Of Anant Ambani, me and weight loss

Raju Korti
If you believe that successful weight loss needs more of programming than will power, here is my repartee. There is a huge emotional quotient attached to it as well.
The immediate provocation for this argument is a talking point story according to which Anant Ambani, the young son of industrialist Mukesh Ambani, shed a whopping 108 kilos in just eighteen months. Anant has been a regular sight during the IPL matches, especially those involving Mumbai Indians. He would be seen occupying a broad sofa all by himself and each time the camera panned on him, I have seen people sigh in disbelief how anyone could bloat to that extent. But fact is stranger than fiction. Ask me whose weight loss has been noticed by just a few compared to the national headlines that Anant made.
Many people believe that Ambani's weight loss story is merely promotional and an example of "money speaks". That may be true given the super-rich glossy status of the family. However, you got to give it to the boy who went through a rigorous diet regimen and a gruelling work-out schedule to shed the accumulated flab. That certainly needs a sustained effort and control when you know the boy lives in the era of junk food and doting parents would do everything to keep him happy.
Excess exercise is known to be counterbalanced by excess hunger, exemplified by what is called as "working up an appetite." Only a very few can resist such hunger pangs but for the vast majority, weight loss through exercise is a flawed option.
Anant lost six kilos per month if my arithmetic serves me right. I roughly lost the same weight in a span of three to four days. And though we are different case studies, we throw up same results.
In Anant's case, all credit to him and his weight loss advisers. I didn't have any. Nature ordained it for me. After the debilitating bypass heart surgery, I had several other complications that necessitated hospitalisation three more times. In the first instance I dropped 18 kilos since I had stopped eating and drinking (water please!) completely and being a diabetic, the only thing I remember during that period is alarmed doctors telling my relatives to stuff me with Fruity and rasagullas as my sugar levels had dipped to a dangerous below 50.
Three days of continuous monitoring showed that I had dropped to 52 kilos from 70 kilos which was a terrible fall and certainly nothing to be admired. So bad it was that I couldn't stand on my feet. Circumstances had cut me to size.
There are two factors that tempted me to make a comparison between Anant and me. The amount of weight loss in both cases was phenomenal and almost in as much time. Although he went through an excruciating schedule and I through the knife, the emotional quotient that I talked about is same. It is peripheral to this comparison that he hit national headlines and became a figure of admiration while your's truly could only garner the sympathy of relatives and friends. These are wages of social dynamics.
I have thrown weight around, now I don't have any. The powerful Ambani son can still do it after shedding those heavy-duty calories. There is just no comparison here.

Burnt alive in funeral rights

Raju Korti

Pic only for representation

An idle mind provokes more thinking, howsoever inconsequential it may be. In my present frail health, all I can do is to harness it to more constructive purpose.
The one thing that always gets to me is the emotion and melodrama after a murder or a suicide in serials and films. It appears that a funeral shot is mandatory in such episodes. The formula always works because nothing tugs at your heart-strings more than a funeral where mourners weep inconsolably while someone among the family of the bereaved lights the pyre. While you do make a concession for such emotional scenes as part of the "entertainment", it is amazing to see the quantity of wood burnt to show these fake funerals.
As a kid watching movies, it never occurred to my juvenile mind to think about such things. While watching a funeral shot all I could muster was few genuine drops of tears. Nothing affects as much as death does. Decades later, I still get misty-eyed watching those emotion-filled scenes but there is enough sense left now to question the necessity of wasting precious resource as wood on such scenes at a time when the environment is headed for an inevitable, impending disaster.
Crime serials in particular on television and movies in general have to have such a scene though each one of us concedes in our rational mood that they are corny and the effect is intended to last only until the time you watch them.
Forest covers are dwindling faster than people are planting trees. Oxygen will be available only in cylinders some day and the room temperature in a decade from now on will shoot through its rooftop. People who worry about environmental degradation are in terrible minority and their voices of sanity are either lost or go unheeded. Forget animals, even human race will become extinct one day if you make a small allowance for the extremity I am painting.
I am inclined to believe that given the badge of intellect they wear on their sleeves, our film-makers and serial-makers would do well to show funeral scenes symbolically rather than burning logs of wood every time to give the impression of being realistic. But discretion often gets shrouded in noisy debates and there will always be lobbies to and for. Ask know-alls of the likes of Arnab Goswamis and Rajdeep Sardesais. They have the potential to hold incendiary debates which are meritoriously inconclusive. Should there be a debate on this, a mild-mannered Sunder Lal Bahuguna would probably be run down by the shouting brigade from the showbiz.
I am looking to that day when some journalist will do an investigative story on this pepped up with facts and figures. My gut feeling is it will be a revelation.
Despite all this harangue, I am keen to witness a funeral scene being shot. I am sure the man who is shown as dead, must be watching his own funeral from the sidelines and laughing his guts out even as tonnes of wood burns.

