She wanted money for a shroud for her dead husband. I glanced across the road. Indeed, somebody lay on the pavement. I didn’t know if he was dead, but I didn’t know if he wasn’t dead. So I gave her some money. She moved on. I wondered how much a shroud costs. Then the traffic lights changed.

A few days later, she was back. Her husband lay dead, she said. I glanced left (yes, a man lay motionless on the pavement), and smiled at her. “I know. I helped pay for his shroud, remember?”

A month later, she came up again. This time, I burst out laughing. I didn’t need to say anything. She hurried away.

Then I stopped seeing her. Maybe the scam ran dry at this traffic signal. Or maybe somebody complained to the cops. Maybe they put her in the beggar’s home.

Then I began to think of an elderly couple who had accosted me in Delhi, about five years ago. They were dressed like Rajasthani farmers and said they were looking for their son. He went to Delhi and disappeared. They didn’t have enough money for bus tickets to go home. My first thought was: “Scam.” My second thought was: “If this was a movie, you’d be the heartless metro-bred ‘extra’ who walks past the hero’s desperate mom.” 

I gave them the money. I never saw them again.

Last week, on a skywalk, I heard someone say: “Didi… vada-pav…” 

To my right, there was a young couple. A travel bag between them. Two toddlers asleep, bent over the bag. My first thought was: “They don’t look like beggars… farmer-migrants?”

I walked on, then looked over my shoulder. The couple was sitting down, as if it took all their courage and dignity to ask for food, as if they needed to recoup before asking again.There was a vada-pav stall nearby. I bought four and ran back. Another woman was also rushing back, bringing some food. None of us could meet each other’s eyes.

I never saw the family again. Perhaps they found somewhere to go. Relatives, jobs? Or perhaps they were hauled off by the cops.

I remember reading a news report a few months ago about how a ‘poorly dressed’ woman who was put in the beggar’s home. She had a skin disorder that was being treated inMumbai, and was on her way back to Nagpur. But she was hauled off by cops who thought she was a beggar.

Because, according to our laws, beggars can be put away. We cannot ensure a nation in which there are no beggars. So we lock them out of sight. We can’t force them to work. Many beggars are ill, or disabled, or addicted, or homeless. I doubt we can find them minimum-wage jobs or decent hospitals. And yes, they need protection — from thugs, from traffickers — but must we take their freedom?

The non-beggar lady who was sent to the beggar’s home in Chembur told the newspaper that she was kept in a room with 75 other ‘beggars’. She was asked to strip and bathed communally by having “a mug of water splashed on each of us”.

I think now of that elderly Rajasthani couple, the young family on the skywalk. Perhaps they were professional beggars. Perhaps they scammed me. Do they deserve to be locked up in a room with 75 people? Is this our idea of a dignified ‘Home’ for the desperately poor?

Read full piece here

And then she dozed off

A couple of months ago, I undertook an arduous but very interesting train journey. It happened like this: I was booked on a night train between Lucknow and Delhi, but the vicious winter fog had been playing its dirty tricks. My train was delayed by four hours, then six, and then seven. Trains were getting cancelled every hour and I was panicking since I was committed to an event in Delhi, the same evening.

So I bought a new ticket and boarded the trusty old Gomti, a daily up-down express that only offers seating (no sleeper coaches). The engine was huffing gently as a girl pulled me into her coach. She said I must throw myself at the mercy of the TTE. I must wave my ‘AC ticket’, sadly unused, in his face. I must beg for the Ladies quota. Only when all attempts to get a ‘pukka’ seat failed must I shift to the ‘general’ coach. Meanwhile, I could have a few minutes of peace in this near-empty coach.

The train left Lucknow station. No sign of the TTE. At Kanpur, more people got on. Still no TTE. Conversations swirled around me like the thick mists of a December dawn. Most of the passengers were young men and they were talking about a police sub-inspector examination, which they intended to appear for that day.

A couple told me I was sitting on their reserved seat, and I vacated at once. On and on the train rolled. I stood an hour, two hours. A large contingent of young men boarded the train. They were headed to the centre for this police exam, and judging from their conversation, they were ticket-less.

Firozabad, Aligarh. More students, more families. By now, the coach was so packed that it was impossible for people to get in or step out. One family managed to put the kids on board, but failed to board themselves. The (emergency) chain was pulled.

There was no longer any hope of the TTE coming by. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t enter the coach, much less go around checking tickets. If he tried, he risked a mini-riot. From childhood journeys in western UP and parts of Bihar, I knew that many young men do not quite believe in train reservations, especially during daylight hours. If they want to sit, they sit. Hang your reservations. 

If you complain, you are politely threatened. Students travelling in large groups might quickly turn into gangs. People get thrown off the train; people get killed for fighting over seats. Most of us accept that it is better to be uncomfortable than dead, or even endlessly frustrated. So we sigh and ‘adjust’.

But one Sikh family was fighting for their reserved seats on board the Gomti. They pleaded, bullied, shoved. The fierce matriarch somehow wrenched seats for her husband and young son. She herself loomed over the young men who'd captured her seat.

The men seemed amused. They told her they were sitting for the police exam, as if that was a valid excuse. They said it was the government’s fault for setting up a center so far from Lucknow, or Barabanki. They said they could not vacate the seat because that would mean that they would have to stand, and there was no longer any room for anyone to stand. So they would just have to remain seated.

When the matriarch continued to scold, the men finally said, “Aunty, come sit on our lap.”

At my feet squatted two men and three toddlers; two pregnant women had managed to find seats. I realised that I was the only passenger who — ticketed or not — had actually vacated a seat. Everyone else had remained firmly seated. If a reservation-wala came along, they just squirmed until six inches of free space was created. Then they said, “Come, sit.” If you couldn't sit, well, tough! Somebody else would.

The matriarch’s scolding voice was silent now. I turned to look and found that she had dozed off. She was finally seated. In the bony lap of an aspiring sub-inspector of police.

A slightly shorter version of this appeared here.

The image says it all

Two bits about censorship, words, and speech

"Words don’t die of cold
they die from a lack of courage
Words often perish
because of humid weather

I once met
a word
that was like a bright red bird
in the swamp along the riverbank in my village
I brought it home
but as soon as we reached the wooden door-frame
it gave me
a strangely terrified look
and breathed its last

After that I started fearing words
If I ran into them I beat a hasty retreat
if I saw a hairy word dressed in brilliant colours
advancing towards me
I often simply shut my eyes"

- Kedarnath Singh
[From the poem translated as 'Words'. Full text here]

"Like grown-ups who spell things out in front of kids, to protect them from reality 'because reality leads to moral degradation' the subtitles too, have a word censorship and substitute stars or euphemisms for some words. Most intriguing of these are: ovaries, uterus, period, rape. It's as if everything connected to the female body will destroy our innocence. Let's not grow up! Let's pretend there's no ovaries, or rape.
...
Words are all we have. We can twist them, and with that, twist reality, twist people's lives. We can draw a thick line over reality. That's called censorship, but we can also subtitle it, bulls**t. For those who cross that line with truth there is rape, torture, banning. For everyone else there's Mastercard."

- Paromita Vohra

Because the freedom struggle isn't quite over

I'm just copying (and endorsing) this from here. Read, share, protest. And remember, the freedom struggle is an ongoing one.


#flashreads for free speech/ Feb 14th:
THE IDEA: To celebrate free speech and to protest book bans, censorship in the arts and curbs on free expression

WHY FEBRUARY 14TH? For two reasons. In 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering the death of Salman Rushdie for writing the Satanic Verses. In GB Shaw’’s words: “Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.”
February 14th or Valentine’s Day has also become a flashpoint in India, a day when protests against “Western culture” by the Shiv Sena have become an annual feature. In Chandigarh, 51 Sena activists were arrested by the police after V-day protests turned violent in 2011. Our hope is to take back the day, and observe it as a day dedicated to the free flow of ideas, speech and expression.

#flashreads is a simple way of registering your protest against the rising intolerance that has spread across India in the last few decades. At any time on February 14th—we suggest 3 pm, but pick a time of your convenience—go out with a friend or a group of friends and do a quick reading. If you'd like some suggestions/ selected passages, email me or leave a message in the comments and we'll send you some selections from challenged books. Or pick your favourite passage on free speech, or passages from a challenged book or the works of any writer who has faced sedition charges, a book ban or other forms of censorship. 

