Tagore and Cultural Appropriation

I was pleasantly surprised when my wife announced that there has been a “new translation” of Tagore. For those who aren’t familiar with the name, Rabindranath Tagore (the most accurate transliteration of his Bengali name in the Latin script with English phonetics should be Robindronath Thakur, but I stick to the conventional spelling reflecting an Anglicized pronunciation) was a Bengali polymath who lived in colonial India - a highly versatile poet, playwright, lyricist, music composer, novelist, philosopher, political thinker, painter and education reformer, he is the biggest cultural icon for the almost 300 million Bengali people. His music and literature revolutionarlized Bengali culture for generations that followed and contributed deeply in creating the Bengali identity. He is the national poet of the Republic of India and the national anthems of both Bangladesh and India were written by him. Incidentally, in 1913, Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature for a collection of lyrical poems titled “Gitanjali” (Song-Offerings), which he himself had translated to English, from their original Bengali. He also happens to be the first Asian, and the first non-White person to win the prize in any discipline.

Inspite of his versatility as a writer, his creative genius and the sheer enormity of his works (his complete works span an impressive 18 hardcover volumes), and inspite of his international acclaim, at present he is not as well known outside the Bengali-speaking world, and especially in the West. An obvious factor is the inevitable issue of translation, as no English translation could do justice to the richness of Tagore’s lyrical Bengali. Furthermore, from the very beginning, Tagore was misunderstood in the West. As Amartya Sen, another Bengali intellectual (and also a Nobel Laureate) explains, Tagore's admirers in the West portrayed him solely as a mystical religious figure, ignoring the rich ambiguity in Tagore's work, which balanced love for humanity and God, and emphasized on rationalism. In Europe, Tagore was perceived as a sage with a solution to the discontent plaguing the continent, whereas in his homeland, he was seen as a multifaceted creative artist and rational thinker. This marked a significant disconnect between Tagore's Western and Indian receptions. 

The fascination with the “mystical sage” soon made way to disillusionment, in Amartya Sen’s words:

“... the real Tagore, got very little attention from his Western audience—neither from his sponsors nor from his detractors. Bertrand Russell wrote (in letters to Nimai Chatterji in the 1960s) that he did not like Tagore’s “mystic air,” with an inclination to spout “vague nonsense,” adding that the “sort of language that is admired by many Indians unfortunately does not, in fact, mean anything at all.” When an otherwise sympathetic writer, George Bernard Shaw, transformed Rabindranath Tagore into a fictional character called “Stupendranath Beggor,” there was no longer much hope that Tagore’s reasoned ideas would receive the careful and serious attention that they deserved.”

As a Bengali deeply imbibed in my culture and as an ardent lover of Tagore’s literature, I have always felt that the rest of the world has a lot to receive from this versatile genius, if only the obstacles of language, distance and the orinetalist gaze could be overcome. Therefore, I was excited to learn that a “new” translation has been published. Which of his 40-odd books of poetry were translated to English this time, I asked. Who was the translator, I was curious, a Bengali, or a Western author who had taken the pain to learn Bengali, in order to capture the true beauty of Tagore’s creations?

The answers to both these questions left me shocked. It turned out that an American poet, Coleman Barks, has simply “re-written” the poems from Tagore’s English verses of the Gitanjali, without having any access to the original Bengali, as he does not read or speak Bengali.  Nor did he seem to have received any close collaboration with a Bengali speaker in the process. The cover of the book, titled “What Wants to Come Through Me Now”, however, still presents itself as a “new translation/ version” by the American poet. 

Any Bengali person who has read both the English and Bengali collection of poems featuring in the Gitanjali would agree that the English versions are stripped of much of their original brilliance, partly due to the inherent limitations in translation, partly because of the psalm-like heavy English Tagore chose, and partly because of Tagore’s deliberate adaptation of those poems for a Western audience. As the editors of “The Essential Tagore” a recently published anthology of Tagore’s works published recently by the Harvard University Press point out, 

(Tagore himself) “was not very confident about his own command of English and far from complacent about English translations of his work. He also tried to make his works accessible to readers in the West by toning down the Indianness of his works. ”  

As an aside, the above is a well-done collection that includes some of Tagore’s own English writings as well as translations by an eclectic group of authors, all of whom translated the writings directly from Bengali. The translation of some of his poems by the Oxford-based bilingual poet Ketaki Kushari Dyson is also noteworthy. 

Anyone familiar with Tagore’s Bengali work, would admit that bringing forth the true beauty of Tagore’s Bengali poems to an English speaking audience is simultaneously important and extremely challenging. How someone, with zero knowledge of Bengali could overcome those challenges, or how one could in fact “translate” something without having any access to the original (since they do not know the source language) is puzzling. At best, this is a re-interpretation of Tagore’s poems in simpler English, or, if we must use the word “translation”, a translation from English to English. As such, while it can render the undeniably heavy language used by Tagore to a more colloquial English, it cannot in anyway bring the reader closer to the magnificence of the original Bengali. 

Of course, any poet, can interpret another poet’s works in whatever way they feel inspired, and I do not doubt that Coleman Barks, who, in his own words, attempted to “rephrase his insights in language that does not cloud their brilliance”, has produced verses that are indeed more lucid and simpler than Tagore’s biblical English. As a literary exercise by a poet, that is an interesting endeavour. However, when the same exercise is presented as a new translation, and pretends to re-introduce Tagore to the West, this becomes deeply problematic. 

As I read the description of the book, I also realized that Mr Barks has followed the footsteps of Yeats and Pound in “re-introducing” Tagore as “one of the great universal mystics”. It is disappointing that such a reductionist view of the versatile maestro would continue to be presented and entertained in the Anglo-American circle despite decades of both scholarly and literary work in English that should have presented ample opportunity to demystify Tagore, and appreciate his multifaceted contributions. Sadly, Mr Barks chose instead to continue the same orientalist perspective that has obfuscated Western perceptions of the East through centuries. 

But to me the biggest issue with this purported “translation” is the complete exclusion of Bengali voices from the presentation of the book. Not only do millions of educated Bengalis learn Tagore’s songs and poems at a very early age, many of us literally live by them. Many Bengalis would admit how Tagore’s songs connect profoundly with our emotions in both joy and the depths of sorrow. To an outsider, it’s difficult to explain what Tagore means to Bengalis — few other people have such deep adoration for a poet. Nor are Bengalis an alien, inaccessible lot, there are more than a million Bengalis in the English-speaking world, many of whom are extremely well-versed in both Bengali and English. And yet here they are uninvited in conversations around their most precious treasures. 

The above could have been palatable even if the people presenting Barks’ version were at least somewhat familiar with Tagore. Alas, that too is not the case – the publisher’s own website, for instance, quotes one Elizabeth Burns, President Emeritus, Mount Holyoke College, as saying 

“This is what Coleman Barks has just done in his reinterpretation for English-speaking audiences of Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali. In the elegant poems we have been taught to love in his versions of Rumi, Barks now makes available to all of us Gitanjali of Tagore, a crowning achievement of Hindi Bengali literature. With it he has opened for us the treasures of Hindi spirituality and given new and personal meaning to diversity for the 21st century.”

Note the use of the word “Hindi” here. This is akin to describing Federico García Lorca as a French poet, or Victor Hugo’s works as a crowning achievement of Anglo-French literature. Tagore was not a Hindi poet and wrote nothing in Hindi, and his Gitanjali has nothing to do with “Hindi spirituality”, whatever that may mean.   

The fact that the Anglo-American publisher could audaciously ignore the Bengaliness of Tagore, and appropriate the greatest icon of a people, and strip him of his versatility, is ultimately linked to the privileged position that the West, and especially the English speaking circles in the West, enjoy in a world that still remains culturally colonized. Coleman Barks himself is not new to this, his “translations” of Rumi, too, were rendered boldly without any knowledge of either Persian or Islamic theology, and has been called out for de-Islamizing Rumi and Sufism to the international audience. And yet, thanks to that same privilege, these still happen to be most well-known  internationally, out of several, more authentic versions. For products of South Asian culture, Tagore’s reconstruction through Barks, joins a long list of colonial appropriations, some of the foremost of which are Tantra and Yoga. 

Who gets to represent something at a global stage? Those who come with a deep personal connection to the culture that it comes from, and have access to it in its most unadulterated form, or those only superficially familiar with it, but who, by means of their privilege, have far greater clout and reach? Those of us who dream of decolonizing the literary world need to have an unambiguous answer to this question. 