Sadhana...ke dil abhi bhara nahi..

Raju Korti

Having watched most of her movies, I always believed that there was something surreal about Sadhana's million dollar smile and her eloquent eyes. Her eyes, coy and demure, especially spoke volumes that made the director's job ridiculously easy. But when I saw her in flesh and blood for the first time on the sets of Intequam in 1971, I had to retrace my steps in history to know that this was the Sadhana people swooned over all the sixties. Actually around time that she wasn't a patch on the Sadhana people had idolized in the past and there were many who had started writing her off.
Sadhana, who had had her education in Jai Hind College never went by popular equations or perceptions. She continued as long as she herself realized that people didn't wish to see her on the screen any more given the beatific image she had created in public mind. This trait of hers was in enough evidence even when it came to marrying, when she chose director RK Nayyar  over a highly popular Rajendra Kumar. Nayyar was just making a name in the quick sands of film industry and Rajendra Kumar had made a very popular pair with her in Mere Mehboob (1963), Aarzoo (1965) and Aap Aaye Bahar Aayee (1971).
Sadhana did not wait and hope to be discovered rather she made herself so she couldn't be denied. Within a span of four years she was in the top bracket though there were formidable actresses like Waheeda Rehman, Saira Banu, Nanda and Asha Parekh who had created their own niche. Sadhana's USP was her eyes that did all the acting. She also owned a an angelic smile that made her a breed apart. Little wonder she was acting with top heroes of the times including Dev Anand and Rajendra Kumar.
Just what kind of impact Sadhana made on her audience is evident in popular perception on a handsome Dev Anand serenading with the last word in romanticism "Abhi na jao chhodkar,,," (Rafi-Asha) could not have been as compelling if any other actress was alongside. Hum Dono had not only Dev Anand focusing the camera on himself, it had another share of pie for Nanda whose role was equally challenging. Yet, Sadhana made an impression with just smiles and tears.
She fortified her position with Mere Mehboob which brought her in the top league. Remember a sleepy-eyed Husna whom Rajendra Kumar wakes up through the enchanting notes of Piano and the eternally young voice of Rafi with "Ae husn zara jaag tuzhe ishq jagaaye..". Not without reason, the general belief is Sadhana looked her beautiful best in Mere Mehboob.
While the first half of her life got her name, fame and money, the latter half wasn't so rewarding. Age doesn't spare anyone. In case of Sadhana, it just gave her that little extra time because anything otherwise would have been blatantly unjust to a performer who swept an audience away by just fluttering her eyelids or with that devastating, cherubic smile.
By Intequam, she was downhill and the writing was almost on the wall. Even in Aap Aaye Bahar Aayee , she looked slightly obese and a little over made up and the  make up was failing. To add to her troubles, the marriage with Nayyar was threatening to fall apart. Not mixing her personal life with professional life, she bravely carried on until she made peace with the fact that her reign was over.
At her Santacruz residence, she started living the life of a recluse. Like many other actresses and actors who do not want to be seen by people except in their avtaars as popular peak, she just shut the doors on the society, rarely meeting people, unlike her contemporary Waheeda Rehman who ventures out for social work in her late seventies. I still want to be remembered as an actress who sang "Main to tum sang nain milaa ke haar gayee sajna.." in Manmauji (with Kishore Kumar). To be fair to her, shejust went through the same motions that most film stars not wanting to face people past their prime. As an actress she had her fantasies but she also knew she was a fantasy herself.
As she makes her exit from a profession without any guarantees, she almost seems to say: "I always am in a role, lovely – for you, for them – even for myself. Yeah... Even when I’m alone, I am still in a role – and I myself am the most exacting audience I have ever had.”  But all that her fans can say is "Adhoori aas chhodke, adhoori pyaas chhodke jo tum joagi to kis tarah nabahogi..."

