Prastanam movie

I watched Telugu movie Prastanam and felt I should go out on to the road and shout, then thought, rather its a more sane to write it here. This is not a movie review.

First of all I can’t imagine that someone can make a movie like that, most of the time when I was watching this movie, I had my mouth open, whenever a song starts I used to realize that my mouth is open and my eyes were double the normal size. Except 2 songs rest all dream songs were boring as usual.

First credit goes to Direction and Screenplay, I don’t remember seeing a movie so gripping and engaging (you are free to think that I haven’t watched lot of movies). Except songs, there was not a single scene where I was able to wink my eyes. And surprisingly as I generally try to predict in other movies, I was not even thinking of predicting, even if I tried to I would have failed.

I thought may be for every scene, it would have taken months to write dialogues, because, for an ordinary dialogue writer it’s impossible to write these any earlier, or may be, in other movies they don’t use the actual dialogues written by dialogue writers. I loved every dialog by Sai Kumar and Sarwanad. Before intermission an old person sitting before fire, tells Sarwanand about Leader “Right from birth, Man burns like fire till he dies. Burns with hunger, burns with Anger, burns with Lust and Jealously. With that inner fire few burn everything they touch and grow, few others use the fire as a lamp, show light to others and grow” . After hearing this I said to myself, man! how the hell can someone write something like that? This dialogue is not delivered with high pitch or no regular Sai Kumar stuff, but still it’s really intense. If I start writing my favorite dialogues I have to write all the dialogues from the movie. But I can’t resist from writing one more of Sai Kumar's “Selfishness is the real character of humans, Selflessness is just a shield guarding it”

About the story, I just see it as a political thriller, I was more impressed about how they told the story rather than what they told. But still the way current political ground realities are shown and amount of study that went in to it is impressive. Especially about people who are loyal to Leaders and parties and how their lives get ruined for selfish leaders. When Basha enters into masjid being chased by police who tries trying to kill him, his agony of being targeted by someone who he believed for 40 years and the way it’s shown, ho man.

Who says Indian cinema lacks technical values? Prastanam should at least get one national award, provided some Hero’s mom doesn’t become Panel’s chairman. It’s sad that this movie was not a big hit and didn’t stay in multiplexes longer (may need a re-release with better publicity), but I’m sure it would have made every film maker to rethink about the way they were making movies and that can lay path for better movies.

May 27: Watched Prasthanam again yesterday, at http://www.rajshritelugu.com/Video/Prasthanam online on demand version without 4 songs (better). Again equally awesome.

Why should Sita be called Ram's wife, how about Ram being called Sita's husband

I always wonder, how come every time we talk about Sita (Goddess in Ramayan) we just say Sita, wife of Ram, why can’t it be other way calling Ram husband of Sita. May be Ram did greater deeds compared to Sita, in that case Satyabhama or Goddess Lakshmi should get that missing privilege, but that is not the case. They are just depicting the social status of women when these epics where written, there has been considerable improvement in social status and dignity for women, we have many women now who doesn't need to be named after some man, but is this improvement well distributed to all the communities? Can we continue to have half of the population being treated as inferior and continue to have them suffer?

We may think that poverty leads to more trouble for women, but according to statistics percentage of female-headed families among below poverty line are 4 more times more compared to average female-headed families. So it not just financial status of a family that is deciding the social status and independence of Women. We have women reservation bills pending for statutory bodies, will these bills help? If just sending few women to power is going help, then problem should have been solved already, as Indira Gandhi (the most dynamic Prime Minister India ever had) ruled India for 15 years, Bangladesh having ladies as both prime minister and opposition leader, most of the South Asian countries were ruled by Women. But all this didn't give women in these countries equal status to women. So woman empowerment needs to happen at a mass scale, by providing education and employment opportunities. If we can’t provide compulsory education to entire population of India, it can at least be provided to the 50%(women) of it.

India stands in the top list in case of Women trafficking, where lakhs of women are forced in to flesh trade, which makes their life hell forever. Forcing them to live in dangerous conditions, without any help, either from government or Women rights organizations. At least I have never seen any women Right Organizations showing apathy for their fellow women who are suffering in this Trafficking. Best solution for this may be to give legal status and identification to them which will stop exploitation from others.

