Monty’s Indian Outlook – Issue 65

Earlier this week as I rode my bike through Goa’s capital city of Panjim, I noticed people staring at televisions like zombies and immediately thought the world might be ending.

Fortunately they were gaping at Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar breaking the world record as he scored 200 not out in a one-day cricket match against South Africa.

Tendulkar is known as the Little Master and unlike the pomaded and overrated Kevin Pietersen, the unfaithful and porcine Shane Warne or the thug and gambler Ricky Ponting, he is also a cricketer to be admired.

While Indian’s cricketing captain MS Dhoni advertises just about everything on sale in India and seems like a man on the make, Tendulkar limits his endorsements and appears as humble as only true outliers can be.

But every genius has a flaw and while some say it is his susceptibility to the short ball or 20 years of cricket finally catching up with him, it is a more likely source for a man approaching middle-age; a fast, red car.

In 2002, after equalling Don Bradman’s record of 29 Test match centuries, Tendulkar was presented with a Ferrari 360 Modena by the automaton, er I mean human being, Michael Schumacher, a gift he readily accepted.

At the time, India’s Justice Minister informed Tendulkar that he would waive customs duty on the car in acknowledgement of Tendulkar’s achievement. This would have been 120% of the car’s value, almost $250,000.

However, certain Indian lobby groups took exception to this exception and demanded Tendulkar pay the duty, which he refused to do. In the end Ferrari paid the money and everybody was happy, especially the Little Master… although just a little shine was taken off our hero’s star.

While Tendulkar prefers to arrive at cricket matches in more understated vehicles, it is well-known in Mumbai that our Little Master loves nothing better than a late-night burn-up in his car.

And as his retirement becomes more imminent and this cricket legend eventually leaves the stadium, expect Mister Sachin Tendulkar to get his Ferrari out of the garage rather more often. Proving that no man can dodge that mid-life crisis, not even cricketing superheroes.

Still, at least he won’t have to buy a Porsche and not that I’d known anything about middle-age crises … Now where did I leave my bike keys?

Monty’s Indian Outlook – Issue 64

It is only two weeks ago that I nearly fell through a roof filming my final scene as Major Johnson in the upcoming Bollywood movie, Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey.

What’s more, that was only the first take. As I extricated my foot from the roof and looked down at the tiles on the floor below, my director asked me for ‘one more’… insurance wasn’t mentioned.

On the second time around, as I shot and killed the rebel Nirmal Sen, this time my other foot went through, but what the hell, I didn’t fall and a realistic frame was delivered.

And that is Bollywood movies in a coconut-shell. Planning means rewriting the script on the day, health and safety is unknown, fellow-actors will die to deliver a scene and it is the most addictive thing known to man.

I’ve been involved in the film for three months. A day here, a week there, night-scenes in 12-hour shifts, role expanded, a death scene promised and then rescinded, and ultimately I kill the rebel who was earlier supposed to kill me. Wonderful!

Co-starring Abhishek Bachchan, one of India’s best-known actors, and Deepika Padukone, on the front cover of Maxim India this month, the film is slated for release in autumn 2010 and no, there is no singing and dancing; this is a serious film.

The film portrays the British as bastards and is a hagiography of a group of Indian students who gloriously fail to overthrow British rule in 1930s Chittagong, but became heroes to the Indian people.

In the same way that Hollywood films are a marketing tool for the American way of life, so it is now for this country. ‘We’re not all about that Gandhi geezer’, screams an increasingly powerful India, ‘we had heroes as well and we now have the money to write our own history.’

Whether history will be kind to the acting talents of Major Johnson, I don’t care. I was paid well and would have do it for nothing, I did 30 days’ filming and loved every single minute of it, even if I had to wear a stick-on moustache, looked like John Cleese and had to wear a heavy officer’s uniform in 30 degrees of heat.

What’s more, I’ve just been cast as a British drug-dealer in my NEXT MOVIE, a role that should be significantly easier to portray than the moustachioed Major Johnson… I’m going method all the way, baby.

Monty’s Indian Outlook – Issue 63

How often have you, yes, YOU, reader, had to be a corrupt person? Been compelled to pay a few rupees, Euros or dollars more to make your life easier, and had to oil wheels, pat arses and grease dirty palms because there was no alternative.

Not that many, I would hope, but it still leaves bile in the stomach and a feeling that your essence has been sullied. I especially get that feeling when the Goa Police pull me over on my bike demanding a bung for whatever offence they decide I may have commited.

But imagine if you had to bribe people all the time, especially when it came to receiving a public service that should come for free. Such is India and even if such a culture appears embedded, it is only when people refuse to pay and stand up against it that it can be destroyed.

So, step forward NGO (non-Government Organisation) 5th Pillar with one of the Great Ideas of the 21st Century. 5th Pillar’s idea is simple. Rather like the Bank of England or the Federal Reserve it is printing money to forestall the problem, and unlike our financial institutions, it is proving to be rather more successful.

