New credit card rules take effect today

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From AP via Huffington Post – Starting today, Monday February 22, 2010, the credit card act of 2009 signed into law last May will end some of the unfair and deceptive business practices of credit card companies. Here are some of the salient points-

INTEREST RATE

THEN: Banks could raise the interest rate on an account at any time, including the rate on an existing balances, even if you weren’t late on payments.

NOW: The rate cannot be raised in the first year after an account is opened unless an introductory rate has come to an end. After that, cardholders must be notified 45 days in advance of any rate change.

For existing balances, rates can’t be raised unless the account is at least 60 days past due. If payments are made on time for six consecutive months, the original rate must be restored.

There’s still no cap on rates.

DISCLOSURES

THEN: The fine print on cardholder agreements was often difficult to understand. Rates, fees and penalties for other services such as cash advances, for example, could be hard to find. The impact of the interest rate on paying down a balance was hard to compute.

NOW: Cardholders will see how many months it will take to pay off a balance if only minimum payments are made. Statements will also indicate how much needs to be paid each month to pay off a balance within three years.

SERVICE FEES

THEN: Banks could charge as much as they wanted. They could assess annual fees, activation fees and other fees. This was mostly a problem for subprime cards marketed to those with poor credit scores. One popular card, for example, the Premier Bankcard, charged $256 in first-year fees for a $250 credit line.

NOW: Service fees, such as activation and annual fees, will be capped at 25 percent of the credit limit during the first year of use. After that, there is no cap.

GRACE PERIODS

THEN: Some card companies sent out statements not long before payments were due, and sometimes shifted payment due dates from month to month, meaning that payments would not always have enough time to arrive and get processed before being deemed late. As a result, some cardholders ended up getting charged interest or late fees even when they thought they were sending in payments on time.

NOW: The law requires that due dates remain consistent. Statements must be sent out 21 days before the payment due date, and finance charges and fees cannot be applied before that period is up. In practice, about half of card issuers have extended grace periods to as long as 25 days.

OVER-THE-LIMIT FEES

THEN: Banks set credit limits, then routinely allowed charges to exceed those limits. When that happened, though, the customer was charged an over-the-limit fee as high as $39. These fees were often triggered by interest charges or late-payment fees that pushed a balance over the credit limit. What’s more, multiple over-the-limit fees could get charged in a single billing cycle if the balance was paid down and another charge pushed the balance back over the limit.

NOW: The cardholder must specifically agree to permit transactions that exceed the credit limit. Only then can over-the-limit fees be charged. But the fees can’t be triggered by other fees or interest charges. Only one over-the-limit fee may be imposed during a billing cycle. No over-the-limit fees may be charged unless the cardholder has specifically agreed to permit transactions exceeding their authorized credit limit. These fees can no longer be triggered by other fees or interest charges imposed by the card issuer, and only one such fee may be imposed during a billing cycle.

In practice, several of the largest card companies have dropped these fees. Some banks are using pop-up boxes on their Web sites or other methods to obtain consumer authorization.

UNIVERSAL DEFAULT

THEN: If you made a late payment on one credit card or loan, or even late payments for obligations like utility bills, that could trigger interest rate hikes on other credit card accounts.

NOW: Card companies cannot raise interest rates on existing credit card balances. Interest rates can’t rise during the first year an account is open, unless the original agreement spelled out a promotional rate for a limited time.

Consumers with older accounts must be informed of any interest rate increase on new charges at least 45 days in advance. They must also be given a chance to opt out of the hike by canceling the account and paying down the balance at the old interest rate. If an interest rate is increased, the card company must review the account once every six months to assess whether the rate should be dropped.

STUDENTS

THEN: Students arriving on college campuses often confronted a gantlet of credit card marketers handing out T-shirts, pizza and other gifts in exchange for filling out card applications. Credit cards were frequently handed out without checking the applicant’s income sources. In 2008, 84 percent of undergraduates had at least one credit card. Average balances topped $3,100.

NOW: Credit cards may no longer be issued to anyone under age 21, unless the applicant has a co-signer, or can show independent means to repay the debt. Colleges must disclose any marketing deals they make with credit card companies. Banks are not allowed to hand out gifts on or near campuses or at college-related events.