Sexual discrimination has diminished, but still we see it in abundance, like purdah system being prevalent in parts of the country. When Shabana Azmi speaks about kids text books teaching that “Father earns for family, Mother cooks for family” we may not take it seriously, but these sort of small things creates preconceptions which can grow stronger.

India is always thought to be a land where women are worshipped, but when we look back into history it just stinks with practices like Sati, Devadasi, Purdah Systems and this list continues. But at the same time we have unending list of Women who achieved great strides here. Better education and opportunities for women can get us to better society and may be somebody won’t need to change their surname after marriage.

Where is this Going?

September 2009 was the start for the chaos and anarchy in Andhra Pradesh (AP), the month in which then Chief Minister of AP YSR died in an helicopter crash. Largest budget state in India landed in to series of unfortunate events most of them man-made actually leader-made. This is perfect example of, what happens to a country or state, when there is no strong leader. After YSR died, there was a shameless race for CM's post and ultimately, a no leader becoming CM of AP, like the way we have our Prime minister, who can easily be remote controlled by High Command.

This leadership vacuum created an opportunity for every failed leader (all those who were kept aside by YSR) to try to grab a slice of public money, thus hunger strikes were started by leaders to divide the state and another group who were trying to keep AP united, both sides have their own vested interests. One will even be forced to think that all the drama can be run by other group who didn't get a chance to grab the power in state, by creating chaos and confusion, they may try to prove that current leadership is not capable. Trying to prove something which is obvious.

Outrageously enough the so called dynamic leader ChandraBabu Naidu is silent over all this and he doesn't have a stand even when the state is burning. And funnily enough politically inexperienced Chiranjeevi took an U-turn on the state bifurcation issue. Its completely out of my logic, to think about why was central government so much interested in announcing the state split and now repenting on it. I will only be forced to think that, may be center is to trying to weaken the local parties, so that they can get to 2 party system (defacto) at the center level.

Now when everything was cooling down, one of the local news channel telecasted about a capital house's conspiracy in YSR's death, resulting in wide spread riots all over Andhra. There was no reason for this to be telecasted NOW, except if somebody conspiring to create more problems, as this was a very old news on the source website. I sincerely hope that this is not true, as, if this is true, it will prove that Indian democracy is at stake. All we can pray is that, this is just a rumor and are views of people interested in conspiracy theories. All these events are making business houses going away from AP, Telugu people are shooting on their own feet. Its better to have a strong leader even if he is bad instead of being led by no leader.

With all these events happening there is only one person suffering "COMMON MAN"

Racial attacks on Indians

Today again one more student from India was attacked in Australia and was fatally injured. Again the same story starts were in External affairs ministry condemns the attacks and saying India will take against the attacks on Indians. Life of each and every human being is equally important and loss of life is always sad. 

While the entire media is talking about the attacks that happened in Australia and people are sitting in their living rooms and ENJOYING the news, there are Dozens of people in north India dying of cold wave, I don't understand how are these deaths not so important for both media and people. Its a shame for entire country that we cant even have enough clothing and protection for our poor to keep them alive from cold. We have long back stopped seeing all the human lives as equal or else may be there wont be people dying of hunger or lack of clothing in this country.

Instead of condemning the attacks and doing nothing, government in India should provide better education and employment opportunities which will make students not to go out of this country and a live a secondary citizen life in other countries. We Indians have the least right to talk about Racism as we discriminate our own people and need to correct that before we point our finger towards others.

When MNS attacks Biharis or North Indians call North Eastern Indians as Chinkkis, that is the real shame and racism, which needs to be pointed finger at. We don't care about stopping all this, but we want Aussies to stop attacking Indians, of course even I want to ask them to stop all this, but before I ask them, I want to make sure that i'm not discriminating my own people as there is no point in being wrong myself and asking others not to do that mistake. When there are enough jobs and resources for everyone there wont be any conflict, Bangladeshis can come to India or Indians can go to Australia and live happily. But when we lose our jobs and recession comes in, that's when we start feeling the pinch, think that Bangladeshis or some other non locals are taking away our jobs. This is one of the reasons Andhra Pradesh is also boiling for more than a month now, as people of different regions thinking that resources are being looted by others.

May be solution is not in discriminating and attacking, but by working together towards creating more resources and jobs which can feed and protect everyone on earth or else day is not far when everyone becomes intolerant and attack each other for basic needs.