I sorely miss the red soldier in Delhi. I know I will defeat the Commonwealth (the current Big Bad) and win this game, but I only wish I could do it in two player mode, as part of The Brother Grim.

Delhi Belly - From Anger to Infatuation - Dwitiya Adhyaya

(This is the 2nd part of my post of Delhi Belly and how my initial WTF turned into excitement about the movie. Etc. If this post doesn't make sense, it probably is because you haven't read the first part. For maximum enjoyment, please read the first part first. Etc.)

To me, the singer is a voice of the disenchanted youth of our nation, a man whose dreams and aspirations could not survive contact with the harsh reality of the fast paced rat race our urban life is. He is beset by disillusionment and despair after his realization that the three things in life most important to him (roti, kapda & ladki), the three cornerstones of his world as he had envisioned it, all three are out of his reach, and its going to take both hard work and sheer dumb luck to get them. Our singer has realized this, and it has sunk in that this is a world he was not prepared for.

The disdain of his seniors, his mistaking of an abyss for a small, harmless pot, the constant tension he faces in what was supposed to be his paradise (paradise actually means garden in one language or the other), all of this, all of his misery, it is simply because he is a product of the society, of his seniors and their morals and conventions, and that is where he has decided to place all blame. He has taken all of his frustration and anger, and has decided to channel it against the society, and DK Bose is just a metaphor for that society. Whether the protagonist’s anger is justified or not, whether, his shortcomings are his own fault or the fault of the world at large are merely academic discussions. What is important is that the singer is hunting down Mr. Bose, he is asking DK Bose to run, for the protagonist knows that a storm is coming after him.

And what of the storm? This question is perhaps the easiest to answer. The storm represents the turbulence that comes with great social change. The protagonist is using his anger, his issues, his frustration, and he is expressing them via his rage, a rage that takes the form of a storm and sweeps over the society, uprooting deeply held traditions and outdated modes of thinking which are holding the protagonist back. What is interesting is that the protagonist’s elders have also lived through something similar. Their generation had Amitabh, the angry young man who inspired them, who was an outlet for their frustrations, in whose onscreen wrath could they find the release needed to deal with their misery. And yet, this same generation whose struggles are forever immortalized in the saga of the Angry Young Man, this same generation created a world that in turn created our protagonist. Therefore, the lyrics of this song are also a deeper commentary on the cyclical nature of things, and signal that perhaps, one day the protagonist himself would take on the role of DK Bose while his progeny rages against him.

Anyway, suffice to say that I was hooked onto this song, but even though Bhaag DK Bose had exorcised most of the ghosts of Delhi Belly’s first promos, I still had small tendrils of doubt in the back of my head, trains of thought that kept sending me back to the Farting Man. What if this fine offering, this song that perfectly captures the zeitgeist, the sense of frustration and anger that consumes today’s youth, and is issued as a warning to the society in general that a storm is coming; what if this gem of a song was a fluke. What if the entire movie was based around Farting Man and his adventures, and the song, this microcosm of the young urban Indian experience crystallized into music and words, what if this song was just a lure, a bait to get us, the unsuspecting audiences into the theaters so that we would have to experience The Adventures of Farting Man instead.

Rest assured, these thoughts were most assuredly laid to rest (repetition beeches!) by the second song that I heard, Nakkadwaale Disco…

Interestingly, for me, this song isn’t so much about the lyrics, as it is about the video. Before I saw the video, I wasn’t sure of the intentions of the producers. I wasn’t sure if Bhaag DK Bose was a one off thing, a Sheela ki Jawani for a lackluster Tees Maar Khan, or was it really an indication of how funny, goofy and irreverent the movie was planning to be. See, that’s the thing about the special promo songs, at times, they promise you things that the final movie just doesn’t have. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Dum Maaro Dum, but that’s a whole other argument.

So, coming back to Nakkadwaale Disco… the opening shots sealed the deal for me. The three characters sitting on the stage with their instruments and dresses, the gaudy banner hanging behind them, the flowers, the stage and the microphones… who amongst us hasn’t been to one of these gigs? You know what I am talking about, the low production local gigs with a few local artists doing cover songs. As a kid, I dreaded those outings, since these events were Cultural, and therefore, if I was bored to tears, I should suck it up and take it as a man. Yes, it was styled after one of those gigs and when I saw the three guys doing soundchecks, I nearly fell off my chair laughing. It wasn’t just the setting, it wasn’t just the music, it wasn’t just the lyrics, it was the serious, dead pan, intense and earnest expression that the characters had as they sang the song.

