Play the game that people play?

Lucky Baskhar (Telugu; 2024)

Director: Venky Atluri

There are different rules for other players. The rich have it good. The system ensures that they stay wealthy. Money begets money. The law provides that the bulk of wealth remains within the confines of those with them. There are different rules for other players. The rich have it good. The system ensures that they stay wealthy. Money begets money. The law provides that the bulk of wealth remains within the confines of those who possess it. The legal system makes justice swifter for all the money that can be bought. The middle class stays put in a self-imposed restrictive loop. The middle class is trapped in a cocoon by concocting rules of morality as well as divine and social justice. Grabbing an obscene wealth escapes them and can only be an unattainable dream. 

The middle class is often used as a scapegoat to show society that the system is fair. By periodically using them as sacrificial lambs, society sets an example to others of what can happen if they flaunt the law.

The word scapegoat has an interesting origin. It comes from the Book of Leviticus. In the Jewish ritual of Yom Kippur, a goat is symbolically burdened with the people's sins and released into the wilderness. This was a practice of atonement. In modern life, the poor are left high and dry to sanitise the wrongdoings of the community's upper echelon. 

Gone are the days when people are judged by their virtues. Currently, man is assessed by the amount of wealth he amasses. It does not matter the means it was acquired. Once money jiggles in one's pocket, everything and anything can be sanitised. A middle-class person is no longer middle-class. He springboards to a different level and acquires a new set of rules. He is viewed as a success story. Society, hellbent on punishing him earlier, will now bend backwards to protect him. Anything friends in higher places cannot help; money will do that.

Lucky Baskhar is an interesting movie with twists at every corner. It is a make-believe story that shows how one can beat the system once one learns the trade of the game. Baskhar is a low-ranking bank teller who is springboarded to the post of Assistant General Manager after a minor scandal in the bank. 

Little does he realise he is a pawn in the big boys' game of interbank loans, middleman brokers, share market rigging, and swindling the Reserve Bank of India. Baskhar cannot be a hero and expose everyone as his good name is also dragged into the muck. Baskhar, too, has his own economic woes and pressures from his family, father, siblings and in-laws. So, how does he kill two birds with one stone? Baskhar devises a complicated web of deceit that beats the big boys at their own game, solves his financial woes and gives everyone a run for their money.

The viewers always like to watch the little men whip up the powerful man at his own trade. This is it. The audience will leave feeling satisfied as if they had watched 'Catch Me If You Can'!

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The Messiah?

Kalki 2898 AD (Telegu; 2024)

Director: Nag Ashwin

Why is it that every culture predicts a nihilistic future where annihilation is the final outcome? Almost all paint a picture of chaos where morality is down the drain, virtue becomes an alien feature, and pandemonium is king.

According to Hindu culture, time is cyclical in Nature. A time unit, chaturyoga, lasts 8.64 million years. It is divided into four yugas—Satya, Treta, Dwarpa, and Kali. We are in Kaliyuga, which commenced in 3102 BCE and will last for 432,000 years. Each yuga depicts further deterioration of human behaviour. Like the four seasons on Earth will repeat indefinitely. By the end of Kaliyuga, human behaviour will be despicable, with total anarchy and chaos, reaching the point of entropy. Decoiry, emphasis on external beauty, false divinity, fakery, greed, and the list go on about what can be expected by the end of Kaliyuga. Nature would need to reboot and restart the system, returning to Satya, the golden age. Rinse and repeat.

It is believed that the end of the Kurukshetra War marked the commencement of Kaliyuga. With so much disorder (adharma) ongoing, with so much breaking of conventions and ethics, it is said that Vishnu's 8th avatar, Krishna, manifested to set rules for mankind so the effects of Kaliyuga could be minimised. 

It is prophesied that Vishnu's final avatar, the tenth, will appear at the end of Kali-yuga to set order once again and pave the universe into the next yuga, Satya-yuga, the golden age.

