Govind Bhai Ke 2011 Filmfare Awards!

I've done all the work for you by watching pretty much every single Hindi movie worth seeing this year. I watched a ton of Hollywood movies too and those are at the end! Be sure to watch these during break if you haven't already!

Bollywood in 2011
Must Watch: DESI BOYZ, No One Killed Jessica, Delhi Belly, Yeh Saali Zindagi, Shagird, Stanley Ka Dabba, Chillar Party, Shaitan, I Am Kalam, Dirty Picture, I Am.
Time Pass But Definitely Watchable: Singham, Challo Dilli, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge, Mere Brother Ki Dulhan, Rockstar, Ladies V/S Ricky Bahl, Luv Ka the End, Ready, Dhobi Ghat, Thank You, Pyaar Ka Punchnama.
Avoid At All Costs: All the other movies!!!

Top Theme for 2011: Child-centric movies - I Am Kalam, Chillar Party, Stanley Ka Dabba, and I Am brought a new direction to Hindi cinema, addressing issues surrounding orphans and child labor. Most of you know that is dear to my heart. What these movies did best was capture their innocence. Simply beautifully done.

Best Comedy: Delhi Belly & Desi Boyz
Best Thriller: Shagird, and Yeh Saali Zindagi
Best Drama: No One Killed Jessica
Best Director: Sudhir Mishra for Yeh Saali Zindagi
Best Actor: Nana Patekar for Shagird and Irrfan Khan for Yeh Saali Zindagi
Best Actress: Vidya Balan for Dirty Picture
Best Debut/Debutante: None really. If I had go with a "Heroine," I'd go for Kajal Aggarwal in Singham. As far as a "Hero," there was no one. Some of the teen actors were really good, just the stories of the movies they acted in were ehhhhh...Notable mention - Saqib Saleem and Saba Azad in Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge. Arunoday Singh had a shot but he flopped out hardcore once Aishwarya got knocked up, she replaced by Kareena in Heroine, and Kareena booted him as her hero. Phail.
Biggest Waste of Money: Ra One.
Biggest Disappointment: Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.
Most Overrated Performer: Sonam Kapoor. Please stop trying to act, and stick to walking the ramp and doing make-up commercials.
Person Who Should Never Gain Weight: Aishwarya Rai. Pregnancy is not flattering.


Hollywood in 2011

Best Film: Hugo
Best Comedies: Bridesmaids, 50/50

Must Watch Action/Fantasy: Warrior, MI4, Real Steel, Paul, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, X-Men First Class
Must Watch Thrillers: The Adjustment Bureau, Limitless, Source Code, Super 8
Watchable Rom-Coms/Date Movies: The Change-Up, Paul, Just Go With It, No Strings Attached, Hall Pass, Bad Teacher, Friends With Benefits

Lose Yourself

Photos are available here.

Right next to Reay Road, a railway station in Mumbai, India, is a stone-walled shack where a group of men sit huddled together. A mist of smoke rises above them, and the men’s faces grow visibly anxious as they begin to take in bittersweet smell. The men take turns chasing the smoke rising up from the deep red resin of the opium poppy as it slowly trickles from one end of the foil to the other.

“Just as a man loves his wife, he begins to love this drug,” says Aneja, a twenty-eight year old drug user and taxi driver. His friend, in a stupor, hangs lifelessly next to him. The flame on the match Aneja was holding had already reached his fingertips, but he continued, “This is a horrible thing, but, without it, a man’s mind stops working.”

In this small shack, everyone is outspoken about how opioid addiction has ruined their lives. It was a moment of dissonance to witness the simultaneous use of these drugs and their denunciation. “We can only go without it for twenty four hours and then our whole bodies become weak. One goes crazy without this,” says Paresh, another user in the room.

Undoubtedly, drug addiction debilitates individuals physically, mentally, and financially. But it has a far-reaching societal impact, especially in Mumbai, a city with over 38,000 intravenous drug users (IDUs) alone, according to a 2006 study published in Sexually Transmitted Infections.[1]

A walk near the Mumbai Central railway station reveals just how desperate addicts and young intravenous drug users (IDUs) become for their next fix. These men will even extort money from their own mothers. The familial impact of drug addiction is devastating when harassment and verbal abuse turn into physical violence. “Most men begin committing crimes to pay for their drugs. Maybe 10% of addicts actually work real jobs,” says Paresh.

