It is well known that men who become the moral police for women are sexually immature and insecure about themselves. It is a condition that arises mostly from the environment they are brought up in, dominated by or taught to disrespect the other sex. It is a condition that if not checked, can lead to rape. And in societies where a woman’s sexuality is considered immoral, rape almost becomes an accepted form of humiliation and punishment. But it arises not from a moral perspective, but a far deeper, darker insecurity of their own ‘maleness’ and a need to dominate and humiliate the other sex in order to give themselves feelings of self worth.
The young men that beat up the girls in Mangalore are a slur on their religion and completely screwed up inside. They represent a danger to society, and should be locked up. As do the young men that raped the girls in Noida, the most horrendous part of which was the way the village elders blamed the girls for the act.
It was ultimately what I explored in Bandit Queen, where Phoolan Devi was gang raped for the audacity to become a leader of a gang and trying to stand up to men. Both as a woman and low caste.
Happy Republic Day, but what are we celebrating ?
Used to be such fun. Getting ready early in the morning, putting on your woollies with my mom trying to get us going as early as possible. To see the parade in Delhi from as vantage a point as possible. It was such a event. As a boy of course my favourite were the armed forces ! The march past, the tanks that rumbled by, pointing their gun turrets to the saluting Prime Minister. I would always wait for the jets to do their final flypast spewing out the Indian colours. Just the sounds of those jets would get my heart pumping. I loved the white uniforms of the Navy and for a long time had the ambition to join the Navy. To a 10 year old it felt like the coolest thing to do. I just liked the way they saluted. It was not like the open palm of the Army or the Air Force. It was so smart. Imagine, that I may have gone into the Navy just because I loved the way they saluted. I guess we will never know what motivates us to take directions in life.
Then we did not think about what we were celebrating. It just was such a celebration. Even my school would participate in one of the floats ( I never made it – I was too quite and shy to express creative urges then). We just celebrated a holiday, a day out and the pageantry. And India was such a young country then. The cynicism had not set in.
What are we celebrating now, other than a long weekend ?
We are celebrating the birth and survival of an impossible Idea. An Idea that is India. An idea that brought a sub continent of different cultures, of different religions, of different races, and of different languages together. That Idea was freedom. And out of that idea, an India that never really existed before, was born as a democracy.
India is still an Idea. A hope. A dream. That it has survived and we still exist as a whole despite all the divisive forces, the complete political failure, the corruption, the poverty, the inequality, the lack of a working justice system, a corrupt police force, the greed of the corporate system, is in itself an absolute miracle. But then, more than anything else, an Idea leads to a miracle
That is what we should be celebrating. That the idea has survived. The Dream still beats in our hearts. And hope still drives us.
And that hope is kept alive not by the politicians who are probably the most treacherous people on this planet, nor the elite or the corporate sector, who will plunder middle class investors and transfer India’s wealth overseas without blinking an eyelid. Nor by us film makers, that find exhilaration in box office results international awards. But it is kept alive by the farmer, who season after season will wait for the monsoons and the crops to feed his family. And still hope. It is kept alive by the working and middle classes that travel in from Virar to Churchgate everyday and have done so all their lives, and still hope and survive and celebrate. For they’re the ones that buy the cell phones that turn our cell phone operators into billionaires.
India’s beating heart, India’s hope, lies in the people for whom life is a daily struggle. This year I celebrate those people.
The Idiot box is so much more idiotic now
With the levels of soaps degrading everyday, news being turned into soap opera, and the complete inability to tell the difference between one reality soap and another, many people are nostalgic of the Doordarshan days when series such as Hum log, Udaan, Shyam Bebegal’s Bharat Ek Khoj, Malgudi Days and Govind Nihilani’s terrific adaptation of Bhisham Sahni’s novel on the partition of India ‘Tamas”.
Yes there were those boring state dominated news broadcasts that became just the state propaganda, and many programmes were merely there because of who bribed who. Not all was good, but there were some terrific things on TV that we don’t get now. Neelesh Mishra has written a wonderful piece that I enclose here about ‘growing up with Doordarshan called :
“inside the idiot box of memory”
Let me take you to several minutes before 6 p.m. on crisp winter evenings in the 1980s. In a cobweb of narrow Lucknow lanes, my four young uncles would be about to return home on their Bajaj scooters, my tough cookie grandfather would be about to have his evening tea and on the first floor, my grandmother would be cutting guavas and bringing them to my twin brother Shailesh and me.
That was the moment when I would get up for the highlight of our winter vacation days, in the neighbourhood someone had so stupidly named Ghasiyari Mandi.
A massive click. I would switch on the thick cylindrical silver knob of the Uptron Urvashi TV set, encased in a wooden cabinet. Vertical vibgyor colour bands would show up, and then, suddenly, the rotating Doordarshan logo that seemed to us like two huge kajus hugging a rasgulla in the centre. Sublime, pre-24X7 moment. The moment my brother and I would have waited for the whole day, killing time to prepare ourselves to open the rolling wooden shutter on the TV cabinet.
Doordarshan was the anchor of my growing up years in Lucknow and Nainital……
Continue reading “The Idiot box is so much more idiotic now”
Did Heath Ledger really leave us a year ago ?
The New York Post asked me to write a tribute to Heath Ledger on the anniversary of his passing. It seems just yestrday.
Time, say philosophers, mystics and quantum scientists is an illusion. Before the Big Bang there was Eternity. Beginnings and Ends are just means to contextualize our lives within our limited perceptions of a world that surrounds us.
