Sunday, May 04, 2014

2 States : Not Irrelevant - This is My Story Too


I have not read Chetan Bhagat's book, although I have seen the book multiple times in friends' places, in the last three years. This reflection is written solely on the basis of the film of the same name.

Few days ago, I was reading a review of the film in Screen magazine. The reviewer rated the film average, and lamented stereotypes in Ananya's parents' roles, and the overall make up of the Tambram mind and the Chennai society (whatever little of that is shown.) 

The reviewer has also wondered how such a cliché topic could be so popular among today's generation. However, it is. One cannot deny the fact.

I saw the reason fairly well while watching the film myself.

Intercultural (read interracial) marriage in India is common in metro cities, in the 21st Century. But, it is not yet so common as a marriage between two white Americans from two different States. In small town and rural India, it is fairly uncommon at the best. At the worst, it can get really violent.

The other day, I was reading Rabindranath Tagore's articles on marriage and society. Throughout his sixty-five year long writing career, Tagore changed his stance many times. That is not really surprising, considering the fact that Indian, and specifically upper and middle class Bengali, values went for toss in many areas in this time.

However, even in his last days, Tagore could not see marriage as individual aspiration. For him, it was always connected to the building of society. Tagore was a keen social observer and participant. So, his opinion may go as a good echo of the social mores of his time. 

In most of India, the picture has not changed much in the last seventy years.

But, I digress. Let's come back to the issues the film raised.

I can relate to the film as I have been insider to both the cultures for years. As someone who have extensively stayed, studied and worked in all the four metros of India, shunning his birth-community, learning new languages, assimilating new cultures and adapting to new food, I can see the connection. The new gen finally dreams of being Indian. We become global citizens at heart.

But... And this is a big BUT. The older generations with their values and traditions are still here. We are a product of them as well as of the new time. 

When I went to study in Chennai, my decision was to assimilate. I had learnt enough of Bengali culture. I never wanted to come back. I wanted to discover something new, to learn something different at each and every turn. That influenced my decision to go to Chennai.

And I was lucky that I went.

I was unlucky that I could not totally succeed in my plans to assimilate.

After the initial charm was over, I wanted to become an insider. I was taught Tamil language in the university. But, the teaching was pathetic. Even after learning Tamil for three years, I forgot almost everything in the next seven years, except a few keywords and the script.

I always wanted to learn the language more properly. Naturally, I took this as an opportunity to master Tamil while staying in Chennai. But, that was not to happen.

I asked everyone I knew there - teachers and students form my filmschool, shopkeepers, friends, other expats. Nobody had any clue where I could learn Tamil. Some of them bluntly told me that non-Tamilians could not learn the language in Chennai. They told me that there was no facility in Chennai for this.

I used to go to the British Council Library, at Mount Road, every Saturday. The Central Library of Chennai was in the same building. I wanted to be member there too.

When I went there for enquiry, two senior members were standing there. As the librarian was telling me about the facilities, that the library had mostly Tamil books, these two senior members were eavesdropping.

Finally, one of them asked me from where I was. I definitely did not look Tamil. I guess I could pass as South Indian until I opened mouth. But, here I was talking in English. My Tamil was worse than a horrible creole.

I told them. Their reaction was on the verge of violence. "Doesn't Calcutta have libraries? Why have you come to Chennai looking for books?"

This might be counted as a stray racist remark. But, this was not the only time I faced such a reaction.

I had never mingled with other ethnicities in Calcutta before. It never occured naturally. And I was not very curious to find out, although I had been studying Comparative Literature.

Everywhere, I found the reason to be the same. Ignorance of the others' histories, the others' cultures. Ignorance leading to intolerance and cloisterism. 

In Bathinda, I asked a writer friend, why the small towns in Punjab were a little cold, if not openly hostile, to outsiders. I rarely met anyone in Bathinda who was not Punjabi. Same with Barnala, or Patiala, or Jalandhar. Most of the roadsigns were written in Gurmukhi. Good for me. I could learn something new.

Whereas I could pass as Tamil, I could not pass as Punjabi in appearance. I needed not open mouth. The moment anyone saw me there, s/he knew that I was an outsider. I got the same cold reception that I used to get in Chennai.

My friend, the writer, told me these border towns were always invaded and pillaged by the outsiders. That made the citizens take up arms and build an insulated community of warriors.

Possible. But, I see the same insulation among Tamils, Marathis, Assamese and even Bengalis. (Interestingly, not so much among Goans and Konkoni Brahmins)

As a reaction to my Chennai experience, I got really interested in the other cultures of Bengal. And, for the first time, I saw the necessity of a pan-Indian language. Coming from a family that was anti-Hindi in my childhood, this was a revelation.

I just wonder how it would be for the Tamil people. We still have a lot of similarities between Bengali and Hindi (or between Bengali and Punjabi, or Bengali and Gujarati). We do not have to learn Hindi as a completely new language. But, Tamil has no such similarity. The language comes from a radically different roots.

Culturally, I belong somewhere in between Punjab and Tamilnadu. Punjabis rarely eat rice, Tamils rarely eat roti. We eat both (although out rotis are much thinner, like their phoolka.) The idea of sambar starts from rural Odisha, while the Punjabi dal makhani tastes totally different. Bengali dal shares a lot with both.

