A Perfect 20

The 20-20 World Cup is over and against all odds, India actually pulled off an amazing victory. The triumph was well deserved and we beat all the teams in the competition to emerge victorious. This is something that Dhoni and the boys can be clearly proud of; after all, 20-20 or 50-50, a World Cup is a World Cup.

There have been many cynics of this format (me included). My father used to call it the Gilli Danda version of cricket and we both cursed the administrators for coming up with another slam bang idea. But far from being a slogger's game, the game has actually shown bowlers in better light.

After all, victories were pulled off by teams due to the bowling prowess of Umar Gul, R P Singh, Clarke and the rest, dispelling all the notions of this being a Batsman's game. Even, somebody like Afridi did so much more with the ball than the bat!!!!

There is no doubt that cricket won more than anything else. Spectator patience is low and producing a result in three hours is definitely a great USP for the format. The game is not very different from the regular ODI format, except for the free hit rule, possibly.

Nor are the boundaries any shorter, as it was assumed it might be before the tournament began. The only thing that has actually changed is the ability to take risk, which increases dramatically in this version.

The 20-20 version has seen the most accurate bowling in recent times and yorkers being bowled regularly (Recollect the number of batsmen bowled in the tournament). It requires greater accuracy from the bowlers and many of them have shown the ability to deliver.

The overall strategy has not changed much; the Indian strategy remained keeping wickets within the first 5-6 overs and slogging at the end. The best team still won the tournament and it did not result in any bunny cricket.

Will this affect the other forms of the game? I don't think so. A three hour format is a greater threat to movies than to the one day form. Test cricket has a niche audience and they will not be weaned away by this. One day cricket is exciting and still remains a sponsor's dream, with the large number of advertising spots available.

What this could do is to increase the chances that cricketers get to play the game. How about 3 different sets of teams now? There have been other experiments with the game like double wicket which have faded but 20-20 is clearly to stay, primarily because it does not interfere with the actual fabric of the game.

The one day format when introduced in the early 70s was scoffed at but it has survived all the criticism. Gavaskar may have scored 36* in 60 overs but just before retiring he scored one the fastest hundreds in the World Cup (of 82 balls, a far cry from Afridi's record of 37 balls,of course). Even, the traditionalists can come around if the game provides all the thrills which seems to be the case, as initial evidence shows.

Yes, we have won and the country is celebrating - well almost, except for the hockey team. The BCCI can provide $3 million to the cricketers but should the state generously award these cricketers from the money we pay in taxes. With the funds there in the game and outside it, does it actually have to splurge it on cricketers?

No wonder the hockey team is upset to receive this form of state sponsored neglect. Also upset are the people who were stuck in the traffic jam on Thursday because the team was dancing its way to glory!!!

One thought on the finals - Shoaib Malik's comments during the awards ceremony was in bad taste. I don't believe he actually said - Sorry to all Pakistanis and Muslims in the world for losing the match. I did not realise even the current Pakistani generation is so short-sighted, considering the team as a representative of Muslims worldwide.

So what should Irfan Pathan have said when he won the Man of the Match - I am thankful to all Indian Muslims for supporting me??? That one second, I felt so glad that we remain Indians at heart and that victory for Dhoni is not a Hindu victory, whatever Malik may think...

We have a tough Australian series coming up and I hope the audience and the media support them just as they did now. It does not take much of an effort for a fickle audience to change its feelings; Dhoni would do well to recollect that his house was stoned and effigy was burnt when we crashed out the 50-50 World Cup.....

In The Name of Ram

Religion’s a funny business, alright. My site meter tells me that my posts on Religion have traditionally done a better job than my other poorly performing posts. So, just to liven up things here and boost the sagging fortunes of this blog, I am posting one on religion.

Watch any news channel now and you know who are the attention grabbers currently - Ram Sethu, DMK and the BJP and their stallions, the VHP and other rag tags. Wonder how come Shiv Sena has not entered the fray- after all; it is the Madrasi Dravidian Karunanidhi who has been making these anti-Hindu comments.

It all started with the ASI making an ass of itself with its uncalled remarks, in a petition to the courts hearing the Ram Sethu issue. The affidavit claims that there was no historical evidence that Rama and Ramayana ever existed.

