Playing by the Book

A school kid has had many a trick to rid himself of the ennui that filled up the space between two consecutive rings of the bell that signified the time period that comprised of a boring class. Of course, not all classes in school were dull and dreary, as the kid found out later on in engineering college, when the classes there raised the bar for boredom inducement beyond compare.

There's stories of how Tom Sawyer played with an ant during a class that he didn't want to pay attention to, and there's also tales of many a truant student who got into trouble for having made a conscious choice to make the most of a class where it wasn't possible to pay attention. The student was however compelled to sit in the class anyway, and escape from this world into an alternate one where time flew by instead of being in reverse gear seemed to be the best way to conform to what had to be done, while not losing one's mind in the process.

There are many pastimes that one would engage in to hasten the progress of time in such situations. One would end up letting loose one's imagination in a Calvin-esque flight of fancy, or play with walking on one's desk, or end up scratching out messages on desks to be read by others that were to share a similar fate eventually, in the next academic year, were those engravings made to withstand the test of time.

As adults in a professional environment, the same people with poor attention spans would think about blogging or LJ-ing, or end up thinking of making tally marks out of catch-phrases uttered by those less verbally equipped, who would spout the 'like's, the 'means's, the 'actually's, the 'basically's and so on and so forth.

As the number of meetings attended grew, it also brought in an increase in one's catch phrase vocabulary, and this tally mark system evolved into the grid format where one would make a list of catch phrases in one column and the names of the participants in the other, making tally marks against each person for each catch phrase uttered, and then coming up with a final score that would be the total sum of the products of the number of times a catch-phrase was uttered by the weight assigned to that particular phrase, which in turn was directly proportional to its frequency of use.

Simply put, final score F = w1.n1 + w2.n2 + w3.n3..... + wm.nm (wi = weight of particular catch phrase and ni= number of times said catch-phrase was uttered)

The one with the highest score would then be awarded a mental atomic wedgie. Sadly, it being a figment of one's imagionation, such a thing hardly made a difference to the 'real world scenario', but made for some priceless amusement all the same.

Now, a long time ago, some genius who wanted to kill time came up with the game of 'book-cricket', which proved to be quite entertaining and engrossing, insofar as making father time rush by in supersonic mode. The best part about this game was that one could play it in class with a text-book and, with enough discretion would seem like a pedant, which would then come in handy while currying for favours with the teacher concerned.

The rules for book cricket, for those that aren't acquainted with this beautiful game are as follows:

1. Take a book, any book will do. It can be 'War and Peace' by Leo Tolstoy, or it can be 'I Have Read That Somewhere' by Aswath Venkataraman. So long as it has page numbers on it, preferably arabic numerals, or numerals of any other kind that you would be comfortable reading.

2. Make a list of 22 players, 11 on each side. During the time book cricket was a craze in school when I was going to school to get beaten up by my teachers and sent out of class thereafter, we used to make lists of national teams. Students in schools and colleges nowadays can use any combination of players. Heck, throw in football and hockey players too, just to spice things up. You could even have mythical fairy tale characters playing cricket, or have politicians make up the teams - UPA XI v/s NDA XI. I wish I had thought of this when I was playing this in school! Hindsight 20/20.

3. Start playing the game by opening the book. Look at the right-most digit on that side of the book that contains even numbers. Runs are awarded, or player is out based on the following conditions -

0 - player out
2 - two runs
4 - four runs
6 - six runs
8 - dot ball

4. Continue this process until all the 11 players on one side are out, and repeat the same for the other 11 of the opposing side.

5. Make a tally of all the 'runs' scored by both teams and the one that has more runs is the winner.

6. It would make sense to make a total count of all balls faced by each player (balls faced = number of times the book was opened to add either 2, 4, 6 runs or a dot ball until a player gets out) in order to resolve a tie between two teams, should one be really keen on making a proper match out of it. I know of one person who did that meticulously, and he's applying to the Indian Statistical Institute for a fellowship this year. (OK, I made that part up, but you must admit it sounds convincing to some extent!)

The reason I thought I should mention book cricket is because I have been following the IPL T-20 games regularly, more out of compulsion than choice, because every place I go to has the T-20 on screen, or has someone following it or has the remote control button stuck such that no other channel could be displayed (though I think my relatives were yanking my chain on that one, doubting them would have caused a family rift and hence Dear Prudence told me to shut up).

Some games have been good fun to watch, and some games, including the debut of the IPL of the Royal Challengers against the Knight Riders would have probably made supporters wish they'd never brought tickets at all to watch the game live.

The past few matches have been so exciting, especially the ones where the Royal Challengers and Knight Riders triumphed against the Deccan Chargers and the Kings XI Punjab, and the flurry of runs courtesy of the unleashed batting by B Akhil and Saurav Ganguly in those matches transported me back to those times when every ball bowled in imaginary cricket utopia was either a wicket, or would fetch high denomenation runs.

Maybe the IPL is quite like book cricket - it will keep us engaged when we have nothing else to do on a boring evening, but when life takes over and demands that we attend to things that are more important, this whole venture would be tossed aside until the next time ennui comes beckoning.

Then, in a manner similar to how children turn into adults and graduate into more 'sophisticated' pastimes for ensuring the passage of time, there will be things that will captivate our collective imaginations much more than the IPL has managed to do so at the present time.

Until then, lets milk it to the max and have fun while it lasts!

