Pawan Kumar

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Last night was the end of this year’s THE GREAT GALATA.

It started in the year 2012, and I was damn lucky to get a call to be part of it. I thought my theatre days were done and no one saw me as a theatre guy anymore, but thanks to Nimi, I got to be part of it in 2012. Its one of the best things that has happen to Bangalore Theatre. I am sure, very soon chapters of the same will start off in other states as well.

Theatre guys are true artists. And True artists are very emotional. We see each others works and most of the time are trying to criticize it. I guess it is natural because we treat our theatre as our own child and our own child is always the best. In the process we very rarely appreciate another persons work with an open heart.

But Great Galata changes this, even if it is for one day. Its totally worth it. So what happens at THE GREAT GALATA? More than 70 theatre practitioners from Bangalore gang up for a day before March 27th (World Theatre Day). 9 playwrights  9 directors and 4 actors for each play are randomly chosen and bundled up. And they get 24 hours to make a 10 mins play. All the plays are staged one after the other at Rangashankara on March 27th.

The whole theatre community comes together selflessly. This is not a competition, there are no awards, there is no money. Its really for the love of it. We don’t judge eachother’s works. As a writer, you dont have a choice to choose your director. As a director you dont have a choice to choose your actors. And as Actors you dont have the option to choose anything. I think this is the TRICK! And it works like true magic. We all find our little corners in RS and rehearse our 10 min plays with such conviction. For an outsider it would look like we are doing it becoz our life depends on it, but that is not the case. Between rehearsals, you’d see everyone doing their ‘real jobs’ over the phone.

I think, the most magical moment of GG 13 was in the play ‘Missed Call’ written by Rajath Kapoor. The real essence of The Great Galata was seen in that play. HOW? Well, Rajath from Mumbai writes a Hindi play and sends it across. Rajiv from Chennai gets to direct it. Arundathi Nag is randomly chosen for the play. And another young theatre boy from Nepal – Amjad is also chosen in the same process. I have seen Amjad for years. He is a great actor. If it wasn’t for the ‘RANDOM’ selection process of Galata, he wouldn’t have been chosen for that play. So, we had Amjad playing the 80+ Old man, husband of Arundathi Nag’s character in that play. And Amjad rocked! He sort of became the sole image that you’d carry home about the evening. Who would in their right mind give Amjad that role if it wasn’t for the Galata process? But now, I don’t see anyone else doing that role. Even if you got a 70+ actor, he’d not have brought in what Amjad did.

DID YOU KNOW? – I cast two of the major characters for LUCIA after the Great Galata in 2012. Sanjay Iyer and Krishna, both veteran theatre actors. I saw them perform on stage last year and immediately asked them if they were interested in being part of LUCIA! And thus we got two great talents to be part of our film.

After the 2012 galata, I was secretly wishing that I’d get called again for the 2013 galata. For a year, I had kept march 26 n 27 aside for the Galata. Though I dont know what I am doing 2 weeks later, I know for sure that I am busy on March 26 n 27 2014. But the fear lingers at the back of the mind – What if the younger generation takes over? What if I am not called fot the next year? Did I speak too soon? OMG.

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Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else.

- Tyler Durden, Teacher

 Population explosion! remember that phrase? We spent a lot of time writing essays on that topic in our primary school and High school. So it is sort of deeply rooted in our heads – We two, ours one!

So everyone who studied well and got educated about the social status and the future of our country, got pretty much convinced that they should make only one child! The tragedy is that the number of people who understood that is small in number, and the ones who didn’t understand anything (including population explosion) are large in number and they had a lot of sex, made a lot of children, who have grown up to follow the ideologies of their uneducated parents. In fact it started sometime in 70′s I guess. And the results are reflecting today – Educated class is the minority and the uneducated is the majority. And majority always rules. That is what is happening to us, to our country. How do we solve this? Well we all counted on the people who promised us the 21/12/2012 but looks like someone from the majority bribed them as well.

