Lets get this right. Slumdog is an Indian film. So what if it the funds came from outside India. The funds for Bandit Queen came from the same source and it is considered an Indian film. The funds for Chandni Chowk to China came from Warner brothers, but it is considered an Indian film. So what if the Director is British, for his take on the film is completely Indian. Except for the Director, Screen Writer and one of the Producers, everyone else of the 100 odd people that make a complete film unit were Indian. The film is based on book by an Indian author.
It is easily the most successful Indian film ever. And it will get at least 3 Oscars ( but who cares about them anyway) and will ultimately go on the make $ 200 million in world wide box office and other rights. That is 10 times what has been achieved by any other Indian film, including the ones that are getting all the media hype now.
Danny and his team have done a terrific film and they deserve everything that is coming to them. It does not matter that no Indian director thought of the film. It is good that someone did and made a film. In India in any case it would have been almost impossible to find funding for this film ( $ 15 million), and keep the integrity of the story. But hopefully this film has paved the way for other Indian films that appeal internationally, and producers and financing companies will wake up to the opportunity. And buyers overseas will now be more open to films from India –
Well done Danny and his team and thank you for making this wonderful film.
Satyam, the tip of the iceberg ? What is being hidden by the banks
The long tentacles of the huge Satyam fraud will ultimately engulf not only the the auditors (Price Waterhouse) but also the banks where the cash deposits were claimed to have been kept. The answers are just not good enough, and the lies will soon engulf the banks. I trained as a chartered accountant, and in those days was part of many audit teams. One of the first things that is mandatory is for the auditor is to independently confirm the cash balances as shown in the balance sheet directly with the banks, and not through the company being audited. If such a certificate was obtained by the auditors, as is mandatory, then it is possible that some one in the bank had been bribed to send the falsified statement to the auditors. But it is virtually impossible that just one person could do so at a bank. The computerized internal audit systems at the bank would show up the discrepancy almost immedietly. Even assuming that there was a group of people at the banks perpetuating this fraud, the cash reserves of a public limited company are public knowledge and are detailed in schedules to the published balance sheet.
Satyam was such a highly regarded and traded stock, that it is virtually impossible that the banks like HSBC and HDFC, all of who run their own wealth management funds for their clients would not be completely aware of the details of Satayam’s balance sheet. Someone would gave got up and said ” Hey ! these cash balances stated in our bank just do not exist !”
Yet no one blew the whistle ? For seven years ? Either the banks and their fund managers are completely stupid, or were just willing to go along with the fraud. The accountants and the banks, both of which have a fiduciary and legal responsibility, have much to answer for. And perhaps the reason the the investigators are not going after the banks is that it would create a loss of faith in our banking systems. That would panic the entire financial system and might even led to a run on the banks.
Corporate India has a lot to answer for. It was these people that would go on and on about the corruption in the government, which incidentally they themselves would encourage on a much higher level. But now it is evident that even at its core, Corporate India sees itself as a private club that is free to dupe the middle class investor and depositor for its own gains.
Satyam is India’s sub prime crisis, and the effects will be long and painful as the corruption in the system is unraveled. It will reach the highest echelons of our corporate world, for Raju could not have perpetrated this fraud at this level and for so long, alone. It needed the collusion of the banks, the accountants, and the government. And I would bet that he knows that he will be let off lightly as the investigations will be somehow stopped before it engulfs the whole system.
Madrid, Jordi Molla and El Greco
No, not at the zoo, but the show window of a fish restaurant inviting you to a gourmet dinner !
A view of Madrid from my hotel room
I am in Madrid to talk about a movie (tell u about that one later) but also to see my friend Jordi Molla, who played King Phillip in Golden Age. We have been great friends since, and despite being a big star in Spain, Jordi is one of the humblest persons I have ever met. We keep promising to do a film together again and even a short film would be great. Something we could shoot in Barcelona maybe, in about 20 days. Madrid is a vibrant cultural city. Cinema, art, Theatre and Opera. And then there is the food. Oh my God, by the time you have finished lunch people are already discussing dinner. Have to get away before I become a balloon.
I have been to Madrid before but every time I come, I have to go to the Prado Museum. It has some of the best works of Rubens, Goya, Rembrandt, Rafael and others. But mainly I come to see the paintings of El Greco. Yu cannot stand in front of some of his paintings and not be moved by the emotional turmoil contained in them. The only other artist that has that effect on me is Van Gough. The Prado has the largest collection of El Greco in the world. I find Greco fascinating and even at a time where expressionism in religious art could put you squarely in prison, El Greco was painting dark fantasies (he apparently went through a very dark period himself) using religious iconism. And some of his art where he broke free of the strictures of religious iconism, is amongst the most beautiful of expressionistic work I have seen even in the great modern artists.