Feel free to create your own protest.

Places where you might do public readings: subway and Metro stations, public parks, coffee shops, open areas in malls. If you’re talking about Flashreads on Twitter, please use the #flashreads hashtag.

If you have a blog, a tumblr or a website, an easy way to join in is to post Tagore’s poem, “Where the mind is without fear” (see below) on your site for a day, or choose any other passage on free speech/ censorship that appeals to you. Or write a post about free expression and what it's meant to you in your own life.

Where the mind is without fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high 
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments 
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way 
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee 
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

~Rabindranath Tagore

We are what we sing

The year is 2005. The rain has settled into a sweet Delhi drizzle. Between the bus conductor’s lusty cries of ‘Gurgaanva!’ the radio crackles with song. A group of college girls boards the bus, arranges itself in the row just ahead. The song changes to the still popular ‘Bheege honth tere’ (Your lips are wet). One of the girls begins to sing along, but there is one line she skips: Kabhi mere saath koi raat guzaar (Come spend a night with me).

In swoops a memory. I’m a schoolgirl in remote Rajasthan. It’s lunch break and the girls are soaking in the winter sunshine, singing 'Mr India' songs. The girl with the sweetest voice is singing the stunningly sensual 'Kaate nahin katate' but there’s one line she will not sing. All of us hang our heads, humming, afraid of being caught singing that line: ‘I love you.’

This is the sort of childhood memory I never share with Bombay and Delhi friends. They’ll never understand, but for us, it would have been too bold, which wasn’t a good thing to be. When I was a teenager, references to zulf (tresses) and ada (style) would make our eyes roll, but love songs were still about undying loyalty. We could not conceive of a popular song — or indeed a world — where boys and girls spent nights together.

Traditionally, Hindi film songs have had room for every shade of sentiment, including disillusionment. Like a sozzled protagonist singing something along the lines of ‘Rehne do, chhodo bhi, jaane do yaar’ (Let it be, my friend, I don’t want to fall in love). Today, he might sing ‘I hate love stories’ but he’s all up for one-night stands.

To an older generation, this spells the death of romance. Shikha Biswas Vohra, who runs Sangeet Smriti in Delhi (a group dedicated to keeping old film music alive through regular shows) and is the daughter of composer Anil Biswas, says that for her generation intimacy meant a single touch and fidelity was the norm. “When one broke the norm, bewafaai was the theme of the lyric. Nowadays the norm is ‘break up, move on’; short-term relationships. Modern technology too exults in shortcuts, which means love is not a ghazal, but an SMS. That is why you have very direct lyrics like ‘Aati kya Khandala’.”

Film writer Javed Siddiqi agrees that to the extent that films are a mirror to society, so are songs since they’ve traditionally been an intrinsic part of Hindi films. And it is only natural that words change. “Once, every other song mentioned sajan and balam. Not any longer.”

When I ask screenwriter and lyricist Jaideep Sahni about how the expression of love is changing, he seems unsure that it is being expressed at all. “A lot of songs have [love] words thrown around liberally but they are not really about love. They are meant to be good jingles with romantic phrases working like comfort food.” Sahni’s ‘Haule haule ho jayega pyar’ focuses on a specific mood: a fellow madly in love telling himself to go slow lest he screws things up. But barring a few exceptions, Sahni says that opportunities to tease out a full idea through a song are rare; songs are are marketing tools, not narrative devices.

Writer-filmmaker Paromita Vohra agrees. “Songs are now at a remove (of emotional logic). Which is why the music of films like 'Aisha' might be nice, but not memorable. The lip-synched song as a filmic moment is disappearing.”

Disappearing, but not quite vanished. Like children abandoned in the forest by hardnosed producers, lyricists leave a bread crumb trail, clues that tell us how to retrace our journey as a society. Hindi films dominate popular culture to the extent that even if, as Vohra says, the canvas is shrinking, it’s still big enough for a few corners to be painted such that they escape the censure of both market and moral police.

Thus, in a time of ‘break up, move on’, when lovers hope to remain friends, a song pops up to fit the situation. ‘Chor bazaari’ (from 'Love Aaj Kal') may well be the first Hindi song that exults in the relief of being free of someone you love. Or ‘Ladki kyon’, where the boy makes fun of the girl’s sentimentalism and hypocrisy, and the girl accuses him of hitting on her friends.

This is a sea change from the Girls versus Boys lyrical battles of the past, which were often designed as a tug-of-war between husn (beauty) and ishq (love). Now, girls are starting to call the boys out on the ishq fraud. ‘Gore-gore se chhore’ attacks commitment phobia with lyrics complaining: They cry out in the name of love, but they do not want to marry. 

These are songs for a more aggressive generation, one that has little appetite for niceties.

According to Vohra, ‘item’ numbers are quite revealing: “It is the one song in the film which is made to be listened to, so we really listen.” But they’re slightly problematic since these words rarely express female desire, although they’re mostly performed by women. “Most item numbers are about how the woman is so desirable, inviting men to look or touch.”

But there is a difference between saying "I’m drawn to you" and "I look hot, come take me". The current generation of ‘hot’ songs have words like ‘Zara zara touch me’ while ‘Sheila ki jawaani’ takes the here’s-my-sexy-body routine into unexplored terrain with words that seem to say: Why do I need someone? I can make love to myself.

Until the '70s, it was mostly men praising women’s beauty in song. Now item numbers suggest that women seek to overwhelm and cause destruction through their beauty. As Vohra points out, there is also a growing trend where women are blamed for ‘provoking’ men into violence. Not surprisingly, the words and the action they accompany can border on sexual harassment. I remember a scary visual from the '90s: a knife is pointed at a college girl, with the words ‘zara bhi choo-chaan ki jo tu ne...’ (not a squeak out of you) casually inserted into the ill-fated ‘Meri pant bhi sexy.’ There was some outraged spluttering, but only about using the word ‘sexy’, which was later replaced with ‘fancy.’

When I was growing up, there was much controversy surrounding film lyrics. ‘Choli ke peechhe’ made headlines. ‘Gutar-gutar’ ostensibly referred to cooing pigeons, but it ruffled so many feathers that lyricist Maya Govind was forced to defend herself on national television. ‘Sexy Sexy’ was changed to ‘Baby Baby’, while ‘Sarkaaye liyo khatiya’ remains a contender for the trophy at Raunch Central. Yet, these songs were not just experiments in titillation. ‘Sexy’ was fast becoming acceptable amongst young urban Indians; my older brother’s crowd even called vada-pao sexy.

This was the '90s and liberalisation was at India’s socialist throat. On MTV, multinationals battled for our teenaged souls during commercial breaks. ‘Western culture’ was everyone’s favourite bugbear. English and Hindi were on a collision course that would ensure neither was ever the same again.

Take ‘Saawan ka Maheena’ from 'Hulchul'. The title is a throwback to a subtle '60s song about the monsoon. But the new song leapt forward with: ‘We want girls beautiful-beautiful… / We want boys handsome-handsome, dashing He-man, Superman, Phantom.’ 

For a generation that grew up on comics, animation shows, and some Hollywood, Superman and Rocky were cultural reference points. In ‘Tan-tanatan-tantan-tara’, from 'Judwaa', the guy buys two tickets for the 9-12 show (seats at the back, so they can neck with a modicum of privacy) and when he asks the girl out, he promises a taxi ride, an air-conditioned theatre, samosas or idli-dosa. These were the new tropes of romance: movies, eating out, discos. A distressing change was evident: wooing a girl meant spending money.

In the '60s and '70s, at least on-screen, it was enough to compliment a girl and protest that you’d die without her. If she melted, you took her for a walk by the sea, or to a park, or the hills. Films often touched upon the conflict between love and money but there was little doubt about which would prevail. Songs like ‘Dilwale dulhaniya le jayenge’ spelt it out. As late as 1985, there was Anil Kapoor in 'Saaheb', trying to sell off a kidney for his family’s sake, and yet he sang: 'Yaar humein paisa nahin pyar chahiye' (we don’t want money; we want love).

