Death

Shiv sena supremo Balasaheb Thakaray is no more. Sunday 18 November, 2012 hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Shivaji Park to see a glimpse of their God as he was taken in procession from his house Matoshree in Bandra East to Shivaji Park. A distance of less than 6km that took whole day for the procession. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the route.
The original plan was to bring him at Shivaji Park by 10AM and allow people to pay their respect and have Darshan till 5PM. But it took whole day to reach Shivaji Park. After they reached Shivaji Park around 4:30PM, lot of time spent in arranging VIPs to sit at the podium and then pay their respect to the leader.
Unfortunately, this left no time for the common people - those very ground level sainiks who revered their leader next to God - to have last glimpse of their God. It pained me to see those various party leaders to wield their VVIP status and come to the venue at the last moment and still be on that stage and the common people who made Balasaheb god had to scramble around and yet not be able to see their God.
Many of the VVIPs like Chhahan Bhujbal, Sanjay Nirupam had earlier publicly expressed not so flattering words on political dais about this great people's leader. And yet by virtue of their VVIP status they get place on that stage. People like Amitabh Bacchan and other celebrities who by virtue of their VVIP status had easy access in Balasaheb's last few days of illness.  And yet those people who revered him had to struggle in vain.
I wonder what Balasaheb would have thought about this irony.
I guess when we are alive we can select the people to speak to, to be friends with, to criticize. But after death we cannot control who visits our last rites and keeps flower on our body.
Death such cruel thing!

Uncha maza zoka - English usage

Z Marathi runs a serial 'Uncha Maza Zoka' on life of Shrimati Ramabai Ranade - one of the very early women's rights activists in late 19 and early 20th century in India. It is loosely based on the memoirs written by the lady herself. For the sake of adding dramatical value they have added some imaginary scenes to the serial.
Overall the presentation is nice. They are quite successful in recreating the landscape and characters of that era. The creative additions added enough drama to the story to make people want to see more day after day. After end of 'Eka Lagnachi Dusri Goshta', this is the only serial which makes me wish to reach home before 8PM and try to catch up through repeat telecast or youtube.
One of the things that bug me lately is how Nyaymurti Ranade and his elite friends use english words like 'Guilty', 'Excellent' etc in their conversations.
In current times it is very difficult to see anyone speaking pure marathi or hindi or for that matter any other regional language without using even a single english word. But I think that is because we are required to use english in all our professional life and we need to speak in Hindi in our social life (especially in cosmopolitan cities like Mumbai). We use our mother tongue only at our home with our close family and friends. In fact to be relevant in this global village era we even speak with our small kids in english so that they learn the language early in life. Therefore we are loosing our vocabulary of marathi words. I experienced that we speak fluently when we are thinking fluently. And now we started thinking in all these languages, so that reflects in our speech. I do not think we intentionally speak such polluted language.
But I cannot imagine people in those times, even the elite circle of Nyaymurti Ranade, would have had such problem with marathi vocabulary. It would have looked apt if they would have talked full english sentences and full marathi sentences.
I hope they make this small change.

Eka Lagnachi Dusri Goshta

Eka Lagnachi Dusri Goshta (ELDG) - A refreshingly different serial in the rat race of daily soaps on idiot box! It has captured hearts of almost all age groups of marathi TV viewers. Lot of people talked about the serial, some even gave statistics like how many subscribers to its facebook page etc. Now that the serial is coming to end, many fans are requesting to not end it and many feeling bad about it.
Of course I also like the serial for its different presentation than the typical serial format and the no-villain plot. I always wonder about those other serials, how they endlessly continue showing villain characters whose sole purpose in life is to keep plotting some or other torture plan for the protagonists. Do we really ever see such characters in real life? Anyways thats topic for different blog. :-)
There are many places in ELDG, the story does not appeal my rational mind, especially since most of the key characters are shown to think rationally. In fact the basic notion of contract marriage to satisfy family with key agreement to divorce at some future point, itself seems stupid. Of course not as much stupid as some lady marrying to some guy to take revenge on his misbehaviour in earlier episodes or some lady asking girl whom she hates for her smartness to marry her son to take revenge on her.
But after accepting that they really did a contract marriage, the overall presentation and especially the light yet meaningful(whenever necessary) dialogues and sometimes Kuhu's poems. :-) The 'Kavita Antakshari between Kuhu and Abir' was very good.
Suddenly couple of week back they declared that the 'Goshta' is going to end on 25th August. I guess it was to end some couple of months ago, but they had extended it on strong public demand. I am not very sorry for it to end. All good things have to end. But suddenly I felt that the episodes post declaration are becoming more and more cliche.
The 'Mangla Gaur' was so ill conceived. I felt as if it was specifically planned for Radha to say 'Ghana majhyavar ka bara rusla?' If that was the only purpose then it could have been done in any other way. A rational girl like Radha agreeing for Mangla Gaur was completely unimaginable for me, especially since their secret was already out to Mai, her father etc and she herself experienced how their stupid decision had hurt their close relatives. Even though being in love of Ghana she may have wished to have Mangla Gaur, she should have understood how much it will hurt aai-baba (her sas-sasoor) when in just 3-4 days they declare their divorce decision to them. She could have avoided it very easily. Her character would have allowed her to be rebeleous easily.
Similarly Ulka's dialogues couple of episodes back about Ghana were little out of tune from the usual crisp dialogues this serial made us used to. Mai's falling ill also was so typical daily soap kind. She could have told Ghana not to think of their family's emotional pressures while making his decision. Making her ill has automatically put that pressure on Ghana.
Finally, assuming mostly female viewers the Goshta does not depict Ghana's feelings/thought process as much in detail as they are showing Radha's. This makes Ghana look very selfish. Ulka and Radha tell him to think once for himself and not how others will feel about his decision. But most of the time he is shown thinking for himself only. Especially no remorse shown in his behaviour to Radha.
So all in all, I am little happy that the Goshta is coming to end finally.