Thoda pyar, thoda logic

We at MiD DAY went out and watched Thoda Pyar Thoda Magic recently. The film is packed with tricks that its makers imagine would delight the kids.

I don't know about the kids, but most grown-ups who watched it with me thought it was cheesy.

Last week, thousands thronged to the house of a phenol manufacturer after he claimed a Sai Baba image had miraculously opened its left eye. Here was magic in real life.

Many of us who find an angelic Rani Mukherjee pedalling down from the heavens on a rainbow laughable can actually believe that a marble image can open its eyes, or a clay Ganesha sip milk, or a picture of Jesus start bleeding. We are, in fact, desperate for magic, which is why the house of A Babu has become a pilgrim spot since Wednesday, when the Shirdi seer reportedly gave his benediction.

The police always look for motive when they are called upon to investigate a murder. However strong our personal need for magic, we in journalism ask ourselves rational questions when confronted with stories such as this one. We wondered, "Who's the miracle helping?"

No one had reported instances of faith healing: the lame suddenly finding strength in their feet and walking, or the mute discovering words and talking. But one man was raking it in.

Babu was suddenly a hero, and we wanted to know more about him. We got the dope. He is a longtime resident of this south Bangalore neighbourhood. Some say he was a washerman who used to rob passers-by. Others say he is in heavy debt. He lives on a plot that belongs to a 500-year-old math. He is fighting a court order to stay put, and has roped in some 80 others to carry on the battle. Today, he is best described as an entrepreneur running a business selling a bathroom hygiene product.

Gavipuram is known for a 12th century Shiva temple. It is not posh and middle class like neighbouring Basavangudi. Its ups and downs and old trees remind you of a Bangalore emerging out of little village clusters. A little way up is a crematorium, and its expanses give this extension a macabre beauty. The perfect setting, you'd think, for wayside robbers.

When our chief reporter B V Shivashankar went to meet Babu, he found him an amiable conversationalist as long as they discussed the glories of Baba. The moment Shivashankar asked him questions about how much money he had collected, and what he intended to do with it, Babu became abusive.

A Marwadi businessman had placed bundles of Rs 500 at the deity's feet. Others had made smaller offerings. I don't know how many came out of despair, and how many out of greed. But we at MiD DAY thought it our duty to let you know that Babu's piousness vanishes the moment you ask him what he will do with the cash. You know he deals in phenol, but did you know that he spouts such disgusting filth you would want to use some of his hygiene product to clean out your ears?

Thoda Pyar and Thoda Magic was Mumbai trying its hand at a pop Christian, Hollywood-style parable. But who can dispute its message that we need a little love and a little magic? And in any case, we always have the Babus of the world to remind us that we need thoda pyar, thoda logic.

In praise of Jaggesh

What's in a name? Oh, everything. Yesterday, the crew of an FM radio station got beaten up because someone didn't like the name of a show they were recording.

And what was the show called? Bendettu Bengaluru.

If you are a Bangalorean, and if you have Kannadiga friends who don't mind a bit of slang, you will probably have come across the expression 'bendettu'.

'Bendettu' is a mix of two words: 'bend' and 'ettu'. Bend is from English, and ettu is Kannada to take out, remove, lift. Bendettu means to straighten up something, and I suspect it comes from the world of tinkering. Cars that are dented need to be straightened up... they need the bendettu treatment. Get the drift?

Bendettu Bengaluru's producer describes it as a show that tries to find solutions to Bangalore's civic problems.

Now why should this name upset anyone? Members of the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike went to Vijayanagar, where the crew was talking to passers-by, and asked them why they had chosen a name that was insulting to Bangalore.

The terrified jockeys had no answer, and so these custodians of Bangalore pride decided to teach them a lesson.

We all know the Rakshana Vedike is excitable when it comes to Kannada issues, but how do you explain them going and thrashing Kannada radio jockeys doing a Kannada show with what one would think is a witty Kannada name?

Anyone with any interest in Kannada movies will have heard of an actor called Jaggesh. If you want to enjoy Bangalore's street language, you should watch his movies. I am sure he makes up his own dialogue. His clowning is good fun, but he stands out for his linguistic brilliance.

I know of no actor who has been able to tap into the rich, iridescent world of Kannada slang the way Jaggesh has. Rajkumar is too dignified an actor to mouth slang, and romantic heroes such as Vishnuvardhan don't even think it necessary to try to break out of their middle-class monotony. Upendra talks a lot, and tries to shock you with his iconoclasm, but you can hardly accuse him of good taste.

