Dear Sir,
The long list of price-controlled foodstuffs during Ramadan issued by the Consumer Protection Department includes salted butter, tinned sweetened condensed milk, cream, tinned creamed soups, 10 kinds of frozen pastry dough, frozen French fries, jams and a range of cake mixes and desserts called “dream whips’ .
The government is seriously concerned about obesity levels in the country and is encouraging people to exercise and lose weight.
Is this a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing?
Frances Gillespie
(E-mail address supplied)
Film column crosses the line
Dear Sir,
This is in response to Gautaman Bhaskaran’s column published in the Gulf Times Community supplement of July 10. On several occasions, Bhaskaran’s reviews seem to cross the line. He has a penchant for lambasting almost every Bollywood film. He often compares Bollywood films with Hollywood classics, giving the feeling to readers that the latter is somehow greater than the former. Comparisons like these are meaningless as they ignore differences in tastes, ideas and culture between the two industries and the people they serve.
However, on rare occasions he does praise a Bollywood film, but then he reverses his stance a few weeks later, as in the case of the film, Special 26. In his February 13 column, he had good words to say about the film, which prompted me to go and watch it. But in his latest column, he lambasted the film for glorifying villains.
Another film he had chosen to vilify was Lootera, a film which opened to extremely positive critical acclaim.
There have been quite a few inaccuracies in his column too. During the 66th Cannes Film Festival, which had India as the country of focus, Bhaskaran made several baseless statements, such as “Sadly, India has become a joke, a big joke. As much as a foreigner would tell you that he loves Bollywood’s song and dance formula, he would invariably rubbish it in private conversations with his own fellowmen. An important reason for this is the overdose of Hindi cinema’’, “There can be another reason why Cannes tilts towards Bollywood’’, “American cinema knows how to narrate a story, how to engage and enslave you with its superb script, photography, acting and editing.’’
The article (March 6) was full of such inaccurate observations to that it made Christian Jeune, Adjoint au Délégué Général for Cannes, write a letter to Gulf Times, refuting several of Bhaskaran’s claims (March 9), while pointing out that the article had misled several of its readers.
Bhaskaran must realise that not every film needs to be a critic’s darling. Song-and-dance Bollywood routines are made for the people and by the people whose ideals of a good film are in no way inferior to a critic’s.
Furthermore, his constant comparison of Bollywood films with Hollywood ones, which are indeed superior in several departments, ignores differences in culture, people, and history of the two regions. There never will be a universal standard for a good film.
Aswin Anilkumar
Please send us your letters
By e-mail
Fax 44350474
Or Post
Letters to the Editor
Gulf Times
P O Box 2888
Doha, Qatar
All letters, which are subject to editing, should have the name of the writer, address and phone number. The writer’s name and address may be withheld by request.