The sheer absurdity of the entire situation was overbearing. At one point Imran Khan went into a vocal solo and he absolutely nailed it. Not the solo itself, but the actions and the expressions as he acknowledged a job well done. The video is hilarious and I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the smaller touches that you only noticed for a fleeting second, but nevertheless they completed the picture. For instance, you see Imran Khan’s golden watch and rings for maybe all of fifteen seconds in the entire video, but they were exactly the kind of flashy jewelry you expected those performers to wear. And it wasn’t just limited to dresses or props, but even the mannerisms of the characters made the whole thing pop. The seriousness with which the singer starts, how he becomes more relaxed as the song goes on, the sheer earnestness in his eyes… it was like a mountain of absurdities piled upon a plateau of awesomeness dumped upon a… well, it was bloody funny is what I’, trying to say. And like I said, it wasn’t just the set design or the lyrics; it was little things like those that helped ground this video into reality and made it so much more fun. It is this attention to even the smallest details that makes these kind of movies (I Am, Peepli Live, Dhobi Ghat, Dev D etc) so much fun to watch, for it’s a sign of commitment, a covenant that the makers have signed that they will pay attention to all the little details as well, that they will make even the small things count and tell a story. It is this kind of an attitude I expected from Amir Khan productions, the cutting edge, irreverent, refreshing and balls out insane approach to cinema and storytelling, and they hadn’t disappointed in both the songs from Delhi Belly. Perhaps I was wrong, and perhaps I should give Delhi Belly a chance. It was then that the thought struck me. What if I had been wrong about the Farting Man as well?

See, I had judged the Farting Man without any context. What if he had had an excellent reason for the amount of noise he was making. Maybe he was providing another character with an alibi! Maybe he had just been dosed with enough laxatives to make an elephant cry out in anguish! Maybe it was a very crude attempt at chemical warfare! Maybe he was trying to gross out the goon so that he would leave! Maybe he just had an actual case of Delhi Belly! The possible interpretations were endless!

Anyway, so the point is, Bhaag DK Bose could have been a bone thrown to the target audience, saying look, I am edgy and creative, I push the envelope and break the mould, so won’t you please love me? But when its two songs doing the same thing, and it seems like the magic of Bhaag DK Bose was not a happy coincidence, that the makers do have a plan to cover this thing in awesome, that there exists a vision for the movie and that all the small parts are logical extensions of this vision, well then, movie-makers, I will take a risk on you. When I saw the Farting Man for the first time, I was surprised, confused and slightly disgusted, but when I saw Bhaag DK Bose and Nakkadwaale Disco… I knew Delhi Belly would be a fun movie, and that in hindsight, the Farting Man was bloody hilarious!

(Well, that's all folks! I hope this post taught you a valuable lesson, ie: never judge a book by its cover, or a man by his first fart. And now, I swear a solemn promise, no more fart jokes on this blog, ever!)

Delhi Belly - From Anger to Infatuation - Pratham Adhyaya

(Edit: Given that this is a long post, I have decided to break it down into two parts. The parts are continuous and meant to be read one after the other, its just that at about 2900 words, this post was pushing the limits of long posts. Also, if something in this post doesn't seem right or seems to go against the laws of obviousness, it is probably because I am being sarcastic)