There are still ways for credit card companies to give out loans to cash strapped borrowers in the form of payday loans, prepaid card and subprime credit cards. There was talk of a consumer financial protection agency to deal with these trade practices, but its fate seems uncertain.

The Yucatan Peninsula – rich and "cheesy"

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By Rhishi Pethe

chichen itza“Amigos, it’s not chicken pizza.” That was the first thing our guide Vincent told us when we reached the ancient Mayan town of Chichen Itza. Chichen Itza is about 30 minutes from Valladolid in the state of Yucatan and just a couple of hours drive from the tourist hotspots of Cancun and Playa del Carmen. Valladolid was one of the first towns established by the “Conquistadores” and you can tell that they used a lot of stone from Mayan structures to construct their buildings and churches.

Chichen Itza is a testament to the scientifically advanced Mayan civilization. Mayan astronomy was very well advanced and they knew about the revolution of earth around the sun and did very accurate calculations about it. The pyramid is a living example of that fountain of knowledge. As can be seen from the picture, each side has 91 steps, which makes it 364 steps for all the four sides. There is an additional step on the north side corresponding to 365 (364 + 1) days of the year. Each side has 9 levels and the steps split each side into two parts giving 18 separate levels on each side. The Mayan calendar had 19 months, with 18 months of 20 days each and a 19th month of 5 days. The Mayan calendar is believed to have been created sometime between 16th and 6th century BC, compared to the Julian calendar which was introduced in 46 BC. The Mayan calendar is considered to be more accurate than the Gregorian or Julian calendars.

The central attraction of Chichen Itza is the massive pyramid which forms the center of a large city occupied by the upper classes that covered almost 25 square kilometers. The lower class lived outside the main town.
We were lucky to be at Chichen Itza on the day of the Spring Equinox. On the equinoxes, a shadow representing a serpent comes down the pyramid and meets the snake statue at the base of the north side of the pyramid. The serpent represents the Mayan feathered serpent deity of Kukulkan. It is amazing to know that this structure was built around 600 AD with such precise astronomical knowledge.

Towards the west of the pyramid is the ball court in the shape of an “I”. The Mayans believed that humans went to heaven in their after-life and so it was an honor to get sacrificed. Typically the captain of the ball team (either winning or losing team) was sacrificed at the end of the ball game. The way the stones have been laid on the walls of the ball court also allowed for excellent acoustics on and around the court. This was in sharp contrast to the announcements being made at Cancun airport.

cenoteAnother interesting feature of the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico is its geology. The ground of the Yucatan peninsula is like cheese. There are a lot of natural holes (called cenotes) in the ground and a lot of them are filled with fresh natural ground water. We had the chance to visit a very popular cenote in the town of Ik-kil, which is very close to the ruins of Chichen Itza and the town of Valladolid. You have to go down winding stairs to the get to the water level. A platform has been created for people to jump into the cenote and then swim around. Going up the platform (about 20 feet from the water level) and jumping into the water after so many years from such a height, caused me to skip a beat.

A lot of people start and end their tour of the Yucatan peninsula in Cancun and Playa del Carmen, but there are a lot of other side tours like Chichen Itza, Tulum, Mayapan, Uxmal etc which are also very interesting and are highly recommended. I would highly encourage everyone to look beyond the beaches to soak up the local culture and get acquainted to the rich history of the place as well.

Rhishi Pethe works in supply chain management consulting and is currently pursuing a part time MBA at the University of Chicago. His interests outside of work are spending time with his wife, travel, reading, economics, jazz, good food and blogging.

My Name is Khan – a touch too filmy

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MNIKIt’s hard to judge a movie after you’ve been inundated in the pre-release hype. You’ve heard about the billion-dollar deal with Fox Studios, you’ve read interviews with the stars and director, you’ve heard reports from the sets of fine performances, and you have a fair idea of the story line. All that remains is the visual representation of that torrent of information. In the case of MNIK, the real life detention of star Shah Rukh Khan at an American airport gave away ( or was publicized deliberately) one of the key plot points of the movie; his characteristic of Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) was endlessly discussed-was he going to do justice to the role? Would professionals think the script adequately explained AS?