Movie Magic

There has been a progressive increase in the media's interest towards a particular movie, with each passing big budget release that happens out here in our country. Movies have tie-ups with soft drinks, television programs and IPL teams, which in turn help(?) in promoting the movie further so that hapless souls can venture out to watch them in theatres and wonder what bad Karma they'd incurred to be subject to the nonsensical crap that they eventually are destined to endure, for three hours or so.

This whole hoopla leads me to think how simple it was not so long ago, when there was tremendous hype about the release of particular movies only in select circles or in movie magazines such as 'Filmfare', 'Cineblitz' or 'Screen' which I would invariably end up reading from cover to cover while waiting for my turn to have a haircut at the barbershop that I have been visiting ever since I learnt from my class teacher in school that a haircut was the only way I wouldn't end up having to sit with the stupid girls in class, a school of thought that prevailed in a 10 year old version of me, but something that has been thankfully remedied since. Now a grown-up, enlightened version of me prefers the company of women, but that has already been posted about in my livejournal.

These magazines would result in me knowing which movie Salman Khan would be acting in next, or about a certain rising star named 'Divya Bharathi', who died on my 10th birthday in 1993, much to the disappointment of many people who really thought she was cutemax, and about how a certain Tamil music director named A.R. Rahman was creating waves in Bollywood with the release of 'Rangeela'.

However, it was never the case that one had too much information at one's hands about a particular movie, and the cinemas retained a certain sense of exclusivity, a particular charm or a mystic allure to their being that somehow could be experienced only through visiting a movie theatre. The alternative was to rent a VCP (not a VCR) from the video circulating library along with a few tapes and then sit and watch them at home together.

It is time for an interesting (?) digression in the insipid narrative here to highlight the fact that though our household was open to books, magazines and printed material of pretty much any kind in much the same way as the Playboy mansion is to promiscuous women, the same openness was not extended towards the movies, and we'd end up watching movies mostly whenever the almighty DoorDarshan deigned to telecast them, invariably with breaks in between for the evening news and other such interruptions. This was one of the reasons why bringing home a VCP to watch movies, which happened about three times in my entire childhood was such a big deal, and we watched movies such as 'Mr.India', 'Dances with Wolves', 'Where Eagles Dare' and 'The Sound of Music' during those ventures, which to my delight, have added to my collection of treasured childhood memories.

Going to the theatres and watching movies was a big deal, and it was a ritual that required extensive planning and a substantial amount of time invested in choosing what snacks to buy and which day to watch the movie on, which city bus route to take to get to the theatre and so on. The first couple of movies I saw with a good friend of mine from school were the result of these extensively planned outings, and I remember the movies we watched were James Cameron's 'True Lies', dubbed in Hindi and Mani Ratnam's 'Bombay', in Tamil, which was incidentally when I, as a precocious 12 year old boy just out of class seven fell in love with Manisha Koirala and realized subconsciously that a feeling of vulnerability combined, paradoxically, with a fierce streak of independence in women is indeed a highly attractive trait.

As we hapless consumers, post liberalization of our economy in 1992 gladly bore the brunt of the onslaught of satellite and cable television programs all through the 90's, it was becoming more and more evident with each passing year that it would be hardly a matter of time before the interlinking of all forms of media would take place, much the same way as physicists such as Planck were intent on propounding a Unified Field Theory for all the various types of forces whose existence was known to man.

This unification meant that the movies would not remain exclusive to those that were actual die hard fans of celluloid, but would turn out to be open access for anyone with a television. The effort one had to put in, or the entry barrier that one had to cross in order to gain access to the magical world of movies had suddenly been reduced to nothingness, as convenience and sloth brought in a new wave of on demand movies, and movie channels of all sorts showing movies so many times that it would have been practically impossible to miss out on watching a movie like, say, Titanic, even if one were to try very hard to miss it on TV.

This next level of dilution of a movie lover's standing was atleast something that he/she could put up with, because it also resulted in providing one with greater access and exposure to hitherto unknown or unheard of cinema, including the different forms of parallel cinema and indie movies that most people that want to break the mould or want to be cool so fervently swear by, in present times.

However, as one turns on the television today to watch some random program, and all one can see are promos of movies such as 'U me aur hum' (whose title could be a dedication to the shorthand using generation that I wish to distance myself from) and 'Tashan' (how I hate that word!), which are screened pretty much on the same lines as advertisements, with the producers having purchased time slots on channels, and one wonders why it is that these movies have to hardsell themselves so much if they are good movies that people would be falling over each other to watch. How did movies such as 'Sholay', 'Jurrasic Park', 'Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge' and others gain so much popularity without having to resort to a media blitzkrieg?

I am taking an educated guess here to make an assumption that the contractual agreement that most actors would sign as part of their being cast in a particular film would require their services much more beyond the requisite time they spend on the set shooting for a given movie. Once the movie has been shot, and has undergone post production, they would still have to appear for media interviews, shoot promos which are, one tends to notice, mutually exclusive to the content or plot related to the movie, and that would also contain copious references either directly or through the placement of logos to media houses, fashion houses, restaurants, banks or other commercial establishments that are piggybacking on the movie's gravy train to further their own causes.

Gone are those days, when most people made movies solely for entertainment, or as a mode of self expression or to portray a certain message that one strongly believed in. I would like to fervently believe that it is only a certian section of movie makers that have sold out, and that most of those who haven't will remain true to their cause.

However, it is quite unlikely that the magic of movies would vanish just because of a new avatar that they have assumed. Any air-headed romantic person would still believe without a shade of doubt that the best movie moments are those that one experiences in real life, rather than in the theatres.