My first proper encounter with Delhi Belly was… less than ideal. It happened a few months ago, and it almost made me swear off the damn thing. I was sitting with my buddies in the Jade, the place to be in Singapore if you want to catch a Hindi movie on the big screen, and we were waiting for the intermission to end (can’t remember which movie we’d gone to see that day, but clearly, it was good enough for us not to have made a mid movie dash for freedom). While we whiled away our time (alliteration beeches!) making small talk and poking fun at Basantani, the promos for upcoming movies started playing, and while most of them were the standard ho-hum bollywood teasers, one particular promo caught my eye. It started off in a very grandiose fashion; the theme from Lagaan started as the moving pictures and somber voice over declared that the makers of Lagaan, Jaane tu ya jaane naa, Taare zameen par and Dhobi Ghat were preparing to blow our minds again. I gripped my seat in anticipation, for I had recently seen Dhobi Ghat, and had been spellbound by its subdued, at times silent and visceral portrayal of four interconnected stories in Mumbai. Mr. Khan and family had blown my mind with Dhobi Ghat, and I was ready and willing to have my mind blown by them again. As the promo reached its climax, I frantically went through every single news item and Wikipedia entry I could remember, trying to recall the name of Amir Khan’s next home production.

An overly long fart broke my reverie. No, it didn’t just break my reverie; it smashed my reverie with a hammer, jumped up and down on it wearing spiked boots, and then covered the pieces in liquid methane and set them on fire. Instead of the glorious vistas of Delhi that I had imagined, the screen showed a dimly lit toilet with a man expelling gas. I couldn’t take in any more details as my eyes had glazed over and my brain was literally blown. I remained in that state of catatonia for the next few minutes as my homunculus scrambled to hotwire my neural network and get my brain running again. When I finally regained my senses, I was filled with feelings of despair, disappointment and something not unlike WTF!

I am not, nor have I ever been a pseud. Yes I have at times entertained dreams of living like Chris Noth’s character from Sex and the City, a suave, sophisticated man whose every pore oozed refined taste, but those were never more than idle fantasies, dammit! I have prided myself on my kuntry/desi tastes. I have laughed hysterically at the bucolic and puerile jokes in Ishqiya and Omkara, and at the unintended humour and awesomeness of Gunda and Mohra. Hell, Dabangg is a part of my vocabulary now, and I have a tendency to describe myself as a jatil person. I am not someone who is above toilet humour, and yet, the promo for Delhi Belly left me shaken to the core. The poignant images Munna’s daily life from Dhobi Ghat, the humorous yet scathing scene from Peepli Live where the journalists reported on Natha’s excrement and the heartwarming finale of Taare Zameen Par, all of them were replaced by the Farting Man. The Farting Man!

Here’s the thing. I wasn’t disturbed by the image of a man in a dirty toilet farting as if his life depended on it, but from Amir Khan’s production house, I was expecting something with a little more… finesse. These are the same people who gave us the meticulously planned and detailed Lagaan, the low-fi and perfectly executed Taare Zameen Par and the slow, deliberate yet tight pacing of Dhobi Ghat. The same people who had created brilliant movies out of scenarios that others would have dismissed as boring, clichéd or too quirky to work, those very same people had put a Farting Man on the screen to advertise their next movie! The mind reeled!

With my faith in humanity shaken, I decided to not fanboy over the movie. There would be no daily visits to the Wikipedia page, no religious refreshing of Rediff’s Movies tab, no sitting awake till three in the morning, waiting for a tweet with a loose, offhand update on its status, nothing that I would normally do for an upcoming movie/video game/album that I was interested in. Instead, I decided to lock the specter of the Farting Man in the deepest recesses of my memory, the part that remains blocked forever, the part that even my subconscious dreads. And I forgot all about this movie.

Fast forward a few months later, and I was sitting… well, no, that won’t do at all. I can’t even remember when and how I made second contact with Delhi Belly, but it was that contact that turned me from an indignant “you are trying to sell what to me?” to a more docile “ooo I want more!!!” See, I can’t remember how and when I heard the song, and that is ok, but what is important is that I did listen to the song, and it was good! Someone made me watch the video on Youtube, and by the time the first chorus hit, I was hooked. Easily hummable and with a hilarious video and lyrics to boot, that song got me hooked to Delhi Belly again. That song, of course, is Bhaag DK Bose.

