South Asia Daily

On Hindi Diwas

This is coming from someone who has been a passionate admirer, promoter and practitioner of Hindi for decades. In fact, I was the first one to start an entire Hindi literary portal in 2000 along with one for Spanish and one for English. The plan was to add all languages eventually but money upended it.

भारत में और भी भाषाएँ हैं. उनका भी तो अपना अपना दिवस हो.

यह क्या बात हुई की एक भाषा और बाकी सब तालियाँ बजाएं. 

The other day I was invited to a webinar about Hindi. When I mentioned purely as a matter of fact that my mother tongue is Gujarati, one panelist had the temerity to tell me "आप को हिंदी गर्व से बोलनी चाहिए."

मैंने कहा, "मैं जो भी भाषा बोलता हूँ बस बोलता हूँ. उस में गर्व की बात नहीं है. आप क्यूँ न सिर्फ एक वाक्य गुजराती में बोल के दिखाइए."

It is this petty linguistic chauvinism that irritates me; this morphing of a broad cultural India into a narrow Hindi India.

Hindi is a truly great language but it is not India. India is all its languages and dialects.

Clusterfuck of carbon dioxide

Two stories underline the clusterfuck of carbon dioxide being unleashed in our atmosphere as a result of climate change and global warming. One is, of course, the raging wildfires in California, Oregon and Washington and the other, which are far more consequential, are the wildfires that have erupted through the Arctic Circle.

Reading a story about the Arctic wildfires in Nature offers a sobering reminder how forces of nature from a variety of sources could upend civilization as we know it. “Wildfires blazed along the Arctic Circle this summer, incinerating tundra, blanketing Siberian cities in smoke and capping the second extraordinary fire season in a row. By the time the fire season waned at the end of last month, the blazes had emitted a record 244 megatonnes of carbon dioxide — that’s 35% more than last year, which also set records. One culprit, scientists say, could be peatlands that are burning as the top of the world melts,” Nature’s Alexandra Witze reports.

“Peatlands are carbon-rich soils that accumulate as waterlogged plants slowly decay, sometimes over thousands of years. They are the most carbon-dense ecosystems on Earth; a typical northern peatland packs in roughly ten times as much carbon as a boreal forest. When peat burns, it releases its ancient carbon to the atmosphere, adding to the heat-trapping gases that cause climate change,” the story says.

This vicious carbon cycle poses a serious existential threat. The carbon stored in the Arctic peatlands constitutes nearly 50% of the global amount. As global warming thaws the Arctic peatlands, the carbon in the atmosphere will increase which in turn will trap more heat from the sun and then the loop continues. Climate scientists are describing this as “alarming” even though the word has lost much of its sting.

I strongly recommend you read the Nature story in full to understand how Earth makes no concession once a damaging process has begun. It will reach its logical conclusion even if it means wiping some of us out. Earth, like the universe, owes us sentient beings nothing. They are not obliged to mollycoddle us. Everything eventually is incidental to Nature’s forces which do what they do without any particular regard for the damage they might cause. Remember that.

Vinoba Bhave In The Time Of Land Acquisition

Vinoba Bhave

Vinoba by MC

Today marks the 125th birth anniversary of Vinoba Bhave. To commemorate, I republish a post I wrote on March 18, 2015. 

March 18, 2015

Vinoba Bhave (September 11,1895-November 15, 1982) is a very prominent presence at the Gandhi Ashram here in Ahmedabad. With the current political ferment in New Delhi over the Narendra Modi government’s land acquisition policy, where farmers’ consent to their lands being acquired is the main bone of contention, Bhave’s life seems fictional.

While waiting for the shoot to be set up at the Ashram yesterday for my interview with Dr. Tridip Shurud, a well-known Gandhi and Narsinh Mehta scholar, who also happens to be the director of the Sabarmati Ashram Preservation and Memorial Trust, I began thinking about Bhave.