There is a lot of literary work that talks about the Ram Sethu and its origins. Should we conveniently ignore all that because the ASI thinks it is unscientific to consider literature as a source for historical veracity?

I am not questioning the ability of the ASI to judge these issues but surely, they could have stuck to plain engineering and economics for their stand, instead of bringing Rama into the picture.

Judging the evidence of the Sethusamudram bridge is fine but questioning the very existence of Rama is not their prerogative. Why would the ASI make such a claim and create a controversy when none existed, atleast from a historical angle? Beats me.

Whether we like it or not, religion is an integral part of all our lives and plays an important role in moulding us. It is a sensitive issue and the government could have shown greater tact. Sonia or Ambika may think that Rama is a figment of our dreams and there is nothing wrong if they think that way.

After all, this is a matter of faith and everyone has his or her set of beliefs which needs to be respected by others. But to put that in a government affidavit and make a fool of oneself is a simple case of committing political hara kiri.

Karunanidhi’s arguments do not even merit a discussion but they do make for decent juvenile reading.

Does Rama have an engineering degree and where did he graduate from???

Did the Tamil Nadu CM actually make such a remark? Imagine asking what Kamban’s authority on Ramayana is; after all, has he done his BA in Tamil from any college?

This is no atheist blogger venting out his spleen against religion and God but the Chief Minister of a State. Is it acceptable for a public figure and that too the head of a state to make such comments? Surely, there are better things to argue about rather than the veracity of Rama’s existence? Matters of faith anyway cannot be decided by logic and are best left to the people who care about it.

DMK cannot raise the bogey of freedom of speech here. After all, you could scarcely imagine them questioning the existence of Jesus and the marine engineering skills of Moses in splitting the sea or probing through the Koran for any non-scientific material?

There are many Hindus who are not too particular about religion but even they are bothered when their religion is selectively mocked at by the highest leadership but in the same breath, nothing is mentioned against the other religions because of the fear of being branded “communal”.

Shouldn’t the political class think that their comments may alienate a certain set of people, simply because of religious bias while taking potshots at religion? Of course, my point is not that they should rant against all religions and thus prove their secular credentials.

India is a religious cauldron and there are people waiting for an excuse to go berserk with their beliefs. What is the need to vitiate such an atmosphere by coming up sensitive remarks that would offend any community?

I do not have any issue if such a feeling were expressed by someone in his personal capacity but public figures must be sensitive to other’s feelings and not just scream over roof tops to claim a point.

What happened after all this mud-slinging is ofcourse highly deplorable. A bus of the Tamil Nadu State Transport was torched (killing 2 persons) and Selvi, Karunanidhi’s daughter, was attacked – all in the name of Ram. There are thousands who are willing to die and kill for religion but no one it seems who wants to live for religion.

Such acts of vandalism have no place in any civilized setup and it is extremely painful to see such acts of democratic hijacks. There are so many of us asking this question repeatedly Is our faith so narrow that one person’s statements can make us behave like barbarians?

To me, the entire issue is a debate of ecology and economics. There will be always be conflict in this area but we need to sit across a table, discuss this out and close it. There is always a solution but it can happen only when there is a give and take and tolerance and acceptance of different sets of values.

As a democracy, we are making rapid strides but where we seem to be caught in a time wrap is our level of intolerance. Forget it, it is not even a time wrap; I’m sure we have been more liberal in the past but as we progress we just don’t care what someone else wants to say.

Considering the complexities of running this nation where the only uniting point is nationalism, we must tread very carefully. A small scratch and the entire fabric holding this idea will tear apart.

I strongly believe that religion divides people but it can also be a great unifier. It teaches us to forgive and forget; the true value of our religions has been conveniently forgotten in the din of intolerance that we have come to practice.

Do we have a Transport policy???

A few days back, I came across Karan Thapar’s interview with Ratan Tata in CNBC TV-18. Among the various issues that were discussed, one of them was the Tata’s 1 lakh car. Ratan Tata was confident that they would be able to deliver the Rs 1 lakh car by mid-2008; a few more months to go before the world’s cheapest car hits the roads.

The showroom price may not be one lakh but somewhere in the range of 1.2-1.3 lakh, nevertheless, it still beats the lowest price in India by a huge margin. The Maruti 800 sells at about 2.3 lakhs while even its second hand model (with 2 years usage) comes at about 1.5 at least.