That song worked for me on so many different levels. And while the music is catchy and the video is funny, what really worked for me were Amitabh Bhattacharya’s lyrics. The angsty, funny and downright insane verses are matched only by the earnestness of the chorus where the singer warns DK Bose, the central character of the song, to start running, since a storm is brewing. The fact that the lyrics aren’t suggestive, that there isn’t even a hint of double meanings is also a very welcome plus in this day and age standards are dropping every second. Also, like all works of art, this song is very open to interpretations and analysis. To me, the song operates on two different levels, namely the main protagonist, who is the singer, and a secondary character called DK Bose, who is a false protagonist, a red herring who is mentioned again and again just to throw us off the track, to hide the true meaning in a much more nuanced and interpretation. The verses describe the thoughts and emotions of a young man in urban India, a dejected man who has been pushed to the edge by the burden of his father’s (symbolizing the older generation) disappointment, accusations of lacking substance (a reference to the oft repeated motto old is gold and new things suck, perhaps?) and the sheer helplessness of being a free bird, yet having to use a broken, decrepit scooter (sacrificing one’s dreams and ambitions to survive in a world that is clearly sub-optimal and functionally broken). These angry, complex thoughts are interspersed with a simple, catchy chorus, a warning to DK Bose that he should start running, for there is a storm coming.

While I had earlier thought that DK Bose is being warned by a well wisher who doesn’t want to see him come to harm, later hearings have altered my interpretations of this somewhat. It is my belief now that the tone of the warnings is more… aggressive. The singer isn’t asking DK Bose to preserve himself by running; the warning isn’t being issued in good faith. No, this is the warning a hunter issues to his prey. This is a warning tinged with menace and a clear attempt at intimidation. Clearly, the singer has a bone to pick with DK Bose, and is giving him a head start before the rampage begins. Whether this warning was a well intentioned, honourable way of giving Mr. Bose a fighting chance, or whether its purpose was to strike terror in his mind, to make the hunt more enjoyable to the hunter, that point is moot. What is important is that the DK Bose is in trouble, the singer is pursuing him, carrying a grudge and a heavy stick, and that a storm is coming. Given this perspective, re-reading the lyrics offers a slightly different interpretation.

The problem might be you...

Me: So, your Egypt trip…
Friend: Hmmm?
Me: Will you guys be hitting Memphis?
Friend: Dude, Memphis is in the US :P LOL You don’t even know this??
Me: o_O erm dude...
(after consulting Wikipedia)
Friend: So what! I was talking about the Memphis in the US!

Sometimes, it helps to do the research. Or at least not offer an opinion on something you haven’t got the slightest clue about. The best part about the internet is that it is a treasure trove of knowledge. Knowledge on the Internet is not just condensed onto sites like Wikipedia, but it is also available on blogs, online magazines and other such websites. Usually, when I am looking for something on the internet (the history of a particular book, lets say), I browse around, and usually, I find something that is quite interesting and relevant. And sometimes, I find stuff written by an idiot.

The great tragedy of the internet is that any idiot with an opinion can create a blog and spew mindless crap. Now, I am not talking about opinion pieces or blogs that are low on content quality, but still make an effort. I am also not talking about people offering incorrect facts and interpretations of something of which they would not be qualified for anyways, for theirs is an error of ignorance, and who hasn’t been guilty of that? No, I am talking about blogs and websites that claim to be experts in an area, and then post something erroneous and inflammatory without doing any of the research (which in this day and age is basically typing stuff into a google search bar anyways). THEN, when their errors are pointed out, they still stand their ground and defend every single silly thing they said and claim that the readers did not get them.

I pride myself on being a ‘know it all’. Ever since I was a kid, I have been into books of all kinds, and that has given me a thirst for learning and knowledge that I will cherish all throughout my life. That has also left me socially awkward and adept at shaking trees, but that is beside the point here. I pride myself on my knowledge, and I take every pain to show it off as much as I can. However, what I really pride myself on is the ability to keep my mouth shut when I don’t know anything about what is being discussed, and to admit that I am wrong when I am wrong (which happens far more often than I would like). It’s a tough pill to swallow and I always wish I wouldn’t have to do it, but its something that I have to do. Most of us are the same, we make mistakes and we admit it. Its no big deal and everyone gets on with their lives. These things are brought up at times when we are amongst friends and everyone has a good laugh and all seems right with the world.

Then, you come across people who make incorrect and inflammatory comments and judgments, and when called out on it, defend their own stance and cite i) freedom of speech ii) the sanctity and unassailability of opinions iii) their credentials as experts, even though they might have made a rookie mistake, and iv) offer an apology that is no better than a ‘screw you’. There are, of course, other ways that people respond, but in my experience, these are the top four.

