The School

As promised, I will veer away from governed, government and governance, at least for this post. I remember stating previously that this post would be about my grandma or the color of rose. So let me write about the rose….. The rose is clearly non political entity, or is it? Don’t the leftists claim the rose for their own, deep red being their birthright (red as a rose, red as blood, red as their flag)? And wait, so do the rightists (whether rose or lotus what’s the difference.What’s in the category; a lotus, even if garbed in the mantle of a rose, still smells right) and the centrists (the hand that holds the rose rules the nation). Err…. I think I better stick with talking about my grandma.

I have a grandma, actually I had two (what’s new, you may ask; give me a minute, patience pays) but one passed away. She is old (as are all grandmas), the one who is alive I mean, and pious (as they better be)…. Looks like this endeavor is also turning out to be a squib; I better write something else before I lose you, the lone audience that I have.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Dark clouds of ignominy threaten to engulf my already subdued writing. And in these times of desperation, let me turn to my age old favorite – to appear sophisticated through snide comments about passable works in the world of cinema. Let me talk about one such tryst that I had with mediocrity over the weekend.

Paathshaala. The school. When I was told that the cast ensemble included Nana Patekar and Shahid Kapoor, I expected the experience to be memorable. And with Ayesha Takia as the female lead, the male audience is bound to be satiated, or so I thought.

It started off well enough – a close up shot of Shahid’s smiling eyes, a “Krantikari” dialogue and you thought you had a sure one. But the movie turned out to be good only in promises. It was a promising theme, a promising cast, and might have turned out to be a promising act. But it fell flat. Leaving me wondering, what is it that went wrong? For at the heart of the answer lies the answer to one of my favorite questions “What makes a classic?” The cast was good; the acting insipid. The theme was noble; the scripting was by a moron. The intention was altruistic; the direction was pedestrian.

Worst of all, there was no storyline. Cinema is a nuanced form of storytelling, and to tell a story you need to have one. No amount of ad spend, eye-candy and star power can replace a story – however flimsy it may be. Yet this seems to have been neglected. Did the director want to highlight the crass commercialization of education? Or was it his intention to show the nobility of the profession? Did he intend to highlight the importance of individual character? Some questions are meant to remain unanswered.

The plot meandered about so aimlessly that the director was forced to reiterate the roles of the characters time and again. Except for that, I see no other reason why a geography teacher should be shown walking around the school lobby with a globe, all alone. And for a movie that claims to portray education, heaven alone knows why there was no depiction of teacher teaching the taught. Going by the movie, one would believe that all that the profession of teaching involves is jostling with fellow teachers, principal and management.

One supposes that the think-tank behind this movie consists of a bunch of socialist bigots. Commercialization of education, in itself, is an ugly can of worms; there are so many real issues that dog such ventures that you do not have to show the pseudo-"educators" as misanthropes. By trying to convert varying shades of grey to distinct black and white, the movie does injustice to the theme it claims to support. You can take your self righteous pedestal and castigate your capitalistic opponents to eternal damnation even without showing them as people who profit openly from a child’s misery; no sane human will do that, more so because it would hurt him (I meant financially) more than anyone else.

Despite all its shortcomings, the movie had good intentions; and that counts for a lot now a days. It may not have been realistic, yet there were a few moments where you got nostalgic, where the nobility of the teaching profession uplifts you…. And before you get carried away, the movie, with a jarringly awkward narration, moves forward, and you once again curse the stars, sun and moon.

My take on the movie – do not watch it, even if it comes for free. I think its time for the cast and crew of the movie to go to a Pathshaala – a real one this time. However, if you have to watch some movie or the other, choose it over Phoonk 2; I have heard people refuse to believe that the movie they just slept through belonged to the horror genre. Dear makers of Phoonk and its successors, do not go to any sort of gatherings, I am forever scared witless by the thought that ideas could be contagious.