RIFLE RANGE BOY

Samantar (Parallel, Marathi, 2021) Season 1&2, Mx Player. We understand that life has its ups and downs. Sometimes, the downside drags us so severely that it buries us in the muck so entrenched that it becomes impossible to wash off. Occasionally, choices made at the spur of the moment plunges us into such miseries. If only there was a way to identify these times when these crucial decisions had to be made. Our ancestors came to suggest ways to predict bad times and possibly avoiding bad decisions. Palm reading and astrology charts based on one's birthdate and times form a crucial Indian way of soothsaying. It is believed that celestial bodies in space affect events, behaviour and outcome of events. Hence, the importance of auspicious times in officiating life-changing events. What if someone is given hints of events of the near future? Would he be able to avert maladies, or would he still be subject to the same path he is destined to follow? Is knowing one's fate a way to ...

Court (Hindi, Marathi, Gujerati, English; 2014) Screenplay, Director: Chaitanya Tamhane I remember a joke someone told recently.  There was once a 75-year-old man who was brought to a magistrate. The spreadsheet showed that the accused was charged with molesting a 17-year-old girl. The magistrate looked at the 75-year-old and asked, "Why? At this age, why all these? A 17-year-old?" The accused replied, "Sir, I was also 17 when the incident happened!" That pretty much explains how slow the legal machinery works and how farcical some of the red tapes are. Sorry to keep you waiting! Doctors are humans too, they need to eat. The men in robes (and women) argue about the most frivolous point and drag their feet to put an end to the misery that the legal system places on the Joe Public.  For them, it is another day in paradise, appearing important and flaunting their verbosity. It is another day of loss of income and the uncertainty of the unknown for the average Joe. The ...

The Disciple (Marathi, 2021) Netflix Life is easy with eyes closed, accepting whatever we 'see'. However, for someone who questions, examines and introspects his every move or feeling, life can be a very tedious affair. The indecisiveness and guilt are just too much to bear. The answers available to us are just too ambivalent and can be interpreted however we want to. The more one thinks about it, the more confused he becomes in choosing the desired path. Probably that is why we all look for shortcuts. We look upon those who have been there and done that with reverence. We hope we can use their wisdom to manoeuvre through the options available to us. It is easier this way, leaving life's big decisions to what the elders preach. If only there were a 'to do' list that answers all our queries. Even then, the answers will be not so forthcoming. See how 'man made' law need regular amendments all the time? So how is it that the 'divine decrees' stands the ...

Cycle (Marathi, 2017) A Malay proverb goes, ' gajah mati meninggalkan tulang, harimau mati meninggalkan belang, manusia mati meninggalkan nama'. Literally translated it meant elephants die leaving bones, tigers leave their stripes and men leave their good name. Essentially it denotes that a legacy of a person is his deeds, not his materialistic assets. It may all be make-believe and fabled narration - that the world is so good where it provides for everybody. Your deeds are the only that matter. That is the only thing that is remembered of you are your virtues. The material representations of you are not you but the mere reminders of your existence. The movie set in 1958 rural India. Perhaps the innocence of Man that existed in the yesteryears is just a forgotten relic of the past. Modern Man is more self-centred and suspicious of the person beside him. Money has pervaded into everyone's life that it supersedes doing good or the right thing. Maybe somewhere in the corner of...

Panipat, The Great Betrayal (Hindi; 2019) Many post-colonial nations are eager to re-write their histories. Previously their colonial masters painted a story of their land as seen from their jaundiced eyes, in keeping with their narration as being the saviour and liberators. Now, after years of accepting the past history as the gospel truth, the natives have arisen from long slumbers. They want to re-write the baloney. There is an urgent need to re-look at our history books. Indians complain that their history books are only filled with a dramatic depiction of impoverished India where the liberators from the West, rose to their occasion to illuminate wisdom and a sense of purpose. Their glorious pasts are conveniently whitewashed. It seems that even the narration about India's most prominent kingdoms like Vijayanagara, Paalavi and the Pandava Dynasties are conspicuously absent from the history textbooks. Bollywood is trying to patch the gap conveniently blanked out of histo...

Sairat (Wild, Marathi; 2016) The Marathi cinema has the reputation of producing the first-ever full-length Indian film in 1913. Honouring the doyens of the yesteryears, the Government of India gives out an annual award to an icon of Indian cinema for lifetime achievement, named after the director of this movie, Dadasaheb Phalke. Unfortunately, over the years, it lost out to its glamorous, world acclaimed and well-funded cousin, Hindi films of Bollywood. Of late, Marathi films are making a come back of sorts after the Government of Maharashtra made it tax exempted. Many Bollywood actors and directors are jumping the bandwagon to dwell on the craze. 'Sairat' is the highest grossing Marathi film and is the first to cross the ₹50 crore mark. The story is nothing spectacular. It is a tale teenage love of members of contrasting classes (a fisherman's son and a landowner's daughter). The lovebirds are hellbent on being with fulfilling their youthful desires despite...