Qalandar

Proust. My Map.

2012-01-21T06:27:00.003-05:00

"How about Proust's In Search of Lost Time?" Tamaru asked. "If you've never read it this would be a good opportunity to read the whole thing."
"Have you read it?"
"No, I've never been in jail, or had to hide out for a long time. Someone once said unless you have those kinds of opportunities, you can't read the whole of Proust."
"Do you know anybody who has read the whole thing?"
"I've known some people who have spent a long period in jail, but none were the type to be interested in Proust."

-- 1Q84 (pgs. 613-14), Haruki Murakami

I wouldn't have been able to read Proust without public (and not-so-public) transport: over the last two years, New York's subways; and, after I moved to India, its flights and trains, provided much of the (odd) setting for my entry into Proust's mysterious world (nothing hermetically sealed or self-contained about it, and yet I can think of few novels that I've read that so persuasively imagine a world that seems its own world, timeless in that it seems utterly remote from the reader's world, but subject to the same laws as our world). So, without further ado, thank you to the 6 train (most often from 103rd Street to Grand Central); the Q and B trains (for after-work trips to Brighton Beach, but -- for a very few days while I was in the middle of the second volume -- elsewhere in Brooklyn too); the rides on the E to Queens and on the 4/5 to Brooklyn; and the even rarer jaunts on the 1 or the L (the West Side has not been subway terrain to me for years); for a couple of cold months late in 2010 (my last in New York), there were different rides on the 4/5, to Wall Street; earlier that year, in my last summer in the City (and, it seemed to me even then, one of my happiest), there were trips on the F and R to GOWANUS too). The NYC subways weren't the only trains: the occasional Metro-North trains on the Harlem Line to Westchester; and the New Jersey transit lines to Rockland County, did their bit too. And then there were the flights: not very frequent, but guaranteed to afford me uninterrupted time to read: a few between New York and London or Dubai; or between New York and Delhi or Bombay. Indeed, after I moved to India and my diligence in this matter fell away, my Proust became increasingly dependent on the chunks I got through on planes: so thank you, too, to the Mumbai-Delhi flights; and the Mumbai-Dubai ones; the take-offs and landings otherwise known as the Mumbai-Bhopal and Delhi-Bhopal flights; and two outliers from Bombay, to Calcutta and Hyderabad. But for sheer pleasure, nothing topped the two Proust train journeys, the Samparkranti Express that took me from Mumbai to Bhopal for my niece's wedding (in a carriage where the air was so thick with talk of commerce and complaints about corruption, it was transformed into something comforting, a familiar and dense ambience that felt snug); and the Rajdhani from Mumbai to Delhi. There was much reading at home too, of course: my Proust-world is bordered at one end by an apartment on 103rd Street and 2nd Avenue in Manhattan; and by a flat on Shirly-Rajen Road in Bandra at the other. And much reading that I owe to the friends I was going to see or staying with (you know who you are; some of you cannot be named, hence it's fairer to do it this way).

It's only fitting that it takes so much time to read Proust's novel: long enough that, reading it, one cannot ignore the passage of time. The novel demarcates my own last two years from other periods of my life, but it also refracts them through its prism. Perhaps every novel would do that, but this one, of necessity, takes up so much of one time, its imprint is permanent. Thank you, Bhaiya, for planting the seed back in 1995, in a wooden attic with a "Teach Yourself French" book; through several false starts (poor Swann only found his way at the third attempt), the idea persisted.

DEOOL (Marathi; 2011)

2011-11-14T08:52:00.009-05:00

When abzee initially recommended that we go see Deool, I kept my hopes modest, and for one reason above all others. At least based on my experience with Indian films, we don’t seem to do political films – that is to say, films set in the world of politics and politicking – very well. Even otherwise celebrated directors have faltered (I’d pick the Gulzar of Mausam over the director of Aandhi any day of the week), when they aren’t busy falling flat on their face (Prakash Jha in Rajneeti is a good example), or using it as a vehicle for masala entertainment, where politicians can simply be one kind of villain.

There are several reasons for this failure, but a common thread runs through these films, be they “high-brow” (Gulzar’s Hu Tu Tu); low-brow (Shankar’s Nayak/Muthalvan); chauvinistic (Avdhoot Gupre’s Jhenda); or just plain pretentious and awful (Madhur Bhandarkar’s Satta): in virtually all of them, the purpose of the film is to pander to our prejudices about politics. These films never tell us anything new about ourselves, about the milieu that enables the politicians we all love to berate, because the films are so busy regurgitating what we already know about our leaders. Worse still, many of these films demand the mantle of courage as well (for “exposing” that which no-one has been able to hide to begin with), further confirming the audience in its own complacency.[Mani Rathnam's sublime Iruvar is indeed very special, but what makes it so is not its engagement with politics or ideology, so much as its representation of cinema, memory, and a friendship sundered by politics -- a Tamil archive, but not an archive of Tamil politics.]

Umesh Kulkarni’s Deool ("temple" in Marathi) has no such problem, and is, to put it simply, the finest Indian film set in the world of politics that I have ever seen. It is so, in the first instance, because “the world of politics” is nothing separate and apart from our world, and is not inhabited by caricatures and gangsters worlds removed from the “us” of the audience. Rather, Kulkarni’s film is acute – and acerbic – enough to appreciate the ways in which our reality (our poverty or prosperity; our venality; our religiosity; and our commerce) is already political.

This is certainly true of the village where nearly all of Deool is set: early on in the film, the modest farmer Kesha (Girish Kulkarni, who also wrote the script) tracks down a runaway cow near a ficus tree; worn down by the heat, Kesha goes off to sleep, only to be woken by a vision of Lord Dattatreya (a tripartite deity combining Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva especially popular in the Deccan and Gujarat). Kesha is wonder-struck, and goes around shouting about what he has experienced to the entire village. No-one takes the simple farmer seriously at first – his own mother and much of the rest of the village can barely stir from the TV (the film has several disturbing visuals of people reduced to zombies before their televisions); and Bhauji Gadande (Nana Patekar), the seasoned local politician who owns the runaway cow, is more interested in worthy practical pursuits, like ensuring the village do-gooder Anna (Dilip Prabhavalkar) gets a hospital built. At first. But very soon, Bhauji is at risk of being undermined by the most ambitious of his own men, who see in Kesha’s vision an opportunity, not just for themselves but also for the village (to be fair to them, they might even believe in the vision, as Bhauji’s wife Vahini (Sonali Kulkarni) does); and Bhauji survives the challenge by coopting their enthusiasm; succumbing to pressure from his boss, the local MLA (Mohan Agashe); and embracing popular opinion in the village, coming out in favor of a temple at the now-sacred site. The unnamed political party Bhau and the MLA belong to has not, we were told earlier, hitherto been trafficking in religion. That changes rapidly: a temple is built, and before long the village is transformed into a bustling commercial center, with religion the chief commodity for sale.

The villagers we have been introduced to over the course of the film have all become much wealthier when we see them after the film's intermission, as have the political players. There is no suggestion that any of this wealth has been illegally gained, but Kulkarni is clear that it is ill-gotten, based on the merchandising and consumption of religion (a sequence featuring customers who want bhajans to the tune of the latest Bollywood hits is especially funny). Who’s to complain, if no one is harmed? Here and there, however, we see glimpses of warped priorities, of hospitals not built as land is developed for hotels and entertainment centers. Anna, and in time Kesha, appreciate that the village, more importantly the village’s god, have lost their soul.

If the above makes Deool sound crude and preachy, it does this magnificent film a grave injustice. The Kulkarni brothers are nuanced, even at their most explicit: the final meeting between Bhau and Anna, when the former reminds the Samaritan of how miserable the old days were for the village, is a case in point. In the beginning, Bhau reminds Anna (and us), he wasn’t in favor of this sort of thing. But a few compromises aren’t so bad if they mean electricity, better roads, and greater prosperity. Bhau with his compromises cannot be the hero of this film, but there is chastisement here for Anna too: the sort of man who will do anything rather than get his hands dirty, the village has passed him by, and he has abdicated his responsibility to try and make a difference in the life of his village. From that point on, it is up to the disillusioned Kesha to try something desperate, inspired by a stranger (Naseeruddin Shah) who might or might not be god himself. This isn’t the sort of film where the end means victory: the status quo is jolted, adjusts, and continues.

If Mangesh Khadke’s score had consisted solely of the background to the opening credits, it would nevertheless have been one of the year’s better pieces of film music for me. But there’s more: a soulful, throaty bhajan; and excellent background music throughout the film; not to mention a sleazy item number that gleefully wallows in mediocrity, ramming home the manufactured tawdriness that is about to replace the intimacy of one man’s religious devotion. I could have done without the repetitive “Dutta Dutta” track (with its obvious lyrics) accompanying visuals of devotees performing the pilgrimage, but it is a minor blemish in a very good album.

The acting in Deool is of a uniformly high standard, and just about everyone plays a part in vividly etching the characters to life: Nana Patekar was no surprise, but it must count as an achievement to steer clear of caricature when essaying the role of a politician; Sonali Kulkarni is also superb as his wife, skeptical of her husband’s religious skepticism, and used to lording it over those around her by virtue of her husband’s position (I do wish the script gave her more to do in the film’s second half, although the one scene of her as hostess, in a much spruced up home, to a number of guests eager for the Dattatreya darshan, is very well done). Bhau’s boisterous, loutish underlings are all memorable, effortlessly drawing laughter from the audience (in a notable scene, a casually venal schoolteacher boasts that he has been able to get donations for the temple by threatening to fail his students). As is the initially diffident sarpanch: when we first see her, presumably a beneficiary of reservations for women (and perhaps for “backward” castes?) at the panchayat level, she’s a quavering mess, taking a back seat to Bhau and Vahini – over time, we see her grow in confidence and stature. No dialog announces this – Kulkarni’s modus operandi is to show the audience – and a stance here, a gesture there, complicate the picture: she might well have been a beneficiary of a quota system, but even quotas can help complicate and disturb established power structures.

For me, the most memorable character of all was the landscape: harsh, desolate, and beautiful; and never more so than in the film’s closing sequences. As cinematographer Sudhakar Reddy’s camera follows Kesha through cliffs, caverns, and ending at the sea, the Deccan landscape seems timeless, underscoring (as did the isolated village setting, and even the virtuoso “sand art” performance that accompanies the opening credits) that the Kulkarnis’ classic is a modern-day fable – but also, more darkly, that one man might be (as Anna tells Kesha) no more than a freckle in the cosmos. A freckle, not a speck – because man leaves a trace. Deool fittingly opens with an archaeological dig, and periodically returns to the site: surveying the village’s landscape by film’s end, one is tempted to ask the same question that, as Anna tells Kesha, propels archaeology: centuries later, what will they make of us from our debris?

ROCKSTAR (Hindi; 2011)

2011-11-12T15:35:00.020-05:00

Early on in Rockstar, Khatana (Kumud Mishra), the resident sage of Delhi University's Hindu College's canteen, pooh poohs the musical ambitions of Janardhan Jakhar (Ranbir Kapoor): for Khatana, art is borne of suffering, and sorrow in turn of love and a broken heart. The callow Janardhan (who will in time be re-christened "Jordan") promptly decides to fall in love with the next pretty girl he sees, with an artificiality the film knows better than to take seriously. I found myself chuckling at these scenes, reading in them director Imtiaz Ali's send-up of a bourgeois misreading of Romanticism in the arts.

I was wrong: Imtiaz Ali was dead serious. His Jordan really can become, not only a musical success but even a genuine musical talent, only once he has loved and lost Heer (Nargis Fakhri). Not a trace of irony may be discerned here, and the result -- a "rockstar" who might see "Free Tibet" signs at his concerts, but whose military fatigues and lyrics about "Sadda Haq" cannot hide the fact that there is no cause, no politics, nor even any social awareness here but a highly personal loss. Nor is there any of the sex and drugs one might expect: Jordan barely drinks (and is expressly a teetotaler until he no longer has Heer). While the latter might seem like a minor point, both of these underscore just how safe Imtiaz Ali wants to play things (perhaps he, like most others of his directorial generation in Bollywood, simply knows no other way; certainly every other film Ali has made has been utterly conformist, and Rockstar is, in the final analysis, no exception for the most part.)* The story arc sounds epic enough -- struggling musician falls in love; loses the woman in his life by way of her marriage to another man; becomes a celebrity; finds her again before losing her for good; and continues with a tortured and guilt-ridden career -- but its execution, heavily weighted as it is in favor of the love story, left me confused as to whether Ali had made a film on the proverbial rock star, or whether this was a love story where one of the protagonists simply happened to be a popular singer. Imtiaz Ali has clearly lived with this script and this character for a long time -- perhaps far too long: it bears all the hallmarks of adolescence, the sort of film one gets into the film industry in order to make. It shows in the film's "rock" backdrop, more reminiscent of a youngster's investment in icons like Jim Morrisson and Led Zeppelin, than of the wider relevance of that sort of figure in the Indian landscape; in how Heer seems to be a boy's fantasy given form, given her reveling delight in all things bawdy (ranging from skin flicks to strip clubs); and in how indulgent Rockstar is: it is much looser than Ali's other films; the second half feels especially long, and is quite tedious (several people in the Andheri theater I saw the film at were audibly impatient by the end).

Perhaps the film seems so long because of Nargis Fakhri: her acting is so wretched, so abominable in just about every scene, you have to wonder what Imtiaz Ali was thinking by casting a performer this weak as half of his lead pair, in a film that is more a love story than anything else. Fine performances by the likes of the reliably excellent Piyush Mishra (playing a hard-nosed music producer; for those unfamiliar with his work, the scene where he exploits Jordan's need by snapping "mein tujh se bade kuttay paper sign karvaaonga" should suffice) and Shernaz Patel (who plays Heer's mother) cannot make up for it, and it's no use criticizing the actress -- the blame lies squarely with the director, for offering her the role in the first place.

But goddammit, there is a lot I can forgive this film: while intellectually conformist, Rockstar, like Dum Maaro Dum earlier this year, hearkens back to a time when big films could nevertheless be made with passion (not assembled in the way far too many contemporary Hollywood and Bollywood films are). In these times, a film that demands a little bit from its audience, both in the form of sustained attention and the possibility of (gasp!) a Sad Ending, might without more be considered risky. On that front, Rockstar is a world removed from the sort of banality that far too many of Ali's peers churn out: simply put, there is some cost to watching this film. And even if it is less than the sum of its parts, it has some superb parts: the Delhi ambience early on in the film; very brief Bombay sequences much later on; and the most striking Kashmir I have ever seen on film (a cheap nod to Ranbir's genealogy in the form of a reprise of a Shammi Kapoor song notwithstanding). [Ali falters badly in Prague, which could be, as he;s filmed it, anywhere in Europe -- an unpardonable sin where this city is concerned.]

And then there's the music. Not just A.R. Rahman's songs, nor even his background score, but the way Ali has used it in this film: so seamlessly has the music been integrated into the film -- heck it is almost the very texture of the film -- that I would be hard-pressed to pick a high-point: as Mani Rathnam first did with Rahman's music in Guru (2007) (in particular, with the "Ae Hairath-e-Aashiqui" song); and later Rakeysh Mehra (albeit less adroitly) managed in Delhi-6 (2009) (the omission of most of the sublime "Rehna Tu" still smarts), Ali treats Rahman's album as a collection of musical motifs for the most part, and pieces of different songs float in and out, leaving me both incomplete and spellbound -- in this, the music tracks the films chronology (featuring flashbacks within flashbacks, including non-linear ones!), and makes the film. Not since Rang de Basanti (2006) has a major Hindi film been so unimaginable without its music -- and while I still maintain Rahman's album is hardly a rock album, I found myself caring not a whit. Not when "Hawaa Hawaa" easily transcends its origins in Guru's "Maiyya Maiyya" and bewitches the audience; or when "Kun Faya Kun" is given form in and around Nizamuddin (replete with appearances by the shrine's Nizami qawwals): the dargah has featured in many a Hindi film, but never so vividly, in as magical a manner, as here, where it is literally the site of Jordan's awakening. Even on "Nadaan Parindey", where the over-the-top trailer (that is, the video's incongruity with the lyrics) had given me grave misgivings, it all made sense in the film. Not the best musical moment in Rockstar, but perhaps it couldn't be: by then Jakhar is Jordan Inc., the singer's troubled life and controversies simply fodder for the manufacture of his own celebrity.

I'm nearly at the end of this piece, and if I haven't said anything about Ranbir Kapoor's performance yet, it's because there isn't much to say. Beyond that he is superb here, in easily the role of his young career (indeed, he might well go years without getting another opportunity like this one). Prior to Rockstar, I'd never found Ranbir less than competent; but equally, I'd generally found him too groomed, too safe to really surprise the audience. And while there is some of that here (I found his portrayal of the young Janardhan in college condescending, and somewhat implausible -- more a representation of some imagined middle-class boy from Pitampura than Janardhan Jakhar), there is no denying that he really comes into his own once he is kicked out of the family home, rising above the inconsistent characterization the script saddles him with to weave in real nuance and impact. We see Jordan go from epiphanic acolyte at the dargah -- the scenes where he takes a back seat to the qawwals in the singing parties are masterpieces of understatement -- to hack singer at private parties, combining earnestness and disinterest, to bona fide celebrity, to tormented star, and you really feel the change in circumstance, the fact that this character has come a long way. Even in the romantic segments later on in the film, Ranbir manages to make the done-to-death sequences more than watchable; given my limited patience with this Bollywood genre, that's saying something. And then there are all those scenes of the man singing. If, like me, you've been irritated at how unconvincing most actors seem while playing other artists, look no further: I kept forgetting that the man on the screen in "Sadda Haq", every sinew into the song, was simply lip-syncing for Mohit Chauhan's voice. It might not seem like much, but the conviction and variety he brought to these sequences, were integral to his role's -- and the film's -- plausibility. Rockstar isn't a great film, and Jordan isn't an especially well-etched character, but Ranbir doesn't let you see any daylight between him and his avatar once Janardhan Jakhar is out of the way: you suspend disbelief, and stay till the end.

*[But not completely: Ali deserves credit for the fact that this is perhaps the first popular Hindi film I have seen where a woman cheats on her husband, and is nevertheless dealt with as a sympathetic character. The film's final twist is similarly unconventional, inasmuch as it, while quickly buried, does not reflect Jordan in a good light.]

7 Aum Arivu and The Degradation of the Dravidian Movement

2011-11-12T04:15:00.014-05:00

Ordinarily, there wouldn't be much to write about 7 Aum Arivu, the latest Surya starrer by Murugadoss (of Ghajini fame): it's a shoddy and thoroughly mediocre masala movie, a promising first twenty minutes -- set in ancient India and China, and tracking the legends surrounding the monk Bodhidharman's founding of the Shao Lin order (now world famous for its Kung Fu martial arts) -- undone by the routine beat 'em up that follows, as the film tracks Bodhidharman's 21st century descendant through his efforts to foil a Chinese bio-terror plot targeting India. Unfortunately, that isn't all there is to it. 7 Aum Arivu, produced by the son of DMK supremo M. Karunanidhi (Stalin), is also an unwitting showcase for the Dravidian movement's degeneration; or rather, of the movement's reduction to its most problematic aspects, and to empty gestures that try to mask its contemporary hollowness with bombast.

7 Aum Arivu isn't just marred by its naked anti-Chinese jingoism (a jingoism that testifies to nothing so much as to a pervasive feeling of inferiority on the part of many in India's bourgeoisie with respect to its gigantic, and economically far more successful, neighbor; as well as to a clandestine envy of the authoritarianism that characterizes the People's Republic); it goes further, and tries to graft this xenophobia onto the gestures of the Dravidian movement, perhaps trying to update the latter even as the politicians and ideologies clamoring about it have long since emptied it of almost everything other than ethnic chauvinism. Thus, in the finest fascist traditions, Tamil identity in this film is about Tamil blood, about the genes as it were -- so much so that Bodhidharman's contemporary descendant doesn't need to learn anything, undergo any training, in order to become like his super-powered ancestor. He simply needs to be made aware of his (biological) heritage (more accurately, a cultural heritage that is simply a biological inheritance); that awareness, married to modern scientific wizardry, suffices to make him a new Bodhidharman. This isn't mere symbolism: time and again, characters in the film (most notably the young scientist played by Shruti Haasan) announce it too. The message is dinned into our heads: it is blood that matters, and "our" inheritance has been stolen by others, and used against us (it is typical of this film's dimwitted ethos that it never pauses to reflect on why Bodhidharman himself taught his learning to the inhabitants of a Chinese village; if nothing else, the ancestor seems to have been far less provincial than his contemporary urban descendant). History is nothing more than ethnic chauvinism -- "we" were the first, the best, the most, and some combination of villainy and our own indifference conspires to keep us in chains. It's a fairy story, and even as tales go, a rather stale and not especially insightful tale.

Murugadoss doesn't stop with the rather standard "supremacist" approach common to revivalists and xenophobes the world over. In fits and starts, his script remembers that it needs to be chauvinistic in an especially Dravidian way, and thus we are treated to the specter of Shruti Haasan being mocked by senior professors for speaking in Tamil (a scene so ludicrous and incongruous given the context, it verges on spoof, of the film closing with Surya's character chiding Hinduism for replacing the scientific/rationalist bases of Indian culture with ritual and cult; the true god of Reason obscured by false idols, as it were. This much is standard, lifted from the texts of Periyar and others -- but whatever one thought of Periyar's ideology, it found expression in a context of resistance and revolt (against Brahminical dominance; the social "backwardness" of various castes; and the Sanskritization that implicitly or explicitly held Tamil culture inferior). Today, after four decades of rule by this or that (more or less) Dravidian party in Tamil Nadu, and a movement that has been rather successful in many of its cultural aims (although not at all in Periyar's anti-Hinduism), Murugadoss' gestures seem lazy and stale, and directed at soft targets.

I might have been more forgiving of these gestures if they were more sincere -- but they are utterly cynical. 7 Aum Arivu is a film where Surya deploys blond highlights for much of the film; just about every song is saturated in the imagery and aesthetics of American music videos (Harris Jayaraj's music is also very far from the rootedness of Ilaiyaraja or Rahman at their Tamil best; in fact it is miles from even the popular Tamil music feel of Jayaraj's own Samurai, and is utterly bland, generic, and forgettable); and then there's Shruti Haasan, whose Tamil accent sounds off even to my non-Tamil ear, and whose Bollywoody, manipulated appearance brings to mind the long tradition of Tamil films casting light-skinned North Indian women as heroines. When Shruti Haasan mouths Tamil nationalist dialogs, I didn't even get to taking offense -- I laughed, and I laughed.

A conversation, and a reflection on movie stars...

2011-10-19T00:50:00.008-04:00

A discussion with a friend, about the contrast between the zeal with which contemporary stars promote their films, and the anxiety that often manages to shine through, led to the following note. The specific context here is Shah Rukh Khan's Ra-One campaign (during the course of which he's spoken more of failure than he usually does), but the point is generally applicable:

...If the specter of failure seems to haunt the stars, and seems to haunt them more intensely the bigger they are, it is because of the disconnect between the promotions, the campaigns, the machinery of the promotions -- which are about the corporatized entity, the brand, that each of today’s Bollywood superstars have become, be they SRK, Aamir, Salman, whoever -- and the man. Aamir Inc., or SRK Inc., has to be impressed into service – but the man at the core of the machine (here, SRK) might know better, or at least differently. The man at the core of the machine might be talking about failure not because he expects this film to flop (I don’t think it will; but more importantly, I don’t think he thinks it will, and I doubt he could function if he believed it would), but because the man at the core of the machine didn’t get into cinema for this, surely? When the man dreamed decades ago of standing on the Bollywood summit, did he think he would be staking it all on a seemingly derivative sci-fi film with large doses of child-friendly appeal? Surely not – that is to say, I believe SRK is enough of a child of the traditional Hindi film registers to regard that fate with some distaste (the answer might well be different for a new breed of actor, but SRK is from a different era).

Nor is SRK the only one: did Aamir really get into it to be the guy wanting to break opening day records with every film? Yes, he does more "different stuff" than his peers, but even that is drained of joy: he now has to do the unconventional (alternating with huge grossers -- this is necessary, because the audience increasingly has begun to withhold respect unless the star is seen to participate in the drama of consumption itself; for certain segments of the audience, nothing on-screen is as dramatic as the sound of cash registers ringing offscreen), else he wouldn’t be recognized as Aamir. [I am reminded of the (Foucault?) quote that once upon a time, women struggled for the right to have an orgasm; today, they labor under the obligation to have one.]

And even Salman: when he was a teenager in the late 1970s and 1980s; or even after Maine Pyar Kiya and Baaghi released, was he really in it to be a swaggering oaf in every film, to have every film be about an oafish swagger? Surely not. And let’s not even get started on the greatest star of all, the one who is now busy encrusting his legacy with mediocrity from recent years (my one consolation that his achievements are too luminous for even his own latter day efforts to completely obscure), when he isn’t busy hawking cement. This is why the scene from Halla Bol (one of my favorite in recent Bollywood) is so important: not only does it remind us that every star is a stranger to his own image; but (and this is a point I did not make in my review) given that in the film Sameer Khan is confronted by his image right after he has stood idly by in the face of a murder committed openly and amidst a party; it reminds us that every star ultimately bankrupts himself (perhaps I should say, is bankrupted by himself, that is to say by the image that is himself yet other than himself); one might even go further: every star stands idly by in the face of a murder – the murder of his own self.

SAHEB, BIWI AUR GANGSTER (Hindi; 2011)

2011-10-02T04:48:00.012-04:00

I won't say much about Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam, because Tigmanshu Dhulia's film has little or nothing to do with Abrar Alvi's 1962 classic (although never a personal favorite). Which isn't to say that the 2011 film is bad (or not for that reason) -- but simply that the film is so removed from the sensibility of Guru Dutt, Alvi, and Bimal Mitra, that I couldn't help but wonder why Dhulia felt the need to raise the specter here (one could just as easily have done so with Ishqiya if one had been so inclined; mercifully, Abhishek Chaubhey was not). Of course, that much was clear from the trailer; the fact that I nevertheless went to watch Saheb, Biwi aur Gangster in the cinema testifies to Mahie Gill's considerable charm, and to my determination to do my bit to reward Jimmy Shergill for turning in consistently charismatic performances (and, perhaps, to the interest on the principal of Dhulia's Haasil (2003), a film that deserved more viewers than it received). And, I can't really say I was disappointed: I expected atmosphere and the two gills to be the best things about the movie, while Randeep Hooda was always going to be a misfit, and Dhulia served up exactly what I expected. Nevertheless, the fact that this could have been a very good film had it been better written, specifically, had its characterization been more consistent, rankled. [Hey, it's rare enough when non-Punjabis get some representation time in Bollywood, and the most has to be made of these chances (who knows when the next one will materialize?). Dhulia does not disturb that other maxim of contemporary Bollywood: only representations of Punjabi culture get to be happy ones; the rest of us are just plain violent.]

Saheb (Shergill) is the latest in the line of Devgarh rajas, the family's glory faded in the face of the modern world's predilections for commerce, elections, and competition. In contemporary U.P., Saheb is simply one of many jockeying for advantage, his exalted self-image incongruous given how hard-up he seems to be as far as money is concerned. Even his palatial haveli is sparsely populated -- most of his retainers have left for greener pastures, leaving only a few ghosts to haunt the manor. Saheb, however, is not the kind to quietly fade away, and uses a mix of thuggery, political wheeling dealing, and tenders for road work, to try and turn his fortunes around. One of his rivals, the decidedly more plebeian Genda Singh (Vipin Sharma) decides to settle scores with Saheb, and plants a spy in his household, in the form of Lalit (Randeep Hooda), hired to chauffeur the haveli's discontented, psychologically unstable Rani (Mahie Gill). The Rani has reasons for dissatisfaction: her husband is not only authoritarian but besotted with another woman; Lalit, himself dumped by a woman who felt he wasn't classy enough, is the right man at the right (or perhaps wrong) time. Some truly awful music (Lalit crooning "Choo Choo" has to be experienced to be believed) and many twists and turns later, the film suddenly ends, in an unconvincing climax that I won't spoil here. Suffice it to say that the film is never kinetic enough to suggest that it is building up toward something; and both the Rani and Lalit are so poorly written that the actors inhabiting them can hardly be blamed for not being able to redeem these roles. Lalit, for instance, seems like a callow youngster who periodically has to remind himself that he is supposed to be animated by class resentment; likewise, the Rani seems off her rocker early on in the film, but forgets her way to melancholy sanity the rest of the way (her spunky independence also seems to lapse into docility the more she gets close to love, an accidental domestication all the more disquieting because Dhulia seems to view it as natural). And the Rani and Lalit are the lucky ones: other, less central characters, are taken up, appear to portend something, but are abandoned (not to mention that at least one is a condescending portrayal of a "village girl" (Deepal Shaw's lively Bijli, enjoyable enough in her attempt to resurrect Deepti Naval); and then there's the usual lazy contempt for India's politicians, especially ones from the heartland).

Which isn't to say that the actors don't compound the script's problems. They most certainly do: Randeep Hooda has wandered into the wrong film, and screams "fake" with just about every scene, Exhibit "A" for the truth that it takes more than pronouncing a "z" like a "j" before one can earn even Bollywoodized bhaiyya chops. Mahie Gill is also disappointing: although ravishing as ever on that strange boundary she inhabits between limpidity and erotic initiative, she (as a friend wisely observed) channels Maqbool's Tabu far too much to use her own strengths, and simply does not register the requisite impact in a film where she has the title role. If these two were all there was to the film, I'd be urging people to skip the film. [Not everyone agrees -- Tushar Amin seems to have watched a different film than the one I did.]

Mercifully, Jimmy Shergill completes the tinity of the film's title, and his fine form here (perhaps the best of his roles that I have seen) serves as further reproach (after the likes of Eklavya and Tanu Weds Manu) to an industry that doesn't seem to be able to get him more quality work on a regular basis. Shergill's thakur is fantastic, in itself worth the price of admission: the script denies him any real interiority or growth, but none of that seems to matter when the Saheb seems sculpted from the landscape, every inch of him asserting that he and his kind do not agree with any reading of history that confines them to the safety of the past. His accommodations with the modern world are simply those sufficient to enable him to carry on as before (even as neither he nor Dhulia seem to appreciate that the nature of those accommodations make him just another gangster in U.P.'s rough and tumble countryside, a far bigger gangster than Lalit could ever hope to be). There are two reasons to watch Saheb, Biwi aur Gangster, and Jimmy Shergill is definitely one of them.

The second is simply the setting: Dhulia seems to have tracked down some outstanding havelis, and their faded splendor elevates this film. In scene after scene, I found myself marveling at the architecture, and just as important, at the interiors (whether these are sets or on location, the art director deserves an award) -- the milieu was completely transporting, and I found myself wanting to re-visit scenes from the film even as I was exiting the theater criticizing the movie. In his third feature, Dhulia has gotten many things wrong about what goes into making a good film, but the importance of creating a plausible world, of a sense of place that, whether or not "authentic" in some anthropological sense, is compelling as its own place, is surely not lost on him.

Dreaming in Calcutta...

2011-09-06T08:22:00.003-04:00

There’s a strange sequence in Apocalypse Now Redux when the lead characters (who are, of course, American soldiers in Vietnam) come across an abandoned (French) colonial-era plantation, replete with the mistress of the house. I was reminded of that sequence when I visited the Marble Palace in Calcutta last Saturday (alas, photography was not permitted), the neo-classical columns and plethora of European sculptures and paintings of Raja Rajendra Mallik’s grand 19th century mansion almost comically out of place amidst the Muktaram Babu street neighborhood it is part of (in stark contrast, I couldn’t help but think later on the same morning, with the nearby residence of Rabindranath Tagore, a traditional mansion that is like nothing else in its vicinity, and yet feels as organically Bengali as anything could be). It was a feeling that recurred a day later at the Park Street Cemetery (where the last three photos here are from), where just about all the graves of 18th and early 19th century Englishmen and –women seemed tinged with green algae; I felt I had wandered into an abandoned site that had nothing to do with the city outside, even as I knew that the feeling was completely unfounded, because I was wandering amidst the detritus of a colonialism that had shaped and built the very city that now motored along indifferent to it.

Walking around the Marble Palace is the closest I have come to a waking dream: I saw no other tourist until I was leaving; the lights in all the rooms were switched off until my guide switched them on, but even that did little to change how dimly visible many of the paintings (in particular, the ones mounted high up on the walls) were; and I kept stumbling across treasures – a Joshua Reynolds painting of the infant Hercules strangling serpents registered more of an impact than it ever could have in a well-lit museum gallery, a Murillo painting of St. Sebastian was perfectly placed to catch the light, and seemed better than everything else in the gallery (as did an amazing Jan Fyt still life at the foot of the staircase on the floor below, this one aided by the darkness), and Rubens’ Marriage of St. Catherine was on a wall so bereft of light it seemed older than it was, and bore only a distant kinship to other paintings that I had seen by the same artist; everything seemed charged with an obscure meaning, and it was hard to imagine these rooms as once inhabited. As with dreams, there was plenty of frustration to go around -- the guide knew little, and I never did find the Titian painting I knew was there somewhere – but that was part of the disorienting spell. Magic is difficult to find for the contemporary tourist, but last Saturday, for an hour or two in the early afternoon, the world slept at 46, Muktaram Babu Street in Calcutta. And dreamed.