The organisation prints ZERO rupee bank notes that are then handed over to any venal official who demands money for doing their job. The idea was originally conceived by a visiting Indian professor at the University of Maryland, who realised how widespread bribery was and wanted to do something about it.

While the NGO’s website has rather too many stories that tell of corrupt officials who instantly throw their hands in the air and beg forgiveness for their sins after being presented with the notes, even this cynic can’t argue with the essence of the idea – shame them into action.

After an initial print run of 25,000 notes, the NGO has now distributed more than one million bank notes and it is this collective passive resistance that not only echoes Mahatma Gandhi’s silent rebellion, it confirms it.

So it is now incumbent upon me to get hold of some of these banknotes and try it out for myself, but I’m still not convinced yer average Goan rozzer is going to buy it.

So, watch this space… if it goes wrong, please send money to Anjuna police station to get me out of nick. Sometimes the old ways work best.

Monty’s Indian Outlook – Issue 62

Who would have thought trying to respect another people’s culture by putting my palms together as in prayer and intoning ‘Namaste’ would cause certain Indians such annoyance.

First it was a female editor from one of India’s most successful newspapers who told me to ‘stop doing that’ and then at a party a State Attorney-General looked at me as if I’d just defecated on a Ganesha statue.

Not only that, he cut me off completely by looking me up and down and muttering ‘interesting’ as he walked past (and through) me, giving attendant friends much pleasure in the process.

East is east, west is east, blah-blah, never the twain shall meet, blah-blah and maybe the grass is always greener… or whiter depending on your shade. While white people flock to the beaches of the world to darken their skin, in this country the more pretentious classes spend crores on cosmetics to whiten their flesh.

This desire has its roots in the caste system and while it is not confined to the fairer sex (sorry), this is primarily a feminine concern. The cause is the Caste system where fair-skinned Brahmin males looked to similarly coloured women to marry… and the darker ones who finally got their man also got shit from their in-laws for the rest of their marriage.

Recently, however, there has been a backlash with some Indian models (some more than others admittedly) eschewing the cosmetic industry’s millions to put their name to glorified bleaching-chemicals.

And about time too. ‘Until the significance of a man’s skin is of no more significance that then the colour of their eyes’ as Bob Marley once sang but it still astounds me how Marley’s words have still to come true.

So, maybe I should dump the ‘Namaste’ gesture and instead compliment people on the whiteness of their skin, but there again I’d rather set fire to my house than genuflect to that particular philosophy.

Oh well, whatever, time for the weekend and the beach to top up the tan. Now where did I leave that coconut oil?

Monty’s Indian Outlook – Issue 61

There’s nothing like a randy toff to sell content so Indian Summer, a film based on Edwina Mountbatten’s relationship with India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru has already received widespread publicity.

Unfortunately, publicity is as far as it goes and not just because of the film’s highly unimaginative title. Set to star the imperious Cate Blanchett, the film was shelved earlier this month.

Depending on who you believe, the film didn’t receive sufficient funding or the Indian government colluded with the UK establishment to block it.

I know where I sit. I have yet to see a scientific breakthrough, a beautiful book or even a decent song produced by a Royal or a Close-Relative-Of-A-Royal, and this example shows once again how the in-bred classes still have the power to set history as they prefer it to be.

India’s ruling class has a similar mindset. All foreign films shot in India must be approved by a vetting committee that screens the script to make sure ‘nothing detrimental to the image of India or the Indian people is shot or included in the film’, proving that while it comes across as all rather snugly, India possesses a bit of China about it.

While the rest of us can only guess if Edwina’s Gate of India was breached by an opportunist Nehru and whether this changed the (back) passage of history, such a movie would have garnered huge audiences in India.

This, however, is only a recent phenomenon; 2009 was the year Hollywood finally broke India. A Bollywood strike and the small, but increasingly significant, rise of multiplexes in Urban India means films such as 2012 and the ubiquitous Avatar have proved as popular as home-produced movies.

Such benchmark movies mean more investment in 2010 as more Hollywood films are dubbed into Hindu, Tamil and Telugu and believe me, multiplexes aren’t as cheap as you’d think.

It costs 170 rupees per ticket, that’s more than two quid. Throw in popcorn and hot dogs for a pound and the babysitter who costs 50 pence and it’s as expensive as London, isn’t it?… Or maybe I’ve been in India too long.

So the potential market for the market is huge and while the West has salivated over Slumdog Millionaire and will do the same ONCE MY MOVIE IN WHICH I STAR AS MAJOR JOHNSON is released in Q4 10, the East has been similarly obsessed about our movies.

Whether this obsession will prove to be as long-lasting as our fascination with the bonkings of alleged bluebloods, only the Box Office will tell. But something tells me there’s too much money to be made out of Edwina Does Delhi, as the movie should certainly be renamed, for that movie to remain unscreened.