Gultrage Reboot

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Whose Mother-in-Law is it anyway?

I always get fascinated how the real owners of society have managed to raise armies to fight their causes for free.

The war in Syria?

No. No, looking at the "SAVE Attharintiki Daaredhi" campaign. I am really impressed at the majestic display of power that our leaders have in controlling the minds, thoughts and actions of the people. It's truly remarkable.

Save what campaign?

Attharintiki Daaredhi (translates to “Which way to my mother-in-law’s house?”) It’s a Telugu movie starring actor Pawan Kalyan. Scores and scores of young Pawan Kalyan fans around the world took to the streets and social media to “save” the movie.

Save the movie from what?

From internet piracy

How do you do that?

By raising awareness about the evils of internet piracy. On how by the act of selfishly watching a pirated version of the movie in the comfort of our bedrooms, we are no different from pickpockets, robbers and dacoits raiding and stealing from the movie producer’s coffers.

They are posing the most important moral question of our age: What kind of assholes deliberately do things that affect the lives of so many hard working actors, directors, producers and crew and their families?

That sounds like bullshit a Hollywood lawyer would throw at Pirate Bay. How did it all start?

Some guy with a wicked sense of humour, allegedly an editing assistant who worked on the movie, leaked high quality footage of the first 90 minutes of the movie onto the internet even before its release.

The fans (mostly males in their early teens to late twenties) were horrified at this news. They shook their head in sacrilege disbelief and wanted to fight this injustice. They took to streets, got on twitter, and formed an army. They fist-pumped, chest-bumped and high-fived each other, made resolutions to fight this war and defeat those cyber pirates.

They were not going to rest till the last pirated copy of the movie was removed off the net. They are going to make everyone go to the theatres and watch the movie there. They are going to ensure the profits for the producers. They will to use this opportunity to showcase their collective strength and establish their superiority over fans of other heroes. They will make their hero be proud of them.

Thus the campaign "Kill Piracy – Save Attarintiki Daredi – Save Telugu Films" was born.

You guys are nuts!

That is only the beginning. Telugu movie fans all around the world spontaneously burst into action. Some fans have taken resolutions to watch the movie two or three times in the theatre just to pay for the sins of their fellow dishonest Gult citizens and green card holders. They organized themselves on the social media to report links to the anti-piracy cell so that those links can be taken down and legal notices sent if required. Pawan Kalyan’s fans have formed an alliance with Mahesh Babu’s fans to raid CD shops selling pirated mp3s and shut them down.

They have shared, put up and walked around with Save Attharintiki Daredi, Save Telugu Film Industry posters and banners. Some NRIs even released videos of them wearing PAWANISM T-shirts and trying to articulate the power and greatness of their hero on their way to watch the movie. And finally when news reports emerged that the movie broke box-office collection records, they celebrated by bursting crackers on a weekday afternoon.

What is this PAWANISM?

PAWANISM is a way of life that involves watching celebrating every Pawan Kalyan movie that releases, following and worshipping the stunts, dialogues, dance and charisma of their leader Pawan Kalyan who is rumoured to be an intellectual because he was once seen wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt inside a shopping mall. The intellectual part thankfully is just a rumour.

Is he that good?

No, nothing like that. They just idolize the fictionalized persona of a mediocre actor who happens to be the younger brother of actor-turned-politician Chiranjeevi. It’s not just Pawan Kalyan. Every movie star has a religious following like that.

I don’t know why but part of being a fan includes praising the actor’s masculinity. All the characters in these movies make unsubtle references to the hero’s manliness, ferocity, tiger-like agility, his lion-like courage, the mass appeal of his family, his forefathers’ virility and the awesomeness of his fans and followers in general.



The fans are really into what metaphors are used to praise the power, stamina, influence and the greatness of their hero. It is one of the aspects of the movie they look forward to and compete with fans of other rival heroes on this idea of masculinity. This even forms the basis of college politics in a lot of colleges in Andhra. These manhood issues are a very recent phenomenon.

You people are nuts! I understand hero worship. Europeans break each other’s jaws over football rivalry all the time. I am all for people punching strangers in the face but fighting internet piracy like this is a little hypocritical, don't you think? I mean when was the last time you Googled "XYZ movie songs free download" and felt guilty about it?