I was right to realize that my feeling was completely unfounded: the colonial world is not past, it lingers. And that world is our world too, even as it renders us strangers to ourselves: the Marble Palace was built not by the British but by one of the wealthiest of the nineteenth century Company babus; eyes with a keener appreciation of architecture than mine can easily look past the European sculptures, exterior, and columns to spot the interior courtyard that the Palace shares with traditional Indian mansions. I needn’t have even wondered about those exotic Australian birds in the cages lining the walls and overlooking the courtyard, oddly unsettled as I was by this sign of life (even if imprisoned and foreign) that had appeared without explanation. On the upper floor, as I was leaving one of the galleries, I saw in front of me my guide bring his hands together in respect. I saw an old man on the other side, in a shirt and lungi, nodding to my guide; he neither looked at me nor acknowledged my presence in any other way. That’s Mallik sahib, my guide (whose accent placed him as being from Bihar or Eastern U.P.) told me. Half the Palace is off-limits to the public, because Rajendra Mallik’s descendants still live there, apparently the seventh successive generation to do so. I presume the birds belong to them.

Thoughts on Anna Hazare's Movement: An Email

2011-08-30T05:50:00.001-04:00

A (non-Indian) friend of mine had asked me for my take on the Anna Hazare movement. I excerpt the relevant portions of my response to him below:

"On the anti-corruption movement, while I obviously don't disagree with the notion that corruption pervades every aspect of Indian life, and that this anti-corruption legislation (the "Lokpal bill", which would create an anti-corruption ombudsman with the power to call elected politicians to account, but which would not itself be elected) that Anna Hazare was fasting to get enacted has been stuck in legislative limbo for years precisely because it is inconvenient for the powers-that-be to just enact it; nevertheless this whole movement, and the orgiastic way in which the media has embraced the cause, is for me a matter of grave concern. I see it as yet another instance of the Indian middle class' flight from politics, i.e. of that class' self-image as fleeing from politics (into the technocratic arms of "good governance" and the like). Once upon a time these fetishes gave us planning commissions and bloated socialist bureaucracies in India; now, with the children and grand-children of those post-colonial days, the same fetish gives us an uncritical valorisation of the private sector in everything, and a corrosive suspicion of India's political class (at the very time when the political system is increasingly subject to the push and pull of various interest groups that were more marginalized in the early decades of the republic than they are now. Certainly, political gangsterism is on the rise, but some of that is also because the politicians are no longer simply the genteel products of the haute bourgeoisie or the elites -- the criminality of the latter, who often did not need strong arm tactics to get that which could be obtained by favors, networks, and patronage, was tolerated for decades with barely a protest by the middle classes, perhaps because the loot was by "people like us." It still is tolerated, and even admired: when was the last time we heard one of the anti-corruption crusaders complain about the coziness of this or that corporate titan to the government, with all the attendant benefits?).

It isn't surprising that the crusade has taken "anti-corruption" as its rallying cry, an abstraction so vague as to be meaningless (who, after all, is for corruption?). That there is no such crusade for greater police accountability, or for a focus on human rights violations by the police/armed forces, the social situation of various marginalized groups, adivasis (aboriginals) dispossessed by mining projects, or even an anti-corruption crusade targeting the business community (when the politicians strike dirty deals, they usually don't do it with themselves!), is telling (I note that support for the movement from India's minority and Dalit groups has been tepid at best, despite Anna Hazare's photo-op showing him breaking his fast courtesy honey water fed by Muslim and Dalit children; whatever the failings of India's political process -- and they are many -- it is access to the political process that has yielded whatever gains have come the way of these sorts of social groups; and one could hardly expect them to side with majoritarian demagoguery at the expense of India's political institutions). Because "politics" could not be effaced from those hypothetical agitations, and once "politics" rears its head, the imagined consensus would collapse. Stated differently, Anna Hazare's political campaign is of course political (he insists it isn't), but this is a politics that functions by effacing itself, by acting dishonestly as it were, and that is thereby liberated -- to try and colonize the entire political sphere. As a result of this completely "non-political" campaign for greater probity in Indian public life, suddenly there is (for the moment anyway) little oxygen for any other discussion, for any other politics. This is the highest, nay the only salient issue in India today, and one might as well say one is on the side of corruption/the ruling Congress-led coalition if one demurs.

So in my view, this is a dangerous precedent: the spectacle of a self-righteous man claiming to be the sole spokesman for all India, browbeating the (admittedly flabby, corrupt, and spineless) government into creating yet another massive Indian bureaucracy (except that this one won't be accountable to the public, but will be manned by experts), the "Lokpal" that will have the power to investigate corruption everywhere in government (but nowhere else); and all of this pervaded by the intoxication of self-congratulation among the commentariat and the bourgeoisie; was a bit nauseating, even apart from the fact that Anna Hazare's own track record isn't exactly the most progressive out there (for instance, his Gandhian views on Dalits seem quaint at best, and completely out-of-step with the temper of contemporary Dalit activism), even ignoring the political use made of the movement by a host of right-wing groups opposing the governing coalition.

At the same time, a part of me resists the above tirade. Because "politics" doesn't just mean "the political process," doesn't just mean "politicking," and the Anna Hazare-led movement demonstrates that -- shouldn't that be cause for celebration? Wouldn't a mass movement in one of the Western democracies thrill me for that very reason, as offering a way out of the apathy that increasingly empties those republics of their democratic fervor, a passion that yet seems alive in India? If my concern is because the stakes are too high in India, that nothing is "settled", that the political spectrum includes -- as legitimate options -- everyone from socialists; medieval-style communitarian politickers, trafficking in myriad caste and linguistic identities; to fascist parties proudly implicated in pogroms and glorifying violence, then shouldn't that be a reason to participate in politics, rather than to abdicate the scene in favor of the rancid compromise that tells us there can never be anything better, that seeks to substitute resignation for any passion for democracy? Isn't that an insight afforded us by Holderlin's line that the saving power grows where the danger does? Yes, those interventions will be more difficult than Hazare's -- because they will not have the enormous force of urban privilege, hypocrisy, and addled millenarian thinking behind them -- but it is possible their path might be eased by the precedent that has been set here (more accurately, advanced; the precedent was set with Jayaprakash Narayan's anti-Congress campaign of the 1970s, culminating in Indira Gandhi's suspension of democracy for two years. Once as tragedy, then as farce...) Perhaps not (very many people have been "doing" politics on the sidelines for a very long time without much support or attention from the culture's commanding heights, so why should the Hazare movement change anything?), but, inasmuch as the anti-corruption movement reminds us what should never have been forgotten -- that although everything in public life is always already enmeshed in politics; in the truest sense politics belongs to the actively political, an immense burden that is at present borne far too often by only the boldly unscrupulous; the fanatical; or the desperate -- perhaps..."

Half-asleep, musing on The Tree of Life

2011-08-29T02:46:00.003-04:00

This line in a recent A.O. Scott piece in the New York Times discussing, among others, Terence Malick's The Tree of Life, caught my eye:

I “read” the film as much darker; well, “darker” is not the right word, but I did not see the sequence about the dinosaurs as “impl[ying] that something like divine grace was operative … before humanity”, but instead that the film, while it does not endorse, it wistfully acknowledges that despite our aspirations to Grace, we live in a world of Nature (that is to say, a world indifferent to Grace, and yet a world that has produced us, so needy of Grace). Certainly this film needs more viewings than I have been able to accord it thus far, but for now I do see the “key” as lying in the Chastain voice-over early on in the film, about choosing between the way of Nature and the way of Grace (the film offers no resolution, of course, but makes us experience that although the way of Nature rules the cosmos; an insistence on Grace might be the only thing that makes us human)....

Bombay Letter -- 3

2011-07-29T07:48:00.002-04:00

No, the emails aren’t becoming more frequent because inspiration has suddenly struck (that thunderbolt needs drier wood), it’s that I am fast approaching my – homecoming to? Vacation in? – New York, which has been a beloved city for so long that must be part of the reason I found myself unable to tear myself away from Teju Cole’s “Open City”, with so much of that novel set amidst the narrator’s walks and subway rides across the city, part of the reason I was sad when it ended. A good time to take stock – or as good as any; all the more so given the monsoon season is well underway, and I’ve had it on good authority that whatever the level of my affection for Bombay, it would be sorely tested once the rains started.

…And there is much to irritate about the rains, from the traffic (never great at the driest of times) to the puddles one steps into early in the work-day (and the dampness one has to live with for the rest of it) to the random drips, drops and leaks getting into and out of cars, buildings, or just standing around waiting for the roadside sandwich; to the fact that many of one’s colleagues simply won’t be able to show up to work on any given day, lending a whole new dimension to coordination.

But the prose of workday plans is banal. You feel it when you are woken up in the morning by the sound of rain so loud it registers over the drone of the AC; you look out your window, and you can’t quite believe mere rain could be this unremitting, as if the gods had decided Earth needed a shower (the sort you find in hotels in the US, enthusiastic and ready to beat you down at the first sign of feebleness). Not much imagination needed to believe Brahma’s warning to Bhagiratha, that summoning the celestial Ganga was one thing, but the earth would be washed away by the force of her torrents – except of course that Shiva’s matted hair breaks the fall, leaving the earthly Ganga as run-off. If we stay with the myth (and what fool wouldn’t want to, especially walking home from the gym when every last salty trace of fatigue and heat is washed away?) Bombay city, always unsightly and under-construction in the outer suburbs; its traffic, its railway lines, its tenements, its grilled windows, its balconies with their potted dieffenbachia plants and baby coconut saplings, its concrete, its stone, its trees, the underbellies of its flyovers, the always under-construction metro-to-come, are the mendicant god’s locks, drenched so that we might be spared. [Not completely, and not all of us: far too many scurry for cover from the rain for me to ignore the fact that looking down from my window on the rain hitting the ground is a privilege.]

“[S]orely tested”? Monsoons do your worst. Or best, I’m not sure which. I’ll be glad to be in New York in August (although, will scratching that itch help or hurt?), but part of me is sorry the monsoon season will be on the downswing by the time I’m back. They tell me not to worry, there will be a next year, there’s always a next year where the monsoons are concerned, but it’s hard to believe their cosmic force is renewable. In my mind there is a finality to the end of the season. But then, that’s why we’ve always needed myths, like the one about Shiva and Ganga – to rescue us from time.

Bombay Letter - 2

2011-06-30T12:42:00.002-04:00

More from my email inbox (this time only two days out of date):

It’s been a long time since the last missive, mostly due to some combination of business and personal travel, and the fact that once mango season begins, there really isn’t anything for anyone to do but gorge on the fruit. I’m no stranger to the mango’s delights, but it had been nearly six years since I’d had any of the sub-continental varieties. And I guess I’d never really focused on the post-modern ambiguities of the mango, the extremely “localized” nature of various mango narratives and mythologies that all but ensure that two amateur mangophiles are often unsure as to whether or not they are talking about the same varieties. Thus, the Sunehra of North India is the dense and almost sour Kesari in Bombay parlance (isn’t it?); the Banganapalli of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu is the Badaami from Gujarat and up north (or is it?); but what of the large yellow ones I feasted on over the course of a June weekend in Bhopal – simply the best mangos I’ve had so far this season, not yet pulpy and over-ripe, no longer hard yet sustained by the firmness I prize above all else when it comes to mangos (flavor? Of course the fruit needs flavor, but the best mangos are as much marvels of texture as taste; and if you’re one of those who prefers to suck your mangos rather than bite into them, you should simply stop reading this, as you’ve clearly never grown up) – referred to as Badaami by this Bombay-born Bhopali; Safaidy by another; and Baynishaan by a Hyderabadi visitor? I instinctively sided with the expansive promise of the last: Badami would do for the more generic mangos of that ilk that I’d been having in Bombay and Delhi; and Banganapalli (or my family’s own variant, the Baingan Palli) seemed to require a more intimate (or at least a Southern) setting. For mangos this perfect, “Baynishaan” promised matchlessness.

But mango consumption is post-modern not just because the names promise no stability, but also because of the structure of deferral this fruit seems to thrive in. The sensational Langda I discovered in Noida, delicate and floral to the tongue but also as fibrous as the Chaunsa I knew quite well from childhood trips to Karachi, was surely the last word on the variety? Ah, the company guest-house’s caretaker Rajinderji told me, real Langdas begin to arrive a few weeks later. The sickly sweet little Dussehris, so lauded by U.P.-waalas and so disappointing that I asked several times if I really was eating one of the 46 mango varieties mentioned in Ghalib’s letters? No no, everyone said, the good Dussehris aren’t available until after the rains. Fair enough, but at least I’d get to try Hyderabad’s legendary Himayath when I’d visit my aunt in that city later in the summer? – but it’s too late, my cousin murmured, the Himayath is an early¬-season mango. Ah, I see. So not much to do but to stay put in Bombay, every year in the grip of Alphonso-mania, the little mangos flourishing during a brief pre-monsoon season and at the center of a fanatical cult, the core precept of which requires adherents to regard anyone who prefers mangos other than ones named for Portugese monarchs with contempt and pity. And no question, they were very good – but but but, more than one colleague told me, this year the harvest in Ratnagiri hasn’t been very good, the Alphonsos are simply not as good as they usually are. Too early, or too late, and never quite the right time.

There is the small matter of accommodation: I have found a place to stay since I last wrote to all of you. After seeing dozens of apartments all over the central and northern suburbs, I fell for one in the very suburb my broker had advised me to go for on the first day of my quest. What can I say, he was right: it isn’t just the fact that in Bandra (West), no-one seemed to care whether I was a bachelor, a non-veg, or a Muslim; or even that I’m a five minute walk from the sea at Carter road in one direction, and leafy Pali Hill in the other. No, it’s the fact that in contrast to the scores of Dubai-style apartment buildings that seem to be cropping up all over the city, old Bandra has charm by the bucketloads – in its quiet side-streets, its fading (few remaining) Christian cottages and villas, in the crosses that one stumbles upon walking around – some with “J.N.R.J.” or even the odd “J.N.R.I.”, but others with greater fidelity to the Latin, hence “I.N.R.I.” – in the gulmohar tree outside my window that startled me red one morning, changing color from dull green virtually overnight and transforming my rather pedestrian bedroom view into something magical. The downside to this charm? A weeks-long hassle getting a cooking gas cylinder, and don’t even get me started on the ancient electrical and bathroom fixtures I need to replace. In the meantime, the place has become home: the gym is a 15 minute walk away,* and the books, posters, and computer I’d had shipped from New York (and without which the place was simply an apartment) arrived none the worse for wear.

*[A follow-up to my story about the free gym associated with the Powai guest-house? I thought you’d never ask. Suffice it to say, at the end of the torturous road I’d laid out in my last letter, and still some time away from moving to Bandra, I had my form, my documentation, but more importantly I had hope. I filled it out, until I got to the point where I needed the apartment owner’s signature. Undaunted, I took the form to work to hand in to the Admin department. And heard nothing for a couple of days, until a sheepish colleague from that department materialized in my office. The guest-house lease will be up in a couple of months, he told me. And? We were in the middle of tough negotiations with the landlord as far as the rent was concerned. I see. He lives in London. Of course. All of which could only mean one thing. Sir, I don’t think he’ll sign until we resolve the issue. Simple, really. It isn’t that I was beaten, it’s just that one cannot fight fate, and it was my fate to be denied access to the free gym at Hiranandani Gardens. I moved out shortly thereafter, and now pay for my work-outs. Moral of the story: the cheap stay flabby.

No, that’s lazy, I was right the first time: in the face of malignant fate, there is no moral. A month or two after I moved out, another expat, a new hire, arrived. When last heard, she was merrily using the Hiranandani gym.]

A Note on JHENDA (Marathi; 2010)

2011-05-21T10:37:00.006-04:00

For all the hype about director Avdhoot Gupte's thinly-disguised film on four young men caught up in the turmoil over the split in the Shiv Sena, with the party passing on from founding father Bal Thackeray to son Uddhav Thackeray, and the more charismatic nephew Raj Thackeray forming his own splinter Maharashtra Navnirman Sena ("MNS"); Jhenda is deeply disappointing. That is to say, disappointing in the way that so much of Maharashtrian politics is, and that so many Indian "political films" are: emptied of any charge against the political class but cynicism, and hence ostensibly drained of politicized content, the "political films" (Rajneeti and Satta come to mind from Bollywood) end up re-inscribing the narrative into precisely the sort of reinforcement that ideologies bent on effacing themselves qua ideologies (i.e. focused on presenting themselves as simply "natural" effects of "given" phenomena, such as a linguistic, ethnic, or religious identity) thrive upon.

To be honest, Jhenda doesn't even try very hard at effacing much. As with its Bollywood kin, its only charge against the politicians (more the characters standing in for MNS supremo Raj Thackeray and an establishment Congress-ish minister, than the Uddhav stand-in; although the film's Raj is clearly the charismatic center of the film) is opportunism and moral corruption. Men like the film's politicians have betrayed the ideals of a Marathi-centric politics, and of the Hindu rashtra Savarkar had envisioned. But those ideals themselves are never called into question. Indeed, the fact that they are accepted as givens; to the point where the viewer is supposed to empathize with the disgust of one of the film's protagonists when his boss Rajesh (the rebel politician) embraces a Muslim political leader (the latter himself as disgusting a caricature as can be imagined); is a vivid reminder of how deep the rot is in Maharashtrian politics. [Not to mention how total the impoverishment of any liberal sphere is, the ruling Congress/NCP combine seemingly content to play rent-a-state with major corporates. On some days, it seems the two Senas are the only major political parties to have hitches their stars to the state's aam aadmi, however narrowly he is defined.]

Bombay Letter

2011-03-17T15:32:00.012-04:00

A month out-of-date, but I re-produce an email I had sent friends and family three weeks after arriving in Mumbai (more missives to follow); on the bright side, they didn't get the photos (click on them for larger images):

"Just a general update: it’s been nearly three weeks since I landed in Mumbai [on January 27], and things have pretty much settled into a routine. The whole thing still feels a bit “provisional” because I haven’t found an apartment yet. I’ve been fairly assiduous about looking, and in a variety of areas, but the market is hot (read: rents are high) now, and more importantly it is premised on information arbitrage (e.g. one broker quoted me a rate twice as high as another for, coincidentally, the very same apartment!), not to mention other uniquely Indian issues (some buildings won’t rent to bachelors; others to Muslims; others to non-vegetarians (read: Maharashtrians or Muslims); others to non-Parsees; others to non-Muslims (no-one wants to stay in those areas anyway); others to nobody except for Gujaratis). I could avoid the whole issue by renting in the expat-friendly area I am currently in (Powai), but that’s kind of dull. Fashionable Bandra, with some really charming side-streets and lanes, is also ok on this front, although is probably pricier than South Bombay these days. Then there’s traffic: plenty of reasonably-priced apartments around, but if they’re that reasonable you can bet the commute will be murder.

But then, one spends the sort of weekend I did, and one is reminded why one came to the city in the first place: Saturday began with lunch at a colleague’s place in Borivali (way up in North Mumbai), near the national park; after an afternoon looking at a few apartments in the vicinity, took the train from Borivali to Mahim (Central Mumbai, on the western edge), walking from the train station to the Koli food festival. (The trains are much less crowded on the weekends, so if one takes [them] at the right time the rush is easily negotiable). The Kolis are a traditional fishing community, so this was the place to be for a seafood lover. The stalls represented Koli communities from just about every part of the city, and certainly added to the nautical ambience of the area (Mahim is on the water, and I could smell the sea when I got off the train; not unusual in Bombay, but welcome whenever it happens). The only eyebrow-raising moment: when I got to the festival, past a predominantly Muslim neighborhood and one of the city’s best known churches (St. Michael’s), I realized that it was sponsored and organized by the Shiv Sena-breakaway, the MNS. True to the MNS’ xenophobic but relatively non-communal ideology, there were a large number of burqas and beards (from what I could gather, Marathi-speaking Muslims) in the crowd (and many of the Koli are Christian), and all announcements and signs were in Marathi. The food was worth the commute though: my favorite fish the pomfret was to be found in abundance (including stuffed with green masala, a dish I’d never had before), but I also thought the bombil (Bombay Duck), the raavas, and the surmai were superb.

After dinner, there was nothing to do but to enjoy the breeze on the back of a friend’s bike through sea-side Bandra and into Juhu (both are Western “suburbs”, as areas not in South Bombay are referred to here, and immediately north of, and much posher than, Mahim) to a cinema showing the flavor of the month “Ye Saali Zindagi” (verdict: excellent, pungent dialogs, but all-in-all a mediocre film; Chitrangada Singh is smoking hot though). A 1AM rickshaw ride from Juhu back to Powai underscored how remarkably commutable the city would be with the sort of metro Delhi has: the journey took a mere 22 minutes at that time of the night (those few miles would take over two hours in peak traffic).

Sunday was just as, um, productive: went down to near the southern tip of Mumbai, to Kalaghoda for the last day of the annual arts festival. In general, South Mumbai is the best preserved, most gorgeous part of the city, combining the poshest of the posh with some of the most atmospheric areas where [some of] Bombay’s oldest and most rooted communities live (including various traditionally Parsi, Bohri, Khoja, and other Gujarati areas where outsiders can’t get in the building for love or money; for a superb representation of the old Muslim neighborhoods, and a meditation on the city as a whole, check out the recent art-house flick “Dhobi Ghaat”), and it doesn’t get much more posh here than Kalaghoda. The art installations were pretty mediocre though, except for a disturbing one on the Bhopal gas tragedy that consisted simply of large photographs of the interior of the abandoned Union Carbide plant, often overlaid on other similar, but not identical, photographs, leading to a somewhat disorienting and eerie effect. The absence of any people in the photos spoke volumes. Afterwards, I went to the Tata theater (overlooking the Marine Drive) for an English-language play called “Pune Highway”. The play was well-written and interesting, and the staging/seating were truly memorable: I was in the second row, and the lower, “closer” stage (than I am used to from the US, except in off- or off-off-type productions; certainly not in theaters this large) made for a thrilling experience.

Late at night my friend and I headed to the legendary Bade Miyan, who has a whole range of tikkas and kababs (but not, interestingly, mutton seekh kababs; he refuses to make those) but is best known for the chicken seekh kababs, the roomali roti, and most of all, mutton bheja fry. Each of those was phenomenal (although the high cholesterol in bheja means this cannot be a regular meal; indeed I think it’s the first time since 2004 that I’d had it); the chicken tikka and boti kababs were less so.

All in all, I’ve either bored the !@#$# out of you by now, or made you really hungry. I can’t wait to get my own place and settle into a better rhythm. Two things in particular have suffered: Proust-reading (patchy; but I think it’ll get more regular going forward) and the gym. The issue on the latter is that the [company] guest house [in Powai, where I'm staying in while I find a place] is associated with a free gym, but the number of days it takes to get the relevant form*/complete the paperwork (still not done; the signatures of two people utterly irrelevant to the gym remain) has meant that I haven’t worked out in three weeks. Hopefully it’ll be sorted out soon, but the real solution will be when I get a membership in a gym close to wherever I end up moving. Other banal routines have been worked out: I get a tiffin delivered to work ... my newspaper is the Indian Express (the Times of India is a celebrity-obsessed rag) for now (I’ll probably switch to The Hindu, which Abbaji [my grandfather] preferred to all others, with good reason).

Work? I was going to write about that too, but will save it for a different missive; I can only count on so much indulgence."

No words. Only pics.

2011-03-02T08:45:00.002-05:00

No new blogposts, but lots of new photos from the last month or so...

...not an excuse for not writing more, of course. Patience (all three of you who read this blog) -- the mojo is coming back.

Secrets: Musings on Sodom and Gomorrah

2011-01-31T13:05:00.003-05:00

The secret is the secret of Proust -- even for his homosexuals, the secret of their secret is not their homosexuality, but their homosexuality is the sign of their secret. Nor can the question of secrecy be resolved simply by avowal: the secret is simply that reality, that hidden truth that shadows everything we can see, taste, and touch, that haunts every party, every gathering, every encounter (even the most intimate ones), and particular secrets (this or that character's homosexuality, for instance) are merely symbols of that reality. Of the hidden nature of that reality.

For this reason, and even though it seems very far from Proust's intention, the Recherche seems of great relevance for us, in a political sense (especially in this season of Wikileaks). There is no great conspiracy underlying the political phenomena we see all around us; it is just that the surface of all politics seems to be inconsistent with the reality underlying that politics. Zunguzungu might say -- effectively did say in his piece on Assange -- that the maintenance of secrecy, the conduct of work-in-secret, has itself become the overriding work of governments. Proust doesn't overtly think about this aspect, of course (although, given the close linkage of "high society", homosexuality, the Dreyfus affair, and foreign diplomats in his novel, that is to say, given these recurring signs and motifs, that aren't so much coherently linked as associated the way colors might be, that evoke each other; is this aspect really as far from Proust's thought as might, at first blush, seem?), but foreshadows, represents, immerses the reader in, a world where everything is thus.

Irish Hunger Memorial, near Battery Park City (Manhattan)

2010-12-31T14:44:00.002-05:00

Sighted: The Man in the Podar Suit

2010-12-15T13:30:00.003-05:00

The possibility of this sort of random encounter is, to me, the most exciting aspect of the internet. [Not "exciting" in the sense of intellectually stimulating, oh no, but something far more immediate, that frission I feel when fingers lightly pass over my arm...]

Scattershot notes on KHELEIN HUM JEE JAAN SE (Hindi; 2010)

2010-12-07T09:49:00.002-05:00

I saw the film last night, and was quite disappointed. It certainly deserved a way way better box office fate than it has received (yet again I am appalled at an audience that not only prefers a Golmaal 3 -- that doesn't surprise me in itself -- but prefers it by a tenfold margin (if the box office grosses are any indication)!!!), and some scenes/sequences were definitely big-screen worthy (I liked the whole attack on the armory sequence quite a bit). And in general the second half is much better than the turgid first half. But all in all, this is an earnest, clunky, stagey film. Stated differently, Gowariker's earnestness and stageyness drags it down (I lost track of the number of times character 1 steps forward, recites his dialog; then character 2 does the same to recite his dialog, and so on -- are you fricking kidding me?!) in a way that was more "hidden" (under the costumes and sets) in Jodha Akbar. In the sparser Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Se, there is no place to hide...

As an Abhishek fan, I was most disappointed by the fact that it wasn't enough of an "Abhishek film" for me. That's my problem, not Gowariker's, I suppose, but this film doesn't get made without a star, and yet there isn't enough of the star here -- that is, the film ends up seeming curiously de-centered in the second-half, likely because of the director's desire to do justice to as many aspects of the Chittagong insurgency as possible (the same sort of problem bogged down J.P. Dutta's LoC as well), and at the expense of the drama inherent to a film centered around a star.

One caveat to my scorn for the public: at some level, this film isn't just old-school (to the point of quaintness) in its cinematic choices -- it marches to the beat of a drummer that is no longer plausible to many in the contemporary audience. I mean that the notion of Patriotic Freedom Fighters unaffected, un-humanized by anything like psychology, any remotely ordinary motive whatsoever, is JUST NOT CREDIBLE (the only exception is the initial impetus toward the movement for several teenagers, who are aggrieved because their local football ground has been taken over by the military; but even this is not dwelt upon after a few minutes, when it could have been poignantly re-visited at film's end: weren't the children exploited by the adults in the movement? Was a football ground worth dying for?). This isn't about "heros" per se, it is that, except in Gowariker's world, the notion of heroism is inflected differently in 2010 than in 1953. In other words, the real Chittagong rebels were nationalist heros, brave men and women, etc. -- their counterparts in this film seem drawn from the pages of school textbooks. Gowariker claims his film is based on a true story, but it is no less a fable than the Asterix-inspired Lagaan. But that film was not only rescued but legitimized by its unabashed comic book-air; Jodha Akbar too was a fable (Gowariker revealingly cited the Amar Chitra Katha comics as an inspiration in one interview), but the relatively recent milieu of the nationalist movement cannot survive this sort of treatment...Right or wrong, one expects "authenticity" from an evocation of 1930, perhaps because we think (or delude ourselves) that we would more surely spot a false note than we would where a film on the Mauryan emperor Asoka is concerned.

The Pleasures of Work: A Note on UNSTOPPABLE (English; 2010)

2010-11-16T10:38:00.004-05:00

One of the pleasures of Hollywood films for me used to be work. Specifically, the depiction of labor in this or that industry as a powerful and understated way of drawing the viewer into the film’s world, of constructing both that world’s plausibility as well as its claustrophobia, the sense that this might be the only world there is. Somewhere along the way, Hollywood abandoned this aspect of movie-making to television where, at its best, series like “The Wire” preserve the old-fashioned sense that density of detail matters (such density is absent in a “Boardwalk Empire” or (returning to cinema) in “Guru”, and the absence is deeply felt), and separates an experience of the real from a canter through a film set. But television series have the luxury of time, and I find myself admiring the successful compression of cinema that much more. Of late, I’ve had to content myself with scraps, as movies that look and feel like video games alternate with “thrillers” where there is no need for craft or thrill, simply sensation (How is Thief X going to open this safe/get inside this dream? Why, by deploying his never-seen-outside-this-film gizmo known as the Safe Opener/Dream Decoder, moron!).

Unstoppable, people, is old-school, and is riveting. The plot is not even a one-liner – runaway train needs to be stopped, and only our heroes, played by Denzel Washington and Chris Pine, are up to the job – but it doesn’t matter. In its complete plausibility (no alien invasion here), in the indulgent richness of detail director Tony Scott builds into his representation of the world of freight trains and the struggling rust belt towns they are inextricably tied to, in its very modesty, the film packs quite a punch. (Not to mention that there are endless shots of trains, goddammit! From The Railway Children in 5th-grade through far too much time spent watching Mani Rathnam’s films, through too many vacation shots of this or that train or station, no prizes for guessing my favorite mode of transport. And given Washington’s lead roles in both Unstoppable and The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, it’s clear who Hollywood’s patron saint of trains is.) Is it sentimental in its valorization of the “blue collar” worker? Sure – but I’ll take that over the valorization of the video game-warrior any day. In a nutshell, if you thought From Paris with Love or Wanted were good films, do yourself a favor and skip this; but if you find the notion of guys fiddling with switches, peering under carriages, and bandying about railway-jargon thrilling (not just because it’s about trains, but because it’s jargon), you won’t be watching a better action/adventure film this year.

Outlook Column: Dangerous Pedestal

2010-11-09T08:52:00.001-05:00

New column on Outlook's website, in the wake of the Adarsh Society scandal.

A (rushed) note on garbage and ENTHIRAN (Tamil; 2010)

2010-10-15T10:14:00.028-04:00

The detritus of modern life -- specifically the detritus of a specific kind of consumer culture -- litters the language of most Shankar films, especially the songs. Unlike in most other Tamil songs, lovers in Shankar's films croon about cell phones and digital tunes (Indiyan (1996)); Coke, ice-cream, and following a Friday temple-visit with a Saturday disco-jaunt and a Sunday screening of "Titanic" (Mudhalvan (1999)); cappucino (Anniyan (2005))-- and don't even get me started on Boys (2003). The effect can come across as wannabe, or reminiscent of a time capsule (and hence fated to seem dated in a few years), but it would be a mistake to dismiss it as nothing more than silliness: Shankar is more self-aware than any other contemporary ringmaster of glitzy, cheesy spectacles, and certainly more than he is given credit for. It is fitting, then, that one of Enthiran's most important scenes -- the discovery of the discarded "Robo" by baddie Dr. Bhora (Danny Denzongpa) -- occurs at a vast garbage dump. [The site hearkens simultaneously to Wall-E, "new" Tamil cinema, and the excavation site in the Shankar-esque Citizen (2001), but retains a vibe that is all Shankar (indeed, the setting is prefigured in Anniyan).] Here (finally, I might add) the cue is visual (not, as is far too often the case in other Shankar-films, verbal), and seamlessly integrated with the film's theme, powerfully driving home a point about our own callousness, and the dispensability of, not just the things we make, but the other. Scientist Vaseegaran has created an android-robot out of what can only be described as monstrous vanity: the machine looks like him, is named after the scientist's childhood nickname ("Chitti"), and exists to serve him. When Chitti's absence of human feeling presents a roadblock in Vaseegaran's attempts to get official sanction for his project, he thoughtlessly decides to make more of a man out of his machine by imbuing Chitti with human feelings (pride is fittingly the first to surface) -- only to discard him when Chitti falls head over heels in love with Vaseegaran's girlfriend Sana (Aishwariya Rai, looking every bit the sort of woman who justifies the use of "hapless" before "lover"; the "Kiliminjaro" song almost made me weep; the video's problem? It ended). The garbage dump is an ideal place for a re-birth such as Chitti's: at the film's outset, he was created by Vaseegaran, but amidst all of humanity's other refuse, Chitti re-assembles himself, a touching sign that he is human enough to engage in the self-fashioning denied other animals; and that we too do not re-make ourselves out of nothing, dependent on the bits and pieces bequeathed us.