How Absurd Are Nation States?

When we look at a world map today, all the land is seen to be neatly divided into around 200 or so fixed blocks, known as “countries”. In the context of international relations and conflicts, we often hear about the irrevocability of borders, in popular culture we learn about stereotypes and festivals and languages and cuisines of these countries. In a way we are presented with a world that is always divided into countries through clear lines, and these borders are deeply connected to the history and identity of the people that live inside them, and fixed in an eternal, intrinsically natural, almost sacred way. Countries are seen as units of culture, tradition, behavioural traits and values. 

If we look back even 40 years into the past, which is a very short period in human history, this irrevocable aspect of borders become questionable - suddenly there is a huge country called the USSR in the midst of Asia, there are two Germanies, Czechia and Slovakia have merged into one, and all those tiny Balkan countries have disappeared into Yugoslavia. If we keep going further back, we see more and more changes - before the 1940’s there were hardly any independent country in Africa or Asia, instead there were colonial empires. The many lines in Africa where exactly how a handful of European powers deemed it right to divide the continent among themselves.  Those lines would become the basis of countries in Africa in the second half of the 20th century, along with some of the administrative divisions within them. Of course these lines not any more natural than any arbitrary line on a map, they have nothing to do with people, and everything to do with foreign powers that ruled over them. The same goes for the borders in West Asia, which were drawn up when the Ottoman Empire fell. 

Even in countries that were not created through colonization by foreign forces, the present borders were drawn up following wars and treaties. Most borders in Europe have everything to do with kings and armies and almost nothing to do with the people who got defined by them. It was entirely possible that Provence in Southern France or Andalucia in Spain  remained its own country and Portugal were part of Spain, or that Italy remained fragmented in dozens of different countries. But despite their fragile and artificial nature, somehow, once countries become a reality they become a strong marker of identity. These identities stick to people defined by those borders, the same people who had little or no say in choosing those borders in the first place. Emphasizing on borders to redefine identity often leads to sad yet hilarious results, like how Indians and Pakistanis insist on Hindi and Urdu being different languages, or how Croats, Serbs and Bosniacs speak effectively the same language but call it by separate names, or how the many languages o China simply become, Chinese.   

Even if someone tried to redefine countries to represent people living in a geographical region as faithfully as possible, it’s an impossible task. Throughout history, people of different languages, cultures and religions have almost always cohabited the same large geographical spaces, living side by side. As a result, no matter where we try to draw borders, we would almost always be left with minorities, be that linguistic, religious or ethnic. The idea that a large part of land is exclusive to a certain group of people is a relatively new and a very dangerous one, and attempts to implement that have resulted in extreme bloodshed and horrendous levels of tragedy, as in the case of the partition of India, the Balkan civil wars, the Armenian genocide or the Holocaust. Even after these very violent episodes, these regions are still quite diverse and heterogeneous, their cultures and traditions are still not entirely shaped by those lines. Today that same toxic idea is continuing to cause pain across the world.

Assigning one’s cultural, ethnic or national identity through borders lead to absurdities. A Bengali person born before 1947, has been an Indian, a Pakistani and a Bangladeshi. These changes have certainly affected the laws they had to follow or their travel documents, but does it really change every aspect of their culture? Cultural, ethnic and religious identities continue to exist in spite of borders – people within one country could maintain myriads of distinct identities (like in countries like India or Pakistan or Papua New Guinea), whereas people separated by borders can share virtually the same culture (like US and Canada, or Uruguay or Argentina). Not to forget the many groups of people who have neither their nation state, nor are even confined in one country, like the Kurds or Balochis or Punjabis, or those who do not even have a province or region where they constitute numerical majorities, like the Roma people in Europe or the many indigenous people in the Americas and Australia. Such identities are shaped by language, religion, culture and shared histories, which may or may not always coincide. The identities of each of these communities, represented neither by a border nor a flag and sometimes not even by a map, are still no less real than those coming from more homogeneous and well defined countries like Korea or Iceland.  

What makes it hard for many to notice this is that the dominant countries of today's world, especially in the West, do have somewhat homogeneous cultures within their borders, with at least a very significant majority of their people belonging to the same linguistic, ethnic, religious and cultural identities. In some countries like France or England this homogenity was not there to begin with but was achieved through decades of government policy. Countries like USA, Canada, Australia or Argentina were shaped by settler colonialism lead by specific imperial groups, and are also culturally rather homogeneous. As a result, people from these countries look elsewhere expecting to see the same culture within borders, and struggle to comprehend either the depth of diversity in South Asia or Sub Saharan Africa within a country, or the complex relationships that culture and identity have with borders in those regions.      

If we look further back in time, beyond the period of extreme European colonization, we see a very different world with regards to borders. Borders used to be a lot less rigid, and were not seen as much a part of one’s identity as they are today. States and kingdoms, even empires had a weaker grip than present day countries. As a result. Borders kept changing regularly, frontier regions kept switching hands, and people moved through them with far more relative ease than today. In many cases, the borders were not clearly defined in the first place and even when they were, there were vast amount of unclaimed or loosely claimed lands where people lived relatively free from any big national or imperial government. In Central Asia and the Eurasian steppes, even a few centuries ago, many people lived in self administered city-states or small communities, occasionally paying tribute to a nearby empire, but maintaining their identity and culture still. Vast regions in Asia, Africa, Australia and the Americas, simply didn’t have well defined frameworks of political divisions comparable to today’s borders. In many of those regions, communities were often nomadic or semi-nomadic, for whom borders didn’t really have the same connotation. 

May be its time we rethink the idea of nation states. May be we start to take borders for what they really are, mutually recognized power sharing mechanisms between groups of poltical elites, not something that defines who we are, and definitely not the fundamental unit of culture, language, traditions or shared history. We should be very careful to use these borders to define others or ourselves. 

Reza Aslan and a "Show About Hinduism"

How does mainstream, presumably responsible news media, respond, when a society experiences rising xenophobia, and when certain minority groups have to fight stereotypical depictions and prejudice? If we were to take CNN's example, they proceed to bolster such prejudice further, by promoting them through a TV show.

In the first episode of CNN's recently telecast series "Believer", "religious scholar" Reza Aslan takes his audience to India. He begins by explaining that he has come to the ancient city of Varanasi "to do a show on Hinduism". However, instead of providing an overall understanding of a vast school of belief systems poorly understood in the West, as one would expect, he then proceeds to focus on a few (namely two) very specific aspects within Hinduism. 

Aslan begins the episode with a very high level description of the caste system, thereby missing out on the nuances and complexity of the subject. He then presents a harrowing image of the plight of the systemically oppressed Dalits, or "untouchables". After explaining how obsessed Hindus are with ritual purity and pollution, he introduces his audience to Aghoris, a fringe sect of renegade ascetics, as an antithesis to a caste-based social order, as a radical movement that attempts to break down dogma. In the next three segments, spanning half an hour in total, we encounter three different groups of Aghoris: an Aghori spiritual leader called Lali Baba who takes Aslan to his oddly illuminated chamber adorned with a number of skulls that he uses as drinking vessels; an intoxicated monk (and his disciples) on a secluded bank of the Ganga who horrifies Aslan with utterly grotesque behaviour that includes cannibalism and consumption of bodily fluids; and then finally a less radical group of Aghoris, who do not indulge in taboo practices but focus instead on eradicating caste discrimination through social work. 

Caste based discrimination and untouchability are certainly pertinent problems in contemporary Hindu society; although I was surprised to see a scholar like Aslan confuse the notions of Varna and caste, and not comment on how the caste system evolved to its present form (at their inception, Varnas were assigned based on one's quality and action, not lineage). It was also unclear from where Aslan gathered the impression that Hindus believe people belonging to "lower" castes are perpetually stuck in their "hellish" existence through cycles of birth, and have no hope of spiritual liberation from the vicious cycle of birth and death.
             

I was more puzzled, however, at the choice of his second topic. There have been numerous reform movements in India that do not accept caste based discrimination, starting from Buddhism and Jainism that emerged before the fifth century BCE. More recently, there have been several Bhakti (devotion) based movements through medieval India, and a plethora of reform movements in the last century, many of which denounce caste-oriented dogma. But instead of depicting better known and mainstream groups like the Ramakrishna Mission or the ISKCON, Aslan decided to present Aghoris, a fringe sect of radical ascetics, as an example of a reformist movement. Without going through the details of their spiritual beliefs and philosophy, without bothering to explain the secretive and extremely closed nature of some of these cults, and without interviewing an expert on the topic who would have helped provide better understanding and context, he then proceeded to show the most cringe-worthy rituals practiced by some of them. 