MNIK is about Rizwan Khan, an autistic man who goes on a quest to meet the President of the United States after the events of 9/11 turn his happy little world upside down. The movie is largely about the quest, with Khan’s back story interspersed in an occasionally confusing way. Given how much we already know about the movie, I’ll try not to give away any more of the plot, which comes from the fevered brain of scriptwriter Shibani Bathija. (Bathija is a San Francisco University alumna who first made it in Bollywood with Fanaa, another emotional highly-charged roller coaster.)

So does Khan accurately portray AS? My own Aspie son looked confused when the grand revelation was made. “He’s nothing like me!” was his initial comment, and we had to do a quick whispered lesson on how autism is pretty non-standard. Khan the character owes more to Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man; there are the odd phobias, the sensitivity to noise, the unique talent, the discomfort with physical gestures, and the monotonous voice. Khan the actor does his very best, but the effort is overwhelmed by his long Raj-infused filmography and his superstardom. (I felt the same way about Ajay Devgn’s performance in Main Aisa Hi Hoon, the Hindi remake of I am Sam.)

In interviews, director Johar was careful to point out that MNIK was a “serious” movie, tackling not only a developmental disorder and its associated challenges, but also the attitudes towards and treatment of American Muslims in the post 9/11 world. And purely on the page, the movie is pretty serious. There is not only the minor indignity of being body cavity searched at the airport, but also a violent death and a natural disaster.

But on the screen the treatment is pure masala; every revelatory moment is telegraphed and accompanied by crashing cymbals, every character plays their part a little louder than life, and there are scores of stereotypes, (the Gujarati motel owner, the fundamentalist Muslim, the loud but well-meaning hairdresser). The simple message of the movie is “There are 2 kinds of people; good people who do good deeds and bad people who do bad deeds,” Unfortunately the characters in the movie are also as binary. The injection of such a Bollywood sensibility into a movie that is set in the United States is jarring. One expects characters to be a little more subtle, a little more restrained. The scenes shot in Georgia are the worst – everyone hams it up, including the two African American characters who befriend Khan, and the post-hurricane devastation and drama is just too unconvincing.

The only performer who stands out is Kajol as Mandira, Khan’s best friend, lover, and muse. Contrary to her usual high energy performances, here she is admirably restrained, even in an emotionally shattering moment when her life comes crashing down. Age has lent her beauty luminousness-she looks divine in a bathrobe, sans make-up, and she is in better shape than ever before. Kajol is the merciful anchor to Khan’s histrionics and if any performance in this film should be feted, it is hers.

The music, the art direction, and the cinematography are all what you would expect from a Dharma production – excellent and non-obtrusive. Bay Area residents will enjoy the scenes shot in San Francisco; the city has never looked more beautiful.

My Name is Khan has the ambitions of an epic. It wants to be an odyssey set in America; something hatke, something award-inspiring. In Johar’s hands it ends up being a mainstream Bollywood offering. Had movies like A Wednesday and 3 Idiots never been made, it may have even stood out for its bravery. But in the renaissance of Bollywood, its style is just a little too dated, its sensibilities a little too overblown. Will it make money? Perhaps, though that billion-dollar price tag is pretty intimidating. Will it get critical acclaim? From early reviews it seems likely. Will it be remembered as a classic? I don’t think so.

UPDATE: We saw the movie in the BIG cinemas multiplex in Fremont, the theater that used to be Naz 8. I think not many people know about the change yet, as the hall was not packed. The concession stands are better staffed and the ticketing system is more efficient. There were also greeters before and after the movie..I’m guessing that service is going to be temporary! The floors are still sticky with popcorn and soda, but I’m reserving judgment till a few months have gone by and they’ve had some time to clean it up. If anyone can tell me about the state of bathrooms, go ahead, add it in the comments.

My Name is Khan: *ring Shahrukh Khan, Kajol, Zarina Wahab, Jimmy Shergill. Directed by Karan Johar.

My rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars.
Kid advisory: Not suitable for pre-teens and under.

Become a Green Kid

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Pavan at the dump1At 4, little Pavan Raj Gowda was already disturbed by litter. Says mom Shanti, “He would get so upset that we would walk around cleaning it up.”