  

Some thoughts on writing a book

Raju Korti
As a tenderfoot writer, I have been advised by many in the past on how to write. The best one that I have learnt is to ignore them and start writing. That little piece of realization helped me glide through my first book which is set to see the light of the day soon. I was also told the hardest part of the exercise was putting one word after another but in another brilliant stroke of enlightenment I found a book writes itself. You are just the hand that puts everything on paper.
As a youngster I often dreamt and yearned to write a book but never followed the passion with the perseverance it called for. I had any number of subjects to choose from. The only hitch was how to lend substantivity and depth to the pledge that I had taken with a commitment that I never failed to flaunt at my friends. They never took me seriously and thought I was speaking through my hat which was justified given my habitual laidback attitude. So it was nothing short of a battle won when I steeled myself to write one although I was overtaken with a series of self-doubts. To make matters worse I chose to write the biography of a man considered a legend in his lifetime.
I was warned by naysayers and cynics. If they felt I was incompetent to handle a personality as titanic as the late Mohammed Rafi given his four-decade career, they weren't off mark. But in the end, like all well meaning friends they kept egging me. I soon found out that writing a book is at once tough and easy. Tough because you need to be assiduous in putting together what are accepted as genuine facts and minute details with no margin for error. Easy because you can visualize it in black and white once they are at your disposal.
There are many biographies on Rafi, all eminently forgettable. That was a rallying point. It propelled me to write faster and piece together a book in three months -- something my friends well conversant with my procrastination were hugely surprised with. More than them I surprised myself. Finding a good publisher to me was more of a fluke than judgment. Talk of dame luck! Since the last month, I am trying to grapple with the idea of having turned an author. So are my friends.
The royalty cheque paid to me by the publisher was more than a lottery to my gloating mind. It spurred my pen with a compelling sense of urgency. The making of the book went through its usual list of travails but finally it was a story of all-is-well-that-ends-well.
More than the sense of achievement what it has done to my limited writing abilities is to plan more books. Why not ride on your luck when kismet is more than willing to take you the distance? So there I am planning two more projects one of which is ready to take off in a few days from now. I hope the same sense of urgency will manifest when I pen down those.
In the early stages of my career, some of my colleagues, better writers than me, never made secret of their ambition to write a book. It is just that my frittering has turned out to be better than theirs. To all those who want to write a book, I have an unsolicited piece of advice.
People are afraid to write books because they fear people will read them and find them worthless. Write as if nobody is going to read and throw your work into the public dustbin. Somebody may find it and consider it a treasure.

Sheen lost? Return the awards!