Arguably one of Gandhi’s most consequential followers, Vinoba was an extraordinary figure whose was, in many ways, a uniquely Indian story. He set out for a life as a Himalayan hermit. As part of that quest his first stop was Varanasi in early 1916. Newspapers then there were full of reports about a man called Mohandas Gandhi and his defining speech at the newly founded Benaras Hindu University. He sought a meeting with Gandhi and subsequently met him in June of that year. That changed his life and put him firmly on a lifelong mission to perfect non-violence as a tool for social transformation.

His chosen tool of transformation through non-violence was ‘Bhoodan’ (Bhoo meaning land and dan meaning donate) or land gift. The idea was exquisitely simple yet enormously difficult. Using the power of his personal morality, mass public contact and the essential goodness of people’s hearts he would make the landed voluntarily gift tracts of land for the landless millions of Indians. Vinoba believed that along with air and water land too was a natural human right. But he also knew that it was far more difficult to part with than the other two.

During a meeting with the disenfranchised and landless people of the village of Pochampalli in Andhra Pradesh he found out that barely 80 acres of land could change their lives. He did not know how to get them the 80 acres. It was then that a local landowner, Ram Chandra Reddy said he could gift 100 acres. That set the stage for what turned out to be a remarkable movement. Starting September 12, 1951 he walked thousands of miles throughout India for 13 years exhorting large landowners to donate pieces of land for the landless across the country.

According to Bhave’s official website over 4.1 million acres of land were gifted as part of his Bhoodan movement. The actual land distributed was about 1.2 million acres with over 1.8 million acres being found unfit. The remainder was perhaps never donated. Even if it was just 1.2 million acres of land, it is quite an accomplishment for a frail, barely clad, man to walk the lengths and breadths of the country and getting people to donate something for which massive wars have been fought.

At a time when the country is discussing fair ways to acquire land from farmers for infrastructural development, Bhave’s is an exceptional story. To me it is also strikingly cinematic and not in the least because of his unusual presence. It is a great movie waiting to be made.

It is not as if I have forgotten my mother, Zini

याद तो उन्हें करें जिन्हें भूले हों--MC

It is not as if I have forgotten my mother, Zini. It is just that I don’t say often enough that I remember her.

This morning I want to say I do remember her a great deal. It is quite remarkable that with so many of Snehlata’s (that’s her name) memories, there is a song attached. Many of these songs are free floating appendages not specific to any situational memory.

For instance, there was a song that Zini (that’s her affectionate name) sang for no particular reason. That is something I have inherited from her unlike any of my three siblings, one of whom, Trilochan, is no more.

That song, I started singing this morning for no reason at all and that triggered mother’s memory.

It is from the 1960 movie Ghunghat written wonderfully by Shakeel Badayuni and composed superbly by Ravi. I find that these days so many songs that I randomly recall turn out to have been composed by Ravi.

Mother sang the song immortalized by the inevitable Lata Mangeshkar rather week. Zini had a much deeper voice and I remember she used to sang it in a lower octave. So here is to Zini again.

 

Whoa! Is all I can say

When the universe was a little more half its current age, which would be seven billion years ago, a gravitational shockwave left two colliding black holes. The collision or merger produced an entity with a mass 142 times that of our Sun. One solar mass is 1.989 multiplied by 10 followed by 30 zeroes kilograms or 330,000 times the mass of Earth.

On May 21, 2019, that gravitational shockwave from that particular collision reached Earth after traveling 150 billion trillion km.

Are you still there? I ask because the scale is so beyond comprehension.

If you are into trivial earthly matters, this may not interest you at all. It does me because, well, it just does. It is a great escape from the drudgery of existence. It does not alter my life in any everyday sense other than reassuring me yet again everything is just futile.

I do not know what I can do with that information other than just marveling ceaselessly at the scale of the universe. Think about the fact that the gravitational wave left 2.5 billion years before even our solar system, therefore us, were even in existence. Who would have thought that such a staggering time lapse later there would be a planet like Earth on which there would be life which would evolve into us, among whom there would be a group of people called scientists who would construct a detector called the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) which would detect this particular signal?