At 10, that young neatnik is a confirmed greennik. The founder of greenkidsnow.org, this precocious environmentalist has taken the message of reduce, reuse, recycle to heart. Started by Pavan a couple of years ago with help from Shanti, the website is an attempt to connect with other green kids and start a movement of sorts. “I’d like kids to pledge to care for the environment,” says Pavan.

Pavan began his efforts to spread the message of caring for the environment in his classroom at Glenmoor Elementary school in Fremont.

Says teacher Johnna Laird, “Pavan’s passion for the planet strikes a chord in the hearts of children and adults.”

When Pavan informed his class about his website, more than 20 students raised their hands, saying they want to join him in finding ways to make the planet healthier.

One student, Natalie, decided to enlist her Girl Scout troop in energy conservation projects.

Another student, Matthew, took Pavan’s Green Kids business card, attached his pencil as a stick and marched around with his mini-placard at recess advertising Green Kids, just as he had seen adults campaign for an important issue.

Anna used a spelling and preposition homework assignment to write about her concerns after Pavan spoke to the class:  “As for people who don’t litter, they should wear a badge on their shirts. If we all manage to keep the earth clean, we can change the world.  Whenever you see trash on the ground, pick it up and throw it away.”

Adds Laird, “Pavan is a catalyst for children.  He has figured a way to transform his feelings into action, into a practice to make a difference.  Other children want to be part of this process. They care. They know that Earth is their home and want to keep it healthy for years to come.” The school has already replaced its light bulbs with longer-lasting fluorescent ones as a first step in conservation. In the classroom, care is taken to use both sides of copying paper before it is recycled. Even the recycle bin was added at Pavan’s urging. At school birthday parties, biodegradable plates and spoons are used.

These are small steps, but imagine every classroom in Glenmoor, every school in Fremont, California, the United States, taking up these simple changes.

Pavan hopes the website will make his message a movement. Kids who are interested can sign up and create local teams. One child takes a leadership role and represents the kids in their efforts to make their own environment a little better. The kids work out cost-benefit analyses and write proposals to effect change in the schools and neighborhoods. They learn teamwork and leadership skills.

Already 97 kids have signed up. Chapters are being formed in Ohio, Indiana, and Washington state. Apart from the Fremont chapter, the Bay Area has another in San Ramon.

Pavan oversees these activities. Each regional team is helped by an adult, but in general the activities are led and managed by kids. Mom Shanti is working towards non-profit status for Green Kids Now. “Once we received the appropriate status, hours spent with Green Kids will count towards community service credits,” says Shanti. She hopes to get it by May 2010.

Still, being a 10-year-old with a passion for the environment when your friends are into Harry Potter and Super Mario can be frustrating at times. “People don’t take me seriously because I’m just a kid,” complains Pavan. “They ignore me.” Many of the kids at school couldn’t be bothered either. “I tell him not to give up,” says Shanti. “That kind of reluctance from the community is natural.”

Says Laird, “when I think of Pavan and his classmates, I think of the words to a Whitney Houston song:

I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way.”

It’s not easy being green, as Kermit the frog realized, but Pavan hopes his efforts will help bring about those small changes that can hardwire environmental awareness into the consciousness of the next generation. If your kid wants to sign up, becoming a green kid is just a click away.

Here is a partial list of classroom tips from the website:

Use both sides of the paper
• Only buy recycled paper
• Have a recycle bin in the classroom, and mark it clearly with the recycle symbol
• Create a student job as a “Recycling Monitor”. This person would be in charge of making sure that people are recycling instead of throwing into trash bin
• Use reusable water bottles, rather than throw away plastic bottles
• Use biodegradable plates, cups, and spoons for class parties
• Do projects using recycled materials
• Do art projects from things that we throw away
• On a nice sunny day, let the sun light come inside and turn off the lights
• On a hot day, open the windows for fresh air, instead of using the air conditioner

The Price of Adventure

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statue of liberty

Lakshmi Palecanda

On a vacation in India, I was talking to a family member who was moaning over the family problems she had.  I tried to show empathy by relating some of my problems, when she straight out said, “Oh, you have no problems of this kind there.”  I tried to make sense of this statement.  Yes, we didn’t have problems with gossiping relatives, but we had more serious issues to deal with.