Exactly! The hypocrisy is Himalayan. I want to take yoga classes to expand my consciousness so that I can fully appreciate the supreme irony of all this.

I know you humans and I know you are not a very honourable species to begin with. You guys aren't acing any moral-science exams just as yet. You routinely lie about what you are and what you do to your parents, bosses, girl-friends, the income tax department, traffic police and pretty much everyone. You cheat like it is your birth right if you can get away with it but two days before the release of the movie, you people are out on the streets lecturing everyone about rights and wrongs… screaming about protecting intellectual property of Telugu film makers?

That's the thing. What is so "intellectual" about these movies that warrant "protection"? The Telugu Film Industry is not oozing with original ideas and creativity by any standard. Scripts, story lines, jokes, action sequences, and music scores are routinely ripped off with impunity from Hollywood, Hong Kong, Korean and other world cinema and suddenly, this special group of anointed fans get a sudden attack of conscience, grant themselves moral worthiness, act like cyber vigilantes, shutting down shops, reporting links…

So they are trying to protect the intellectual property rights of people who have no problem stealing from others?

Pretty much. Let me make one point absolutely clear. I have nothing against this movie. I have not seen the movie. I haven’t even seen the trailer. Bits of it are probably funny. I heard that the second heroine is hot. In fact, I respect the talents of writer-director Trivikram Srinivas. The quality of the movie is NOT my concern here at all.

What is amusing to me is the total lack of perspective in these self-organized armies of fans that have formed to defend the financial interests of the movie's investors. If you look at their hard disks, I bet you’ll find a lot of Allari Naresh movies, contraband Hollywood movies and illegal porn. They didn’t buy those original DVDs. They downloaded them from the internet, just like everyone else. Let them first pay for all the HD movies, the HBO series and for all the times they jerked-off for free, maybe then I'll listen to their lectures on “The honourable way of watching a movie”

Every movie industry in the world has been reeling with the problem of piracy for a couple of decades now and Tollywood has solved it. Their efforts of building the mythology of macho star power seemed to have paid off. The most interesting thing is that these people spend their own money in droves and then take pride in the profits it generated for someone else. Even Apple cannot dream of such obedient consumers!

Here's what I find really pitiful about the fans. If anyone of the ethical self-righteous movie-going fans, after all that they have done to save the profits of the movie, walk up to the producer for a chat or something, he would most probably treat them with the same contempt as a shepherd treats a goat in his herd. The industry doesn't care about the fans. They don't give a damn. All they care is how to take their money as easily as possible. And they are already doing it quite efficiently.

Think about it. If the actors and the directors really had even the tiniest bit of respect for their loyal fans, they would at least have the decency to put an honest effort into making movies instead of selling the same recycled misogynist machismo drivel shot in a foreign location.

Instead we have fans trying really hard to say nice things about the movie with a sense of duty. And mind you, all this action is happening when the state itself is going through the worst political crisis in decades.

I totally forgot about it. Wasn't your state supposed to be split into two or three?

Yeah, ever since the central government declared in August that it is proactively considering bifurcation of the state of Andhra Pradesh, a huge political turmoil ensued in all parts of the state.

Schools and colleges were shut down, protests and strikes were enforced, banks refused to open for business, industries became inoperable, government employees are on strike, public transport is paralysed, and politicians are making trips to Delhi contemplating in their business class seats if they should threaten to resign and yes, the release of Attharintiki Daaredi itself got postponed for the same reason.

This Samaikhya Andhra paralysis is happening at a time when the economy is already at its worst with the collapse of the manufacturing sector due to the power shortage, the on-going agrarian crisis, and massive unemployment. The postal department made an announcement for two hundred odd clerk posts and more than ten thousand people – many of them unemployed engineers with education loans on their head – applied for those clerk posts! That is the future.

A lot of these fans themselves are staring into the same uncertain future but reality doesn't seem to bother them at all. The box office fortunes of their hero's films continue to be their biggest concern in life.

Am I supposed to empathize with them?

Do you want to?

I am not answering that question.

Most of this is written by Flawsophy

Yet another Gult movie

What are you doing in the kitchen? Are you eating my roommate's Maggi again?