Whoa! Is all I can say.

Revisiting Richard Gere at 71

Richard Gere

Actor Richard Gere turned 71 yesterday, which for a Buddhist like him and unbeliever like me means nothing in particular. However, for the purposes of this blog it is as good an excuse as any to carry an old interview of mine with the Hollywood A-lister. I met Gere in McLeod Ganj in Himachal Pradesh in India in April, 1996. The interview took place in ‘Kashmir Cottage’, the home of the Dalai Lama’s younger brother. I remember it to be a crisp Himalayan morning with endless miles of mountains shrouded in what seemed like a velvety blue-green cloak of pine trees. Gere was amiability itself. My (now former) wife Kesumi happened to be with me during the meeting. I introduced her and got on with the conversation.

Next day, as Kesumi and I went loafing around in McLeod Ganj, we bumped into Gere. An effusive greeting later, Gere turned to Kesumi and said in mock seriousness and fully feigned dreaminess, “We can’t keep meeting like this.” A laughter was had by all three before moving on. Here is the interview in its original Q and A format. Those interested in getting involved or contributing to The Gere Foundation, visit here.

I have not carried any picture of Gere because I have not bought any. In any case, many of us know what he looks like.

April 26,1996

By Mayank Chhaya

McLEOD GANJ —

In the two-street bazaar of this Himalayan hamlet chances are that Hollywood star Richard Gere would walk past you unobtrusively.

Gere, who is among the most high profile supporters of Tibet and a keen student of Tibetan Buddhism, visits here every year for about three weeks to continue with his “learning of the soul.” Since his first meeting with the Dalai Lama in 1982, he has become the most vocal Hollywood campaigner against the Chinese “repression and genocide” in Tibet and “systematic annihilation”of its people and culture. He holds forth on Tibet and Tibetans passionately and upholds India as their “best friend” in the world.

Gere spoke to India Abroad in an interview at Kashmir Cottage, the residence of the Dalai Lama’s brother overlooking endless miles of pine trees.

Excerpts from the interview:

Q. What is it that attracts you to Buddhism?

A. Its fearlessness. You are not afraid of questioning anything in Buddhism. Most philosophical systems start with a series of givens and build an argument on that. In Buddhism there are no givens. That is the only way you can find the root ground of consciousness. It is a very practical system which is emotionally and intellectually sound. It speaks to all ages. It speaks the basic truth about the mind.

Q. Why do you espouse Tibet’s cause?

A. It is a valid cause. They are people who need friends. There are very few people who stand up for the Tibetans. The movement has been nonviolent. I think all nonviolent movements should be supported in all possible ways. There is repression and genocide taking place there. Those who have access to the media should talk about it.

Q. What happened when you first met the Dalai Lama?

A. That was in 1982 in Dharamsala. I had been a student of Zen Buddhism before that. I did not know much about Tibetan forms at all. I was very nervous about meeting him. But he made me feel comfortable at once. That is the sign of a great and humble man.

He introduced himself as an ordinary human being and nothing else. He did not know who I was, but his brother had told him I was an actor. He asked me when I act angry in movies, do I actually feel angry or when I act crying do I actually cry. Then he told me that the illusory nature of the emotions that an actor has are almost identical to the illusory emotions that a normal person has. He said when I fake anger as an actor it is no different from a normal person. I know it is a performance and you don’t. That fascinated me.

Q. Being a man of prominence and perhaps political influence, what is that you can do to make the U.S. see China in a different light on the issue of Tibet? Trade seems to tower above everything in Indo-China relations.

A. I can be the conscience. I can’t change the U.S. government’s economic policy, but I can certainly speak for the human rights community.

Q. Do you think there has been a difference in the way Tibet is perceived internationally with people like you championing it?