Our dhoti nicely fits the Maharashtrian tradition, and our Kurta-Pajama that of Punjab. Our music shows influences fromn Lucknow and Punjab, while the Carnatic refrains are not entirely invisible.

Not only in Bengal, or Calcutta. Everyone is a mishmash of many different global traditions and cultures today. But, there are still some problems.

People are still  keen to retain their cultural identities. That means everyone, in a crosscultural marriage, has to take up two identities. That inevitably leads to some conflicts. 

And the confusion goes higher in the next generation. If a Tamil girl and a Punjabi guy marry and settle down in Manipur, which toungue would their children speak? Which food would they eat? Which music would they play? Which dance would they take up?

I can say, Manipuri. That looks like the most natural choice. Would everyone agree?

I can connect fairly well to 2 States. For the last 10 years, I am trying to be an Indian. Not a Bengali, or Tamil, or Marathi, or Punjabi. But, an Indian.

I know many other people who are trying the same.

Even after sixty-four years of the formation of the Republic, it is still not easy to be an Indian.




Sunday, October 27, 2013

MetaCritic : The Fifth Estate

     
                                     Image Courtesy: Hindu, Oct 26, 2013


This blogpost is not really to attack anyone; not any person definitely. This is probably to attack a trend in film review, especially reviews in Indian media.

A review of the just released Fifth Estate calls for some introspection. For a long time, past Cahier du Cinema, almost no popular newspaper or magazine indulged in such reviews.

Review, as I see it descriptively, has become a personal liking of the film and a musing over that taste. Inevitably that includes the plot structure, a one liner and the USP of the film.

But is that all about Cinema?

The Fifth Estate may not be a great film. It may not even be a mediocre one. But, that should not be the reason to start the review as the CNN-IBN film journalist has started; The film doesn't tell us anything we don't already know.

Why should a film necessarily tell us anything that we do not know? Is it like an investigative journalism?

Mumbai Film Festival has just ended. After watching 3X3D, a student asked me, "What is the moral of the story?"

I do not see any need to answer this. Why should there be a moral of the story? What makes one think that only one kind of cinema is possible? 

This is a gradually prevailing notion among the student filmmakers of the country - that film should have a social message.

Making cinema a vehicle for social messages can be one approach. But, why must that be all about cinema?

That would be the same as saying all music should be hard rock. 

However, when a trend becomes too monolithic, it says something about the society.

In a monolithic society, there is no choice. The idea of choice itself is mostly absent.

That happens when there is rarely any space for breathing.

Especially, in a city like Mumbai, where people cram themselves with others in a small room for decades, and see that as a very normal existence, choices cannot exist.

I cannot be normative, saying that such a thing is not good for the society. 

But, I can certainly say that Cinema is not monolithic. It is pollysemous, multilevel and multilayered, just as any other spontaneous or consciously crafted form of expression.

There would be revolutions when watching and talking about Cinema become too predictable.

This is the time for that revolution!


Sunday, February 20, 2005

SCUM : Reality of British Life

I just went through the sort of horrible pleasure one gets from watching a movie like "Scum" for the first time. Set in a typical borstal in sometime around 70's this sophisticatedly (in terms of art) made crude reality-spark deserves much much more than this brief piece of blog. Apparently the daily dregs of a rehab centre seen from the POV of Carlin, a juvenile delinquent, this film is about government, state, justice and humanity. The very essence of legality, trust and justice comes to a questionable halt when we see the Law itself permiting lawlessness in the name of 'might is right'. Surely this is a part of our day-in -and-day-out existence; occuring over and again in Vietnam, Korea, Russia, Gulf and Iraq; let alone the numberless official and unofficial prisons worldwide ---- the biggest being the USA itself. Shot entirely with mostly unknown cast members like Ray Winstone, Mick Ford, Phil Daniels and Martin Philip this film was inspired by the banned but widely acclaimed TV film of the same name. However, in this film the sate is not directly challenged, and in this regard this movie should be appreciated before viewing real anti-state movies like "A Clockwork Orange".

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Elephant Man


The other day I saw David Lynch's "The elephant Man" for the first time I got more .... much more than I expected from the short reviews posted to and fro on the net that connect us. Photographed in greyscale, with a highly symbolic light and grain scheme; and ... above all .... with John Hurt's (John Merric) and Anthony hopkins' (Sir Frederick Treeves) role-plays this film takes us easily and absorbingly into the realm of the interior (the sensitive mind) and a reactive exterior (the centre of the world), the Victorian London. Before our eyes gradually unfolds a beautiful mind covered in repulsive deformities; and an aberration of nature truly becomes an angel. This film may carry a christian message to some viewers; but it is quite possible to get at it from a totally existential point of view. The birth was not in his hands, but it was Merric himself who revealed his core (remember he journeyed through the continent to London alone, when he fled from Bytes), our Doctor merely assisted him by love. However, to me this film carries the message of racism and class over the other possible ways of seeing. In Victorian England the 'scientific' study of eugenics was first initiated by Darwin's false disciples like Galton and Spencer. And that validated the 'society's mockery and torture of 'sub-human' races and classes of man. Lynch, in the film, started his journey from that societal structure. The end, however, is like a fairy-tale ending. But isn't it only right to dream in your mind's eye when all other ways are barred? I get an inspiration to live whenever I watch or merely think of this film ---- the true story of how a banal 'elephantine' existence was overridden by a mind that 'loved'.