Tomorrow when the inevitable (read mob violence) is going to happen, it is us the educated who will be wiped out first. Imagine yourself amidst a mob and you are talking about logic/peace/sense in front of say 10 people who live in an entirely different world from yours, they are just going to give you one tight slap and ask you to either follow them or be crushed under their feet. HANG ON! Isn’t this already happening. We the minority are governed by the most uneducated class of people. Yes we are dancing to their tunes. Every minute of our lives, we are following them blindly. Yep we have excellent skills to raise our voice or probably blog (like this one) about how we are not in agreement with whatever is happening. But nothing beyond that. And why we don’t do anything about it? Becoz we know that we are the minorities. We know that even if we show initiative and try to stand ahead and fight this injustice, there will be none to back us up. Even if everyone stands up and supports, we still fail, because – we are a minority. Hence some of us simply blog, garner few comments/likes, feel accomplished and satisfied.

It takes only 552 honest people to change this country. We must be such a minority because even in a population of billions we can’t find those 552 honest people. 552 is the maximum members in the Lok sabha. Planting selfless honest people in that room for a period of 5 years can bring in such a big change. I know it. You know it. But yet we can do nothing about it. We will quietly continue to be ruled by the stupid-ignorant-uneducated majority. And like we have been programmed – we will make only one child and we will teach that child to simply follow our foot steps.

I know what you are thinking – “If you talk so big, why don’t YOU do something?”. That crossed your mind, right? My answer is – yes I am trying. For now, I am trying it within my domain and I am learning from it. I am hoping that someone smarter than me, someone more educated than me will stand up to lead (could be you) and I can offer unconditional support. But if this smarter than me person doesn’t stand up soon, then I will. I am thinking about all this. I am letting the world around affect me, to disturb me, to wake me up. But are you letting these things happen to you?

Sometimes I feel it is justified that the educated mass (us) will suffer and perish. Eg. In the field of cinema, it is the majority section of the society which is giving the money. They demand for crass, and they are supplied with crass. They pay for it and keep the process in circulation.  But in the educated class, we are all just a bunch of confused minorities. We don’t even demand, we simply whine. Hence we get nothing!

There was a time when an Artist would create a work of art and put it out for the lesser mortals to look at it, to appreciate it and to probably learn from it. The lesser mortals respected the artist for his/her gift. They studied the art work and tried to understand it. In the process, they were growing. This happened in all streams of art. And cinema is a combination of all art forms. When the lesser mortal sat down and saw a film, he/she “had” to be moved by that experience, thats how powerful it was. Their constant effort to understand the Artist’s work made them more and more sensible and intelligent. But one day, something weird happened. A smart ass said ‘Why must we lesser mortals try to understand art and learn from it? It is taxing and tiring. Lets simply make what we all can easily understand, laugh at and have fun’. Lesser mortals who were in large numbers voted for the idea. Majority won. Dabaang and Bodygaurd kind of cinema became the trendsetter.

Currently, the whole Kannada Film Industry is helplessly dancing to the tunes of the Majority audience. An entire industry is producing content which will make a bunch of 10 – 15 lakh people happy and keep them as consumers. 100+ films are made in a year, all of them desperately attempting to keep this mass interested. The industry hardly makes an attempt to reach out to the rest of 5.5 Crore Kannada audience. It doesn’t make any logical sense or business sense. And yet it is happening.

So is there no hope for the minority section?

There is one solution. The minority has to unite. We are educated, we are smarter, we are updated, we can think clear and faster. All that we have to do is – UNITE. Watch each others back and we will win over the majority. My current film – Lucia, is a working example of this. It took only 110 educated people to unite, to bring in a change. We have made a film which is free of market pressures, a film that is not desperately trying to keep the masses impressed. We didn’t have to think of how we would reach out to an uneducated audience. Instead we have made a film which will help this uneducated audience to think, to question, to take a step forward. Isn’t that progress? Wasn’t that the purpose of a film or any art? or was it really – entertainment, entertainment and entertainment. I can bet that the sad state of the Kannada Film Industry could be completely changed in a span of just one year. It only takes 10% of the educated crowd to actively get involved in bringing in this change.

If we could do this for a film which is not even a basic necessity! Cant we do this for our country? Can’t the educated unite and decide to take over the offices which are currently run by the demons.

Remember, we also wrote essays about – Unity is Strength. Lets put it out to practical application. Lets gift our children a better country and let them live with dignity. Let them be happy that they are educated. Let them feel that life could be fair too.