A. No, I don’t think so. It is not us but the person of His Holiness that changes people’s minds. Every time we have facilitated His Holiness’s meeting with anyone, there is a change in people’s minds. He is the key. When you know you are in the presence of a great man, a great mind and a great soul, you can’t help but be touched and influenced. Surely economic interests are far too important, but even with the fact that the U.S. has nothing to gain by helping Tibet there have been far- reaching pronouncements in Congress, including the one which said that it is the sense of Congress that Tibet is an occupied territory. I don’t think India would say that.

Q. India has a Tibetan government in exile on its soil.

A. That is very kind, but I don’t think India is going to make a political statement like that. Of course, Tibet has no better friends than India. Sure, India is not going to go to war with China over Tibet. I would not expect India to and I am sure His Holiness would not either. India has been incredibly kind to the Tibetans. One of the reasons why Tibetans have such a successful community in exile is because India and the Indian people have made it easier for them to get land, schools and various other support systems that are so crucial.

Q. Is there any realistic time frame in which one can expect an early resolution of the Tibetan issue?

A. I don’t think there is a realistic timetable. When you are playing with combustible situations in China, especially now, no one knows what is going to happen. I suppose it is as combustible now as Eastern Europe was, and as spontaneous and all inclusive too. No one had any idea that everything would fall apart in one year. It is possible in China too.

Unfortunately, China has seen what happened in Eastern Europe and Russia and has guarded their situations very carefully. The military presence in Tibet is extremely high. The control of information is extremely tight. I can’t go to Tibet any more. I can’t even transit through Beijing. Just because I am a friend of Tibet’s.

Now am I calling for the violent overthrow of any country? Of course not. I speak the truth and am involved with any human rights group or any group that is looking for justice.

Q. Kashmiris claim they are fighting for a similar cause.

A. I am not very educated about that, but Kashmir was not invaded. Tibet was. Tibet has been occupied by a massive occupation force for 40 years. That is a big difference (between Kashmir and Tibet). Another thing that does not make the analogy correct is there has been a systematic annihilation of the Tibetan people and their culture, which I don’t believe happens in Kashmir. There has been a massive population transfer which I don’t think has happened in Kashmir.

Q. Has the experience of Buddhism changed you as an actor for better or worse?

A. I am not interested in better or worse, but it has fundamentally changed everything. If you fundamentally change your mind and heart everything changes.

Q. Do your Hollywood colleagues ask you what you are doing in a place like Dharamsala?

A. They accept it. I have had many receptions for friends in America and everyone is very touched and changed after meeting with His Holiness.

Q. Does the Dalai Lama ask you to push Tibet’s cause even more?

A. We talk about it constantly. We talk about what is a good strategy that would help the cause. We discuss specific things too. For instance, I am going to speak at a human rights conference on Tibet. His Holiness would tell me about perhaps emphasizing something and de-emphasizing some other things.

Q. Do you see a more formal role for yourself in the movement for Tibet?

A. I am not planning anything. Whatever happens, happens. In the kind of job that I have (as an actor) it is very hard to plan anything. My life has been a little chaotic that way. I haven’t had the luxury of being a householder.

Q. Is your Hollywood career on or do you want to leave it to concentrate on Buddhism and Tibet?

A. I have to go back to America because my last movie is opening in April. For me right now my career is not that important, but then it affords me to help a lot people on many levels, on a financial level, on influence level, political or psychic levels, because of the position that I have as an actor. So in many ways it would be foolish for me to turn my back on that because it can potentially cause some good. Maybe later in life, but for now it is alright.

Finance Minister God

I am told India has a new finance minister—god.

One has heard many disingenuously inventive alibis for a failing economy. “An act of god” as apparently blamed by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman must rank among all-time greats.