In the Hindu scripture, eight icons are booned (cursed) with immortality. Besides Hanuman, Vyasa and Markandeya, Ashwattama was cursed by Krishna to roam the jungles, deformed with wounds festering with blood and pus for 3,000 years. For the context, Ashwattama was Drona's son. Drona was the archery teacher to both Pandavas and Kauravas. Because of politics, Drona and Ashwattama fought for the side of the Kauravas. Krishna was the charioteer for Arjuna, the principal warrior of the Pandavas. 

As dirty as war can be, the Pandavas tricked Drona into believing that his son, Ashwattama, had died in the war. Drona's temporary lapse of concentration cost him dearly. In actual fact, an elephant named Ashwattama was killed. The angry Ashwattama went on a rampage, which eventually led to him attempting to kill Pandava's last heir, Uttara's unborn child, Arjuna's grandchild. Hence, the curse.

This is where the movie starts. Six thousand years into Kali-yuga, 2898 CE, the world is dystopian, with Kashi being the only 'civilised' place left standing. Kashi is ruled by a despot harbouring serum from pregnant mothers for youth rejuvenation. I do not think Shrimad Bhagavadam describes things as these. The storytellers have taken the artistic liberty to draw in viewers. The rebels have gone underground at Shambala. One of the mothers in the incubation pods carries Kalki in her womb. But the extraction of serum proves fatal. Hence, the rush to save the day. We can deduce this from the fact the mother's name is Sumathi. 

Ashwattama springs into action. A bounty hunter who catches anyone and anything for a fee is also on the trail. Unbeknownst to the bounty hunter, Bhairava (a reference to Shiva's incarnate. controller of time) is a reincarnation of Karna. The movie is obviously just a teaser to one of many more sequels. 

Ashwattama was cursed with immortality for aiming 
a celestial weapon at Abhimanyu's pregnant wife to
kill the Pandava lineage. In his defence, he was not
taught how to disarm the weapon.

With all the CGIs, this is undoubtedly a rare attempt of Indian cinema to create science fiction using Indian mythology. With no local templates to follow, it is evident that the makers got the prototypes of their props from Star Wars. 

Is it a coincidence that most civilisations and religions present a world entirely of sin and debauchery, leading to the annihilation of the world? And a saviour always comes on a white horse. What do you know? Kalki is said to ride a white horse, too. Why are there so many overlaps between Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic traditions? The story of a newborn escaping royal capture happened in the cases of Jesus and Krishna. Moses and Karna were placed in a waterproofed basket in the river to be adopted by someone else. 

One possible explanation goes back to the time after Nebuchadnezzar's army destroyed the First Temple of Jerusalem. The Israelites were taken captive and brought to Mesopotamia as slaves. There, intermingling with the local populace before King Cyrus the Great brought them back to Israel, the early Jews added tales common to Hinduism to their pantheon of stories.

(P.S. 2898 CE is long before the end of Kali-yuga if it lasts 432,000. It seems too premature for Kalki to be born.)

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Brutally funny?

Bhama Kalabam (Telegu, The Dance of Fate; 2022) 
Written and Directed by: Abimanyu 

I learned two things from this movie. 

Increasingly, crime is a funny business. This film falls under the genre of comedic crime thriller. The Indian cinemas have graduated from fake fighting with comedians pouncing on villains with their most hilarious bumbling moves. Now, it involves quirky investigators or their blundering assistants. Violence is a necessary mainstay, as, after all, it is a crime drama. So, nitty gritty grizzly details of the killing, striking the jugular and bundling a dead body into a suitcase are accepted as the most natural thing to do. Get a 13+ rating, and everything is kosher. Do not question dragging dead weight around with ease and the ability to keep a deadpan face after committing a heinous crime. If you pass all that, you should, as it is a comedy, remember, then you will enjoy this movie. 

Filmed during the pandemic, the moviemakers managed to pull through by confining the filming area within a housing colony and the street surrounding it. The effects of movement restriction are hardly noticeable. Despite a few flaws here and there, the film is enjoyable overall. 