“Art is not submission and rules, but a demon which smashes the moulds”
Two last images of Innsbruck as I left
Frozen stream
The church behind my hotel
Innsbruck : room with a view
Love the mountains and feel spiritually lifted when I come back to them And I breathe easy out of the claustrophobia of the city. Innsbruck is particularly beautiful. Right now is the skiing season so I am told the town is full, but I am a few miles away in a place called Wattens where t is really quite and peaceful.
What is the identity that is India ?
Sitting in a coffee shop at Vienna airport waiting for my flight to Innsbruck. , using fast free internet (why cant we have that all over India ?). The airport is full of Indians. Going to Milan and Frankfurt mostly. This is the time of the textile fairs, so its wonderful to meet all the young entrepreneurs from all over India.
The question that plagues many of us is, what is the force that binds India ? Before independence it was always empires that fought and brought this sprawling diverse continent under one leadership. But there was so many divisive factions, cultures, languages, political and social systems that the umpires ultimately broke apart not only through foreign conquests, but mostly because the internal divisions always helped the new conqueror. We say that the British were great at the ‘divide and rule’ policy – but in saying that we actually hide truth. We Indians are so divisive that it is easy to divide and rule us. Not the other way round. Is internal divisiveness our fundamental nature, and Indian nature ? I don’t think so. I believe it is that we are such a disparate people that divisions are easy to come by. India is always threatening to break at the seams, politically, or through religion, or through cast or race, or even language. Should India hold together (as I think it should), then what would/could hold it together ? Remember taht divisions in India can never just be resolved through geographical separation into states. For example the rise of the political power of the lower caste through Mayawati is not a geographical, issue. Caste politics are spread through our nation, or we would have to divide our nation once again through the upheavals that happened in partition.
So what is the idea that is India ?
Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol: Whats common amongst them ?
and Helmet Newton, Marc Chagal, Brian Eno, Alexandra McQueen ? They have all done installations or sculpture/art pieces for the Swarovski museum in Wattens near Innsbruck in Austria. It is now the second most visited place in all of Austria. And now I have been asked to do an intstallation there. It is not only an honour, but also promises to be a very humbling experience. The installation is based on a short film called “Paasage” (which used to be called 3 Graces) that I just completed, and which I wrote about when I went to film in Argentina. Swarovski funded that film.
I am doing this in collaboration with my good friend David Adjaye, who is one of the most innovative and celebrated young modern architects in the world. Pray for me, that through humility I may access a universal creativity that would allow me to do something worthy of being there.
http://kristallwelten.swarovski.com/Content.Node/kuenstler/kuenstler1.php
The so called ‘Negro’ Village in Gujarat
In Sasan Gir in Gujarat, we saw this ‘Peacock Dance’. We were astonished at the style and the beat of the dance, which felt completely African. The body structure of the men performing the dance did not feel Indian either. It felt like a troop of dancers that flew in from a country in Africa. I was told that the dancers came from the ‘Negro Village’. And when went there the next day, we found a village (and then many more) where everyone looked completely African but spoke and were culturally completely Gujarati. They told me they were descended from the people that were brought in by the Nawab of Junagargh, but some said that they had descended from fr earlier times, when the Arab traders brought Abbisynian slaves many many generations ago. The term ‘Negro Village’ is the local term, not mine.
Incredible India : The Great Rann of Kutch
kaveri exulting in the sheer magnitude of the white salt desert of the Great Rann of Kutch. The largest in the world, it covers almost 10,000 sq kilometers. Formed by receeding seas that left the salty marsh land behind, it is amazing to actually see yourself walk on crunchy salt crystals and see just white for as far as the eye can see. According to Wikipedia, this was a navigable stretch of water in Alexander’s time – but to my mind this is probably geologically a far earlier phenomena. Inside there is the largest colony of flamingoes in the world.
Travelling
I am travelling in Gujarat with my daughter visiting the villages that keep the traditional handicrafts alive from generation to generation, the Rann of Kutch and now in the Gir forests in search of the last of the Asian lions. Many of these things will probably not survive the onslaught of our times by the time she grows up. So I would like her to see where India really grew up.
No fast internet access here – so will post some pictures and more details soon.