As a business model, it makes perfect sense to launch such a low priced car targeting a segment waiting to indulge itself. The Indian car industry is growing at more than 15 percent compounded annually since 2001 and we are expected to be one of the top 10 countries in terms of vehicle sales by 2015.

Anyway, I’m looking at this post not in terms of the business strategy of Tata Motors but in terms of the larger picture of how we commute in urban centres. Whenever I try to picture city life, the first images that strike my mind are traffic congestion, pollution and chaos.

When I moved out of Mumbai (16 months back) and came to Hyderabad, I was expecting a saner city but now, I have given up on that idea. The idea of a clean, organized city remains a mirage – sometimes, it takes me more than 2.5 hrs in the evening to commute from my office to home by the company bus (the distance to be covered is about 32 km).

Everyday, as I sit in the bus and look out at the ever bludgeoning traffic, I feel so relieved that I am not subject to the torture of driving to and fro for my work. But imagine, what a 1 lakh car will do – two wheeler houses will start investing in it and you will have many households with multiple cars at home. Can our roads and environment sustain all this?

There are two primary ways that the government can look at handling road congestion – expanding the scope of the public transportation or increasing the roadways in the country. Most governments are hell bent upon ignoring the first strategy (at least in most cases) and are going full throttle on the latter one. While expansion of road infrastructure is required, will it solve the problem?

More roads will mean more automobiles on the road, strangling whatever public space is still available. Ask a Hyderabadi the pain involved in navigating through Ameerpet and finding parking space there.

Funnily, the only solution that a government can think of is towing vehicles instead of regulating uncontrolled construction. Public transportation as a policy is notoriously under debated, primarily because we live under the fallacy that everything that is private is perfect and government should be avoided as much as possible. To ensure free flow of traffic, we need to evolve a combination of strategies, including discouraging citizens from using their own vehicles.

What can an efficient public transportation system do? Very clearly, reduce the traffic congestion problem and lower the health hazards that we face after being dumped with tons of carbon monoxide – a visible manifestation of the booming economy. The system should provide a credible alternative that encourages people to move from the comfort and convenience of their vehicles to the public transportation system.

The Hyderabad MMTS provides the comfort but no convenience (very few trains and poor connectivity to the city) while it works the other way for the Mumbai local trains (good connectivity and frequency but zero passenger comfort). From whatever I have heard, Delhi, has got this balance right.

The concept of a Metro Rail that a few governments in India are floating is a step in the right direction. It is a non-polluting medium and can help immensely reducing traffic (Thailand has seen a 4% reduction in traffic after introducing trains in the city).

Hopefully, the gestation time of the projects will not be too high otherwise by the time the first train rolls out; our traffic would have seen a quantum leap. Moreover, during the entire period of the project, the traffic could be badly affected; the Project mangers would have to tread carefully to prevent the chaos from spurting further out of bounds.

One very important thing that needs to be done is to have an integrated transportation policy and not just a rail policy. One of the main criticisms of the MMTS system in Hyderabad is its poor connectivity with the state’s road transport system – something that could have been learned from the successful model in Mumbai.

I take a train from Secunderabad to Lingampally station (to commute to my office) but there is hardly any connectivity from the station to the rest of the city. Why would people want to pay hefty rates and travel by autos from the station when bus transport is so much easier?

The AP government is finally implementing a long delayed proposal of having a combined pass for railways and buses in the city. This would clearly help passengers who have to otherwise take a ticket separately for the MMTS system. But there is more required to be done in terms of infrastructure building. Frequency needs to be increased and connectivity issues need to be addressed to enable more and more people to use these systems.

Any traveller who arrives in Singapore the first time will be able to commute his way through easily because of the user-friendly approach of the government in having clear signals, sign boards everywhere. Contrast this with the confusion in Dadar in determining on which platforms the Western and Central Line trains arrive. This might seem a pretty innocuous point but these small steps do go a long way in easing congestion.

There could be other ways to tackle commutation woes as tried out in London and Singapore. London has tried a harsh £8 congestion charge for motoring through some areas such as Central London while Singapore has not only a peak-hour tax but also a surcharge on the sale of automobiles (a step clearly out of favour with the automobile industry and other ancillary industries). However, the point to be noted is that they have a robust rail network to get the city moving and no such measure can be taken in isolation.

