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The most appealing thing about the latest Hindi-language movie “Class of ’83” (released on Netflix on August 21), apart from Bobby Deol’s promise of a comeback, is its length. At 1h 38mins, this movie is one example of how Indian filmmakers have been trying to cut down runtime to suit the preference of new audience. A 90-something-minute movie is the new undefined feature length and totally worth one’s time. Even if turns out bad, you wouldn’t regret, not having spent two (or more) grueling hours getting past it.

As a ‘resurrection’ for Deol, who never did have a career high since his debut in “Barsaat” (1995), Class of ’83 was moderately anticipated, and the trailer showed it as an out and out action thriller. Produced by Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment and adapted for screen from Indian journalist/author Hussain Zaidi’s 2019 book with the same name, the film claims to be inspired by real life stories of the officers of the law and yet also gives a disclaimer that it is mostly fictional.

So there seems to be a general confusion on the portrayal of fact vs fiction, and this shows throughout. The film doesn’t stick to a line; it rather zigzags, confusing the audience. If the phrase ‘all over the place’ had a face, it would definitely be Atul Sabharwal’s direction. Because even with his years of experience in writing films, Sabharwal loses the plot here. So many times the film feels like a labyrinth of ideas that just go round and round and never amount to anything. Sabharwal can’t seem to decide on the important conflicts in the film, and what scenes should be given time.

Class of ’83 is about a batch of students at a police academy in Maharashtra, India and their new dean Vijay Singh (Deol), an honest, resolute cop who has been transferred to a ‘punishment posting’ after falling out with a powerful politician. Feeling he has been failed by the system, and that system needs an overhaul to maintain law and order, Singh decides to recruit a bunch of wayward students in the academy and nurture them so that he can inject them as ‘anti-bodies on the corrupt system’.

Vishnu Varde (Hitesh Bhojraj), Aslam Khan (Sameer Paranjape), Laxman Jadhav (Ninad Mahajani), Janardan Surve (Prithvik Pratap), and Pramod Shukla (Bhupendra Jadawat) are the five misfits dean Singh selects and trains with his unorthodox methods, also making sure they pass academy exams. Now the premise that since the selected team is from the bottom list of eligibility in the academy they must be honest, is flawed in itself. But that’s just one of the over-exaggerated, glorified accounts of police training the film portrays.

Then come twists and turns and the saga of failed expectations, corruption, betrayal, and retribution that we are made to watch as dispassionately as possible.

We know for fact, after watching Deol onscreen for more than 25 years, that the actor does not have serious acting chops. But still, Class of ’83 fails to bring out even the little acting skills he may have. It provides him with the perfect premise to create a memorable character, but deprives him of the opportunity because of a badly written role. Singh, struggling with family issues as well as professional problems, could have been someone with more intensity, depth and character, but lack of screenwriting and direction skills fail him more than the ‘system’ he is fighting against. As for the rest of the characters, there is not a single name that stands out.

Who should watch it?

Class of ’83 might not exactly be a “Shootout at Lokhandwala” (2007), but it does have moments that may be enjoyable for audiences interested in cop movies. This genre, where good cops are glorified to some extreme, sits well with some. And its brevity is also an advantage. For the rest, don’t bother.

Rating: 2 stars

Genre: Crime/Drama

Actors: Bobby Deol, Bhupendra Jadawat, Sameer Paranjape

Director: Atul Sabharwal

Run time: 1h 38mins

“Convenience Store Woman” is a short book but the deadpan tone of Sayaka Murata didn’t let me read it in one sitting. I had to put it aside and contemplate on what was happening to understand the protagonists’ emotions or lack thereof. It’s a book that makes you think—about the mundane things in life, and how they all connect to the bigger picture.

Keiko Furukawa has always known that people find her strange. When she was in school, she saw a dead bird, and wanted to take it home to grill it for her father. She ended a fight between two boys by hitting one on the head with a spade, and “calmed” a hysterical teacher by pulling down her skirt to shock her. As an adult, Keiko isn’t very different. She still thinks most problems can be solved by hitting people with shovels. When her sister’s baby wails, she eyes a small knife thinking it could help.

She doesn’t realize why these kinds of thoughts and actions make her different though. Keiko thinks she is doing what the situation demands, and opting for the simplest solution. But people don’t understand her ways, they never did. And so now as a 36-year-old, Keiko keeps to herself.

The normalcy of routine work, without creativity, at the convenience store makes her feel like a functioning cog in society. She loves her job and takes it seriously. But her family and colleagues find it weird that she has had the same job for years and her career doesn’t seem headed anywhere.