A phone call in the middle of the night is never good news, especially for a desi.  In June 2001, we got such a call from back home: one of my husband’s brothers had died tragically.  He was 45 years old.  My husband desperately wanted to make it back for the funeral, but the cost of purchasing an air ticket was astronomical, even with the hardship concession.  He never got to say goodbye to his brother.  And over the years, I’ve heard many such sad stories.

All of us immigrants have something in us that inspires us to leave the safe confines of our home country and seek to make our lives elsewhere.  Whether it is an urge to make money or a name for ourselves, or even just wanderlust, we feel compelled to experiment with what foreign lands have to offer.  However, we have only a hazy idea of the drawbacks of this adventure of ours.

When we do leave our safety circle, we are faced with loneliness and homesickness when we think our past life, and uncertainty when we contemplate the future.  In my case, it happened when I came over to the US for my studies, over 18 years ago.  During my Master’s program, I had a horrible time of it, since I was brought up in a very sheltered family atmosphere.  Two months after I got here, when it dawned on me that I was totally alone, I just wanted to up and leave.

Gradually, however, we immigrants make it, with new friends, jobs, money and a piece of the American dream, and it is then that we begin to truly enjoy life abroad.  Once we had a decent pay-check, my husband and I began to have a ball.  We had no obligations to anyone, and there was no one to impose stultifying conventions on us, either.  We took crazy risks, and did pretty much what we wanted to do.  If things went well, we mentioned it to our families on our biannual visits.  If they didn’t, we just didn’t talk about them.  If a festival fell on a weekday and we couldn’t do anything special for it, we postponed it to the weekend.  If we were unable to manage even that, we just said a prayer and went on.  On our visits back home, we congratulated relatives and friends on their weddings at the same time as we admired their first-born.  Often, we couldn’t recognize youngsters.

“How you’ve grown!” we exclaimed often.  They said the same to us too; only, it wasn’t complimentary, since all our extra inches were on the equatorial plane.

However, there was a shadowy side to all the bonhomie.  Along with the congratulatory visits, condolence visits had to be made too.  Familiar, beloved faces began to disappear from family gatherings.  Grandparents, uncles and aunts who were in their sixties and seventies, and whom we loved too much to let go, were gone when we went to receive their blessings. In their cases, at least we could cite their age, and console ourselves.

There were shocking deaths, of cousin sisters and brothers, who were way too young to die, who we hoped to grow old with, and friends to whom we had said good-bye on our last trip, not knowing that it would be final.  It was hard enough to come to terms with these events, but they were made more excruciating by the visits that we had to make to their families.  These visits were sometimes a year to a year-and-a-half after the demise of the loved one, and embarrassing for being so delayed.  We often wondered what the relevance of expressing our sorrow was, at a time when the family had already got over the worst of their grief and moved on.  My worst moment was when I had to condole a cousin’s wife on the loss of her husband … at a wedding of all places.  We had tried to visit her, but she wasn’t home.  Even with this excuse on my side, I felt horrible.

But there was no question of the effect of these visits on us.  Even these tardy visits were very valuable to us because that was the only way we could achieve some measure of closure.  Being so far away from the family circle, we cried alone at each bereavement, with only strangers to console us.  When I got the phone call that my grandmother had died, I was at work.  A friend held me when I cried, for which I was grateful.  But I wished I were with my own family that knew how much she meant to me.

This event in particular made me realize that we were living Life Lite as it were.  We had all the perks of adulthood, like unlimited bedtime and no curfew, but none of the responsibilities, like having to represent our own family at happy and more importantly, at sad events.  In Tamil, they have a saying: if you don’t go to a wedding, it’s okay, but you shouldn’t miss a funeral.  I began to understand the ramifications and the truth of this saying.

Something happened in December 2004 that brought this realization even more chillingly close to me: my mother had a heart attack.  I got a phone call the next day from my father, who broke the news gently to me.  When I asked him why he hadn’t called me immediately, he said that he waited until her condition had stabilized because he didn’t want me to worry.  I was upset at the delay until I finally comprehended the truth.

“What an idiot I am!  Of course calling me wasn’t top priority; they were busy saving her life!  That was far more important than keeping me informed.”

