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Hormonal hysteria strikes down ‘Brahman Naman’
Film: “Brahman Naman” (Netflix’s first Indian film); Director: Qaushik Mukherjee; Cast: Shashank Arora, Sid Mallya and Tanmay Dhanania; Rating: None
Warning: Some comments ahead may only be suitable for horny adolescents who have just discovered ‘pleasure’.
This film about a Bengaluru-based Brahmin boy’s discovery of sex is from the director who gave us the highly controversial “Gandu”.
If discomfort is the mainstay of a certain genre of cinema, then carry on. Do see “Brahman Naman” — about an inescapably over-sexed man-boy all tied up in his Brahmanical sacred thread, and his three equally libido-challenged friends.
In all portraits of orgasmic desperation, they are shown spending their time leering, ogling, salivating and humping imaginary sexual objects. And if there is nothing around to hump, they just mock-hump each other on the street.
Didn’t I mention? This is conservative Bangalore in the 1980s. So while Naman (Shashank Arora from the very intensely authentic “Titli”) finds ways to manifest his sexual desires in the weirdest of places, the elders frown, curse, rant and tear their meagre hair in frustration.
In-between bouts of auto-eroticism, there is a plot about a quiz team from Bangalore travelling to Kolkata and meeting some fiercely feisty girls on the train who smoke and use the ‘f’ word with a casualness that defiantly defines the director’s 1980s’ values.
This is the coming-of-age drama that, apparently, we’ve all been holding our breaths and loins for, though we didn’t know we were waiting for it. That unabashed celebration of post-pubescent sexuality which is not afraid of the censor board. Released on the internet, “Brahman Naman” derives a strange patently perverse pleasure in recording the energetic innovative erotic overtures of its protagonists.
In “Brahman Naman”, perversion is a password to glory at film festivals. Shashank Arora, who played the Delhi boy in desperate need of escape from his family’s crimes in “Titli”, is here constricted by camera movements that insist on capturing his face as cartoonish contortions. The point being, I suspect, the sharply wonky world of teen arousal as seen through the eyes of a sexual contortionist.
In “Brahman Naman”, the director who is known for his emphatic iconoclasm, grabs his teenager hero by his horns and plunges us so deep into his sexual perversions that the line dividing our sensibilities from those of the protagonists are ridiculed, quickly disregarded, dissolved and dispelled. While the women are being brazenly objectified by Naman and his pals, we are treated to camera angles that would pose a serious threat to the lascivious frames of regional porn films.
Argue as we might that this is the avant garde director’s stab at neo-voyeurism, designed to take us into the post-adolescent male gaze without the restrictions that mainstream filmmakers impose on their depictions of sexual awakening, the fact remains that much of “Brahman Naman” is too puerile and callow to be taken seriously.
This quirky-going-into-corny-going-into-horny film sets out to be Federico Fellini’s “Amarcord”, but ends up “American Pie” without the pie.
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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