There's a second reason why the sequence at the garbage dump is the lodestar of this wacky film that, if it has a flaw, it is that it struggles to contain all the zest it teems with. Chitti re-assembling himself parallels his dismantling of himself in the film's penultimate sequence, and by means of the latter, Shankar places the "Robo" far ahead of the people he shares the film with, who have shown themselves singularly incapable of self-sacrifice. Simultaneously, the director gets to pay tribute to Rajni's "Thalaivar" aura. Given that the superstar plays all three of the film's male protagonists -- Vaseegaran, Chitti, and the villainous Chitti -- the message is clear: the super-Rajni who can do anything is created by Rajni (creates himself, as the sequence at the garbage dump makes clear), and to the extent Rajni loses (whether in love or in combat), it can only be to -- you guessed it -- Rajni. Rajni is both hero and villain, and hence this film's Alpha and Omega. (He is also remarkably bad-ass as the villainous Chitti. There's simply no other way to phrase this: Rajni is the best, most fun baddie in years, and easily steals the show from the more staid Rajnis who have preceded him. It also helps that Shankar's action sequences are his most fun ever, underscoring that all the SFX in the world -- such as far too many Hollywood films' -- cannot make up for a lack of imagination.) Rajni also gets to survive his own de-construction, that is to say he -- or pieces of him -- get(s) to be there even after he's no longer there (watch the film, you'll see what I mean). Detritus was never this much fun -- and in linking debris to the quest for identity, desire, and what it means to be human; as well as in his presentation of the star who is the film, it's clear Shankar has meaning on his mind. The meaning that only excavation and archaeology can provide to garbage.

New York, with Fall approaching...

2010-10-11T12:41:00.004-04:00

Who says the city never sleeps? Last night, walking home past 1AM to East Harlem from 113th Street and Frederick Douglas Boulevard, I went block after block with barely anyone in sight save the odd amorous couples on the benches on Central Park North, and a couple of people sauntering in the opposite direction. Once past the park, I saw no-one at all until 106th Street and 3rd Avenue. No one at all. I felt by myself in the city, but not all alone: the weight of all the people behind windows was with me.

The city does sleep, at least in the early hours of Monday morning when the buses have stopped running and I am awake to cross from West to East Harlem, past the gorgeous, melancholy lights (both in Central Park and outside, white until I got to 5th Avenue, at which point they all turned yellow), the shadows, the streets that seem so clean after dark. And I was entranced to watch it asleep.

Reflections on Masala Cinema and DABANGG (Hindi; 2010)

2010-09-11T19:48:00.022-04:00

In recent times, Bollywood has tried to shake off some of the industry's contemporary distaste for its masala roots, with periodic salvos in the form of films like Bunty aur Babli (2005), Jhoom Barabar Jhoom (2007), Tashan (2008), and Chandni Chowk to China (2009). Looking back, it is not difficult to see why all of the films named (barring the first) failed miserably at the box office. Although I liked more than one of these, their attempt to resurrect masala cinema itself testified to the corpse in our midst: these films typically began with the premise that there was something drastically wrong with, not just masala films as the tradition degenerated over the course of the 1980s and 1990s into cliched set-pieces and moldiness; but the masala mode itself. That is, even the directors who purported to love the old masala cinema saw that way of approaching films -- rooted in the mythic; and other to both the neo-realist rhythms of Hollywood-inspired fare as well as the greeting card cheesiness of the NRI romances, that had swept all before them in the Hindi film industry from the late 1990s-onward -- as irremediably past. The specter of masala, it seemed, could only be summoned if the medium was funny, held at a distance by irony, or rendered homage to by spoof. Films like Lagaan (2001), seeking to incarnate masala in a more urbane and globalizable, yet also perhaps more bland, garb, promised new paths, but the film was too good for its own good: the message the industry seems to have taken to heart was that serious masala could work only if the film were as good as Lagaan. Which did wonders for the reputation and career of the film's leading man, Aamir Khan, but made an aberration of the film itself (an effect intensified by Khan's subsequent career trajectory, that has led far too many to equate the "different film" as one only Aamir could pull off, and hence as one that need not be emulated by others). In retrospect, it was a different Aamir Khan film, a far more embarrassing one for the industry's multiplexie filmmakers and audiences, that sounded the bugle: Fanaa (2006) was a mediocre film, but above all else, was a throwback of a film, hearkening to the cinema of Rajendra Kumar and even Rajesh Khanna, with only the flimsy patina of Kashmir militancy to clue the audience in that this was supposed to be Our Own Time. The film was a smash success, and Aamir had his formula (i.e. alternate more "serious" fare with "massy" cinema hearkening to Bollywood's past). The actor followed up the middle-brow (and thoroughly multiplex) Taare Zameen Par (2007) with the pan-North Indian smash-hit Ghajini (2008). While too early to say for sure, the latter's eye-popping box-office receipts finally seem to have made the truth impossible to deny: that films like the sort that had become synonymous with Yashraj and Dharma productions were not simply motivated by commercial considerations but by ideological ones. Audiences excluded from the new Bollywood paradigm were not simply "backward" folk who would, in time, see the light, but were simply not going to the cinemas often enough. In short, a film like Ghajini, by amassing crores and crores beyond what even the biggest Yashraj and Dharma films had managed to earn in the domestic market, irrefutably demonstrated that contemporary Bollywood was very far from maximizing audience share -- that millions of fans just did not care for candyfloss films set in NRIstan for no good reason, that paraded brand names and product placements with breathtaking vulgarity, making the display of consumption part of their drama. That millions of fans, in short, wanted a more authentic cinema, or at least wanted more of it than they had been getting.

Did I just say "wanted"? Salman Khan's 2009 blockbuster of the same name was an unabashed celebration of the masala mode, in both its thrilling and its ridiculous (even unsavory) aspects. No matter. Its authenticity, its lack of pretention, made for a successful box office run for a film that many hadn't expected to do much. Much of the credit had to go to the leading man of Wanted: Salman Khan's off-screen bad boy air, combined with a refusal to bullshit about his career or the industry (a disease with most of his colleagues), and a self-deprecating twinkle that winked to the audience "you think I don't get this is ridiculous?!" while simultaneously standing by the legitimacy of the film, made for an irresistible combination (it certainly got me to the cinema for a Salman Khan film, a phenomenon much rarer than a leap year). But so what? From a different perspective, both Ghajini and Wanted testified to the paucity of Bollywood masala: both films were remakes of Tamil and Telugu blockbusters; and both were directed by successful directors from Southern film industries. Both films, that is, were barely products of Bollywood at all.

That didn't make them any easier to ignore, but it did raise questions in my mind as to whether I could hope for a genuine Bolly-filmmaker -- that is to say one not simply seeking to translate a successful Southern film -- to follow in their wake. Salman Khan, apparently, was also paying attention to the fate ofGhajini and Wanted, as was Abhinav Kashyap, brother of enfant terrible -- and dean of a (yet another!) new, "indie-ishtyle" Bollywood that is neither masala nor Hollywood-lite nor Hallmark-drenched -- Anurag Kashyap. The result is Dabangg -- for me, a Sallu film in the theaters for a second consecutive year (this time with a better title: the word means brave, fearless, perhaps even reckless, and -- for all these reasons -- manly, the sort of title the late Feroze Khan would have approved of. None of this sissy Love Aaj Kal stuff for him). Not for nothing is it Eid ka chand.

Abhinav Kashyap attempts to answer my questions. Acting like it's 1983 won't do, but neither will spoofing all the way to a gag-fest -- leaving everything else aside, masala-as-slapfest just isn't funny. Nor does the tongue in cheek cleverness, or rather, the cinematic presentation of cleverness (a la Bluffmaster!), sit comfortably with a mode the very lifeblood of which is "as if": masala cinema takes the absolute significance of the story and characters that it is presenting for granted, as if nothing mattered more. What's left, then? In a word, the world of Robert Rodriguez (something like Desperado), the exaggerated gesturality of which, combined with the complete seriousness of purpose, makes clear that this world must be taken seriously, even if it seems a bit like kabuki, sending us missives in a language that is no longer completely retrievable, evoking a mode that can only be viewed through a screen. Kashyap must walk a tightrope: self-consciousness -- the curse of recent attempts to resurrect masala, and unknown to the Southern remakes -- cannot simply be wished (or willed) away, but too much of an emphasis on mode can itself betray that one is at a wake, with the films focusing almost exclusively on the hero's gesturality, to the exclusion of everything else (to the extent Tamil and Telugu masala cinema has itself fallen into a rut, it is this one). To the extent Kashyap has to come down on one side, he does so on the latter, but not before maintaining his balance for longer than most others on this terrain. Dabangg, in short, is good fun: in an old-school way, it takes its narrative seriously, evoking the traditional tropes of mother, paternity, and dispossession; while its representation of a cheerfully corrupt, amoral hero, looking out above all else for himself, is of more modern vintage. Bridging the gap between the two, the one who holds it all up, is Salman Khan, never more charismatic than he is here, and whose Lalgunj Inspector Chulbul Pandey is cleverly drawn by Kashyap to give full rein to the audience's skepticism -- if we succumb to this film's charms, Pandey's own eccentric antics will stand for and sum up everything that can't be happening on screen. Leaving us to imbibe the rest of the film as is, freed as it were. Sure, we can never feel for Chulbul Pandey -- that isn't his function. Instead, Salman is asked to function as a medium for the ghosts of a certain kind of hero; by making the character's --and the actor's -- oddity explicit, Kashyap enables us to stop asking the question.

If the above makes Dabangg, sound like a somewhat bloodless, even abstract, film, despite the star at its core, that is my intention. For, in a nutshell, the film, while quite enjoyable and never less than engaging, and certainly no film that I can think of has (with the possible exception of Saawariya) showcased Salman Khan better; lacks something. Perhaps it is what desi audiences call an "emotional connection" with the film. Perhaps it is simply that the film comes across as an interesting concept given form, rather than a distinctive vision or a compelling story. Don't get me wrong, I laud the concept -- the film's relentless embrace of a dusty U.P. milieu, of a hero who isn't (a shocker in these Bollytimes) a gazillionaire, and of Indian popular cinema's heritage -- but the film needed more. Such as, oh, some kind of moral core: the film simply has none; for all the promos announcing Dabangg's protagonist as "Robin Hood Panday", there is precious little of that in the film. What there is oodles of is a casual attitude toward police brutality, corruption, encounter deaths, and even the use of false arrests as an excuse to get Inspector Panday's lady-love to the police station. All of these can be material for humor -- of the bleak, not guffawing, sort, even if the last-named of these moments provides guilty consolation by segueing into an energetic "Hum Ka Peeni Hai" song that is one of the film's highlights.

To recap: Chulbul Panday grows up a second-class member of his step-father's household, and into the sort of cop who will fight criminals only so he can steal their money. This naturally runs this descendant of Bachchan's Shahenshah-cop afoul of Lalgunj's politicians, specifically Chedi Singh (Sonu Sood), the guy behind at least some of the gangsters. Along the way to a reckoning with Chedi Singh, Panday meets and falls for potter Rajo (Sonakshi Sinha), reconciles with his estranged family, faces tragedy, and, by film's end, triumphs. And becomes the only man ever to hook his shades on the back of his collar.

The best of the rest of the cast certainly deserved better: Sonakshi Sinha's Rajo isn't asked to do much, but we see glimpses of something interesting in her, a flash of quiet anger and resentment here, a wary look there, that leads us to want more. With the exception of a hilarious moment with Chulbul Pandey on her wedding night (the only gender-bending moment in a rather sexist film), we are disappointed, as Sinha is barely present as the film wears on. Not to mention that her Indian look, squarely at odds with the sort of "size zero"-blandness that seems to be par for the course in contemporary Hindi cinema, was easy on the eyes. Sonu Sood's villainous Chedi Singh suffers from the opposite problem, appearing at the beginning and towards the end, but barely present for much of the film's middle as it takes a detour toward resolving Chulbul's conflicts with his brother Maakhan (Arbaaz Khan) and stepfather Pandayji (Vinod Khanna). The film could have done with more of him, and more villainy (less simpering) from him.

The music was better than I expected: the title song "Dabangg" is pungent, despite the "Omkara" hangover, and the very fact that Sajid-Wajid were able to rescue the utterly conventional "Tere Mast Mast Do Nain" from staleness is reason enough to be impressed (not to mention the zany video). Malaika Arora-Khan's item number "Munni Badnaam Hui" was popular leading up to the film's release, and certainly features a fun video (wherein, it must be said, Sonu Sood is the scene stealer), but the song suffers from poor placement in the film, diluting its impact. There was another song, set in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, but it was so generic I can't for the life of me remember its name.

I can remember the action sequences, though, but not because they were memorable: there are too many sequences marred by poor SFX and close-ups (i.e., close-ups designed to mask the inadequacy of the SFX), a grave sin in a film with this title, and it is hard to square these with the verve shown by Kashyap at several other points during the film. This is not, visually speaking, a pedestrian film (even if it comes most alive during the various bazaar sequences), making the inadequacy of the action scenes mystifying.

Should you see it? That depends on what you want: if, like me, you've been casting about for signs of a disturbance in the reigning cultural hegemony within Bollywood, Dabangg might be one of the clearest signs yet that the prospects for greater diversity aren't dead. And, despite the film's shortcomings, that will thrill you, as it did me, and you won't regret watching it. But even if you aren't sympathetic to this kind of cinema, it still might be worth checking out. Along the way, you will certainly get glimpses of the sorts of people who have been marginalized for years in Bollywood's Big Films. Sure, none of this might matter to you -- perhaps you prefer your dish bland, or laced with saccharine -- but I'm betting most have enough of a weakness for spice, and Dabangg is light enough and Salman Khan certainly funny enough, that they probably won't regret watching it.

On Terrorism & Culture (A Response to Manan Ahmed's Essay)

2010-09-03T10:29:00.008-04:00

An interesting piece by Manan Ahmed in The National. [UPDATED 9/3/10: Lapata's piece HERE predates Ahmed's, and should also be kept in mind for my response below.]

A rambling response:

I found this to be a superb piece, as well as personally useful inasmuch as it provided a pathway into Daisy Rockwell's work that had hitherto been denied to me (I had always found her images compelling, but inaccessible and "closed" to me, and Ahmed's reading was thus suggestive and welcome). No reader of this blog will be surprised to read that I found Ahmed's invocation of Bollywood (and its contrast with American discourses on terrorism) useful -- it would be too bureaucratic, too much like the 9/11 Commission, to gauge imaginative work in terms of its utility (especially given that the Bollywood films co-exist with horrific state abuses, within or without the paradigm of counter-terrorism operations), but, nevertheless, the tradition of imagining the terrorist as borne from the state's own excesses (Dil Se is the best, by far; Fiza and Dhoka are crappily part of the same vein) is valuable work. More importantly, eschewing the tendency to imagine the terrorist as completely other, which Ahmed reads American discourses as doing, is ethical work, and when harnessed to the extraordinary appeal of the mass stars (Hrithik Roshan, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, and so on), Bollywood representations of the terrorist open up a space where empathy (not so much for the terrorist as for the people caught up in the vice-like grip of conflict, suspicion, and cruelty; from among whom the ranks of terrorists might be drawn) might be imagined.

For Ahmed, then, America imagines the terrorist as other, whereas Bollywood can present a sympathetic portrayal -- but is this so only if the terrorist is not completely other? i.e., Where the terrorist is portrayed as completely other, are Indian representations no different in kind than American ones, and might this account for why Bollywood portrayals of Pakistani or Afghani terrorists seem seem completely "off"? (For instance, even in the otherwise fantastic Black Friday, not to speak of more mediocre fare like Deewar - Let's Bring Our Heroes Home, one is struck by how un-recognizable Pakistan is, almost as if Umberto Eco's Baudolino were telling the tale.) Perhaps the Bollywood model simply re-inscribes empathy in the nationalistic framework: we are asked to sympathize, and by the end of the film, we are asked to affirm the best that is in India, including the very sympathy the film elicits from us for our (misguided) own. But not universally (the film cited by Ahmed -- Dil Se -- is a good, if atypical, example), and perhaps, occasionally, there is sympathy for others as well: for instance, in Sarfarosh, it is the "muhajir" ISI agent played by Naseeruddin Shah who articulates the pain of Partition most frankly (although, there can be little doubt that the one-time countryman, the Pakistani, especially the "muhajir" with roots in areas that form part of even post-1947 India, is not an "other" in the same way that, e.g., the trans-national jihadi of Anil Sharma's The Hero is). Such imaginative sympathy, borne of liberal nationalism, might well be problematic, but I agree with Ahmed's implication that it remains a more self-aware and nuanced position than the civilizational/apocalyptic tone of struggle we have all become familiar with in post-9/11 American culture. Ahmed does well to make that last word the focus of his piece: one can only have realistic (that is to say banal) expectations from states and bureaucracies -- the real failure of imagination is occurring elsewhere.

A Note on INCEPTION (English; 2010)

2010-08-28T22:43:00.002-04:00

I saw Inception earlier tonight, and was more impressed than spellbound by this tale of espionage and loss set in the dreams of its protagonists. For all the talk and representations of dreams in the film,what was missing from every instance of a dream here was what Freud would have called "the uncanny," that strangeness that is the very texture of a dream . In Inception, every aspect of the dreams can be accounted for, leading to an effect more akin to that of a puzzle, or a Rubik's Cube. Or, most obviously, of a video game: the compartmentalized layers of the dreams in Inception are the products of a post-electronic gaming era, and have little to do with the imaginative, dense, mysterious tapestries seen only in half-light, conjured up for me by the word "dream." As a result, the film, while always gripping, felt more than a little impoverished, missing that touch of madness that suffused the last DiCaprio film, Shutter Island.

A discussion on ISHQIYA (Hindi; 2010)

2010-08-03T13:37:00.001-04:00

A piece on Chapati Mystery by Basanti, and my responses on, Ishqiya.

Earlier note on the film HERE.

BOOK REVIEW: "My Life With The Taliban" by Abdul Salaam Zaeef

2010-08-02T10:33:00.003-04:00

The Asian Age commissioned this review (I was told to keep it to under a thousand words).

On the Star's Gesture...

2010-07-27T12:07:00.003-04:00

A youtube clip of Rajnikanth's iconic cigarette toss/move (Hindi film viewers probably know this only in its elaborate form from Giraftaar (begin watching at the 1:43 mark here); followed by Satyam's comment in the context of what Shankar has made/is making of Rajni, led to the following musings:

"…and the scene illustrates the nature, and hence the limits, of gesture. That is, the gesture — which, unlike the pose, is purely itself; that is, it expresses personality, unlike the pose, which seeks to express someone else’s personality and is merely a kind of imitation — operates at the level of “as if.” We are charmed by the gesture inasmuch as it is able to be enacted as if no one were watching. This is of course not true — on film, by definition someone is watching — but for the spell onscreen to be compelling the performer must be able to enact it as if it were true. (The becomes less and less true as the gesture is transformed into the star's stock move, and, as in the scene from Giraftaar, filmmakers will often try to disguise the staleness by rendering it ever more elaborate.) This scene from Ninaithaale Inikkum (a film I haven’t seen, by the way) demonstrates that even the most gestural of stars, Rajnikanth (in the sense that no other star seems so conflatable with his gestures), is undone if the illusion is undone. The “as if” element cannot be present, because, in this scene, people are literally watching him. Also, the purity of the gesture is explicitly compromised, because, instead of existing in and of itself as it does at the beginning of the scene, the cigarette trick is impressed into the service of a goal: winning the car. The gesture, in short, is undone, and all pleasure and delight drained from it, when it is transformed into a task."

I'm falling in love with a stranger...(actually, did so back in 1975)

2010-07-24T11:12:00.003-04:00

I just love this song (the scene from the film is here)...it just grooves...hadn't thought about it in years... in fact the lyrics mimic (anticipate?) the homo-erotic -- or at least erotic -- investment of the audience in Amitabh...he is the stranger we are falling in love with. That is, his outsider-status, his strangeness, is why we fall in love with him (very different to why "we" might have fallen in love with Rajesh Khanna, SRK, or Rajendra Kumar -- those were loved because they were familiar). When Amitabh ceases to be strange, when he becomes familiar, in the way a kindly old uncle is, he continues to be held in great esteem and affection, and is perhaps even loved, but simultaneously one scorns him, loathing the betrayal...

[Related discussion at Satyamshot here.]

Lapata on Daniyal Mueenuddin (via Chapati Mystery)

2010-07-24T02:48:00.002-04:00

A great post by lapata on Daniyal Mueenuddin, Manto, Pakistani (as opposed to Indian) fiction, and representations of women. Check the comments thread out; one of my responses is pasted below:

"A superb post, one of the best on this blog in recent times. Since Dalrymple and others (I remember Amit Chaudhuri wrote a lengthy essay in the last year or so that touched upon the difference between Indian and Pakistani writing (the complete piece is not available online; here's a link to the abstract); more specifically, it was in large part about what he felt was the desiccation of Indian art — classical music was exhibit A — by state patronage; even the Indian novel-in-English was thoroughly implicated in the Indian national project on Chaudhuri’s reading, and thus condemned to a bland liberalism (unlike Dalrymple and Mishra, then, Chaudhuri’s criticism is not based on the writer’s “inauthenticity” as on the fact that his/her artistic vision is, perhaps despite himself/herself, compromised by the Nehruvian project, pursuant to which illiberalism becomes a kind of cardinal sin)) have used Daniyal Mueenuddin as a kind of representative of “Pakistaniness”, it is a troubling omission on Dalrymple’s part that he does not acknowledge or recognize that Mueenuddin’s stories could be said to reflect the almost untouchable privilege of the z– “farm manager.” In fact, lapata’s post is the only thing on him that I have read that seems to raise questions based on Mueenuddin’s position. Not that that position prevents one from creating great art, but lapata hones in on the fact that it is a particular kind of art — no less particular than the sort of art a well-heeled urban person, whether in Pakistan or India (see the novels of Mohsin Hamid; Kamila Shamsie; and Uzma Aslam Khan) might be said to write. One can certainly say that one kind of writing is less bland, less expected, less common to English-language readers — but I must confess I am a bit uncomfortable with the idea that the latter kind of writing incarnates a “truth” about Pakistan whereas those others don’t (about pakistan or india). i.e. Mueenuddin can be considered a very good/great writer without the burden that the “third world” writer always seems to have, namely the obligation to be authentic. [Not exactly sure why, but writing this comment reminded of a funny quote from Foucault's "History of Sexuality" (Vol. 1), where he says something to the effect that women once upon a time struggled for the right to have an orgasm, and now are condemned to live under the obligation to have one.]"

While searching for a link to the Chaudhuri piece, I found a second one by him that touches upon some of these issues.

A CM thread on Indian history...

2010-07-17T15:08:00.002-04:00

I haven't had a blog post of late, but I have been busy commenting on a discussion thread at Chapati Mystery...

My Paul-the-Octopus Moment (in Dubai)

2010-07-10T16:54:00.003-04:00

I leave New York for a week and the Yankees win seven straight. Maybe I need to stay in Dubai...

A Note on RAAVANAN (Tamil; 2010)

2010-06-23T08:18:00.017-04:00

A post-script to my review of Raavan, in light of last night's trip to New Jersey to watch Raavanan (the Tamil half of this bi-lingual):

The dialogues in the Tamil version are the biggest surprise -- and offer the most intriguing glimpse into director Mani Rathnam's vision. Several dialogues offering glimpses of the "backstory" are absent in the Hindi version, ranging from details (Veeraiya's brother Singarasan (Prabhu) suggesting that since Ragini's 14-hour absence has driven husband Dev (Prithviraj) to distraction, a 14-day absence might be even better; Hemanth's punishment seems more clearly spelled out in the Tamil version, replete with a eunuch who appears when Ragini (Aishwariya Rai) tries to free him (in Hindi the analogous figure is Veera's brother Mangal; and when Veeraiya (Vikram) says his jealousy of Ragini's husband makes him feel all-powerful, the Tamil version makes clear this is so because this is the one emotion her husband does not feel (he is wrong)); to political subtext ("Are your girls flowers, and ours gravel?", one song asks, foreshadowing the trauma at the core of Veeraiya's revenge; although, all references to "Delhi" are absent from the Tamil lyrics); to characterization (Ragini knows her husband is an "encounter specialist", underscoring her own complicity). The cumulative effect is of a more explained, and hence more explicable, darkness, a world that -- despite the geographic displacements of locale -- seems more at home in the history of Tamil cinema than in the world of myth where the Hindi Raavan takes place. The Tamil version is, in short, a shade more worldly, more political than the Hindi film; the latter is a shade more mysterious, with meaning vouchsafed more by glimpses than piquant dialogue.

Two differences redound entirely to the Tamil version's advantage however: almost from the very outset, the dialog has a sexual subtext, underscoring the real core of Dev's anxiety at his wife's abduction. "Not all women," Gnanapraksh (Kartik, the "Hanuman" of this film) uneasily says when a villager tells Dev that women love Veeraiya. The Hindi Dev tortures Veera's brother-in-law because he's a brutal, violent character; the Tamil Dev does so because he thinks Veeraiya is sending him a message by tying up the young man in Ragini's clothes (in both versions, the man infiltrates Veera's/Veeraiya's sister's house dressed in drag). By cutting off this man's arm, the Raavan of this epic signals that he can unman Ram. The difference is one of nuance rather than kind, but manifests a fraught, carnal, current that is perhaps too obscure in the Hindi version.

Second, there are Vairamuthu's lyrics. Even filtered through sub-titles, the master's simple, powerful words are better suited to the action on-screen. For insance, when Ragini first picks up a weapon to try and kill her abductor, instead of the wonderful but somewhat incongrous "Ranjha Ranjha" lyrics (with their provenance in the work of the Sufi master Bulleh Shah) testifying to a Heer who has so subsumed her identity in her lover Ranjha that she can only go by his name, the Tamil version of the song asks whether she now belongs to the forest, or is fated to vanish like an illusion or even dream ("maya"). Rahman's haunting vocals at film's end croon not about the loss of passage, but about a loss that is also a promise to return.

The above notwithstanding, the two versions are so close the difference is most manifest in the cast, anchored around the female constants of Aishwariya Rai's Ragini and Priyamani's Jamuniya (Hindi)/Vennila (Tamil). Among the supporting cast, Karthik's Hanuman is markedly better than Govinda's in wit, timing, and humor -- but looks a bit too well for a man stuck for the last 28 years in a dead-end job as forest officer, and liberal with the booze to boot. As the bandit's brother, Prabhu isn't bad, but his physicality betrays the role: he is, to put it bluntly, more Jell-O than brigand, his wobbles speaking a language all their own. Prithviraj's Dev does not offer the foil to "Raavan" that Vikram did in the Hindi version, although there is something to be said for his restless creepiness. It's just as well the Tamil film (unlike the Hindi version)announces that his marriage to Ragini was arranged -- it's hard to imagine her choosing him in the first instance (an intuition that might add to Dev's anxiety).

Ultimately, of course, the film rises or falls with the man at the eye of the storm. On this terrain, playing this sort of character, it is perhaps impossible for Vikram to disappoint. He nevertheless manages to surprise by incarnating a tortured soul who seems at once driven and world-weary. Abhishek Bachchan's Veera was stranger, as is more appropriate for the stuff of myth; but Vikram's older Veeraiya has seen more, has endured more. And for me was more convincing in love; or rather, Veeraiya's love is an affliction; Veera's is a sentiment. With respect to their physicalitly, Rathnam plays with both actors with great precision: In the Hindi version, Abhishek's greater height, framed against the cliffs and drops, is highlighted to great effect (Vikram does not have the same advantage, most noticeably when he is framed against the sun in the abduction scene; in his first encounter with Ragini atop a cliff; and when he turns towards her at the end). On the other hand, Vikram's greater brawn, his sheer breadth, means Rathnam has him crouch quite a bit more than his Hindi counterpart. Veeraiya is literally closer to the earth than Veera is, one might even say his distinguishing element is earth as opposed to sky (fire and water are common to both). More crucially, Vikram's frame renders him the more immediate presence in the character's close-ups with Ragini, and whatever one's preference, he is undeniably the more carnal presence. One can almost smell the sweat.

While the Tamil version, and its central performance, are etched a shade more vividly in my viewing experience, choosing between these gems is not a dilemma one needs to face: both films make for essential viewings, and represent different refractions of Rathnam's vision. Commercial Hindi/Tamil cinema does not get much better.

RAAVAN (Hindi; 2010)

2010-06-19T00:44:00.043-04:00

It doesn't begin at the beginning, but, like a Greek epic, in the thick of things, by way of a jumble of images, from a serene Beera (Abhishek Bachchan) atop a cliff to policemen facing a road-block, to lust and ambush at a village fair, leading to a shocking image of men being burned alive, to, of course, to Ragini (Aishwariya Rai) in a boat, under threat from a larger vessel manned by Beera -- framed against the sun, more silhouette than man. The cycle begins with Beera, and ends with him, and involves his contact with three of the traditional elements: earth, air, and water. As for the fourth -- fire -- that is Beera himself, as he himself suggests later on in the film when he is consumed and confused by his desire for Ragini. The succession of images, colors, and characters is determinedly non-linear: we all know the Ramayana, and so we know what must happen here, but the order (or lack thereof) unsettles our expectations. After five or more minutes of ravishment, its compression unequalled by any other sequence in director Mani Rathnam's illustrious career (just about every principal theme is introduced in this overture, that must surely rank among Hindi cinema's most memorable), the camera finds itself below the surface of the water, gazing up at the two boats nearing each other. At the moment of collision, debris (or is it blood?) drips onto the now black screen, as backdrop to the word "Raavan", even as A.R. Rahman's addictive "Beera" song navigates the darkness, illuminated only by print-like images of the title character.

Those first few minutes are worth the price of admission. The concision extends on either side of the titles: what has gone before has introduced us to Beera and Ragini; immediately after, we encounter the proud Dev (Vikram), and Sanjeevani (Govinda), a drunk forest-officer comically showing us he is the Hanuman of this tale. The opening frames certainly set the tone for what is to follow, a visual feast even Rathnam's and cinematographer Santosh Sivan's careers have not fully prepared us for. The two have long been associated with striking imagery, and indeed, as Baradwaj Rangan demonstrates in his insightful review, many images in the film are drawn from Rathnam's own oeuvre. When Rathnam and Sivan are at their best, however, as in the opening portions of the masterpiece Iruvar (1997) or the singular Dil Se (1998), the experience of watching their work does not so much boil down to handsome images so much as to a certain visual texture, woven by virtue of rapid succession into a dense tapestry where almost nothing happens because someone says it is, but only because the filmmaker shows that it is. This is no "poetry" of expression, as more than one film critic has termed it, except insofar as it, like poetry, is economical. Rathnam achieves it by removing from cinema almost all that is not cinema.

That, in a nutshell, is what makes this retelling of The Ramayana ultimately worth watching: we get no new insight into the epic by virtue of its contemporary setting, but simply -- and wonderfully -- get a Ramayana for our cinema (as opposed to for our ears, or readers, or for devotion). Which made writing about this film a bit difficult for me, so wedded is Raavan to the succession of images that constitute it. Especially earlier on in the film, when even the linearity of individual sequences is disturbed by re-arrangement of the expected order -- we see an unconscious body before we see the fall, and by that point we aren't surprised: that's how things are in the world of this film. Conversely, the film's descent into linearity as it moves toward the climax is a bit disappointing. There's nothing "wrong" with what the film does there, one simply misses the magic that has come before. Although, even at the end, there are consolations: an effective bridge fight between Beera and Dev (a follow-up to the one from Yuva/Aayitha Ezhuthu), and, best of all, a closing scene that mirrors the opening one -- with a very different result.