People do tend to get uncomfortable and defensive when they are called out on their errors, and that is perfectly fine for that is how we are built. What is not fine is turning the whole thing into a shouting match or a ‘holier than thou’ competition. What makes it worse is that a lot of people are using this tactic to gain cheap publicity and to portray themselves as different, and hence, cooler. It is not uncommon on the various social media, to come across someone like this, someone who will make an inflammatory and/or ill-informed comment, and then defend themselves by saying that because going against popular opinion is tougher, they are the ones who are right.

Seriously, how tough is it to say ‘I was wrong, I didn’t know any better’. Its not like saying ‘whoops, my bad!’ on the internet will get you a lifetime ban. If anything, you might get a few admirers for having the balls to say that you made a mistake. Similarly, how much of a wannabe do you have to be for you to want to be contrary just for the sake of being cool. The chasm between ‘cool’ and ‘weird’ isn’t very wide, and it is called ‘pretentious’, and sadly, that is where a lot of people end up, both in real life and on the internet. On almost all major forums or online discussions, there will be at least some who will try to appear more knowledgeable and flame bait. When you find a poster who uses extreme straw logic or even insane troll logic to defend their points, who resorts to claiming everyone else is a moron for citing facts etc, well, congratulations, you have found someone who is perhaps the most annoying-self-righteous-pretentious-little…

Sorry, got carried away a bit there. Anyway, to summarize, if you meet someone like this, assume that this is a test to judge your character, and quietly ignoring these people will net you just as many points with the god of your choice as laying the smackdown on them in the most awesome way possible.

Also, if the description above seems to apply to you, then I would offer you the same advise that The Rock has given countless times:

KNOW YOU ROLE, AND SHUT YOUR MOUTH!

(Note: This incoherent rant was inspired by this post. Please read it for some further context)

Why Superman will lose to Nagraaj

I recently downloaded Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe on my Xbox, and me and my flatmates proceeded to set up and engage in awesome and improbable duels including, but not limited to, Batman vs Liu Kang, Kitana vs Catwoman, Sonya Blade vs Flash, Raiden vs Captain Marvel etc. While it was nice to see my flat mates engage in virtual combat, err, kombat with a childlike glee as they hacked, slashed, burned, gouged, strangled and tried to otherwise severely inconvenience each other’s characters, as a regular follower of DC comics, it was jarring for me to see stuff happen that would be impossible in the real world, or rather, the real world of the comics. (THERE IS NOWAY SHANG TSUNG COULD BEAT THE FLASH! NO WAY! NO WAY AT ALL!!!)

While it was understandable that the power levels of some characters would have to be changed to make the game balanced, case in point, a fully powered Captain Marvel could probably defeat the entire Mortal Kombat contingent ex Raiden by just flexing his muscles and yawning, but at the same time, it was slightly disconcerting to see someone like Catwoman actually go toe to toe with Superman. Of course, the fact that one of my flatmates was a rabid fan of Mortal Kombat and refused to listen to my well reasoned arguments on why Captain Marvel could easily defeat even Raiden, was infuriating as well, mostly because most of his arguments were based on his assertion that “Liu Kang phodu hai!”

While it is easy and correct to dismiss a person who argues for the superiority of Liu Kang over a character who is basically Superman with Magic as a charlatan with questionable morals, yet at times, some of the questions and arguments raise cannot be answered easily, simply because no one has tried to answer these questions before, and I, as a follower of both the John Constantine and Gendo Ikari school of thought, cannot let it stand. Therefore, I shall now demonstrate why Superman will lose to Nagraaj in a fight.

I shall approach this problem rationally. Nagraaj is more awesome than Superman, that is a fact. Therefore, Nagraaj has a starting advantage. Secondly, and more importantly, Nagraaj has a counter to each and every move that Superman has, and he has the one thing on his side that Superman has no defense again. Thirdly, and most importantly, I am a jingoistic elitist jerk and India won the world cup this year, therefore, Nagraaj deserves to win.