The take home message, then, was the following: mainstream Hindu society is ridden with that vile social apartheid known as caste, and the people fighting against it are mainly a cult of renegade cannibals.  

Of the thousands of images of Hinduism that CNN could have left their audience with, they chose to use, not those of temples, deities, devotees or colourful festivals, but a haunting image of an intoxicated man consuming human flesh. The audience was familiarized with the caste system in Hinduism, but not of its core beliefs of pluralism, of its meditation and mysticism, of its lack of obsession with sin, of its traditional openness about sexuality, or of its loftier ideas about the nature of reality and the universe. It was, as if, upon encountering a five thousand years old religious tradition, rich and replete with myriads of sects, beliefs, practices and schools of philosophy, the producers, by some strange coincidence, ended up choosing an aspect that would be deemed the most repulsive and vulgar by its audience. 

The naive, over simplified, and patronizing manner in which the entire episode was narrated was deplorable, to say the least. Frames of people bathing in the Ganga were juxtaposed with corpses being cremated in the vicinity.  The presentation reeked of old school Orientalism: often patronizing and insensitive, and  at times, factually inaccurate. For instance, Aslan mistranslated the word "ghat" (meaning a flight of steps leading to a water body, usually a river) to a cremation ground. He referred to Varanasi, an ancient city with a spiritual significance comparable to Jerusalem and Mecca as the "city of the dead" and remarked that the meditation chamber of a monk looked like some "Hindu rave".     

The fact that this show came from someone who claims to be a "scholar" of religion makes one doubt either the quality of erudition of the said scholar, or their intentions, or perhaps both. That he doesn't have a good understanding of Hinduism was demonstrated in a four minute CNN video titled "What Hindus really believe". Ironically, this scholar has been known for cautioning the world against making generalizations about a certain religion, and for actively fighting prejudices, and yet in this case we find him in a slightly different role. The equivalent of how Hinduism was depicted in the show, would be to air an episode purportedly "on Islam" with ten minutes on Saudi Arabia, and half an hour on ISIS. And if that was indeed done, ever, there would be outrage in the USA, and rightly so. In this case, however, there wasn't much. 

    

Sir Winston Churchill once described Indians as "a beastly people with a beastly religion", capturing the prevailing sentiments of the West he was a part of. The CNN episode demonstrated that some people would like perceptions to remain that way in 2017. 

India 2014: What to Expect

As the results of India's marathon election finally started to come out, revealing that the Bharatiya Janata Party is going to form a government with a strong majority, my facebook feed got flooded with reactions from Indians from across the country and beyond. These reactions could be broadly classified into two types. Those that represented a sense of jubilation, an intense hope, religious almost, that the new government will transform India into a paradise of development; and those that reflected a deep anguish and panic, a fear that India will see an unhindered rise of fanaticism, communal strife and massive repression. While the first saw in the new prime minister of India some sort of a messiah with the power and will to magically solve all the problems that the nation faces; the second perceived in him an Indian Hitler: a personification of pure evil whose only mission is to butcher minorities and threaten the so-called "idea of India", defined by tolerance and multiculturalism. Such a bipolar characterization of reactions was not particularly surprising, given that the key figure around whom the election was fought and won had for the last ten years been one of the most hotly debated politicians of the country, and opinions about him have since then been highly polarized.  Presumably, the future, however, would lie somewhere in between. We would neither see a gigantic leap in terms of development, nor would we witness concentration camps.   

Let us begin with the narrative of development. The prime ministerial candidate emphasized repeatedly on how "development" was his top priority. Interestingly, very little detail was furnished on how this development was going to happen. The aspirations and expectations of the electorate in this regard are based mainly on the much discussed Gujarat model of development. However, while the PR team of the BJP did a phenomenal job in pushing propaganda through various channels of media to establish the idea of a near perfect Gujarat, akin to a Rama-Rajya, all relevant statistical data indicate that Gujarat is a mediocre state in pretty much all the metrics of human development. As Jean Dreze pointed out in a recent article, "If Gujarat is a model, then the real toppers in development indicators, like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, must be supermodels". Indeed, in all social indicators, including poverty, education, healthcare, malnutrition Gujarat ranks somewhere in the middle among the Indian states. It is only a leading state in terms of economic indicators like GDP per capita, but the fact that it does poorly in these social indices in spite of being a (relatively) rich state, raises big questions about the inclusiveness of its growth. If such a model is followed and implemented in India, it is therefore naive to expect any real improvement in healthcare, education or extreme poverty. 

But while the expectations of development are naive, unreasonable and unfounded, so are the fears of a Nazi takeover in India. It is a fact that the BJP has its roots in the RSS, an organization whose founding fathers drew inspiration from Hitler, but then the BJP itself has done little in recent years to indicate that it has any sinister motives to implement Fascism in India. It is worth noting that throughout the election campaign,  the leadership spoke almost entirely of its desire of ensuring good governance, of reviving economic growth and creating jobs, and of curtailing inflation. Issues like the Ram temple featured in the election manifesto, but were given insignificant importance in the campaign narrative of the BJP. In fact, this was the first election where the core Hindutva issues were largely neglected by the BJP throughout the campaign. It is also interesting to observe that in earlier elections, where communal issues did take centrestage, the BJP failed to gain as many seats. Clearly, the massive victory, then, could not be attributed to a growing fanaticism among polarized voters but to issues which where key to this particular election. It would be very unlikely, then, for the BJP too indulge in fomenting communal sentiments at this stage, because A) they don't need to as far as their pre-election promises are concerned; and B) they don't want to antagonize a large chunk of voters who supported them on election issues but are opposed to their social conservatism and religious agenda. Finally, the probability of a full scale riot or genocide happening in India is close to zero. To encourage something of that sort would be suicidal for the prime ministerial candidate, who would not only embarrass himself on a massive level, but also justify all the censure showered upon him by his critics; and jeopardize his chances for a second term. In all likelihood, the state will throw in all its power to stop communal strife from snowballing into high casualty riots. 

To summarize, in terms of social indicators our country would maintain status quo. There would be no significant improvement in healthcare and education, although there might be a minor reduction in poverty as a result of economic growth. On the other hand, India will not become a Fascist country, or a Hindu state, and the state itself will not get directly involved in persecuting members of any vulnerable community.  Instead, here are some of the things that probably will take place in India, as a result of these elections.

Markets would open up more in India, foreign investment in various sectors would be encouraged, more SEZs would be created, and tax cuts and benefits would be gifted to big corporations. Forced land acquisition might become common. An improvement in ease of doing business would presumably boost the economic growth and create more jobs for the middle class. It would also fill the already deep pockets of our Ambanis and Adanis. The government would be made smaller, in terms of number and size of ministries and possibly in terms of overall investment in the public sector. Some of the existing welfare projects aimed at the poorest members of the society might be scrapped, and new ones would not be introduced. This would also reduce government level corruption and wastage of taxpayers' money to some extent. Some of the less powerful politicians of the previous government would be prosecuted on corruption charges.

India's foreign policy would become more assertive, and in some cases mildly aggressive. This would be a shift from the soft state that India has traditionally been perceived as, especially throughout the last decade or so.  There will be no war, but there might be increased skirmishes at the border and escalation of tension with Pakistan and China. On the other hand, stronger relations would be sought with countries in South East Asia, Japan, the US and Israel. Relationships with Iran may deteriorate. Strong anti-terrorism bills would be passed, targeting both Jihadi elements and Maoist insurgents.

Public funds would be spent on propagating Hindu nationalist ideology. This would be implemented through subtle changes in school curriculum by depicting Hindu glory; through promotion of Sanskrit, Indian astrology and Ayurveda, and through  more ostentatious displays of Hinduism in government activities. Funds would be earmarked for the protection of cattle. These influences, would mainly entail a softer version of Hindutva. The effects of a stronger version of the same would be felt as well, though not directly through government initiatives.

