Lootera: An Exquisite Love Story

It is of Benarsi sarees and fedoras, of Murphy radio sets, gramophones and vintage Chevorlet cars, of quiet restrained love, soft emotions and warm sepia shades, of an India in its early years as a free nation. Should you ask me how ‘Lootera’ is different from other love stories in Hindi cinema; I would perhaps tell you that it isn’t. In fine gossamer silk packaging lies an almost ordinary tale.

What does set it apart though is its depiction. Unlike other modern day romances, there is nothing garish or over expressive about Pakhi and Varun’s story. They don’t belong to larger than life, picture perfect families and are not excessively airbrushed. She is an overindulged only-child of a wealthy zamindar while he is a brooding albeit handsome (in a dark ‘Heathcliff’ kind of way) conman. They play their parts as star crossed lovers with oodles of grace and dignity despite the various shades of grey that colour their persona.

Shama, the housemaid and Dev, the best friend contribute their fair share to the story’s realism. There are other characters as well – the indulgent father, the cautious munim, the clever cop and the gang leader of the con-men – who form a cocoon within which love blossoms.

Amidst fishing expeditions and Ramleela enactments in a culturally rich Calcutta and poignant exchanges in a snow clad Dalhousie, one literally feels the peaks and troughs of Pakhi and Varun’s love for each other. With just a play of expressions on their faces and unsaid words reflecting in their eyes, the two protagonists tug at your heartstrings. You want them to find happiness. You wish you could do something to help ease their pain. It is almost as if they are your own.

Intense scenes pregnant with strong emotions are interspersed with slivers of light hearted humour as if to strike a balance of sorts. For instance, when an anguished Varun irritably shoves his revolver in Shama’s hand and quips – ‘rakh lijiye, masala kootne ke kaam aayegi’ or when an iffy Dev tries to explain to a handful of bewildered workers why they are being asked to dig at an excavation site – ‘kyun khodna hai….kyunki zameen hai’.

Laced with old melodies like ’Taqdeer se bigadi hui taqdeer bana le’ and a haunting soundtrack, the movie takes on a bewitching quality. Even though you know that the climax is picked up from O’Henry’s short story- ‘The Last Leaf’, you don’t mind because it blends in so beautifully. And before you know it the two hour twenty minute movie rolls by leaving you in a misty-eyed trance.

With movies like these, it is evident that Indian cinema is capable of churning out tasteful work which pleases the soul. It is no longer a prisoner of stereotypes and has broken the shackles of regression to move ahead towards creative liberation.

Why your money is safer under your mattress than in a Citibank Account

My name is Preeti Sharma. I am just another average 29 year old. I love food, shopping, books, hanging out with my friends and all the other things people my age are fond of. I dream of a comfortable future and I work hard towards securing one. Recently I became a victim of a fraud which took away a part of my faith in humanity and replaced it with hard cynicism. I paid a heavy price for living in this modern age of eBanking. An Internet banking fraud left me devoid of all the savings I had accumulated over the past 6 years (INR 10,49,301.85). The unfortunate incident happened on the 27th of Aug 2013 in the form of 14 fraudulent online transactions within 24 minutes. Luckily I am a compulsive ‘email checker’ and so I caught the 14 auto emails that I had received from Citibank (informing me about the transactions), fairly quickly (within an hour and a half) and immediately reported the issue by calling the Emergency Hotline. However, much to my horror, all my money had been drained out by then.

The bank (Citibank) registered my complaint and an Investigation team was supposedly put on the job to look into the matter. The following day I was told by the bank that they needed me to lodge an FIR at a local police station so that the investigation could be carried out. I was in the US when all this took place and was quite baffled with the bank’s repeated insistence on me personally filing an FIR. They refused to acknowledge the fact that I wasn’t in the country and could not make an emergency trip back because of unavoidable circumstances at work. At this a Citi official had the audacity of suggesting that I lodge a complaint at a precinct in the US. Somehow I got my aunt to file a complaint on my behalf at a police station in Bangalore (although not without a lot of running around). In the meantime, a signed letter to the Bank Manager of Citibank, Bangalore (where my account was maintained)had initiated a flurry of responses from Citibank. I think this sudden interest was also a result of the fact that I had taken my banker aunt and uncle’s advice and forwarded this letter to the Banking Ombudsman and other senior officials in Citibank (CEO-Citibank, Head Customer Care-Citibank etc.). The disputed amount was provisionally credited to my account but since it was frozen, I couldn’t use a penny of it.