There are bits that are weird and you have to struggle to make sense of them, but Keiko is a fascinating character. And it’s fun to try and see things through her eyes—it’s a completely different perspective altogether. There are some laugh-out-loud moments because of how Keiko views the world and deals with people around her—she gives ‘feed’ not ‘food’ to a guy living with her as if he were a pet.

Convenience Store Woman is a simple story of one woman’s quest to make sense of this chaotic world. From the first sentence of the book—‘A convenience store is a world of sounds’—you can hear, feel and see everything that’s happening.

Murata spent 18 years working part-time in convenience stores before the success of Convenience Store Woman finally allowed her to quit for good and write full-time. The book is Murata’s 10th novel but the first to be translated into English. It has sold more than a million copies in Japan and is being translated into 23 languages worldwide.

Fiction

Convenience Store Woman

Sayaka Murata

Translated to English by Ginny Tapley Takemori

Published: 2016 (Japanese) 2018 (English)

Publisher: Granta Publications

Pages: 163, Paperback

For those unacquainted with Nepal’s political system, they could do worse than pick up “The Politics of Nepal: Persistence and Change in an Asian Monarchy”. Leo E. Rose and Margaret W. Fisher’s short book covers the country’s history from the time of Prithvi Narayan Shah to the late 1960s, when it was written. Lok Raj Baral’s preface to the new Mandala Print Edition partly covers the subsequent evolution of Nepali politics between late 1960s and now.

The strength of this brief book, like the other books Rose has written on Nepal, is it’s jargon-free, simple language. Anyone can pick it up and easily understand the historic evolution of Nepali polity, while also getting a glimpse of other factors that have shaped Nepal’s destiny over the years: it’s unique geography, its rich ethnic mix, and it’s challenging geopolitical position. 

Besides the preface, and foreword by Richard L. Park, the book is divided into seven chapters. The first chapter ‘Political and Social Heritage’ discusses the evolution of Nepal as a country and its many geographical and ethnic attributes. Also included is an account of the country’s political experimentation since the time of PN Shah until the late 1960s.

The second chapter ‘Monarchy and Representative Institutions’ is basically a history of Shah monarchy: how it was subverted during the Ranarchy and how its role changed drastically in post-1950 politics. Most notably, after dismissing the elected government of BP Koirala in 1959, King Mahendra imposed a party-less Panchayat system the following year.

Other chapters in the book are: ‘The Administrative and Judicial System’, ‘Political Forces in Nepal’, ‘The Modernization of the Nepali Economy’, ‘Nepal’s International Relations’, and ‘Modernizing Nepali Politics”. These chapters are followed by a comprehensive literature guide on Nepal, and suggested further readings.

Again, the book is an initiation into modern Nepali politics. Yet more serious scholars on Nepal would also find it of some interest. Even though it is a brief volume, Rose and Fisher offer their unique take on the course of events in Nepal. For instance, the authors are ready to give King Mahendra benefit of doubt on his imposition of the partyless-Panchayat system, even as they are unsure the experiment will succeed.

They try to understand King Mahendra’s possible motivations. Among other things the monarch must have considered: “Would crown functions be usurped by the present prime minister and the monarch relegated to a figurehead…?”, “Was the very existence of the monarchy imperiled by the growing power of the Nepali Congress…?”, “Was Nepal itself in danger of becoming an Indian satellite?” It would be strange, write Rose and Fisher, if “they [these questions] had not arisen in the mind of a monarch who was only too aware of the underlying factors in both the founding and the collapse of the Rana regime, whose virtual prisoner he had himself once been”.

He argues King Mahendra’s strong prejudice against political parties is “not without substance”: “The record of the political parties in Nepal, as in much of the non-western world, does not inspire confidence in their capacity to provide the leadership and authority necessary in a difficult transitional period”. Yet the writers are far from dyed-in-the-wool monarchists. King Mahendra, they write, must also share some of the blame “for the failure of the Nepali parties to mature” as the palace itself was often engaged in playing favorites among political groups.

Nonetheless, as Baral hints in his preface, it was because of Rose’s rather sympathetic reading of the role of Nepali monarchy that King Birendra awarded Rose ‘Gorkha Dakshin Bahu’ in 1984.

The book hews to the maxim that every two has two sides. It would be wrong to ignore the version of the monarchs even if the reader is a firm believer in the democratic process—for doing so would entail an incomplete reading of Nepali history.

The guide to literature on Nepal that the book ends with is also an invaluable repository of the required reading to understand the country better.