Our consumption rates are increasing dramatically but can the Indian infrastructure handle all this???

Phorpa - The Cup

Going ahead with my newly found interest in World cinema, I would like to draw the attention of readers to Phorpa (The Cup), a Tibetan/ Bhutanese movie directed by Khyentse Norbu, a Lama, better known under his religious title- Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche - an eminent teacher and practitioner of the non-sectarian tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, and the recognized incarnation of a great 19th century Buddhist saint.

The very idea of a monk in the world of entertainment sounds weird, but then such a thought is a tribute to our sense of stereotyping more than anything else. After all, art has no boundaries – then, why not an ascetic entertaining us? Norbu not only manages to make a movie but also weaves a surprisingly charming tale using a set of non-professional actors and real life monks.

The Cup was a surprise hit at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival; it tells a story of football crazy monks, obsessed with the idea of viewing the 1998 World Cup – torn between spiritual enlightenment and their love for the game.

Based on a true story, it takes a delightful look at the world of Tibetan monks and refugees staying in India. To outsiders who imagine that Tibetan monks live an impossibly austere life, the film comes as a surprise. The youngsters under the control of their strict taskmaster, Geko, are mischievous and playful.

You have scenes of the monks playing football, singing, sleeping during prayers, secretly reading magazines etc. – everything which enables us to look at the monks just as they are, sans their halos. His lens not only gives us a peep into the various Buddhist rituals happening but also the normal day-to-day activities in their lives.

Most of the youngsters in Dharamshala have escaped from Tibet and come to India to stay under the aegis of the Dalai Lama. But this does not mean they are automatically attracted towards religion. Two boys are sent, with much hardship and danger, to a monastery in exile in the picturesque foothills of the Himalayas to be ordained into a monastic life.

They have other things on their mind and football is a top priority (in the film), but staying within the walls of the monastery means that they cannot watch their stars in action. Led by a young trainee monk, Orgyen, a few of them make plans to watch the World Cup by sneaking across outside the monastery but are caught by their supervisor, Geko, and punished.

But Orgyen, a Ronaldo fan, is not willing to give up and makes a last ditch attempt by requesting Geko to allow them to bring a television to the place so that they can watch atleast the World Cup final. They promise to work harder and plead to be allowed this one chance.

Surprisingly, they are allowed permission to bring a television but the next challenge is to raise funds for it. The monks pool in money to rent out a television and satellite dish so that they can watch the finals.

The narrative is slow, sparse and does not have any specific events that drive the plot but it sashays its way across effortlessly as a monk navigates through time. It is not didactic or preachy and takes us into the world of Tibetan monks at a leisurely pace.

The humour is warm, sweet and not forced. The bewilderment that the senior monks have when faced with this “non-spiritual” challenge is genuinely funny. Like the scene where Orgyen and his friends consult a soothsayer monk to predict the result of the matches; the soothsayer is left wondering what the fuss is all about.

Witness this conversation between Geko and the abbot:

Abbot: What is the World Cup?
Geko: Two civilized nations fight with each other to gain possession of a ball.
Abbot: Is there violence involved?
Geko: Sometimes.
Abbot: Sex?
Geko: No, you do not have to worry about that.
Abbot: What do they get after the war?
Geko: A Cup.
This exchange can be seen as a critique of modern sport also where two countries battle it out for something as simple as a cup or a trophy. Contrast this to the Tibetan struggle where the hope of a country itself is in shreds and sport has no meaning.

It looks at what home sickness and nostalgia means to the monks in exile, who are so cut away from their homelands. It also presents the attitudes of the new generation of monks who have always tasted freedom and portrays a streak of rebellion in them, unlike possibly their predecessors.

The movie could as well have been set anywhere in the world and the incidents would still have remained just the same. But when the same story is juxtaposed against the ethereal and slow world of the monks in Dharamshala, the movie has a different hue and the layers demand more meaning to the flow of events.

A movie on Tibet could easily have been a blatantly political movie but Norbu allows the theme of political independence to be embedded in the script subtly and does not permit it to dictate the flow. There are hints to the Chinese occupation and Indian and American support for their cause but these are thrown at a few places here and there and do not form a central part of the plot.