Raavan is more focused than many Rathnam scripts, but even it suffers from some poor writing. Beera's central motivation for revenge -- his sister's humiliation at the hands of the police, depicted in searing fashion by Rathnam's refusal to show anything at all; it is Priyamani's words (describing the harrowing events) that make the audience uncomfortable -- doesn't seem to figure much in the latter portions of the film. Indeed, the flashback sequence with Priyamani -- superb in every scene she is in -- not only makes the later effacement of her memory from the film bizarre, it casts a shadow over what has gone before. Why does Beera only think about killing Ragini? Doesn't the thought that he could rape her ever cross his mind? Doesn't it cross Mangal's? One cannot help but feel that what Baradwaj Rangan has characterized as Rathnam's "resolutely middle class" ethos is his undoing: he simply won't have Beera engaging in something too distasteful on screen. Or, as everyone knows: the odd hacked arm is OK (although, why on earth would Beera spare the policeman who has raped his sister?), but sexual misconduct is just Beyond The Pale. This imaginative failure casts a shadow over Beera; that it does not cripple him is due to the efforts of Abhishek Bachchan, who is memorable in a role where his most common props are stance and gesture, framed against the elements or the wilderness, that look Rathnam's eye captures -- not dialogs and high drama. This must have been a difficult role to essay, given the juxtaposition of sparseness and signification in Rathnam's Beera, and the younger Bachchan deserves credit for giving memorable form to the film's least developed character, and most developed iconic presence. But he cannot forestall a certain unevenness in tone, and whether that is due to an acting limitation or a directorial failure, the result is occasionally labored. Not to mention that in a film darker and more intense than any Rathnam has previously made, by the end Beera's character reflects one ray of sunshine too many. I did not get the sense he had been anywhere as bleak as Yuva's Lallan.

The rest of the cast gets to play more natural characters, and does not disappoint. Beginning with Ravi Kissen (as Beera's brother Mangal) and Nikhil Dwivedi (as police officer Hemant). But not ending with them: apart from Priyamani, even the children who appear in the odd scene or two, or the police-man cowed into cooperating with Beera, as well as the extras, appear to have been cast with care. And then there's Govinda; that it took Rathnam to remind us that long before David Dhawan, the man could act, speaks volumes about the utter disinterest so many filmmakers display towards non-lead roles.

Even an epic called "Raavan" needs a Ram, and Vikram's Dev is unforgettable. A tough cop with his own violent darkness, Vikram's domineering screen presence is a perfect fit for the role, as is his superciliousness. One never really likes this Ram, or even sees that he is virtuous. One simply accepts the inevitable, that this man will not be denied in his quest for his wife. It is, all things considered, a relatively small role -- yet Vikram's charisma means he never feels far from the action. Aishwariya Rai's role is at the other end of the spectrum: her Ragini has more screen time than any other character in the film, and provides the female center that this film needs. The characterization is quintessential Rathnam: Ragini is tough and gutsy in captivity; and, in the flashback sequences, the sort of domestic sari-clad goddess who would make even confirmed bachelors sign up for marriage. (The fact that Rathnam himself appears to be married to just such a deity in the form of Suhashini probably justifies the happy husband peddling such felicity in his films.) That bourgeois ideal is established by a seductive Khili Re video, all the more welcome given how rare it is for classical dance to be married to overt sexiness in Hindi films -- watch out for Ragini playfully snapping at Dev's nose, in a room featuring one mirror too many. That sort of assertiveness goes well with the Ragini we see in Beera's clutches: for much of the film, she is never still, periodically trying to escape, kill Beera, and even rescue another captive. In fact, Rathnam shrewdly compensates for Rai's limited dramatic range by giving her the most active role in the film, as she falls, jumps, slides, laments, and snarls her way through the jungles, her beauty unnerving despite -- or perhaps because of -- the wringer her director puts her through. To the extent Ragini's character has an aesthetic has an undoing, it is her own confused desire for Beera. Rai lacks the expressive range to adequately convey her growing attraction to Beera, but Rathnam doesn't help by having Ragini's desire manifest itself as a kind of passivity (until, at the very end, this film's equivalent of the Agni-pariksha ("trial by fire") enables her to wrest the initiative once again).

I've reviewed the music elsewhere, but would be remiss if I didn't add here that the film's visuals cannot be "thought" without Rahman's accompanying soundtrack, so seamlessly integrated here that (unlike in, for instance, Guru), it is only after the film that one remarks upon the absence of a favorite song or interlude. The one, brave, exception is "Ranjha Ranjha", where the album's lush yet troubling and unsettled number is replaced with a radically different version, almost a cross between the song from the album and "Raasaathi" (Thiruda Thiruda). The film's version only works because it reminds us of the album's version, and hence of the road not taken. Rathnam intends to deny his audience the easy pleasure of familiarity, even in this most familiar of stories. Rahman's background score is less uniformly felicitous, alternating between magic worthy of the visuals (that is to say unobtrusive and inextricable from the visuals; at its best this is one of Rahman's most accomplished background scores); and some awful interludes that try and announce how momentous the scene is by their sheer loudness. No-one, and least of all Rahman, can be forgiven such vulgarity.

Ultimately, with any re-telling, the question one has to ask is "why?" And despite the fact that if one can do what Rathnam and Sivan do here, perhaps the only answer is "because we can", Raavan goes a long way toward providing a more substantive answer. The charge of superficiality often laid at Rathnam's door when it comes to politics will not work here: as in Dil Se, this is a film about individuals caught in the eye of a storm, and in both films, freed from the burden of having to chronicle cause and effect (the burden, that is to say, of providing an origin story), the director can paint the storm as he sees it. The result is an impressionistic world, well suited to the realm of myth, where meaning is manifested strangely and without explanation: the beauty of a body falling down; cigarettes burning holes in a newspaper photograph; a caped figure looming at the entrance of a cave, or dimly visible atop a bike through the haze; or framed by the sun in the midst of water. Those who cavil at the lack of cultural specificity -- Orchcha pops up as a backdrop to one song; Mangal's bhaiyya dialect seems incongruous in these jungles, especially given no-one else speaks like him -- miss the point: this is not a film about a particular place, but a myth re-imagined for our times. The pseudo-Naxal backdrop is not meant to provide an insight into the insurgency so much as it is to provide the stage on which the epic may be re-enacted. It might be an all too easy way out, but it is deliberate: we are not told the name of the state, the district, or any place at all, except that Beera lives in "Laal Maati" ("Red Earth"); Rathnam dispenses with authenticity in representation, and, as in Dil Se (where too, we were never told what cause was at issue, or even what region, which appeared to alternate between Kashmir and India's North-East), does so aggressively.

There is certainly politics here -- Beera and his men mutter more than once (not to mention sing) about "upper caste" and state oppression -- but it is only there by way of explanation: it's why everyone is where they are. In the wider sense (i.e. not limited to statecraft), of course, there is a lot of gender politics here, and Rathnam isn't shy of taking sides: the male ethos, of both Ram and Raavan, is glamorous, violent, destructive -- and fragile. The female ethos -- incarnated in Ragini -- is strength. Not necessarily so (Beera's sister is crushed), and perhaps not unproblematically so (to what extent is Ragini's opposite fate a function of her greater social privilege?), but there it is. Most interesting of all, female strength invokes anxiety and weakness in the men around the women, whether in the form of desire (Beera's for Ragini); or of the vigilance demanded by a purity fetish (Dev's, after Ragini's rescue); or of honor (all too easily lost when a woman is raped, as close to an originary trauma as this film will give us). The film isn't called "Raavan" simply because it is the venerable epic's double. Rathnam's addiction to the trope of two is subtler here: the film's title doesn't indicate that Rathnam's sympathies are always with the women, but it does announce that Ram isn't the hero of this epic. Raavan is not a woman, but he is more child than man, and is certainly not the man Dev's Ram is. That deity, for Rathnam, wears a uniform -- that is, he belongs to the official world, to the mainstream discourse, to the world of men. (The director is uninterested in Ram's especial traditional resonance for North India's "little people," most notably the Dalits, a silence that might well limit the extent to which many audiences are able to relate to their beloved epic's cinematic imagining.) The downtrodden and marginalized of this version demand a different hero.

The 1947 Matrix

2010-06-12T10:22:00.001-04:00

I was recently commissioned to write a personal, "NRI"-type piece for The Asian Age (Delhi), at no more than ~1,000 words. It appeared today; I was surprised to learn that the Deccan Chronicle is under the same management, and the editor told me they were using the same piece for that paper as well. Yenjoy. I disclaim all responsibility for the titles.

The Hatred of Democracy: RAJNEETI (Hindi; 2010)

2010-06-10T21:25:00.014-04:00

Yes, the title of this review is borrowed from the book by the French philosopher Jacques Ranciere. And no, this isn't overkill. Not when you consider that Rajneeti is only the latest in the line of films set in the world of Indian politics, mostly distinguished only by their suspicion of democracy (masquerading as skepticism of politicians), and by their refusal to engage with any politics. Almost as if the mere fact of representing politicians on screen liberates one from ever having to talk about politics (even as the films themselves advance a subversive form of politics that is neither progressive nor practical). The director only needs to show the jockeying of various more-or-less villainous characters, pillaging and murdering their way across the landscape with abandon. Don't believe me? Watch Madhur Bhandarkar's Satta (2003). Or watch director Prakash Jha's Rajneeti, which, despite an impressive star cast, a much larger canvas, and the (for Bollywood) previously virgin locales of Bhopal, manages to muddle its way through "politics" with what I can only call cretinous irresponsibility.

Rajneeti is set in the world of Madhya Pradesh politics, and by the time the film hits its stride we know that its principal characters are cousins jockeying for power and control of a local political outfit, the Rashtrawadi ("nationalist") party. On one side are Chandra Pratap (Chetan Pandit) and his sons Prithvi (Arjun Rampal) and Samar (Ranbir Kapoor). When Chandra Pratap's older brother and party patriarch Bhanu Pratap has a stroke, he basically hands over the party to Chandra and Prithvi, inflaming his own son Veerendra Pratap (Manoj Bajpai), who decides to wrest the party from his cousins one way or another. And one of those ways is by championing the cause of Sooraj Kumar (Ajay Devgan), a local Dalit youth who's determined to make sure the shanty-towns of Azad Nagar finally get to decide who their assembly representative will be. Guess who's the long lost, out-of-wedlock son of Bharti Rai (Nikhila Trikha), youthful leftie activist-turned doormat mother of the Pratap family? (If you think that's a spoiler, you shouldn't be watching Hindi films.) Somewhere in the middle is Indu Sakseria (Katrina Kaif) daughter of an unscrupulous business man and in love with Samar. This last chap is a grad student in the USA, and wants nothing to do with politics -- until, that is, Rajneeti turns into The Godfather, and Samar realizes that Victorian poetry cannot provide as much satisfaction as can Michael Corleone.

If this film were called "Inteqaam", the above would be pretty unexceptionable, perhaps even loads of fun. But this film was hyped to death as presenting a relatively realistic take on Indian politics, and is shot through with the sort of faux-gravitas that comes when a frivolous film takes itself too seriously. When a relatively gripping revenge saga is shoehorned into a narrative that claims to speak the truth about power, the stakes are high enough to make certain kinds of masala licence dangerous. Case in point: once the first twenty or so minutes are over, no one seems to have any kind of political program. Jha doesn't even have his characters promising anything to any particular constituency and then reneging -- his politicians don't even bother indulging in public lies. For them, merely showing up on a podium is enough to get crowds cheering, waving, and generally throbbing with excitement. Rajneeti, in short, is not about politics per se so much as it is a representation of a politics premised on nothing more (or less) than personality. And while the film is depressingly on the money in its depiction of a regional party that essentially functions as an extension of one clan (far too many Indian political parties fit this description), it apparently cannot bear to think that the clan itself might stand for something, might represent something in the eyes of the public -- Rajneeti empties the clan of all political content, which ends up standing for nothing other than itself.

Juxtaposed with the endless shots of "the public", represented so passively one is reminded of a sitcom's laugh track, I could not escape the conclusion that "the people" were only here to reinforce urbane prejudices about the great unwashed, as a mass of voters undifferentiated by anything except for traditional cleavages of caste and communal affiliation, unable to master its destiny, and eternally fixed in its lack of meaningful agency. (As in his earlier Apharan, Jha reserves an especial cheap shot for the "Muslim vote bank", reinforcing the prejudice that its constituents vote en bloc and at the direction of clerics; years of research have been unable to substantiate this bugbear, except in the limited sense that Muslims are -- quite reasonably -- likely to vote against parties the politics of which are imbued with an anti-Muslim charge; but Jha is not one to be confused by facts.) This film isn't about Indian politics, it's about the politics of certain Bollywood audiences, a fantasy of what "we" think "they" are like, out there in India's dusty heartland. By film's end, the fantasy's arc has been achieved, as the urbane, English-medium types take over the state (both "down market"-types have been dispatched, while the film's only authentically Dalit major character has decided to return to being the driver of the family that has killed his son; that's what you get for being uppity). If the likes of Mayawati, Laloo Yadav, Nitish Kumar, Mulayam Singh Yadav, and Shivnath Singh Chouhan are watching, I imagine them scratching their heads and wishing for Yash Raj's Switzerland all over again -- if the country's got to be unrecognizably foreign, at least that one was pretty. All of which is to say that at the level of politics, Rajneeti does only one thing effectively: it panders.

The film doesn't even leave us with a morality play: for all the pre-release hype about the film being an adaptation of The Mahabharata, the film's characters lack any moral center or even any reticence, anxiety, or hesitation. And in Samar, far from the coming of age-tale of a reluctant prince (one might have re-titled The Godfather "The Education of Michael Corleone"), Rajneeti gives us a character who exhibits so little development as to seem inert. He never has to learn how to fend for himself, kill, and protect his family -- he knows how to do all these things the moment the opportunity presents itself. Heck, he might have delved into this stuff much sooner, had Victorian poetry not been distracting him. This film's Krishna (Brij Gopal, played by Nana Patekar) doesn't need to urge Arjuna to take up arms against his family in order to fulfill his dharma -- Samar's only dharma is to take up arms on behalf of his family, an inversion that speaks volumes about Jha's bourgeois ethos. And speaking of ethos, let's not forget the women: virtually every one of the principal female characters is so passive one might mistake them for scenery. That includes Indu, who displays initiative only in declaring her love for Samar -- once this is done, she is content to be led this way or that. The two exceptions are telling: one is an American, and the other an aspiring politician who will sleep with anyone who can get her a ticket. Need I say more?

As for the rest, Rajneeti isn't bad, and probably better than most Hindi films, especially in the film's first half, never less than gripping. Much of this is due to enthusiastic acting by Bajpai and Rampal, who decide to treat their roles as masala romps, to great effect. Bajpai in particular is a delight, rolling around dialogs with the air of a man who enjoys the sound of Hindi on his tongue -- harried by Hinglish, I was grateful to him (and to the writers Jha and Anjum Rajabali). As in Om Shanti Om, Rampal shows he can indulge a villainous streak to great effect, and was easily more memorable than Ranbir Kapoor, determined to play Samar earnestly straight. Which isn't to say that Ranbir is incompetent -- far from it -- merely that he is no more than competent, and isn't what this film needed. That's doubly true of Katrina Kaif; Jha should be embarrassed for casting her in this part, and for not unraveling the great mystery: if Samar is America-returned and Indu has long been Bhopal-bound, why is it her who has the accent? Devgan's Sooraj could have been the most interesting character, but the writers didn't know what to do with him. The fact that he and Veerendra spend the entire second half stumbling from one defeat to the next, reduced to standing around TV screens brooding or throwing tantrums -- Sooraj only the former; Veerendra only the latter -- is a large part of why the film degenerates post-interval. (That is a more general problem: I lost count of the number of scenes featuring cars pulling up to the palatial residence of this or that Pratap; or of crowds thronging the streets. Jha has never been the most visually interesting of filmmakers, but his staid style is all the more exposed given the size of the canvas.) But weak characterization aside, Devgan delivers possibly his most jaded performance, listless and un-compelling, a far cry indeed from Rajabali's other Devgan role in The Legend of Bhagat Singh. Nana Patekar's Brij Gopal is a pleasant surprise, a sign that years of bombastic roles have not buried the actor in him: his cunning politician is economical (with words, with gestures), and commands the attention of every room he is in -- in a Bhopal-full of hammers and pouters, Patekar enjoys acting, thereby elevating a weakly-written part. After the film has ended, it is his aura that lingers.

VINNAITHAANDI VARUVAAYA (Tamil; 2010)

2010-05-27T20:45:00.024-04:00

Gautham Menon isn't my favorite director. Although I hugely enjoyed his Minnale (2001), that film didn't have much of what later became recognizable as his style, a post-Mukull Anand, post-Agni Natchitharam chic marked by neo-Hollywood technical slickness and crisp lighting, whether in the service of police procedurals that began better than they ended (Kaakha...Kaakha (2003) or Vettiayadu Vilaiyaadu (2006)), or more domestic genres (Pachaikili Muthucharam (2007); Vaaranam Aayiram (2008). So I was hardly enthused when I heard Gautham was making a love story with Trisha Krishnan and Silambarasan in the lead (if there's a hero I like less in Tamil cinema, I haven't seen him). Until I heard Gautham had jettisioned long-time musical collaborator Harris Jayaraj in favor of working with A.R. Rahman. And saw stills from the film, featuring a hero I was assured was "Simbu", but who looked nothing like him. Clearly, Gautham was returning to the love story genre of his first film from 2001, but didn't want to tread old ground.

Well, sort of. Like Minnale, Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya involves a Hindu-Christian love story. But whereas communal difference didn't matter much in the earlier film; here it is one of the main reasons why Karthik (Silambarasan ("Simbu")) and Jessie (Trisha Krishnan) find that the course of their true love does not run smooth. Nor is it the only one: Jessie is not only Malayalee Christian to Karthik's Tamilian Hindu, she is -- gasp! -- a year older than him. Karthik is also, for the umpteenth time where a Tamil film hero is concerned, an aspiring film director -- and as such doesn't have any real job prospects as far as Jessie's tyrannical father is concerned. We know what to expect from here on: after some hand-wringing by the female protagonist, the lovers will proceed along their clandestine way, until they are caught out by this or that parent, followed by a hastily arranged betrothal of the girl to some other guy. The only open question is whether the wrong marriage will be conducted. Um, do you really have to ask?

Gautham doesn't completely depart from this script for most of the film, but he does mix it up. The skeletal plot above, which could be expected to take up an entire film, only takes up half of this one, with most of the couple's romance actually following Jessie leaving the Other Guy high and dry at the altar. After the interval, the furtive romance blossoms, although Jessie is adamant that she won't be eloping with Karthik: she will bring her father around -- but seems not to make the slightest attempt to broach the topic with him). Even when the ultimate end is not in doubt, but Gautham plays enough with the conventions of the genre to ensure that the film's twists and turns aren't very predictable. That is, they all occur, just not when one expects them to. The final, and somewhat clumsily executed, twist takes the film to some place rather different from love stories, although it's an open question as to whether the film is better as a result.

The film's strength lies in the fact that Gautham does a better job of capturing the mood of young love than the carefree ambience favored by far too many Hindi film love stories. Such carefreeness is implicitly, in the context of a society riven with social distinctions and largely predicated on arranged marriages, a marker for a certain kind of privilege: for instance, nothing stands in the way of Saif's and Deepika's urbane love in Love Aaj Kal except their own wishy-washiness. Apart from that, there would be no issue with the eligible pair: no communal or class distinction could intrude. The same holds true for the Aamir-Preity Zinta pair in Dil Chahta Hai. (Instructively, in Love Aaj Kal, such conflict is relegated to the 1960s, a depressing reminder of the yuppiedom that has overtaken the Hindi film audience; in the Present Day, it seems, we don't worry about these things -- odd given the sorts of news stories that are never far from the front pages.) Even the exceptions actually reinforce the rule; these days, it takes something truly cosmic, like the India-Pakistan border in Veer-Zaara, for the world to intrude. I don't mean to dismiss these sorts of films out of hand -- it is possible that the flight they represent is part of their charm -- but merely note that they trade on fantasies of escape, not on catharsis. Gautham knows better, and the Karthik-Jessie relationship knows no dopey gallivanting around fantasy landscapes (the one exception, the "Anbil Avan" video, is in fact a fantasy) -- it is always fraught, and menaced by the world.

Along the way, there is much fresh dialog in Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya ("When I saw you on the terrace, I wanted to touch your face," Jessie tells Karthik in one scene; such directness is a far cry from the saccharine falsity of most Bollywood love stories), along with some wannabe stiltedness ("You're hot," Karthik tells Jessie; the only surprise is Karthik's belief that this line might work; later on he mentions a "one-way ticket to heartbreak city"); gorgeous Kerala locales; and an unobtrusive attitude. This film's determination to evoke a youthful, more contemporary vibe is manifested in its laid back feel, its post-Mani Rathnam, (relatively) naturalistic dialog, and in the sleek visual texture Gautham's films tend to have -- not in its theatrical attempt to tear up the script (a la Dev D (2009)). Nor is this love story embarrassed by its sappiness; nevertheless, the film's biggest drawback is possibly that it sacrifices a little too much romantic intensity at the altar of Gautham's "contemporary" vibe. But all in all, Vinaithaandi Varuvaaya seeks to update a cinematic tradition, not up-end it; as such, it feels less of a one-off than the Dev D's of the world; and more of a pointer to a possible way forward for big budget, star-driven commercial cinema. Leaving aside the odd false step (the odd twist at the end; plus, Gautham recycles an old stereotype about intransigent minorities in making Jessie's Christian father appalled at the thought of a Hindu son-in-law; while communal difference doesn't even register with either Karthik or his parents), Gautham gets enough right to make Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya worth watching. Stated differently: if you don't think this makes the cut, you're probably not watching too many Tamil or Hindi films.

Tamil films aren't known for strong characterization of women, and for the film's first half it seems that Trisha Krishnan's Jessie is not going to re-invent that paradigm. But even in the first half Gautham does steer clear of the infantilism that is often the lot of female lead roles in major Tamil films: Jessie is always a young adult, and for that Gautham has to be commended (that he has to be speaks volumes about what the rest of the industry is doing on this front, but that's a different story). Trisha Krishnan has never been the most expressive of actresses, nor is this role especially taxing, but she is seamless here as, quite literally, the girl upstairs. Her trademark gestures -- the furrowed brow, the quizzical look, the half-smile -- have never been used to better effect. Not that the glamor quotient is absent: there's no getting around the fact that Ms. Krishnan is bewitching here, in the way of one's first crush, an unattainable neighbor -- that is, if one's neighbor were a major movie star. Especially in the array of saris she wears, like a woman who knows the dress is sexy as is, and does not need much tarting up (or down, as the crotch-level saris of the Priyanka Chopras and Deepika Padukones show). The actress really comes into her own around the film's half-way mark, as Jessie begins to take charge of her own love story: post-interval, Jessie is assertive and sexy in way not enough lead roles in Tamil films have been (I couldn't help but wonder whether the fact that Jessie isn't Tamilian freed Gautham of the burden of having her serve as guardian of "Tamilness"; the inextricable link between Tamil cinema and cultural politics means that not many can rise above such turgidity). I do wish that the screenplay had allowed her point of view more scope: her inner voice is so absent that when we do hear it in a couple of scenes in the film's second half, we are startled, and forced to acknowledge that it has been missing all along.

And then there's Simbu. The film's leading man shows that the most drastic make-overs do not always need the most make-up or prosthetics: shorn of his facial hair and the jerky mannerisms that made something like Saravanaa both parodic and unbearable, I barely recognized the man on screen, looking more like a cross between Abhay Deol and Madhavan (the latter also called Karthik in his first hit, Alai Payuthey), than his own former avatar. Simbu is patchy but effective in his best moments, combining intensity with awkwardness like any kid head over heels in love. Even with respect to the unevenness, I wasn't sure if Gautham's screenplay wasn't just as much to blame, and to Simbu's credit he does well enough. Most important, he is completely fresh in this role, and is an appropriate vehicle for Gautham's aim of re-imagining the rather well-worn love story genre. He's no Madhavan, but how many are?

On the CD inlay, A.R. Rahman wrote that "[s]coring music for this film was like a peaceful homecoming," as good a summary of the score as any. This will never be considered one of Rahman's major works, and while the combination here of the later Rahman's slick production values with the sparse bent of some of his albums from the early 1990s produces a curiously un-Rahman effect at times, the mood lingers. This is Rahman's most consistently mellow album (and background score) in quite a while, with a personality as charming as Ms. Krishnan's. ("Kannukkul Kanne" typifies this: never has the Tamil tapori vibe seemed so laid back -- but then, it likely has never previously been set amidst waltzy strains and a soaring refrain of the sort that Rahman has made his own.) And one of his more situational: for the first time since Rang de Basanti, I had to watch the film to fall for Rahman's music. Curiously, it is the music videos that seem visually "off" at times: both "Kannukkul Kanne" and "Hosanna" are visually pitched a shade higher than the music, although Rahman himself errs (not for the first time) with Blaaze's faux-reggae vocals in "Hosanna." But these are cavils: on the whole, Gautham does justice to the music by making sure the film is suffused by the same breezy yet lovelorn mood throughout, and not just when the music videos are on -- if any part of Kerala has ever been captured more joyously than Allapazhu is here by cinematographer Manoj Paramahamsa, I don't know it. One cannot help but think of Kaadal Virus -- what would that superb album have come to mean, if Gautham had directed the film?

Book Review: India: The Rise of an Asian Giant (2008)

2010-05-26T19:22:00.003-04:00

My review of Deitmar Rothermund's India: The Rise of an Asian Giant is up on H-Net...a big thank you to Prof. Sumit Guha for commissioning it.

[May 26, 2010 Update: Unfortunately, a couple of typos/errors crept in over the course of the process. In particular, the published version includes the following: "The book contains no more than a couple of stray references to Muslim Indians (let alone to other religious minorities, B. R. Ambedkar’s protest-Buddhism for the “untouchables” aside)--remarkable given the centrality of Muslims to Indian politics, both by exclusion. It largely omits discussion of the Hindu-nationalist Right--and by ideological inclusion--the secular Left, as well as smaller Northern Indian caste-based parties, the success of each of which depends on particular caste-groups voting in tandem with Muslim voters."

...which should read:

"The book contains no more than a couple of stray references to Muslim Indians (let alone to other religious minorities, Ambedkar’s protest-Buddhism for the “untouchables” aside) – remarkable given the centrality of the Muslim to Indian politics, both by exclusion – on the Hindu-nationalist right – and by ideological inclusion – on the secular left (not to mention for the smaller Nothern Indian caste-based parties, the success of each of which depends upon particular caste-groups voting in tandem with Muslim voters). "]

Lazy Sunday on Twitter...

2010-05-23T12:28:00.005-04:00

From my twitterfeed: On We The People: Do young politicians have old ideas? From Khap panchayats to Fatwas why doesnt Gen Next take a position?

My tweets in response (all questions below are rhetorical):
Perhaps because nothing is older and staler than the idea that "the young" will begin politics anew (remember the Rajiv Gandhi-brigade?) How can "the young" be expected to stand apart from/transcend the very society that has shaped them? Especially when it comes to politics, where "GenNext" all too often consists of the privileged scions of dynasties. How can an Omar Abdullah or Pilot change the system? Perhaps only this system makes them possible... My take: only ideology and political commitment can reliably determine the nature of one's politics; mere urbanity/youth does not...

What happens in Minneapolis when you're bored in a hotel room...

2010-05-12T11:08:00.005-04:00

In response to this piece (check this discussion (specifically Satyam's comment) out as well), a stray thought:

What is fascinating — despite the fact that the current generation of hindi filmmakers is so steeped in American global pop culture, has traveled there so often, and in many cases has even studied there — is that Bollywood’s depictions of the USA are so “off.” It isn’t about whether these representations are good/bad/positive/negative, but about how “off” they are. No less so than India in Octopussy (1983) or Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). Apparently, decades of globalization and cross-cultural exchange and commercial interactions haven’t made an iota of difference (think of Hindi films from decades ago, like Purab aur Paschim (1970) or Des Pardes (1978); compare with Namaste London (2007), and you'll see what I mean).

At one level that demonstration of how difficult cross-cultural communication is, depresses me. But there's also something gratifying about encountering the stubborn survival of something that remains so resistant to the homogenizing drives of our current moment. The two don't cancel each other out -- I simply note that they jostle together in me.

Music Review: RAAVAN (Hindi; 2010)

2010-04-29T23:32:00.003-04:00

The music of "Raavan" -- supposedly a modern day re-telling of The Ramayana -- wasn't what I was expecting. Instead of a self-contained album confining itself to the world of the film like several other collaborations between composer A.R. Rahman and director Mani Rathnam (such as "Alai Payuthey", "Yuva", or "Kannathil Muthamittal"), this album hearkens to the music of the greatest Rathnam film of all, "Iruvar", in its anthologizing of almost an entire film music tradition. But whereas Rehman's mode in "Iruvar" was history, with each song representing a different Tamil film era (Rehman's genius ensuring that none of the songs seemed derivative or stale, as merely nostalgic numbers would have), the "Raavan" album cannot imagine such continuity: the Hindi film musical tradition is here, but in shards as it were. The cumulative effect of the album is thus somewhat disorienting, as musical moments from Bollywood's past -- a 1990s song here, a Punjabi beat there, a tapori jig elsewhere, even strains reminiscent of some who have followed in Rahman's wake, such as Mithoon -- occur when least expected. Fitting: for nothing so linear as chronology (even where history is refracted through Rathnam's eye) makes sense in the realm of myth (and the power of myth), even if, in the case of Rathnam's Ramayana, by virtue of being a contemporary tale, the myth is itself heir to several histories...

The first song on the CD, "Beera", would have been more at home in "Yuva" than at least one song in that Rahman/Rathnam/Abhishek Bachchan film (think of "Kabhi Neem Neem"): the soaring, clean instrumentation, the in-your-face lyrics, the urban vibe (that is to say, not music targeted at the self-consciously urbane, but music that takes its bustle and restlessness from cities) that was practically invented in Hindi and Tamil cinema by Rahman -- "Beera" shows that six years on, the Master still has it, and he doesn't need to repeat himself to show it. Gulzar's lyrics owe more than a few debts to his earlier work on the title song of "Omkara", but musically the two are as different as can be; and if the lyrics of "Beera" are nowhere near the equals of those in the earlier song in terms of epic grandeur and the sort of myth-making this sort of "hero" song cries out for (although Gulzar shrewdly uses the word "Beera" ("brave"; or "warrior") as a refrain for entire lines of song, almost seeking to obviate the need for any other poetry), musically the solid and assured "Omkara" cannot match "Beera" in fleetness of foot or deft touch. And if this emphasis on charm seems a bit incongruous in a film named after Hinduism's most famous villain (or, from the perspective of Dravidian nationalists, its most vilified hero), perhaps it tells us something about the film: virtually all of the album's quintessential "hero" songs are lighter, more upbeat, than its dark, fretful love songs. A quibble: at just a shade over three minutes, I wish it were longer -- Keerthi Prakash, Vijay Prakash, Mustafa, and Rahman's vocals didn't begin to satisfy me, giving this song the air of a tease.

Its opening fifty seconds are reminiscent in tone of Anwar's "Symphony in Blue", but "Behne Do" then veers back into a more traditional direction (this track is about transporting love; not the victim of society at Anwar's core), combining a conventional tune-structure with the mood of "Dil Se Re" (Dil Se). Over a decade on from that unsatisfying number, though, Rahman is now more adept at composing testimonials to hopelessly overwrought desi love in a semi-Western orchestral setting. Think of it as the frontier between "Dil Se Re" and "Satrangi" from the same film (certainly singers Mohammad Irfan and Karthik seem to think so, with their Sonu Nigam-inspired vocals) -- while I doubt "Behne Do" will ever rise to the level of "Satrangi", the best neo-Sufi love song in Bollywood history, Rahman's integration of the Western orchestration into a completely Indian emotional landscape bodes well (in the past, his attempts along these lines have more often than not been unsuccessful). Ultimately, though, the song, splendid in itself (except for the fact that, not for the first or last time in the album, Rahman relegates his own vocals to the background), suffers from the presence of "Ranjha Ranjha" in the same album, almost as if two different attempts at fulfilling director Mani Rathnam's brief have been preserved in the same album. "Behne De" isn't completely subsumed by the later song's spell, but what is its own is poorer.

With respect to "Thok de Kili", it is a real pity that the album's most politically daring lyrics -- turning on childish rhymes between nails (killi), a common Indian street game (gilli), and of course, the national capital (in lines reminiscent of the 1857 battle-cry "Delhi chalo!", itself appropriated decades later by Subhash Chandra Bose for his rebel Indian National Army) -- should be housed in the least impressive musical number. It's certainly early days for me and this song yet, and it is perhaps the least accessible (and deceptively so) of the album's songs. But while the instrumental portions have a chocolate velocity to them that is hard to resist, the vocal portions (by Am'nico, Sukhvinder Singh, and Rahman himself, although one is hard-pressed to make out anyone but Singh) drone on without getting anywhere. Gulzar's daring appropriation of the rebel trope for some of contemporary India's least popular political militants (Abhishek's "Raavan" character has long been rumored to have Naxalite antecedents; the stinging criticisms of Delhi's neglect, and references to the color red, appear to provide confirmation), deserved better. I'm curious to see if the Tamil version will showcase this song's music to greater advantage.