This reminds me of a chief reporter at a newspaper I worked for in Bombay (It was Bombay then.) I used to be marked for the night shift frequently in those days of the early 1980s. The chief reporter, whom I am not naming out of decency, would call unfailingly every night before the paper went to bed to ask me or whoever was the night shift reporter, “Everything under control?” Not that he was expecting any answer at all or that any answer made a difference. Irrespective of what the answer was—everything under control or nothing under control—he would complete the conversation with “God is great.”

We used to joke that he expected god to be our chief reporter.

In a similar vein, Sitharaman expects god to be India’s finance minister. To the extent that the COVID pandemic has seriously upended India’s economy, one understands the sentiment behind what the finance minister is saying. There is some there there. God, of course, is notional. Atheists, please read that as “an act of god who does not exist.” The point is she is seeking to transfer the blame to forces beyond human control.

I am not sure whether she realized that she was setting herself up for some ridicule and derision. Perhaps she did and did not care. Perhaps she did not and is now discovering the political folly of that argument. In some ways, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is similar to the administration of President Donald Trump here in America. No failure of theirs seems to stick for any significant length of time. People want peacocks to be fed well and regularly and dogs be cared for but I am sure they also want them to be looked after as well.

***

President Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the White House bringing to conclusion the Republican National Convention was as much his acceptance speech as it was his daughter’s Ivanka’s intention speech. “I will run in 2024” was writ all over that speech. Whether or not she does, at least the optics were clear.

If Ivanka does indeed do that, it would be interesting to see how Nikki Haley, former South Carolina Governor and someone widely expected to jump in for 2024, might position herself. That would queer the pitch for Haley. (Queer the pitch is a British expression which means to spoil someone’s chances). I am all for 2024 becoming an all-women race from both sides of the divide.

It has long been my case America needs a woman president for the next 235 years in order for us to do a fair comparison between the genders. Incidentally, the figure 235 was calculated on the basis of the fact that George Washington on April 30, 1789. Considering until 2024—that is 235 years since his time—there will not be a woman president, we need to count after that.

Does anyone doubt that if Ivanka Trump does indeed run in 2024, her doting father will pull out all stops to make it happen? What happens to Governor Haley then? I know. I know. It is all too early and speculative to get into it right now but people made the same mistake when President Trump as candidate Trump.

***

Lately, I have been slacking in writing my blog daily, having missed some in succession. I am back now. In any case, it is not as if you pay me to read this blog.

Here is to Rambhai

From left, my sister Pallavi, Rambhai and the Dalai Lama

“Scamp and scalawag are my two words of the day. What are yours?” Rambhai asked me.

“Mine are gimcrack and gasconade,” I replied.

On hearing the news of the demise of my cherished brother-in-law, retired Gujarat high court judge Harshvardhan Antani, whom we called Rambhai, at age 72 yesterday, this was the instant recall for me.

Come to think of it there could not be a more fitting reminiscence of someone, who quite like me, loved to read the dictionary. Incidentally, scamp means a person, especially a child, who is mischievous in a likable or amusing way, scalawag means a person who behaves badly but in an amusingly mischievous rather than harmful way; a rascal, (The two can be broadly called synonyms), gimcrack means flimsy or poorly made but deceptively attractive and gasconade extravagant boasting. They are all American slang.

It is a great tribute to Rambhai that my first memory on his passing was that exchange from 1978, about a year after he married my sister Pallavi in May, 1977, when I was 17 and he 29.

As I think about Rambhai over the last four decades, it is hard for me to decide what he loved the most, absolutely top of the line mangoes, obscure words, Test cricket and within that Sunil Gavaskar, Vivian Richards and Alistair Cook, every top of the line international news, science, travel and sports journal that he subscribed to unfailingly for decades or jurisprudence. Let me make it easy for me by saying all those in equal measure and top it off with his genuine love for great newspapers. There were times when I used to joke that Rambhai singlehandedly kept the newspaper and magazine business alive—be it Wisden, The Economist, Nature and at least a dozen or so more apart from as many newspapers regularly.