What else am I supposed to do? It’s been an hour and a half since I ate something. I even sneaked into your neighbor’s kitchen but I hate the cold, tasteless tetra pack milk you humans drink these days…

One of these days, one of my roommates is going to kick you out of the house. Don’t blame me if that happens

What’s with the grouchy mood?

I just came back from a Gult movie

How was it? Wait… Let me guess, it sucked and it was the worst three hours of your life.

Yes, the usual but this movie made me think. Why is it that Gult people HAVE to watch every movie that is cleared by the censor board without any bias, discretion or standards?

Are you talking about Telugu Cine fans?

Why single out the “fans”? Everyone is like that. Sometime in the last ten years, an entire generation of Telugu people has been convinced that every movie that hits the theaters ought to be watched in the theater. I don’t know how that happened but it did – Ritualistic movie going

It’s a part of your culture now

It is our culture. Thursday evenings: Eleven pradakshanams at Sai Baba temple. Friday evenings: New movie at Prasad’s multiplex – That’s the time table.

The thing that really baffles me is that people aren't tired of it. I mean it’s the same movie over and over again. Every hero in a mainstream production is essentially the same misogynistic, boorish, less talented knock off of yesteryear Chiranjeevi but with an unlimited SMS pack on his cellphone. He keeps fighting the same villain – a power hungry businessman-feudal lord with a daughter of marriageable age. The music is a pile of shit and the lyrics are the stink that emanate from it as it rots.

The romance is the same outdated, self-repeating, boring-as-a-block-of-wood Neanderthal mythology where the damsel in distress falls for the eve teasing asshole because he is probably a “nice guy” at heart.

People basically have been watching the same potboiler for the last 15 years. These are the same people who will shout if their mom cooks the same vegetable twice in a week!

Well, your people have always been a little fanatic about movies

Yes but it happens at a totally different scale now. It used to be that people went to the theater only if they were sure that it is worth three hours of their time and read some movie gossip once in a while from the Sitara magazine stocked in the barber’s shop but now it’s crazy.

Movies are the only thing on TV, on radio, on the internet, in the newspapers, on social media, at weddings, gatherings, schools, colleges, trains, buses, hospital waiting rooms…

Yes, that is really irritating

And people passionately follow everything too. They follow the movie right from its announcement, to the press release, the launch muhoortham, the first look, photo stills, audio preview, audio release function (live), controversies, gossip, platinum disk function, movie teaser, ‘official’ trailer, second trailer, item number, and after all this hype, the three hours of old shit on new toilet paper is met with obvious disappointment and then their fans go through the five stages of grief!

Wow, your generation spends ALL its free time, energy, resources, ability, thought and surplus on the Telugu Film Industry complex. That’s a little weird given how bad they are these days

Let’s not even talk about quality. We are living through the dark ages for Telugu movies as an art form – the range of themes, the writing, the acting, the music, the lyrics, the portrayal of women, the portrayal of men – all of them are on an all-time low

Except the profits!

That’s the tragedy…. bad movies go unpunished. In fact they do good business because we will watch anything

But hey, the comedy is still pretty good… most people at least claim that.

Yeah, you can say that but comedy has always been consistently amazing in Telugu culture. We are a people with a great sense of humor. So we’re not doing anything exceptional in the comedy department either. We’re just managing thanks to the amazing comedians and individuals like Brahmi, Kota, Tanikella Bharani, Ali, M.S Narayana, Dharmavarapu Subramanyam etc.

Yeah Brahmanandam’s 20 minute track pretty much decides whether a movie is a hit or a flop

What worries me is that we don’t have a next generation of funny people and Jandhyala’s generation is not getting any younger. The humor itself is moving towards a loud, loaded with on-your-face insults, innuendos, and slapstick moments compared to the subtle idiosyncrasies and clever wordplay

Yes, and Brahmi is getting beaten up way too often. Every bonehead hero with a 50 paisa face wants to trash him and put it on his resume. And that Ali fellow should stop wearing that female costume. Ugh!

He’s the only woman character that stands out if you notice. There are no women in our movies anymore, just cleavage and a navel with Sunitha’s voice. And she is there for the hero to cook for him, dance with him, stalked by him and finally saved by him.

How come Gult girls don’t complain?

