Dhurandhar, gold, and a Bhadralok at the polo ground

Dear reader,

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Weekly Vine. This week, we explain how Dhurandhar shows that Bollywood has learnt the art of myth-making, examine why gold is facing a ‘tough time’, decode why gold prices are plunging, explore the curious history of the Church of England (which is set to get its first female head), and recount what happened when a Bhadralok turned up to watch polo.

The art of myth-making

Aditya Dhar’s duology rejects Bollywood’s mass, formulaic approaches to war movies or spy thrillers, eschewing escapist item-number fantasies or surreal jamborees, with a level of peak detailing that would gladden Frederick Forsyth’s heart. The movie uses enough real-life examples to serve a delicious Quentin Tarantino-style revenge fantasy, the kind we have seen in Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, or Kill Bill.

The music is sublime, mixing hits old and new, from far-off genres. Golden-era Bollywood classics jostle with qawwalis, as Punjabi pop, Arabic rap, Indian hip-hop, and Western rock come together, coupled with a background score that could have been developed by Hans Zimmer.

There are so many scenes – subtle and not-so-subtle – that go out of their way to push the phantasmagoria of revenge, the kind that Hollywood has used to sublime effect over the years. All in all, it is competent myth-making. And your availability heuristic will decide whether it is myth-making for a particular spymaster, regime, religion, nation, or civilisation.

This is not the first Indian movie to do that. The Baahubali duology and RRR are both sublime artefacts of civilisational pride wrapped in grand filmmaking, but the difference is that they are either set in fantastical lands or in history. Dhurandhar, on the other hand, is set in contemporary times – in the not-so-distant future – one that is the lived reality for many people watching the movie.

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Gold not glitteringFor the longest time, my mother had a lament: what will happen to my gold jewellery if my son does not get betrothed? The answer, that I would wear it like Bappi Da, was never a good enough one. Thankfully, much to my mother’s relief, I did find a better half, which means she can now live peacefully knowing that her gold will pass on to a worthy heir. Why am I talking about gold? Because it fell this week, which is shocking to me because every finance column I have ever had the misfortune to read has told me gold is the most ‘stable’ investment.

Robert Plant once sang, “There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold…” That is until it doesn’t. In a world of uncertainty, fear, panic, and a trigger-happy US president, gold is anything but stable.

When oil becomes more expensive, it pushes up inflation. Higher inflation can lead to higher interest rates, and when returns after inflation improve, investors suddenly have better options than holding a piece of metal that has to compete with higher bond yields and dollar strengths.

But India, as per use, is never for beginners. In India, gold is not just gold but also an import, so you are not buying only gold, but gold multiplied by the rupee-dollar exchange rate. As gold fell, the rupee weakened as well. A higher crude bill means India needs more dollars, and more demand for dollars weakens the rupee.

And this is the bit that people who say ‘gold is safe’ leave out. Safety depends on what you are measuring in, so in dollar terms gold prices corrected. In rupee terms, they arrived diluted. Because it is never just about the gold, but quietly deciding how much of the fall you are allowed to feel.

To quote our main man Bappi Da: “Yaar bina chain kahan re…” Or, to use another of his lines: “It’s a tough time.”

A brief history of the Church of England

In Yes Minister, when Jim Hacker finds out that Italian terrorists have access to British-made weapons, Sir Humphrey Appleby tries to mollify him by pointing out it’s not their department’s problem. British weapons in the hands of foreign terrorists were outside the Ministry of Administrative Affairs’ jurisdiction. Probably a Defence Ministry problem, or a Foreign Office problem, the unflappable bureaucrat points out, before a beleaguered Hacker hits back: “I am talking about good and evil.” This leads Sir Humphrey to point out that made it a “Church of England” problem.

That quip, while hilarious, stands the test of time, because knowing the difference between good and evil is a heavy cross to bear for an institution created by a megalomaniac king who wanted a divorce.

Now, the Church is in the news for getting its female Archbishop of Canterbury for the first time in its nearly 1400-year-old history. In classic ecumenical tradition, her predecessor had to resign over an abuse scandal involving hundreds of boys.

But why does England have a separate Church?

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Postscript by Prasad Sanyal: The Bhadralok at the Polo Ground

 Sunday afternoons, in a certain version of India, still carry the faint echo of hooves. Not the hurried, honking chaos of our usual lives, but a slower, more deliberate rhythm. Leather on grass, mallet meeting ball, conversations that pause mid-sentence because something elegant has just happened in the distance.

Polo, like many good things, refuses to shout. It does not trend. It does not explain itself. It simply unfolds, with the quiet confidence of something that has never needed validation from a dashboard.

And yet, even such afternoons are no longer entirely immune to the administrative imagination. Somewhere in Delhi, the Jaipur Polo Ground, that improbable stretch of colonial memory and ceremonial leisure, has been asked to vacate. Not dramatically, not even controversially, just a notice. A quiet reminder that history, in modern India, is often a tenant on a short lease.

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Post Postscript

Word of the Week: Salt
Since reviewers are particularly salty this week about Aditya Dhar’s film, the Vine thought it would be a good time to revisit the etymology of the word. The word itself is ancient. Even salary comes from the Latin salarium, an allowance paid to Roman soldiers to purchase salt, a reminder that this was once a measure of value, not just taste. Salt comes from the Latin sal and has seeped into the English language in more ways than one. To be “salty” is to be irritated or bitter; salacious, its more formal cousin, has come to mean lustful or spicy. The everyday salad traces back to herba salata, literally salted greens, while sauce comes from salsus, meaning salted. Even sausage and salami owe their origins to the practice of preserving meat with salt. What began as a basic mineral ended up quietly seasoning language itself.

Book of the Week: Avenger
To honour Dhar’s magnum opus, let’s revisit the master of detailing Frederick Forsyth and my favourite book written by the master spy thriller writer: Avenger. The book tells the tale of a former Tunnel Rat – a Vietnam vet with a special set of skills – who becomes a bounty hunter. From Vietnam to Yugoslavia to an unnamed South American republic, it’s a masterpiece in storytelling with an attention for detail that is unmatched. As the kids call it today: it’s peak detailing.

Meme of the Week: Bacha hai tu mera
And finally our meme of the week is Jameel Jamali (played by the brilliant Rakesh Bedi) in Dhurandhar saying: Bachai Tu Mera. The meme is already all over social media – we will not give you a spoiler of when it’s used – and was used by Delhi Police to excellent effect: “Bacha hai tu mera, helmet pehen le.”

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