Speaking of Sunil Gavaskar, Vivian Richards and Alistair Cook, for as long as I remember one could not say something even remotely negative about the three great cricketers, especially the first two. Gavaskar, in fact, became Rambhai’s friend whom the latter hosted at his Ahmedabad home and corresponded with.  As for Cook, my sister did something heartbreakingly touching in Rambhai’s final but fully alert moments. Apart from showing him his parents, Bindubhai and Harvidyaben's photograph, Pallavi showed Rambhai Alistair Cook’s photograph. He was that fond of Cook. 

Here was perhaps the most steadfast admirer of the Test cricket format of the game that I know of in the midst of the testosterone-fueled T20/Indian Premier League world. Rambhai would watch the five-day game being played anywhere with great relish. Separately, he was an excellent mimic of cricket commentators, including Tony Cozier, Vijay Merchant and so on.

Endowed with a naturally joyous temperament, Rambhai was a serious judge of unimpeachable integrity and rectitude. He was always steadfast in recusal even at the slightest hint of a conflict of interests. Not given to flashy flourishes he leaned more on the sober, scholarly side of things in his chosen profession, first as a lawyer and then as a judge who rose through the ranks to become a high court judge in Gujarat. He could have easily ended up on the country’s Supreme Court but for combination of retirement age and some amount of political play. He brooked no interference in his work irrespective of who was doing the interfering. Whether or one likes to admit it, that approach is counterproductive in the Indian judiciary when it comes to rising on the basis of pure merit.

The only child of a well-placed bureaucrat in his father, Rambhai made the best of all the professional opportunities that came his way. His post-retirement life became intensely busy as he become a much sought after former judge in matters of arbitration.

Rambhai and my sister Pallavi, whom we call Bebli, made a wonderfully happy couple who have had no children. They would have loved to have children but that was not to be.

There is a great deal one remembers of Rambhai and his substantive life but what still remains vivid is the passion and enthusiasm with which he did his vegetable shopping. He insisted on doing it himself, subjecting each mango or a potato or a tomato or an eggplant to meticulous scrutiny just as he would do to every magazine that he bought making sure there was not a single page bent or askew. He preserved his favorite journals, such as Nature, National Geographic, Wisden and other expensive travel journals properly bound and neatly stacked. The latest issues of the dozen or so magazines would be displayed in a special built magazine holder on his drawing room wall.

Here is to dear Rambhai and his often great sense of humor.

Kamala Harris and the notion of Tambram

I started writing about the ludicrous debate whether the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential nominee and Senator Kamala Harris hides or hinders or just hives off her Tambram (Tamil Brahmin) heritage from her mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan’s side.

That was a big mistake because my already existing migraine exploded tenfold while writing on this absurd subject.

The idea of Tambram or Tamil Brahmin is being injected into US presidential politics via the agency of the Senator from California. There are already articles making appearances in the mainstream US newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal by Sadanand Dhume who writes that she “…airbrushes her mother's community from her story. The words Tamil and Brahmin don't appear at all.” I do not know that to be a fact but what I do know is that it is embarrassing that we feel the need to narrow down the political discourse to whether a daughter of two immigrants—one from India and one from Jamaica—ought to effusively and insistently talk about her partial heritage in such excruciatingly specific detail which will be most certainly lost on a vast majority of American voters.

Sure, sections of the Indian American community, especially those of Tamil heritage, might pay some passing attention to that aspect of her life but the notion that she has to refer to her Tamil and Brahmin origin is pathetic. Dhume’s piece was clearly mischievously headlined ‘What Kamala Harris Isn't Saying About Her Mother's Background' as if there might be some toxicity or something odd to it that she chooses not to mention it. There is a kicker to the headline which said “Tamil Brahmins like Shyamala Gopalan fled identity politics and socialism for the U.S.” How does Dhume know she fled anything? Perhaps she just came to America like millions of others do—for a better economic opportunity and without even remotely thinking about “identity politics and socialism”. Incidentally, Gopalan was 19 when she came here.

