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The strain of very badly played instruments permeates through the closed widows. Ho hum… must be a wedding in the neighborhood. And not just one! Weddings, like buses, tend to come along all at the same time. There is what are called, ‘wedding seasons’. I get the fact that there are days which are more auspicious than others for weddings and I understand that some months in the year are just not great for cele­brations. Planting, harvesting, mon­soon—all would have made it diffi­cult in the past to hold a wedding which might involve your guests walking for hours from nearby vil­lages. But I would have thought that in Kathmandu and other cities, the social calendar no longer needs to revolve around the agricultural year. Or does the agriculture year now revolve around weddings?Whether for genuine belief in the gods appointing an auspicious day for a wedding, or whether bowing to convention, weddings all happen at one time. Or that is how it appears anyway! I have friends who have to rush from one party palace to anoth­er on the same day to attend sev­eral weddings. The roads become even more congested than usual as the many wedding cars make their way from one location to the next. Last Friday, I was delighted to see a carriage drawn by two white hors­es near my house. The usual red-clothed brass band was present as well as a crowd of invitees and curi­ous passers-by. Well, not actually ‘passing by’ as the road was blocked. I had to squeeze through the throng of excited aunties and children.

I’ve attended weddings in villages, in a range of party palaces, and in 4-star hotels, and they all have one thing in common. What’s with the sad-faced bride? Even love marriag­es or marriages where the bride and groom are extremely happy with the choice of spouse, where does it say that the bride needs to look like she is in a dentist waiting room? She sits there in her fine clothes and gold jewelry on a raised platform so that everyone can see what a lucky man the groom is.

Well, yes probably I wouldn’t be looking too happy either under these circumstances. And not being able to join in the dancing? My face is falling by the minute! For what is a wedding without dancing? On the whole the main reason for me attending a wedding is for the dancing! Wheth­er that is a Scottish wedding with traditional dances such as the Gay Gordons and Strip the Willow (don’t these names sound a little strange today?) or a Nepali wedding with Bollywood and Nepali tunes, I just love to dance. And why shouldn’t the bride be allowed to dance also?

I’ve been at weddings where the brides look petrified. At a friend’s village wedding I sat talking to his bride for quite some time as she looked completely lost and vulnera­ble. Years later, I was introduced to my friend’s now smiling and happy wife. She did not remember me, despite me being the only foreigner at her wedding. The whole day for her was just a blur of ritual, red vermilion, and no doubt the fear of what was to come. While the rest of us were dancing and eating to our hearts content and generally having a great time, she, like so many other brides, was not.

So when I hear that far-from-mu­sical wedding band, I usually feel quite unsettled. The young bride has no idea what is in store for her. But, hopefully her ‘new’ family will be good to her. However, I suspect a little bit of her dies that day. And if you have no idea what I am talking about… you must be a man.

Thriller

RAAZI

CAST: Alia Bhatt, Vicky Kaushal, Jaideep Ahlawat, Rajit Kapur

DIRECTION: Meghna Gulzar 

4 STARS ****

Even with the plethora of spy-thrillers Bollywood has been churning out of late, Meghna Gulzar’s ‘Raazi’ feels dif­ferent. The smartly woven film recounts the life journey of its female protagonist, from a meek homely girl to a fearless spy. A mas­terly performance by Alia Bhatt suc­cessfully glues together the film’s moral complexities and nationalist sentiments, making it an important film to have come out of India in recent times. During the volatile times in the build-up to the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War, 20-year-old Sehmat Khan (Alia Bhatt) is plucked from her sheltered life as a student in Delhi University and made to train as an Indian spy by her father (Rajit Kapur), a sea­soned Indian spy himself with ties to a high-ranking Pakistani army official. To plant his daughter inside Pakistan, he arranges Sehmat’s mar­riage to the Pakistani army official’s youngest son Iqbal (Vicky Kaushal).

