Previously I had posted about this movie – based on a real story of a teenager who sets out to “live off the land”.

Right now I’m reading the book of the same name while traveling back to Mumbai.

There are a lot of differences between the movie and the book. The movie simply romanticizes McCandless’ journey and the adventures he had along the way. Nowhere in the movie there is a constant reminder to the viewer of the innumerous perils which a traveler may face if unprepared. Watching the movie for the first time had made me want to throw away my laptop bag, burn all my visiting cards, deactivate all my email accounts, permanently switch off my cellphone and head out on the road.

But the book is more sober and realistic. There are constant reminders to what may go wrong in such a journey. Other such adventurers are referenced who lost their way while following the call of the wild.

The movie (directed by Sean Penn) was beautiful but the book (authored by Jon Krakauer) is responsible.

Between the movie and the book, I still like the movie more. The sights of Alaska have a totally different pull than reading about the dangers.

I surely can’t leave the life I’m living and set out on such a journey. But I hope this book can. I was thinking of an experiment. I was planning to leave this book abandoned somewhere where someone with a more adventurous spirit would come across it and take it forward from there.

Maybe I can leave it in this train itself, maybe in a taxi someday. Someone may decide to follow the trail of McCandles and return successfully.

And so I bought the book. How is the book? Well the story is about the adventure of a tribal chieftain from Tibet called Shiva. The story is about his journey to a fabled land called Meluha. The story is about the fight between the Suryavanshis and the Chandravanshis, and a few Nagas thrown in between.

The book shows promise, the story is well-paced and the premise of the story – about a mortal attaining Godhood – is something innovative.

The downside. The book seems written in haste. There are many scenes which the author could have elaborated. If the author would have taken some time to build the character sketches, the story would be more believable. Here all characters seem artificial. Parvateshwar, Daksha, Ayurvati – all seem paper-thin, all of them humble (Shiva included) to the point of being irritating. There are numerous passages where all the characters do is to be modest and heap all the credit on the other person, who then bounces back the credit to the previous person. The battle scenes too are quickly ended (The climactic battle with the Chandravanshis also seems something straight out of 300) It seems to me that a potentially bestseller premise has been wasted, atleast in the first book.

Another jarring aspect of the book was the use of modern terminology – like orientation executive etc to describe some of the characters and events. The author could have used more traditional words to blend in with the story more smoothly.

Having said this, the book is well-written for a debutante. Amish looks promising if he takes time to develop his characters and story. I enjoyed reading the first book of the trilogy. Time will decide if I buy the other two books as well.

Endnote: Ever since I read the first chapter, a niggling thought occupied my mind till the end. I couldn’t exactly understand what it was. When I finished the book and turned to the inside flap, I realized what it was. Amish is a graduate of IIM. Another one bites the dust.

The first couple of minutes of the movie, even before the opening titles, show in a nutshell what TV journalism in India has become. The film further reveals that slowly and surely, even TV channels which were, previously thought of to be upright and unbiased in their coverage of news, get caught up in the race to gain more viewer-ship. So here are my five reasons why you should forget what Ram Gopal Verma has given us in the past, and watch Rann.

1) The growing sensationalism in the media - Unless you’ve been living under a rock for all these years, you know what news on Indian TV has degenerated into. In the race for garnering more viewer-ship, more ad revenues and more TRPs, news has been relegated to the sideline while at the same time, a generous dose of entertainment (mindless to say the least) has been mixed in the programming. The movie explores a few reasons for the same.

As Rajpal Yadav’s characters explains to a director in the movie – “We both are in the same business. You make films, we also make films. Only we call it news.”

Some would say this mix is harmless. What’s wrong if you can get a little entertainment out of news channels as well? But the danger lies in the future when it would be difficult to distinguish between the entertainment part and the actual news part. This movie is for all those people who are already ignorant of this distinction. This movie is for all those people who are tired of the rampant “Breaking News” permanently plastered on TV channel screens.

2) Hard hitting facts - The movie discloses a few facts about how politicians and business-people can manipulate the media into twisting or actually creating news stories out of thin air. Without directly mentioning the parties involved (but giving enough clever hints), RGV has picked up (real) stories from all across India to give an example of the nexus between politics-business and politics-TV media. How many journalists today can honestly say that they haven’t compromised on the quality or content of the news which they report in order to get a few more eyeballs?

4) Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? This is a Latin phrase from a Roman poet, but made famous by Dan Brown in his novel Digital Fortress. The literal translation of the phrase is “Who will guard the guardians?” If the sole medium through which we receive our news are the TV channels and newspapers, who will ensure that the veracity of these news is unquestionable? As is shown in the movie, if facts can be distorted or reversed at the mere mention of money or power, whom will the common man believe when he is watching the news? The scenario described is not far from the Orwellian control of all media by the government or a part of private industry.

3) Rajpal Yadav’s histrionics – Rajpal Yadav plays a wannabe TV anchor at India 24×7 who wants to bring in more creative programming on the channel. In order to achieve this purpose, the character practices – in front of the mirror – the now famous mannerisms of the “b-grade” anchors who have built a whole genre of programs on TV with their loud intonation and their exaggerated descriptions of news. Think . If you jog back your memory a few years back, this trend was most probably started by the now forgotten Suhaib Ilyasi for India’s Most Wanted. But thankfully, RGV has kept this character in limits. Even though you would enjoy the face tweaks and gestures of this enthusiastic reporter, the seriousness of the film would have gone for a toss if he had been given more screen-time.

5) Last but not the least, Amitabh’s and Paresh Rawal’s performance. None of the actors in Rann have a dominating presence in terms of screen-time, but as is expected of them, these two towering personalities put everything into the screentime allocated to them. Paresh Rawal, as the scheming politician Mohan Pandey is menacing and not far from today’s politicians.

The movie has its down-sides too. Some parts of the movie are typical Bollywood. For instance, the part where everyone receives an SMS at the same time on their mobile revealing the truth of Mohan Pandey is hilarious. The telecom companies would have made a killing in this part. One major irritating aspect of the making of the movie was the camera angles. RGV’s cinematographer tried the same angles he tried in Sarkar 2 and fails miserably. Since the movie was about TV news, the least the director could have done is to try out a news studio kind of setup. A static multiple camera setup would have been better than the shaky, twisting angles which the cameraman constantly tries. It’s like the cameramen wanted to go for a susu but the director wouldn’t let him.

All in all, the message that Rann is trying to send across is beautifully exemplified in one of the lines Yashwardhan Malik Vijay Harshvardhan Malik speaks in his closing news broadcast in the film.

…”[For the media industry, ] news was supposed to be the goal, with money being a medium. However, today money has become the goal, with news becoming a medium…”