During 2021 – for a couple of months
– I wondered (for the first time) if I would end the year in a position to
write about books, movies and the good things in life. It was the year where
all our privileges came in handy and we encashed all of that to live to write
another year-end writeup. Annus horribilis, it was! But the books and movies
helped…
I read a
little less than I would have liked to. Watched more trailers and fewer movies
than I should have. I found immense solace watching Kapil Sharma and Akshay Kumar
carrying on a banter about who earns more (Spoiler alert: Akshay does.) and snippets
by comedians (Heartfelt thanks to Vipul Goyal, Abhishek Upamanyu and Abijit*
Ganguly) on Insta Reels.
[*Pedantic
Bong curiosity: Bhai Abijit, tomar naamer H-ta baad kyano?]
So, here
goes my lists of five favourites in four categories: Sports, Shows, Movies,
Books.
Feel free
to ignore. You’re welcome to disagree. Only condition for the latter is that
then you’ll have to then make your own list!
Here goes…
SPORTS
5. Indian men’s hockey at Tokyo
The literal
crowning glory of the tournament was goalkeeper Sreejesh sitting atop the goal –
after a nailbiting bronze medal match against Germany. His wall-like saves in
the last quarter of the game was a fitting finale to India’s campaign, which led
to a medal after 41 years. [Some drought, this!] The bonus good news was the
Executive Director at my office was ecstatic enough to order samosa and jalebis
for the entire building.
4.
Neeraj Chopra
With his Olympic
gold medal, Neeraj Chopra hit the bigger milestone of being featured in a Cred ad before becoming
a yesteryear star! I watched the winning throw with a bunch of batchmates and we
raised a toast when the announcement was made, singing the national anthem with
gusto! We knew so little about javelin throwing that we weren’t sure of the medal
till it actually said so on the screen.
(Yes, we figured 87.5m > 86.5m but still wasn’t sure how many backup throws
everyone had.)
3. India
W vs Britain W in Field Hockey, Tokyo
I was walking
towards my office instead of hailing an auto or cab when Vandana Katariya (who
was abused for her caste after a previous loss) put us ahead. I stopped right
there and just willed for the 3-2 scoreline to hold, crossing my fingers and
praying fervently – not so much for the team as for myself, because I needed
the fairytale more in the middle of a depressing year. It didn’t end that way
but a team that finished last just four years back had already scripted such an
unbelievable story that I rank it higher than India’s two medal-winning
efforts.
Please read
Sharda Ugra’s pieces on the team: Betiyaan
to badasses. The
Grand Furies.
2.
India M vs England M, Second Test match, Day 5, Lord’s
The fourth
innings target is 250+ and the team is bundled out for 120 in less than 50
overs. Indian fans of the 1990s see this situation like a stinking cliché, a
recurring nightmare. It starts with early wickets, usually two gone in the
first couple of overs. Some middle order pottering to prolong the agony before wickets
fall in a heap, with fans grimacing at the inability to negotiate pace and
marveling at the assembly line of pacers the opponents are able to line up. Hell,
even that raw newbie got four wickets!
Except.
Except. Except this time, the newbie’s name was Mohammed Siraj. And he was supported
by Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami and Ishant Sharma. The pace battery – oh, the
joy of saying this – was finally ours.
And whenever
I will feel sad from now on, I will open this
tweet and stare at the chart. We are better than Ponting’s Australia. Hell,
we are better than Lloyd’s West Indies. *weeps uncontrollably*
1. India M vs Australia M, Fourth Test match, Day 5, Brisbane
Gabbatoir, they said. Didn’t win in
three decades, they said. See you at Gabba, he said.
The last India-Australia
Test series started in the 1990s and ended in 2021. We started with a 36 all
out. We managed to lose half (and more of) our team in the first three Tests
and then went into the fourth with eleven scrappy kids who probably weren’t old
enough to watch cricket in the 1990s and didn’t know that Australia had to be
respected. In a Whatsapp group, we started by wondering if we can last 90 overs
but by the time Rishabh Pant had taken charge, we were a screaming, shivering
mess – cancelling office meetings and begging unlucky people not to switch on
the TV.
We ended
the year with a win at another stadium we have never won before… but after Gabba,
it seemed almost natural.
And you
must read what Gideon
Haigh has to say about the match!
SHOWS
This was the year of the shows. Or maybe, from now on, all years will be years of shows? The amount of non-English, non-Hindi content that we now consume, discovering new niches and unsung masterpieces, is here to stay for good. I hope.