The folly inherent in predicting which number in a Rahman album is going to stand the test of time in my iPod playlists is not going to prevent me from nominating "Ranjha Ranjha" as my favorite song from this album. Rekha Bharadwaj's chorus-refrain (adapted from Bhulle Shah's poetry) is addictively catchy, but insistently and urgently so, and no less mournful for it -- a worthy metonym for a song that re-treads old ground about love being both blessing and curse, loss of identity and derangement, slave and master, and -- not coincidentally given Raavan's theme -- kidnapper and captive. Thanks to Gulzar, who is at his best where, as here, he borrows bits of folk songs and poetry to use as a springboard, the lyrics are that rarest of things in Hindi romantic numbers: fresh. The song's urgency -- devoid of aggression -- is crucial in rescuing the song from the merely conventional, far removed from the strains (too familiar to place with precision, in too unfamiliar a setting to be placed), left over from other songs, other musical moments wafting in and out of this seductive yet unsettled number. Who knew that a khichdi of everything from Nadeem-Shravan's mediocrity (often by means of Javed Ali's callow-sounding voice); Sufi-kitsch the Bhatts specialize in; the generic urban sound of countless "male bonding" songs; all held together by the promise of intimacy always suggested by Rekha Bharadwaj's voice, could combine to yield an ambience so compelling?

I'm not a huge fan of Rahman's very slow Hindi numbers, but "Khili Re" is the way Goldilocks would have liked it: just right. Rahman gets it right, first, by using a female solo (most of his slow misfires are male solos, such as Bombay's "Tu Hi Re" (Hindi)/ "Uyire" (Tamil)); and second, by keeping things simple for the first minute and a half with restrained instrumentation accompanying Reena Bhardwaj's delicate voice. Just when you begin to think the song might have trouble sustaining interest over five minutes, tabla beats (of a decidedly traditional dance bent) break into the song, inflecting this song with a structure and balance it might not otherwise have had, even after it has returned to Bharadwaj's vocals. Over all, the purity of this song is reminiscent of some of Rahman's earliest works (such as "Dil Hai Chota Sa" from "Roja"; or "Karuthamma"), and while it is too polished and ornate to completely blend in with that company, it is heartening to encounter Rahman's abiding readiness to compose work in a decidedly minor vein. Especially nowadays, when the combination of the Oscar for "Slumdog Millionaire" and the fact that (unlike in Tamil, as even the far-from-great Vinaithaandi Varuvaaya will attest), his Hindi music is mostly for Big Films, threatens the mellower pleasures his music affords.

"Kata Kata Bechaara Bakra" has to be the most rambunctious, fun, Rahman number in quite some time, a wedding-song that reminds the audience there was one (far more lewd) in the album that brought Rahman India-wide renown ("Rukmini Rukmi" from Roja). Despite all the throwback fun -- the backup vocals, the percussion, and the speed, all might have been transposed from the era when Rahman unleashed Kathalan on us, while the lyrics are clear kin to those in "September Maatham" (Alai Payuthey)/ "Chori pe Chori" (Saathiya) -- this song is not fluff. In any film that purports to engage with the Ramayana, the question of That Marriage has to loom large; and while I don't know if this song is set at the wedding of the purported Ram and Sita-characters, the conch shell-sounds that punctuate this track never allowed me to forget that this film is supposed to re-imagine an epic, that something cosmic is in the air. That extra dimension, unncessary in the analogous songs from Roja or Alai Payuthey, is also expressed in Ila Arun's vocals, which take this song into a more traditional (and surprising) place, the North Indian "household" women's songs that are now virtually extinct in urban India (but not, apparently, for Rahman, whose "Genda Phool" (Delhi-6) is also in this vein). In a little over five minutes, distinct Indian spaces -- the urban South, the North, and the western deserts it is impossible not to think of when confronted with Arun's voice -- bubble up and vanish. This song (like its mythical progenitor) has geography on its mind. [My one reservation: while my non-existent grasp of Tamil will mean that I'll miss Gulzar's lyrics in the Tamil version, I can't help feeling that language's more definite consonants and springy rhythm will do greater justice to the mood of this number than Gulzar's playful lyrics; I mean, could "Kummi Aaadi" (Sillunu Oru Kaadal) have been nearly as much fun in any other language?]

R.I.P. Dr. Siras

2010-04-12T19:35:00.002-04:00

Dr. Siras, a professor at the Aligarh Muslim University ("AMU"), shot to national prominence a couple of months ago after lhe was videotaped having sex with another man began circulating on campus. Because AMU, in its wisdom, decided to suspend the professor for "gross indecency" rather than take any action against those who broke into Dr. Siras' home and violated his privacy (a Times of India piece said it was reporters who had done the taping; other sources have claimed that a tape was sent to AMU authorities) in a manner that can only be called, well, gross and indecent. [The report of a fact-finding team may be found HERE.]

Why am I bringing this up now? Because Dr. Siras is now dead, apparently the result of a suicide a few days after a court ordered his reinstatement. But legal victories are small compensation for a public culture of hostility on campus. Those who taped him --students or others -- are morally responsible, and AMU itself is complicit; and perhaps worse, given that some AMU faculty/administration members responded to the incident by stoking hysteria and blaming the victim. AMU took away Dr. Siras' job, and would have taken away his dignity had he not shown himself incapable of losing it. Sadly, it seems the maelstrom surrounding the professor did not let him see matters in the same light.

One wonders how long before Dr. Siras' heirs, or someone else (via a PIL), sues AMU. And more generally, AMU needs to learn that it is a "minority institution" -- not an institution that merely presents the pageant of "Muslimness". The two are not the same.

The Indian Express carried a moving account of the circumstances in which Dr. Siras spent his last few days HERE.

R.I.P.

More Pages on Dantewada [UPDATED 4/11/10]

2010-04-10T17:02:00.003-04:00

A few tweets, an attempt to be a bit more comprehensive, and an editor's suggestion, led to this piece.

APRIL 11, 2010 UPDATE: [PS -- the footnote about page length isn't mine; that's courtesy of the Outlook editors.]

Roy Among the Comrades -- II

2010-04-07T09:55:00.005-04:00

I have previously expressed some irritation at Arundhati Roy's "embedded" piece from Dantewada, while affirming its essential importance: whatever "side" you find yourself on, you need to read this piece if you are interested in Indian politics, economic growth (more broadly, the discipline that used to be called "political economy" back in Adam Smith's day; I'm one of those who wishes it still was), and even global economic growth, with an especial focus on the "extractive"/mining industries. But Barkha Dutt's tweet, responding to yesterday's appalling massacre of 76 security personnel by Naxal rebels by taking a dig at Roy for even writing about the issue ("no more 36 page essays on the good folk of dantewada pls"), is silly: the severity and scale of this attack makes 36-page essays on understanding what the state is up against even more important. Recoiling from horror into ignorance is no tribute to the fallen: it is the privilege of those whose lives are not at risk. That can't be said of either the dead jawans or "the good folk of Dantewada". We do neither any service by reflexively jumping to the view that only an escalation in hostilities can serve the purpose.

I am not naive, and do not doubt that the Naxalites can be beaten without the use of military force/police action -- but nor can the rebellion's back be broken absent a far-reaching overhaul of the way in which the state treats its most marginal citizens. Unlike what is suggested by some of Roy's rhetoric, I do not believe this is a war being waged to wholesale displace adivasis or to exterminate them -- but there is no doubt that they are being made to bear the costs of economic development for which they see virtually no benefits. As long as that doesn't change, the insurgency cannot be dealt with: the massacre of 76 jawans (themselves almost certainly from some of the poorest segments of Indian society) doesn't change that reality; nor should it diminish the urgency of understanding the Naxalite point of view, of hearing adivasi voices that we simply don't get to hear very much of in the mainstream media. The lives of not just adivasis in Dantewada, but of many more men like the 76 slaughtered yesterday, depend on it.

ah, THAT old ugliness...

2010-03-30T09:28:00.003-04:00

The ongoing "controversy" surrounding Amitabh Bachchan and the Congress casts a new light on the point made by far too many that celebrities need to stay away from politics; when the stakes are this high and the profile this visible, one is likely to be politicized no matter what one does -- figures as diverse as SRK, Amitabh, and Sachin have become embroiled in manufactured controversies over the last few years -- so rather than try and maintain the naive (and perhaps disingenuous) fiction that one is simply apolitical (as virtually all celebrities do when facing flak from this or that political outfit), one should face the reality of one's position, so that any political interventions are measured and deliberate, not haphazard and reactive, and despite one as it were.

[Aside: the lack of introspection displayed by the ordinarily effective Manish Tewari is amusing: everything he says about Bachchan vis-a-vis the 2002 Gujarat pogroms can also be applied to himself vis-a-vis the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms; to paraphrase Tewari himself, he "would be stripped of his ... job the moment he uttered a word against" the Congress' "record during the anti-[Sikh] violence of [1984]." Not to mention that, given this particular round of the Congress-Bachchan war was kicked off when a Maharashtra minister from the Congress' own ally, the Nationalist Congress Party, invited Bachchan for the inauguration of the Bandra-Worli Sealink's second phase, Tewari needs to do some soul-searching on the impossibility of "construct[ing] walls between" politicos "and the communal violence and choose to see them separately; he must tell us what his views ... are." But that might be too much to ask of the spokesperson of a political party.]

Roy Among the Comrades [UPDATED 3/31/10]

2010-03-20T21:36:00.007-04:00

Arundhati Roy irritates me: her tone, her smugness, her careless use of history -- specifically, her stringing of disparate events/places/phenomena as if they all amounted to the same old same old (e.g. lumping together the Indian annexation of Hyderabad as part of the country's "colonialis[t]" course, bizarre given the old order displaced by the annexation was an absolute monarchy hijacked by religious revivalists in its twilight, an old order diametrically opposed to the sort of peasant insurgency one would expect Roy to be sympathetic to -- were the Indian state not on the "other" side of the argument, that is) -- her sloppy and oft-expressed views that the Indian polity is no more than an "upper caste Hindu state", are annoying not only in themselves, but because they mar the force of her arguments, on issues that are so crucial one can ill afford to slip up.

But. But. But. For the courage to talk about what (at least when it comes to what can only be called a civil war in Central India) is barely touched upon by other writers in English, and rarely without resort to the empty platitudes of those who use language not to think about the problem, but to avoid thinking about problems; and for the courage -- and this is perhaps hardest for a writer, even unknowns and aspiring writers, let alone famous ones -- to not pander to her audience, to be unafraid of being misunderstood; everything Roy writes on the plight of the Indian polity's ultimate expendables (far more so than any religious minorities, far more so than even Dalits), namely the "tribal" populations, cannot be missed.

Her latest dispatch from the front-lines is in this week's Outlook.

[MARCH 31, 2010 UPDATE: Here's a clip of Roy reading from her essay (thanks sepoy!)

Time to Listen

2010-03-04T00:09:00.001-05:00

On the Indo-Pak front, enough talks about talks. How about some re-/dis- orientation instead?

AVATAR: a note

2010-02-22T14:10:00.002-05:00

I finally saw Avatar, probably the last person on earth to have done so. In response to Goodfella's fine review at Satyamshot:

"Personally, I was as enchanted by the 3-D/IMAX visuals as I expected to be — but did find myself squirming in my seat by film's end. The utter predictability of the plot, the banality of the dialog, did begin to grate after a while. And it isn’t enough to say that isn’t the point of the film; in the very best films, the audience would not, should not, feel any “gap” between visuals and other elements. Here, I did. That being said, it is perhaps no crime to not be among the “very best films”, especially when one is at the forefront of the list of films that have to be seen, and have to be seen on the big screen. That is to say, no other recent film has been so resistant to the DVD/home viewing/computer viewing/youtube culture that we find ourselves increasingly tending toward year after year. To use the cricketing analogy, in a world embracing 20/20s, despite the cutting edge technology, Avatar is a test match. For that alone, I could forgive it much.

Additionally, Cameron deserves especial credit for setting up a new standard of beauty and elegance that isn’t just a rehash of what we are already familiar with. We know the alternative rather well from pop culture: where feminine beauty is concerned, exotic forms of the babedom we already embrace are held up: the blonde bombshell becomes an Asian or a Latina, but the only thing that has changed is/are the facial features and skin tones (sometimes not by much, given the sorts of “others” chosen). In Avatar, by contrast, in the representations of the Navi we have a standard of beauty and elegance that is far less assimilable, and yet no less seductive for all that. When the technology underlying this film becomes outdated or overtaken, this achievement will nevertheless endure."

A second fragment on The Museum of Innocence

2010-02-17T15:40:00.001-05:00

[First one HERE].

I was thoroughly charmed by the concluding portions of The Museum of Innocence: Pamuk’s introduction of himself as the character who has been recounting Kamal’s story all along – in the first-person, no less -- was handled with the lightness and understated humor worthy of a tongue-in-cheek take on Proust’s insight that the “I” who writes is different from, and perhaps irreducible to, the biographical I, the I who inhabits society. But I was also thoroughly moved, by the novel’s concluding demonstration of that other Proustian truth: that we appear wholly other to others than we do to ourselves, a gulf that proceeds not so much from imperfect information as from our inability to avoid refracting ourselves even when we see others. Or, in terms of Pamuk’s novel, Kamal’s life, which by book’s end is seen by the world around him as tragic or even pathetic, but at any rate a complete failure, is, from Kamal’s perspective, a life well-lived. I found myself wondering whether Kamal’s lover Fusun would have said the same, but that didn’t detract from the truth of Kamal’s claim: and in the face of the latter, Istanbul’s objective judgment to the contrary seemed both presumptuous and trivial.

A note on ISHQIYA (Hindi; 2010)

2010-02-08T10:57:00.007-05:00

Ishqiya is better than most films the Hindi film industry makes, even if its pleasures weren't the ones I was expecting. I went into the film looking for a taut, erotically charged thriller about a femme fatale manipulating two saps over a pot of gold, film noir in a bhaiyya-setting as it were. What I got was a compelling evocation of a small-town U.P. milieu (the (in)famous badlands of Gorakhpur district, along the Nepal border), a locale debutant director Abhishek Chaubhey has presented even more naturally than his mentor Vishal Bhardwaj ever managed with his out-of-the-way settings in either Maqbool or Omkara(that is to say, Chaubhey does it "simply", such that the presentation of the milieu (to "outsiders") does not itself become the point of the film). Thus, in place of the exoticized Muslim gangsters of Maqbool, we have Khalujan/Iftiqar (Naseeruddin Shah) and Babban/Raza Hussain (Arshad Warsi), two small-time thieves who don't perform either their "Muslimness", or their "U.P.-ness" -- the viewer simply finds them as they are. As (s)he does Krishna (Vidya Balan), the lady of the house where the two thieves have sought refuge, on the run from Mushtaqbhai (played by the famous Pakistani actor Salman Shahid) over the small matter of 20 (missing) lakhs.

The dialogs and interplay between the three principal characters are the best part about the film: each of the three loves to talk, and two of them -- Khalujan and Krishna -- share a great weakness for old Hindi film songs (the third, well, Babban's heart is more likely to skip a beat in response to Apna Sapna Money Money's "Dekha jo tujhe yaar / Dil mein baje guitar"; although, make no mistake, all three take their cue from that film's title), and the film is strongest when the viewer's ear is thus engaged (including by several of the film's supporting characters, ranging from a savory old village woman -- "tai" -- to the precocious Nandu to the local steel baron K.K.). Stated differently, the film is weakest when it tries to justify its title, or Krishna's pregnant dialog "ishq mein sab bevajaa hota hai" ("In love, nothing is with reason"; that is to say, love is its own reason, and needs none other, even as it shades into meaninglessness in a terrain dominated by hunger and conflict): the insight -- and the plot device needed to drive the point home -- seems forced, firmly inserting far too much contrived "vajaa" for my liking. A hot kiss between Babban and Krishna notwithstanding, the film never comfortably seems like it's about three people deranged by Eros, so much as about three people down on their luck and thrown together.

The acting performances hold the film together. None are less than competent, but Warsi, Shahid, and the boy who plays Nandu are easily the standouts, with Warsi's Babban cheerfully hogging the limelight. Shah is probably incapable of delivering a bad performance on this sort of "small film" terrain, but does suffer from the fact that his hugely enjoyable character takes a rather passive turn in the film's second half. Balan's Krishna is no natural femme fatale, but Chaubhey uses her well: this siren seduces more with her voice, her singing, and her love of word-play, than the promos might lead one to believe (sure, she brandishes a gun and, later, suggestively sucks Babban's bleeding thumb to light his fire, but then again, what else would work with a mind as unsubtle as his?). All in all, the film is pretty good fun, so don't be a ______ sulfate: Ishqiya deserves to be seen, not least because it will acquaint you with the sort of compound your chemistry teacher never told you about (but that even the tai is intimately familiar with).

Book Review: MY POLITICAL STRUGGLE, by M. Asghar Khan (2008)

2010-01-20T23:58:00.001-05:00

My review is up at H-Net, HERE.

New Year

2010-01-19T15:39:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year. heh heh.

Liminality: A Reprise

2010-01-18T12:53:00.002-05:00

A re-working of an earlier blogpost of mine, this article was published in the January 16, 2010 issue of the Economic & Political Weekly.

A word on NADODIGAL (Tamil; 2009)

2010-01-17T13:43:00.007-05:00

I recently saw Nadodigal, and after all the hype, was quite disappointed. The film is quite well-made in terms of ambience, but uneasily straddles the line between old-school masala and "new" tamil cinema -- and ends up with neither the energy and enthusiasm of the former, nor the rawness and "street cred" of the latter (not to mention that the film's protagonists, chief among them Sasikumar, are not well adapted as far as the masala-end is concerned.

What I did appreciate about the film -- which centers on a band of friends who help a couple elope in the face of fierce parental opposition -- was that this was the one film where the "heroes" were the characters who are peripheral in most love stories: the friends, siblings etc. who help the lovers run away from oppressive parents. Nor is any of this costless: in the typical potboiler, one never sees the consequences, be it the violence or the heartache, that accompanies such filmi romances. Nadodigal certainly does not suffer from that problem, but goes too far, draining truth in yielding to the temptation to be maudlin (not to mention that the film's (un-ironic) representation of the politics of friendship, the violence that such love can itself entail, is highly disturbing; sure, other Tamil films might suffer from the same worldview, but the stakes are higher on the supposedly "realistic" terrain of the "new" Tamil cinema, and there is no escapist hatch one can resort to). I only wish director Samuthikarani had followed his impulse -- to do justice to the marginal -- through to the end, instead of trying to make a Bigtime movie out of it...

Stadium Days

2010-01-14T17:25:00.002-05:00

...or, memories from past lives at Sharjah stadium.

The print version is a bit shorter than I would have liked, due to space considerations. An earlier, longer, version, follows:

I wish I had held on to those -- brochures? booklets? we called them “souvenir books” even though they commemorated no memory, instead serving advance notice -- glossy publications issued in connection with the Sharjah cricket tournaments of the 1980s. Looking back, the articles in the souvenir books were little more than puff-pieces on the Indian and Pakistani cricket teams, and the obligatory third team (and sometimes, a fourth or even a fifth) brought in to avoid the tournament seeming like a bilateral India-Pakistan series, veiling the latter, as it were, but only to heighten the ultimate pleasure of the encounter. But back then, they seemed like little pieces of magic that my father would bring back from his trips to Sharjah stadium, and I devoured not only the write-ups, but also the full-page photographs that made even obscure players -- such as an uneasy-looking Laxman Sivaramakrishnan in the white-bordered souvenir issued for the 1985 “Challenge Cup” -- seem like titans. Even the tobacco ads did not escape my attention. We lived in Abu Dhabi then, and I had never been to Sharjah, not being Old Enough to be allowed a day trip to the stadium; accordingly, I had to content myself with these souvenir books, coveting them almost more than news of who had won the match.

Things began to look up after we moved to Dubai: I was older, and Sharjah wasn’t far away at all. Certainly close enough to go to an India-Pakistan match with my father in 1987, where no fewer than three Indian batsmen perished to the generally unthreatening Salim Jaffer’s full-tosses. My father didn’t stay long -- he had to work that day -- but there were many more matches in the ensuing years, both with him and with classmates, leading to a treasure chest of disjointed images for memories: Viv Richards walking back to the pavilion after having scored 36 nonchalant runs that briefly lifted the tedium of yet another predestined West Indies victory -- the match doesn’t matter, he seemed to be saying to me as he walked back to the pavilion with that inimitable swagger of his, only the style does; name-calling in the stands, as a red-bearded Pathan raffle-ticket seller grew enraged at being mock-whistled at (“like a girl,” he fumed); Waqar Younis running in to complete his 10-over bowling quota, destroying New Zealand to the tune of a two-figure score, his run-up and action an excuse to showcase his godlike open-chested form at the point of delivery; my father’s binoculars, difficult to focus but indispensable if I was ever to associate the men the scoreboard assured me were on the pitch, with the photos I had seen in Khaleej Times; that impossibly little boy with curly hair walking out to bat, to face batteries of West Indian and Pakistani fast bowlers -- Sunny Gavaskar always said Sachin was special, and in my memory that specialness lingers in an image of the child’s fragility; he was only 17 or 18, wasn’t he? Surely that helmet was too big for him? Surely Sunny -- who never could be hurried, who always seemed like he had more time than anyone else -- should have made Sachin wait?

Never having watched a cricket match being played in any other country, I had no idea, in those days before live telecasts of the 1992 World Cup from Australia and New Zealand, that the Sharjah stadium pitch was a “flat” one, that its cracked and parched surface greatly favored batsmen over bowlers. “There’s no grass on it,” my father had long mourned, but it wasn’t until years later, when satellite TV began broadcasting images from England and New Zealand that I began to appreciate what he meant. Television gave rise to other doubts too (just how many of Aqib Javed’s 7 wickets represented dubious umpiring decisions?). By the time I left Dubai behind in the late 1990s, Sharjah cricket was losing much of its sheen: upstart neutral venues like Singapore and Toronto were springing up; and there were growing murmurs about match-fixing, murmurs that couldn’t simply be ascribed to the whining of Indian fans who turned up at every tournament to watch India snatch defeat from the jaws of victory against Pakistan.

Or perhaps it was that I was simply older, and more likely to fancy myself a cricket connoisseur and look down my nose at the batting paradise the curator had cooked up, affording even the moderately gifted time to back away from the stumps and pummel a Curtly Ambrose offering through the offside (I thought Pakistan’s Basit Ali was good back in 1994, but I knew he wasn’t that good). More likely to wince at the taunting chants of Ganpati Bappa chorya (“Ganpati [Lord Ganesh] is a thief”) by some of the more raucous Pakistani fans -- taunts that could not be repaid in kind by Indian fans who were similarly inclined, who would know that analogous insults against Islam would not be tolerated by the authorities. Neutrality only went so far; Bambai mein bolte to bataate (“We would’ve showed ‘em had they said it in Bombay”), I heard one spectator mutter near me. All in all, by the time Sharjah hosted what turned out to be its last match in 2003, I was indifferent to its cricket, preferring to watch the various test series and tournaments I could access in New York thanks to TV and the internet. It didn’t seem to matter anymore (did Pakistan celebrate after beating Zimbabwe to lift the Cherry Blossom Sharjah Cup that year?), and it wasn’t until much later that I realized no one played international cricket in Sharjah any more.

But Ganpatti Bappa chorya stayed with me. It wasn’t just the unfairness of the situation, but the fact that it all seemed so, well, un-Sharjah. But why? It surely wasn’t the fact that some religious sensibilities were more equal than others (the state had never made any claim to the contrary). Perhaps it represented a contravention of the stadium’s spirit? After all, the whole point of Sharjah cricket was to enable India and Pakistan to play each other when relations between the the two countries were hardly friendly, and thus cricket tours of the “other” country, rare. And cricket tournaments were few and far between in the 1980s: outside of the World Cup every four years, there would hardly have been any opportunity for India and Pakistan to play each other, had it not been for Sharjah. Moreover, Sharjah wasn’t just a neutral venue: the large expatriate population from the sub-continent meant that it was one of the very few venues on the planet where neutrality would mean an almost entirely -- and equally -- bi-partisan crowd. Australia versus the West Indies at London’s Lord’s this most certainly was not. That is to say, Sharjah wasn’t just a showcase for quality cricket for the game’s fans -- it was an opportunity for Indian and Pakistani fans to wage war by other means, in each other’s presence. To me, this says something about Sharjah, more broadly, about the Gulf. About the deep and abiding connection between the Gulf and the wider region within which it is embedded.

This is an under-studied aspect of the Gulf boom: for a few decades now, it has been common to dismiss the “petrocracies” of the Middle East as almost unreal (and hence, the implication is, vaguely illegitimate) places, their success dependent on their promise of secession from a “real world” that is just too messy. One sees it even in otherwise sober media coverage, where this or that outlandish idea (an indoor ski slope; the world’s largest something or other) is held up as emblematic of what is “wrong” with the place. There is some truth to this view, indeed I remember subscribing to it myself for a long time, but it is too glib. The stadium -- and by extension, the Gulf -- wasn’t “unreal” in the sense that it had no connection to what was left offshore. Tying the Gulf, and my memories of it, to notions of “reality” (and its double, “fantasy”) would be to use the wrong metaphor: the stadium was, as the Gulf is, a crossroads, a place where certain sorts of encounters and exchanges might happen, fraught encounters running the gamut of the surrounding region. India and Pakistan mostly couldn’t play each other except in Sharjah; more broadly, Pathans and Malayalees and Sikhs couldn’t stumble over each other as they could in the Gulf. [To be sure, there were desi diasporas in Toronto, London, and New York even two decades ago, but these were far more monolithic than the Gulf: under the sign of the catch-all “desi”, one could be forgiven for thinking only of Sikhs in Vancouver, Gujaratis in the American South, Pakistani Kashmiris in the north of England, Hyderabadis in Melbourne, Sri Lankan Tamils and Pakistani Punjabis in Toronto, Bangladeshis in New York. And in North America, there was no public event that would bring desi immigrants together while reminding them of their otherness to each other; London with its cricket could have had such an event, but the sport’s authorities didn’t see England in that role: in their imagining, England was simply itself, not a medium for bringing foreign -stans face to face.]

All of which means I was right to be unsettled by Ganpati Bappa chorya, even beyond the bigotry embodied therein, but not for the reason I had imagined then: my unease was in part the discomfort of someone who had to recognize the untenability of an idea that had hitherto been assumed. Politics, bigotry, and nationalistic hatreds -- “reality” -- weren’t checked in at the Sharjah stadium gate. The promise was and is a different one: of simply enabling the encounter, on ground that has never been a blank slate.

If this is an insight, it isn’t necessarily a melancholy one: you see, I’m one of those who finds something illegitimate about fantasias (whether conceived by the the builders or critics of indoor ski-slopes and outsized malls) designed to keep the “real world” out. A snatch of a taunt and muttered discontent overheard in Sharjah stadium long ago, even perhaps the match-fixing allegations, only make sense now: the real Gulf wasn’t -- and shouldn’t be -- about keeping the rest of the world out; but also about enabling those nearby to stumble upon others who wouldn’t be encountered elsewhere. It’s also why I’ve been more sanguine than many about Dubai’s prospects in the wake of the recent economic turbulence: not because of the billions this or that entity continues to have invested in the city, but because, as long as Indians and Pakistanis, or Malayalees and “North Indians”, Bombayites and Tamilians, Pathans and Muhajirs (I could go on: west to the Levant and Egypt, then south through East Africa; or east to the Philippines and beyond -- but that wouldn’t be cricket, would it?) need to meet, do business, eat each other’s food, resent in close proximity, and make love, Dubai, and the Gulf, will keep renewing the meaning of Sharjah stadium. Ye Hindu hamare fast bowlers se darte hain (“These Hindus are scared of our fast bowlers”) I heard in 1991, in the same tournament when the 18 year-old Sachin helped take 65 runs off 5 overs from the fearsome Wasim and Waqar, as India finally broke its Sharjah jinx against Pakistan. I felt bile rising as I turned to glare at the man behind me, but nearly two decades later I see something else as well. Alone, each of us might have been anywhere; but the two of us, sitting a row apart in unfriendly togetherness, as those around paid us no heed -- back then, it could only happen there.

The Post That Isn't A Post

2010-01-11T16:08:00.003-05:00

I have, I know, been remiss about updating this blog of late, mostly because of a (foolish?) decision to embark upon reading A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, the charm of its endless deferrals, its perversity, its acuity and wisdom ultimately proving too much to resist this New York winter. However, since Proust's novel also does a fair impersonation of the Monster That Eats Up A Year, I'll have to find a way to make sure the rest of me -- also known as my blog and my film-viewing, and (maybe, just maybe) my writing -- doesn't get put into cold storage. In terms of a resolution for 2010, that's as good as any.

Happy New Year, readers.

3 IDIOTS (Hindi; 2009)

2009-12-23T20:00:00.004-05:00

Midway through 3 Idiots, there's a sequence where the ultra-irritating Chatur, the epitome of the learn-by-rote student that principal Viru Sahastrabuddhe (Boman Irani) delights in producing at the Imperial College of Engineering ("ICE"), has to deliver a speech at a college function, before the student body and its chief guest, an education minister. Chatur Ramalingam, a Tamilian by way of Uganda, doesn't know very much Hindi, and has memorized a Hindi speech that he has (unethically) had ICE’s librarian write for him -- another reminder (in a film that doesn’t lack for them) about the petty meanness of a system where everyone’s looking out for No. 1. Unknown to Chatur, however, Rancho (Aamir Khan) and Farhan (Madhavan) have conspired to find and replace several Hindi words with rather more lewd equivalents. Chatur is none the wiser, but the student body and the chief guest collapse in laughter as Chatur’s “chamatkaar” (miracle) is repeatedly replaced by “balaatkar” (rape). The comedy is broad, the shot is cheap, and the audience cannot help laughing its guts out.

A lesser director might have been satisfied with that, but Raj Kumar Hirani gives us more. As the tyrant Sahastrabuddhe tries to get out of his seat to stop Chatur’s speech, he is physically restrained by the politician next to him: neither sleazy nor villainous, this V.I.P. is simply having a blast, and Hirani makes clear that not even ICE’s dictatorial principal can overrule a minister. Not in India. Not in the system that Sahastrabuddhe and ICE serve so well. The actor playing the politician in question is memorable, despite barely a couple of lines of dialog, and that says a lot. About Hirani, about his films, and about the state of the Hindi film industry, where even most lead protagonists are forgotten by the time the audience walks out of the theater. The female lead of De Dhana Dhan, anyone?

The scene discussed above neatly encapsulates Hirani’s films, with their reliance on broad (but not mean-spirited) comedy, a social message, strong writing and the love of dialog, and a very, very desi silliness. Contemporary Hindi cinema has more than one director whose films I’d pay money to see -- but none have drunk so deep from the almost forgotten well of the Hindi comedies of the 1970s, that is to say, none are as humane, as cheerful (and cheerfully local), and as unpretentiously instructive, as Hirani’s films.

To no-one’s surprise, Hirani doesn’t stop at bit parts: 3 Idiots is a film of two halves, both very strong, and combining to give us the finest Hindi film of the year. The imbeciles of the title are played by Madhavan and Sharman Joshi (as the conventional Farhan Qureshi and Raju Rastogi, respectively), and by Aamir Khan (as the decidedly unconventional Rancho); the three are freshmen at ICE, and are the vehicles for Hirani’s relentless (and relentlessly welcome) message to his audience that a mindset that views education as a means to secure mere social advantage, or as a means to do better what everyone else is trying to do, is a system that is focused on producing people with degrees, not educated young men and women. A system that places a higher premium on training highly qualified coolies than on creative thinking that might lead to practical solutions for India’s problems. Rancho is relentless in thumbing his nose at ICE’s powers-that-be, and naturally runs afoul of Sahastrabuddhe -- with potentially disastrous consequences for the three idiots’ future prospects. Indeed, when the film opens we don’t know what has become of Rancho, and will not find out until the very end: throughout, the film flits effortlessly between the past -- i.e. Raju’s, Rancho’s, and Farhan’s antics at ICE -- and the present, when Farhan and Raju are in a quest to find their friend, guru and guide.

As far as vanished imams go, they could do far worse. This is a Big Bollywood film, so some of the idiots are more equal than others. Specifically, as the biggest star, Aamir gets the biggest part, as the prophet of Hirani’s gospel preaching secession (of sorts) from the rat race (not completely: the success ethic isn’t completely left behind, given Rancho’s repeated promises that withdrawal from the race will lead to the greatest success). And Khan is equal to the task: he has the most over-the-top role, and performs it with aplomb and genuine likeability, and -- crucially -- with infectious enthusiasm and energy. There aren’t really any students like Rancho, but I didn’t care, because this film is about one, almost other-worldly student (and his flock of two). Not for nothing does the Zoobi Doobi song video offer a partial tribute to Raj Kapoor: Aamir’s Rancho is very much in the line of the wise fools Kapoor liked to play (not Awaara so much as Chalia), not to mention that in this decade, no-one has more determinedly played the role of India’s cinematic conscience than Aamir Khan. And in ringing out the decade, he does so again, in a film that might be called the revenge of India’s students on Baaghban. To all those “elders” fond of casting reproachful looks around the room while Ravi Chopra’s sobfest is playing out, here’s a film that asserts, unapologetically, the right of India’s kids to be something other than engineers and doctors, to be whatever the hell it is that they want to be. Take that.