Modern sport is a curious mix of entertainment, raw passion and nationalism. The director uses football as a symbol of this nationalism to convey the Tibetan sense of loss. Sitting on our sofa set when we cheer the Indian cricket team, we do not merely support eleven men in blue but we associate that feeling with a sense of pride in the nation.

Sports, probably, more than anything plays this role of arousing nationalism and so, Norbu uses this is as a powerful allegory to feel what it is to belong to a nation.

The entire Tibetan affair is a serious business but to look at their world in a light hearted way which is appealing is a clearly an ingenious act and full credit to the director for this serene and lyrical movie which gladdens all our hearts and still scores cerebral points. Who says soccer and religion cannot mix!!!

Chasing Daylights

Death is not annihilation; it is the flowering of life
- Mata Amritanandamayi

A few months back I chanced upon a book- Chasing Daylights -in one of the book reviews in Business World. The premise of the book- How my Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life – seemed interesting and I promptly bought it.

I started off in a hurry as I generally do with all the books that I buy but after a few pages, I lost interest and the book found itself scattered all across the house- at different locations, in different rooms, lying in an unwanted heap of books and papers.

And then, suddenly, last week, for some unknown reason, I decided to pick up the book and give it a try (Thank you, Amma). My journey to office takes close to 1.5 hrs daily and I had the time to read it. Now that I am through with the book, I wonder why I did not finish it in one go earlier.

Chasing Daylights is a new age philosophy book written by Eugene O’Kelly, former CEO and Chairman of KPMG, one among the Big Four Audit firms. Calling it a New Age probably does not do it justice – New Age is a much abused terminology. This book is an account of his final journey towards death.

It starts from the time he is diagnosed with the disease- glioblastoma multiforme - and concludes with his death four months later. The final chapter of the book is written by his wife as he is too sick by that time to pen down all his thoughts. It is an intimate, thought provoking account of the last days of a man who realizes that he was “…blessed. I was told I have three months to live”.

Death is undoubtedly the most personal moment of one’s life(!!!) – a phase which one has to handle alone - all alone. The grief that surrounds this transition affects not just the person but the surroundings, making it a rather morbid feeling. Eugene, however, decides (rather realizes) that death need not be so bad at all and that the pain of it can be lessened by being ready for the last day and embracing it full heartedly.

He decides to unwind himself from all that he is associated with – his colleagues, his business associates, family members and finally self. He reckons, very rightly I realize, that the pain is much lesser when both the related parties agree to move apart.

I guess, in many ways, the problem with death is not that it comes one day inevitably – we all know that- but when it comes, it jolts us rudely from our slumber of mortality. Most cultures do not discuss death because there is a fear and anxiety about it but how about facing it with a smile or even welcoming it by being ever ready for it?

Welcoming death does not necessarily mean running away from life but it means looking at death as yet another milestone that needs to be covered in our ever changing state of consciousness. We are all scared of Death because no one has ever returned from there to tell us how it is to die; if someone could return, things could have been very different.

Most Hindus would agree, at least theoretically, that death is not the annihilation of our souls but a mere signpost in our long journey. But are we ready for this journey?

I distinctly remember reading the The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche where he says that the best form of meditation is to meditate on one’s death. Sounds ghastly, right? But it is so only because it is a radical thought; after all haven’t we all been brought up to look at death as something hideous and grotesque? He says and I quote -

Death is a vast mystery, but there are two things we can say about it: It is absolutely certain that we will die, and it is uncertain when or how we will die. The only surety we have, then, is this uncertainty about the hour of our death, which we seize on as the excuse to postpone facing death directly. We are like children who cover their eyes in a game of hide-and-seek and think that no one can see them.

One of the most beautiful things that Eugene tries to explain is how to live in the present and not bury oneself in the debris of the past or the uncertainty of the future. Now this is not an entirely novel thought and I’m sure we would have heard this umpteen times. But, he does not sermonize; instead, he tries to bring that change to his life.

He succeeds on a few occasions while he continues to struggle on many others but there is a certain peace that he feels as he connects to his true self – something that happens when you start living in the present. It is a constant struggle which takes a great deal of effort initially but slowly it becomes an effortless and painless process. Contrary to what we have been brought upto believe, it is our nature to be happy and it is only when we move away from this feeling, we become diseased – a state of not being at ease.