Disclosure:
I haven’t watch Succession. Sue me.
Honourable
mention: I must
start with a standalone gem. Geeli Pucchi was part of an anthology (Ajeeb
Daastaans) whose other entries were nowhere as good. With his short, Neeraj
Ghaywan cemented his reputation as one of the sharpest filmmaker of our times, socially
aware and with an outstanding talent for visual storytelling.
5. Ray (Netflix)
I love the
source material. I loved three of the films enough to squeeze it into my list of
Favourite Five. I (kind of) fought with possessive Bengalis who thought ‘sexifying’
Ray isn’t the done thing. I even wrote about it in detail.
Only one question
remains: Where is S2? What are the stories? Who are the directors? (Okay, three
questions remain.)
4. Aranyak
(Netflix)
Raveena
Tandon stood watching one of her masterpieces get murdered
on the altar of box-office success before she decided to join the streaming
bandwagon. She played Kasturi Dogra, a Himachal cop out to solve a murder that
might well be the return of a serial killer or a brazen politician’s son’s escapades.
Or both. Or neither. She was well-matched by Parambrata Chatterjee, who has now
made a name as the cop who’s confident enough to match female stars in their
adventures. Police procedurals with a hassled, middle-aged woman as the protagonist
is a streaming platform trope but with good performances, direction and a
strong local flavour, it is far from becoming a cliché.
3. Mandaar (Bengali, Hoichoi TV)
Fahad Faasil’s Joji was the Macbeth remake that everyone talked about (and FF’s physical transformation as a nearly wasted youth was phenomenal) but for me, the show-stealer was the Bengali remake of the classic. Set in a coastal town of rural Bengal (Medinipur), Mandaar is visually striking and aurally arresting. The accent (of the region) added an eccentric layer to the tussles in the fishing town involving crooked politicians, crooked businessmen and crooked police. Debasish Mondal in the title role and Sohini Sarkar as Laili (Lady Macbeth) gave two legendary performances – making this one of the most inventive Shakespearean adaptations from India.
2. The Family Man S2
This was supposed to be the crowd
pleaser and – as rare as this gets – the second season lived up to its promise.
But what’s eye-popping in something starring Manoj Bajpayee is when the antagonist
steals the show. And Samantha Ruth Prabhu did just that. As the suicide squad
soldier of the Sri Lankan Tamil cause, both her mental and physical preparation
were spot on! When she first appeared on screen, I had to move closer to the TV
to confirm it was indeed her and after that, I couldn’t take my eyes off.
1. Hellbound
What was supposed to Squid Game’s
year turned out to be something else for me. Hellbound is an allegory set
in something like a fantasy world in Korea but all of us have seen this story
unfolding around us. Over millennia, we have codified crime and punishment, blessing
and damnation, sin and virtue, God and Devil into seemingly immutable codes. In
six hours, Hellbound recreated this process of building a random code,
that eventually becomes a religion. It’s as spellbinding as it is scary.
FILMS
[Have selected only 2021 releases. A Bengali film, Anik Dutta’s Borun Babur Bondhu turned out to be a lovely 2019 film that I watched this year. 2020’s Palm Springs was sci-fi-dark-romantic-comedy that will also stay with me for a while.]
Honourable mentions: Pagglait and Ramprasad ki Tehrvi
These two films are essentially two
sides of the same coin, but both throwing up a winner. Set in the aftermath of an
untimely death in a UP joint family, both films approach the sensitive topic
very differently and end up as very different films. Keen eye for detail,
razor-sharp writing and brilliant ensemble casts distinguish both films.
4. Sarpatta Parambarai
As a Bollywood fan, Toofaan was
supposed to be the boxing film of the year but the ‘national boxing champion’
from Dongri was upstaged by a 1970s Madras dockyard labourer, whose sparring
identity is defined by his lower caste clan. Ranjith’s writing and Arya’s
performance are so good that it is impossible not to get caught up by the
boxing bouts happening in an unknown suburb, two generations back. And the
boxing action gut-spillingly real!
3. Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar
In a year with two Salman Khan releases, the catchiest ‘Salman Khan’ item number (complete with a hook step!) was in an offbeat Dibakar Banerjee film about two people on the run, two people who couldn’t be further apart. A surly Haryana cop and a suave Gurgaon executive go on a road trip packed with real-life parallels of the shady kind, their journey dotted with scenes and characters with top end writing and acting. And with not-so-gentle reminders that a bank scam is just one reckless turn away.