If we don’t act now, 20 years hence, our children will be struck in traffic, while a convoy will be escorting a good for nothing uneducated politician. And they’d be thinking “If only our parents hadn’t fucked up” (Pun intended)

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A compilation of few stories I witnessed in the last few months. All these experiences keep me wondering about where we are heading.  Who is bad? Who is right? What differentiates Bad from Good? Langauge, sex, color, etc etc Everything seems so mixed up.

If you know Kannada, you don’t eat pastries!

When we were scouting for Locations for Lucia, we met up with a lot of corporates. I’d propose that they could tie up with my film and benefit from infilm branding. I could shoot at their restaurants and hence give the restaurant some publicity. When I was in talks with one such place, I got to meet the regional head. Very impressive man, explained to him about what benefits his pastry shop would get by letting us shoot there. After the whole presentation, he seemed impressed but had one issue. He said ‘The problem is that you are making a Kannada film and it wont be helpful for us.” I said “You have a whole chain of outlets right here in Bangalore, and yet it wont help?” He said “Our customers dont watch Kannada movies”. I asked “Does that mean those who watch dont come to your store and eat pastries?” He concluded by saying that he doesn’t want his brand to be associated with a Kannada film as it wont boost his business.

Strangely, I had the same experience with many other brands! They have chains of outlets and are flourishing here but they dont think that any of their customers watches Kannada Films! Some thing to think about.. Why do they think so? What in Kannada movies has given them that impression? And another store said they dont play Kannada channels on the television in their outlets, when asked why,  they said they have strict orders from the head office. Its an international brand so these local employees had to follow the orders, though they were not very happy about that.

Who gives an outsider a wrong picture of a language and of the people who speak that language? The outsider comes to the city with no knowledge about it. But soon he converts into a person who disassociates from the language and makes fun of it. Why? Who breeds that into their heads? The language may have a great history but an outsider sees what is happening in the present, how the language is represented around him. And Love can’t be forced… so how does he or she voluntarily feel like falling in love with a language. I feel the use of the language in the contemporary world, in today’s world, that is what makes a huge difference to the current situation.

The Yellow Bus

About a year ago, I was driving with my wife on the St.Johns Road. It was a busy time, traffic was moving slow. I am quite a slow driver, and take way too much precaution, so much that my friends make fun of it. So I was moving at 10-20 km/h and trying to take a left. And from nowhere a ‘yellow’ private bus overtakes me from the ‘left’. Needless to say, we survived, bcoz it could have been an ugly accident. I didn’t know overtaking from left was allowed and that to at such high speeds. Like the tv ad which says there are idiots on the streets, my wife and I had the similar expression. We were for a moment so shocked that everything around turned off. The next moment I got so angry that I apparently cursed something which my wife had never heard from me. She didn’t know whether to laugh or still be in the state of shock. Then we discovered that this bus had brushed against the mirror on the left side of my car and it has hanging by the door. Now this called for a ‘meeting’ with the driver. Right?

Like a responsible citizen, I didn’t stop my car in the middle of that road, so that I don’t cause any trouble to the others on the road. Instead I followed the bus, over took it and got in front and forced him to slow down and park, we stopped at the signal. We saw a Traffic cop on the other corner. My Kannada speaking wife quickly got out of the car and ran to him and brought him along. The cop got into the bus, and the signal light turned green. So we crossed the signal and stopped on the left. I got out of the car thinking that the cop will help me settle this dispute. That he’d get the driver to pay up for the broken mirror or register the event so that I could claim for an insurance.

Cop gets down and tells me that I have got the wrong bus, that apparently it was some other yellow bus that brushed against my car and that I had mistaken this one for that. The bus driver, conductor were of course supporting the story. I was shocked. I showed them the yellow paint on the broken mirror. Suddenly, all the 50+ passengers from the window said that it was another bus, of course they all had to go back home and they didn’t want to be delayed by this dispute. Hence, in just 5 mins, the bus got away. I was standing there holding the broken mirror looking at it go. I asked the cop in Kannada as to how much money he took from the driver to make this story up. He just abused us and went back to his busy “trafficking” work.