But in the '90s, something shifted. In 'Chandni', Sridevi sings: You fool! You don’t bring any flowers or gifts / Never go empty-handed to meet your girlfriend. A few years later, ‘Sexy Sexy’ left little unsaid: ‘Me no worry, me no care, me go marry millionaire/ If he die, me no cry, me go marry another guy.’

The assumption was that you need to be a millionaire to get a sexy girl, and a sexy girl was inevitably westernised. This was the sort of girl for whom ‘Sheher ki ladki’ was written, a song that talks about English-speaking city girls who shake hands and say: 'Hi, how are you?' The assumption also is that an ordinary salaried guy isn’t going to get anywhere with this kind of girl. In ‘Sheila…’ the girl declares: ‘I know you want it but you're never gonna get it’ and then explains why: ‘I need a man who can give me all that’ (i.e. money, bungalow, car.)

We hear an occasional note of admonishment. The ‘Paisa’ song asks: Why do you keep talking money? Are you not afraid of God? But it does not take this criticism further. The guy simply promises to rain money upon the girl once she belongs to him.

This is a radical departure from older songs, which acknowledge the power of money but also describe it as a problem. 'Laawaris' made a direct argument, asking: Why are you proud of your money? What can money buy? Can it buy you the breeze, the sky, a human soul? ‘Paisa bolta hai’ from 'Kala Bazaar' says the world is one big black market, because there is rot in God’s house too; you need cash for worship.

But the '90s had given us a shiny new dream - Make pots of money, rule the world. A song from 'Yes Boss' speaks not only of wanting great wealth and power, but also wanting to be acknowledged as a good person; in fact, as the best person. In the new millennium, songs from 'Taxi No 9211', 'Johnny Gaddar' and 'Aa Dekhen Zara' said that money-lust is ubiquitous, but they offered little critique of the sentiment. 'Waah! Tera kya kehna' has a song that suggests money itself is both sin and virtue, and that money brings you love and friendship.

Another change over the last couple of decades is that there is little mention of work or jobs. In 1971, 'Haathi Mere Saathi' had crusty lyrics saying: If you want to live, you must work; you must bow low to everyone. There was also pride in honest labour. In 'Khoon Pasina' (1977) the hero sings: We will eat only what our sweat earns us, else we will go to bed hungry.

Sweat is now distinctly unfashionable and words like roti (bread) have almost disappeared from lyrics. The inequity we speak of now is that of Middle-Class Cool versus Richie Rich. The former pokes fun at the latter in songs like ‘Pappu can’t dance, saala’, making references to Gucci perfume, coloured contact lenses, fast cars. Being elite translates into expensive brands, but flaunting these brands exposes you to mockery by those who are secure enough in their own Indian skins.

This newfound confidence had found expression in the anthemic ‘Hum hain naye, andaaz kyon ho puraana’. The chest-thumping words represent the buoyant half of India, one that can afford to say: The world lies at our feet; the earth and sky have been created only for us.

But what of those who can lay claim to neither sky nor earth? What are they saying? Not a lot, it seems. Filmmakers can rarely afford that kind of enquiry into desperate poverty; hunger doesn’t make for pretty ring-tones.

However, a generation ago, even a romantic comedy like 'Pyar Kiya Jaa' could hint at class conflict. A slogan like ‘Daal-roti zindabad!’ was slid into a song that threatened: Don’t give us jobs and we’ll wipe you out / We’ll burn down this bungalow, these cars.

Now, worker unions are rarely powerful. Threats of a backlash seem as distant as battles over forest and farmland. We focus on urban middle-class problems – the pressure to build lucrative careers, EMIs, the price of pulses. That’s precisely what ‘Pocket mein Rocket’ describes - the feeling that there’s just no time for anything. Our greatest burden seems to be our own upward mobility. Like the ‘Gadbadi, hadbadi’ song says: Keep running and they keep dragging you further / Your wants are your handcuffs.

Middle class India is also stressed out over matters that really shouldn’t be so stressful. It was perhaps first hinted at in the mid-90s, as in the title song of Rangeela, where a child’s voice breaks in abruptly to complain of 'Tension! Tension! Tension!'. And this tension was about things like drinking milk and choosing between different brands.

The parent-child relationship has always been fraught. But older songs were defiant, not despairing. In the '80s, ‘Papa kehte hain’ voiced a youngster’s hopes for himself, not what daddy wanted. In the '00s, songs hint at feelings of worthlessness. The lyrics of ‘DK Bose’ suggest: Daddy said I’m a mistake.

In '3 Idiots', there’s the saddening ‘Give me another chance; I want to grow up once again’. The song says that all our lives, we have been dying, while making references to heavy schoolbags and 99 percent marks. The ‘Percentage’ song from 'Faltu' confesses: ‘It makes me lie, mere percentage / It makes me cry, mere percentage’ Consider the spate of exam-related student suicides and these songs tell a story of frustration and fear of the academic system. 

This is a far cry from the 1940s and 50s, where films like 'Barood' and 'Kangan' sang of education as something that adorns a child, makes him worthy. In 'Sant Gyaneshwar', a little girl sings: One-two-three-four, brother, get smart/ Everyone says you mustn’t stay illiterate. 

It is hard, though, to find a lyrical exhortation to study in the '70s, perhaps because the ranks of the literate unemployed were swelling, and going to school didn’t automatically translate into jobs.

By then, we were waking up to the fact that independence was only the first of our battles. Shikha Biswas Vohra says that the post-independence euphoria shattered quickly. In the '60s, poets like Sahir Ludhianvi, Kaifi Azmi and Jan Nisar Akhtar lashed out bitterly against poverty and inequality. Sahir took apart the beautiful fantasy embedded in Saare Jahan Se Achha with his own mocking version, saying: China and Arabia are ours, India is ours; We’re homeless, and the world is ours’. 

And yet, in another song from 'Phir Subah Hogi', Sahir allows us to hope against hope. He writes that though the earth itself has a price tag and human dignity is worth nothing, yet, another day shall dawn.

In the '70s, disillusionment had turned into anger and bitterness. Thus, the caustic ‘Apni to jaise taise’ which suggests that poor people will survive anyhow, but what’s going to happen to the elite?

However, in the '90s, it was like a chord had snapped. Films were often about non-resident Indians and sure enough, a spate of songs emerged, full of a vacuous nostalgia. Songs like ‘East or West, India is the best’, or meaningless phrases like: 'Saare jag mein nahin hai doosra Hindustan' (There is no other India in the whole world).

Since then, patriotic songs have sounded a bit iffy. There was the disarmingly honest ‘Phir bhi dil hai Hindustani’ which admitted: We might sell you old things in new packaging… we’re a bit honest but we’re also crooked. The title song of 'Chak De! India' was neither wholly complimentary nor entirely blind to social realities. But it exhorts us to stop putting up with the grind, to rise above our desperation.

And if you complain about the young urbanite’s disconnect with the ‘real’ India, there’s lyrical evidence of that as well. The bhangra beats of ‘Rang De Basanti’ hint at a general cluelessness. This nation-love song is romantic and, like the euphoric ones from the '50s, it uses the language of ishq, but seems blind to the fact that in this same country, young people are still murdered for falling in love!

If there is one thing film songs have rarely acknowledged, it is caste-related violence and the aggressive control over women’s sexuality. There have been hints. In the '90s, for instance, there was ‘Tere baap ke darr se’ (I’m running away with you because I’m scared of your daddy). Even peppy numbers like ‘Kisi disco mein jaayein’ go on to say: I love you with my whole heart but it is true, I’m scared of your brother.

Naturally, for such fathers and brothers, a grown-up daughter is a headache. A song about the difficulties of getting daughters married off in 'Dana Paani' (1989) put into words what millions of Indians are probably still thinking: Once your daughter grows up, you’ve had it. And if our sex ratio has been so unbalanced over the last two decades, why is anyone surprised?

Filmmakers rarely address the obsessive, often violent control of women’s sexuality. Although incidents of lovers or spouses killing women have appeared in the news regularly for a decade, it was only recently reflected in the deeply discomfiting title track of 'Love Sex aur Dhoka' with lyrics that say: I’ll put a bullet through you… Try stopping me, I’ll cut you down. The song also reflects a schizophrenic desire to flaunt a woman and yet control her sexuality, as it says: I’ll film you, exhibit you in public / those who look, I’ll gouge their eyes out.