The other two idiots have important roles, but more importantly, they are played by very good actors: Sharman Joshi makes good use of, but also rises above, the comical oddity of his face to give his most memorable performance since Rang De Basanti, while the reliably superb Madhavan is, well, super. Not to mention effortlessly natural. Aamir Khan provides the star wattage and charisma here, but deserves credit for not being shy of sharing the stage with more natural, quirkier performers. A lesson more than one Big Time Star could learn.

Kareena Kapoor (who plays Rancho’s love interest -- and Sahastrabuddhe’s daughter -- Pia) deserves a special mention. Her role isn’t very long or intricate, but it is gratifying to see that Hirani knows what only Govind Nihalani, Vishal Bhardwaj, and Mani Rathnam seem to have learned before him: that the camera loves Kapoor when she isn’t trying too hard to play the mega-babe, when it can catch smiles, anger, that flush only Ms. Kapoor seems to have, flit across her face. I felt disappointed when I saw her in 3 Idiots -- because of all those other films she seems to do. Also welcome was Hirani’s evocation of the Raj Kapoor legacy in the context of a song video featuring the man’s grand-daughter: a (small) victory in an industry where, all too often, notions of inheritance and legacy are tied to sons, not daughters. This one is a Kapoor too, Hirani gently reminds us (he wouldn’t shout, that man), and one wishes more would take the lesson to heart.

No-one is perfect, and not even Hirani-the-writer/director can redeem the utter mediocrity of this film’s music (having to swap his preferred A.R. Rahman for the Vinod Chopra banner’s Shantanu Moitra serves as a reminder to us all that Aamir Khan doesn’t always get his own way). Likewise, Hirani’s visual idiom is generally no more than functional -- although he seems to have taken strides from his Munnabhai work; in particular, one odd sequence -- the film’s first look at Raju’s family home -- is insanely funny, at once a descendant and well ahead of Lage Raho Munnabhai’s “Samjho Ho Hi Gaya” song. I’m almost relieved to be able to point to these limitations: otherwise, I might have had to change my religion, and come to Hirani’s altar to hear Rancho’s gospel in an altogether different way.

Legal Trouble

2009-12-19T17:14:00.001-05:00

Mine, and perhaps everyone else's too.

Devil's Advocate

2009-12-12T00:10:00.001-05:00

No no, it's not in "support" of the politicians, but more a question of why everyone else seems to be getting a free pass.

A fragment on The Museum of Innocence

2009-12-02T21:52:00.004-05:00

Orhan Pamuk's latest novel is the best kind of erotic writing: suffused with loss and painfully light, and reminiscent of both Proust and Kundera in its psychological acuity, in its chronicling of the desperation and anguish of longing (like those other two authors, Pamuk paints its stubbornness and perversity, but not its energy). Moreover, the novel's central conceit, of a narrator showing readers around a(n) (impossible?) museum (dedicated to the woman the narrator has loved and lost, and comprised of objects associated with her in the narrator's mind), and providing the very context that museum visitors are typically bereft of, perhaps does nothing so much as demonstrate the impossibility of ever fully accounting for any object, of completely exhausting its meaning and significance. And doubly so where the context is lust, love, the spectrum of the erotic -- each object is simply charged with too much meaning for one to do justice to it, and to the secret it testifies to...

Horror Show

2009-11-27T15:55:00.003-05:00

It doesn't take much to get me started on the topic of the direction(s) contemporary Hindi cinema is taking. And that little was provided by the Kurbaan promotional campaign -- leading to this piece for OutlookIndia.com.

Apu-in-the-World: A Response

2009-11-08T15:39:00.003-05:00

Chandak Sengoopta's recent piece on the Apu Trilogy (brought to my attention courtesy Satyamshot) prompted the following:

I was struck by the fact that that the vast majority of the quotes Sengoopta cites appear to be from no later than 1961 — but things have come a long way since then, and this smattering of quotes surely does not exhaust critical reception of Satyajit Ray's trilogy in the West over the last half-century. Sengoopta's indifference to the continuing reception of Ray's work "abroad" (especially given that many of Ray's other films have only recently begun to garner a wider audience, thanks to retrospectives and DVD releases; a phenomenon Sengoopta passes over in silence even as he makes the sweeping statement that "[a]s Ray’s later films dealt in greater and greater depth with Indian history and culture, his western critics (with some honourable exceptions like Philip French or Ray’s biographers Marie Seton and Andrew Robinson) simply did not try to engage with the specifically Indian elements...."), leaves one with the impression that he is fighting a battle from long-ago.

The essence of Sengoopta's piece is contained in the following excerpt:

There’s no doubt western critics loved the trilogy—but to what extent did they comprehend its contents and contexts? Based on two classic novels by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, the films were Bengali to the core, and often harshly realistic in portraying social change, economic malaise and individual growth. Although set in the 1930s, they were tinged, as Indian critics have rightly pointed out, with the optimistic modernism of Nehru’s India. How much of this was appreciated by viewers who knew little about India and Bengal? ... It is, no doubt, a good thing that Ray’s Indianness is no longer explained with ethnocentric stereotypes. Is it much of an advance, though, to strip away his Indian identity and regard him only as a purveyor of universalist “nuances”?

I share Sengoopta’s unease with the “local” being stripped away from Ray’s work in favor of a “universalism” that threatens to submerge identity, but the article proves too much: for instance, what does “India and Bengal” mean? Many, if not most, of the film’s non-Bengali viewers will not have intimate “insider” knowledge of rural Bengal either; indeed, how many Calcuttans would either? (Conversely, how many of Bengal's rural denizens -- themselves a diverse group -- will get the opportunity to watch Ray's films?) If the point is that one needs to be well-versed in the social and political intricacies of early twentieth century-Bengal, then Sengoopta should make that point (although, even there, the point is surely amenable to general application; does the average global reader of Jane Austen really know more about her world than the average viewer of Ray's films does about Bengal?) — rather than setting up some kind of halfway house, whereby the point is juxtaposed with the implication that a certain segment of viewers, simply by virtue of being Bengali or Indian, have unfettered and unproblematic access to the world of the film. That is, while decrying ethno-stereotyping, Sengoopta seems to have himself made the Apu Trilogy into something akin to "folk art", not only a Bengali work of art but a work of art that is nothing more nor less than its Bengaliness. Indeed, the answer to the question of just who the "outsider" is cannot be assumed. Taking just two examples, given that the Apu Trilogy is the cinematic adaptation of a Bengali novel (itself an art-form invented in Western Europe, and, arguably, assuming "Western" notions of subjectivity and narration); and that Ray was obviously very familiar with Western culture and learning (more so, perhaps, than many in his Indian audience) it is obvious that questions of access run the other way too...

The D-Word

2009-11-04T03:02:00.000-05:00

My piece for OutlookIndia.com.

Afghanistan's Golden Age

2009-10-21T11:57:00.004-04:00

An interesting piece in the New York Times (by way of Chapati Mystery) on Afghanistan's (none too distant) "golden age", although I remain somewhat reticent about such rhetoric, because it can easily be used to deflect arguments against increased intervention by outside powers -- although the argument never seems to prevent involvement in any but the most humanitarian conflicts (Balkan Ghosts, anyone?). That is, it's an argument that might be deployed in Year 8 of a war, not Year 0.

Nevertheless, because it helps disturb the sanguine (and maddeningly superficial) view of Afghanistan as a country that one can 't do anything about, as a land, discussions about which are bookended by phrases like "imperial graveyard" and "fiercely ungovernable", the piece is welcome. The evocative photographs don't hurt either.

Blind Spot

2009-10-13T15:05:00.003-04:00

The recent publication of the United Nations' human development report and country ranks prompted me to write this op-ed for Outlookindia.com.

A Movie Poster Yatra

2009-10-07T23:47:00.006-04:00

[For all the Mumbai theaters I am deeply indebted to Abzee and his father for taking me there]

In Delhi (February 2006) ("Suhaagan Banaa Das Sajnaa Hamaar"):

In Ajmer (February 2006):
Near Ajmer Shareef:

(full-sized image HERE)

In Rawalpindi (February 2007) :
"Aaj Da Badmaash":
(larger image HERE)

"Bebas Kaliyan":
(larger image HERE)

In Hyderabad (November 2007):

"Om Shanti Om" and "Jab We Met":

"Viyyala Vari Kayyalu" in Raitu Bazaar (Thanks Madhu for the film title!):
(larger images HERE and HERE)

In Warangal (November 2007):
"Yamadonga" giving way to "Munna":
(larger image HERE)
(larger image HERE)
(larger image HERE)

In Bhopal (December 2007):
"Qismat" and "Partner" in Bhopal's Old City:

In Mumbai (December 2007):
"Welcome" & "Dilwaale Dulhania Le Jaayenge" at Maratha Mandir:

"Sautela" and "Laadla" at Royal:
(larger image HERE)

"Judwaa" at Alfred:
(larger image HERE)

"Aandhi aur Toofan":
(larger image HERE)

"Welcome" and "Taare Zameen Par" at Eros (opposite Churchgate):

In Varanasi (March 2009):
"Delhi-6":
(larger image HERE)

"Delhi-6" and "Ek Haseen Khiladi":
(larger image HERE)

"Chandaal":
(larger image HERE)

Ruins...

2009-10-07T23:36:00.005-04:00

There has been a great series of posts/photos on Satyamshot of some landmark movie theaters in various Indian cities. Many of these "single screen" cinema halls have seen better days, and seem melancholy today, symbolizing the shifting balance of the Hindi film industry in favor of neo-Hollywood and/or "multiplex" cinema, often with exorbitant ticket prices that price out large segments of the audience that was once the industry's mainstay. In the process, Hindi films are increasingly becoming associated with a particular lifestyle/mode of consumerism -- rather than the cultural phenomena they used to be.

The image below, of "The Strand" (Mumbai), was especially moving...

...This image brought to mind some passages by Bolano or Le Clezio (in the case of the latter, I am thinking of the interviews in Ailleurs) — this theater seems like a rusted, stranded space ship, a messenger from another world, continuing to transmit, but in a language no one around can understand…

For my own movie poster/theater yatra, see HERE.

Montreal!

2009-10-06T12:15:00.011-04:00

Things have been quiet on the blogging front because I've been away for a few days, in Montreal...always good to be back there (next time, will make sure I make my way to Quebec City). In the meantime, some photos from Vieux Montreal (click on them for larger versions):

A Note on Two Satyajit Ray Charmers...

2009-09-25T14:45:00.016-04:00

[Image courtesy Ballygunge Government High School Alumni Association.]

One of my great pleasures is exploring a master's minor work -- often it is only in the latter, especially when one has attained canonical status, that some vestiges of the whimsical remain. Strictly speaking, this is only partly true of Satyajit Ray's work (he actually seemed to get more whimsical with age and directorial maturity), but nevertheless, an acquaintance with the Ray of less serious subjects is highly rewarding. One isn't overawed, but most decidedly charmed.

[Image courtesy Rodney Koeneke's blog Modern Americans: Poetry, Poetics, Portland. I urge readers to check out his suggestive reading of Joi Baba Felunath.]

The two Detective Prodosh Mitra films I saw recently certainly fit the bill: Sonar Kella ("The Golden Fortress"; 1974), an odd little tale of a boy who is apparently obsessed with images from a past life, and endangered when the promise of treasure associated with that past life leads to two criminals to abscond with him; and Joi Baba Felunath (1979), a more conventional detective story about a missing idol of Lord Ganesh in Varanasi, are both as compelling as fables, but in a comforting manner. One has never any doubt that Detective Mitra (Soumitra Chatterjee) will get to the bottom of everything, and the films thoroughly partake of the pleasure of detection, the pleasure to be obtained from uncovering secrets and figuring things out -- a pleasure that almost seems anachronistic to me, inasmuch as I think of it as a quintessentially nineteenth century (and English?) sentiment; as well as of the whimsicality of a Tintin adventure. (This is especially true of the older film, and Ray acknowledges as much in a seemingly casual shot of Mitra's cousin and sidekick Topshe (Siddhartha Chatterjee) reading a Tintin comic on a train.) It is perhaps the supernatural element that makes Sonar Kella the superior film, so saturated with atmosphere one is sorry to be parted from it when the film ends. But with respect to both films, Ray effortlessly manages to convey what too few directors are capable of: the condition of being a traveler. When the characters in these films travel to an "exotic" location (Jaipur, Bikaner, and Jaisalmer, all feature in Sonar Kella; the later film is set entirely in Varanasi), the audience -- no matter where it is from -- is also taken out of its comfort zone, and transported. One can only wonder how much more effective these films would be with high-quality DVD transfers: especially in Sonar Kella, the faded colors do not do justice to Ray's visuals of Rajasthan.

[Image courtesy CalcuttaWeb.]

No reflection on these films could ignore Soumitra Chatterjee, a Ray favorite. His Prodosh Mitra is a model of languidness and stylized understatement, in the process elevating dowdy dhoti kurtas and kurta pyjamas into Bengali babu chic, and generally providing both these films with the calm poise of a center. Which isn't to say other characters aren't important, especially the baddies, ranging from the pint-sized slimeball Mukul Dhar (Kushal Chakravarti) in Sonar Kella, to the fantastic villain of Joi Baba Felunath Maganlal Meghraj (Utpal Dutt) -- the latter especially welcome for Hindi film viewers who are more familiar with Dutt as the lovable presence from so many Hindi film comedies from the 1970s.

[Image courtesy the wonderful Satyajit Ray Film & Study Center, University of California, Santa Cruz.]

WANTED (Hindi; 2009)

2009-09-20T01:45:00.000-04:00

[Image courtesy NDTV]

The passage of time does strange things, but not even Marcel Proust could have dreamed it would have this effect. I've spent most of the last two decades disliking Salman Khan. I mean, really disliking him, and everything about him: from his wannabe vibe, his faux-Bambi eyes, his breathless dialog-delivery, his weird English accent, and his non-existent acting skills. Needless to say, I wasn't much convinced by his occasional half-assed attempts to do masala actioners; he was -- and there's no polite way to put this -- just too puny for the likes of Garv, especially given that he was playing it straight, as opposed to using the sort of explanatory gimmick Aamir Khan deployed (namely, that he was a raving lunatic) in Ghajini.

But then, a funny thing happened on the way to 2009: masala cinema went the way of the dodo, leaving adherents like me to whatever slim pickings remained (mostly by way of remakes of Southern superhits, such as the unsuccessful-but-enjoyable Run (2004), and the ultra-successful Ghajini (2008) (both remakes of Tamil films of the same names, from 2002 and 2005, respectively; and both directed by filmmakers from that industry)); and Salman Khan, after an indifferent run at the box-office, began hosting a TV game-show called Dus Ka Dum. The Salman of the latter was a revelation, funny and irreverent, and most interestingly, possessed of a new persona that almost seemed to parody "Bollywood." Certainly, there were occasional glimpses of this in Salman's oeuvre, such as in the brilliant opening scene of Jaan-e-man (2006), or in David Dhawan's underrated Trishul-spoof of sorts, Yeh Hai Jalwa (2002), but something as sustained as Salman's Dus ka Dum avatar is rare in an industry where far too many take themselves far too seriously (and with far too little justification). Wouldn't it be fun, I mused, if someone managed to cast this Salman Khan in a film, preferably a masala movie?

Had I known God was listening, I would have wished for the winning lottery ticket.

Wanted is, consistent with the trend of Bollywood's seeming inability to come up with a decent masala actioner, a remake of Pokiri (2006), reportedly Telugu cinema's then-biggest grosser -- or is it Pokkiri (2007), Prabhudeva's Tamil remake of Puri Jagannath's Telugu original? No matter: Prabhudeva apparently likes the script so much he's decided to re-re-make it, this time with Salman Khan standing in Mahesh Babu's can't-be-bettered shoes, or in Vijay's less impressive Tamil running gear.

He's not getting better at this: while Wanted is an almost-exact ersatz of Pokiri, it is a markedly lesser film. Some of this is attributable to Puri Jagannath, who managed to infuse the original with a certain fluidity that lent itself to repeat viewing (the far clunkier Wanted does not). But most can be laid at the door of Mahesh Babu,in his prime and capable of powering along the rather patchy narrative -- and make no mistake, this is the kind of film that rises or falls with its male lead.

Mercifully for Prabhudeva, his male lead -- Salman Khan -- is in possibly the best form of his life. Now well into his forties, age has begun to show as much as it has with his peers Aamir and Shah Rukh (and, for all three, to a greater extent than with Akshay Kumar), and Salman's dance and action-movements betray a marked stiffness at points in Wanted -- but, with the exception of his dignified and iconographic cameo in Saawariya (2007), Salman Khan has never looked better or more charismatic (when dressed normally, that is; Prabhudeva all too often clothes him in outlandish wear befitting an actor half his age -- it doesn't help that the female lead, Ayesha Takia, probably is half Salman's age). He certainly has never looked more convincing in action sequences (the most intense of these, the climactic one, betters the analogous sequence in Pokiri). And, given that this is the story of ruthless thug Radhe (Salman), his love interest Jhanvi (Ayesha Takia, whose effervescent persona is utterly wasted in a role that ought to be beneath her), the sleazy inspector who lusts after her (Mahesh Manjrekar), and who, like Radhe, ultimately works for underworld don Ghani Bhai (Prakashraj), himself pursued by a ruthless new assistant commissioner of police (Govind Namdeo), there are plenty of opportunities for action sequences (indeed, Wanted is markedly gorier than Pokiri). Salman handles these with gusto, if not quite aplomb. More importantly, his hyper-stylized screen persona fits right in where this film is concerned; and Salman deploys it in a bemused manner that borders on self-parody, to the point where one could be forgiven for imagining a twinkle in his eye. And Prabhudeva gives him the works, from seeti-taali inducing dialogs to fisticuffs to gunplay to smoldering face-time with Takia; heck, by film's end, he even has his shirt off. No Salman fan could possibly complain about this outing.

The above is a longwinded way of saying that the failure of this film cannot be laid at Salman's door. If one had been hoping for Prabhudeva to improve on Pokkiri's script, one would be disappointed. The original was not powered by a classic script, and although the Hindi version lops off much of the unwelcome comedy track, it feels no tighter. Nor does it have adequate substitutes for the zing of Pokkiri's one-liners, attempting to make do with more double entendres and crudity than the Telugu film had (when Jhanvi is backed into Radhe in a stalled elevator, she is jolted, and timidly asks what has happened; Radhe informs her that's his cellphone on vibrate-mode, and Jhanvi obligingly moves her ass to confirm for the audience this is indeed the case). Far from diluting the sexism that marred Pokiri, Wanted might even have ramped it up. In the context of the ultra-girlish Takia, paired with a man who looks old enough to be her father, some of these dialogs can seem positively creepy. (Not to mention the fact that just about every woman in both films is associated with some instance of sexual coercion.) I can't say I regretted seeing the film -- I'm too starved of masala cinema for that -- but it does give me pause before any recommendations are handed out. And I won't be seeing it again -- not as long as I can access the DVD of Puri Jagannath's film...

Book Review: THE PASSING OF PATRIMONIALISM

2009-09-17T11:55:00.010-04:00

The Passing of Patrimonialism: Politics and Political Culture in Hyderabad, 1911-1948; by Margrit Pernau; New Delhi: Manohar, 2000 (earlier version published in German as Verfassung und politische Kultur im Wandel : der indische Fürstenstaat Hyderabad 1911-48; Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1992)

Original Photo HERE

The incredible wealth and personal oddities of Hyderabad's last Nizam, Osman Ali Khan; combined with the striking anomaly that the Deccan outpost of, and successor-state to, the Mughal empire -- it is no coincidence that the graves of Aurangzeb and the first Nizam lie very near each other, in the Burhanuddin dargah in Maharashtra’s Khuldabad -- survived until the middle of the twentieth century; not to mention the state's bizarre decision to try and cling on as a monarchy even after the departure of the British, rather than strike a reasonable accommodation with the post-1947 Indian state; have contributed to the dominant popular image of the Nizamate, and of its court culture, as one of eccentricity and anachronism. If ever a polity was in the wrong time, popular historiography seems to agree, the Mughal relic in the Deccan was it. Margrit Pernau's first achievement in The Passing of Patrimonialism, then, is in taking and representing that polity seriously for a relatively non-specialist audience. Her book (the English version is a 2000 reworking of her 1992 German-language study) attempts to take the reader through the last four decades of British rule in India from the perspective of (for the most part) the Nizam's court and Hyderabad's political elites. While the Pernau of 2000 acknowledges that her 1992 thesis' implicit conflation of "politics" with the statecraft and maneuvers of the Hyderabad political elites is a bit too narrow given the book's subtitle, she unapologetically insists upon the subject's importance. One would be hard-pressed to deny it, although Pernau's concession does mean that one cannot take the book's stated ambit, "Politics and Political Culture in Hyderabad, 1911-1948", literally. The "patrimonialism" of the title refers to Max Weber's classification of the forms of "traditional " political authority in his seminal Economy and Society. Following Weber, Pernau notes:

. . . three forms within traditional authority, that is authority which derives its legitimacy 'by virtue of the sanctity of age-old rules ('existing since time immemorial') and powers. The first form is gerontocracy or primary patriarchalism, which functions without an administrative staff of its own and therefore can exercise control only over a limited area. . . . If an administrative staff develops, it can be responsible to the ruler personally -- the second form. In this case Weber speaks of patrimonialism. Alternatively -- and this is the third form -- it can appropriate particular powers and economic assets, in which case it would be called estate-type domination. . . . (Passing of Patrimonialism, pg. 51)

The "passing" the book's title refers to is thus that of Hyderabad from the pre-modern "patrimonialism" of the Asaf Jahi state to the modern, impersonal bureaucratic state. But the bureaucratic state Pernau apparently has in mind is not simply the Indian Union. While Hyderabad is commonly thought of in popular discourse as stuck in a time warp until its old order was replaced by virtue of the state's absorption into the Indian Union in 1948, Pernau sees the transition as having begun much earlier, such that the ancien regime was already all but dead by the time the Indian Army walked into the state. In Pernau's view, the passage from the second to the third of Weber's forms of "traditional authority" was initiated by the last Nizam, Osman Ali Khan (r. 1911-1948), who sought to create a modern administrative state structure that would nevertheless leave undisturbed the legitimacy and symbolic order of the Asaf Jahi dynasty, a monarchy that bore the trace of its distant Mughal origins in the sovereign's own title (the "nizam" of the title referred originally to Mir Qamaruddin Khan, the eighteenth century Mughal "nizam-ul-mulk" ("administrator of the land", a title given to Mughal governors) who founded the dynasty by achieving the de facto independence of the declining Mughal state's Deccan province). But The Passing of Patrimonialism isn't very clear as to whether this bureaucratization was the result of the last Nizam's own drive for centralized power (at the expense of that of other traditional elements in the state, such as the nobility); or of the Raj's determination by the 1920s to clip Osman Ali Khan's wings, by attempting to institutionalize administrative authority in the state in order to reduce its dependence on a man the British alternately regarded as bulwark and troublemaker.

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The book's failure to explore this distinction points to a wider issue. An account of Hyderabad's broader passage from the world of the "beloved" Nizam Mahboob Ali Khan (d. 1911) (held, along with his Minister Maharajah Kishen Prashad, to typify the traditional Hyderabadi courtly ethos) to that of the modern nation-state, would unquestionably be highly significant (whether or not even pre-1911 Hyderabad conformed to Weber's notions of the "patrimonial," given the size and extent of the state, and the fact of British paramountcy and range of "impersonal" means at the colonial power's disposal to influence events within the state, is a separate question). But The Passing of Patrimonialism only intermittently concerns itself with such an account, and even less so with a study of the state's increasing bureaucratization, with the result that the book's statement of thesis, laid out in Pernau's introduction, is somewhat misleading. Pernau does engage with her book's purported subject when it comes to discrete areas -- such as her superb account of the manner in which the patrimonial (and perennial) struggle between the aristocratic Paigah family and the sovereign, with the contours of Paigah power varying over time and dependent on the nature of the family's relations with the Nizam -- became institutionalized by the end of the 1920s, the rights and privileges of Paigah seigneurial authority over the family lands becoming appropriate subjects for legal/rule-based adjudication, rather than informal politics. But for the most part, the book does not provide an overarching account of a system passing into bureaucratic modernity. Indeed, at its most persuasive, such as in the long fifth chapter on the new forms of political mobilization in the twentieth century, the resulting sharpening of linguistic and communal boundaries as well as the simultaneous fluidity of the boundaries between the Indian nationalist, Hindu revivalist, and linguistic movements; and on the extent to which even orthodox Muslim "loyalism" ultimately undermined the polity; the book's account of the passing of Hyderabad's patrimonial structure does not seem to have anything to do with the increased bureaucratization of the state. The nazar controversy of 1920 serves as a good illustration. Osman Ali Khan's re-interpretation of the Mughal concept of nazar, from a personal presentation to the sovereign as homage, or at the time of a request; to an institutionalized (and highly unpopular) revenue stream collected throughout the realm; would appear to be a perfect illustration of the book's thesis. But Pernau discusses the issue only within the context of rising tensions between the Nizam and the British, and other critics who saw the new policy as evidence of Osman Ali Khan's avarice. A study of the new nazar policy as symptomatic of the passing of patrimonialism is strangely absent.

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Fortunately, the tale Pernau does tell is no less significant. The Passing of Patrimonialism is essentially a history of Hyderabad's politics during Osman Ali Khan's reign, and, given the paucity of overarching scholarly narratives on this subject in English, it is welcome as such a history. Ultimately, the broader historical passage Pernau's title alludes to is not the subject of her history so much as it is the backdrop to her account of the efforts of the Hyderabad ruling elites to negotiate both British paramountcy and the rising tide of nationalism, all the while attempting to preserve the old order. Pernau's book, that is to say, is not a study of the last Nizam's modernization drive as symptomatic of a long structural change, but is primarily a history of his strategy to negotiate that change. That strategy was doomed to fail -- Osman Ali Khan's regime ultimately found itself on the wrong side of virtually every major political trend, with the exception of the increased bureaucratization that was one of modernity's hallmarks, or of an overtly Muslim politics, although even both of these could not help but undermine the foundations of the ancien regime that had encouraged them. However, an adequate understanding of that attempt, that is, of Osman Ali Khan's position as a crucial transitional figure -- a "modernizer," but one who sought to use modernization to try and shore up his position and to hold outsiders at bay -- is essential, not only where the political history of the Deccan is concerned, but also because it encapsulates several major themes in Indian history that resonate down to our times: the dichotomies of "tradition" and "progress"; cultural autonomy and "outside" influence; the functioning of colonialism in the context of "indirect" rule; the grand narratives of nationalism and communalism (Muslim and Hindu); the more localized narrative of a sub-national (Telugu, but also Marathi) identity; not to mention (by the end of the period) an armed peasant uprising.

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The Passing of Patrimonialism is very good in illustrating the unintended consequences of political actors pursuing their own ends within the context of the hybrid colonial system that combined directly ruled British India with a patchwork of "native ruled" states, and over which (certainly by the late nineteenth century) British authority and influence was such that their characterization in the academic literature as instances of "indirect" rule is entirely justified. Pernau lucidly shows how, step-by-step, and cognizant of his early weakness within Hyderabad vis-a-vis the nobility and the throne's Minister (given that the appointment of the latter had long been one of the principal ways in which the colonial power exercised influence at the Hyderabad court, the position was an especial interest of the British, and, over time, no Minister could be appointed without British approval) the last Nizam sought to shore up his authority by courting the British Resident and importing (or accelerating the adoption of) British bureaucratic models within the state's administration; while, simultaneously, attempting to instal his own men in significant administrative positions. (The latter move adversely impacted the traditional aristocracy, and, indirectly, British influence, given the nobility's tendency to appeal to the British Resident for support in conflicts with the court.) This double (and somewhat contradictory) move would have been fairly typical of the dance the larger princely states had to manage vis-a-vis the Raj (the double move would become a trapeze act once nationalistic politics gained ground in the twentieth century, as India's new "mass leaders" challenged the legitimacy of the "traditional" rulers in profoundly destabilizing ways), were it not for the outbreak of World War I.

Pernau underscores that the British need to "keep Muslims loyal" in the face of an enemy that included Ottoman Turkey (still ruled by a Sultan who was nominally Khalifah (Caliph) of all (Sunni) Muslims worldwide) led them to solicit the overt support of the Nizam, as the ruler of the largest Muslim(-ruled) principality in India. This need became ever more urgent once it became clear that the war's end would spell radical changes to the nature of the Ottoman state. Not to mention that complications arose from Britain's position as global -- and not just an Indian -- power: while the British had extended assurances to Indian Muslim leaders that the position of the Khalifah as custodian of the holy places of Makkah and Madinah would not be affected, these promises were simply inconsistent with the expectations of Arab nationalists (also encouraged by the British) that henceforth they would rule in the Arab lands. While the Nizam's combination of loyalty and subservience to the Raj, and championing of a specifically Muslim agenda, would pose problems once the Khilafat movement made the two courses diverge, until that break, on Pernau's account, the Nizam was able to see his position as "Muslim leader" as an opportunity to leverage his relations with the Raj in his favor. However, what neither the Nizam, nor the British (nor anyone else) foresaw was the destructive impact the Nizam's new pan-Indian Islamic identity ("new" in the sense that it was understood to transcend the borders of the state of Hyderabad; the Asaf Jahi dynasty had always seen itself as orthodox Muslim, but had not laid any claim to wider Muslim significance beyond the Deccan, and had over time celebrated the notion of a court culture where Hindu and Muslim could not be distinguished on the basis of language or dress) would have on the legitimacy of his state in the eyes of its own population, the vast majority of which was Hindu.

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What explains this blindness? One might just chalk it up to the inevitable law of unintended consequences, but Pernau links it to the ambiguous duality inherent in the position of the princely states vis-a-vis the Raj. That is, the princes were expected to maintain "traditional" rule within their borders, but at the same time had to follow the British "civilizing" lead (a ruler who stubbornly refused to implement any of the modern bureaucratic, administrative, educational, and technological methods being applied in British India, would soon find himself -- as an unfriendly reactionary -- on the wrong side of the state's British Resident). Conversely, the princely states could not go the whole hog in conforming to the British model: not only would this be suicidal for the native rulers' own position (which to a large extent depended on traditional symbols and models of patronage, few of which could survive the impersonal bureaucratization of the modern state), but it would also undermine the Raj's own rationale for why the princely states continued to be tolerated. That is, if the British were justified in letting the princely states survive despite their "backwardness", this was because "traditional authority" was better suited to Indian realities, and indeed, the Indian public was imagined to be greatly attached to the traditional forms of authority. (The cynicism of such justifications may be readily gleaned from the obvious point that this essentially relativistic argument could just as easily be used to undermine the ideological foundations of colonial rule in British India. Pernau, more charitably, refers to this unacknowledged contradiction within British imperial ideology, but that presupposes an integrity that I am not persuaded imperial policymakers possessed.) Wholesale importation of the British model would de-stabilize the traditional bond between prince and subject. The "traditional" rulers also began to serve a second ideological function once Western-educated Indians began to lead the nascent nationalistic movements: in contrast to the likes of the urban, Anglicized Indians who showed signs of making greater political demands than the Raj was prepared to grant; the nawabs and maharajahs could be held up as representatives of the "real" India. The (pre-Gandhi) Indian nationalists might have been "civilized" by means of their Western-style education and orientation, but that also made them un-Indian in the eyes of the colonial power, and hence un-representative. Progress, the Raj's message appeared to be, came at the price of political irrelevance.