I guess that is why people stop their cars or bike and fight in the middle of the road. I was foolish enough to not cause any disturbance to anyone around by stopping my car right there and fight it out. How easily all 50 people in the bus lied at the same time. How quickly one can bribe a cop and get away.

I think it didn’t matter whether I spoke in Kannada or whether I had the sense to not block the traffic.

The Muscle Power

This was a few months ago when I was being dropped back home after the shoot. We had hired a Sumo and he was a reckless driver. I remember thinking if I could change the driver for the shoot next day. He was speeding and breaking all rules, I was feeling quite guilty sitting in that vehicle.

And in Jayanagar, as he was mindlessly speeding a vehicle in front of us came to a sudden halt. So this guy stopped as well. A two wheeler behind us didn’t for see it hence brushed against the mighty Sumo on the side. So our driver stops the car in the middle of the road and furiously gets out and starts abusing the two wheeler. I got down to see the damage, well, how much damage can a TVS do to a Sumo? I kept looking at where the driver was pointing, and there were many scratches on it, most of them very old ones. He started using all sort of abusive words on this boy and almost wanted to beat him up. We managed to get him and the vehicle off the main road.

For the next 15 mins, this well built driver verbally abused this little young boy. We tried to interfere but he wouldn’t listen. The driver wanted this boy to pay up for the ‘scratch’. The boy kept apologizing but this one won’t listen. At one point he started beating him up as well. There were an audience of course. I was in two minds to just leave the place but we had too much equipment in the vehicle, so stayed through the ordeal. The boy then offered about 500 bucks, everything he got. But our driver was greedy, he wanted to extract more. Then the story took a funny turn.

All the while this lil boy was being apologetic and our driver was being the monster. The boy then made a phone call and spoke in his Shivaji nagar Hindi! He was asking the ‘Bhai’ to get people and come to Jayanagar. Our driver’s expression changed. This puny boy was a different person all of a sudden. After the boy hung up, our driver spoke like he is doing a favor and took the 500 and quickly got us out of that scene. As we drove he was laughing and said “Ratri bar duddu bantu”.

Met him 2 weeks ago on the sets again. He had come to collect some balance payment. His sumo was missing. When asked what he doing now, he said he was into politics and was working with his brother for the next elections.

The Arrogant Immigrant !!!

This story is happening now. The following links will give you more info about the story and how it is perceived by different people. This is a dear friend who is labeled as an immigrant within her own country. She is this quiet person who was involved in the arts. Arts dont have a language barrier they say. She is also someone who was involved in setting up theatre festivals which involved a lot of Kannada content. However with this story, things have been spoken quite wrongly about her. Some say she is doing this for publicity. I think she’d have got more publicity as North eastern girl working for a theatre based in Bangalore and dealing with Kannada play programming, but instead she is getting famous for something else! Read on.

 http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/woman-groped-by-mob-slapped-by-constable-after-accident/article4172944.ece

https://www.facebook.com/pawanfilms/posts/180047468802037?comment_id=610314&ref=notif&notif_t=share_comment

https://www.facebook.com/pawanfilms/posts/234152513381754?comment_id=22939811

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Auto Drivers have to be well behaved and take me where ever I want to go!
(But I will scare my well behaved children by saying that if they don’t study well, they will become auto drivers. Yes we look down at those jobs)

Politicians should be honest and should attend to my needs and well being
(But I will discourage my well educated children from getting into politics or to stand up and fight for their rights; I will tell them to study more of maths and science, Ignore history and social science. BA and MA is for losers)

Government servants are all useless, good for nothing and are simply feeding on my tax money.
(But I will tell my children to study well so that they can get jobs in private companies or fly abroad)

Teachers in schools and colleges KNOW nothing.
(My second son didn’t score well n wasn’t placed in any companies so now he is teaching, he will quit when he gets a good job opening)

The art and culture is so rich and so well protected in the other countries, but we are a nation celebrating mediocrity. Horrible.
(YES, my child is a talented singer/dancer/writer/actor/etc but that is just his/her hobby, I will not let him/her do that for a living and neither will I fund him/her to develop his skills, what use I say?)

Is this YOU? – A middle class Indian