It's not like there haven’t been any lyrical fight-backs over the years. A few songs have rejected overt attempts by lovers to control women. Songs like ‘Bindiya chamkegi’ before the '70s were gentler, saying: I love you but I’m not your slave. A song for more aggressive times, ‘Bad Girls’ (Chak De! India), says that a girl can give back harder than she gets. She’s not interested in jewellery or ghazals. She’s rough, she’s sweaty and she’s not going to feed you, braid her hair, or lower her eyes.

These are rare exceptions, though, and according to Jaideep Sahni, there can only be more such songs if there are more films made where women protagonists have ambitions independent of men.

But every once in a while, lyricists rise about the limitations imposed by their production houses. 'Love Sex aur Dhoka' is a film about cameras and what they’re doing to India, but ‘Tainu TV’ refers to big money, crime and deliberate controversy, serving as an obvious critique of current television content. Similarly, Piyush Mishra managed to pull off what can only be described as lyrical stunt with ‘Rana-ji.’ Ostensibly an item number in 'Gulaal', it touches upon 9/11, the US invasion of Iraq, the bottled-water culture, and the undermining of our democracy.

So there is hope. As long as our writers are talking about the currents shaping India, or twisting her out of shape, there is hope. And as long as we are listening, we will know how to sing songs of truth.


An interview with Jaideep Sahni

Q: I believe films and film songs always tell us about ourselves - where we are as a society/culture, and what our values look like. What do newer songs tell us?
A: First, like always, they reflect the changing popular language and expression. Traditional metaphors are reducing at a at a frightening pace in both how people speak in the urban areas and the films that cater to them, but the new urban expression in Indian languages has not yet grown and matured fully to present a credible alternative which has enough depth and a bandwidth of metaphors and shared history. So it’s a bit of work in progress right now.

Secondly, a lot of new lyrics show that most new films are about nothing. A song can rarely rise above the film it is a part of. Most songs are made to fit a producer’s ‘requirement.’ Due to technological changes and financing patterns, this is about selling lucrative ringtone rights to music companies or aggressively marketing the film on TV for an opening weekend. Most songs are carefully designed by producers and their buyers in music companies not to be about anything specific or important.

Q: Do contemporary songs address critical issues? I know you wrote 'teeja tera rang' which is a contender. But have other songs tried to confront discrimination on the basis of religion?
A: It happens now and then. The title track of Chak De! India was about a kind of patriotism which rejects our national past-time of praising ourselves. But a song embracing an issue obviously cannot fit an issueless enterprise.

Q: Why have Hindi songs never addressed Caste? Religion is at least acknowledged (in that old national integration style) but I cannot remember anything on caste.
A: That’s because most films are largely designed to give a rollicking grand time to urban multiplex viewers. Serious issues don’t exactly fit the bill, do they? When a film does (address caste), so will its songs.

Q: Despite the 'ring tone' approach, do writers still try to push in larger ideas into tiny spaces?
A: Yes, all the time. But you win some and lose some. Most wins happen when you write lyrics for your own scripts or for colleagues who share your sensibilities; most losses happen when you’ve misjudged the real intentions of the people who hired you. You try your best to make the songs say something, failing which you grit your teeth and get your contractual obligation over with as soon as possible.

Q: What about attitudes to women and their aspirations?
A: Well, they are a bit more ‘equal’ in tone, a nod to changing urban lives. It’s a kind of upgrade, a diet version of the traditional film heroine and what she sang. Lyricists have tried to get away from the diet lyrics representing women, but few manage to get past the filter.

[Interview ends]

And finally, a very short list of must-hear Bollywood songs (for the lyrics):
Pyaasa (1957), ‘Jinhe naaz hai hind pe who kahaan hain’ and ‘Ye duniya agar mil bhi jaaye to kya hai’

Phir Subah Hogi (1958), ‘Cheen-o-Arab hamaara’

Kagaz Ke Phool (1959), ‘Ek do teen, chaar aur paanch’

Barsaat Ki Raat (1960), ‘Na to caravan ki talash hai’

Dosti (1964) ‘Jaane wale zara mud ke dekho mujhe’

Laawaris (1981), ‘Apni to jaise taise’ and ‘Kahe paise pe itna guroor kare hai’

Saath Saath (1982), ‘Ye tera ghar, ye mera ghar’

Ijaazat (1987), ‘Mera kuch saaman tumhaare paas pada hai’

Satya (1998), ‘Goli maar bheje mein’

Jodi No. 1 (2001), ‘Ande ka fundaa’

Gulal (2009), ‘Aarambh hai prachand’ and ‘Rana-ji mhare gusse mein aaye’.


[A slightly edited version of this essay was published in the winter edition of Forbes Life, 2011]

Bleeping bleeps

In a collection of ghost stories, Washer of the Dead, Venita Coelho describes a place where women no longer speak. Mothers cooperate by silencing their daughters, but one woman breaks the rule. Of course, suffering ensues. And much of the suffering comes from people cooperating too much with the oppressive forces.

In stories, it is easy to tell the good guys from the bad. But in real life, most of us dither. We wonder why there’s such a fuss about Salman Rushdie. Well, the fuss isn’t about Rushdie, or Taslima Nasreen. The fuss is about societies that silence people through violence. We read about such societies in books and we shudder.

And yet, we do so little to protect our society from silence. The wretched assumption is that some people’s freedom is morally superior (such as the press) to others’ (such as writers). I missed most of the exciting events at the Jaipur literature festival this year but some writers had started a petition asking the state to reconsider the ban on Satanic Verses. I was helping get signatures when I was ambushed by some TV crews.

They wanted me to speak about “the issue”. I told them to read the petition. They didn’t want to. They just wanted another face to take up the Rushdie chant. I asked if they would sign the petition. They refused. I asked why they didn’t want to sign and they mumbled, “Well, we’re press people…”, which left me very annoyed. There’s a difference between being objective and being a mute spectator to injustice.

There are some basic rights that our constitution guarantees us and freedom of speech and expression is one. Press people are citizens first and in fact, they should be at the forefront of this particular battle. How can reporters expect that they can tell a true story unmolested, if a writer cannot write fiction unmolested?

Besides, the press is supposed to inform public opinion. But often, the only information being conveyed is that X group is offended by Y book, and Z is at risk. Why is there no emphasis on the fact that X group is breaking the law? Death threats are illegal; writing is not.

Look at what is happening to us. Actors are dragged to court for a peck on the cheek. Art is destroyed (without it being paid for). Activists are arrested for possessing leftist literature (including Bhagat Singh’s writings). Recently, Aseem Trivedi, a cartoonist (reportedly a Team Anna player), was accused of treason because he lampooned the state’s (alleged) attitude to corruption. When Arundhati Roy expressed her views on Kashmir, she was threatened and her house attacked. TV crews stood there, recording, but not really condemning.

Now take this thing about cows. When historian DN Jha wrote Holy Cow, publishers didn’t want it. They expected violence since Jha reminds us that cow sacrifice and beef-eating were common during the Vedic era. A decade ago, reports in newspapers mentioned calls for a ban, and suggested that the book was blasphemous. Almost nobody focused on the fact that Jha was facing death threats, and his tormentors deserved to be arrested.

A decade later, beef stands criminalised in states like Madhya Pradesh. When foreign TV shows like Friends are aired, the word ‘beef’ is removed. As if beef simply did not exist anywhere in the world. Which is a lie, of course. But in eliminating the word, cable networks are demonstrating to us how to cut off our tongues, offer them up at bloodthirsty altars of silence, and pretend that we have managed to live unmolested.

Read full piece here.

Class conflict on the Virar Fast

Over a year and they haven’t faded — two tiny scars on my right hand, caused by another woman’s hands. Both of us were trying to get into a local train and she was both impatient and aggressive.

Trains are the rather choked lifeline of Mumbai and commuter fights are routine. I don’t mean squabbling about who gets to sit down where. I’m talking about petty violence — an elbow in the ribs, a shove, a slap, plenty of speculation about the incestuous and bestial relationships in our families.