Groups that do not enjoy economic influence or political clout, or those who represent ideas that do not conform entirely to the doctrines of Hindu nationalism would be targeted and persecuted by fringe groups that adhere to a more extreme version of Hindutva. Target groups would range from religious minorities, homosexuals and Kashmiris, to the politically liberal. Vigilant groups and self-appointed moral police would feel encouraged, and incidents of rogues beating up people celebrating Valentine's day or women drinking alcohol would increase. Freedom of speech and freedom of press would both decline to some extent and critiques of the government or Hinduism would be attacked more severely and frequently; again not so much by the government itself but by fringe groups who would now enjoy some level of state protection.   These spurious attacks, however, would still generate further criticism from sections of the population, and at some point, the government would be forced to draw a line and put a check. Moreover, the BJP would be keen to not antagonize Muslims, knowing that the landslide victory would not have been possible without a considerable number of Muslims voting for them this time. 

All of these, needless to say, are mere speculations, and the truth will only become evident in five years' time. It can be guaranteed, however, that overall, India will continue to be the slow and sluggish elephant that it has been as far as change is concerned, since time immemorial; and neither would its problems go away, nor would its rich and diverse social fabric be destroyed.  Both India's problems, and the "Idea of India" are too deep-rooted to be obliterated by a single election. 

Rediscovering the Dolma

Our Ukrainian friend  had a knack for cooking, and would surprise us now and then with something interestingly delicious. The most memorable dish she cooked, comprised roasted green and red bell peppers stuffed with chicken and seasonings. Savouring the intricate flavours entangled underneath the glazed layers of pepper (or Capsicum, as we call them in India), I was reminded of a personal favourite from home.  Consisting of gorgeously fried Pawtols (they are apparently called "pointed gourd" in English, but the name lacks the charm and sweetness that one associates with this vegetable) stuffed with cooked fish and spices, Pawtol-er Dolma is a mouth-wateringly popular speciality from the Indian state of West Bengal. The commonality wasn't particularly unusual, I thought. After all, filling the hollow inside of a vegetable with food and cooking it seemed like a simple and generic idea which might originate in many cultures independently. I told my friend of my reminiscence, and how I was pleasantly surprised to notice the similarity between a delicacy from Bengal  and the dish she had prepared.

"Do you call it Dolma?" she asked. 

If the prevalence of green gourd-like vegetables filled with delicious stuffing in both Bengal and Eastern Europe had surprised me mildly, I was quite startled to know that they had the same name as well. What I had always considered a very ethnic, very local item turned out to be ubiquitous across Eurasia in its many forms: from the Balkans and Russia, through Turkey and Iran, to all the way to Central Asia and Mongolia. The word, wiki says, is of Turkish origin, and it means "(something) stuffed".      

Two years after this enlightenment, as I finally take out my own version of stuffed peppers with potato, chicken and onions from the oven, and as I happily relish the creations with a mild sense of accomplishment, I cannot help reflect on the amazing journey made by this remarkable dish, and its evolution, through hundreds of years, across thousands of miles and perhaps a million kitchens.

Adieu, Sachin!

The second test match of a seemingly unexciting home series against one of the weakest teams wouldn't normally be expected to bring one back to watching live test cricket after a hiatus of almost six years, that too in the middle of the night. It's slightly different, however, when the match happens to be the last in the career of a man who was by far the biggest star the game of cricket had ever seen. 

I grew up in a time, when, propelled by the World Cup victory, and through increasing commercialization and media coverage, the popularity of cricket was attaining a level of religious fervour in India. Live telecast of international matches on television brought cricket into the living rooms of the middle class, and it quickly became one of the biggest means of entertainment. 

The nineties in India were not a cheerful period. In a nation ravaged by abject poverty, rampant corruption and communal violence, frustration and disillusionment were widespread, and there was little to look forward to. When almost everything else about the nation was discouraging and sad, cricket became our only source of inspiration. The nation needed heroes. We did not find them among our morally bankrupt political leaders, but among our cricketers; and never ever was there a greater hero than Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. 

There was no IPL in those days. The national team was the only team to cheer for. The passion for cricket got intermingled with zealous patriotism. We did not perceive the Indian cricket team as employees of the BCCI, or even as just a sports team to cheer for, but as representatives of a nation. As the most prolific member of that team, and as the only unchanging face in the squad for two and a half decades, Sachin Tendulkar became the man who bore on his shoulders the hopes and aspirations of a billion people. 

There were no expensive merchandise back then, or even if they were, they were not the means through which fans channelled their devotion. Our veneration was expressed through the excessive purchase of  bubble gums to collect the cricketers' cards that came for free, through posters and photographs collected from sports magazines and Anandamela, and through compilation of newspaper cuttings of scorecards in days when cricinfo was unheard of. If not a religion, cricket in India was certainly a cult, and Sachin was its central deity. The nation was united in the extolment of this man, and his flamboyant straight drives could bring smiles on the faces of a seven year old and a seventy year old with the same ease. 

For the 15 years or so that I avidly feasted on cricket, Sachin Tendulkar was the man to watch out for.  The fall of India's second wicket was always met with a huge cheer in home grounds, often much to the bewilderment of foreigners, for it marked the arrival of Sachin Tendulkar at the crease.  When there was a big target to be chased, we would often only watch as long as Sachin was batting.  Sachin's dismissal commonly resulted in the turning off of a few million television sets, with people grudgingly going back to their daily chores. 

We watched with awe how he amassed hundred after hundred, often under difficult conditions, when all his teammates failed; how he massacred the greatest bowlers of his times with his impeccable stroke play; and how he, often with single-handed efforts, saw India home, match after match. On tours overseas, when all the other batsmen faltered on fast, green wickets, Sachin Tendulkar stood his ground, firm and determined, and saved the nation's grace. We watched how he decimated the Australian bowling attack in Sharjah, how he went after Henry Olonga, how he danced down the wicket to Shane Warne in India and gave him nightmares (literally), and how he slaughtered the likes of Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Shoaib Akhtar at the 2003 World Cup. We also watched, often with tearful eyes, his vulnerability: matches where he could not make us win in spite of all his efforts: the world cup semifinal in 1996 on that sinister wicket, the Chennai test against Pakistan where he almost succeeded in leading India to an unlikely victory despite being in excruciating pain. 

Notwithstanding the jokes in social media that predicted a career lasting for eternity, Sachin Tendulkar's retirement was, of course, an inevitability. The fact that he could survive, nay dominate, close to 25 years of international cricket speaks volumes on his tenacity and perseverance. But all good things must come to an end, and so must the career of Sachin. Tonight as I watch the man bat for one last time in an international test match, I cannot help feel sad for having missed dozens of matches in the last six years or so, partly because of being in a different time zone, but mainly because the passion, enthusiasm and romanticism of boyhood and early youth had disappeared slowly over the years.

Perhaps, Sachin Tendulkar's retirement makes us sad and contemplative not only because we would never get to see him live in action, but also because he was a symbolic link between the present and the past, because he was like a living memory from a period otherwise only remembered through fond reveries along the streets of nostalgia. With him gone, a bit of our childhood is gone forever.  

Sachin Tendulkar leaves behind him a legacy comparable to few before him. We do not know yet the future of his records, or of his fame. Surpassing the runs and the number of hundreds he scored is going to be difficult, but not impossible. Perhaps there will come a day in our life times, when all these records would be broken, and new heroes would come to dominate the cricketing world. It is also possible, that some time in the not so distant future, test cricket would be deemed obsolete and rejected by the fans, one day internationals would become rare, and Twenty-20 would be the only form of cricket watched and appreciated. In such a hypothetical but not particularly unlikely future, the glory of the man who for over twenty years bore on his shoulders the hopes of an entire nation would be gradually forgotten. The happy memories that he leaves with the men and women of our generation, however, would last as long as we live; and we would, when we are old, frail and infirm, proudly tell our grandchildren that there once was a man called Sachin Tendulkar in this nation, and that we had seen him bat.   

Half-life

To quote one of our teachers from high school, our birthdays are the results of biological accidents, and as such, there is little merit in making a big deal out of them. Our ages too, one can say, are just numbers,

In Physics, half-life is defined as the time required for a quantity to fall to half its value as measured at the beginning of the time period. The term is primarily used in the context of radioactive decay: "the carbon-14 isotope has a half-life of 6000 years" implies that if a sample contains 100,000 carbon-14 atoms today, then 6000 years from now 50,000 are expected to remain, while the rest is expected to wither away.

Unlike carbon-14 atoms, human-beings are in general, not known to be radioactive. However, if there were some ways to quantify the vitality of our spirits; then there's little doubt that that quantity would undergo a decay much similar to that exhibited by radioactive substances. I'll venture to say that the half-life associated with our species is 30 years. That is not to say that I assign a pessimistic life-expectancy of 60 years at birth; it only means that when we are 30 we lose half of the life-force that we are born with.