Being a businessman, he goes about the business of dying (as he calls it) in a very methodical manner. He lists his final goals, sets timelines and tracks his progress, all of them focused with one final target in mind – DEATH. He stumbles repeatedly as he realizes that his strengths as a business leader are probably not the biggest assets that he requires now.

Speed, efficiency and micro-management (Type A Personality characteristics) were of not much use to him at this juncture and it is then he realizes that the most important virtue in a man’s life is Consciousness.

Multi-tasking is not a virtue as many of us would like to believe. It merely means a lack of focus on any particular activity. I remember reading this beautiful Zen tale about a monk and his disciple. One day, after years of austere life, the disciple asks his Master what is the difference between the two of them?

The Master says, “I eat, I sleep, I work and I meditate. “ The puzzled student says, “So do I. What is the difference?” The Master smiles and replies, “When I work, I work; when I eat, I eat. But when you work, you think about what you eat; when you eat, you think about your sleep and so on”.

How different are we? At this moment, as you are reading this, you probably have lots of different ideas running through your head. We are all a set of muddled minds, without a focus – the ocean of thoughts needs to become a silent stream.

Chasing Daylights is not about one man’s fight against death like Lance Armstrong’s It’s Not About The Bike which chronicles his struggles against all odds and less than 10% survival chances to emerge a hero. Armstrong’s effort is wonderful and inspiring but for some reason I felt closer to Eugene’s story. Embracing death is probably so much tougher than enduring it, though a happy ending always makes for pleasant reading.

The disease was at its final stages when diagnosed; probably one reason he did not fight it the way he and many of us would have wanted. Yes, snatching life from the jaws of death is heroic but there are times, when we need to accept life and death as they are. The book is more about his acceptance of his fate which some people may claim as cowardice but to me, it is as heroic as it gets.

After reading the book, I think I need to strive to live in the present; not an easy idea to implement by any stretch of imagination but it is a profoundly powerful feeling. As I write this, my mind goes back to the meeting that I had in the morning; clearly there is a long way to go before I actually start living in the present but then, I can always make a start, can't I?

We all have the required tools scattered around us to tap the energies in the world, conspiring outwardly to help us whenever we need. But let us make an attempt to reach out to it. It's never too late; we need not wait until Death stands at the altar of our lives before we attempt to change.....

Right to Reincarnate????

Reincarnation was always considered to be something left to the faith of people and a religious issue. But now, the overzealous Chinese Government has pitched in to stop and regulate reincarnations.

We always knew that the Chinese government was scared of the Tibetan monks but isn't this stretching it a bit too far? In a new rule, Tibet’s living Buddhas have been banned from reincarnation without permission from China’s atheist leaders.

Beats me how the Government is going to identify reincarnations. Can you imagine a set of monks sitting for a reincarnation test and then an interview? Maybe the monks would have to submit an application claiming their reincarnation with required proof, duly attested by a gazetted officer (scope for easy money).

When matters of faith start being regulated and framed by governments, you know where this is all headed. Now you’d appreciate the complex responsibilities that bureaucrats have to deal with across the world, especially in such regulated democracies...

For further reading, check this space - China tells living Buddhas to obtain permission before they reincarnate...

Children of Heaven

In the past few months, thanks to the Hyderabad International Film Festival and a couple of friends (Sirisha and Prem), I have had the good fortune of being exposed to the world of international cinema, something which I have always wanted to but never could. Sometime back, I got a DVD version of an Iranian movie Children of Heaven, directed by Majid Majidi, a prominent member of the Iranian New Wave Cinema. The movie was nominated for the Best Foreign Feature Film in the Academy Awards (2003) but lost out to Roberto Benigni’s “Life is Beautiful”.

Children of Heaven is the kind of movie you want to watch and recommend to others for viewing. The movie is stunningly simple and subtle but at the same time is highly engrossing and never for a second, do you feel bored with the proceedings. There is something about such movies which is refreshingly different – they are simple, unhurried and talk to your heart directly. Sometimes, in the name of art, directors complicate movies and make you wonder whether the art of story telling can be so convoluted after all.

