Category: The outre side (Page 2 of 2)

Mr. Ghantarao is well known to people who know how things used to work in the movies of yore. Which, come to think of it, is not many people. So allow us to introduce him: he is the man who made the ‘bhalah!’ sounds in sync with the punches in action sequences in Telugu films of the 70s and the 80s. Sadly, technology and changing sensibilities (which rarely change for the better) have rendered him obsolete. He has retired now. However, back then, in the glory days, he was the punch in the punches, the biff in the biffs. We are delighted that he agreed to answer a few questions.

Question: What made you choose ‘bhalah!’-making as a career?

Mr. Ghantarao: I didn’t choose it. It chose me. Even as a child, I was a good ‘bhalah!’–maker. It all began in a fight with the class bully. He was slaughtering me. He laid me out with a right hook to the nose. But I slowly struggled to my feet again. I hit out weakly and blindly. And, I don’t know why, but I made my first ‘bhalah!’ sound as I punched. It was not perfect, this first ‘bhalah!’, because it came out through my bleeding nose, but it worked. Like, like…a mantram. The big oaf was startled by the ‘bhalah!’ and I actually connected with a punch. It had the authority of the ‘bhalah!’ behind it. It was enough to scare away the big buffalo. You may well imagine why I became a believer in ‘bhalah!’.

Q: When did you get your first break in the movies?

Mr. G: I was in college then. There was a film shoot in our village. The hero was rescuing the heroine from the villain. I got carried away and began to make the ‘bhalah!’ sounds. The villain was inspired too, or maybe he was distracted, and so far forgot himself that he punched the hero for real. The hero was furious, but the director was pleased, and oddly, so was the heroine. The director invited me to Madras for the re-recording. He said I was just what was needed to make the scene work. I suppose the world knows the rest of the story.

Q: Yes, it has been a fantastic career hasn’t it? But tell us more about your ‘bhalahs!’. How do you make them? What makes them work?

Mr.G: What can I say? They come from the gut. From deep within. It is the ‘bhalah!’ that makes the punch. After all, the fights are make-believe. But the ‘bhalah!’ is real. Always. Feeling. Feeeeling. See?

Q: As the ‘bhalah!’ actor, what is your mind picture of yourself as you act, as you emote for the fight? Do you see yourself as the impersonal force of the punch, or do you imagine yourself to be the hero, or the villain, as the puncher, or the punchee?

Mr. G: That is a good question. I can only give you a partial answer, because I try not to over analyse, it may interfere with spontaneity. Well, the movie fight is not an equal fight. Usually, the hero, who looks like someone’s uncle, is pitted against several substantial thugs. So one must perforce compensate, help the audience suspend its incredulity. The hero’s ‘bhalahs!’ are always more ‘bhalah!’ than the villain’s ‘bhalahs!’ So you could say that, in my mind, I’m the good guy.

Q: Does technology play a role? Do you think sound mixing and electronic enhancement help make the ‘bhalahs!’ more convincing?

Mr.G (a little sternly): I think I have already mentioned that the ‘bhalahs!’ are real.

Q: Sorry. Did you ever feel the urge to experiment? ‘Bhallah!’ instead of ‘bhalah!’, for instance.

Mr.G (still stern, and even a little brusque): No.

Q: What do you think about all the fresh new punch sounds out there today? Biff, pow, kapow, wham, dishoom, even dishhhh?

Mr.G: Mediocrity everywhere! Warped sensibilities! No pride in craft! Our society is in terminal decline.

Q: Mr.G, let us move on to pleasanter topics. Can you tell us if you have a favourite ‘bhalah!’? Was there a fight scene that you will never ever forget, that you think was the acme of the art of the ‘bhalah’?

Mr.G (a dreamy look replaces the frown): It was in 1980. The movie was Peddha Donga (Big Thief).  It had a very big star, who had done over 200 movies until then. But he was over sixty already, and he couldn’t move all that well, you know. The fight scenes looked a little forced. In fact, why mince words, they looked downright unbelievable. They used stunt doubles wherever possible, but the close ups were worrisome. His punches looked like caresses. And his expressions! Like a tired old man humouring his grandchildren with a mock fight. The director was clutching his head as he watched his footage at the studio. But after the recording he came up to me and shook hands warmly with me. He didn’t say anything. I think his heart was too full for words. His eyes did all the talking. Don’t thank me, I thought. Thank the ‘bhalahs!’.