On my thirtieth birthday, therefore, I reflect on how I expended the first half of that force. I remember my days as a child: the trinkets that my mother used to bring for me  on her way back,  our regular vacations to my grandparents' place at Santiniketan and the long walks with my father, and the stories told by my grandmother; who had a remarkable memory and knew all the classics to minute detail. My retrospection is filled with a myriad of fond images and experiences: of cheerfully jostling through packed crowds in Kolkata during Durga Puja, of playing cricket in severely constricted spaces, of the summer holidays spent immersed in Tintin, Enid Blyton and Satyajit Ray, of the games that my cousins and I used to concoct  and play, of the cricketers' cards that I used to collect and that I eventually started manufacturing on my own, of the poems and stories with which I filled hard-bound notebooks, of the stuff that I used to write in my journal; and so many more. I think of the things I learnt and the stuff I forgot; of the friends I made, and those that drifted away; and of the girls I had crushes on and those that developed a fondness for me. I recollect many trivialities and many of the little pleasures of life that had chanced upon me. For thirty years, I have had the joy of experiencing the sights, sounds and fragrances of this planet and that in itself I find fulfilling enough. 

But while the ride this far has been fascinating, the path ahead, still, is fraught with sudden turns and detours. It is generally expected that by the time one is thirty, one's life should be settled or at least in the direction of being settled. The lives of many of my friends approaching thirty follow this norm. They have good jobs, years of professional experience, regular salaries, well-planned financial investments, and loving spouses or fiances. Some of them share pictures of their children on social media while some share pictures of the houses they have purchased; some others do both. Most of them, while pursuing their career and personal goals, seem to be converging steadily towards a state of order and stability, towards a life that is regular and secure.

About thirty years ago, when my parents observed their thirtieth birthdays, they were married for six years, had  stable jobs in academia and were expecting a child. Of course, they still had a long journey ahead, but they knew where they were going, the path was in sight. 

My life, on my thirtieth birthday, however,  lacks more or less everything that society assigns value to. It would seem that I had clearer directions when I was twenty, than what I have now. I am still a graduate student, working towards an academic degree that, while self-gratifying; has little utility in the market, and my only experience in the industry was for a mere 10 month period some 6 years ago. Far from settling down, I have little interest in spending the rest of my life in the same country, even continent; and have no idea where I would be living in, in a year from now. Finally, the prospect of me marrying and/or starting a family is slightly more far-fetched  than that of an asteroid colliding with the earth. 

And yet, it is this uncertainty, this lack of direction, that makes the journey exciting. Like a particle undergoing Brownian motion, a life without stability can go in any direction whatsoever. Instability and lack of planning give rise to a lack of rigidity; potentially keeping open a sea of possibilities, and between a stable life of perpetual boredom and an uncertain life with the potential of unexpected surprises, I have already made my choice.  Today, therefore, I do not resent my uncertainties but revel in them; and when I think of all the places I want to visit, of the languages I intend to learn, of my unfinished novel and of all the remarkable things that can happen, I see no reason why the second half of my life's energy would not be spent in a way at least as interesting and as fulfilling as the first. 

Lest We Forget

It has been exactly a month since the incident. Culprits have been arrested, we hear. Attention of the press has predictably drifted to regular topics. The black circles have mostly disappeared from  facebook profile pictures; and status messages are no longer dominated by angry outbursts. Apart from a few protesters at Jantar Mantar; for most of us, concerned or unconcerned; it is back to business as usual.

This was neither unexpected nor unusual. It is as natural for us to be alarmed, appalled, upset and angry when something bad happens; as it is for us to forget and eventually move on. Sensational news gets us excited and charged up but only for a limited period. Our lives are far too complex, far too eventful, far too burdened with our own petty problems to let anything linger for beyond a threshold period. Except for those affected directly, unpleasant news gradually gets buried under layers of busy life; only to resurface when something unpleasant of a similar kind happens again. The fire that devastated a building on Park Street, Kolkata in 2010 was largely forgotten until a similar tragedy happened in AMRI a year and a half later. Memory of the terrorist attacks in local trains in Mumbai in 2006 resurfaced in public psyche when the siege of 2008 happened. The massacre of Aurora came back to haunt us after the shootings at Newtown. It would have been more beneficial perhaps if we had better memories; for if such issues continued to make us ponder; we would have continued to push for reforms long after the events ceased to be subjects of recent news; but that is not how society works. In that aspect, the incident of December 16 is not unique. Like everything else, the frenzy associated with it, too, appears to have been a passing phase.

There is, however a significant difference between what happened in Delhi that night and other disturbing news that bring forth public response. As much as a lot of us would like to think, the former was not an isolated tragedy; not a random act of insane brutality. Rape (and other forms of sexual violence and molestation; and subsequent torture and murder) is more prevalent in India (and indeed, the rest of the world) than one is perhaps inclined to believe. According to the United Nations, there are about 20,000 rapes reported per year in India on an average; for the period 2004-2010; and the number seems to be increasing steadily (22,172 in 2010). This, one must keep in mind, is the number of recorded incidents; and rape still remains the most unreported criminal offense in the world; more so in a conservative country as India. Add to that the fact that Indian law does not recognize marital rape as a criminal offense. Indeed, 20,000 per year, then merely gives a lower bound to the number of incidents; i.e., there are at least about 60 cases per day. When one adds to that, the myriads of cases of "eve-teasing" (which, by the way, happens to be a strange euphemism for sexual harassment ) that happens across the country everyday, one only begins to get a picture of the seriousness of the problem.

What happened on the night of December 16 was horrifying enough to say the least. What is even more horrifying is that rape is so common in our country that it is no longer an issue of significance at the national level. It does not make frontpage news; nay, news even; as long as the venue is not high profile or the incident does not involve sufficient savagery. Unlike lunatic gunmen, brainwashed terrorists or irresponsible building personnel; sexual offenders strike every day; and if even a tiny fraction of such incidents were to be covered by the press as news of prominence; it would but be hard even for a patient of the most severe amnesia to forget and ignore. It would then be exceedingly difficult not to accept that violence against women is a serious problem intrinsic to our society.

A great many of us seem to be deeply concerned about ensuring the greatest possible punishments for the perpetrators. Unfortunately, the level of enthusiasm is not as high when it comes to try and identify the root cause of the issue. It is in fact fair to say that there is a general lack of response in that direction. A number of statements have been issued by our leaders; both political and spiritual; and an overwhelming majority of them have placed the responsibility on victims; and indeed, on the liberalization of our society under "evil" Western influence. Western outfits, item songs in Bollywood movies, discos, women staying out after dark, free-mixing through co-education have all been blamed. One leader has made disparaging remarks about the protesting women, while another (who incidentally is female) has falsely accused one of the victims of being a prostitute (with the bizarre implication that raping a prostitute is justified). Sadly, there has been little effort to put these people in their respective places; nor have these outlandish remarks made by leaders been countered by an equal number of balanced, thoughtful remarks from their peers. Over all, there has been a conspicuous lack of a call for introspection from the ruling class.

Elected leaders by and large represent popular opinion. And it is this opinion, this attitude that is the most disturbing aspect of the situation. As long as our press does not deal these matters with the seriousness they deserve; as long as we continue to remain in our state of denial; and as long as we fail to accept that we are a part of a system that reeks of chauvinism and encourages sexual prejudice; we would continue to encounter such incidents. A mere acceptance of the situation would not immediately solve it; but one must identify the disease before even attempting a remission.

Indian Children in Norway- Cultural Differences and the Welfare System

Last month, a bizarre news article reported across various print and electronic media managed to create a significant amount of excitement in India. The incident happened in Norway and involved an Indian family and the Norwegian childcare system.

The family consists of a young couple who are on a temporary visa in Norway, and their two children: a three-year-old son and a one-year-old daughter. As per the reports, the couple lost custody of both their children several months back because the childcare authorities concluded that the care given by the parents were inadequate and did not meet the children’s needs. When the authorities visited the family on a few routine inspections, they were appalled by the various ways in which they perceived the children were being mistreated. They pointed out many anomalies; including:

1. The mother was feeding the children with her hand.

2. The boy was sleeping in the same bed with his father.

3. The boy didn’t have a bed of his own.

4. The mother breastfed the baby whenever she cried instead of following a fixed schedule.

5. The toys that the boy had were deemed inappropriate.

6. The boy didn’t have sufficient space to play.

7. The boy didn’t have suitable clothes.

8. The mother seemed depressed and irritable.

Apparently, representatives of the childcare system started visiting the household after the boy was seen to exhibit phases of irritability in school. Upon a “thorough investigation” that spanned several visits, the representatives deemed the parents unfit for rearing children. The verdict was that the children were to be cared for in foster homes until they were eighteen years old; and that during this period the parents would only be allowed to see them twice every year, for an hour during each visit.