In sum, the princely order was already accustomed to grappling with two systems, and even two symbolic orders; one applying to the native state's dealings with the "external" power, and the second applying to its dealings with its own people. On Pernau's telling, the Nizam (presumably in common with the other princes) did not appreciate that the second system could be profoundly affected by the vagaries of the first. Thus, the "external" approach of presenting the Asaf Jahi ruler as natural leader of India's Muslims, and custodian in some vague sense of Indian Islam, was not perceived to have any bearing on the Nizam's relationship with his own subjects. To the extent Pernau is right, the Nizam was no more wrong than the other princes about the relationship between "outside" and "inside". However, as the ruler of the largest native state, and the only one who had become implicated in pan-Indian symbolism, only the Nizam was playing such a high-stakes game. And Hyderabad was one of the handful of large states where the ruling family and the majority of the population belonged to different religions. Pernau is surely right to pinpoint the dovetailing of British and Nizam interests in Osman Ali Khan's adoption of pan-Indian Muslim garb, as setting the stage for a communal disaster within Hyderabad. The nationalistic mobilizations and communal conflicts that engulfed India in the decades after World War I would likely have made things challenging for the polity in any event, but the Nizam posing as Muslim champion made the destruction of his regime's neutrality, and, ultimately, its legitimacy, inevitable. Not to mention that the shift would also come to restrict the Nizam's room for maneuver where proponents of a specifically Muslim politics were concerned; by the 1940s the state was regularly bullied and co-opted by the fanatics of the Majlis-e-Ittihad-ul-Muslimeen (although the significance of the Nizam's own cynicism in encouraging the Majlis in order to undermine other power centers within Hyderabad; and Jinnah's opportunism in forging an alliance with the likes of Majlis leader Bahadur Yar Jung as part of the Muslim League's drive to present itself as India-wide representative of all Muslims, whether in British India or the princely states, cannot be underestimated either). By the time of Hyderabad's collision course with the post-1947 Indian state, Pernau notes that the old order had in any event become irretrievable: the Nizam still reigned, but his rule was becoming an empty shell in the face of a de facto coup d'etat by the Majlis's military wing, the Razzakars. In the wake of nationalism, while democratic politics ended up undermining the legitimacy of princely rule all over the sub-continent, the same politics also served to renovate many a prince as Member of Parliament or Minister after 1947. But Hyderabad's particular constellation of events meant there would be no re-invention for the Nizam and his descendants as modern politicians. Like that other state that lay directly across the fault-lines of the transfer of power from Britain to its successor states, namely Kashmir, the former ruling family in Hyderabad is today utterly absent from the public life of its former realm (except as the subject of news stories about ongoing litigation concerning the family fortune), in a way that would be unimaginable where the erstwhile rulers of the Rajasthan states, or Gwalior, are concerned.

Original Photo HERE

But The Passing of Patrimonialism overstates the case when it asserts that Osman Ali Khan's re-orientation of his throne as leader and symbol of India's Muslims was not intended to have any bearing on the throne's relationship with its non-Muslim subjects. That is, Pernau ascribes tactical, but not ideological, significance to this move where the Nizam was concerned. But it is difficult to square this with Pernau's own account of the last Nizam's "attitude towards the Hindu-Muslim question" within Hyderabad (pgs. 150-151): what policy could be less likely to maintain Hyderabad's internal Hindu-Muslim equilibrium than the virtually complete sidelining of Hindus from the highest echelons of the cabinet after 1924 -- especially given that the same period saw the first Hindu-Muslim riots, and the arrival of the Muslim tabligh and Hindu nationalist "re-conversion" drives to the Nizam's domains. Doubtless Osman Ali Khan was no closet Majlis ideologue, but it is hard to shake the impression that he was (or grew) susceptible to the puritanical political Islam espoused by the likes of Osmania University's Habib-ur-Rahman and (later) the Majlis. The last Nizam probably did not have any radical moves in mind, but Pernau devotes insufficient attention to his encouragement of a shift in emphasis where the bases of his rule were concerned, in favor of a more overtly Muslim garb for the state.

The final act of this communal drama was grisly indeed: Pernau estimates that "one tenth to one fifth of the male Muslim population" was massacred in the conflagration that followed the Indian army's entry into Hyderabad in September 1948, as the Razzakar oppression of Hindus during the Nizamate's last years was apparently followed by indiscriminate massacres and violence against Muslims, "primarily in the countryside and provincial towns." (Pg. 336). The claim (which Pernau mentions in passing, citing the work of Omar Khalidi, Wilfred Smith, and a few others) is startling, not just because carnage on this scale is more commonly associated with the 1947 violence (especially in Punjab and Bengal), but because attention on human rights violations during this period has tended to focus on Razzakar atrocities against the peasantry prior to the Indian army action, and on the army's own human rights violations in the wake of the "police action." The latter pale in comparison to the sort of violence Pernau mentions, and I do not know if this lacuna in so many writings on the period points to the factual unreliability of the claim that so many were killed, or to the scandal of a most under-studied example of the sort of "popular" mass killings (perpetrated not, or not simply, by the arms of the state, but by large populations) that Mahmood Mamdani discusses in his permanently useful study of Rwanda When Victims Become Killers. In such circumstances, the horror of violence -- by victims whose sense of historical grievance unmoors retributive violence from any sense of "measure" -- is shocking not just because of its brutality, but because it is experienced by perpetrators as liberation. Intriguingly, my (admittedly anecdotal) experience discussing this issue with a couple of people from Aurangabad and Hyderabad points to disbelief, even among Urdu-speaking Muslims, that the killings could have occurred on such a scale. This too is in stark contrast to the situation vis-a-vis the 1947 Partition massacres: while in both situations, notions of community honor and shame contribute to reluctance to discuss the violence (especially sexual violence), except in general terms, everyone seems ready to acknowledge its scale (even if primary responsibility is often sought to be foisted on the "other" religious group). Where Hyderabad is concerned, there is an almost complete absence of discussion of the sort of popular violence Pernau references, except in the general sense of an instance, even if extreme, of recurrent Hindu-Muslim communal violence. Nor can it be simply a question of blotting out a trauma, since my sense is that it is not difficult to solicit reports of atrocities by the Indian military. Perhaps the fact that the brunt of the violence would have been borne in villages and smaller towns, as opposed to in larger urban areas where the Indian military was able to exercise control relatively quickly and effectively, offers an explanation. The urban masses, whether elite or subaltern, Hindu or Muslim, and especially in the nerve center of Hyderabad city, would not have experienced the singularity of violence on the unprecedented scale Pernau notes; what they would have experienced might well be accountable by means of narratives of "normal" Hindu-Muslim violence, or of the end of an old order (the fall of the Nizam's regime). But the fact that Pernau seems to be one of the few authors who has even tackled the issue -- and it is hardly the main focus, even of her work -- leaves the lay reader in the uncomfortable position of trying to decide whether the silence is itself a singular historical phenomenon worthy of study (apart from, of course, the fact of such a carnage, which ought to inform a whole host of historical and political narratives; The Hindu carried one of the few popular articles on the issue in 2001); or if it raises questions about the scholarship underlying the claim of this many killed. Stated crudely, one finds oneself asking whether Pernau, Khalidi, and Smith, et al., are right as far as the number of those killed is concerned (the fact of widespread massacres is not in dispute, given the anger and concern expressed by none other than Jawaharlal Nehru upon hearing of the reports, not to mention the sources cited in the Noorani article in The Hindu), in a way one never needs to where the other, academically well-plowed massacres of India's atrocious 1940s, are concerned.

Original Photo HERE

Although The Passing of Patrimonialism doesn't quite justify its title and introduction, it is invaluable as a study of the government-level politics of Hyderabad during the reign of the last Nizam. This is so despite the fact that Pernau's book leaves the reader none the wiser on the question as to why Hyderabad's political elite pursued (at least once it became clear that the departure of the British was imminent) a policy that does not need the wisdom of hindsight to be described as suicidal. How is one to account for this blindness, right to the bloody and bitter end? Perhaps it couldn't be otherwise, given the book's focus on strategy and maneuver, and its relative indifference to the ideology of the narrative's principal figures (apart from the ethos of the traditional nobility, sketched as backdrop at the book's outset). Equally, however, the mystery might be a function not just of this study's limitations, but of the sparsity of the historical record in key respects -- unlike their rather prolific counterparts in British India, many of the prime movers in Hyderabad during this period (including the Nizam and the Razzakars) left few private papers that have been made public. Moreover, the Nizam had many policies implemented orally, and, as Pernau notes, on occasion in direct contradiction of the written policies (principally in order to satisfy the British with respect to a particular demand, while actually creating facts on the ground to opposite effect). The foregoing, and the intersection of the ritualized forms of Mughal court practice in the context of a thoroughly modern colonialism, combine to lend an air of kabuki to the proceedings that the historian is charged with deciphering. However, The Passing of Patrimonialism is superb in evoking the practice of colonial statecraft in the context of indirect rule. That practice -- conducted in an elaborate dance of letters, personal interviews, "advice" from the British Resident, appeals and counter-appeals to (and reprimands from) the Viceroy in Delhi (and even, by the 1930s, to politicians in London), and ministerial intrigues -- is masterfully recreated by Pernau's judicious marshaling of a wide range of sources, and drives home, both the reality of indirect rule and the ceaseless attempts of the princes to try and game the system, however rigged.

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Pernau memorably offers a glimpse into the true nature of that system by means of her discussion of the Nizam's attempts to call into question the nature and basis of British paramountcy, in order to regain control over the province of Berar (leased to the British under dubious circumstances since the mid-nineteenth century, the arrangement confirmed in perpetuity since the early twentieth; apparently leading Mahbub Ali Khan to joke that his G.C.B. award actually stood for "Gave Curzon Berar"). Confronted with a claim that was legally sound, the Raj was forced to articulate the naked force (as opposed to liberal conceptions of the rule of law and treaty rights) that ultimately underlay British supremacy vis-a-vis the princely states, a supremacy "not based only upon treaties and engagements, but exist[ing] independently of them”; it was, after all “the right and the privilege of the Paramount Power to decide all disputes that m[ight] arise between States, or between one of the States and itself." (March 27, 1926 letter from the Viceroy to the Nizam, quoted on pgs. 143-44). In our post-9/11 world, when nostalgia for the British empire and arguments for new imperial arrangements have become commonplace in the writings of both academics (such as Niall Ferguson) and popular writers (such as Robert Kaplan), we would do well to keep the crude honesty of Lord Reading's words in mind, both for what they teach us about the nature of imperialism, and for, as Pernau shows, the distorting effect the cloaking of the latter has on the politics of the governed. None of this predetermined the Nizam's utter lack of political realism or wisdom in the final analysis. But, as Pernau recognizes, the manufacture and maintenance of shadow sovereignties increasingly divorced from reality, and essential to effacing the nature of colonial rule in the eyes of "indirect" subjects, surely incentivized a system where reflexive conflation of form and substance, and a disastrous over-estimation of the latter based on the former (especially when the increasingly hollow form remained decked out in the iron clad regalia of solemn treaties with, and political guarantees by, a colonial power that, in the final analysis simply decided to wash its hands of the mess and leave), was a real possibility:

While in former times symbols had been an impressive language understood by both the British and the princes, a language in which the struggle for power was conducted, by 1930 the British had forgotten all they ever knew about the relationship between the signifier and the signified. Consequently they no longer regarded symbols as signs but as substitutes for real power and used them accordingly. Hyderabad remained tragically unaware of this change; part of the overestimation of its own power, which ultimately led to its downfall, can be traced back to this. (Pg. 220)

CHAMKU (Hindi; 2008)

2009-09-15T03:02:00.008-04:00

The first sequence gets you. It's aboard a train -- as so many of the best action sequences are -- and Bobby Deol, his hands bound, is being escorted to an unidentified gangster, along with a young woman supplied from Varanasi for the gangster's pleasure. Her bright-red shalwar qameez simply underscores her nervousness; not the the gangster cares, pulling her to him even as he yells at his men to kill Deol's character and throw him off the train. At that point, a cell-phone -- within the woman's brassiere -- rings, and all hell breaks loose, as the narrow passages of the train erupt in gunfire and good ol' action. Can't keep a hero down, even with his hands bound.

The hero is Bobby Deol, looking better than he ever has, and shrewdly cast in a taciturn role that doesn't feature much dialogue, namely that of Chamku, the son of a farmer from Bihar's badlands. After he is brutally orphaned by the evil thakur Mahendra Pratap Singh, little Chamku is taken in by a Naxalite commander (Danny Denzongpa), and grows up to be the latter's right-hand man. Assassinating a local politician in the midst of a lewd Holi song? No problem. Unfortunately for Chamku, arrest means encounter death for the entire cadre; Chamku himself only survives because he's the hero, and can;t possibly be felled by a few bullets. He comes to in the hospital, only to find himself face to face with the sinister Mr. Kapoor (Irfan Khan), making him an offer he can't possibly refuse: a position on a "dirty squad" being formed by the Indian government's intelligence agencies to carry out all sorts of nefarious acts within the country. While Chamku doesn't exactly throw himself into the job with glee, his world is thrown into turmoil, first by the sight of schoolteacher Shubhi (Priyanka Chopra) -- in the sort of sari-blouse that ensures full attendance by the class -- and second, by a chance encounter with the evil thakur, who seems to have made the transition from backwater oppressor to Mumbai builder with great ease. As the New York Lotto line goes: Hey, you never know.

The story is improbable -- or, more accurately, a tale that begins with a promise of a realistic depiction of some of India's seamier realities, ends up flirting a little too intensely with the sort of masala mash that needs commitment from the word go in order to be convincing -- but the director is Kabeer Kaushik (of Seher (2005) fame), which guarantees that Chamku is suffused with a seriousness of tone and purpose that belies the outlandish plot. And if the film doesn't live up to its early promise, it nevertheless remains the best Bobby Deol film you've never seen. And that's just wrong: Kaushik's sophomore effort is never less than engaging, principally because of his splicing of a routine narrative by means of several time shifts; and his superb use of Bobby Deol in what has to be the man's best action outing; and a nonchalantly evil turn by Irfan Khan, who represents a kind of bureaucratic evil. Irfan's Kapoor doesn't appear to be animated by patriotism, love, hatred, etc. -- he (and his boss, played by Rajendra Gupta) just want(s) the job done. Other Hindi films have featured corrupt government agents -- but Kaushik's film is the first to evoke a "system" that is steeped in immoral ruthlessness, that views itself as entitled to transgress its own laws in its own land. Seher was unquestionably the more gripping film, but Chamku pushes the envelope further. I wish I had seen it earlier.

A word about the cinematography: Gopal Shah's work is strongest in enclosed public places -- trains, crowded malls, alleys -- and he clearly loves focusing on his hero negotiating these spaces. It's a solid effort, but interesting enough to warrant better projects than the likes of Heroes (2008). The music director is Monty (of Saawariya (2007) fame), and while old-school Holi songs and item numbers aren't his natural element, he gamely tries, resulting in some energetic music (heck, there isn't much other Holi music to go with, so I'll certainly go with the catchy Gola Gola). The real standout is the restrained Dukh ki Badri -- while not a match for Saawariya's Daras Bina Naahi Chain, Kalpana, Shail Huda, and Parthiv Goel, infuse this folkish track with genuine feeling, and a gravitas that stays with the listener.

Music Review: BLUE (Hindi; 2009)

2009-09-11T23:12:00.013-04:00

Outright fun, not to mention silliness, has long been a casualty of A.R. Rahman's recent Hindi oeuvre. Unlike in Tamil, Rahman simply hasn't done very many soundtracks for "ordinary" Hindi films of late. That is, the typical Rahman Hindi album this decade has been a Swades or a Jodha-Akbar, or a Delhi-6 -- not a Rangeela or a Daud. The last year might well be the beginning of a shift, with Ghajini, and now Blue. No song in either album will ever make a list of Rahman's best, but equally, no-one can doubt that at their best, these albums feature a more playful Rahman, the sort of souffle-lover one missed in the likes of Jodha-Akbar. On the down-side, at its worst, the likes of Blue do give the impression of a composer who hasn't lavished much care on his work. Luckily for us, the balance comes down on the side of buying the album.

Fiqrana began with a nod to Ghajini's Kaise Mujhe Tum Mil Gayeen, but then, when it seemed one of the Mahesh Bhatt stable of composers had taken over the song, my heart sank -- not that there is anything wrong with those neo-Pakipop songs, it's just that such generic music is unworthy of Rahman. At the fifty-five second mark, I realized how wrong I was as Vijay Prakash's voice segued from the familiar sounds of a number filmed on Emraan Hashmi to the more rhythmic, almost drunk "Jeet te hain hum larh larh ke"; and then, after about ten seconds of the addictive loop inaugurated by those words, the song begins to soar with "Hum mehekte ... gulzaaron mein". By then, this listener was hooked, with no possibility of escape. This song doesn't soar very far in terms of complexity, and will never be a major Rahman song; but it remains a song that insinuates itself into the bloodstream, and demands to be heard dozens of times -- or not at all. That the maestro has not lost his taste for light musical confectionery after all these years in the industry is worth celebrating in itself; but the extent to which this song's edges have been smoothed out in keeping with the film's aquatic theme (in no small measure due to Rahman's effective deployment of Shreya Goshal's voice), means this sweet dish will go down easy. This track is worth the price of the album.

There is more breeziness in this album: Aaj Dil Gustakh Hai is twice as light as Fiqrana, and half as interesting; and while Sukhvinder Singh's voice is always welcome on a Rahman composition, the duo do not break much new ground here, resulting in a song that is musically faultless but quite safe. That doesn't mean you'll be skipping this song. Far from it: think of Aaj Dil Gustakh Hai as the Ocean's Eleven of this album -- smooth, suave, utterly charming, and rather pointless. Given the song's video trailer features Sanjay Dutt and bikini-clad Lara Dutta cavorting on a beach and on board a boat, this track seems like it is just what director Anthony D'Souza ordered.

Rehnuma features Goshal and Sonu Nigam at their charming best, and the somewhat portentous effect created by the juxtaposition of their old-school crooning with a relatively overwrought orchestral backdrop makes this a more interesting song than it otherwise might have been. However, there is something missing from the song, a certain fun quotient that was needed to justify a song its musical arrangement does not get all the way there. At least on a first listen: of all the tracks in this album, this one is most likely to gain by repeat listening.

No-one will ever accuse the delightfully throwback Yaar Mila Tha of lacking a fun quotient. Fittingly enough, Rahman resorts to Udit Narayan for the male vocals here, with Madhushree's faintly over-ripe voice playing the female part. The song is best thought of as Rahman's attempt to turn his gaze toward the sort of rollicking love song Hindi film music just doesn't see much of these days (replete with lyrics like "har maa kahe bete se, laa aisi dulhaniya"). That he is doing so self-consciously is indicated by the early soft-jungle beat reminiscent of a rather different vibe, namely Daud's "Shabba Shabba"; and by the decidedly contemporary hip-hop groove the song ends with. It all adds up to this album's best shot at timelessness, a song that should be as un-dated ten years from now as it is today.

Bhoola Tujhe is another relatively simple composition, elevated by a chorus that soars several notches. The song's mellow anthemic vibe is in keeping with its subject -- Rashid Ali's vocals are addressed to the Creato -- although the tune seems a bit too upbeat for the lyrics. This song has the smell of a purely situational number, and as such might well work within the context of the film, but could have been truly memorable has Rahman himself crooned in place of Ali. In the final analysis, Bhoola Tujhe is notable for hearkening to an earlier Rahman, the composer of relatively sparse numbers like Bombay's "Tu Hi Re" -- the effect is one of clean, if safe, lucidity.

The less said about the Blue Theme, the better. Or rather, I'll say enough to make clear that large chunks of Blaaze's rap are strongly reminiscent of Give It Away Now by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (or is it Ishq Bector's Dakku Daddy?). The song flows into some neo-Arabic strains and compelling incantatory passages, but these aren't good enough to rescue the track (which in fact falls apart at the very end, as it speeds up and is ultimately washed away in the sound of the surf). In Rahman's defense, I suspect this piece's function within the film will be to serve as background music rather than a conventional song. As it stands in this album, however, the Blue Theme is more a rough draft than a fully realized composition.

The real stinker in the album is the first track. Piggishly named, I Wanna Chiggy-Wiggy With You features Kylie Minogue in an utterly generic pop song, cheerfully interrupted by an equally generic Hindi/bhangra song. From the song's video trailer, the latter moment affords Akshay Kumar an opportunity to play his populist card, a gatecrasher persona the actor has perfected beyond anyone else in contemporary Hindi cinema, but it is disappointing Rahman was not inspired to come up with something more imaginative to showcase his lead star's wattage.

NAAN KADAVUL (Tamil; 2009)

2009-09-10T19:00:00.021-04:00

The late Robin Buss, in an introduction to his translation of The Count of Monte Cristo, referred to George Eliot's criticism of French novelists as "tempted to deal with the exception rather than the rule," that is, as exploring the extraordinary rather than the mundane -- presumably, on Eliot's view, freed from distraction by the sensational, only reflection upon the mundane could provide meaningful insight into us, and the world around us.

What Eliot might have made of Bala isn't hard to guess. Ever since this oddest of contemporary Indian directors first burst onto the scene a decade ago with Sethu (1999; poorly remade by Satish Kaushik in Hindi as Tere Naam (2003)), his films have relentlessly plumbed the marginal -- apparently, not due to any ethical compulsion to give voice to those who have been ignored, but in the service of what can seem a purely aesthetic attempt to represent the psychotic. Sethu centered on Vikram's character of the same name, an anti-social ruffian whose love deranges him, leading to madness and a netherworld of sorts; Surya essayed the title-role in Nandha (2001), of a young man wracked by an almost unbearable burden, namely the memory of having killed his father as a boy. Pithamagan (2003) featured both Surya and Vikram, and was in a sense Bala's most joyous film: although it stars Vikram as the wild man Chiththan, raised in a cemetery and a misfit in human society, the film offered us Surya's Sakthi as well, a lovable rogue who becomes Chiththan's only friend. But this is Bala we're talking about, and by film's end Sakthi has been murdered, leaving Chiththan to turn his back on (his) humanity and avenge his friend in a berserker rage. If, through all of this, Bala remains anchored to mainstream Tamil cinematic tradition, it is because of the fascination the mythic mode holds for him. Bala's earlier films do not seek to represent "the human condition" for the most part, and are uninterested in illuminating our world. Stated differently, his heroes are no less exceptional, no less godlike, than the beings who populate Tamil cinema's masala movies (indeed, it is no coincidence that Bala launched the masala career of Vikram as a solo hero, and has ever after sought to cast major stars as his male leads) -- it is just that his films are more sombre and less reassuring than the standard masala movies, too focused for cartoonish detours, and promising no easy catharsis or redemption.

Naan Kadavul ("I Am God") is the logical terminus of Bala's concerns, which include a concern with the history of the Tamil masala hero persona (there can be little doubt Bala has cinematic history on the brain; the descent of a godlike star into the masses' midst is a fleeting motif in Pithamagan, in the person of Simran playing herself in a medley of old film songs; in Naan Kadavul, there is another medley, with people -- all beggars, I might add -- dressed up as MGR, Sivaji Ganesan, and Rajni, not to mention an ultra-lewd man dressed in drag and cavorting to one of Nayanthara's dance numbers; for the original video of that "Yammadi" song from Vallavan (2006), feast your eyes on this) . The film's protagonist Rudra isn't just godlike, he insists that he is god. And not just any deity, but Kaal Bhairava, the Shiva who stands watch over Kashi. Nothing in the movie suggests that Rudra is deluded, or that he is anything other than the Kaal Bhairava who cut off one of Lord Brahma's heads in violent demonstration of the futility of the argument between Brahma and Vishnu as to who was the real lord of creation; the correct answer was neither the Creator (Brahma) nor the Preserver (Vishnu), but the Destroyer (Shiva). (Indeed, one of Bhairava's manifestations is even called Rudra Bhairava; and Rudra is of course also the name of the Vedic storm god, subsequently assimilated into the cult of Shiva.) Bala's creation of an ambience where the viewer simply accepts this claim as normal where Rudra is concerned, and in a context where most other characters in the film are not so sanguine, is his most creditable achievement.

Rudra does have a history, however. As a boy, he was abandoned by his Tamil parents in Varanasi after four astrologers prophesied that he would destroy his family. Fourteen years later, Rudra's father and sister travel to the holy city to track him down and bring him back, only to find that Rudra is now an aghori, the tantric sect (in?)famous in India for their embrace of all acts (on the theory that all dualisms, including the axes clean/unclean and taboo/permitted; are obstacles to true enlightenment and liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth) -- even, or so the stories say, cannibalism, necrophilia, and consumption of human waste. While aghoris are known to symbolize Bhairava in their personal dress and appearance, Rudra, as mentioned above, sees himself as quite literally divine. Nevertheless, when human bonds intrude in the form of his father and sister, Rudra's guru orders him to accompany his kin back to Tamil Nadu. An aghori should be free of all bonds, and Rudra is ordered to dissolve any that remain and return to Kashi.

The scene shifts from north to south, from Lord Shiva's city to a hellish underworld populated by beggars, and ruled by Thandavan (Rajendran), who has to be one of the most loathsome villains ever seen on film. His name is reminiscent of Shiva's tandav dance (one of Thandavan's henchmen is even called Murugan), but his motive is profit, his employees the hapless men, women, and children who are maimed to serve as effective beggars. These unfortunates are introduced to the viewer in a parade of the grotesque, and thereafter serve as the film's principal characters, remaining its most recognizably human ones even as Bala's deliberate concentration of ugliness grates on one's nerves.

There is never any doubt Rudra is going to be the instrument of Thandavan's destruction (I am surely giving no spoilers away when I say that in a memorable action sequence at film's end, he slays the vile man without ever seeming reminiscent of Lord Ram); the only question is, what does it all mean? The beggars are often dressed as Hindu deities (they even address each other in character in a funny scene early on in the film), and the entire community worships the deformed midget Maragettu, housed in a shrine and utterly indifferent to all entreaties to say something or bless his devotees -- his indifference is only shaken when he comes face to face with the real deity, namely Rudra. An early song likens all humans to beggars, with their bodies no better than begging bowls. As if this weren't enough, Bala muddies the waters by his brazen indifference to Rudra's family, who disappear halfway through the film, never to be heard from again.

The only way I can approach Naan Kadavul is as a meditation on the indifference of god. In the world of this film, the divine is not so much inhuman as un-human, lacking any bond or connection with his devotees. The Latin phrase for the divine, totaliter aliter ("totally other"), comes to mind, but the alterity is all the more unthinkable here given that the divine in this film is also the man Rudra. In his divinity, Rudra is totally other to man, i.e. himself, and is thus terrifying to those around him. "Benevolence" has no meaning to Rudra: when he helps those in need, such as the blind beggar Hamsapalli (Pooja), trying to escape being sold to a man so hideous only a blind woman can sleep with him, Rudra does so inadvertently, because his own repose has been disturbed by the goons pursuing Hamsapalli. He is oblivious to all appeals to his sympathy, and it is clear he can only offer one boon: to the wicked as well as to those for whom life cannot be borne, death.

Naan Kadavul, in short, has a fantastic premise. Equally, it cannot be denied that the film is far more interesting conceptually than it is in the execution. The absence of all but the bare rudiments of a plot doesn't hurt the film, but the rapid evocation and burial of characters and motifs, most certainly does. The viewer does not see why so much is made of Rudra's mother only for her to disappear after a couple of scenes; nor why Rudra sticks around in the village after breaking his bonds with his family, rather than returning to Kashi (by film's end, we see that the crucial bond is between Pooja and Rudra, but while it is easy to see why this is important to Pooja -- she hopes Rudra will be her savior -- there is no explanation why the final dissolution of this bond should be crucial from Rudra's perspective). Bala's mysticism has always had more than a touch of obscurantism, and in Naan Kadavul the fog threatens to swallow the movie.

The casting of Aarya as Rudra adds to some of these shortcomings. While one is loath to criticize the young actor's creditable turn, as well as his courage -- he spends much of the film half-naked, and is as careless of his form unclothed as he is when it is clothed, a rare enough trait among actors -- the role patently needed a Vikram (if media reports are to be believed, Bala and Vikram had a falling out, leading to Vikram's exit from the film; even more irritatingly, the two have reportedly patched up, making the missed opportunity of Naan Kadavul all the more tantalizing). Chiyan Vikram might not have been able to make up for the film's muddle, and with him there would always be a risk that Rudra might seem like a cousin of Pithamagan's Chiththan, but to my mind he remains contemporary Tamil cinema's most credible deity. It is hard to believe that the director who launched him on that path would disagree.

On balance, despite the rather serious problems, and despite the film's frequent unpleasantness, this film needs to be seen. For the ambience, always one of Bala's strengths. For the fact that he has thought through the mythic paradigm of masala cinema to its logical (and extreme) end, resulting in an unprecedented ending that, alas, I cannot discuss without giving too much away. And, most importantly, for the fact that Naan Kadavul is simply a film like none other one is likely to see this year, in any language.

[For an interview with Bala, see HERE; also check out Baradwaj Rangan's take on the film, although a spoiler warning accompanies that recommendation.]

Cricket Interlude

2009-09-05T11:34:00.004-04:00

A welcome piece on the inflation of test match batting averages in the current decade, as the game's historic balance between bat and ball seems to have shifted in favor of the former:

...[A]fter the exits of Walsh and Ambrose, Wasim and Waqar, Donald and Pollock, McGrath and Gillespie, life has become much easier for batsmen around the world. Some of those bowlers played well into the 2000s, but with pitches easing up and other weaker teams coming into the fray, this decade has generally been an excellent one for batting. Once upon a time, an average of 50 used to be the benchmark of batting excellence; now, it seems, that's no longer true. . . . It's clear from the numbers that the current decade has been a prolific one for batting, with an average of 38.22 runs per wicket. Only in the 1940s were the averages higher. The 1990s, on the other hand, was among the worst decades for batting - the average of 35.34 was the second-worst in the last eight decades.

One problem with the generally excellent analysis is that, while the average of most top batsmen this decade suffers once Zimbabwe and Bangladesh are excluded, minnows are not being excluded when the averages of batsmen in other eras are computed. Thus Bradman averaged 160 or 180 in the one series he played against India; if I remember correctly, 10 of Everton Weekes' 16 centuries came against India, Pakistan, or New Zealand (none of them especially strong at the time), and Freddie Trueman terrorized India. Not suggesting any of these are Zimbabwe or Bangladesh, but they were considered very weak teams. In the 1980s, Sri Lanka were a very weak team, especially on foreign soil; one could go on...

[Tendulkar's average this decade against the top eight teams is 46.73; that figure must be contextualized by reference to his numerous injuries during the 2004-2007 period, not just to a general decline -- he has performed much better in test matches over the last two years, after career-rescuing elbow surgeries -- but what is truly remarkable is his batting average of 58 in the 1990s, a decade that was among the worst for batsmen, testimony to his stature among the game's greats.]

DEKH BHAI DEKH (Hindi; 2009)

2009-09-03T18:31:00.008-04:00

Rahat Kazmi's Dekh Bhai Dekh (apparently re-named Dekh Re Dekh at some point; my DVD carried the older name) is a refreshing little film: it hearkens to the cinema of old, albeit in the streamlined garb of the contemporary "little" film. Refreshing because this look backward isn't by way of ironic distance or homage, and nor does it fall prey to the stale rehashing of older Bollywood tropes that is the hallmark of B-grade cinema. That is, with respect to the former, Kazmi's film isn't set in a small-town in U.P. because he wants to make a point about crime and violence in the heartland (the usual vehicle for representations of U.P. and Bihar in contemporary Hindi cinema), nor is he trying to depict a world impossibly remote from the (imagined) "us" in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, or London. Rather, his film just happens to be set in U.P., and does not purport to stage its setting. Or its Bollywood genealogy: I don't remember the last time I saw a song in praise of Radha and Krishna that was so unobtrusively part of a Hindi film (not surprising, given the industry's collective preference for Ferraris with crowds of skimpily clad European women serving as eye candy). And this one ("Kanha De Do Sharan") is picturized on that old masala staple rebooted, namely the protagonists -- Babli (Gracy Singh), Shyam (Siddharth Koirala), Charan (Vijay Raaz), and Yadav (Raghuvir Yadav), all in need of money, and acting on Babli's half-baked plan to steal a valuable idol from her own in-laws -- in disguise, singing a song to distract the audience within the film, in order to set the stage for a heist (as for what happens after the heist, well, there's a reason the film is billed as a black comedy). For such un-showy naturalness vis-a-vis his cinematic inheritance alone, Kazmi's film deserves to be seen.

Luckily, although the film has its limitations (most notably that the narrative could have been more gripping), there is more to enjoy here. Such as the earthy dialogs Mushahid Husain Pasha has written for Vijay Raaz's Charan, a smart aleck thief and generally lovable lowlife. It is rare that one has the pleasure of seeing Raaz on screen, and Pasha does not squander the opportunity -- Raaz deploys a Bollywoodized version of the bhaiyya-speak and drawl to great effect here (I would have loved to see some of the earthier dialogs amidst an appreciative audience in a cinema hall). The visuals are solid, but no more (however, Kazmi's and cinematographer Akash Deep's picturization of the heist song suggests an ability to put a bigger budget to good use). So too the music by Shadab Bhartiya, Abuzar, and Nayab Raja (Raaga.com adds Prem Anand to the list), although it surprises at points, especially when Raahat Fateh Ali Khan and Rajab Ali begin crooning "Sapne Bhaye Hain". The other good song could have been better: "Ladee re Ladee Najariya" is an utterly conventional "dancing girl" number, albeit elevated by the fact that Richa Sharma is singing it.