You've heard of the expression 'would-be' to refer to a fiance? In one of his films, Jaggesh plays on this word, and refers to his girlfriend as his "Udupi wife". He can turn any word on its head!

Jaggesh acted in a film called Bundal Nan Maga some years ago. I suspect he thought up that name himself. It's again like Bendettu Bengaluru. Bundal is probably bundle, short for bundle of lies. Nan maga means my son. If he could get away with a title like that, there's no reason a radio team should be harassed for the title Bendettu Bengaluru.

Jaggesh is now an MLA, and could lose his wit trying to say the right things for the consumption of the media and his constituency. Just imagine the artistic suffocation he would experience if someone went to him and demanded that he explain his word play.

He hails from Srirampura, close to the city railway station, a neighbourhood of working class and poor Kannadigas and Tamils. It was at one time notorious as a haven for criminal gangs. Jaggesh's language draws on the brash, clever, and often dark humour of people forced to live in squalor. In the hands of a great director, he could produce comedies of Chaplin's class.

Dr Siddalingaiah, the most famous Dalit poet around and now chairman of the Karnataka Book Authority, also hails from Srirampura. When a MiD DAY reporter called him yesterday, he suggested the Rakshana Vedike was hurt because of the title Bendettu Bengaluru.

In truth, Siddalingaiah is a sophisticated humorist, and can produce a great script for Jaggesh. If only he'd stop saying bendettu is bad Kannada...

Can an insult paralyse?

Did 16-year-old Shinjini slip into depression and suffer a paralytic stroke because she failed to make it on a reality show?

Her doctors at Nimhans aren't convinced about that cause and effect, but her parents have been telling anyone who'll listen that she was fine until the judges of a dance contest on ETV Bengali humiliated her out of the show.

Modern medicine, or at least the regular allopathic practitioner, does not believe the body and mind are connected the way we non-medical folks believe they are. And although many doctors tell you in private that they do see a connection, they are loath to admit it in a professional setting because that would make their work so much more complicated, and they risk peer disapproval.

People with an interest in the esoteric swear the waxing and waning of the moon can affect the mind. Medical literature dismisses the idea, and it is difficult for those of us who grew up on Western rationalism to contemplate such a possibility. But I had an uncle who used to feel restless as the full moon day approached.

Satyanarayana was the youngest of my father's siblings, and he was what people call mad. No one knew how he came to be that way. He had worked for a short while in the postal department in Hyderabad. My parents speculated he must have been shattered by something that had happened at his workplace. Love? Job rivalry? The kids were never told.

Satya grew his beard long and didn't pay much attention to what he wore, and would sometimes get violent. He wrote letters on post cards and tore them up, and sometimes shredded letters that the postman had delivered before they could reach the addressee in our family. He would launch into lectures that sounded whimsical and illogical to most people who did not know him, but since I had heard him for years, I could make out that one thought led to another, and the sound of one word was enough to trigger an apparently unconnected but phonetically connected thought. (I later learnt the literary critics call it the "stream of consciousness"). He often broke out into song. His favourite songs were those of the Tamil movie star Thyagaraja Bhagavatar.

We couldn't fathom why he did it, but Satya had the habit of walking away from home, and roaming the streets for days. How he managed to survive without money we never got to know. He would come back and quietly resume his routine, and wouldn't answer questions about where he had been or what he had done. On a couple of occasions, when he went away for long stretches, my anxious father would hire an auto at night and go looking for him all over Bangalore. My grandmother would sit at the door through the day, waiting for Satya to return.

Once, when Satya went away for a month, my father consulted an astrologer, who predicted that he would return from the eastern direction on a Friday. My mother's brother, who was a captain in the navy, happened to be driving into Bangalore from Madras, and noticed someone resembling Satya on the highway near Mulbagal. At first he didn't believe his eyes, but later stopped his black Chevrolet, reversed and drove back a mile or so. It was Satya! He brought him back home.

It was a Friday, and Mulbagal is to the east of Bangalore. My father became a firm believer in astrology after that incident.

Medical science knows a lot. Yet it is reluctant, and understandably so, to speculate about the mind. Hurt and humiliation work in strange ways. Some hurts may last a lifetime. Satya never recovered. But let's pray Shinjini does.