But what troubles me the most are the nightly first class-second class confrontations. Around 11pm, one of the three ‘Ladies Only’ coaches is de-reserved. Or, like the Mumbai ladies say, “It becomes gents”. Around 10.45pm, men start to pour in. Women commuters choose to get into the adjacent coach instead, which is ‘24-hour Ladies Only’. This is also a first class coach.

Now begins our nightly drama. Most women scrambling in don’t have first class tickets. Those who do have legit tickets are forced to stand, even at that late hour. They get cranky. They get resentful. They get ugly.

They assess each other’s clothes, bags, burqas, kids. They sniff, and say things like: “These women, they just get in, don’t they? How many do you think have a valid pass? But here they are! And we’re such idiots. Paying extra money to travel in comfort. But what for? We stand and they sit.”

They do sit, rather shamefacedly, afraid of being exposed. Some are so embarrassed that they stand near the door, faces averted. Some brazen it out. They say things like: “We have valid passes, okay? Who are you to ask us for tickets?” Or, “Well, the ladies became the gents so what do you expect? It is the railways’ fault.” Or, “We aren’t regular commuters. It was a family outing, and with the kids...you are also a woman. You should understand.” Or, “Shut up, b***ch.”

This can lead to either an all-out slanging match, or a shrug and a remark directed at another first-class passenger: “These second class people… No point talking to them. No manners.”

The scary thing is that everyone seems to have a class radar whereby they can identify first or second class passengers. In case someone gets it wrong, there is an outraged splutter. First class passengers offer proof, angry at being mistaken for ‘them’. Their eyes seem to be asking: “Why? Do I look like I’m second class?”

On the other hand, there’s the silent outrage of ‘second class’ passengers. I remember two incidents of loud ‘class’ confrontations clearly. One woman had shouted: “Be grateful for us. If we weren’t here, robbers would enter this precious coach and all you first class people would get mugged.” Another night, another woman had snapped: “Are the seats made of gold in this coach?”

They aren’t. The seats are cushioned though. For first class bums, I suppose.

And to think that all this unpleasantness can be avoided. The metro in Delhi doesn’t have first class coaches. So although there is overcrowding and discomfort, we are not constantly gauging each other’s ‘class’, nor humiliating each other.

I’m hoping the new metro lines in Mumbai won’t have class distinctions. And I hope the older trains will also be rid of first class coaches. It might mean more discomfort for a few of us. But if we are to move towards a better world, if we want to build ‘world-class’ cities, then we must try to minimise social resentment. And how can we avoid resentment when some bums have cushioned seats while many others don’t? 

Read full piece here

Incident

A tribal person set out from home to encash a cheque, after working hard to collect tendu leaves. He was ‘picked up’ allegedly by the Chhattisgarh police.

While he was in lock-up, the police said, he used a bedsheet (or perhaps a shawl, or blanket) to hang himself. Then the police were saying that he was caught by the CRPF and tortured nearly to death. The post mortem report has mentioned injury to the genitals. Some constables have been suspended.

Funny, isn’t it, the way these incidents play out? The police explanations… if they must make fictions, can they not come up with something more creative than ‘Hung himself’? Although it is sort of amazing — the speed at which some people grow weary of life whilst in custody. It makes the imagination boggle to think of the kind of misery a man must feel in order to injure his own genitals before hanging himself. And what sane woman would put foreign objects into her genitals before contriving to slip in the bathroom and hurting her head and spine?

On a serious note, what are these cops (or those armed forces guys) thinking when they put out such blatant lies? They must know that forensic and medical science will give them away. They must know that questions will be asked if someone dies whilst in custody. Or, do they not know any such thing?

... Perhaps they are thinking: this wasn’t part of the deal.

Read full piece here

Breasts bodies and the bilge about provocation

My colony has a fancy western-sounding name and, while constructing the illusion that we were buying into something exotic, the builder has installed statues vaguely modeled on Venus de Milo — nearly nude white female forms, arms missing.

Then one day, our statue was found dressed in a nightgown. But perhaps some poor person badly needed a nightgown, so the statue was bare again. Soon enough, somebody had dressed it up again, in a man’s shirt. I often wonder at the people who did that. I doubt they were worried about the dignity of our fake plaster-of-paris Venus. It hasn’t been molested (as far as I know). And I doubt they care about women looking at it. Maybe they were worried about the effect it would have on men who must also look at real, breathing women.

But surely, they don’t believe that every male that happens to be exposed to the female body is psychologically damaged, that he will turn into a rapist and killer?

Perhaps, they do. 

Some people believe that even when it is clothed, the female body can turn the male into a damaged, dangerous creature. The Andhra Pradesh police believe it causes sexual assault and blames ‘fashionable’ clothes. I suppose they refer to clothes that draw attention to women’s shapes, or exposed skin. A teacher who heads a committee to combat sexual harassment also believes that women are only safe in sarees with long-sleeved blouses.

I’ve often wondered why we don’t put these theories to the test. Does a human female body make the male want to attack it? Do clothes — any sort — prevent sexual attacks?

A good place to start would be a society where women don’t wear any clothes. From what I hear, such tribes still exist. From what I hear, sexual assault is virtually unknown there and when it occurs, the culprit is usually an outsider — men who don’t belong to clothing-less societies themselves. Such societies are not very different from us. They marry, bring up kids, worship. The only thing that’s missing is clothes. And, perhaps, the constant fear of assault or humiliation.

Another good place to test this theory is a society where men and women are totally covered up. Is sexual assault unknown? From what I hear, no. Women’s relationships and economic choices are severely curtailed. And yet, they confront accusations of soliciting male attention.

As for our society… but that brings us to the difficult question — which part of our society? Every year, schoolkids dress up in clothes from all over India as a sort of patriotic stage shows: Look, ma! So much diversity! 

Well, diversity means that we show our bodies in different ways. Our women wear sarees without blouses too. Or woolen shawls, backless cholis, dhotis, ghoonghats. Or jeans.

For the last few years, I’ve been part of a campaign against ‘eve-teasing’ or street sexual harassment. One of the projects we run is an exhibit of clothes donated by women who were harassed or molested. The diversity of the collection speaks for itself — sarees, salwars, men’s shirts, sleeveless tops, long skirts, school uniforms, jeans. I personally donated a saree with a sleeved blouse.

Perhaps, the police force (and all University teachers) should see the exhibition and maybe they will acknowledge the daftness of their attitude. Or perhaps, we should all just stop wearing clothes. I don’t know if it will help us become a rape-free society. But we might at least become a society in which we stop blaming the victim.

Read published piece here

Mouths, food, lip service

So, it is a new year, and I hope it is a good one. Many new things are happening. For one, there are so many new babies. At the time of writing this, our estimated population was 1,180,282,734 (according to the population calculating system at medindia.net). By the time I finished typing that sentence, it went up to 1,180,282,747.

It’s quite freaky actually. Try sitting still and staring at the numbers as they go up, up, up. Each minute adds 29 babies. The exercise is kind of hypnotic, and pointless of course. But imagine a new baby popping up in the room every other second. Here’s a baby! And here’s another! And one more…

And the question is: what are we going to do? They’re not numbers. They are all real, squalling babies. They want milk. Soon they’ll want roti and daal, rice and meat, eggs and fruit. We must think about how, and what, we’re going to feed them.

My grandma used to say that if God has given you a mouth, he will also give you food to eat. Which, I thought, was a bit rich, considering how many people die of hunger in this country. But even grandma, despite her faith, didn’t wait for God to fulfill his responsibilities. She actively fed as many mouths as she could and, sometimes, a few more than she could afford.

On a national scale, there are (at this moment) 1,180,283,395 mouths to feed. Some of us can afford to feed ourselves. But there are hundreds of millions — children, old people, sick people — who cannot take responsibility for feeding themselves over several years. And there are hundreds of millions of able-bodied adults who cannot find jobs, nor land on which to grow their own food.

So what are we going to do? Are we going to tell them: “Sorry, but we have no land to give you, not for food, not for housing. You were just born too late.”

Because currently, that seems to be our approach, as a nation. The government, as a representative of our larger collective responsibility, is required to interfere only in a crisis. Like, it might step in to save a malnourished infant, or distribute free food after a natural disaster.