Children of Heaven tells the story of two siblings, Ali and Zahrah. Ali takes his sister Zahrah’s shoes for repair but loses them on his way home. The entire movie revolves around their attempts to manage their lives with a single pair of sneakers. The family is poor and cannot afford to buy a new pair of shoes, so they hide the loss of the footwear from their parents. They come to an agreement where Zahrah wears Ali’s sneakers in the morning while attending school and Ali uses the same pair in the afternoon to attend noon classes.

There is a running competition in the area for kids and the third prize is a pair of shoes. Ali participates in the race hoping to come third but after a lot of effort, comes first. His coach and principal are all very happy but he is glum because he can no longer give the shoes to his sister. The film ends with Zahrah finding out that she will not get a new pair of shoes, but an epilogue explains that Ali eventually achieves the larger-scale success of having a racing career. (The epilogue in the DVD version does not carry sub-titles and I picked this part from the internet).

The story line is quite a basic one and some critics have found it just too simple. But I see this as more of a problem with the cynical times we live in. We are so desperate to complicate our lives and don’t have the time and patience to appreciate simplicity. Serious cinema is conveniently taken to comprise uncomfortable bouts of insufferable silence, long shots of unexplainable camerawork and dialogues which seem totally out of world; entertainment is confused with meaningless songs, action sequences and inane dialogues – all in the name of reaching out to the masses. But Majidi shows that there are no boundaries between class and mass cinema and that art can be both meaningful and entertaining at the same time and does not have be mutually exclusive.

The movie appeals to our heart because it manages to blend realism and beauty – something that people think is difficult to find. There are a few scenes that stand out like when Ali and his father go to the city in search of work and are wonderstruck by the urban life. The scene also shows the two disparate Irans that exist- one in the high rises and the other in the lanes and by lanes. His father fails to get work because of his communication skills (or rather lack of it) but Ali manages to get his father work by talking smartly, also possibly a generational change.

In another scene, Zahrah drops her brother’s shoes accidentally in the drain; she goes through a gamut of emotions till it is retrieved and we live those emotions, along with her. Her attempts to hide her shoes from the other kids and at the same time locate her pair of shoes are almost an ode to the world of innocence that we have long forgotten in the process of growing up.

Children of Heaven will appeal to children and the unfamiliarity in language is not a hindrance. The director manages to overcome the language barrier and bring into our midst a movie that not only enthralls visually but also tugs at our heart strings. However, classifying this as a children’s movie would be doing grave injustice to Majidi’s efforts at reaching out to a larger audience. In the cynical times we live in, children’s movies are looked as escapist fare catering to a slightly lower denomination of audience. But then, anyday, such a movie should be shown to kids rather than a “Spiderman” or a “Batman” which have nothing in it for children except the fact that they are cartoon strip characters.

The beauty of cinema lies in its ability to present a visual medium to the audience; exploring the sights and sounds can be a beautiful experience in itself. Many filmmakers do not use the power of visuals and bombard the screen with too many dialogues; you need to let the medium to speak for itself and not handicap it. However, at the same time, you must not get carried away by the beauty of the medium and subject your viewers to the agony of being thrashed with senseless visuals that do not speak anything coherent.

The movie is set in a primarily lower middle class milieu and the lens work gives us a peek into the world of lower rungs of Iranian culture, without passing judgments- something we have got used to doing whenever we think about the Islamic world. Human struggle (however insignificant) is always intimidating but it can also be shown beautifully, without allowing us to be cynical about the entire experience.

Kid movies often suffer from the problem of overplaying the cuteness of the kids (watch any Mani Ratnam movie) and irritating us but thankfully, Majidi ensures that they remain part of the medium and do not dominate it. In these days of fast paced action, isn’t it delightful to go through the small things in life in such an unhurried fashion? Finally, all I can say is – This is an excellent movie for both adults and children alike, and one that begs for further discussion with your kids.

Meanwhile, my tryst with Iranian cinema continues. A couple of weeks back, I managed to get a DVD copy of Samira Makhmalbaf’s acclaimed movie Blackboards which won her the Golden Palm at Cannes in 2001. Hopefully, this involvement will help me in exploring the world of international cinema, which has only meant Hollywood till now. I’d be grateful if anyone can suggest avenues to explore this world. I am not very sure where I can watch foreign movies in India.