Hard on the heels of this thought came the guilt: I wasn’t doing anything to help out my parents at that time, or could I on the days that followed, when she had a relapse.  My sister heroically bore the sole responsibility of the situation.  Luckily my mother made it, but I will never forget my helplessness in that situation.

This event taught me an important lesson.  Previously, I used to get miffed when I felt sidelined by family decisions.  I would fume that I had not been given my due as a member of the family.  However, after my mother’s illness, I quit thinking that way.  When I couldn’t be a part of their daily hardships and sorrows, I really had no right or say in their daily lives or decisions, did I?  It was a plain fact of life, and I had to become mature enough to accept it.

Another aspect of bereavement also came to my attention at about this time.  One of my friends living here lost her father who had been in India at the time, and she couldn’t make it to the funeral. She termed it the ‘sacrifice’ that she had to make for living abroad.  I agreed at the time, but I didn’t see the flip side of this argument until much later.  Yes, she missed her family a lot, but her family missed her too, didn’t they?  What about the ‘sacrifice’ that our family members make because we are away at the time of tragedy?  A family is, after all, a sum of its members.  With families growing smaller, doesn’t one person’s absence matter?  Reminiscing about loved ones is one outlet for grieving.  But in today’s society where neighbors remain strangers, isn’t the one other person that knew the one that passed very important, all of a sudden?

These uncomfortable questions pop up in my mind every time I get news of a loved one’s passing.  As I sit and cry all alone, I wait for answers that can reconcile my need to live the life I want, with fulfilling my responsibilities as a real, not phantom, member of a group of loving individuals, that are part of my history, that know me and care about me, that are at times infuriating, but will always be an integral part of me.

This is the price of adventure.

Lakshmi can be reached at lakshmi.palecanda [at] gmail.com

Picture courtesy David Paul Ohmer.

Happiness, India style

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By Isheeta Sanghi

Sunrise at India gateIt has now been about four years since the move to India, and I think I have finally been through all the stages that one needs to experience to accept moving to a new place.

No one will tell you this but the thing is, you will never be able to accept it one hundred percent- because it is so different, and the reality is no matter how much you try, you can not change your past, who you are and where you have come from. That said, you do the best you can do, and as long as that is good enough for you – it does not matter what any one else thinks.

“Here in India, you try to change the system, and the system changes you,” one of the most powerful dialogues in Rang De Basanti — the reality of living in India is that you can not change the system, because if you try you will actually go mad.

For instance, nothing is centralized in India; not even banks. And the best way to save yourself a lot of stress and anguish is to remember – everything is a surprise in India! When you walk into one branch of a bank don’t take for granted that they will be able to give you the same information/services as your “local” branch. In fact, trying to get new notes at a bank? Don’t expect the teller to have them. Why? I really have no idea, but if you can tell me, I’d be forever grateful.

Another thing, do not be fooled into believing that people will salute to you as you enter hotels, or buildings these days. Those days are gone! A friend of mine had parked his car at a high end luxury hotel in Bangalore, and when the valet brought his car to him, he realized something had been stolen from the car. At that time the management could only offer their condolences. A few weeks later he went to the same hotel again, and as the valet stepped into the car, my friend simply asked him to be careful as he had had a bad experience last time. The valet replied by saying that he could park his own car, that he parked Mercedes Benz and other ‘high end’ cars all day long.
Shocking huh?

India is not perfect, but you have to find your own strength and weed out the negative, irritating, annoying things and try hard to look at the really great things about living here because no one else but you can do that.

Make a list of the things that make you happy in India – maybe it’s the winter in Delhi when you can look out the window from your apartment on the 20th floor and not see anything but this beautiful thick white fog, it could be the monsoons in Mumbai when you can have a nice hot cup of chai and fresh pakoras while watching the rain come down on your windowsill.

Maybe it’s the one day when you are sitting in your car and at a traffic light you see kids playing on the street wearing nothing but rags and these wonderful, warm infectious smiles, making you realize that there are so many things that you have right now in your life worth smiling for, making you forget about all of your problems, all of the things you have to do, and all the things you want to do.

It could even be something as small as chatting with a friend on g-mail – remembering old times or planning new adventures — maybe even seeing your cleaning lady come to work smiling. Whatever it is that makes you happy realize that it is yours, and no one can take that away from you. This New Year I challenge you to make yourself as happy as you want to be.