With Sehmat installed in her in-laws’ place in Pakistan, she becomes the eyes and ears of India, which wants to know if Pakistan is trying to outflank it on a crucial war-front. The task isn’t easy as we see her walk on eggshells, conniving and cajoling to scavenge just about any information on Pakistani mili­tary tactics which she can secretly pass on to her Indian superiors. And she has to do all this without blowing her cover of a naïve young wife and daughter-in-law.

‘Raazi’ is based on the novel ‘Calling Sehmat’ (2008) by former Indian military man Harinder Sikka. Gulzar and her co-writer Bhavani Iyer’s adaptation retains the broad “nothing above national interest” theme. But they are also successful in telling the story without the kind of chest-thumping patriotism that’s become the standard staple of so many Indian spy genre flicks, be it Neeraj Pandey’s ‘Baby’ or Nikhil Advani’s ‘D-Day’. In this Raazi is more of a character study than a desperate flag-waving film.

Pakistan for a change isn’t por­trayed as filled with villains. Gulzar doesn’t resort to cheap tricks like pulling a sub-plot where Sehmat gets abused by her controlling in-laws, just to massage the anti-Pakistani pathos. Vicky Kaushal, who plays Sehmat’s unsuspecting husband Iqbal, is shown to be an understand­ing partner who on the night of their wedding insists on sleeping on a separate sofa and allows his wife to settle and grow familiar with him. Sehmat and Iqbal’s relation­ship grows to such an extent that it threatens to doom her real mission.

Bhatt, who debuted in 2012 with the high school movie ‘Student of the Year’ has in recent times taken up more challenging and serious roles (most notably in ‘Udta Punjab’ and ‘Highway’), where she peels off her good looks for good acting. The character of Sehmat feels realistic in Bhatt’s subtle hands. She fascinates and has the audience rooting for her right through the nearly two-and-a-half-hour film. I can only hope her star power will help the film reach more moviegoers.

In addition to its riveting plot and characters, ‘Raazi’ also boasts of terrific period production design. Much care has gone into giving the film a vintage look and style through, often the gentle interplay of Urdu language and Kashmiri cul­ture. Similarly, the songs penned by Gulzar (Meghna Gulzar’s father) and music by Shankar-Ehsan-Loy are well-crafted and evocative.

Raazi is a film where the women have the upper hand. Steered by a capable director, with a splendid performance of its female lead, it’s a wholehearted emotional ride and a pulsating thriller. Do not miss .

Sports

DAMARU KO DANDIBIYO

CAST: Khagendra Lamichhane, Menuka Pradhan, Anup Baral, Buddhi Tamang

DIRECTION: Chhetan Gurung

Review: Two Stars **

‘Damaru ko Dandibiyo’, as the name suggests, is a story about the nearly-forgotten sport of ‘dandi-biyo’—an indigenous amateur game of sticks played in the hills and plains of Nepal, and in some other parts of the Indian sub-continent. And it has the right mix of good intent and heart. But sometimes it takes more than good intent to make a good movie. This film tries too hard to make us care about the sport, so much so it ends up becoming an educational sports film rather than an entertaining sports drama. After finishing his Masters, Dambar (Khagendra Lamicchane) returns to his village with a mission. He wants to breathe new life into dandi-biyo and expand the pop­ularity of the game within his vil­lage first. For that he calls for help from his old village pals Mukhiya (Buddhi Tamang) and Mala (Menuka Pradhan). His friends are reluctant because they are busy in their own lives—Mukhiya’s a poor shepherd and Mala’s a school teacher. The village kids are not convinced either. Why should they give up football and cricket and pick up a game that they know nothing about?

But the real obstacle in Dambar’s way is his father (Anup Baral), the headmaster of the village school. Before settling in as the headmas­ter, Dambar’s father used to be an exceptional dandi-biyo player and decades ago, he too had harbored similar hopes of making dandi-biyo popular. Things didn’t pan out as planned and since then he’s devel­oped a bitterness towards the game; he’s disgusted by the idea of his son giving up everything to become a torchbearer of dandi-biyo.

