Sohrab and Rustom?

By the late 60s, Clarion-McCann http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/06/whose-wife-was-she-anyway_27.html & http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/07/in-search-of-holy-grail.html (I joined it in 1965 and quit in 1976) had turned into the proverbial snake pit. By 1966, I was Senior Writer and therefore vulnerable to the emerging power struggle. I had a good working relationship with most departments including client servicing, media and research. The problem, however, was an Art Director with Napoleonic delusions and a Machiavellian mind. He fancied himself as the spokesperson of the downtrodden. Mind you, Clarion, Kolkata, happened to be the accidental offspring of the Trade Unionist struggle in DJ Keymer in the late 50s Kolkata. But the crusty old Comrades running it in the days I’m writing about had by then turned into hard-core capitalists, the worst kind you’d ever encounter. These veterans had not forgotten their realpolitik. One of their major fears based (I reckon) on their own past experience seemed to be that, if not checked in time, the Mumbai mutiny might result in the branch breaking away from the main Agency. To woo the Natives, they hired a mediocre and moderately successful ad manager from one of the most aggressive US marketing companies well-known for its cold remedies. He was a Gujarati who fancied himself to be quite a connoisseur of the arts and a man of the people, especially able to resonate with ‘creative’ people as he chose to address us. He used to tell me how his ‘influence’ inspired one of his ‘dear’ colleagues to write a play about an Englishman who went native in the 19th century Punjab. (The ‘dear’ colleague in one of his recent books wrote dismissively about him, though – not even mentioning him by name.) The new ‘strategic’ acquisition of Clarion-McCann, Mumbai, using his profound managerial wisdom and acumen in turn hired an England-returned Group Manager. Guess who he was? No less than the son (from her first marriage) of Mehtab, the wife of the once-renowned Hindi cinema and Parsi theatre legend, Sohrab Modi. http://www.upperstall.com/people/smodi.html. The office grapevine had all kinds of rumours about him flying all over. Anyway, through him, I met Sohrab Modi on several occasions at their Cuffe Parade home when we were invited there for dinner. By then, I had come to be acknowledged as a fast writer who could produce plenty of alternative ideas at the drop of a hat. So, Mehtab’s son often used to invite me home for a hurried lunch and emergency work conference. One of the most vivid memories I have of him is about his fear of flying. We were flying to Hyderabad for a Vazir Sultan briefing session one Monsoon afternoon. The plane was pitching all over soon after the take-off. I was narrating to him something I had read about air crashes. Then suddenly something made me turn to look at him. It was a sorry and distressful sight. The man was virtually petrified. Though Sohrab’s surrogate son, he was no Rustom.

I’m a stranger here myself.

Meet my old friend, the apocryphal Martian, this time a movie critic to boot and quite up to speed with the big picture of the very latest earthly affairs. On his recent unannounced visit, he dropped in at a multiplex in South Mumbai and painstakingly watched all the Indian movies showing on all the screens. Then, before leaving, he vouchsafed me his startling conclusion. “You guys no matter where you live, whether in India or abroad, have all turned NRIs or POIOs at heart.” Noticing the effect of his words on me, he condescended to reveal his reasons for the extraordinary observation. “Just look at the locales your movie makers opt for. How does a boy who hails from a remote village in Punjab dream of frolicking with a Westernized girl in Switzerland?” “Errrr. Maybe, he was a Swiss goatherd in his previous life,” I butted in hesitantly. The Martian guffawed dismissively – or made an impatient snort that sounded like a human guffaw. “More likely, your Bollywood moviemakers imagine all their compatriots to be closet NRIs/POIOs because they themselves are exactly that. This is not a recent acquisition, mind you. Foreign locales have always fascinated your film folks. It makes better sense to use them now, I grant you. It strikes a chord with the genuine NRIs/POIOs and they end up making more money.” And, finally, this parting shot: “Have you noticed how contemptuous these NRI/POIO-minded moviemakers are of average Indians? For instance, in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, when Nandini’s husband takes her to Italy in search of her lover, the footage is actually shot in Hungary with no attempt made to camouflage the signage in the local language or even obvious landmarks on the assumption that the audience won’t be able to catch on. Is it not the pinnacle of arrogance?” One thing kept bothering me after he left for Mars. How could a purely apocryphal being be so insightful?

Often the best man. Never the bridegroom.

How movies change the way we behave is both amusing and annoying. Ever since the three-and-a-half hour ‘wedding video', Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, became a smash hit, mehendi, sangeet and baraat with traffic-stopping street dancing – invariably with a video crew in attendance – became a sine qua non of nearly every (not necessarily Punjabi) affluent wedding in Mumbai. Even if the groom's and the bride's families were sharing the wedding hall, the make-believe baraat would start a little distance away just so that the baraatis and their spouses or fiancées got a video op to have themselves digitally immortalized as the pseudo-HAHK couple. That those on the road inconvenienced by this hankering after fifteen minutes of fame may be wishing fervently for a ‘shoot' of a very different kind won't even enter their HAHK-besotted brains. We can see this "Smile. You're on Candid Camera" mindset in operation in Indian studio audiences and sports fans in stadia too. Speaking of weddings, do you remember the often-cited phrase ‘Often a bridesmaid but never a bride'? In the Listerine mouthwash (halitosis) ad which ran without a break from 1923 for a decade, it summed up the sorry plight of the graceful but foul-breathed Edna. It is also an ‘original' addition to the English language? The copywriter, Milton Feasley, invented it and the mainstream lingo accepted it with open arms. http://www.amusingfacts.com/facts/Arts_and_Literature/more13.html. Also see http://chnm.gmu.edu/features/sidelights/whoinventedbo.html.

Invasion with a mouth-watering flavour (Don’t armies march on their stomach?)

The Punjabi invasion of the Bombay palate began, if memory serves, just after independence. I recall going with my father and mother on a Saturday evening in 1949 for the opening of a small hotel behind Regal Cinema. It happened to be owned by one of his Irani or Iraqi clients. That was the first time I remember eating Tandoori Chicken and wondering aloud at the red colour sticking to the fingers. That was Punjab pandering to the local palate. The Chinese wave came later probably closer to the end of the fifties, if again memory serves, when eateries started springing up and non-Chinese restaurants began offering a few Chinese dishes as well. What brought about this trip down the gastronomic memory lane, I haven’t a clue. The city’s free-loading foodies too were much later in coming. I was recently told a story about one of the more enterprising members of this pioneering breed. The tale teller claims to have shared his table and paid for his nips and quarters at an aunty’s joint in the bad old days. His gift of the gab and survival instinct were so extraordinary, says his fellow-tippler and my informer, that he could cajole a drink and a meal from the most tight-fisted of his companions as well as the stoniest-hearted among the aunties. All of which reminds me of Jeffrey Bernard (Low Life & More Low Life, Pan Books). Of course, Bernard was a far superior writer than the Indian journalist I was told about although far less successful in worldly terms. A nutshell JB biography is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Bernard. Also, do check out the book review at http://www.eclectica.org/v7n4/mcgowin_bernard.html. To get a quick feel of the times when Napoleon’s armies were marching on their stomach, have a look at the Time Traveller’s Guide to Napoleon’s Empire at http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/guide18/part06.html.