The other thing I learnt from this movie is about Febergé Eggs. Not many people realise that the Russian Empire has its own stories of gory and glory. With ferocious leaders like Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great (who was terrible), Peter III and Nicholas II, they have their skirmishes with the Tartars, indulgences and opulence. In the late 19th century, at the heights of their Empire, only rivalled by the British, royal jewellers made bejewelled Easter eggs for the Czars to amuse their spouses. 

About 69 such eggs were made around St Petersburg, and 52 surviving eggs are exhibited in museums worldwide. It has come to signify the heights of opulence and is worth a fortune. 

In this film, one such egg, on display in a museum in Calcutta, is stolen. While admiring the loot, the blooming thieves dropped the egg off their vehicle. The egg lands right smack into a lorry transporting thousands of chicken eggs. The truck heads to a warehouse. 

Their leader is livid. 

Anupama, a YouTuber, a wife and a mum, has too much time on her hands. Between caring for her family, she manages to find time to be a busybody to mind the businesses of her neighbours. 

After exposing one of the neighbour's husband's affairs, she gets into trouble with the residents' committee. Instead of thanking Anupama, the wife of the fornicator, sides with him when he fakes a heart attack. Anupama gets a warning to mind her own business. 

Curiosity got the better of her when she thought she saw another resident harming his wife. When Anupama goes to investigate, she faces the thief who lost the Feberge egg. He had tracked the egg to that unit. In a scuffle, Anupama kills the intruder. That starts the cat-and-mouse affair of hiding the body, the discovery of CCTV footage, the police, the leader of the thieves and the rush to find the elusive Fabergé Egg. Amongst all these, in the background, is an aloof pastor who has heard in his childhood of a particular egg handed to believers by Mother Mary at the time of Cruxification of the promise that Jesus will arise from death. 

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Remember the time?

Baahuballi 2 (The Conclusion, 2017; Telugu)

My friend was understandably excited when the news of its release and its phenomenal smashing of records of sorts for a Tollywood production. He was over the moon as the news had made it to the desktops of the BBC World Service TV.

After making quite an impression with the first instalment, I felt that this film is quite a letdown. The awe factor seems missing. There is only so much of long shots one can take of the set to impress us on gargantuan portions of the wealth and power of Sivagami and her Mahishmati kingdom. We totally get it. The wide angle aerial shots of CGI-enhanced castles, beasts and savage battle scenes are too many by far. They are only so many flying tackles one can stomach. There is a limit to human imagination. Ok, this is a fantasy film set in medieval India when they were the richest nation on the planet with the intellect beyond yonder and military prowess to match, but stringing three arrows fro a bow and aiming them simultaneously at three targets? And that too by a member of the fairer sex? Hey, this only shows that Bharat was far ahead of its times in gender equality and women empowerment. In BB2, a Queen  (Sivagami, Ramya Krishnan) is the ruling monarch of the kingdom in hot pursuit. The bride to the Prince is also no pushover!

Movies like Baahuballi seem to be sending the right vibes to the citizens of the country at the most opportune time. With the euphoria of a confident and PR friendly Prime Minister who appears to be doing all the right things to stimulate the economy, with a past President who was part of the mega-space project which made space travel much like Airasia - economical and feasible, with neighbours who have fallen into failed state status and no longer posing a security risk, this feel-good movie would only invoke the memories of a once Great India and the zest the blow the ember of making India great again!

Baahuballi has its own charm just like 'Tom and Jerry' and 'The Road Runner' have their strong points. It has its own plus point. Many humanistic values practised by early dwellers of the Indus Valley on power management, stratification of society, the impermanence of human life are illustrated here. Life is a struggle between doing the right thing and the moral thing.  Just following orders may not be the correct thing after all. History, as we know it, is a sanitised version of events that were paved with blood, gore, tears, carnage, blackmail, deceit and death as scribed by the victors.