Currently, we don’t ensure that every Indian has enough to eat. True, there are schemes. We have mid-day meals for small children in government-aided schools. We have the promise of 100 days of employment, in the villages at least. The state offers grain and sugar and kerosene at subsidised rates for the poor. (Now there are attempts to give cash instead, although the poor aren’t so happy with this arrangement. A hungry person needs a food guarantee, not a cash guarantee.)

However, we have not yet addressed the basic question: Do all Indians deserve to eat? Or do we believe that some of us deserve bottled water and broadband and truffles while some of us starve?
We must answer this question. Before we blame the government for crippling the economy through food subsidies; before we talk about how people may become lazy if they eat; before we discuss how farmers will be impacted, we must answer this question.

The National Food Security Bill has already been introduced in Parliament. Before it becomes law, we must answer this question. Because this Bill stops short of offering food security to all. There are problems with its categorisation of the poor. But it can be redrafted so that we move closer to the ideal: Food as a universal right. Because every citizen — all 1,180,285,856 of us — need to eat.

Read here

Year-end Grant

[A poem I wrote in 2009, at a New Years' party. Setting it free today. Ainwayee.]

I had heard of human love, thwarted
by the underworld: one backward glance
and all is lost! 

For the gods are cruel and quick
to snatch.

So I expected no generosity, stepping over shards
of sozzled gloom, I stalked the night for
sandpapered hopes: It's new year's and I've paid 

my dues.

On every floor, a bruising joy
brushes past like a metaphysical conceit

that no longer expects to be understood.

Glitter lines two streets - those eyes! - and hair hangs
heavy on balustrades.
Knees pump, sucked-in bellies, a yowl

of beseeching.
The air parts - warm cake 

with rent hearts
of strawberries.

I turn away, but
too late!

The gods have sidled up

and caught my hair, icy hands
on my neck, they whisper: Now! 
Make a wish. Quick!

The countdown begins: ten, nine...

We give you, here, someone to hold.

Eight, seven, six... Scream, hop about, 
kiss... Three, two...

I creep up the steps, tumbling
like plastic glasses of abandoned rum,
I try to hide in a loo where a woman weeps 

(except it is a man: beads, cleavage painted on);
A god follows me in, grim

under that sussurating yawn.

He pretends concern, says: Come!

This is not done. Make a wish.

We're happy this year. Really. 
And even for gods, good times don't last. 
Don't be this way, don't piss me off.
It's new year, come on, 
ask!

The gods are cruel and quick
to snatch, and I had heard
of human love, thwarted
by the underworld: one backward glance...

But when a god stood there, screaming: Ask! 

I lost my head; I felt cowed.

And that was how, this year too,

I went ahead and asked for you.

(C) Annie Zaidi

Not legitimate

I’ve been reading a novel from which I want to share a few lines: “… says it does not matter if you lie to …. They have no right to silence, even if they know speech will incriminate them; if they will not speak, then break their fingers, burn them with irons, hang them up by their wrists. It is legitimate, and indeed … goes further; it is blessed.”

Can you fill in the blanks? What and who are we talking about?

These lines are from Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, set in the sixteenth century. Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, is talking about ‘heretics’, people who have different ideas about what the Christian faith is all about. Such people were arrested, tortured, and — especially if they had no money or political influence — burnt in public. The public rarely protested.

I know. Not a cheery memory during the festive season. But I bring it up because it struck me that the writer could easily have been talking about modern India. Nationalism is our sworn faith, and the state can snatch up people who have different ideas about what loyalty to India means, or what development should be. And the public still doesn’t protest.

Consider the fact that the National Human Rights Commission has recorded 14,231 custodial deaths in India between 2001 and 2010. That’s about four people a day. Not just slapped around or hung up by their wrists. Dead.

Read the full piece here

Of potatoes and smashed glass

It doesn’t matter that much whether or not Walmart arrives. We already have Reliance and More and Big Bazaar. As a buyer of potatoes and multi-grain atta, it’s the same to me. I’m basically looking at a glass-fronted alternative to the subzi mandi.

Is this good for me? Probably not, given that fresh food is always better than food kept for days in cold storage.

Is it good for the environment? Probably not, given how much paper and plastic packaging is used by big corporations in their packaging of food.

Is this good for farmers? We only have to look carefully at districts where corporations are acquiring foods directly and figure out whether farmers’ lives have changed for the better, particularly small and marginal farmers. Besides, if elimination of middlemen is our chief concern, the best thing to do is to set up farmers markets in every suburb of every town, where farmers are free to come and camp every day, and bring us absolutely fresh, chemical-free food.

So what exactly does the big supermarket give the consumer that the local vendor cannot? Well, toilets for one. I’d much rather shop in a competitive, open-air market but a customer cannot be king in matters of retail if her/his bladder (and dignity) is at stake.

I was covering a protest rally in 2007, in Delhi, when a vegetable vendor called Dulaare Lal complained about how ‘companies’ — foreign or Indian — are treated with respect by the state. They have the benefits of electricity, water and endless space. In contrast, Dulaare Lal didn’t have a license to operate on the roadside.

Dulaare Lal paid Rs50 every day to be allowed to sit at Gol Market.

But he was allowed to sit only between 5pm and 8.30pm. Dulaare Lal had one little bulb hanging overhead. Dulaare Lal knew that customers — the ladies especially — need toilets. He and other vendors had been begging the municipality to build facilities, for they were forced to relieve themselves in the street nearby. But there was no toilet and no running water. When it rained, vegetables rotted because there was no shelter and the municipality wouldn’t permit vendors to have plastic roofing.

Read full piece here

And here's another interesting piece on FDI retail in India from the food inflation and is-it-better-for-farmers' perspective:

"If organised retail is the dampener for inflation then it follows that countries such as the UK, Brazil, Thailand and Malaysia among others where the penetration of organised retail is high should have had minimal or very low rates of inflation. In the US where retail stores account for 83 per cent of the market share, inflation has not been so easy to control. Data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for the first quarter of 2011 reported food price inflation in the UK at 5.5 per cent and rising to 6.3 per cent in the third quarter of 2011.

According to a September 13 bulletin put out by the UK Office for National Statistics, the most significant upward contributions to the commodity price index came from food items such as meat, bread and cereals where there was a 7.1 per cent rise and much higher for processed foods. In India meanwhile, inflation is showing a downward spiral with food inflation down to 6.6 per cent from a high of 20 per cent, and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee predicts that if the trend continues, “we may perhaps have the year-end inflation at 6 per cent-7 per cent.”

Modern retail chains invariably squeeze farmers’ margins and the cartelisation of purchases by the biggest chains has come under scrutiny in the EU and in the US. In the EU, retail chains have become “gatekeepers” controlling the only access that farmers have to consumers (see ‘Abuse of power by EU, US retailers’ p39). The trend in Asia is unlikely to be any different.

Spat upon

A friend’s friend got spat upon while he was riding a motorbike. The traffic light was red. A passenger riding in a bus in Mumbai just poked his head out of the window and spat. Our friend was mid-trajectory.

As the traffic moved ahead, our friend accelerated, stopped his bike right in front of the bus and forced it to stop. Then he climbed into the bus, located the spitter in his window seat, grabbed his collar, and spat back at him.

The weird thing is, in our country, if you want to prevent people from urinating or spitting on a wall, the only way to do it is by putting pictures of gods and goddesses or some other religious symbol. All that worship and stated respect for ‘Dharti Maa’ and here we go, spitting at her all the time.

I have often wished that there was some technology that would make spit bounce back at the faces of spitters. Some kind of anti-gravity film with which we could coat our streets and walls. Perhaps some clever inventor will make it some day.

In the meantime, we spit at our own great structures — the landmarks that define our existence. Residential buildings, court-houses, government offices, police stations, railway stations, even the inside of (air-conditioned) railway compartments — spit, often paan or gutka stained, is all over the body of our republic. And it is, quite literally, corroding our structures.Believe it or not, even solid structures like the iconic Howrah Bridge are in danger of collapsing.

Read full piece here

There’s a man. His name is Bhagwati Sahu. He was a ‘Janpad’ member, a kind of elected representative for the local population in Rawaan, where a cement factory had been set up. This was the Ambuja-Holcim plant, in Raipur district... The police say Bhagwati has criminal antecedents, and listed 18 cases where he is named as an offender. These turned out to be five cases listed over and over again, most of which are relevant to his activism work.

