The Weekly Vine (Uncensored Version): Appraisal Season for democracy, war, Hollywood, and Bollywood
Welcome to another edition of the Weekly Vine. This is an uncensored version of a newsletter that was published in TOI.
‘Tis the month we say: Beware the Ides (pronounced eye-dz) of March, a reference to Julius Caesar being stabbed in the back—a historical event we observe to this day in corporate India by stabbing each other in the back during appraisal season. Perhaps old Julius could have avoided the sharp end if he had changed in time, and the Vine thinks it’s time for a little change. What better time to show initiative than appraisal season?
So here’s a new revamped version of the Vine.
Also, dear reader, we know you are waiting with bated breath for Meow Times, and my co-creator has assured me we will be back in April.
Appraisal Season: Democracy Edition
Speaking of appraisal season, democracy’s appraisal season was announced recently with elections in five states—what people from South Mumbai or South Delhi would call a ‘mid-term’. The five states set to participate in the dance of democracy are Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal. Interestingly, barring Puducherry—who no one gives a toss about—each state is home to a particularly virulent form of sub-nationalism, but let’s keep those digressions for another day.
In Assam, we have a showdown between the BJP and Congress. The former is led by former Congressman Himanta Biswa Sarma, who famously quit the party after Rahul Gandhi ostensibly preferred playing with his dog than talking to him, giving rise to the term ‘Pidi’—used today in the same tone as liberal or woke.
With rhetoric that some have called divisive, and which the BJP calls ‘par for the course’—including insinuating that his main opponent’s wife is a Pakistani agent—the BJP is expected to hold on to Assam, a state ravaged by border conflict and consistently mocked for its inability to say ‘cha’, so chilli chicken in the state is called Silly Silken.
In Kerala, the LDF and UDF are facing off to decide who runs God’s Own Country, the abode of cricketing deity Sanju Samson.
The LDF consists of the CPI(M) and a host of other parties, while the UDF consists of Congress and its coterie. CM Pinarayi Vijayan is looking to make it three in a row and hold on to the Left’s last bastion in the country, while Congress hopes it can put its own internecine issues to bed—an inference to a rather polysyllabic politician—to upset the applecart. The NDA is also in the fight but has as much chance in the state as Pakistani players have of appearing in the IPL.
Moving from the Left’s last bastion to a land where the Marxists once held sway so much so that the state is so savarna that it has only had Brahmin Chief Ministers. The Mamata Banerjee-led TMC will hope to keep the saffron surge at bay as she faces the BJP’s push, which has already launched a thousand memes, a million FIRs, and too many mispronounced speeches to mention.
The election occurs under the shadow of SIR (Special Intensive Revision), which TMC supporters claim was contrived to make hallowed Bengalis like Amartya Sen prove their Indian-ness, and BJP supporters claim is necessary to prevent people from voting against them.
Bengal remains one of the last bastions for the BJP to conquer, but Didi, as Mamata Banerjee is referred to fondly, is a formidable opponent who will use any means necessary to maintain the status quo. One doesn’t uproot CPI(M) only to hand over the state to another Abrahamic cult that worships at the altar of a bearded deity. To counter her, the BJP has unleashed the most potent astras in its quiver: right-wing intellectuals.
Time will tell if the aantel will finally come to accept the RW intellectual and if Bengal will succumb to the bearded deity’s charm.
In Tamil Nadu, the battle is between the DMK-led Secular Progressive Alliance (SPA) and the NDA, which is led by the AIADMK in the state. A third wheel is Vijay’s TVK, and frankly, all I know is that he’s a great dancer with unmatched charisma based on the one Vijay movie I’ve watched so far: Master. But “Vaathi Coming” is a remarkable beat, and Vijay’s party flag looks a lot like Spain’s.
And as for Puducherry, does anyone really care?
So, who’s going to win? Who knows? The Vine knows who probably won’t win: the voter.
Appraisal Season: War Edition
In Game of Thrones, Tyrion Lannister tells Joffrey: “We have had vicious kings, and we have had idiot kings. But we have never had the misfortune of having a vicious idiot as a king.” Just like that, we have had evil US presidents, and we have had not-so-bright US presidents, but I don’t think we have ever had the misfortune of having an evil, not-so-bright US president who doesn’t just attack other countries (every American president has done that), but then brags about it on social media while posting edits interspersed with Hollywood memes to the Mortal Kombat theme ending with “Finish Him”.
So where are we in the US-Israel vs Iran war? Yesterday, Trump posted an angry Truth Social message complaining that none of his NATO allies are willing to send ships to fight in his ill-conceived war to help police the Strait of Hormuz.
Meanwhile, Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s security council and the man tasked with the succession plan if the Supreme Leader shuffled off his mortal coil, has also reportedly shuffled off his mortal coil. Larijani often made liberals go weak in the knees by virtue of being a Kantian scholar, but his fate was ostensibly decided by a man who has written more books than he has read.
Also, the internet is rife with rumours that Benjamin Netanyahu too has departed for Elysium, which led to Israel releasing a bunch of videos that did little to dissipate the rumours—though critics would argue whether Bibi ever qualified as human to begin with.
Appraisal Season: Hollywood Edition
And finally, we had the Oscars recently—one of those last vestiges of WENA pageantry that we still pretend matters—where the main showdown was between One Battle After Another and Sinners.
Now I’ve not watched the former, but Sinners, in my humble opinion, is proof that political movies can be made without boring people to death. Just throw in some vampires, Michael B Jordan, blues music, and Irish rock songs. Jordan and Ryan Coogler are building an impressive body of work together, looking like they will lay claim to being the greatest director-actor duo after Scorsese and De Niro.