Raju Korti
To refuse or return awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal. This seems to have been the guiding philosophy of those who returned their Sahitya Akademi Awards protesting the "silence" of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Dadri lynching incident.
For most liberals or conservatives, wake up calls come at the politically opportune times. So you can't really fault the likes of Nayantara Sehgal or Ashok Vajpeyi whose otherwise nagging conscience was in deep slumber when the country's political landscape was smeared with black ink right from the days of partition scripted with bloodshed. Thereafter, riots became just another reason in the long list of sharp divides in the country's polity.
I didn't get into writing to win Akademi Awards. Nor is there even a remote possibility of me winning one in future. Award winners are made of different mettle (or metal?). However, as someone who never won any award, I must make it known that an award would be welcome enough never to be returned. In any case, the main purpose of my writing is to seek a conversation with the audience.
If I ever win a Sahitya Akademi Award the thought of returning it will not be entertained whatever the provocation. It is stupid and disgraceful to return an award that was once supposed to have been accepted with all "humility". If you had a conscience in place, you would actually never accept it in the first place because sooner or later -- to your skewed political thinking -- the award would prick you enough to recompense it. That makes for poor reflection and introspection for those who loudly proclaim their political credentials. To my credit, as I have bore time and again, I do not subscribe to a set agenda or any particular theory. When you embrace a particular line of thought without any consideration for the other, you become a slave to it. They are slaves who dare not be in the right with two or three, least of all liberals.
I believe that those who have returned their awards must not only return the mementoes, they should also return the cash amount with interest. At least that will show some righteousness if not a thinker's conscience. The chest beating media seems to have forgotten to ask this question to Sehgal and Vajpeyi. On their part, they too have cleverly kept mum. That is selective conscience.
I have recently authored a magnum opus which I hope is considered for the Sahitya Akademi Award. There are more in the pipeline. Even before the committee considers me worthy of it, I am prepared to give an undertaking to them that "award once accepted will not be returned under any circumstances".
The Sahitya Akademi is an apolitical organization devoted to the cause of Literature. Both Sehgal, Vajpeyi and their ilk forget that they are not given because someone is pro or anti-establishment. But publicity is far better than an award when the time is convenient. More so when the award had already gathered dust in your drawing rooms for years. Awards don't pay a mortgage.
Having said that I earnestly believe that awards are not the only markers of success. My judgments are not based on them. As a writer, I have my own mental trophies.
For me, it’s not about winning an award. It’s also about not even being nominated. But if and when an award comes, it will be a keepsake and not a weapon.

Of Modi and dictatorship

Raju Korti
Three decades after she received the Sahitya Akademi Award, it has occurred to writer Nayantara Sehgal's perceptive wisdom that the country's plural fabric is getting torn apart. That in all probability is a red herring when you know she makes no bones for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's studied silence on the Dadri lynching incident. Having made her anguish vocal on Modi's "fascist dictatorship" she has decided to return the award.
Whether out of selective amnesia or political expediency, as part of the Nehru family, Sehgal has chosen to overlook that the pluralistic nature of Indian polity was torn apart repeatedly right from the country's partition days to the anti-Sikh riots and the Gujarat riots if you discount the countless fractures it has suffered from time to time. But of course, this blog is not about Sehgal per se. It is how Modi routinely lends himself to extreme worship and extreme revulsion for the same reasons -- whether it is his 56-inch chest or his sartorial sense.
I do not see much change in Modi beyond certain cosmetic protocols since he continues to be obstinate enough not to change from the days I met him as a state leader in the mid-eighties. Calling him stubborn and inflexible might amount to dictatorship if we indulge in semantics. And yet, Modi is not in the same league as Pol Pot of Cambodia, General Pinochet of Chile or the more despotic Idi Amin of Uganda all of whom presided over military juntas. Modi is just a speck in comparison if you make concession for his unbending leanings. But he never hides his self-righteousness anywhichway.
In his spate of tours abroad in recent times, Modi has thrown all protocol to the winds and poked ridicule at his political rivals which of course has been countered in similar measure. Whether a prime minister's foreign visits should be aimed at creating international goodwill and bring investments to the country or use it as a platform to spew venom against his rivals back home is a debate that will never end. Modi is not known to be a protocol fetishist. We all know the protocol. But more powerful than our protocol is our grooming to believe in something more. The Indian Prime Minister seems to have more conviction in the latter, take it or leave it.
Years ago, Shiv Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray had stirred a hornet's nest by making out a case for a "benevolent dictatorship." Having officiated over a monolith party for well over four decades, Thackeray sought to create a Teflon-coated dictator who had a vibrant democracy and people's welfare at heart. Thackeray, like many others of his ilk, had little to do with the fact that the difference between democracy and dictatorship is in the former you vote first and take orders later. In the other, you don't have to stand in serpentine queues for voting. Modi's case appears to be that of "I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator."
Without sounding fair or unfair to Modi, let me say this: When Liberty becomes a license, there is a dictatorship at your doorstep. All leaders from Gandhi to Modi have been licentious if you realize what I mean. The gullible have a Hobson's choice.

