Doom-time boom

Our reporter Imran Gowhar got us a story about a couple who tried to beat their recession woes with the help of black magic.

Dhananjay (28) sought help from a black magician when he found he couldn't handle his money problems. He had been sacked from a software firm, and started a business that hadn't really gone anywhere. Police have locked him and his wife up for going to a graveyard with a black magician, and causing "public nuisance". From being in a good job to ending up in police custody in just a couple of months must be devastating for anyone. This is a sad story, and we are hearing many sad stories these days.

When the economy was thriving, we heard stories of people giving up secure jobs and striking out on their own. They built enterprises that impressed the world with their ingenuity and daring. But we now mostly hear stories of anxiety and desperation.

Some young people have put off or cancelled their weddings because they feel they can’t afford to run a family. Software firms have stopped issuing health insurance for parents of their employees, and the elderly have less of a cushion if they fall ill today. Some months ago, their children would have willingly admitted them to the nearest posh hospital.

We also see reverse migration: a work force finding itself suddenly unemployed and going back to where it came from. A cab driver told me he knew of hundreds of vacant houses in Electronics City: its residents had returned to their villages in Tamil Nadu because they just couldn’t afford the rents here, and work was drying up. (The good part was that some of them had returned to cultivating their land when, propitiously enough, their villages had just been irrigated). This is happening globally: people moving out of the big cities to wherever they came from.

In the United States, 5,900 journalists, or about 10 per cent of all journalists in that country, lost their jobs. The world’s biggest newsprint factory, in Canada, filed for bankruptcy last week. More and more employees are being laid off in the software sector.

But some sectors are still doing well. Booze is selling like never before. Work for astrologers and others in the prediction business has shot up. The guru empires would have shown spikes in profit if they'd had to draw up balance sheets, but their accounts are unaudited and secret. And strangely, luxury goods are selling more than ever before. For instance, Mercedes sells about 3,600 cars a year in India now, and isn't overly worried about the downturn.

Many things can push humans to despair. Our theology talks of something called karma, of actions being triggered by our own past actions, but in the short run, it is difficult to understand why bad things happen, or for that matter, why good things happen.

Anyone who can give a plausible explanation for one's miseries and offer a straw to clutch at has a good chance of making a fortune, and acquiring a faithful following.

Neat docufilm about Rajkumar

When India's most notorious dacoit Veerappan decided to release Karnataka's biggest movie icon Rajkumar from the forests, he asked him if he had any last wish in captivity.

Rajkumar's reply left him gaping in disbelief: "May I touch your moustache?"

That exchange is among the many delightful bits of trivia you will find in Maya Chandra's documentary Dr Rajkumar, Our Annavaru, screened at Badami House on Saturday.

Among those who spoke about the film were Rajkumar's son Raghavendra, who recalled more endearing things about his legendary father.

When he asked Rajkumar if wild beasts had troubled him in the dense forests, he got this disarming answer, "Humans are the biggest beasts, child! I wasn't in the least troubled by any animal."

Raghavendra said Rajkumar was always ready to share his joy, but would keep his pain to himself. He resisted surgery, saying, "This body is like a car. You meddle with it here and something else goes wrong there!"

In the last 30 days of his life, he got up early, walked around energetically despite chronic pain in his knee, and went about his day as if he were at the peak of his acting career. He was then 72. "I want you to remember me that way," he told his family, and went and slept in the drawing room. He would often shun comforts, such as an air-conditioned room, Raghavendra told the audience of writers, journalists, movie crew, and a couple of diehard, front-bench fans who cheered and clapped in defiance of the academic gravitas of the evening.

The documentary is well made, and delineates the life and times of one of India's most influential movie stars.

But it does tend to lean towards the eulogistic, as Sugata Srinivasaraju, assistant editor of Outlook said before the screening. He warned against using Rajkumar to promote Kannada exclusivism (which might be an oxymoron, since it is difficult to find a Kannadiga who does not know at least two languages!)

Maya Chandra brings the slickness of her corporate film craft to this documentary, and it works well in combination with the effusive affection of people she interviews. Among the many celeb fans is Amitabh Bachchan, who says suitably humble things about his association with Rajkumar (but what is glossed over is that, at one point, he was furious that Raj fans had blocked the release of Hindi films in Bangalore).

Vishu Kumar, director of the Karnataka information department and an admirer of the star like almost everyone in the audience, spoke about the negative perception about the actor that fan vandalism had created among non-Kannadigas.

The documentary, yet to be released commercially, is narrated by movie star Ramesh Aravind. Among its best parts are the interviews with Rajkumar's moviedom colleagues, such as Vishnuvardhan, director Bhagwan, and lyricist Jayant Kaikini.

Other delights include footage from some of Rajkumar's hit movies, and at least for me, the songs that Maya uses to bind together montages from his movies. Rajkumar brought the energy and rigour of theatre music to the movies, and three years after his death, my jaded journalistic heart soars every time I hear my favourite Rajkumar songs.

G N Mohan, who runs Mayflower Media House, was the moving spirit behind the event. As for the Veerappan moustache incident, Kaikini says in the film that it shows Rajkumar's childlike curiosity, and also his motherly concern: he asked, after he came back alive, when his captor Veerappan would be saved.