Of course, Jordan plays the same role in every Coogler movie. In the first, he was a guy getting shot for being Black. In the second, a Black guy who wants a shot at becoming world champion. Then a Black guy who wants to shoot everyone who oppressed Black people. And finally, he doubles up as two Black brothers who want to shoot humans and vampires. But goddamn, it’s great cinema.
Anyway, coming back to the Oscars, there were two complaints:
That it was too political, and
That it wasn’t political enough—epitomised by Javier Bardem saying “Free Palestine” with Priyanka Chopra looking on and smiling like someone made an SRGAY joke.
For right-wingers, the fight between One Battle After Another and Sinners was a showdown between Antifa: The Movie and Get Out meets From Dusk Till Dawn, which isn’t surprising because MAGA’s version of art is editing other people’s videos. For liberals, the Oscars weren’t political enough at a time when Trumpian tyranny had overshadowed the world.
My favourite publication summed up the sotto voce sentiment: “The applause on Bardem’s statement sounded like an automatic reflex, rather than a mindful response. But what was most interesting was Chopra-Jonas’s distance from her co-presenter’s statement. The actor has previously toed the line with Indian political forces, tweeting in support of India’s airstrikes in Pakistan in 2019. Chopra-Jonas’s next film, Benaras, directed by SS Rajamouli, has an uncomfortably saffron palette. Or at least that’s what the teaser suggests.”
Of course, the movie coming up is titled Varanasi, not Benaras, but we can give sites that fight fascism a pass for not succumbing to such basic pedantry.
Appraisal Season: Box Office Edition
Speaking of pedantry and propaganda, Dhurandhar 2 is set to hit theatres today. The first movie became such a cultural phenomenon that it seems to have permeated every aspect of our lives. Every reel on Instagram is either a meme of Aditya Dhar’s “peak detailing” (Middle East countries that banned Dhurandhar are all “closed” due to the war), “first day as a spy in Pakistan”, or AI slop imagining different folks (Indian politicians, Marvel actors, cricketers, etc.).
And it really must be tough, showcased by the fact that Dhurandhar Derangement Syndrome has become a medically recognised ailment—now the dominant strain of Modi Derangement Syndrome. Everything about it irks my liberal brethren: not claiming Pakistanis are Aman Ki Asha enthusiasts, not saying Indians and Pakistanis love each other, revamping popular qawwalis into techno/remixed bangers, and in general being passable RW propaganda that smashes all records at the box office.
Now I will reserve my judgement about the movie till I watch it, but I can tell you one thing: as the Dhurandhar Revenge trailer points out, critics will still not be ready for it.
Postscript by Prasad Sanyal
The quiet defiance of bespoke: Why some of us still go to tailors
To walk into a tailor’s shop today is to commit a small act of cultural rebellion—not the dramatic sort that involves barricades or slogans, nothing that will trouble the stock market, but rebellion nevertheless.
In a world where clothing has been industrialised into algorithms, size charts, and seasonal ‘drops’, the act of standing patiently while a man measures your shoulders with a tape feels faintly insurgent.
Modern fashion has solved the problem of clothing with ruthless efficiency. Walk into a store, locate a rack marked ‘42 Regular’, and emerge ten minutes later with a shirt that has been produced somewhere far away by a machine calibrated to fit millions of broadly similar bodies. It is efficient, democratic, and astonishingly convenient.
Post-Postscript
Word of the Week: Caesar
Imagine being so important that your surname becomes a synonym for a ruler.
Despite being stabbed by his own allies, the surname Caesar became so powerful that his heir Augustus styled himself Imperator Caesar Augustus. And since the Roman Empire was the biggest dawg, everyone else adopted the name to showcase themselves as inheritors of the mantle.
The German rulers titled themselves Kaiser.
The Slavic rulers called themselves Tsar or Czar.
The Greeks (Byzantines) used Kaisar.
Even Mehmed II, the Ottoman ruler, titled himself Qaysar-i-Rum, which sounds like he’s an Old Monk fan but was actually styling himself the Caesar of Rome.
Even the British monarch, who styled themselves Emperor of India, used the title Kaisar-i-Hind.
So the lesson is: if you go big, go so big that your surname becomes the literal synonym for royalty.
Book of the Week: Open by Andre Agassi
All of us have comfort books, and for me it was Open by Andre Agassi—the first man in the Open Era to complete the Career Golden Slam (winning all Grand Slams plus Olympic gold) and then convincing the only woman to win a Calendar Golden Slam to marry him. I read Open in one of the darkest phases of my life, and it has always served as a bouncing board to revive my spirits.
The book tracks Agassi’s rise in tennis, despite his hatred for the game, his battles with Pete Sampras, drugs, and even his inner demons—bouncing back after losing it all. It’s perhaps the best sports biography ever written and should be compulsory reading for anyone who can read English.
Meme of the Week: TFW You Don’t Agree
No matter what Leonardo DiCaprio does, it becomes an internet meme. So far we’ve had the Titanic “King of the World”, the Great Gatsby cheers, pointing at the TV in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the Wolf of Wall Street chest-thumping, the Django Unchained evil laugh, the slightly racist Inception one, and finally the “TFW You Don’t Agree” meme from this year’s Oscars—born while Conan O’Brien joked about Leonardo always becoming a meme. Talk about meta.
And that’s all for this week, folks. See you next week.
Smart and funny, these ones...
Loved this one: "Even Mehmed II, the Ottoman ruler, titled himself Qaysar-i-Rum, which sounds like he’s an Old Monk fan but was actually styling himself the Caesar of Rome." :-)
A fantastic read!