Anyway, onto the contest. For this brawl, I shall propose a barrier/barrier buster approach, whereby Superman uses his abilities for offensive purposes, while Nagraaj does the same for defense. I could, theoretically, have a more complete scenario, where both Nagraaj and Superman take turns to attack and defend, or they both battle it out in real time. Sadly, due to time constraints and me feeling really sleepy, I shall touch upon only the Supes-attacks scenario. Now, on to the main fight.

Round 1: The Heat Vision

Superman starts off by his most famous ranged attack, the heat vision. Bursts of concentrated solar power speed towards Nagraaj and strike his body. On a normal human being, the effect would be deadly, and even on a superhuman like Nagraaj, it would wreak much havoc. Steam and other hot surfaces have scalded him in the past, but this time, he stands resolute, smiling serenely. Sheetnagkumar’s ice based powers have effectively nullified the heat, and Superman’s first attack has failed without even harming a single scale on Nagraaj’s Body.

Round 2: Freeze Breath

Round two has the man of steel using his famed freeze breath, knowing that as person with reptilian powers, Nagraaj would have reptilian weaknesses as well, and low temperatures would quite effectively screw up his metabolism. Of course, Sheetnagkumar counter this attack as well, simply by absorbing the cold.

Round 3: Super Breath

With his two thermal attacks failing to have any effect, Superman switches to his super breath, attempting blow Nagraaj off his feet and finish him off. Nagraaj reacts by calling out his Nagfani Sarps and switching to his snake form. By the time the first gust of wind hits, Nagraaj is safely buried underground.

Round 4: Up close and personal

With all his long ranged attacks spent, Superman shifts gears and flies towards Nagraaj at great speed, intending to strike Nagraaj with great force to knock him out and incapacitate him. Superman is one of the fastest beings on earth, and is certainly faster than all the Indian superheroes. However, Nagraaj waits for him and uses his Ikchhadhaari power to turn into small particles. Superman passes through him without causing any damage, and manages to stop and turn around fast enough to turn the fight into a melee, a fight where Superman’s legendary super strength comes into play.

Unfortunately, this is where Superman’s legendary vulnerability to magic comes into play as well. Nagraaj blows out a small burst of his vish funkaar and Superman falls victim to his own super olfaction, and is momentary disoriented. In the time it takes Superman to recover, Nagraaj unleashes his two most destructive ikchhadhaari naags, Saudangi and Naagu. Saudangi attacks Superman’s body with her magic, while Naagu attacks his mind. Nagraaj’s own strength is of course no match for the man of steel, but Saudangi and Naagu distract Superman enough for Nagraaj to get one bite on Superman. While his Kryptonian DNA and the solar energy stored in his skin cells allows Superman to fight off the worst effects of the poison, the fact that the posion is the posion of a god means that it is still enough to incapacitate Superman. With Superman incapacitated, Saudangi easily starts channeling out Superman’s stored solar energy while Nagraaj creates a canopy of his snakes to prevent any light to reach Superman’s body, thereby depowering him.

Game, set and match.

(EDIT: I haven’t explained all the powers and their nuances in great detail as they are all canon, and anyone who reads comic books should be familiar with them. Also, I am a geek and tired and sleepy, therefore my logic makes sense. Etc.
Also, the formatting in some places is horrible, and I will, at some point of time, correct them, and more add images)

Inner Beauty - It is what meets the eye

Wikipedia describes beauty as a characteristic of a person, place, object or idea that provides a perceptual feeling of pleasure, meaning or satisfaction. Beauty is an abstract concept, and therefore, is bound to mean different things to different people. To a mathematician, an elegant proof, or to a software engineer, an elegant code, can be as beautiful as Mona Lisa. Also, different people have different ideas about what they find beautiful, for instance, to me, Dev D was a beautiful film, but for some of my best friends, it was a crass, gritty update of a classic, and the ruining of a romantic archetype that casts its shadow over Indian Cinema and Psyche. It’s a fact that different people have different standards and look for different things. Given this, is it any surprise that the idea of beauty, or for the purpose of this blog, ‘inner beauty’, means so many different things to different people.