Picture by Koshyk under Creative Commons attribution license

Help Haiti

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haitiIf you’ve been saddened by the devastating earthquake in Haiti, want to help but don’t know how, here’s a really easy way –

Text “HAITI” to “90999” and a donation of $10 will be given automatically to the Red Cross to help with relief efforts, charged to your cell phone bill.

That and other ways to help are outlined in the U.S. Department of State’s website:

http://www.state.gov/p/wha/ci/ha/index.htm

Help.

3 Idiots

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3 idiotsHow is it that a movie with grim themes (academic pressure, student suicides, frustrated ambitions) can make you feel uplifted and hopeful as you leave the theater? Director Rajkumar Hirani accomplishes this neat trick in 3 Idiots, the blockbuster movie of 2009/10. Loosely inspired by Chetan Bhagat’s debut novel Five Point Someone (also a mega blockbuster), 3 Idiots takes on the Indian academic establishment the way Hirani’s two earlier movies took on the medical establishment (Munnabhai M.B.B.S) and apathy in Indian society (Lage Raho Munnabhai).

The cleverness of the movie is to knead its core message of following your dreams with a crackling good tale of college friendship and a neat little mystery story to serve up an authentic Indian tandoori roti. The gentle directive is not under-emphasized, but by letting the suffering of the characters convey the message and allowing for plenty of college high-jinks to divert the audience, writers Hirani and Abhijat Joshi keep the viewers’ attention engaged and, at the same time, make us care fiercely about the fates of these hapless youth.

When friends Raju Rastogi(Sharman Joshi) and Farhan Qureshi(Madhavan) discover a lead to their missing friend Rancho(Aamir Khan) several years after they have parted ways at college, they drop everything to follow the clue, such is their loyalty. They connect with the fourth protagonist of the movie, Chatur Ramalingam(Omi Vaidya), the hard-working, rule-abiding nemesis of their college years (and an unfortunate revert to stereotype) and set off on a journey to find Rancho.  The story of their years in the Imperial College of Engineering is told as a flashback narrated by Farhan.

Each Idiot represents a type: Raju is the bright son of an impoverished family; their hopes and finances depend on him so completely that he is terrified of failure. Farhan is the wannabe wildlife photographer whose parents’ ambitions for him completely subsume his own as he resigns himself to a future in engineering. Rancho is the only one of them who loves engineering with a passion, but his back story is pretty complicated too. Ultimately, the movie seems to say, it is the blindly obedient Chatur with his marble-topped, maple-floored home with matching Lamborghini who is the real idiot.

Chatur being ragged

Chatur being ragged

Aamir Khan is completely credible as a college student; I would not have believed it if I hadn’t seen the film. As a friend joked, “Engineering college tends to age you. You look like a 40-year-old once you’ve been through it.”  Aamir is ably supported by Joshi and Madhavan but the scene-stealer of the movie is Omi Vaidya as Chatur, whose obnoxious behavior will be so familiar to collegians of any age. Kareena has a pretty minor role, but Boman Irani as her dad, the dreaded Professor Viru(s) Sahasrabuddhe hams his way marvelously through the movie, complete with lisp.

3 Idiots makes no claims of being a “meaningful” film. Rather, it takes the prevailing educational environment in India (bright children forced to go into medical or engineering) and weaves a ripping good movie around it. Its focus on entertainment rather than didactism is its strength, even if that allows for a really absurd situation of a baby being delivered via vacuum cleaner! It is a completely mainstream movie, with all the masala movie’s exaggerations and drama, which is perhaps why it found such a responsive and diverse audience around the world.

Lately there’s been a controversy surrounding the movie about its fidelity to Bhagat’s book and how much credit to be given to the latter. I have to confess that I read the book a long time ago and recall only the haziest outline. It seems there have been some characters drawn from the book and some situations, but the consensus opinion seems to be that the movie has departed significantly from the book. Also, Bhagat’s initial acceptance of the movie undermines his later claim that he was given short shrift.  But no matter who ultimately gets the credit for the story/screenplay/script, 3 idiots is a terrific movie that thoroughly deserves its success.

My rating : 4. 5 out of 5 stars.