The incident took place in May 2011 but it only began getting media coverage this January; when the parents, after a long legal tussle with the childcare authorities; took the matter to diplomatic levels and got the Indian High Commission involved.

As the news spread, it caused a great deal of furor in India. To the average Indian, most of the anomalies listed by the Norwegian authorities seemed commonplace; indeed in India these are the norms and not deviations. A mother feeding her child with her hand is common in India; as is common for one to eat with his own hands. In a society that values touch and familial affection highly and has little regard for individual space, it is also usual for children to share beds with their parents until they reach teenage. Breast-feeding babies when they cry, again, is the standard practice in India. Finally, it is also not unusual for children in India to have an inappropriate or an inadequate collection of toys and clothes; the Indian family ascribes little importance to these materials in the context of child-rearing.

At any rate, as per Indian cultural norms; the reported “discrepancies” were either normal and perfectly acceptable; or too insignificant for anyone to bother. Under all circumstances (barring the rare and unfortunate event where the parents suffered from some severe psychological disorder), separating children of ages one and three permanently from their parents would be considered outrageous by the average Indian. He would opine that the combined negative impact of all the points mentioned above would be far surpassed by the effects of forcefully denying a young child the love and affection of its parents.

The Norwegian authorities, on their part, insisted that this was not merely a case of cultural misunderstanding; that the parents were twisting facts to garner public sympathy; that the decision was made on the basis of a lot of compelling evidence of negligence and mal-treatment and after a considerable deliberation; and that the Child Protection System do not snatch children from their parents unless they have no other option. On the other hand, the fact that an astounding 12,500 children were being taken care of by the system in 2005 in sparsely populated Norway, gives an idea of how proactive the system is.

After a considerable interference from the Indian High Commission, the matter was finally resolved in the first week of February; when the Norwegian authority agreed to hand over the children to their uncle. It appears that the children may finally be re-united with their family; although the scars of an eight month long forceful separation from parents in an unknown land would perhaps only heal with time.

As one hopes that the children get to live a normal, fulfilling life, replete with the affectionate warmth of family; one cannot but help ponder over the cultural differences that seem so prominent in cases like these. We often talk about the underlying traits that are common in various societies and that can function as bases of our unity; but at the same time, one cannot deny these remarkable deviations among cultures that can potentially lead to misunderstanding and pain.

As an institution, the family has withered and weakened in the Developed World over the last century. Familial bonds, love between children and their parents have faded with the growth of individualism; personal freedom has come at the cost of a severance of chains that bonded people together. That effect has not been as pronounced in developing countries; and personal relations within a family still run deep. As Aishwariya Rai had once famously said to David Letterman, we don't have to make appointments to dine with our parents.

Another issue of concern in this regard is the role of the welfare system. While social welfare in many cases leads to a general improvement of the lives of people; there are ways in which it can negatively affect the peace and well-being of individuals; as clearly exhibited in this incident. If not implemented with foresight and deep understanding of cultures; the welfare system can lead to menacing results; even when applied with the best intentions. This incident therefore cautions the system to be careful and prudent when it attempts to interfere with someone else’s lives; it is of course foolish to spend tax-payers’ money in an endeavour as futile and useless as this one.

References:

1. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/9035776/India-and-Norway-in-diplomatic-spat-over-children-taken-into-care.html
2. http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2829408.ece
3. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2088337/Norwegian-authorities-away-children-Indian-couple-eating-hands.html
4. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-16676508

Shifting Patterns in Bollywood

Those who know me well would never accuse me of being a fan of Bollywood. In fact, the accusation has often been the other way round. I've been deemed an aantel (Bengali adjective that ridicules intellectuals) because of my conspicuous disinterest regrading the popular entertainment presented by the likes of Karan Johar and Shahrukh Khan. Nonetheless, there have been occasional moments in my life, too, when I have watched a Sholay or a Kuch Kuch Hota Hai with considerable attentiveness; or when I have glanced, albeit casually, to whatever was shown on the television. I continue at present too, to keep myself abreast of the headlines in the world's largest film industry; and the musings reflected in this particular piece are conclusions drawn from such observations; from the past and from the present.

Whoever has seen Bollywood movies of the eighties and early nineties would probably agree that a majority of the movies tended to relate to a certain socio-economic stratum. The good guys overwhelmingly came from a poor or lower middle class background; their economic condition varying from a state of absolute destitution to that of moderate scarcity; but never of abundance. The bad guy almost inevitably was the obscenely rich and devilishly crooked businessman; who would device the dirtiest of means to harass the poor.

The hero would often take the role of a Messiah of the poor; someone who stands up against smuggling trades of the villain; someone who resists bulldozers that the promoter sends to destroy slums; someone who grows up through hardship and deprivation and one day goes on to avenge the misdeeds perpetrated against his family and his people. We have seen Amitabh doing that role a million times. We have seen Mithun there. We have even seen how wealth corrupts character; through the experiences of one Raju in Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman, portrayed by a young Shahrukh Khan.

Since the economic liberalization of India in the nineties; there seems to have been a paradigm shift in that regard. The hero and his friends are no longer poor; seldom are they from the middle class. In contemporary Bollywood movies, the main characters are filthy rich! They are either sons and daughters of industrialists preparing to take over family businesses; or MBAs living in the US; or Engineers working in London. They are dressed in designer clothes; they have well-groomed bodies and perfectly gelled hair and they drink champagne. They visit Switzerland and Australia during vacations and they go to Spain for Bachelor Parties. The modern day hero, too, has his own problems; but unlike his counterpart from the past, unemployment or feeding a family is not one of them.

There certainly is a correlation between the shifting pattern in Bollywood movies and the pro-market economic policies; but there is more to it. It would simply be wrong, for instance, to assert that Indians have gotten significantly richer in the last twenty years; for they clearly haven't. The rich and poor divide, on the contrary has widened; inflation rates have soared; and it is a matter of controversy whether there has been any significant reduction in the percentage of people living below the poverty line.

There is data, that shows that the middle class has become somewhat wealthier. This has been accompanied by a high degree of increase in their aspirations and more importantly, in the attitude towards the rich. The rich are no longer a class of oppressive minority that amassed wealth through deception; rather, they are what the middle-class wants to be. The values that traditionally defined the Indian urban middle-class for a large part of the last century are vanishing; giving way to those that are more suited to a consumer-based economy. Outlooks are changing fast, and socialistic ideals of the past are withering away rapidly from the minds of people; to be replaced by a strong desire for materialistic pursuits: a desire to make more money, a desire to buy more things.

My contention is that it is this aspiration among the middle and upper middle class; this ambition to be rich; this desire of emulating the lives of the rich; that more than anything else, has brought about the shift in the socio-economic ambience of the Bollywood movie. For after all, Bollywood caters by and large to the taste of the middle class.

There could certainly be a host of other reasons and factors that are directly or indirectly responsible for this change. It would indeed be an interesting topic in sociological studies to investigate these effects.

Movie Review: Gandu

In many ways, middle-class West Bengal is more liberal and modern in outlook than the rest of India. When it comes to the use of expletives in social life; however, sophisticated and cultured Bengalis tend to maintain a sort of Victorian Conservatism and cringe at the usage of swear words in popular media. The general view about the depiction of sex in media is likewise. Until very recently it was extremely unusual to find any demonstration of a vulgar vocabulary in Bengali movies; except for the somewhat benign (and more socially acceptable) Shala ("wife's brother") or Shuorer Bachcha ("son of a pig") thrown in here and there, and those, too, were rare. In the past decade or so, there has been some change in that paradigm, with some recent movies presenting sporadic occurrences of expletives, including the Ch-words (a family of Bengali equivalents of the F-word and derivatives), especially while depicting the colloquial style of gangsters and goons; in an attempt to make their portrayals more realistic. Nonetheless, such usages are generally very limited and occupy a minuscule fraction of show time. Barring a handful of recent exceptions, nudity and sex have been taboo as well.