Q: Ah, such a wealth of experience, Mr.G. But was there ever a time when you felt all ‘bhalah!’ed out? When the ‘bhalahs!’ just would not come?

Mr. G (looking thoughtful as he dredges memory): Come to think of it, no. No matter what the state of my mind, no matter what I was going through in my life, once I was behind the mike, only the ‘bhalahs!’ existed.

Q: You are a true professional Mr. G. Thank you so much for talking to us. But before we go, may I request you to demonstrate your incomparable ‘bhalahs!’?

Mr. G: Certainly. Bhalah! Bhalah! Bhalah!

Q: Wow.

Mr. G: Bhalah! Bhalah! Bhalah! Bhalah!

Alibaba was an old man and his memory was not what it once was. In fact, he had more hair than memories now, bald as he was. He stood, bowed under the weight of years, as it were, outside his old cave.

“Open,” he said more to himself than to the cave. “Open something. I’m sure it began with an ‘s’. Seesaw? Seahorse? Sesame? Nah…something else. Maybe even something.”

He cleared his throat. “Er…Open…Something!” he shouted at the cave in his weak, quavery voice. He waved a shaking hand at it for good measure.

The rock guarding the entrance to the cave was unmoved.

Alibaba tried again. “Open…Salaam!”

And again. “Open…Scheherazade!” Now why had he said Scheherazade?

But something appeared to have happened. There was a tremor, and the cave spoke, in its rumbling, gravelly voice.

“Have you forgotten your password?” it said.

Alibaba stared vacuously with rheumy eyes at the cave while a few old neurons misfired. “Ah…yes,” he said finally. “I think that is…correct.”

“What is your mother’s maiden name?” said the cave.

Alibaba processed this question.

“What has that got to do with anything?” he asked querulously. Anyway, he muttered to himself, how could he be expected to remember that?

“What was the name of your first pet?” said the cave now.

“I never had a pet,” said Alibaba.

“What was your wife wearing on your first date?”

“Date? I can’t remember, it was so long ago. It may have been a Tuesday. Look, what is the point of all this?”

“What did you have for breakfast?”

“Bollocks!” said Alibaba.

“You password has been mailed to your registered e-mail account,” said the cave.

Alibaba made coarse noises. The e-mail password. It had been years since he’d forgotten that one.

The curious thing about a rocking chair is that it rocks. When no one is sitting on it. Or is even remotely near it. The fan is not running, it is indoors with the windows closed and there is not even the ghost of a chance of its being the wind’s doing.

One morning, I noticed crowds of ants about my laptop. It is a lowly pentium dual core, but it is the only one I have. Everyone is curious about crowds. They want to know why the crowd? And join it. And thus the crowd. I stood and looked. And I saw that these ants were only a spillover. From the bigger crowd. Which was inside my laptop. Inside. What could they possibly find that is edible inside a computer? For you may depend on it, ants are, where food is. I don’t know how many there were, but there must have been teeming, writhing swarms, for as often as I brushed off and blew away with puffs of breath the ones I saw, more appeared, skittering about on the keyboard and the screen. The little devils had made their way into the innards of the machine through its vents and orifices. They appeared to have made themselves at home in the caverns behind the LCD and the crevices and gorges under the keyboard. Sometimes there were only one or two. Sometimes they boiled up in half dozens out of the various holes. They drove me to distraction, for it seemed nothing could keep them away. For days, we warred. I brushed them off and blew them away until I was dizzy. I hid the laptop in inaccessible places. I picked up the machine and shook it violently. I placed it in a patch of sunlight by a window and hoped that the fearsome heat (it was May) would drive them away. I wrapped it up tight in a plastic bag, hoping to suffocate them. I grieved for my better nature, but it was they, the tiny fiends, it was they who killed it.

For a space, the machine would appear to have been cleared of the enemy. Then they would appear again, singly and in pairs and in little frolicsome groups. They mocked me, the dear little pestilences. One day, however, there were no more ants for many hours. I did not rejoice, much less exult. I waited. This had happened before. They were only playing with me, the minuscule sadists.

After a long while, I decided to not care anymore. I switched on the machine. It was fast. Much faster than I remembered. With a vague suspicion of something outre, I clicked on ‘about computer’. It informed me that my computer had a sixteen core brain. A monster of a processor. The diminutive darlings, the miniature heroes, were actually micro-techies, with jaw-mounted 4 nanometre tools. Despite my egregious, unthinking, unpardonable interference, they had been industriously at work, upgrading my pathetic antique to the latest and the futuristicest.