They do sometimes. Those who feel strongly about such things have stopped watching Telugu movies altogether. Some have accepted that it is not going to change anytime soon, so they cringe and watch anyway. It helps that none of the heroines look Telugu. But those who grew up watching only these movies are totally desensitized. They even aspire to be cute, helpless and borderline retarded.

"Haha… Hasini" There’s this thing called a Bechdel test which is used to identify gender bias in fiction. Did you know about that?

To pass the test, a movie should satisfy three simple criteria. It should have (1) at least two women (2) who talk to each other (3) about something other than a man

All those posh tests our gult movies wont pass babu. It is “out of syllabus”

Most of the Hollywood movies also fail that simple test. The movie industry is like that.

Don’t blame the Telugu Film Industry for any of this. The industry is doing very well for itself. It has bigger houses, better cars, and hotter chicks, plenty of money, media support, more political power, rave parties, and a generation of obedient fans willing to watch anything.

The industry is fine. The people are fucked.

Ouch!

Take any train/flight/bus from anywhere in the world to Andhra Pradesh, the most common sight is a Gulti sitting in the seat and looking into his laptop/smartphone/tablet screen.

We don’t know of any other hobbies. We have no personal interests. This is what we do with our free time. We plug in our ear phones, shut down our minds, and stare at a screen that is playing ‘Dookudu’ for the nineteenth time.

Without getting bored… that is the amazing part

I don’t know if sociologists are studying us, they totally should. It’s an amazing bubble we live in where young people’s identities are so closely tied to what kind of bad movies they prefer, which hero they worship. And everyone has to worship someone. They even have their own “isms”.

Like the unemployed members of the Morampudi Mega-Power Youth Association?

No, I am talking about the educated, brand conscious, cappuccino-sipping, Android-loving, dowry-demanding software engineers (and soon-to-be software engineers) with good educational background and on-site experience sitting in office and having passionate “our caste heroes are better your caste heroes” fights on the internet!

Haha… Yo hero so fat that his belt is the size of the Equator!

We even have strategies to sit through bad movies. When I say I didn’t like a particular movie people say, “No, you’re not watching it correctly” as if there is a right way to watch a movie and a wrong way

Don’t you know? To fully enjoy a movie, we have to turn off our common sense, intelligence, sensibilities, music sense, respect for women, teachers, law and order, society, the environment, and life on earth in general.

And people do it. They are happy to leave their brains outside the theater. Their commitment is amazing. We should release a postage stamp commemorative of the Gulti Movie-goer or something.

I am not very surprised by all this. It is all consistent with what is happening in the state

Yeah, we’re the first Post-reading Generation.

This is a generation that stopped reading. Not just “general” reading like literature, science, biographies, history etc. This is a generation that has never read its own school text books. We only have printed sheets of “important questions” with answers which are to be memorized and puked in the exam hall. That is how everyone earns their degrees!

So it is not surprising that we have this culture where millions of “educated” people in their 20s are proud to have not read a single book their whole lives; a culture that ridicules and alienates those who have; a culture where education is a transaction in which parents mortgage their ancestral property for an “MS from US”; a culture where success means immigrating into a mediocre job in a developed country; a culture that lacks self-respect and confidence in the face of globalization and consequently, a reactionary “we’re like that only” pride in our mediocrity.

Gultisthan Zindabad!

We don’t have to specially shut down our brains while watching movies. We have shut them down a long time back!

Co-authored by Flawsophy

Inventions S1E03: The Great Nation of Gultisthan!

Friends, Gultis and Countrymen,

I have had enough of these demands for a separate Telangana, a separate Rayalaseema, a separate Sreekakulam etc. I cannot stand to see my gult brothers fighting amongst themselves dividing our motherland using anything other than caste.

It is time to think big. Great leaders sometimes have to take harsh decisions. Here is mine. Pro-Telangana people, I have decided to expel you from our state. You can have your Telangana. Just take it and go. You can even go ahead, take Northern Karnataka and Vidharbha too and form a “Brotherhood of fucked up provinces under the erstwhile Nizam” for all I care but let me be very clear about this. You did not fight and “win” your separate state. You got it because we gave it!

Fellow gults, do not worry about the loss of Telangana. Consider them as the prodigal brother who will come back to us once he realizes how difficult life is. In the meantime, let us continue thinking big. 