Butt yours truly!

Raju Korti
Its time singer-actress Jenifer Lopez surrendered all the accolades she has earned for her famed derriere to a man she probably may not know. He has actually stolen it right from under her butt with an impunity that is now so uniquely associated with him.
The former president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) who has just been replaced by Shashank Manohar, an astute administrator with clean record, refuses to bow out. He even makes clear through his actions that he has more grit and determination than any Indian cricketer in recent times. If only they could take a leaf out of his voluminous book! There cannot be a better mascot for his own company India Cements the way he stuck to his position when allegations about his "conflict of interest" flew so thick and fast that even the Supreme Court could not ignore.
Srinivasan is being investigated in multiple scams, including the notorious IPL cricket betting where his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan has been severely indicted for hobnobbing with bookies. Gurunath is cooling his heels behind the bars while Srinivasan celebrates himself as the Chairman of International Cricket Council (ICC) and Managing Director of India Cements. He is also being investigated as a in the corruption involving politician Jagan Mohan Reddy. In March 2014, the apex court ordered him to quit as BCCI president to facilitate investigations into the IPL betting scam.
He did that but not before making light of the court order. It is difficult to believe that as the President of Tamil Nadu Cricket Association, Srinivasan wasn't aware of the "conflict of interest" arising out his franchise the Chennai Super Kings. It is funny how wheels of justice catch up. Srinivasan in all probability will be hounded Manohar whom he replaced in 2011. His long stints with the industry ensured that he remained unruffled in the wake of the media and national outrage that sought his resignation. To his credit or discredit he hung on to his post although various courts asked him step down. Surprisingly, he also got away from being hauled up for contempt of court.
To some people even notoriety is an effective substitute to public fame.
In tune with his characteristic, Srinivasan gave away the Cricket World Cup trophy to the winning Australian team -- which should have been the prerogative of ICC President Mustafa Kamal. Prior to the final, Kamal had stirred a hornet's nest with his statements regarding umpiring in the India-Bangladesh quarterfinals. ICC reportedly had a meeting and decided that Kamal would not be allowed to hand over the trophy. Srinivasan had also expressed his extreme unhappiness over Kamal's comments in the same meeting, causing an embarrassed Kamal to walk out of the final before the match even finished. He later quit his position as the President, and vowed to expose the people behind the "mischievousness".
The Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI), under its new president Shashank Manohar, told the Supreme Court on Monday that it considered divestiture of Chennai Super Kings' shares by former BCCI president and ICC Chairman N. Srinivasan a "sham".

Shortly after the assurance by Manohar to clean up BCCI's image in the next two months, the BCCI did not mince words about its former chief when it told the Supreme Court that Srinivasan is still in a position of conflict and continues to hold commercial interests.
 Having left it to the BCCI this may be the first time the Board has openly distanced itself from  Srinivasan following the severe dent its image suffered during the IPL betting and match-fixing controversy. The other cricket associations are none too enthused about Srinivasan's continued defiance. This time round the battle seems to have reached a decisive phase. But Srinivasan has hung on in a brazen display of intractability. I have words that make for an excellent  quote for him: "I have worked too hard to conquer power. I will not allow anyone to take her away from me."