10th September 2003

Nandi Awards come as irregularly and inconsistently as monsoons in India. When it rains it pours, when awards are announced they invite a lot of uproar. This reminds me of a few words from a song of Chiru's latest movie Tagore - Vanochhenante Varadosthadi. It hardly rains but when it does, it floods. Nandi Awards are rarely announced as per a disciplined dictum and when they are announced they rarely live up to their de facto standard. Our honorable Chief Minister has tried clocking many things right in our state. Wonder how he has overlooked his one thing. Nandi Awards were once synonymous with Ugadi festival. Welcoming the new year with sanguine hopes & great expectations and bidding farewell to the old year by recognizing & honoring the best talent in the entertainment industry for their efforts was a ritual celebrated with delight. Today, Udagi comes and goes but Nandi seems to be at the mercy of the government and the jury members waiting to reunite with Ugadi.

The announcement of the winners of the Nandi awards this year saw me reacting with a plethora of feelings - some I enjoyed, some I put up with, some I liked, some I loathed and some I did not know I could come up with, just the way the jury came up with the winners for some awards.

It's natural for us to be happy when our favorite person (on and behind the screen) wins an award. But the sense of appreciation that builds in us when a deserving person is honored with an award surpasses the aforementioned happiness, especially when the award is given not just for the sake of bestowing him/her with one to make up for the lack of recognizing his/her efforts in one of the past years. We not only put our hands together to applaud the 'deserving' winner but we also put our faith and respect, automatically, in the committee and the Awards System.

There have been many instances in the past (and this year too) where people have been honored with awards not for their best and richly deserving work but for some of their normal, passable fares. Such a thing in the past has not only surprised many of us but also the winners, who have expressed astonishment (and not just contentment) on winning the award. I know it's not fair to compare the results from one year with those announced in a different year, for the judges that comprise the juries are different and might possess diametrically opposite views and decision making abilities.

In one instance in the past, the top honors for best performance in a heroine role, was decided on the dubbing factor. Heroine who dubbed for the role herself won the award and the other nominee who stood at the same altar had to satisfy herself with an announcement made by the jury appreciating her acting skills. There were instances when the jury decided that there weren't any films worthy of the second and third best film awards. But no announcements were made to back up their decision. Not that their announcements would offer any satisfying explanations of their decisions but they would at least help people try to fathom the jury's standpoint as to why one was better than the other and how some awards had to lie low without a winner.

Judging the work of one person with that of others is quite an ordeal. For example, lets take the award for best lyrics. Writing lyrics for songs in movies depends not only on the context but also in trying to meet with the challenge of the lack of a proper situation. Each movie album these days has a hero solo/introduction song which has lyrics that have so much food for thought that if nurtured well one need not crave for any nourishment. There are many songs in just one album that are plain love duets, which neither take the movie forward nor are the *only* sources for either of the characters to express their love to their loved ones. They are there just for providing some relief to the viewers and probably in showing us some new locales or at times making us identify the posts and pillars we have seen in those locales again and again. At the same time there are sometimes few songs which have a heavy situation backing where the lyricist can actually display his workmanship. And there is also a titillating song (folk, mass, crass, whichever category you might want to put this under) which tries to talk about many things but ends up stammering and stuttering.

So, from among so many categories how can the jury adjudge one work as the best? And if they do judge a person as the best, inevitably as they do every year, it sure helps the other contenders understand why they could not make it to the top or/and how the winner was chosen, provided the jury is kind enough not only to announce the names of the winners of each award but also to reveal their reasoning for choosing those winners.

Daarinapoye Daanayya, might laugh at me wondering - does this person even know what lobbying is? But let's attribute some credibility to the awards, pal. Or rather let's re-think of giving some respect to these awards. Just like a hope that Nandi will decorate the Ugadi festival again, I harbor a small hope that Nandi awards, in the years to come, will live up to their pre-set standards and earn respects from all quarters.

-Sreya Sunil

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