The Chhattisgarh High Court has refused him bail.

Remember Soni Sori? Yes, that school teacher who was arrested for being a Maoist. Yes, the one who didn’t trust the Chhattisgarh police, and ran all the way from the bloodied forests of her home to the national capital, seeking protection, saying she feared for her life. She was probably hoping that there would be some sanity, some semblance of justice in Delhi. If not in Delhi, then where? But the judiciary had handed her over to the Chhattisgarh police almost immediately. Remember how she had ‘slipped in the bathroom’ almost immediately after the Chhattisgarh police got their hands on her? Remember how she was in no condition to even walk into the courthouse in Raipur because of head and spinal injuries? Well, they did some scans in Kolkata and found ‘foreign objects’ insider her. This school-teacher had already complained that the cops were pushing pebbles into her private parts.

I suppose they call it interrogation. I suppose that’s how things are.


Read the full piece

Love me tender?

There is a question I have been wanting to ask for a long time now, particularly of my filmmaker friends: Can you name ten tender love scenes from Hindi films made in the last five years?

Can you? Because I can't. I can't even think of even five. Of course, people's interpretation and judgment might differ, but when I say tender love scenes, the emphasis is not on love scenes. The emphasis is on tenderness. Which involves a measure of gentleness. A certain degree of empathy, even respect.

I remember a time when there was no cable TV. The only films we saw were either black-n-white state-approved films from the 60s and 70s, or some colour flick that stumbled into our little township thanks to the traveling projectionist that wandered past once in every few weeks.

This was a time when there was no kissing on screen. At least not of the lippy kind. There were quaint sprints through gardens and nodding roses, occasionally boy and girl would disappear behind a bush. The rest was left to your imagination. If you were adult enough to guess, well, you guessed.

Then came cable TV. Our local cable-wallah showed Mr India when he had nothing else to show. This was supposed to be clean family entertainment. We all saw it at least half a dozen times. We had Sridevi's wiggling, writhing moves in the rain by heart. I was too young to make sense of the writhing but even I knew that this was seduction of a kind.

Was it tender? I don't know, but it least it was clearly pleasurable for the woman on screen.

Barring these rain-dance sequences, and some athletic, even aerobic kind of moves on grassy slopes, we saw no sexual loving in films. We did see plenty of rape. Or near-rape scenes. Filmmakers took their own sweet time over chases where some poor girl would be running for her life, clothes askew. Or her clothes were being ripped off, and she stood there paralysed by fear, eyes wide, begging for mercy.

When filmi boys wooed girls they tended towards stalking and harassment and when they were shown as wanting to get intimate, they did things like grabbing wrists, pulling a somewhat reluctant girl towards themselves, or trying to kiss her though she kept turning away.

Towards the late 90s, things had begun to change; we saw Hindi films with what we used to call 'French kissing'. Raja Hindustani was an eye-popping revelation for us girl students. We used to think only foreign peoples kissed like this.

Then came the new millennium. There were more and more and more films with love scenes. Impassioned scenes. Kissing scenes. Violent scenes. But where was the tenderness?

I have been watching newer films with a fair degree of concern because when a filmmaker does include a love scene in a Hindi film, it seems shadowed by something unpleasant or negative. Perhaps the story is about unfaithful partners, or about a character's obsessions or just youthful experimentation. Very rarely do we get to see lovers being really tender with each other.

Why does  this bother me so much? Because I do believe that films impact us profoundly. Our imaginations are shaped by what we see. Films are a social, collective experience - mostly approved by families - and now that they come to TV sets so quickly, they are usually a shared family experience. Soaps and reality shows are mostly a de-sexed business, despite the constant references to affairs and pregnancies. But toddlers are getting most of their learning from TV and even if they are shielded from darker, more adult cinema, they will soon be exposed to ideas of love and longing and togetherness via the screen, much before they experience it in their own life.

It has been years since I saw a balanced, equal, gentle kind of intimacy between lovers in Hindi films (there were glimpses of it in the recent Rockstar, which is another reason I liked it). I am worried because what do young boys learn as an appropriate first move? Or young girls? It seems as if stereotypes continue for the most part. Women are often being pushed into bed, or carried there, which kind of reinforces the idea that women are weaker, lighter, and need to be led somehow. And being grabbed by the hair or wrists is not a particularly respectful treatment.

Even in scenes where the woman is shown to be equally eager, the couple seems inflamed by uncontrollable passion so that beds might get broken and clothes get ripped off without pause for thought. And there is room in this world for passion, and then some to spare. But if anything can sustain a romantic relationship, it is our solid, remarkable capacity for gentle love. If a relationship is worth having, it must have some mutual respect and empathy too.

And yet, most films do not bother with this aspect of love, particularly in its physical aspect. Rarely does the camera or the filmmaker's eye pause and rest on gentle intimacy. Go over most major film releases over the last decade and see if even ten percent of Hindi films have imbued their vision of physical intimacy with tenderness.

It is almost as if they are embarrassed by real tenderness. And I wonder why that is. If we are unable to envision it, capture it, savour it, how do we communicate the power of such moments to others, especially to young people?And if we are unable to communicate the one thing that is worth communicating, then what exactly are we communicating instead?

This Blog is part of the Men Say No Blogathon, encouraging men to take up action against the violence faced by women. 

More entries to the Blogathon can be read at www.mustbol.in/blogathon. Join further conversation on facebook.com/delhiyouth & twitter.com/mustbol

What we get, we praise (sort of)

Thanks to Rockstar, I've been reminded of the one artistic element no artist can hope to control: the audience.

I was having a conversation with a friend who didn't like the film. At all. He said I must have been in a sappy mood to have liked it. I pointed out that I'm always in a sappy mood. He insisted the film was not about love in any real sense, that the lead character was irresponsible, that he slept with a married woman without trying to 'fight' her marriage in a proper way.

At that point, I refused to discuss the film. I thought he just didn't get it. One of my aunties certainly didn't get it. She did not dislike it but she said, 'the film is about this new modern culture....'

I wanted to protest - no, it isn't about that at all. Other conversations with friends, film enthusiasts, aspiring film makers, film technicians, critics - all pointed the same way. I kept thinking 'No, they don't get it'. But then I saw the IMDB listing for the film. The brief description says: 'He woos... rises to become a rock-star - then self-destructs.' And I wanted to say, no, no, he does not self-destruct; he does not even woo.

But IMDB pages are usually put up by the guys who make the film, eh? Has Imtiaz Ali written that description? Is that what the film is about - self-destruction? Did I get it wrong?

And yet, I feel as if I really do get it. Despite my impatience with excessive romance in films, I felt Rockstar more sharply than other love stories, even the ones Imtiaz Ali has made before. In fact, I felt as if the filmmaker was pushing so hard to capture that emotion - a gnawing, unending hunger for love - that he forgot to be ruthless with the script.

A more rigourous application of Ali's (excellent) screenplay sense would have papered over the unwieldy bigness of this film's plot. One of his chief strengths as a writer is believably likeable characters but usually, he gives them only just enough screen time to drive the story forward. Not this time.

And yet, this film felt more honest to me.

Life allows us the opportunity to experience every shade of loss on the colour card of love. But none of us can quite understand another's compulsions until we suddenly wake up one morning and find ourselves transformed. So it is with our responses to certain films.

For instance, I was a child when I first saw QSQT. I could not understand why my older cousins liked it. It was a stupid movie, I thought. First they (the romantic pair) are stupid enough to run away and live in the hills. Then they are stupid enough to die. What's the point? And why would anyone want to run away with a boy?

This was the phase when I watched black-n-white films happily as long as there was Johnny Walker or Mehmood in the cast. Johar Mehmood in HongKong was my idea of a good watch. I liked Charlie Chaplin. I even liked a strange film where Sridevi was playing a fairy (have forgotten the title). I used to like films with kids in them, and I enjoyed child-like behaviour. Cake-throwing sequences were my favourite.

As a teenager, I began to enjoy love stories. DDLJ and KKHH marked a departure in my tastes. I understood the desire to fall in love before getting married (though I had never met a boy who even vaguely interested me) and I assumed it would be very hard to forget a 'first' love.