Rocket Singh, Salesman of the Year

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rocket singhAfter taking the new kid on the block to soaring heights of success with Wake Up Sid and Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani, the capricious fame gods brought Ranbir Kapoor crashing down to earth with Rocket Singh. On paper the ingredients were all there; Chak De India director Shimit Amin, successful screenplay writer Jaidev Sahni, the hottest ticket in town to play the lead, and an interesting story. But Bollywood is the ultimate gamble; no one can quite explain why weird movies like Wanted do well while competently made movies fail to capture the imagination of the audience.

Rocket Singh, Salesman of the Year, is a throwback to the light-hearted, low budget movies of Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Basu Chatterjee. Like many movies of their oeuvre, the hero is a simple-minded, optimistic, and cheerful middle-class guy with modest dreams. Barely B.Com pass Harpreet Singh Bedi (Kapoor) wants to be a salesman, since he feels this is an area where his academic shortcomings won’t matter quite as much. His outlook on life gets a serious jolt when he realizes the compromises he has to make to get ahead. After a disastrous mistake on the job, he decides to moonlight at his own venture, not realizing that for all his brilliant planning and maneuvering, he has left a backdoor open for the whole structure to come crashing down.

Rocket Singh is a pleasant movie, but with 20/20 hindsight one can see the flaws.  They are minor ones: The academically challenged dude with his two wise friends…hmmm…where have we seen that before? Perhaps audiences who loved Wake Up Sid felt a sense of déjà vu and could not connect.

Also the pace of the movie feels really rushed. Too much happens in too short a timeframe; the initiation into the mysteries of salesmanship, the fall from grace, the success of Harpreet’s new endeavor (named Rocket Sales after his unappreciative colleagues at his day job throw paper rockets at him), its collapse, and even the denouement, which wraps up too quickly to be satisfying. The entire romance with Shereena (newcomer Shazahn Padamsee) is taken care of in a song. The moral superiority that we are invited to share with Harpreet as he eschews the dirty practices of his firm is undermined by the fact that he is operating out of its premises at night and poaching its employees.There is really no soundtrack to pre-sell the movie; indeed the entire feel is that of a independent film made on a small budget. No harm in that, but perhaps Ranbir Kapoor’s emerging stardom set the expectations too high.

It is a pity, because the performances are just excellent. Kapoor gets into the skin of his character, and he gets terrific support from Naveen Kaushik as Harpreet’s boss Nitin, and theater actor Manish Choudhary as the owner of the firm. Prem Chopra as Harpreet’s grandfather is unrecognizable from the memorable villains he used to play. Gauhar Khan as Koena, the receptionist whose talents are unrecognized, is fantastic. Padamsee has a blink-or-you’ll-miss-it role but she is sweet and adequate for what little the script demands of her.

I think Rocket Singh will turn out to be one of those movies that people will enjoy watching on DVD and wonder why the movie never succeeded in the theaters. And I would love to see a uncut director’s version of the movie, perhaps an hour longer than the screen version, which fully explores the story at leisure. Asking for a Bollywood movie to be longer is perhaps the highest praise you can give and Rocket Singh deserves it.

My rating : 3 stars out of 5.

Health Care Reform overcomes a big hurdle

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physician symbolHurray! A supermajority in the senate passes its version of the health care reform bill. The drama has been intense and there have been many moments when it seemed like talk of death panels and communism would defeat the process but, ultimately, with the help of giveaways to all the special interests and plenty of backroom wrangling, majority leader Harry Reid managed to thread the needle. Yes, this is a hugely imperfect bill. But it is also a tacit acceptance of the responsibility of the government to ensure affordable health care for its citizens. For that alone, it is a remarkable accomplishment. In the years to come, it will be hard to reverse any of the benefits and easier to keep improving upon the foundation that was laid today.

If, like me, you’ve been following the HCR drama with great interest but little understanding, here is a graphic representation of what reform is going to mean for the country courtesy The Wonk Room.

health care choices

What next for passage of the HCR Act? The house bill and the senate bill have to be merged in conference and the resulting bill will have to be approved once again by both bodies before it goes to the President for his signature.

The Wonk Room, once again, looks at the difference between the bills and suggests improvements that can be added in the merging process here.