The Bengali movie-goer, therefore, was startled last year, upon hearing of a movie titled Gandu, a Bengali slang loosely meaning worthless, or idiot, having the connotation of the word "Asshole" and rarely used in civilized society. Such a name was unthinkable; the word being considered unparliamentary by the urban upper middle-class. The trailer of the movie soon became available on youtube; and revealed scenes and language that would be considered vulgar, nay repugnantly obscene by most cultures, not just Bengali. As the internet-friendly younger generation frantically searched for a download link on torrent (this reviewer included); it was learnt that the movie had obtained quite a few favourable reviews worldwide and bagged a couple of awards here and there. To my knowledge, it was never officially released in India; in all probability, it couldn't pass the censors' scissors.

After having somewhat forgotten about the movie and the frenzy its trailer had created, I finally had an opportunity to experience it recently; thanks to the internet. It certainly was a strangely interesting experience.

The movie is named after the protagonist; a young guy who lives with his mother, a prostitute. The plot, thin as it is, revolves around the life of Gandu; his frustrations and aspirations. It depicts his relationship with his mother, his experiences with pornography, his visits to the neighbourhood cyber cafe, his friendship with a Rickshaw-puller named Rickshaw, his passion for creating Rap music and finally, his heroin addiction. Indeed, almost half of the movie is a continued depiction of his hallucination while he and Rickshaw were under the influence of the drug. In terms of expletives and depictions of nudity and sex the movie far surpasses its predecessors. Dialogues are richly adorned with profanities and nudity and sex scenes are available aplenty throughout. Some of the scenes would in fact put to shame a hardcore pornographic film and questions have been asked whether there was any artistic necessity for such depictions.

While the peculiarity and the boldness of the movie are striking, there is clearly a lack of substance in the plot. But then again, the movie is perhaps not so much about a central story as much as it is about the ideas it attempts to convey to the audience. A fundamental theme of this movie is addressing the frustrations and perversions of a sexually repressed society. The central character represents this very society. Not only do others call him Gandu, but he himself associates with that name; indicating that he too sees little worth in himself. Rap music is a channel to vent out his anger which stems from his sexual frustration. His complicated relationship with his mother, his constant ogling at the girl at the cyber cafe, his fascination with pornography and his raunchy hallucinations while on heroin; all imply too clearly his state of mind. Indeed, given the nature of the theme, it is no wonder that the scenes are explicit, too powerful perhaps for the general audience (this reviewer included); but meaningful nonetheless.

A second, somewhat less significant theme of the movie is that of a worthless loser dreaming to overcome all obstacles to achieve something big. This is reflected through Gandu's winning the lottery, or his becoming a famous Rapper (it seems that he doesn't really get famous; he only hallucinates of becoming so), or the dedicated attempts of Rickshaw to learn Kung Fu. This of course is a more clichéd topic and has been dealt with at length. A third aspect of the movie is a take on drug addiction; the environment that creates it and the downward spiral that ensues.

The movie is shot almost completely in black and white and has a good number of outdoor shots. There are only a handful of actors; the most famous of whom, Shilajit, is only seen while engaged in intercourse. As the mother, Kamalika, a seasoned actress, has been tolerably good. The characters of both Gandu and Rickshaw have been enacted by newcomers and they have both been excellent. The lead actor, Anubrata, has given a bold and raw performance (Incidentally, he has meanwhile obtained the notorious honour of having acted in a particularly explicit sex scene in another Bengali movie). The middle aged man at the lottery store and the girl at the cyber cafe have both done fine jobs.

Overall, Q, the director (he apparently calls himself by that name) has done an interesting job in creating a particularly unusual movie; the likes of which many viewers may have never encountered. By many definitions it would qualify as porn and yet it would be a mistake to ignore the message it conveys. Many would find the free flow of obscenities and elaborate depiction of sex and nudity shockingly repulsive; and yet these are the things that make the movie what it is.

Parallels between Israel and Pakistan

While Pakistan sees itself as the nemesis of the Jewish State, one cannot help to note the numerous similarities between the two states. Here are a few.

1. Both countries came into existence as an aftermath of the second World War and were earlier parts of the British Empire.

2. The creation of both involved partition that was opposed by many.

3. Both countries maintain hostile relations with their respective severed parts.

4. Both occupy territory claimed by others.

5. Both states were created on the basis of religion; as a homeland for communities that were perceived to be vulnerable.

6. Both are nuclear powers and have formidable armies, as well as (in)famous intelligence agencies.

7. During the formation of both countries a huge number of people were brought in to settle from elsewhere.

8. Both have been strategic allies of the United States of America.

9. Both countries have been victims of terrorism, and at the same time been accused by certain countries to harbor the same.

Of course, there are many differences but listing those wouldn't be as interesting!

The concept of "Akhand Bharat"

Recently (actually, about a month ago) I came across this article on the internet, where it was reported that the RSS has once again called for the re-emergence of an age-old concept, that of "Akhand Bharat".

The phrase "Akhand Bharat" literally translates as "Undivided India" and generally refers to a super-state of "Greater India" that encompasses the entire South Asia at its minimum and may include Afghanistan, Myanmar and even South-East Asia according to some definitions. The idea finds its bulk of supporters among conservative right wingers. It's often argued that the entire area has always belonged to India, and hence it's only natural that India should establish her political control over it. A cursory understanding of the subcontinent's culture and political history, however, would show that the concept makes little sense.

State boundaries change over time. Nations, ethnicities migrate. Demographics of regions change. It's an absurd idea to think that there exists some boundary for a country that is permanent.


China has this ridiculous idea of claiming all territories that were included in its greatest ever extent (and the Chinese do distribute maps showing vast lands of sovereign countries included in China ), but that doesn't mean that India too should be compelled to exhibit the same stupidity. The same region has been ruled by different kingdoms in different eras. If China can claim Central Asia, so can Mongolia! If India can claim Afghanistan, so can Iran, or even Macedonia, for that matter! :P

The truth is, while India has existed as a cultural/ geographical entity for several millennia (with, of course a great deal of internal diversity); India as a political entity didn't exist before the establishment of British Rule in 1857.

Also, while Afghanistan and South East Asia have been parts of Indian empires; there never was a time when both were the parts of the same empire. When the Mauryans had Afghanistan, their empire did not even include the Southern fringes of the Indian peninsula. Indian dominance in SE Asia reached its peak during the time of Cholas at a time when Northern India was divided in pieces.

At all times, the hills of North East Asia remained mostly independent. From the Mauryans to Mughals, Indian empires didn't capture any territory beyond the plains of Assam.

At certain points of time the sphere of Indian cultural influence did include an area from Central to South East Asia; but that influence did not come with military force. Cultural hegemony once upon a time is a bad argument for supporting expansionism.

And anyhow, adding more to the already large and rather diverse country is definitely not something to look forward to. The Republic of India has too many problems of her own to add some more from her current neighbours.

The IPL is obscene, and here's why

While entertainment is an inherent part of sports, there is more to sports than entertainment. Unfortunately, it often so happens that the organizers forget this simple fact and turn events of sports into shows where the superfluous clutter of entertainment becomes more important than the game itself. This, precisely is the case with the Indian Premier League, or T-20 Cricket, for that matter, in my humble opinion.

Let's face it, the game of cricket is too complex and too beautiful to be fully appreciated in a minimized version. A batsman doesn't get time to familiarize himself with the wicket, a bowler doesn't get time to settle down with his line and length, the fielding captain doesn't get time to set a field or choose a bowler. You don't see batsmen anchoring and building an innings, you don't see bowlers bowling spells, you don't see the enchanting beauty of stroke play, you don't see epic duels between individual bowlers and batsmen. There's no time for all that in T-20. You only see a frenzied rush to score as many runs as one can.

The shortened format isn't the only problem with the IPL. In an international match, the teams represent nations; the passion associated with the cricket-match watching experience largely emanates from a patriotic sentiment. The teams at the league don't represent anything. Sachin Tendulkar scoring a hundred for India against Australia is a million times more delightful than Sachin Tendulkar scoring a fifty for Mumbai Indians against Chennai Super Kings.

The loud music synchronized to fours and sixes, the frenzy of advertisements, the ridiculous nomenclature of teams, the ever-smiling blondes in skimpy outfits dancing in a meaningless way; all these may go well with baseball or the NBA but are not appropriate in a cricket match. These remove the seriousness of the game and reduce it to a degree of frivolity. The passion so often an inseparable part of watching a live cricket match is lost amidst this extravagant superfluousness.

The IPL is not cricket. It's a derivative that's produced when one strains out substance and grace from cricket. At best it's a caricature of cricket, and an obscene one at that. And like most obscene things, its only driving force is money.