I did not know then that is is not only possible to forget first love, but also to feel ashamed of it. I also did not understand guilt in love. So when I saw Arth, although I felt its emotional honesty, I did not understand it fully.
There is a scene where Smita Patil (her character) is saying that she feels as if the tiny black beads of the mangalsutra (belonging to her lover's wife) are scattered underfoot. They hurt her skin. i.e. She finds it impossible to move without hurting.

I thought that was kind of crazy - a manifestation of a mental breakdown. It took me many years to figure out that guilt was driving her towards a breakdown.

For the most part of my 20s, I did not fully grasp the nature of marriage. I didn't know how deep the claws of social conditioning dig into our flesh. Despite consuming books and films about unhappy couples, I thought marriage was a permanent concept. That it was inevitable, and that any love outside it was vaguely unclean. All my friends and cousins thought the same way.

But life taught us new lessons. Married friends began to write back to describe their marital experience in one word: "Yuck!" My generation has seen itself go through undesirable affairs, divorces, abuse, despair, very strangely won loyalties. And so, when I see Heer (Nargis Fakhri's character in Rockstar) two years after she's wedded a stranger in a strange country, unsmiling, mentioning doctor's appointments, it makes total sense. I don't need scenes specifying how and why this girl is dissatisfied. I can fill in the blanks.

When I was younger, I had romantic notions about sacrificing your feelings for others' sake. I did not know that feelings could not be sacrificed. They can only be suppressed. I did not know then that suppression of feelings can kill you. Not all at once. But in small, everyday ways - through stress and depression, through mysterious aches and pains - we can all be destroyed.

So I had no difficulty believing that Heer was either mentally or physically sick. In my interpretation, Heer's cancer is entirely metaphorical. What does it matter, the name of the disease? Unhappiness itself is a kind of disease. Living with a person you do not love can be frightening. It carves hollows into your face. It strips you of all self-respect. And if you do not have a clear idea of who you might love instead, or how much, you grow afraid that perhaps you are incapable of love.

You know that if you cannot love and be loved in equal measure, you are doomed. Before you know it, there is something wrong with you. A bad relationship usually translates into a bad self-relationship too. Lovelessness is all-pervasive. You cannot get rid of it by taking a walk or meeting a new set of friends, or shopping. There is only one way of getting rid of it and that is to find a true lover.

But to find love when it is clearly forbidden - that is difficult. It will not just disrupt your life. It will destroy your self-image.

In the cinema hall, there was a group (teenagers or people in their early 20s) seated a row behind me. After the scene where Heer kisses Jordan, then pushes him away, these youngsters started to giggle. They made comments about how they liked that part, because it was fun, and/or funny.

I found myself wanting to turn around and smack someone. I wanted to shake them and say: It's not funny, okay? This is not a funny scene. It comes from a place of torment. From holding yourself one inch short of happiness because happiness means going off a cliff of morality. And you don't want to fall.

Heer does not push Jordan because she doesn't know what she wants. Jordan doesn't want to kiss because he wants to sleep with her. He just wants to acknowledge the truth of their relationship. They used to be friends. They are no longer just friends. They have found unhappiness, and also found that there is a cure for unhappiness - being with each other. Kissing her is a way of telling her that he recognises this.

Heer also knows she is beyond the point of return. Some part of her is already past caring for consequences. But she pushes him away because she does not want to become the woman who has an adulterous affair at the first given opportunity. She is 'neat-and-clean', no matter how hard she tries not to be. She is curious but she is not the girl who wants to disrupt social structures. Nor is Jordon. Actually, gandh machaani in dono ke bas ki baat nahin hai. That is part of their tragedy.

As they begin their love affair in his hotel room, Heer cannot shake off her (social/moral) conditioning. She runs, afraid of what she has become, afraid of this feeling that has become stronger than her. Jordan has fewer qualms because he is still single. He need not feel burdened. But he will not chase her beyond a point. It is she who has to signal to him that their passion is equal. And the director conveys all of this messy emotion in about 30 seconds, with not one line of dialogue.

When I saw this deftness of touch being reduced to 'Ranbir acts so well' by critics, I felt I had to say 'not fair'. But then I realised that perhaps they are not seeing the same film.

I was seeing a very angry film. Poor Janardhan is furious because he hadn't asked for this kind of hurt. He wanted to make it big; he made it big. Now he knows that the glamourous, moneyed space was a trap. But it is too late to snap out of it. Or too soon. He is hurt but not broken. He is upset that he cannot control anything. He is angry that he cannot have a woman he is, in fact, entitled to. He wants her; she wants him. It should be simple. The world really has no locus standi.

Yet, the world butts in. It makes her run. It makes her try to break up with him. It makes her say things she doesn't mean. Later, when they manage to steal some time together, it comes crowding in to demand explanations. Stupid convention, law, tradition, media - it is ripping his life apart. And he will defy, defy, defy.

But finally, there is nothing to defy, because the story reaches a point when he is, actually, guilty. He's damaged his beloved. And his anger loses its heat. That last scene (in my reading of it) was supposed to convey a kind of defeat. A laying down of arms. When there is nothing left to win or fight for, what do you do?

You do what you can. You play music. You go to work. Perhaps you learn to live again. Perhaps, you die. Perhaps, you pretend to live. Who knows what happens to Jordan afterwards?

Every story comes from a point in the artist's heart, even if the events of the story are not from his/her own life. The rest is just craft. You are dependent on your medium to make yourself understood. But no matter how well-crafted a film (or book, or art installation, or photo exhibit) might be, understanding is not guaranteed. Because understanding is a two-way street.

I enjoyed it because, despite its flaws (some bad acting, definitely), I get Rockstar. I think. Not because I'm especially sensitive or too sappy (which might be true), but because the whole spectrum of grief interests me. I catch glimpses of it in every relationship. I puzzle over it. I hear it in songs. I read it. I write it. I watch it. And I am often dismissive of films that have no emotional depth. The filmmakers I love most are the ones who want to look at love and loss right in the eye and show me what they see.

I suppose, it is safe to say that beyond craft, beyond vision, plot, narrative, style, context or the combined talents of everyone involved in a project, there lies that elusive element - recognition. Every film, every book needs an audience who can recognise themselves in the story. Sometimes everyone can. Sometimes only a few people can. It is a bit like dancing to your own tune, except you do it in public. Those who are not in sync with that particular tune will be annoyed. And those who are in sync will fall in step.

Little green aliens

The crazy Mexican invader Krishen refers to was a plant that was deliberately brought to our desert (tossed out from an airplane, apparently). Perhaps, it was done with good intent. Some researchers and/or administrators may have thought: “Hey, some greenery is better than none. Why don’t we bring in this super-tough Mexican shrub?”

And so they did. This new invasive plant took root, sure, but even goats wouldn’t eat the toxic stuff and it was near-impossible to get rid of.

Now, years later, we are making the same mistakes — introducing new plants without due caution. But this time we are not talking about a dot of green in a desert. We’re talking about our bodies.

A fairly intense battle for our dinner tables lies ahead with genetically modified crops angling to get a foot in. And the government seems to be willing to facilitate the process, although India’s experience with Bt Cotton has already proved that GM crops do not necessarily change things for the better. There are serious concerns now because it is hard to prevent GM contamination. Odisha, for instance, had already said a firm ‘No’ to Bt Cotton, but hasn’t been able to stop it from spreading. How do you control every seed, every breeze?

Hundreds of activists, farmer groups, former civil servants and politicians have signed a petition to the prime minister, demanding that the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill be scrapped and ‘a Biosafety Protection statute’ be introduced in its stead.

The protests are getting louder since Parliament’s upcoming winter session may spell make-or-break for Indian farmers. The Seeds Bill, 2004, and the Pesticides Management Bill, 2008, might get passed.


Read full piece here

aka Mera pyaara sukumar gadha

The next time we met, he talked about history. About long swathes of grass. About what it might be to look at the sky without tilting your neck backwards and how it might be if clear pools of liquid existed at the venue of our thirst, so we didn’t have to push our tired bodies to the faraway ponds. He talked about taps and knowledge and fences. It is hard not to love one who talks like this. Although, I should have realized at this point that he was a donkey.


This is from a short story that has recently appeared at the excellent Pratilipi.