The book, now republished by Mandala Book Point, was originally part of the broader ‘South Asian Political Systems’ series Richard L. Park edited. The series took up cases of individual countries like Nepal, Pakistan, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and Afghanistan. Writes Park, “The rapid rise of nationalism in Asia in the twentieth century, the decline of Western imperial systems, and the founding of the many independent states in the early years of the United Nations have all contributed to a growing interest in Asian culture and politics.” Hence the need for books like ‘The Politics of Nepal”.

It’s worth a read for anyone even remotely interested in understanding the evolution of the Nepali political system.

Non-Fiction

The Politics of Nepal: Persistence and Change in an Asian Monarchy

Leo E. Rose and Margaret W. Fisher

Pages: 197

Publisher: Mandala Book Point

For those unacquainted with Nepal’s political system, they could do worse than pick up “The Politics of Nepal: Persistence and Change in an Asian Monarchy”. Leo E. Rose and Margaret W. Fisher’s short book covers the country’s history from the time of Prithvi Narayan Shah to the late 1960s, when it was written. Lok Raj Baral’s preface to the new Mandala Print Edition partly covers the subsequent evolution of Nepali politics between late 1960s and now.

The strength of this brief book, like the other books Rose has written on Nepal, is it’s jargon-free, simple language. Anyone can pick it up and easily understand the historic evolution of Nepali polity, while also getting a glimpse of other factors that have shaped Nepal’s destiny over the years: it’s unique geography, its rich ethnic mix, and it’s challenging geopolitical position. 

Besides the preface, and foreword by Richard L. Park, the book is divided into seven chapters. The first chapter ‘Political and Social Heritage’ discusses the evolution of Nepal as a country and its many geographical and ethnic attributes. Also included is an account of the country’s political experimentation since the time of PN Shah until the late 1960s.

The second chapter ‘Monarchy and Representative Institutions’ is basically a history of Shah monarchy: how it was subverted during the Ranarchy and how its role changed drastically in post-1950 politics. Most notably, after dismissing the elected government of BP Koirala in 1959, King Mahendra imposed a party-less Panchayat system the following year.

Other chapters in the book are: ‘The Administrative and Judicial System’, ‘Political Forces in Nepal’, ‘The Modernization of the Nepali Economy’, ‘Nepal’s International Relations’, and ‘Modernizing Nepali Politics”. These chapters are followed by a comprehensive literature guide on Nepal, and suggested further readings.

Again, the book is an initiation into modern Nepali politics. Yet more serious scholars on Nepal would also find it of some interest. Even though it is a brief volume, Rose and Fisher offer their unique take on the course of events in Nepal. For instance, the authors are ready to give King Mahendra benefit of doubt on his imposition of the partyless-Panchayat system, even as they are unsure the experiment will succeed.

They try to understand King Mahendra’s possible motivations. Among other things the monarch must have considered: “Would crown functions be usurped by the present prime minister and the monarch relegated to a figurehead…?”, “Was the very existence of the monarchy imperiled by the growing power of the Nepali Congress…?”, “Was Nepal itself in danger of becoming an Indian satellite?” It would be strange, write Rose and Fisher, if “they [these questions] had not arisen in the mind of a monarch who was only too aware of the underlying factors in both the founding and the collapse of the Rana regime, whose virtual prisoner he had himself once been”.

He argues King Mahendra’s strong prejudice against political parties is “not without substance”: “The record of the political parties in Nepal, as in much of the non-western world, does not inspire confidence in their capacity to provide the leadership and authority necessary in a difficult transitional period”. Yet the writers are far from dyed-in-the-wool monarchists. King Mahendra, they write, must also share some of the blame “for the failure of the Nepali parties to mature” as the palace itself was often engaged in playing favorites among political groups.

Nonetheless, as Baral hints in his preface, it was because of Rose’s rather sympathetic reading of the role of Nepali monarchy that King Birendra awarded Rose ‘Gorkha Dakshin Bahu’ in 1984.

The book hews to the maxim that every two has two sides. It would be wrong to ignore the version of the monarchs even if the reader is a firm believer in the democratic process—for doing so would entail an incomplete reading of Nepali history.

The guide to literature on Nepal that the book ends with is also an invaluable repository of the required reading to understand the country better.

The book, now republished by Mandala Book Point, was originally part of the broader ‘South Asian Political Systems’ series Richard L. Park edited. The series took up cases of individual countries like Nepal, Pakistan, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and Afghanistan. Writes Park, “The rapid rise of nationalism in Asia in the twentieth century, the decline of Western imperial systems, and the founding of the many independent states in the early years of the United Nations have all contributed to a growing interest in Asian culture and politics.” Hence the need for books like ‘The Politics of Nepal”.

It’s worth a read for anyone even remotely interested in understanding the evolution of the Nepali political system.