Remember Madras Presidency? Boy those were the days when there were no autos in Chennai, Chennai was Madras and everyone in Madras spoke Telugu! We should aim for that kind of domination instead of wasting time fighting these petty bifurcating and trifurcating battles. Yes gults, it is time we fight for The Great Nation of Gultisthan! Spelt with an ‘h’! (Dear every country from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, I’m sorry to tell you but you don’t know how to spell your countries. Love, Gultisthan.)

Geography

With the expulsion of Telangana, we have to let go of Hyderabad. We’ll need a new capital. Let’s take Chennai back!

Historically, we built the city together and then they (the Tamils) took over and named everything after Anna! It is time for us to reclaim Madras. Let us revive the “Madras Manade” movement. (Remember the M&M Revolution™©®?) Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia:

Madras Manade 

In 1953, Telugu speakers of Madras Presidency wanted Madras as the capital of Andhra state including the famous slogan Madras Manade (Madras is ours) before Tirupati was included in AP. Madras, at that time was an indivisible mixture of Tamil and Telugu cultures. It was difficult to determine who should possess it. 

Panagal Raja, Chief Minister of the Madras Presidency in the early 1920s said that the Cooum River should be kept as a boundary, giving the northern portion to the Andhras and the southern portion to the Tamils. In 1928, Sir C. Sankaran Nair sent a report to the Central Council discussing why Madras does not belong to the Tamils. Historically and geographically it was a part of the Andhra region. It was Damerla Venkatadri Nayakudu of Recherla Velama caste was provincial governor in 1639 from whom the English sought to take permission to set up a factory. 

The increasing political dominance of the Tamils from early 1920s at both Central and State level politics caused Madras to remain in the Tamil region. According to the JPC report (Jawahar Lal Nehru, Bhogaraju Pattabhi Sitaramayya, C. Rajagopalachari) Telugu people should leave Madras for Tamils if they want a new state.

And that is how they took our Madras away. It is time to win Madras back and change the name to Medrasu because how is that we roll.

We will also lose considerable amount of land after expelling Telangana. My plan is to take a part of Karnataka to make up for it. Besides we can use some Iron Ore and Bangalore!

The Great Nation of Gultisthan

Oriya people may want to join us. They have a lot of cultural relations and natural resources but with the poverty and Maoist problems, they come with a lot of extra baggage. We’ll take a decision about the fate of Oriya people at a later date.

Economy

With the annexure of Medrasu (formerly: Chennai, formerly-formerly: Madras) and Bengaluru, we’ll have a naval base, a strategic port, the whole IT sector, two IPL teams, R. Ashwin and Deepika Padukone. So our economy is in safe hands.

The Revolution

The process of annexing these territories has already started. Bellary, Tumkur and Raichur are already ruled by gults for all practical purposes. Our soft power tactics are working wonderfully in and around Bangalore where the cultural domination is quite mature too. Gultis are being arrested almost everyday for scams in Karnataka. If that is not domination, I ask you, what is?

More than 25% of Bangalore speaks Telugu. There are an estimated 1.35 crore Telugu speakers in Karnataka, so it is only fair we have some of their land too! People of Karnataka might get a little upset about this but they are nice people. I am sure they will understand and look at this as an opportunity to bring Mysore back to its past glory.

While the Tams are busy making fun of their brahms, trying to answer age old philosophical questions like “Why this kolaveri di?”, and giving war hero like welcomes to their politicians returning from the conquest of Tihar, our people are infiltrating their territory by the thousands to take Madras from the inside.

Tamil People, do you guys seriously believe that all those gult engineering students on Mahabalipuram Road are there to study engineering? Do you have any idea how many engineering colleges we have? They are the future #OccupyMadras protesters.

Mark my words people, mark them well. The process has already started. The clock is ticking. Fates are changing. The wheels are in motion. History is being rewritten. Things are happening as we speak. The revolution is just a matter of time. Gult Greatness shall soon be realized. 

Gultisthan Zindabad!

My latest project -- Gultrage

For quite sometime now, (for reasons I shall elaborate in a series of posts sometime in the future) I have been mad at Telugu people and then came Tambrahmrage which opened a wonderful opportunity for me to use the rage meme as a cathartic tool and thus gultrage is born!

Yenjaay -- http://gultrage.tumblr.com and remember, I am most serious when I am joking!