Every now and again a human being is born to remind us of Eternity. Heath Ledger was amongst those, who we quietly whisper prayers for in our quite moments, wish for in our dreams and in have a special place for our every day thoughts. God knows how many people in this world still carry the pain of the loss of him. Why did a man who lived amongst us for such a short time, and did such few films, leave such a huge imprint upon us when he left ? I have people writing letters on this blog who had never seen a Heath Ledger film, who were not fans, but felt the shock and impact of the loss of Heath Ledger. Everyday ordinary people that a year later are still coming to terms with his passing ?
Like he was an Angel.
Or the Dark Knight. In which Heath left indelible impressions of incredible humanity behind the garb of evil. So much that people went back again and again to the theatres to experience the presence of Heath Ledger. I remember a conversation with Robert Richardson the DP of Four Feathers ” Just make sure that the audience are able to look into Heath’s eyes. They tell a story of ancient wisdom and all of humanity”. Not an easy job for a DP when Heath would so easily break into an Australian crinkle and narrow his eyes, so that the point of light so carefully put by the DP would search desperately for their subject ! I used to tell Heath that he was an ancient soul in a youthful body and mind. That his struggle was between the ancient wisdom he carried in his soul and the coming to terms with youth.
That struggle showed and I was the ‘brother from another mother’ as he called me, that embraced him at those moments.
I wish I was there to embrace him when he passed away. I was so close. But then, it was not meant to be. In his passing he left behind his indelible footprint. As I write this peice I hear that Heath has bean nominated for the Oscars.
Wherever you are Heath, I can see you crinkling your eyes and laughing your deep laughter and saying ” Hey brother, what d you think of that ?” Nothing more, nothing less. Everything just was, is, and will be. In Eternity.
Slum Dog Millionaire scores a perfect 10
10 oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Director, ScreenWriter plus two nominations for A R Rahman. Actually three nominations for Rahman : Best Score and two best songs. I think we need to applaud ?
It’s Slumdog Millionaire’s Summer of Cool !
With film makers in India regretting they did not pick up Vikas Swaroop’s Q&A ( on which Slumdog Millionaire is based), guess which is the next book getting all the hype ? Its Suchitra’s “Summer of Cool. There is a little bidding war going on for it… I should know, everyone is calling me to see if I can help them get the rights ..
‘Summer’ is exactly what it says it is. It is ‘cool’, with the the colors of summer – yellow and orange -with the warmth of the characters who’s hearts almost glow pink !
” A tall glass of lime juice on a warm summer’s day” The Hindu critic called it aptly. And this is just the first of series. This summer is going to be pretty cool for book lovers.. and yes, the book has it’s dark side, but then so does Harry Potter –
addicted
I do
because I want things done
but the more they are done
the more I want done
till
i ask
what did i really want to do ?
and what was really done ?
for the drug
called ‘done’
is a finishing line
that i am constantly
and breathlessly
running towards
that seems to run
away from me….
Plastic bags banned in Delhi ! Well done again Sheila Dixit
The state government in Mumbai had announced after the terrible floods caused mainly by the clogging of the drains by plastic bags, that they would ban plastic bags. But they had neither the will nor the guts to go through with the order. Now Sheila Dixit, the Chief Minister of Delhi has announced the same, and my bet it that despite all the court cases that will be thrown against her, the political pressures and the business lobbying – Sheila Dixit wil stand firm. She did the same when she turned all buses and other means of public transport to CNG gas. She stood firm through the strikes by bus operators, nd cases right upto supreme court. And today you can actually breathe in Delhi. There are lesser cases of asthama amongst children, and the levels of harmful pollutants in the air has come down,
I have seen the effects of not only plastic bags, but also plastic wrappers and empty plastic bottles on our environment in the hills. On a recent trip to Nainital and the surrounding hills, I saw streams, lakes, irrigation ditches all clogged with plastic – killing not only the environment but also causing flooding and killing off river fish.
Traveling in trains in India in my youth, hot milk and tea has very special taste. They were served in fragile earthenware pots. The tea and the milk took on the taste of the earth, and for me they have never tasted the same. Now even in the smallest towns tea is served in plastic cups that are not biodegradable and just go on to pollute our land.
Just one thing more m/s Dikshit – what about plastic wrapping that sell commercial products like Lays (terrible for the health of kids in any case) and pan masaala ? They represent almost 70% of the litter that pollutes our countryside
Israel declares cease fire in Gaza
After killing 1200 (or more) mostly civilian Palestinians, injuring seriously another 900, Israel has declared that its objectives have been achieved. I doubt it. If the idea was to destroy the Hamas leadership, then perhaps temporarily yes. But armed strength and invasion can kill people, not an idea. The idea is more freedom and less oppression for the Palestinian people. After the invasion, the idea will be far far stronger, with more converts to it. Perhaps Israel wanted to crush the Hamas leadership before President Obama took charge. They knew that Bush would support them, so they declared a cease fire on the day that Obama Presidency is being inaugurated !
This was a mistake that in the long term will create even more problems for the survival of the state of Israel. Those pictures of fathers and mothers in anguish over the bodies of their dead children, killed by the Israeli bombs, will stay etched in the minds of the people for years to come.
“Poverty is my art ….”
In a village in the interiors of Gujarat this man’s family has followed the art of lacquer work on wood for many generations. Right from the making the thickness in castor oil, to the grinding and creation of earth colours, and finally applying it to wood to decorate anything from spoons, to furniture, to toys. His sons follow him, in what they feel is a dying art.
“Poverty is my art” He said ” for this art would not be kept alive if we were not poor”
Would that be true of any art ? Does wealth ultimately corrupt artistic endeavor ? Is the artist then confined to life long struggle to stay true to his art ?