2.
Jai Bhim
What is commercial cinema? Who is a
filmi hero? Superstar Suriya and director Gnanavel turn these questions on
their head in their take of the story of lawyer (and later High Court judge)
Chandru and his crusade of police brutality on tribespeople living on the
fringes of society. Without sacrificing drama or thrill, and without the hero
ever breaking character, Jai Bhim is a brilliant reminder of how even
message-driven films can be gripping. Suriya – the original Singham –
inspired an entire ‘cop(y) universe’ in Bollywood. But don’t hold your breath
about the Suriya-vanshis remaking this one in Hindi!
1. 83
This is the ultimate nostalgia trip,
the ultimate feel-good movie and the greatest superhero origin story ever made.
Those three magical weeks of 1983 gave birth to the part-industry-part-juggernaut
that is Indian cricket now. Painstakingly recreating the era, Kabir Khan delivers
a thrilling ride that is a must-watch for Marvel-happy kids. Ranveer Singh
becomes Kapil Dev with an uncanny mix of cricketing action, body language and voice
modulation as he leads his band of devils to the unlikeliest cricketing victory
of all times. After all, what else he here for?
BOOKS
The choices are clustered under topics, not in any ranking order.
Cricket
2.0 (Wigmore and Wilde) is a lucid but exhaustive guide to how T20 has changed the face of
cricket as we know it. It uses statistics judiciously to make irrefutable points
about the genesis, growth and evolution of the format – covering everything from
the club-based leagues to the country-level tournaments. And tries to answer
that million-dollar question by devoting a full chapter to it: “Why RCB lose?
Why CSK win?”
Honourable
mention: Sachin
and Azhar at Cape Town (Mukherjee & Sengupta) is amazing mix of
research and construction that puts together a history of India-South Africa cricket
(and much more) in the context of a single partnership.
Once Upon
A Time in Hollywood
(Quentin Tarantino) is a deliciously rambling insider's account of 1960s
Hollywood, giving a feel of a vintage gossip mag crossed with present-day fan
site. The connection with the film seems almost tenuous, as the novel changes
the chronology and even the focus to tell the same tale of how cool people made
– and continue to make – Hollywood cool.
Bangla Satyajit Ray Sakshatkar Samagra (edited by Somnath Roy) is the
first volume of the mammoth task of compiling the filmmaker-polymath’s
innumerable interviews on a bewildering array of subjects. Ray was accessible,
erudite and articulate – leading to both pithy takes on a topic as well as
free-flowing chats on his life, universe and everything. An invaluable addition
to the Ray library.
Honourable
mention: 3 Rays –
Stories from Satyajit Ray is the perfect gift to start someone on the genius
of the Ray family. This handsome volume contains works by three generations of
Ray (everything translated by Satyajit), breathtaking in their width and
inspiring in their depth.
The Silent
Coup (Josy Joseph) is
a sobering reminder of the failures of our so-called intelligence
infrastructure across era and geographies. Joseph's reputation as an
investigative journalist has been sealed by his many decades of stellar work,
making this something of a 'best of' compilation in terms of range but
embellished with a lot more research and analysis that gives the book wings. This
is also an exceptionally well-written book, and one of the most rewarding
aspects is the idealistic citizen peeping out from under the cover of a cynical
journalist.
Unscripted:
Conversations on Life and Cinema (Vidhu Vinod Chopra with Abhijat Joshi): For me, stories trump analysis and that’s what I loved this lovely
collection of anecdotes, exclamations and pronouncements framed with several unseen
photos. VVC’s reputation as a maverick shines through every page, even though
the focus is not on the cinematic thoughts behind his films but more on his attitude
towards life.
Honourable mentions:
-
Guru Dutt: An Unfinished Story (Yasser Usman)
-
Bullets over Bombay (Uday Bhatia)
- Pure Evil: The Bad Men of Bollywood (Balaji Vittal)
Postscript
They are
now/still available at an online store near you.
As I set
them out for a photo, the Christmas tree formed a nice, bright background and
reminded me once again what a gift it was to be able to write on things I love
and be able to share it with lots of people. As an introvert, this is the most
unobtrusive way of having a conversation.
In 2022, a
new project of mine will hit the stands. As you can make out, I have made good
use of the time/energy that I saved by not commuting in Bangalore during the 2020 WFH season. Watch this space!
Wishing you a lovely 2022. May all your wishes come true. And then some.
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