In my childhood, I had heard time and again from preachy movies, songs and TV soaps, that real beauty is within, that it does not require make up or fancy clothes, that real beauty is skin deep, and all the female protagonist has to do to get the hero is be a good person, and eventually, the shallow lipstick wearing and cigarette smoking vamp would let go of the hero, or the hero would find her cigarette smoking utterly reprehensible and he would come to the Plain Jane heroine and the movie will end with an appropriate happily ever after. On a certain level, it does make sense that the story would take this turn. We all love rooting for the underdog, and the woman who puts hours of effort into her appearance and deportment is obviously a shallow and conniving hussy who is unworthy of our support. Plus, she smokes cigarettes, and that means she is pure evil. Therefore, we should all root for the simple girl next door whose redeeming qualities include a) being a fundamentally good person b) does not care about her looks because she is beautiful inside and c) is usually played by an actress who looks stunning even without make up.

This, of course, caused a severe dissonance when I became a young man and started observing and appreciating female beauty. Most of the girls, if not all, would put some effort into their looks and appearances. While my childhood conditioning made me search desperately and without success for a girl who eschewed the concept of applies beauty altogether, another part of me was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the girls around were putting in conscious efforts to appear easy to the eye. It could just be a case of my male gaze bias, but most of the times, I got the feeling that these girls did not consider the use of artificial beautification a crime, and the world was a better place for it. Now, granted that not all of them were as beautiful as the super hot actresses in the movies who did not wear make up, but these girls did make the effort to make themselves attractive, to make themselves beautiful, and they were beautiful because of it. They weren’t beautiful because they wore fashionable dresses, but they were beautiful because they tried to better themselves in a certain way through hard work.

Now, this might sound shallow on my part, that I appreciated the people around me solely on their physical appearances and not on the kind of person they were on the inside, and I disagree with that. I’d argue that real beauty does come from within, but in its strictest and narrowest sense, it manifests itself in the physical appearance of the person. I would argue that true inner beauty comes from a desire to be attractive, to be beautiful, not just to the outside world, but to one’s own self as well, and that includes a desire to appear pleasing to one’s own self. When a person is strong, confident and beautiful on the inside, they invariably try and make themselves appear more pleasing, not out of their own vanity, but because they want to appear pleasing to themselves. It comes from a universal desire to better yourself, to uplift yourself that all of us have, and which manifests itself stronger in some of us than the rest. These are the people who better themselves both physically, mentally and emotionally through their own will and drive for excellence, and these are the people who exhibit true inner beauty, even in their external appearances. True inner beauty is not about looking pretty without wearing make up etc. A person who looks good effortlessly is a person who just won big time at the genetic lottery, but a person who takes the effort to look good, well, hats off to them.

Coco Chanel once famously said that fashion fades, while style remains the same throughout the ages. Fashion is the outer beauty, the dresses and the makeup and the grooming and the hair-styling, while style is something that we carry within, the inner beauty that makes us who we are, no matter what we wear. Mother Teresa was beautiful, not just because she had a good heart and she worked tirelessly for the needy, but because her calmness and serenity was an aura that she carried with herself, in her walk, in her voice and in her clothes. She who took great care of other who could not fend for themselves, took great care of herself as well. Nietzsche argued that we lived in a nihilistic world, a world where reality was unkind, and that the strongest rose from amongst us on the strength of their wills, and that applies to all aspects of the human experience, including beauty. We live in an ugly, horrendous world, and people make themselves beautiful by their hard work. A person might be born with a pretty face, but he or she will attain true inner beauty only if they work on it. True inner beauty comes with hard work and great willpower and a hunger to better yourself. A person who is not born as a model or a hunk, but still tries to better themselves is a beautiful person, and appreciating a person’s effort to better themselves never made someone shallow.

Net, I’m not shallow, and girls who take the effort to make themselves look good, on behalf of all the men, we appreciate you. In the movies, you might be the vamps, but in real life, we salute you.

What makes a monster?

I just finished reading Monster, a really long, twisted and riveting manga by Naoki Urasawa. Drawing heavily from Osaku Tezuma’s MW and The Book of Revelations from the Bible, the story follows Dr. Kenzo Tenma, a Japanese neurosurgeon living in Germany. On the surface, he has a perfect life, but his disagreements with the people around him force him to re-examine his approach as a doctor and make a fateful decision one dark, story night. As is common, nay, required in such stories, that decision comes back to bite him in the ass, in the form of the titular Monster.