Budiya vs gudiya

Young is a relative term. Modi thinks the Congress, at 125, is a budiya (old woman). Priyanka thinks Modi, at 59, is old. It's possible you'll find college students who think Priyanka, at 37, is not young enough to understand their angst: she just might get angry if they told her what they'd been up to.

This old-versus-young question is eternally old and eternally young, so don't expect politicians, born naturals at flinging mud, to come up with anything strikingly insightful when they discuss it. Thanks to India’s demographics, where 60 to 70 per cent are now under 40, the age debate has become an interesting highlight of the election drama. We used to hear of caste vote banks; since this time young voters will have a say in who will run the Delhi durbar, youth has become a vote bank.

Parties have decided it makes sense to say things that please the young. And they are saying incredibly daft things. Kumaraswamy (50), who lives by every word his 76-year-old dad utters, described fellow partymen defecting to the BJP as old bullocks walking to the slaughterhouse. He piped down after Deve Gowda reminded him that he was himself the son of a grand old man!

The Congress has always been led by experienced leaders (retainers of the Nehru family, if you are cynical). Its prime ministerial nominee, Manmohan Singh, is 77, not exactly a dude age. And Sonia Gandhi, at 63, is no gudiya (doll) either. The BJP, whose item number continues to be 81-year-old L K Advani, is promoting a retirement-age Modi as its 'young face'!

But then, there are young old people and old young people. Looking at their energy, who would ever think an Advani or a Deve Gowda was less capable of running the country than that bleary-eyed 25-year-old call centre exec and neighbour you last bumped into a year ago?

So let’s put all this confusion aside, and look at Raymond Kurzweil, famous for inventing a musical keyboard that sounds as true and expressive as the live instruments it seeks to approximate. In recent years, he has made a bigger name as a futurist who believes aging can be stopped.

At 35, when Kurzweil was diagnosed with diabetes, he did some independent research and arrived at a diet that he says has cured him of the condition. He is now 61, and is convinced that science will find a way to make him immortal. He bases his optimism on the exponential progress he has been tracking in biotechnology and nanotechnology. If he’s going to live for ever, what would you call Kurzweil at 61: young or old?

To come back to where we began, and to our mortal world… If you could see beyond the physical damage that time inflicts on us, you would realise that quite a bit of this age problem is in the mind. You could have young airheads and old airheads, child prodigies and geriatric prodigies. You could have a forward-looking Manmohan at 77, and a disgusting Sri Rama Sene lout at 22.

How the other half dies

Our paper has been reporting on Bangalore’s gangland murders these past couple of weeks. The murder of Narasimha Murthy, alleged don of what is known as the ‘coolie mafia’, was the most brazen of those crimes, and took place in busy Chamarajpet.

A dozen men, led by a burly film financier called Kapali Ananda, flashed their choppers and hacked Nararasimha Murthy to death in full view of the neighbourhood’s strollers. It was a bad gangster movie coming alive.

Looking at photos of Narasimha Murthy, you could well imagine how he must have terrorised the poor labourers at K R Market. He was tall, beefy, and wore a load of gold to proclaim to the world his riches (and ability to pay his way out of any police trouble). He and Kapali had been old rivals, and had vied for control of the money generated from K R Market, Bangalore’s oldest, busiest and filthiest wholesale market.

The death of Narasimha Murthy, whom the Tamil labourers called Poone (‘cat’, because he had cat’s eyes), came soon after the murder of another City Market gangster, Gate Ganesha. Ganesha had earned notoriety in the same squalid setting, making enough money to be able to contest elections in his native Tamil Nadu. A rival lured his men, and persuaded them to do him in.

What exactly is the coolie mafia? Hundreds of lorries arrive at K R Market through the day, bringing fruits and vegetables from all over Karnataka and adjoining states. Poor, powerless labourers do the unloading. A coolie gets Rs 5 for every gunny bag he moves into a shop. The mafia allows him to keep Rs 4, and pockets Rs 1. At least 30,000 bags are unloaded in a day, and the gang ruling the market collects Rs 30,000 from these labourers alone.

The don pays off his cronies, officiously called ‘supervisors’, and takes home a cool Rs 25,000 at the end of the day. That amounts to at least Rs 7 lakh a month, and Rs 8 million a year. The don also collects Rs 10 from each wayside vendor as protection money. With so much ready cash rolling in, the gangsters are tempted to get into what they call the ‘meter baddi’ business. ‘Baddi’ is Kannada for interest, and ‘meter baddi’ refers to interest that mounts fast, perhaps like the fare on a rigged autorickshaw meter. Some venture into financing films as well.

All this can’t thrive without the tacit support of the police, and whoever happens to be the politician reigning in the constituency. Narasimha Murthy reportedly owed allegiance to a Congress leader, a past master at selling hope to the miserable lot labouring away at the market.

Behind these murky stories are the more human stories. The women in Narasimha Murthy’s family told him it was inauspicious on that particular day to have a haircut, but he didn’t heed their words. They are distraught, and convinced he died because he defied their religious beliefs. Kapali, who killed him, got his name from working at Kapali Bar, and selling tickets in black at Kapali cinema. And the boys caught in the gang wars have their own tales of despair and bravado to tell.

The Kannada film industry keeps cribbing it has no good scripts, and pays a ransom each time it buys remake rights from a Tamil or Telugu producer. Any film-maker with any interest in human drama would find in K R Market enough material for a whole series of Godfather films. Or Slumdog Millionaire, if you please.