Citibank’s Executive Response team based in Mumbai was given the responsibility to keep me informed about the proceedings by speaking to me regularly. At first, these people seemed pretty confident that within a week or so my case will be resolved even though they said that typically an investigation takes 45-50 days. But as days went by with no conclusion in sight, it was evident that the bank was just as stumped as I was about the root cause of such a massive fraud. Over the next 35 days, the frequency of status update calls from the Executive Response team went down to once a week. Each time they spoke to me, I was given the same standard update: a) the merchant has not billed the bank for the disputed amount as yet b) the investigation will take 45-50 days c) if the merchant does not bill the bank within this period, we do not know if the transactions will become null and void d) we cannot give you a fixed answer right now. What infuriated me the most was when these people made oblique comments about how this whole fiasco was in some way my fault. ‘Well, you must have shared your debit card details with someone’, ‘You might have given your debit card to someone’ or ‘Someone must have flicked your card’ – statements like these drove me up the wall. I am an educated individual with a fair amount of experience under my belt and I understand the concept of information security. I most certainly do not go about distributing confidential information about my bank account. As for my card getting flicked , since the said card is of no use to me in the US, it has never left my wallet. And, most sane people will agree with me when I say that if I had lost my wallet, I would have known almost instantly.

Another unbelievable fact that emerged was (the Investigating Officer who was responsible for my case brought this up) that these fraudulent transactions were all unsecured transactions which meant that my Ipin/OTP weren’t used to make these transactions. When I questioned the bank about why such unsecured transactions were allowed in the first place, I got no clear answer except for some vague references to international banking associations which allow unsecure transactions internationally. Which means someone who by some means got their hands on your debit card number, CVV and expiry date – which are all clearly stamped on the card itself – is equipped with enough information to empty out your account. So, the next time you hand over your debit card to the server at that restaurant you frequent, or when you are in a queue at that favourite mall of yours and the person behind you who, guess what, has two eyes and can see your card details when you are swiping your card, or for that matter each time you think your money is safe in your bank account because you have your IPin memorized and not carelessly scrawled somewhere, think twice. That server, that man standing behind you in the queue and for all you know even that devil-minded Citibank employee who has access to your information, can go wild on international websites and bill all the resulting expenses to you. Though it is hard to believe, Citibank WILL allow any Tom, Dick and Harry to bleed you dry and walk away into the horizon with every last new penny of your hard-earned money.

My awful experience prodded me to do a bit of research. What I stumbled upon was enough to blow my mind away. Did you know that US, UK and other developed countries have long established the ‘zero consumer liability clause’ in order to protect customers from the inevitability of Internet banking frauds. This has kept banks in these countries on their toes when it comes to investing in state of the art security measures and keeping them up to date. Each time a customer disputes a transaction, the bank has to reimburse the money immediately and if the stolen money is not traced back and retrieved, the insurance company insuring the bank takes care of the claim and in turn raises the premium charged. On the other hand, even though India, in its hurry to ape the developed countries, introduced Internet banking and all its fancy advantages, it failed to bring along the entire package which included ‘consumer protection’. For some strange reason, India felt it unnecessary to protect the nickel and dime consumers and thought it more prudent to safeguard the big-fat-richie-rich banks instead. It makes me sick to the gut when I think about all those unfortunate people who have fallen prey to similar fraud and have nothing else to fall back on. With no financial resources left, most victims of such fraud give up without a fight and the bank gets away without an iota of regret. I, on the other hand am not going to give up. At least not till I expose all the muck that banks like Citibank in India try to hide under layers of swanky advertising and elaborate but false promises of high customer focus.