On the face of it, Monster starts off like any other psychological thriller, but soon spirals into an ever-darkening sordid tale of death and malice, or rather, the complete lack of malice. The Monster is swift and many faceted, and seduces, tortures, kills and brainwashes tens, if not hundreds, of people all throughout his life, and this story is as much about stopping the Monster, as it is about uncovering his past and finding out what drives him. I won’t spoil the story, and I recommend you to read it if you can (if you thought the Joker was cool, then wait till you see the destruction and utter bedlam the Monster causes).

The character of the Monster himself merits a series of blog posts, but for now, I am going to focus on the contribution of both chaos and randomness in the formation of the Monster in the book, and monsters in general. In the book, the titular Monster is a part of two scientific experiments, one devoted to eugenics, and the other to mental conditioning, or rather, brain-washing. The objectives of both the experiments were similar, to produce an ubermensch in order to bring back a golden age, and both the experiments failed terribly. This is a premise that has been covered in many other works in many other media, but interestingly, where Monster differs from them is that here, one of the scientists responsible for a horrifying experiment designed to produce emotionless super soldiers atones, or rather, corrects his mistakes, by running another, similar experiment, only this time, he does not teach the children in his care hate and competitiveness, but compassion and team work. The funny thing is, both of his experiments are equally successful. This, to my knowledge, is one of the few times someone has actually been condition to be a loving and caring person (and that someone doesn’t turn into a villain later into the story) not because of purely moralistic or religious, but as part of scientific experiment.

Both the conditioning experiments relied on two simple premises: i) all humans have capacity for great compassion and great apathy, and ii) with the correct training, it is possible to mould a person into any shape you want. Deriving directly from the above, one of the biggest questions the manga poses is if it is possible for a person whose experiences (both natural experiences in a life of freedom and controlled experiences in an institution) have driven them to a point where it is impossible for them to switch over to the other side, whether it is possible for a true Monster to become a saint, or vice versa. And if such a change is possible, what sort of an event could bring it about. This question is answered time and again in the Manga itself in the form of several primary and secondary characters: a certain Czech author, Grimmer, Pedrov, a certain German cop to name just a few, but with the case of the titular Monster, the question itself changes in a fundamental way. For all the other characters, the a fundamental event changes their way of thinking and they shift from the darkness to light, but the titular Monster, even after experiencing a truth that ordinarily would induce a crippling breakdown, does not change in his Monstrosity. He still manipulates and kills indiscriminately, but his goal changes from bringing about an apocalypse to re-creating his first act of… well read the manga to find out more.

The above in itself raises several different ‘what if’ questions. What if the revelation of the truth was done in a different way, in a different setting, would that have effected a different reaction from the Monster? What if the truth was revealed at a different point in time, would that have made a difference? What if the Monster was so far gone, that no revelation would have redeemed, or even changed him? What if the Monster was so beyond redemption, that the truth revealed could only change him, not redeem him? What if the Monster had not been a part of either, or both of the experiments, would he still have turned out this way? What if the Monster had been part of the experiment based on compassion? What if there was something irredeemable with the Monster since the beginning, and the experiments merely amplified it… etc. etc.

While these speculations are relevant only with the context of the manga, the broader questions are much more relevant in both real life and other works of art. What if Hitler had not been rejected from the art school? Would he still have become a violent megalomaniac, or would he have used art as a means of expressing his internal disquiet? And would Germany not have hurtled towards an extremist society, or would the inertia of history itself have propelled the world to another war? What if Laxman had not mutilated Supa-Nakha thus, would Ravana still have reacted the way he did? What if Narada Muni had not appeared to Kans? What if Sirius and James not tormented Severus? What if Tom Riddle’s father had actually accepted his wife and son?

While a deterministic approach based on causality can answer many of these questions to a largely satisfying extent, or at least allow us to reach a set of conclusions, there does remain a fundamental element of randomness in all these situations and characters, an element which cannot be determined solely using the information given in said situations. Very simply, that element is the question: “was there a basic malice in all these characters, a propensity to do evil, something that could not be deviated or redeemed?”

It is that, that determines what makes a monster.