This obsessing over the ever-narrowing definitions of who one is in terms of ethnicity and heritage helps no one other than commentators and columnists under pressure to whip a weekly quota out and get paid. Whether Harris was raised predominantly black in her cultural choices or not by her mother is also a subject of discussion.

I find such discussions damaging in the already deeply damaged social discourse.

Harris’s parents Gopalan and Donald Harris, a retired Stanford economics professor from Jamaica, divorced when she was seven and was raised by her mother. How much more could she be her mother, a “Tambram”, Gopalan’s daughter than what she already is and has repeatedly said she is?  

My migraine is now a throbbing beast inside my head.

Reviewing movie reviews; palindrome is not a palindrome, Tenet is

 

It is a pity that palindrome is not a palindrome. It would read emordnilap if you tried and your spellcheck will go berserk screaming murder.

This opening line has nothing to do with anything I am about to write but as you would discover the post has nothing to do with anything I might want to write. If all this sounds weird, it is.

I am reduced to reviewing reviews of prospective Hollywood blockbusters these days. So I might as well make the best of it. Christopher Nolan’s palindromic spectacle ‘Tenet’ has received diametrically opposite reviews in two respected newspaper reviews—in The New York Times by Jessica Kiang where the movie has been accorded “Critic’s Pick” honor and in The Guardian by Catherine Shoard where it has been called a palindromic dud. Get it? Dud? Palindrome? I am sure you do.

As sheer writing goes, both critics have written their diametrically opposite takes brilliantly. In fact, I tweeted to Jessica Kiang saying this and meaning it sincerely (I still do): “My compliments on an excellent review of 'Tenet'.

"Within the context of this self-created brand of brainiac entertainment, “Tenet” meets all expectations, except the expectation that it will exceed them."

Sharp.

The quoted line is from her review which I found striking.

And then this morning I tweeted this to Catherine Shoard about her particular line which I have quoted.

"And his affectations can be a welcome distraction. But he still just seems like some bloke who’s got drunk in Banana Republic’s scarf department."

Hilarious...hilarious.

I am a compulsive connoisseur of sharp writing irrespective of their substance and have a habit of complimenting people.

With that out of the way, I am struck by how so completely opposite the two reviews are. Nolan, whose last name should have been changed to Nolon just for this movie, might be confused if he reads both of them together which would be like watching this movie, I suppose.

I have not watched it but since I knew that it briefly features Dimple Kapadia as a Mumbai arms dealer I have watched the trailer. I am told you are not supposed to try and understand this genre of Nolan’s movies but just feel them because trying to understand them would elude them. Got it.

I could have guessed that since it is palindromic in its theme and about time-inversion, there would be scenes where what has already happened would cross what is about to happen, which are both the same thing in time-inversion. Or at least that’s what I think. So if you were Tenet, the letter n would be the point at which the time-inversion would collapse like wave function.

By employing such conundrumery (Not a word but coined here in honor of Nolon) the director apparently keeps up his reputation as a filmmaker who baffles the hell out of you.

At some point, I would like to watch the movie on big screen if that is possible any more and also check out Dimple Kapadia. My only apprehension is that I may start singing “Sagar kinare dil yeh pukare, Tu jo nahi to mera koi nahi hai”. Hindi movie aficionados will catch my drift.

As for just the sheer writing quality, both Jessica and Catherine do a superb job of conveying their points of view. Interestingly, I felt their points of view kind of converged in these two observations, the first by Jessica and the other by Catherine.

“Indeed, take away the time-bending gimmick, and “Tenet" is a series of timidly generic set pieces: heists, car chases, bomb disposals, more heists.”

“Some of this is weariness: for all Tenet’s technical ambition, the plot is rote and the furnishings tired. Eastern European heavies lumber about with pliers and meat-cleavers. Clocks literally tick. Synths groan deeply on the soundtrack.”