The first half of the film is ded­icated to this father-son conflict. There’s nothing new in this graph and the sports genre is overwrought with arcs involving aspirant sons and displeased fathers. ‘Damaru ko Dandibiyo’ draws our attention to the squabble between Lamicchane and Baral, somewhat, even though they don’t remotely look like father and son. But it’s the progression of events in the second half that least convinces.

The screenplay by Lamichhane switches from modest to downright silly, as it catapults the story from Dambar’s village to Kathmandu in a ridiculously staged manner. The later portion lacks the social realism it had when the story was grounded in the village.

For a film that wants us to appre­ciate dandi-biyo, it rarely gives us moments that encapsulate the game’s beauty or burst of energy and make us guilty for ignoring something great. Instead, Lamic­chane peppers the screenplay with jingoist sentiments and makes his characters mouth big words. There’s also a nearly 10-minute-long expo­sition scene where Dambar chalks up the complex rules of the game to explain to his teammates.

Director Chhetan Gurung fails to weave together these informa­tion-heavy scenes with any kind of visual command. Instead he tries to compensate by cranking up tension in every other scene by injecting inspirational background music and 360-degree shots.

All the actors in the movie do a fine job. If only the script had given them a little more life, they would’ve been more lifelike, more relatable. Lamichhane’s Dambar is balled up as a walking-talking activist of dan­di-biyo; not a flesh-and-blood char­acter but more like an ambassador to explicitly champion the philoso­phy of the filmmakers.

‘Damaru ko Dandibiyo’ poses big questions about sustainability and ownership of homegrown sports like dandi-biyo and manifests itself as a love letter to the game from the makers. But it’s written with such broad strokes, flowery imagination and in such a pedantic way, it forgets its first responsibility as a film is to engage and entertain.

Activism apart, ‘Damaru ko Dan­dibiyo’ excites only few times.  

Ever wondered how easily the organs so well protected by bones and muscles within the human bodies fall victims to the environment around us? We need to screen the air through masks, visors, or windshields. We need to fight with the visible and invisible impurities. And no, it’s not just the respiratory problems that we suffer from due to air pollution but diseas­es like cancer and heart diseases too, according to doctors. As I was gathering more knowl­edge on the health impacts of air pollution during the Air Quality Awareness Week last week, I recalled the time my parents would go on morning walks, from Banasthali to Swoyambhu, without covering their nose or mouth. Walking by the side of Peepal trees, breathing fresh air brought by the hustling of the leaves, listening to cuckoos—they are things I can only dream of now. I live in Syuichatar now, very close to Kalanki where construction of an underpass has taken a toll on our health. For the past two years, pass­ing through the area has been a bit like going through a war zone, where bombs were dropped, messing up the whole area.

Development in recent times in the urban areas of Nepal have been very dirty. In winter, its dust all over the roads; come monsoons, there’s awful lot of mud and slush, and once the skies clear and sun shines, up goes the dust air too, just like fog. Our municipality and the govern­ment are strangely wise, who send people with brooms on the roads instead of road cleaning machines.

It’s obvious that those who live closer to construction sites or facto­ries suffer more. Children and elder­ly who do not have strong immunity fall sick, which reflects in higher rates of hospital attendance, as per doctors and researchers. Still, some­thing as simple as vacuuming the roads, to take care of at least one kind of air pollutant, has never been done and yet we dream of becoming cleaner and greener, maybe Singa­pore if not Switzerland!

Although our constitution regards clean environment as our “right” and we can be “compensated” if we suffer from unhealthy environment, no one knows how to claim that compensation. Pollution has limited our fundamental rights—our free­dom of movement is compromised. Freedom of speech also gets affected when you are walking on the roads that are clouded with dust, not to mention additional spending in med­icines, soaps and detergents.

But why isn’t there enough buzz or pressure to demand the right enshrined to us by our constitution? Maybe it’s not sexy enough for poli­ticians. Maybe we are fine covering ourselves. No doubt, roads need to be built and expanded, indus­tries must run, people need to be employed, those who can afford to buy vehicles must be allowed to do so as well. The economy should thrive, not through “dusty develop­ment” that is unfair to citizens but with the “duty to protect” people from diseases caused by pollution.

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