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Let a thousand taste buds bloom
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Given a good director and an original storyline, how many of us care whether the picture is Assamese or Japanese, asks C.K. MEENA
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IF YOU offered me a choice between expensive, gourmet ice cream and warm, homemade sheera bursting with raisins and cashew nuts and redolent of ghee, which do you suppose I'd go for? One look at my mug shot should indicate that, at my age, comfort food would most appeal to me. The younger urban lot, however, increasingly prefers the readymade to the homemade. You can see children, home after a hard day at school, pushing aside the uppittu and laadu and agitating for instant noodles and chocolate wafers. If you threaten to starve them they'll simply take their pocket money to the corner shop and acquire a stockpile of polychromatic chemicals disguised as tea-time snacks.
But homemade isn't always the healthiest. The homemaker could turn out to be a dreadful cook and her sheera might resemble low-grade, mass-produced kesari bath.
The Kannada movie industry — what? You mean you didn't know I've been talking about the cinema owners' strike all this while? Why, it's as plain as the nose on your face that — I'd better stop speaking in riddles. Trying to coerce the janata to watch what they shun is as futile as trying to make them eat what they shun. A prisoner or a soldier may have no option, but so long as you're neither, nobody can prevent you from picking what tickles your taste buds.
If I could rustle up a mob I would force every theatre in Bangalore to screen award-winning, sub-titled movies. But then every theatre would grind to a halt in two days. Short of holding a gun to people's heads and taping back their eyelids, you cannot make them view what is disagreeable to them. What's good isn't necessarily what's popular, and vice versa. Cinema owners are slaves to the pitiless dictates of the box office, screening anything that draws people in large numbers. And people do not enter a movie hall to espouse the cause of a language. They want to be entertained. If it means that they have to pay three times the cost of a Kannada movie ticket for a Hindi or English hit they'll do so if they believe they're getting their money's worth.
Even as you read this, hundreds of citizens are borrowing illegal VCDs of the latest releases, or remaining content with re-runs on TV.
Now, I am not for one moment suggesting that pictures in languages other than Kannada belong to the realm of high art. There is a lot of junk floating around, and junk tastes equally foul whether it is produced in Hollywood or Bollywood. In the same manner that Hollywood has threatened, if not entirely replaced, the indigenous cinema of many countries, Hindi pictures have, over the past several decades, muscled into domains occupied by other Indian languages. This is more easily done in States where the local film industry is moribund or non-existent. The monoliths have huge marketing budgets, too, which work in their favour. But there's precious little we can do to right the balance. We could, however, put up a stiff fight by making low-budget, high-quality films that can attract audiences. Moratoriums solve nothing.
On paper, it sounds almost plausible: give moviegoers no choice but Kannada and they'll buckle under the pressure. No choice? Are you serious? Even as we speak, hundreds of citizens are borrowing illegal VCDs of the latest releases, or remaining content with re-runs on TV. Speaking for myself, my most recent Sunday viewing was a pirated DVD of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 (or "11/9" as we Indians should call it, given our norm of writing dates). I know of staunch movie fans who are prepared to travel to Hosur or even Chittoor to see their favourite heroes on the big screen.
But we've overlooked something vital here: how can language be of any consequence when we talk of Indian films? We are quite accustomed to seeing pictures in languages that are not our mother tongue. "I don't watch Kannada pictures because I don't understand Kannada" is an excuse more stale than last week's holigé. This is a visual medium, have you forgotten? The last Kannada film I watched was Kasaravalli's Dweepa (with no sub-titles) and although the Dakshina Kannada dialect proved difficult at times, in no way did it impair comprehension. I couldn't follow a word of the Sri Lankan Tamil argot in Maniratnam's Kannaththil Muththamittal but that didn't detract from my enjoyment of the moving tale. And now the time has come to talk about my Hindi. I spent my formative years steadily cursing my way through "second language" classes. My vocabulary is as dismal as my pronunciation. Even now, if I stumblingly begin to say "Gandhiji hamara desh ka... " I am paralysed by doubt. Could it be hamare or hamari? Is it ka, ke or ki? But when Dil Chahta Hai appeared on my TV screen one afternoon, I found myself unable to switch the channel. And although I went to see Company mainly to indulge my Vivek Oberoi-crazy teenaged companion, I must admit it was compelling.
Some of you are perhaps like me: give me a good director and an original storyline and I don't care whether the picture is Assamese or Japanese, I'll go watch. If language continues to be a thorny issue, theatres could perhaps screen silent films. Silence, after all, has no language.
Send your feedback to ckmeena@rediffmail.com
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