The Paradox of Choice

I remember the first time I ordered a sandwich at an eatery in North America. I had walked on to the counter to ask for a grilled chicken sandwich, not expecting anything more to say and was subsequently stumped by an array of questions. I was asked to specify the type of bread, the type of cheese, whether toasted or not, and to choose the kind of toppings I would like.

Unprepared, and also only partially enlightened about the options before me (this applied especially for the types of bread and cheese), I took a significant amount of time to make a decision. Since then, of course, I have grown wiser and am much quicker in making such choices. Note, however, that my knowledge on the variety of bread and cheese remains sufficiently inadequate, only now I know that I don't really care if the latter is Mozzarella or Cheddar. I have realized that optimizing a sandwich can be rather taxing for one's brain when on an empty stomach, and therefore mostly make prompt random choices (barring a few exceptions).

There are many more examples where the availability of a myriad of options actually complicates the customer's decision making process and lengthens it. Imagine someone (perhaps a country bumpkin) going to an ice cream parlour with the simple objective of buying "an ice-cream", not familiar yet individually with the variety of desserts that are members of that vast family. At the shop he is bedazzled by the most gorgeous display of delicacies (each looking equally delicious and each well within his budget). When he entered the store he had in his mind this well-defined notion of an object called an ice-cream that he wanted. On entering, he finds out that the description of the object he had in his mind wasn't after all sufficiently specific; asking merely for an ice-cream is not informative enough, one has to say what flavour he wants, and there are several dozens of them. While earlier he wouldn't have cared about the flavour because of his ignorance, now the onus is on him to choose what is best for him. Even after making the choice he would be unsure about its aptness (and hence, not fully satisfied) because of his lack of knowledge on the many options he had to reject.

What does one do then? The more analytic among us actually go on to solve the optimization problem and come up with a definite answer. The rest, me included, would simply make an arbitrary or semi-arbitrary choice which would be very likely not optimal.

Funnily enough, in spite of the fact that the availability of a higher number of options complicates the whole process instead of simplifying it and most often does not guarantee a perfect match, we (including this blogger) tend to prefer places that offer more options. We would rather be baffled by a complex set of choices and end up making an unintelligent selection in the end, than to go somewhere that has fewer options and where the selection process would be easier, and perhaps more satisfying.

Is this another paradox of human nature?

Slumdog Millionaire: A Review

Given the Indian television's well known tradition of telecasting highly patriotic movies on August 15, Slumdog Millionaire was a peculiar choice. Nevertheless, I didn't have much to complain, for I had time to kill, and watching a feel-good romantic comedy seemed a decent means to do so. Moreover, it helped me refresh my impression of the film, the idea of writing a review of which I had been toying with for a while. Without any more deliberation therefore, let me proceed to do the same.

This was the third time I saw the movie and the first time I saw the dubbed Hindi version. The first time I saw the movie was soon after its release in December 2008, and I must confess that I was carried away by the larger than life fairy-tale like appeal. Later, I was gradually influenced by the widespread criticism of the movie, largely in India; and decided that it wasn't, after all, that good a movie. When I saw it for the second time, earlier this August, I was more critical and had the intention of judging it with an objective outlook. When I saw it last week, for the third time, I watched it not because I wanted to judge it, but because I knew that I like it.

Very few of my readers would perhaps be unacquainted with Slumdog Millionaire; especially after the extraordinary frenzy it created at the 2009 Academy Awards. Nevertheless, for the sake of completeness, a summary of the storyline is provided. The movie narrates the remarkable life story of one Jamal Malik, who, beginning from the humblest of backgrounds, surpasses all conceivable obstacles to fulfill his dreams. The story starts with Jamal, now a tea-seller, being on the verge of winning the top prize of 20 million Rupees on a national quiz show that's being telecast on live television. It then goes flashback to show how he was taught the answers to each question by life itself, along his journey that started from the slums of Bombay and took him through several dark alleys that society has to offer. The movie finally ends with Jamal bagging a double jackpot; i.e., winning the prize money and finding his long lost love, Latika.

Nothing remarkable about the central story of the protagonist rising to fame, fortune and meeting his destiny against all odds. Though a cliched concept (especially in Bollywood), a nice execution and fresh faces for the three major characters, made it a movie worth watching. What was novel though, was the idea of the game show; and the connection between each question and some incident in Jamal's life, often tragic; through which he knew the answer to the question. Jamal's journey through the game show, from the first question to the last; in turn takes the audience on a parallel journey, along the path of his life. It also takes us on a journey through the dark alleys and by lanes of our society that we often fear to flash a torchlight into; and would rather remain oblivious to the existence of.

Much criticism has been directed towards the dark and disturbing depiction of India that Danny Boyle projects in the movie. It is undeniable that the projected picture is not quite positive. It would appear as if India is a land of hopeless and hapless people who dwell in slums, lose their families in communal violence, end up being beggars or in the flesh trade; or if they are luckier, in the mafia. The Indian society that one sees in this movie is a filtered society; it has been reflected through a lens that had its focal points on the nadirs of the system. All the tragedies depicted in the movie are realities in India; but there still remains more to reality than such tragedies. Every society has its shadows, some perhaps darker than those of others; and what we see in this movie are but those dark patches. It would be unwise to take this depiction as a representative of the complete picture. A romantic comedy should be taken as a romantic comedy and not as a documentary.

There are three major characters in this story: Jamal; his brother, Salim and Latika; whom we have already mentioned. Jamal is the quintessential hero, his character endowed with almost all the virtues that tradition ascribes to the perfect man. He's caring and compassionate, he's fierce to anyone (eg, Salim) who offends his lady-love, he's smart, not just street smart but intelligent, he's a good and quick learner and above all, he loves Latika rather intensely. He also has a very strong, perhaps stubborn determination. It is this stubbornness that makes him splash through a puddle of crap to get an autograph of a movie star; it is this stubbornness that enables him to find Latika in Bombay and it's this same aspect of his nature that leads him to her at the final moments of the movie. Of course, he gets generous help from luck, or "destiny" as he would rather call it; as if to exemplify the old saying of fortune favouring the brave.

Latika's character is quite straight forward. It's apparent that she loves Jamal dearly. She still recognizes him instantly after seeing him after ages. We are not told if she, too, had an urge to find him after the two were separated. But then, given the circumstances she was going through; it would be too much to expect that on her part.

Jamal and Latika's characters, though very consistent, are typical. It's the conflicting and realistic characters like that of Salim that interest us more. This young man grew up with Jamal in the slums, went through similar hardships, and while his younger sibling more or less remained on the track of honesty, he considerably strayed away. Given the tragic incidents that the boys had to endure in their childhood, Salim's slip into the underworld, or his actions with respect to Latika are nothing unusual. What was interesting was that in spite of all his dishonest and ungentlemanly acts, he still retains a humane side. After having abandoned his brother and having lead the latter's girlfriend to dishonour, it's Salim himself that helps reunite the lovers, killing his gang leader and sacrificing his own life in the process.

There are a bunch of errors in the movie. The most glaring of them is that the Indian equivalent of the millionaire reality show is not aired on real time. It's shot several weeks in advance, so the climax cannot possibly happen in reality. Nor do the quizmaster, or the host has any stakes in the prize money. His trying to mislead Jamal, and then calling up the police, and the subsequent torture carried out by the police are all very absurd. The linguistic transition that the three protagonists go through; namely the transition from rustic Bombay-style Hindi to fluent English doesn't make sense. The Hindi dubbed version was better in this respect because it seemed more realistic to have the main characters speaking in Hindi throughout.

I didn't quite like the name. The word slumdog isn't used commonly in Indian English so I checked the internet. It appears that no dictionary has any entry for the word!

Director Boyle says,

"For us, Slumdog was always a very affectionate term because … it was a hybrid, a mixture of underdog and rooting for the underdog, and obviously he comes from the slums.”

Affectionate or not, I personally found the word derogatory and offensive.

Even though the music wasn't the best of A R Rahman I've heard, it still was one of his bests. And that was one deserving man getting the gold statuette.

In spite of fallacies, cliched concepts and other limitations, what makes it a good movie is the message of hope that it carries. The central belief that I-would-succeed-no-matter-what-happens is something very refreshing and positive in these days when hope is often so scarce.

Was it a good movie? I thought it was, else I won't watch it thrice.

Did it deserve a bagful of oscars? I'm no expert, but I'd say, not really.