Once abandoned by their families, addicts resort to petty crime and theft as an everyday means to pay for drugs. When police catch them using or recognize a user, they beat them and extort money. One man in the shack claimed that the police beat him so badly because he could not pay a bribe that he had to be hospitalized after his leg had been broken in several places. Drug use is his natural way to deal with the recurring infection on his foot, now just a large gangrenous mass.

Hearing this, Sanjay speaks up about the lack of support for addicts and criticizes local NGOs for profiting from the funding they receive. In this room strewn with matches and garbage, Sanjay’s presence would make anyone do a double-take. Clean-shaven and dressed in a crisp shirt, he stands in stark contrast to the unkempt men beside him. He proudly shows me a copy of his diploma from Bombay University, and tells me about his business. Sanjay is quick to point out that he is a recreational user, but he comes to this shack at least once a week. But he is living proof that drug use is a type of equalizer, taking a successful entrepreneur to a congregation of one of the most marginalized groups in society.

He explains how twenty to twenty-five users are paid off by NGOs to come and discuss the benefits of the NGO’s services (they did not actually receive) when funding agencies visit. The lack of follow-up at the NGOs absolves them of having to spend more resources on relieving users of their addiction. He claims that some NGOs that receive free needles from a government needle exchange program actually sell those needles. If proven true, this would implicate NGOs in defrauding the government and funding agencies in addition to taking advantage of the vulnerabilities of addicts.

The destruction of the family unit, police brutality, and corruption in NGOs are not only major societal impacts of drug addiction but also reify the drug problem. Transparency International ranked India 85^th in its 2008 corruption perception index, with police perceived as being the most corrupt all over the world. NGOs and rehabilitation centers can play an enormous role in curbing the societal impact of addiction, but funding agencies should develop novel monitoring strategies to prevent the wastage of resources. Media campaigns exposing police brutality may help empower marginalized victims to come forward. However, solutions to these problems are by no means hard and fast and will require considerable momentum from the public.

Your turn...How do we deal with this problem?

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[1] Title: Estimates of injecting drug users at the national and local level in developing and transitional countries, and gender and age distribution. Source: Sexually transmitted infections [1368-4973] Aceijas yr:2006 vol:82 pg:iii10

A Home, For Now...

Today, I went into Sion Police Station and, after listening to excuses for another hour, I was finally sent on my way with one of the policemen. It was time for Himesh to leave the hospital.

Four hours went into meeting with the medical social worker, Dean, and the Deputy Dean, of which two hours went into waiting around for the ward doctors to discharge Himesh. By now, the nurses had started to recognize me and made small talk.

But we were getting restless. We had to make it to the Dongri magistrate’s office and present Himesh’s case before the court before 5pm that day. Tomorrow is a public holiday and failure to make the deadline would delay us by another three days. I had built up the momentum up until now and it would be a shame to see it go to waste because of the inefficiency on the part of others. Himesh packed up of his belongings, all his clothes, toys, and medicines fitting into 3 small bags. We made it to the police station by 3pm, had the report written up by 4pm, and rushed to Dongri.

Only once the court had heard the case could anything related to putting him in a shelter or ashram be done for Himesh. We reached on time and waited outside the office. There was a ‘middle-man,’ or dalaal (another word for pimp, in Hindi), standing around and taking bribes to help shuttle people who needed their work done urgently in and out of the lawyers’ offices.

They had a juvenile detention facility within the court’s compound, and keeping Himesh there was out of the question. The boys there were older, had committed smaller-scale but serious crimes, and it was no place for a boy who needed to recover. The superintendent did not approve either. The magistrate told me point blank that I should readmit Himesh back into the hospital and come back in fifteen days. He was someone who was used to giving a command and having it obeyed, but I did not flinch. I couldn’t believe my ears…so I demanded that he give me in writing that by court order I was to take Himesh back to the hospital and that there would be a female constable supervising him 24/7. After all, the child was now the government’s responsibility. He backed off immediately.

He wrote that by court order, Himesh was to be taken to an ashram near Sion Hospital. This occurred without consulting that ashram for availability or for Himesh’s eligibility as an HIV-positive child who needed special medical attention at the same time.

There was no time for questions. The office closed and we were sent out. The repeated questioning had worn Himesh out and he was quietly crying to himself for the rest of the evening. We went to the ashram and spent another two hours admitting him there. They agreed to take him in but only temporarily because they do not keep males over the age of six in their ashram. As we left, Himesh began crying loudly. This was not the first time he had been abandoned…

Guardianship and Legality

We couldn’t legally take Himesh out of the hospital, and no one was willing to do anything about it. We had no death certificate for the father and no way of getting in touch with any relatives or guardians.