Dekh Bhai Dekh came and went with barely a ripple, and deserved better. One hopes it gets a wider audience courtesy of satellite/cable TV re-runs, and that Kazmi and Pasha get more opportunities to make their mark. And for God's sake, someone get Vijay Raaz more roles!

KANTHASAAMY (Tamil; 2009)

2009-08-25T19:37:00.020-04:00

Vikram's has been an unusual career path, attaining stardom in Sethu (1999) after nearly a decade of struggle, but apparently not content to simply keep churning out the sorts of hits -- Dhill (2001); Saamy (2003); and Dhool (2003), for instance -- that had propelled the man to the summit of post-Rajnikanth Tamil stars by the time he essayed the title role in Shankar's Anniyan (2005). Since that release, over four years ago, Vikram has only had two lackluster releases until Kanthasaamy hit theaters earlier this month. Some of that sparsity can be laid at the door of producer troubles (that delayed Bheema (2008)), but not all: it has increasingly become hard to shake off the feeling that Vikram has been paralyzed by his National Award for acting in Pithamagan (2003). More accurately, the fact that his roles in films like Bala's (the maveric behind Sethu and Pithamagan) led the Tamil audience to take him seriously as an actor seems to have led to a kind of malaise, almost as if Vikram could no longer justify the triviality of a Gemini (2002) unless it was in the service of outsized projects like an Anniyan. In fact, the strange thing about Vikram's films since 2005 -- both, Majaa (2005) and Bheema (2008), relatively scaled to normal-- has been the disinterest that seems to shine through in Vikram's performances therein. These aren't bad films, but Vikram is undeniably flat in them.

Susi Ganeshan's Kanthasaamy is in the Anniyan mould, and as such, the film has had no trouble keeping Vikram's interest engaged. He owns this outsized, outlandish, and utterly fun film with the sort of cavalier ease and screen presence most actors -- even most stars -- can only dream of. And, to the credit of Ganeshan's team, he looks more dapper here, as the nattily dressed CBI agent Kanthasaamy, hot on the trail of crooks like PPP (Ashish Vidyarthi) and Rajmohan (Mukesh Tiwari), than ever before. Whether it is rowing a boat, sitting at his desk, or romancing PPP's now-she-hates-him/now-she-doesn't daughter Subbalaxmi (Shriya Saran), Ganeshan and Vikram are clearly targeting a younger, hipper audience. Based on the prior evidence of Vikram's Remo in Anniyan (in a nutshell, all misfire, all the time), I had my doubts as to whether this was the right way to go for a leading man who isn't getting any younger; I was completely wrong. Vikram underplays the CBI agent, displaying the sort of reserve more reminiscent of Samurai (2002) than Shankar's 2005 Vikram trifecta. His bemused look and guarded body language (leaving aside the songs, that is), bordering at times on stillness, underscores that while Vikram might not be an actor of great range, he is an intelligent performer, learning from and improving upon past outings and conscious of his limitations. And possessed of that je ne sais quoi that makes the camera love him, he can, and does, get away with much.

So much for the CBI agent. There is, however, the small matter of a second Vikram here, a masked vigilante who has a habit of fulfilling the petitions of desperate devotees at a Lord Muruga ("Kanthasaamy") temple. This Vikram, dressed in a black and red suit, a bird-like mask, and -- no, I am not making this up -- crowing like a rooster and bobbing his head from side to side, is the most surprising thing about the film. This Kanthasaamy passes the laugh test, his outlandishness rendered plausible by the strange derangement Vikram infuses into the role. He's crazy, but he's also disturbing because he's crazy in a way that comes across as other than human. If pressed to rank the costumed weirdos Cheeyan has played, I'd have to pick this clucker over the murderous pedant of Anniyan.

Another, more interesting, way Ganeshan renders his vigilante plausible is by showing his audience the artifices underlying every one of the superheroics: over the course of the film, we not only learn just what makes Kanthasaamy's heroics super, we see them in action in a significant, and thrilling, action sequence in some corn fields. We are vouchsafed backstage passes to a magician's show, and see the ropes and pulleys, the parlor tricks and audio-visual devices, that make the masked man who he is in the eyes of his enemies, at one stroke rendering Kanthasaamy more human, while inoculating the film against the disappointment of a generation weaned on the unmatchable special effects of Hollywood. Nevertheless, Ganeshan never forgets his masala genealogy: the plausibility referenced above does not foreshadow meaningful realism, but simply enables the film to take all liberties (having provided an "explanation" for all such license). Kanthasaamy begins and ends with the Muruga temple, and in the final analysis the film operates squarely within the realm of mythic signification common in Tamil masala cinema. Cheeyan Vikram is unconquerable, a saamy ("god") on earth -- a linkage never more explicit than in his blindfolded action sequence in Mexico. Even sightless and outnumbered 7 to 1, the outcome is never in doubt. But if this is the most operatic of the film's action sequences -- and that's saying something, given that this film seems to feature fights in every imaginable location, including a bar, a row-boat, a bus, and open prairie -- the best one is the back-to-basics first action sequence involving the CBI agent, as he thrashes half a dozen hoodlums without breaking a sweat or spoiling a crease. [One wishes Vikram would (re-)learn to have such fun in "normal" films too: every film can neither promise the accolades of a Pithamagan, nor the spectacle of a Kanthasaamy, and there isn't anything wrong with doing a few bread-and-butter films.]

But not even Vikram conquers all -- not when Shriya Saran is in her element. As Subbalaxmi, she has more footage than almost any actress does in a Tamil actioner, and justifies it: while I prefer the long-tressed, sinuous Shriya of films like Sivaji (2007), it is refreshing to see this hard-edged, sexually assertive woman, her short-haired glamor-turn a far cry from the insipidity that far too often passes for a female lead in Tamil masala cinema. The Shriya-Vikram pair sizzles, but one only wishes Devi Sri Prasad had come up with better music to showcase the actress' dancing skills: only two songs pass muster, and neither is set around Saran: the addictive "Kantha Kantha Kantha Kantha Kanthasaaaamy" and the thoroughly derivative-but-catchy "Meena Kumari/Kanyakumari" sleazefest picturized on Mumait Khan and Mukesh Tiwari's villain Rajmohan. Two veterans also feature in the film as cops: while Telegu film veteran Krishna has a small role (as Kanthasaamy's boss) principally notable for the glimpse it affords us into what his son, the Telegu superstar Mahesh, might look like decades later; Prabhu's turn as a police officer on the trail of the vigilante is depressing. One can only dimly discern the hero of Agni Nakshitharam (1988) in him, and he looks like he could give the marshmallow man a run for his money in the girth sweepstakes.

In sum, this film works, albeit despite a script with some rather large holes. In particular, Ganeshan is unable to coherently tie the worlds of the two Kanthasaamies together, and in time the costumed hero virtually drops out, leaving the entire movie to the cop playing cat-and-mouse with the vengeful Subbalaxmi, out to get even with him for foiling her father's plans (I can't say much more about the film's plot without spoiling the fun). But the director (who himself plays the part of an intelligence operative, Ganeshan, in the film) can be forgiven much for what he gives us in exchange for removing the superhero from the scene, namely, a plot twist that takes Agent Kanthasaamy and Subbalaxmi to Mexico. To, that is, a foreign sequence as transporting as any in years, and reminiscent of the likes of Sangam (1964) and The Great Gambler (1979) -- what Ganeshan's segment shares with the work of directors as diverse as Raj Kapoor and Shakti Samanta is the ability to transport the viewer to someplace in particular, not just to a generic foreign destination represented by a shopping mall or a luxury resort; but simultaneously, not to a particularity denoted solely by means of the iconic (for instance, the shots of San Francisco's Golden Gate bridge ad nauseum in the recent Love Aaj Kal). Ganeshan's Mexico might be a cliche, but it isn't a postcard. It is also striking, memorable, and shot with especial attention -- evidence of a director who has taken his film out of India for a reason, and not simply as a result of a reflex.

Through it all, and despite the foreign locales and high-end settings (the lush song sequences are typically followed by shots of contemporary urban Indian realities), Kanthasaamy preserves its populist connection, made explicit in Agent Kanthasaamy's display, to the corrupt industrialist Rajmohan, of images of the desperate poverty that is seemingly omnipresent outside the luxury bus Rajmohan seems to spend his life in, watching film songs and private dances. By film's end, Kanthasaamy has torn down the walls of the bus in a memorable sequence, literally laying the mobile palace bare to the eyes of the multitude. As a symbolic indictment of our collective indifference to the problems around us, this is, of course, heavy-handed (and par for the course where the Tamil vigilante genre is concerned) -- but it is a welcome change from the exclusion of any such considerations from most Hindi films these days, often shot in the anodyne locales of shopping malls, luxury resorts and hotels -- hardly any of them in India, of course, irrespective of whether the script demands it or not. Films like Kanthasaamy do not purport to offer realistic solutions to India's social problems -- the audience knows that -- but they do not stage the spectacle of secession from India's realities. The result is a fantasy, but one of catharsis and cleansing, not of escape.

Jaswant on Jinnah -- III

2009-08-24T23:59:00.000-04:00

The "controversy" over Jaswant Singh's book on Jinnah underscores that the contemporary consensus in South Asian historiography is certainly not insensible of the role played by the Congress in India's partition (indeed, Jaswant Singh is very much a latecomer to a view that has become received wisdom by now in university history departments). If anything, liberal and left-of-center scholars seem almost reflexively inclined to adopt the view that Jinnah was forced into accepting partition -- a denial of agency and a determinism I find implausible. More significantly, this (essentially puerile) debate on individual responsibility for partition shows that in some ways, South Asian historiography still hasn't grown up -- far too many still seem to be thinking in terms of heroes and villains (merely the identity of these is sought to be changed). More troublingly, the role played by the colonial power is often effaced in these discussions.

Nevertheless, Sugata Bose's recent piece in the Indian Express is among the better ones to have appeared in the wake of the Jaswant Singh controversy. While Bose -- a grand-nephew of the nationalist heroes Subhash and Sarad Chandra Bose -- implicitly seems to regard the partition of Bengal as more illegitimate/tragic than the partition of India (he takes the Congress to task for adding Bengal to the March 8, 1947 resolution calling for Punjab to be partitioned; but ignores that the alternative was a Pakistan that would have included an undivided Bengal, or, less plausibly, an independent Bengal; I do not pass judgment on this notion, but merely note that Bose's piece presents the issue divorced from its proper context), and, like many contemporary historians, implicitly approaches the question of the Muslim League's Pakistan movement as purely tactical, i.e. at the expense of adequate consideration of the movement's ideology; his lucid piece is worth reading. It is more balanced and thoughtful than most commentary on the issue over the last few days; significantly, by speaking of "the Congress" rather than simply of "Nehru", Bose de-personalizes the issue, while also underscoring what the Sangh Parivar would do anything to avoid admitting, namely, that to the extent this is a question of personal responsibility, and to the extent Nehru stands in the dock, the Sangh's idol Patel stands there with him. Whatever reservations I have about the piece or the tendency among Indian historians to demonstrate their willingness to adopt a critical stance vis-a-vis the mainstream nationalist historiographical inheritance by (unwittingly) adopting a relatively uncritical stance vis-a-vis the hitherto demonized "other" of the Muslim League and the Pakistan movement, Bose's core thesis -- that "[w]hile there may still be different points of view on the relative balance of forces that led to partition, and Jinnah is by no means blameless in this regard, the role of Congress majoritarianism in shaping the final outcome of August 1947 has been well accepted in the best historical scholarship" -- seems unexceptionable to me. To the extent this is new and controversial to the public at large, whatever my reservations about Jaswant Singh's book, it will have served a valuable purpose in presenting this idea to a wide audience.

Less convincing is Bose's claim that "[t]he partition of the provinces of Punjab and Bengal at Nehru and Patel’s behest, much like the partition of the province of Ulster in Ireland, permanently skewed subcontinental politics and left a poisoned post-colonial legacy." The claim is unfair, almost suggesting that the whole thing was the brainchild of Nehru and Patel; but also ignoring that sub-continental politics would have been just as "skewed" by a partition of India that did not partition these two provinces. That partition would likely have been less bloody (although, as the grotesque violence in un-partitioned provinces demonstrates, far too bloody nonetheless), but would still have "skewed" the sub-continent's politics, albeit differently. In particular, it is highly debatable whether Pakistan could have comfortably accomodated such a large number of minorities (a larger proportion than would have existed in India) as an ideological matter. Bose presumably has an independent Bengal in mind as a solution to the 1947 deadlock, and not one that was part of Pakistan, but given the geo-political implications of such "regionalism" for both of the new nation-states, it is not surprising neither leadership was thrilled about the idea. [Indeed, the logic of Jinnah as the "sole spokesman" for India's Muslims, as Ayesha Jalal's book of the same name persuasively shows animated Jinnah's approach in the last decade of his life, should have militated against any such division].

The above notwithstanding, there can be no quarreling with Bose's conclusion:

I am not in agreement with those who say that the parties are obsessed with a non-issue, 62 years out of date. The issue which revisiting partition brings to the fore is full of contemporary relevance. It is the search for a substantive rather than procedural democracy that protects citizens from majoritarian arrogance and ensures justice in a subcontinent where people have multiple identities.

...multiple identities that the 1947 successor states have, in their own ways and to different degrees, not been able to adequately acknowledge. Sixty-two years after the tryst with destiny, that pledge is yet to be redeemed.

[Previous post HERE].

Jaswant on Jinnah -- II

2009-08-18T13:02:00.006-04:00

Previous post HERE.

The other thing to note -- and that has gone largely unremarked in the English-language Indian media -- is that, while Jaswant Singh holds Nehru responsible for ensuring partition by insisting on a centralized state (rather than being sympathetic to, as he put it to CNN-IBN's Karan Thapar, the Muslim desire for an adequate space within the Indian political system), he seems to have drawn the opposite lesson from this than one might have expected. In his interview with Thapar, Singh went on to express hostility towards the whole idea of reservations, warning that they might herald a further partition of the country. One would have thought that Jaswant Singh's own claims about the historical record would make precisely the opposite point, namely that resisting such demands might have grave implications for the Indian polity. Evidently, Singh's stick is only good to beat Nehru with -- not to stir the contemporary status quo pot.

[The disconnect undermines Singh's historical argument in a different way as well, by shedding light on his caste-shaped blind spots. In his interview, Singh (rightly) pointed to the aftermath of the 1937 provincial elections in British India as a watershed -- the Congress' breach of faith with the Muslim League convinced the latter that the absolutism of the former meant it was determined not to allow non-Congress political formations any space -- and suggests that this demonstrated to the Muslim League that even contesting elections would not be enough to safeguard Muslim interests. On the contrary, the Congress' short-sighted cynicism (and lack of ethics) aside, the lesson Jaswant Singh wishes to draw (and that the Muslim League did draw) has not been borne out by history. That is, the rise to power and prominence of various regional "lower-caste" formations in recent years, typically turning on electoral coalitions between Muslim voters and particular caste-groupings, offers a glimpse of the road not taken by the League, a road that might well have yielded far greater dividends in the context of an un-divided India than of the post-1947 Indian union. Of course, given the disproportionate influence of ashrafi Urdu-speaking elites in the Muslim League; not to mention of the landlord classes; that was one of the least likely roads for the Muslim League (in short, the latter countered the Congress' ambition not by attempting to subvert it -- as the Left, Periyar, the Punjab Unionist Party, wittingly and unwittingly, and in their own ways, all sought to do -- but by positing a rival totalizing principle, a rival nationalism. That sort of competitive absolutism inevitably raised the temperature, and made compromise less and less likely). Jaswant Singh's continuing blindness and insensitivity to the caste/class question -- i.e. the fact that it apparently plays no role in his study of Jinnah, and the fact that the great lesson Singh appears to have drawn is that reservations are divisive -- over six decades after 1947, shows how little he has learnt.]

THREE NOVELS OF ANCIENT EGYPT: A Thought

2009-08-17T16:54:00.002-04:00

Three Novels of Ancient Egypt Khufu's Wisdom, Rhadopis of Nubia, Thebes at War by Naguib Mahfouz

Mahfouz's three novels on ancient Egypt aren't especially distinguished in terms of theme or depth (the first was published in 1939; the last in 1944, when Mahfouz was not yet thirty-three). But they are marked out for genius by Mahfouz's ability to render a completely plausible Egypt for his reader, to the point where one doesn't feel one is reading historical novels, but novels set in the only time that is. These three are as close as the novel gets to the timeless art of the storyteller.

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Jaswant on Jinnah

2009-08-16T23:59:00.003-04:00

And now it is the BJP's Jaswant Singh (ex-foreign minister and current M.P. from Darjeeling) who has apparently woken up to the greatness of Jinnah, and has joined the bandwagon of those for whom partition was, above all else, Nehru’s fault (for the complete interview, click on the following links: PART I; PART II). The merits of this argument -- or mode of discourse, concerned with affixing responsibility rather than anything else -- aside, it is quite revealing that be it Advani or Jaswant Singh, some on the Indian right find it in their hearts to be more generous to Jinnah than to Nehru. This isn’t to deny Jinnah’s qualities; but the notion (as Jaswant Singh told CNN-IBN’s Karan Thapar) that all Jinnah wanted was a federal polity, and that the unacceptability of that plan to Nehru was basically responsible for partition, is ridiculously simplistic (not to mention that other Congress bigwigs, including the much-lionized-by-the-Sangh Patel, were similarly opposed to the sort of political arrangement that the Muslim League seemed prepared to accept). I would like to read Jaswant’s book on Jinnah, although, from the sounds of it the book seems like a recycled version of Stanley Wolpert’s Jinnah of Pakistan and Ayesha Jalal’s The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, The Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan. And I am certainly curious to see how Singh's apparent acceptance of the tenuous federation (short of partition) Jinnah's League might have accepted, squares with Singh's and his party's (as well as the Congress') unwillingness to countenance something more modest than that sort of federation where the state of Jammu & Kashmir is concerned (for instance, the Cripps proposal, which the Muslim League likely would have accepted, incorporated an opt-out clause as well; Jaswant Singh himself notes that by 1947 the Muslim League's demand was "parity" between Hindus and Muslims; not to mention that the experience of Lebanon holds lessons on the stability (or lack thereof) of constitutional arrangements apportioning political power between religious communities). [None of this is to deny that the likes of Jalal and Wolpert have done valuable service in contextualizing Jinnah's life and work, and in countering the simplistic demonization of the man in mainstream Indian nationalist historiography; and to the extent Jaswant Singh can help lay to rest the idiotic notion held by some that Jinnah hated Hindus or that he was some kind of maniac bent on dividing India, all well and good -- however, in India the revisionist pendulum has swung to such an extent that many Indian liberals (e.g. the constitutional scholar H.M. Seervai) as well as some on the right subscribe to the notion that Jinnah was left with no choice but to "settle" for partition -- a notion that would be strange, until one realizes that the notion internalizes, and is entirely consistent with, how Jinnah appears to have approached his politics: as an exercise in epic advocacy, not conventional political engagement. To conduct politics as if one were litigating might prove tricky even in ordinary circumstances -- raising the specter of (court-like) "decisions" one might not be happy about, but would have to live with given the "litigation" strategy one has pursued. In the sort of hyper-communal atmosphere of 1940s India, this sort of politics could be many things -- brilliant, clever, and even heroic. But (assuming the likes of Wolpert, Seervai, and Jaswant Singh are right that Jinnah never wanted partition), not wise or advisable.]

What explains the "discovery of Jinnah" move in India today? With the right, it might just be down to hypocrisy (never spare Nehru --and, by extension, his political heirs -- a barb if one can possibly help it; for instance, Jaswant Singh's claim that India did not get Dominion status in the 1920s because Nehru "shot it down" is ludicrous -- there is simply no evidence that the British were prepared to offer India the sort of Dominion status they had accorded Canada and Australia by the early 1930s; likewise, when he says that the likes of Gandhi, Rajagopalachari and Azad might have kept India together, citing to Gandhi's position that the British should just quit and leave the mess to Indians to sort out, he conveniently ignores the reality that that "solution" was utterly unacceptable to Jinnah, who (rightly) saw in it a ploy to present the Muslim League with a fait accompli; these sorts of attempted sleights of hand speak volumes about the aims of Singh's book), and to the fact that the Sangh Parivar's own ideological underpinnings pre-dispose adherents to greater acceptance of the Muslim League's two-nation theory (merely a mirror image, and a rather more polite one at that, of the ideology espoused by Savarkar and Golwalkar). As for more liberal-leaning journalists, I have previously written on the issue here.

A Note on EINE FRAU IN BERLIN (German; 2008)

2009-08-09T21:24:00.005-04:00

The annals of cinema are replete with many, very many, "war" fims -- although, given the focus of most of these, it would be more accurate to call them "battlefield" films, seeking as they to do to dominate the audience's attention with bullets and high-octane drama. The human cost of war is certainly represented, but almost always by the blood of soldiers, and the tears of those left behind at the home-front. Given how common it is, how routine in times of war, rape has been grossly ignored in war cinema -- one never wants to admit "our" boys did it, and, likewise, one never wants to admit it was done to "our" women. It is thus not surprising that the diary on which director Max Farberbock's superb Eine Frau in Berlin (A Woman in Berlin) is based, about one woman's experiences as the victorious Soviet troops unleashed an orgy of rape on German women in the wake of their 1945 occupation of Eastern Berlin, caused quite a storm when it was published in Germany nearly half a century ago. Not only was the mass violation of German women by vengeful Soviet troops (seeking retribution for the carnage of the Eastern Front) itself humiliating, but the unnamed author's account of the ways in which she and other women adjusted to this mode of life, tried to reach an accommodation with the situation in order to make do, was also seen as somehow shameful. The women the author ("Anonyma") wrote of were seen as somehow shameless, almost as if it were more dishonorable to survive than to die. Stung by the criticism, Anonyma never identified herself, and ensured that her book was not re-issued as long as she was alive.

A Woman in Berlin thus performs two valuable functions. First, it reminds us of the centrality of rape in war, implicitly underscoring that this lacuna in other war films renders them deficient. Second, Farberbock aims to redeem Anonyma from the reception her diary's publication was greeted with. No-one could come away from this film feeling that the woman at its core had dishonored herself in any way; on the contrary, Farberbock and Nina Hoss (who plays "Anonyma") have given us one of the most memorable female characters I have ever seen on celluloid. It had to have been quite a job essaying this role and managing to ensure that the residue was one of admirable strength, not merely pathos, and Hoss' is surely one of the performances of the year. In sum, this film's, and Hoss', exploration of the wretched ambiguity of, and the steel required to survive, the sort of situation Anonyma finds herself in, where rape isn't just an ever-present possibility but a daily routine, a routine that has been excised from most other war films, can be called many things, but above all else, it must be called ethical.

Not to mention that this is a fantastic film, one that never releases the audience from its grip. Initially, our attention is engaged by Anonyma's attempts to remain safe; when that proves impossible, we are drawn into her cat-and-mouse efforts to salvage some security from the disaster around her. And "around her" is the word: no matter what happens to her, Hoss' Anonyma persuasively assures us she can handle it, "as long as it comes from without." These efforts bring her into contact with the local Russian commander Major Andrei (Yevgeni Sidikhin), who is initially unsympathetic but ultimately intrigued by Anonyma. They begin sleeping with each other because of Anonyma's need to safeguard herself from random rapes by attaching herself to a suitably powerful man, although, later on, tenderness and mutual respect develops. The relationship is shot through with ambiguity, distilled in a chilling voice-over by Hoss: "I cannot say the Major rapes me," Anonyma muses, "but I am at his disposal." The disconnect, between the impersonal politics of a conflict seemingly raging millions of miles away, and the all-too-personal destruction that conflict causes in the lives of the persons depicted here (including, it must be said, the soldiers, two or three of whom are mentioned as having lost everything at the hands of the German army earlier on in the war, or as having witnessed unspeakable atrocities that have scarred them for life), builds an insoluble tension into the very fabric of this film. It isn't often that a film this self-consciously weighty is so very interesting; but Farberbock's film is anything but run-of-the-mill.

The war-zone that Berlin had become by April 1945 is well-captured here in the debris and wreckage lying around; more accurately, in the ubiquity of this waste, which pervades almost every outdoor shot. Some of the outdoor sets, however, could have been less stagey, although the sullied interiors, desperately seeking to preserve some traces of their former dignity, and constantly threatened, are superbly done. In the final analysis, however, and with due credit to the film's director for enabling her, one has to end by returning to Hoss' performance. There is no false step in this mesmerizing turn, but one scene in particular captures for me the craft Hoss brings to her role. A Russian soldier spits on Anonyma's face as he mounts her. The camera rests on her face, and we see her trying to fight off the urge to spit back at him, her face creased with the hate and fear, the drive to fight back. Ultimately, Anonyma's innate practicality -- a practicality that is essentially a reflection of her strength of will and unshakeable dignity, not of a prosaic temperament -- takes over, and we see the furrows in her face smooth out. She won't be fighting this drunken soldier, she won't be throwing it all away. Hardly any film has done heroism better.

A note on KANTRI (Telugu; 2008) and the NTR Legacy

2009-08-04T20:55:00.008-04:00

[Warning: this piece contains spoilers.]

Kantri is a rather run-of-the-mill film (there's a complete review here), and would be unremarkable were it not for the film's symbolic staging of the biography of its hero, NTR Jr. Although much of the film's first half focuses on the impending clash between underworld don PR and local tough Kranthi (NTR Jr.; Kantri ("avenger") when he's in a bad mood, or should I say "kaNTRi"?), the film's second half sees NTR Jr.'s character revealed as the long-lost son of PR (who first came into wealth by murdering the character played by Mukesh Rishi, and his son and daughter-in-law; he abandons his wife and child at the same time). Once this is revealed, NTR Jr. goes to live with his father (albeit reluctantly; for his part, although PR is happy to have Kranthi with him, he also characterizes him as rough, and akin to a "laborer" who needs to be "groomed").

This sort of representation enables NTR Jr. to play the obligatory populist card (in the film, Kranthi is never defensive or apologetic about being "lower class," and in fact brings along with him all the children from the orphanage where he has apparently grown up in), a card that enables NTR Jr. to lay claim to his grandfather NTR's populism (even if, in NTR Jr., the inheritance is refracted through the post-Bachchan angry young man persona that has become the norm for Telugu and Tamil films). This story arc also alludes to the sidelining (long gossiped about in Andhra) of the real-life NTR Jr. by the more "senior" branches of the NTR family -- at this point in the film, the audience is expected to supplement the drama of Kranthi's return to a house that rightfully should always have been his, yet one which he feels is populated by his enemies; with what everyone knows about NTR Jr.'s real life.

It doesn't end here: the twist in Kantri reveals the above to have been a lie all along: Kranthi is not in fact PR's son, and has in fact been choreographing a charade to exact revenge on PR on behalf of Kranthi's grandfather, revealed to be none other than Mukesh Rishi's character -- thereby enabling a symbolic settling of scores with an intermediate generation standing between the two NTRs, grandfather and grandson. And also, of course, inscribing NTR Jr. as the real heir of NTR Sr.'s legacy.

The above reading illustrates why the (all too common) critical view of masala films that focuses solely on elements internal to the plot, while remaining oblivious to the universe of signification within which these elements operate, can only result in an impoverished reading. Equally, however, Kantri doesn't simply re-stage the long hallowed myths of Telegu/Indian/Hindu culture. It does this only in the most general (and even covert) ways. What the film is directly concerned with, however, is the staging of a modern mythology, namely the cult of NTR and his legacy, in the form of family members who also became actors; NTR Jr. is one of multiple descendants, although he is the most successful, and the most plausible heir, inasmuch as he is widely held to closely resemble NTR. (And make no mistake, it is the fact of this lineage that enables the cult to become a dynastic inheritance.) This is what makes Kantri, more accurately, the NTR Jr. phenomenon, new (the Sarkar franchise is the only other that comes to mind). Not all of NTR Jr.'s films "stage" the family biographical drama as obviously as this film, but it is not uncommon for NTR Jr.'s films to intermittently invoke "real life" -- in Yamadonga, for instance, NTR Jr. steps out of character to invoke his grandfather in Yama's kingdom (the late NTR obliges with a digitized appearance) -- that is, in films like Kantri, the NTR Jr. phenomenon doesn't allude to broader cultural myths so much as to the myth of itself. The off-screen alluded to is not unconnected to the actor at the film's center, but is simply the "real life" of the actor. Equally, the actor is, in a sense, only required to play himself (a most difficult role, as far as I am concerned, since one has to make the myth of oneself plausible with hardly any reference to naturalism.)

PASANGA (Tamil; 2009)

2009-08-03T19:43:00.016-04:00

If you're looking for a plot, Pasanga isn't the film for you: it's essentially about the boy Anbukkarasu (Kishore), who shows up at a government (Tamil-medium) school after his none too well-off father decides (over the discontent of his wife) that the family can't afford the English-medium school the children have been attending. On his first day at the new school, Anbukkarasu tangles with the sixth-grade mafia, three thuggish kids led by Jeeva (Sriram), who quickly takes a violent dislike to the nerdy gunner who's joined his domain. Meanwhile, Anbukkarasu's uncle Meenakshi Sundaram (Vimal) and Jeeva's elder sister Suppikanu (Vega) strike up a (to this viewer, annoying) romance. The obligatory inter-family feud follows, as everyone is dragged into the hostilities between Jeeva and Anbukkarasu. By film's end... well, I told you Pasanga wasn't about the plot.

Most Hindi and Tamil films feature the sort of children adults would like to have, models of cuteness more akin to pets than kids. Not Pasanga: far more successfully than any film I can think of since Shekhar Kapoor's Masoom, Pasanga so relentlessly draws the viewer into the world as seen from the vantage point of its nine- or ten-year old protagonists, that despite the manifest absurdity (to the jaded adult eye) of the children's antics, jokes, ambitions about ranking "first" in the class, and eternal concern with being shown up and humiliated before their peers, one cannot help but internalize the children's worldview. So much so that when the film interrupts this arc with the adult romance, one is impatient to get back to the "real" guts of the film. The Meenakshi-Suppikanu love story seems monstrously implausible -- it probably isn't any more so than the ones in most films, but the difference is that we just don't have much patience for it. Not when the child actors offer so much verve and fraught emotion (albeit unevenly so: there is much unwelcome saccharine mixed in too), and ultimately, psychological plausibility. (The adults do not fare as well, especially the two fathers: Anbukkarasu's is insipid, while Jeeva's father manages to lurch from inconsistency to inconsistency without ever threatening to interest one.)

Debutant director Pandiraj is evidently, like his producer Sasikumar (who in turn directed Subramaniapuram (2008)) in the forefront of what Baradwaj Rangan has called the New Tamil Cinema, characterized by generally lower key proceedings (a turning away, in effect, from the high octane bombast that threatened to reduce all Tamil cinema to masala actioners with heros doing all sorts of impersonations of Nandi The Bull), greater sensitivity (potentially, to the point of fetish) to "ordinary" locales and socio-economic environments, and the casting of relative unknowns as leads -- all in the service of thoroughly commercial movies. If films such as Pasanga, Paruthiveeran, Anjaathe, Kaadhal, 7G Rainbow Colony, and Veyil constitute the beginnings of a movement, the jury is still amount on what it will amount to. But for a viewer fed on a steady diet of Hindi films set in Sydney, London, New York, wherever, and with almost cretinous reflexivity, this is exciting: not because of any patronizing promise of vicariously experiencing an (imagined) authentic "other" over the course of a two-and-a-half hour film, an authenticity that one is denied access to; but because these films seem interested in telling stories and representing characters (the two don't necessarily go hand-in-hand: Pasanga is focused on the latter to the exclusion of the former, and the film is not the poorer for it), not in peddling lifestyles or protagonists-as-advertisements.

Moreover, while notions of "authenticity" can hardly be accepted uncritically, a film like Pasanga unquestionably aims to represent a certain specificity -- of place, of class, of condition. None of this is above critique, but when evoked as effectively as in Pasanga, it is most assuredly cinematic. Pandiraj doesn't (for the most part; the film's disappointing opening sequence is an exception) tell you what these kids are up to -- he shows you. Perhaps it is that quality in Pasanga that reminds Rangan of Fellini (I'm assuming it isn't just the unembarrassed scatological references) -- and while I cannot say that I detect here the beguiling sprawl of Fellini (or the sheer mastery over the medium), one sees what Rangan might be getting at. At its best, the directorial eye behind Pasanga aims at creating a world, not in making sense of it. (Witness the scene when the two boys' families -- who live opposite each other -- let a spat between their sons snowball into warfare between the families. That sequence could be from any number of Tamil films -- except for the sound of a vendor yelling out news of Diwali sales on a megaphone, that weaves into the midst of this quarrel, even drowning it out at points -- a sign that the world does not stop for this conflict, that this isn't the Mahabharata, just an unseemly squabble.) Given that so many directors seem to see their job as essentially filming scripts, Pandiraj's entry to the industry, while far from perfect, is welcome indeed.