The Indian Woman's failure to assert herself

Have you ever noticed that even though the Indian woman has achieved almost everything that is possible for her to achieve and is standing shoulder to shoulder with men in all the spheres of life yet the highest paid individual in all professions is a man. Its just not enoughto have a woman President and a woman Prime Minister or a woman Chief Minister. women need to rise up to the highest position as professionals where they are competing with men.
Is this because the Indian Woman is not able to effectively ascertain herself. Take the Hindi film's actresses for one, they sure do earn a lot more than most men in India do but why has it never happened that the highest paid actor (irrespective of gender) happened to be a woman say Aishwarya Rai or Kareena kapoor or Hema Malini? Its a similar story in all the walks of life. We have women entrepreneurs but not the richest entrepreneurs, we have women writers but even they are paid lesser than their male counterparts in the same profession. even the extremely popular and successful Barkha Dutt of NDTV is still left with a couple of notches to climb to the top spot in journalism in India. There has never been a girl winner of the Indian Idol unlike the American idol.
Is this coming out of the male dominated nature of the Indian society or it is simply because the women are not able to become the best in their business. I doubt the latter can be a good explanation and even the former cannot be solely the reason as what stops the Indian woman from going on to become number one when she can easily manage to become a number two. The real answer lies somewhere in the middle where both these factors play their part along with a third one which is very different. It is almost inexplicable as to why most successful women have to be either revolutionary or defiant of existing societal norms. When to be a successful politician a Mayawati or a Jayalalitha(perhaps not the best examples of good politicians) have to deviate from the norm and stay unmarried it makes me wonder whether its the fight to deviate from the usual that takes up the energy of women, likewise when Indra Nooyi the Pepsi CEO sports western business formals with her boy cut hairstyle it gives me an inkling of a feeling that it is the rebel in her, against the more widely accepted norms of dressing in Indian women that makes her don such an outfit.(Not that i have anything against western business formals or any kind of hairstyle)It is this rebellion that women have to put forth is i believe what wastes their energy which never gets wasted for men like this and hence women invariably end up with the silver medal.

Hopefully the time will soon come when the richest Indian business empire will be headed by a woman or may be the highest paid actor will be a Katrina or a Deepika or perhaps Sania Mirza or Saina Nehawal with the highest paid sportsperosons as brand ambassadors.

The PM India could never have

Its Telangana vs Andhra Pradesh, Copenhagen summit and India Sri Lanka series thats dominating the news these days. However the change of guard that has taken place in the BJP over the last two days has gone almost unnoticed.
Even an ardent follower of BJP like me came to know of the stepping down of Shri Advaniji as leader of Opposition, only through a small piece somewhere on the inner pages of the morning paper.
Its the end of an era as Advaniji makes way for the generation next leaders in BJP. Its the right time to pay tribute to this great gentleman who though he deserved to be the PM of India could never become, once because of his own humility and then for yet undiscovered reasons.
The man's journey started way back in the Partition days when he had to flee Karachi and come to India, despised with the Congress and its policies of minority appeasement he decided to follow the Sangh and later went on to found the BJP.
If people like Gandhi and Nehru are credited with making India a democracy, it is the duo of Advani and Vajpayee that deserves the credit for making our democracy a functional one in the true sense of the word. More so Advani as he single handedly galvanized the Indian masses and put forth the BJP as an alternative to Congress at every level of functioning of democratic organizations in the Indian setup. However the humility of the man was so high that he refused the PMship when the chance came, out of his respect for Vajpayee who was senior to him both in experience and age. People talk of Sonia Gandhi's sacrifice but she sacrificed something she knew she did not deserve as she was getting it because of her name, however Advaniji's sacrifice was that of a hard earned position for which he had striven for almost 50 years. Whether his sacrifice was right or wrong considering he never later got a chance to become the PM is only for the historians of the future to determine but we the current lot of the India electorate i feel have missed out on a great Prime Minister. Hopefully his legacy will continue in the BJP and in the national politics at large and we will see his prodigies come to power in future.
After 60 years of hard work in public life Advaniji certainly deserves this retirement. The examples of leadership and of smooth transition to new leadership that Advaniji has set will be remembered by one and all. More so because it teaches a lesson to the other dynasty dominated political parties that they need to move on from a dynasty based identity and allow real leaders from the masses to come forth. Such abstract contributions that Advaniji has done for the Indian political sphere are the real highpoint of his career more than anything else. With great respect and high regards for the former Deputy Prime Minister of India, i will just say this much as he himself would always say "Sangthan mein Shakti hai". (Dont know whats the right English translation, perhaps, "Organization is all Powerful")

Dearth of good Hindi Cinema

It peeves me when i open the papers on Friday and do not see any good Hindi movie releasing that day. 2009 has been a bad year for all genres of Hindi cinema, no good, substantive or masala movie thus far. Perhaps the good directors and script writers are on a vacation an extended one at that. The only movies I watched in 2009 were Love Aaj Kal, Main Aur Mrs.Khanna, Whats Your Rashi and Paa. "Main Aur Mrs. Khanna" i dont know in a fit of what anger i decided to inflict upon me and my family the ordeal of sitting through the movie. It was an extremely stupid and predictable movie with big time underperformances by Salman and Kareena and unnecessary over acting by Sohail as usual.

Love Aaj Kal was a good When Harry Met Sally kind of romantic flick but came no where close to its director Imtiaz Ali's Jab We Met and is an over statement to call it a masala movie.

When i went to watch Paa i thought it would be blessed with the AB magic and would turn out to be at least as good as Black if not better but was sadly disappointed. The lack of a definite story line, too many themes and utterly confused relationships put into one script made a mockery of the message the director was trying to convey. Actually what the message was i am still not able to decipher.

That brings me to what i would call the best among these three movies (am not even counting Main Aur Mrs Khanna it was that bad) Whats Your Rashi. Ashutosh Gowarikar of Lagaan and Jodha Akbar fame came up with this unique movie highlighting the double faceted nature of most Indian families who want to display themselves as cool and modern but go back to square one when it comes to property feuds and marriages. The put offs about the movie were it was to long and had too many songs. Priyanka did her best to portray 12 different characters all with different personalities and behavior. However what impressed me most was the last line of the movie when Priyanka asks "So What's My Rashi" and after having sat through the whole three and half hour long movie it is difficult to recollect as to what Rashi did this character belong to. Wonderfully put the movie gives out the message to do hell with Rashis and horoscopes. Wish the movie was a little shorter in length and Ashu had used twelve different actrese rather than just one Priyanka playing all the actresses.

Anyways that brings me to the core point as to why 2009 has not had good movies at all? Is this the start of the decline of the rejuvenation that had set in Indian cinema in the last few years wit good movies. I bet it is not coz we Hindi cinema has survived for more time than any other film industry in the world other than Hollywood and hopefully the movie makers will come out of this slump. Yet it remains a mystery if movies with different themes would work in Hindi cinema. A trend was beginning to set in with the movies like Munnabhai Lage Raho, RDB, Page 3 and Fashion but will this trend continue is to be seen.