The medical social worker at the hospital had been writing to Mr. Modak, a constable at the Sion Police Station, for over a month requesting that the police come to the hospital and write up a report and take custody of the child who at present has no legal, responsible guardian. We weren’t going to drop the child off with his alcoholic and unstable grandmother, who had not once visited him in the two and a half months he had been at the hospital. She may be a relative, but as far as I was concerned, he was not going to be turned over to her. While Himesh did not want anything to do with his grandmother either, that was a decision I took into my own hands. She would probably put him to work and would neglect his education. This was for me an ethically ambiguous but pragmatic decision.

Either way, the report from the police had to be filed. It had to be documented that the father had abandoned Himesh. Since we didn’t have a death certificate for the father, there was no way to really prove that he was dead. If he showed up at Himesh’s ashram tomorrow asking for custody of his son, he should be punished for abandoning his child. The child was now the responsibility of the government.

I had already made three trips to the Sion Police Station and was getting frustrated. No one was coming, and Himesh continued to live in the hospital unsupervised. The police had been utterly neglectful in responding to this case and gave me excuse after excuse. We are understaffed today, please come tomorrow…We don’t have the proper report papers on which everything must be written…

I had had it. This time I brought my digital SLR and started clicking pictures around the station and of the police staff. Much to my delight, this greatly annoyed the police standing outside! I threatened that unless they sent a policeman to file a report the very next day, I’d go to the media. I walked off, fuming.

Fragile Emotions

The next day, I brought a worker from Childline, an organization that responds to children’s calls for help. All they have to do is pick up a phone and dial 1098 (toll-free). Childline gets calls from abandoned, abused, and sick children and is prompt about sending someone out to meet that child that same day. Dipak, the outreach worker, came and talked to Himesh…but the repeated questioning had worn Himesh out.

If you’ve ever spoken to street children, you will notice they are incredibly forward and open. They will tell you everything about everyone who lives in their lane, everything about their families, and their entire life history if you have the time to listen or before you begin attracting too much attention from people passing by and random, vailaa on-lookers. But the tragedy of Himesh’s situation was still rare for even the nurses and outreach workers who work with the most under-privileged and marginalized sectors of society. I think that combined with the fear of being placed in an ashram, the stone wall he had built around his emotions had worn thin, and Himesh began sobbing uncontrollably. I asked Dipak, who himself was tearing up, to step out while I explained to Himesh that we wanted to put him in a place where people treat him with love and respect, give him good food to eat every day, and look out for him. I asked him if he trusted me to do the right thing for him. Scared and helpless, Himesh could only nod quietly.

Where to go?

Where’s my Eclair? Shit, I had forgotten it…I handed 2 rupees over to one of the custodians and asked him to run downstairs and get two éclairs for Himesh. Network of Thane for People Living with HIV/AIDS (NTP+), an NGO, had sent an outreach worker, Arun, to the ART Centre that day to help out with Himesh’s situation. It was not clear what exactly he would be doing but perhaps he could give me some suggestions. Himesh instantly recognized Arun as the “NTP Uncle” as he used to visit the NGO with his father. Himesh was far more comfortable with Marathi and was chatting away with Arun. So I started talking to the nurses about what all Himesh has been doing. I quickly learned that none of them knew about the death of Himesh’s father and acted very surprised. They reasoned that Himesh probably did not want to tell them because he was very averse to going to a hostel, i.e. ashram.

At the mere mention of the word, “hostel,” Himesh began bawling. We quickly changed topics, but as I gradually came to learn, Himesh had previously lived in a hostel. His neglectful father and grandmother had placed him and his brother in separate hostels, but his brother’s whereabouts are unknown as of now. Himesh’s experiences in this hostel were nothing short of terrifying. In the hostel in Badlapur, he and twelve other children were used as slaves and spent their days performing hard labor. When they worked too slowly or did not listen, they were badly beaten and repeatedly placed underwater. It came as no surprise that he wanted to have nothing to do with leaving the hospital and to strange place where God knows what happens…It was in this hostel that Himesh became very ill and fragile and he attributed his sickness to having been there.

When he used to live with his father on the station platform, Himesh was often beaten by the police. Paying the bills for his mother’s end-of-life treatment had rendered them homeless, and the same people who were there to serve and protect could only batter and banish. Where else would they have gone?