Why the 'idea' of JNU will never die

Shock and awe! That’s what it initially was. But then, should I be shocked and must I be awed by the filth being traded around by the powers-that-be and their pet mice about an institution that has weathered the test of time. My institution, my university, part of my life for most part of my youth. I remember the day I entered JNU through the North Gate for admission to the Master’s programme at Centre for Political Studies. Since that day, JNU remains irreplaceably and irrevocably seared into a part of me, my politics, ideology and personality. Saying this today might be construed as ‘unpatriotic’ and ‘anti-national’ but ask any current or former JNUite and snide slurs and remarks have been the hallmark of our existence since we decided to hone our academic skills at one of the best institutions of higher learning in India. In fact, matrimonial advertisements carry express notes about the ineligibility of ‘girls from JNU’ marking us as unsuitable brides! The joy we – ‘girls from JNU’ – derive from such derision remains unfathomable for anyone who hasn’t been in JNU. I am not the least bit surprised by the comments made by a misinformed, misogynist, gender-insensitive and sexist Haryana bureaucrat about girls from JNU being worse that prostitutes. Can we expect anything better from an official from a state that tops the list in female foeticide and infanticide? Then there is this matter of JNU being a breeding ground for Leftists. Fair enough. The university is made up of 14 major academic schools and a number of research centres out of which the political and intellectual thought of Marx, Engels and Lenin are taught at the School of Social Sciences and as parts of more extensive syllabi at the School of Arts and Aesthetics. Statistically therefore the charge against JNU being a ‘Leftist’ institution is banal and empty. Even if, let’s say, the predominant ideological disposition of the campus is left-of-centre or far Left, does that make the institution prone to illegality or anti-social behavior? As a student in JNU I was exposed to ideas, debates and writings. I was able to articulate my thoughts and engage with the ideology primarily because of the open and inclusive platform provided by the student body at JNU. If I was a member of the SFI, it was my choice. Because at JNU, if nothing else, one learns to choose – from an ideological persuasion to a way of life. I was not wooed by anyone, nor did anyone indoctrinate me or put me through rounds of brainwashing. I ‘chose’ to live by and profess a politics that pseudo-nationalists are today denouncing as ‘Leftist’. It is but a matter of conjecture that RSS shakhas are being conducted inside the BHU campus, an openly pro-BJP man with a questionable film career now heads the Film and Television Institute of India, and the Indian Council for Historical Research is managed by academicians whose backgrounds remain rather suspicious, having eased out renowned historians and scholars. Further, the basis of categorising people – more importantly students – as ‘patriotic and unpatriotic’ and ‘nationalist and anti-national’ remains dubious and problematic. The post-colonial milieu in India was raised on a staple of choices that the nascent and fledgling state made at the start, particular among them being the choice of Hindi over Urdu as the preferred language for national broadcasting (both radio and TV) and the adoption of Hindi as the national language, much to the chagrin of non-Hindi speakers. While Hindi became synonymous with the Hindus, Urdu became known as the language of the Muslims. Needless to say, the fact that a majority of Indians particularly from the North spoke a language which was a combination of Hindi and Urdu with a smattering of Persian and Arabic and influences from Khadi Boli was conveniently ignored. Hence, it was propagated that only Muslims spoke Urdu. Then as relations with the newly-created Pakistan continued to sour the outpourings of hatred and ‘nationalism’ moved from the battlefield to the cricket field. Anyone who did not spew venom at the Pakistani cricket team was considered a traitor and anti-national. The category of ‘nationalists’ therefore included all those Indians who abused Pakistan and Pakistani cricketers in public, those who threatened to dig up cricket pitches and those who wrote vitriolic pieces in ‘nationalist’ newspapers about the ‘impending war’. To this list was also added those who opposed Pakistani artists from performing in India with enough vehemence to overwhelm an entire concert hall. The category grew and developed and tended to exclude everyone who reasoned outside the pea-pod scope of anti-Pakistanism. The ‘others’ were grouped together as ‘pseudo-secularists’ and ‘Pakistan lovers’. This group included academics, journalists, intellectuals, writers, columnists, artists, sportspersons and their ilk. But we did not stop here. More categories have made their presence felt with the passage of time and as political dispensations have been periodically replaced. Today we hear of ‘Maoists’, ‘Naxalites’, ‘Leftists’ and ‘Jihadists’ being churned out by JNU. That the three categories are conceptually and ideologically as different and divergent as chalk is from cheese remains an academic matter not to be discussed in the open lest you be branded, oh yes, ‘anti-national’! The terms Maoist and Naxalite are routinely used as one, in complete disregard of the fact that the locations and cultural contexts of both the revolutions were diametrically different. While Communism in China was a result of the revolution initiated by Mao Tse Tung, the Naxalbari Movement in West Bengal was the culmination of faulty and oppressive land redistribution laws and the exploitation of the poor and underprivileged farmers. The political influence of the Indian Left unfortunately remains a mere shadow of itself supported to a great extent by the radical politics still in evidence in democratic and free spaces like JNU. Interestingly, the ‘Leftist’ revolutionary Bhagat Singh whom the saffronites are hell bent on appropriating for their own political machinations, remained a staunch Communist till his hanging in 1931. He was the product of a strong socialist sentiment in Punjab in the early 1900s which disappeared gradually in the post-Independence era leaving West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura as the only three remaining states with significant support for Left ideology. North India – much of what is known as the cow belt – has, for all practical purposes, degenerated into a communal cauldron overseen by the Sangh Parivar, seeds of which were sown in the early 1990s with the demolition of the disputed structure and the Ramjanmabhoomi Movement. The only other state that could rival the northern states in their blinkered backing of the BJP – the political face of the RSS – remains Gujarat, the site of the some of the worst communal killings in the history of India. In a strange way, therefore, JNU has through the violent history of politics in North India protected and maintained its ethos of inclusiveness and radical thought. That is so because a large number of students in JNU belong to states which have strong Left leanings, ‘nationalist’ critics might want to argue. Not so long ago, another category was added to the list of marauding and flagrant individuals being allegedly produced by the university. A few years back, Praveen Togadia, the acid-tongued, venomous leader of the rabid Bajrang Dal – another prominent member of the sacred Parivar – accused JNU of teaching ‘jihadi literature’ and producing anti-nationals. Nothing to me is as jocular and amusing as a poisonous man like Togadia talking of dangerous literature being taught to impressionable young minds. For starters, it might be helpful to take a look at the literature being produced by Sangh affiliates, an example being a small, historically spurious booklet titled ‘Ramjanmabhoomi ka Raktaranjit Itihas’ which was in circulation during the Janmabhoomi movement. More recent examples come from the Hindutva laboratory Gujarat where school students are taught to refer to Muslims as ‘mian bhai’ or ‘mulla’, entire historical periods go missing from textbooks, examinations are scheduled on Muslim holidays, and question papers are replete with mathematical problems around dead Muslims. Throughout my tenure as a student at JNU, I never once came across any incendiary piece of literature being referred to either in course of lectures or recommended to us for further reading. Yes, there was Marx and yes, there was Lenin. And there was Mao too. But there was also Bentham, and Locke and Hobbes. And Hegel, Kant and Rousseau, John Rawls and Robert Putnam. There were also Ram Mohun Roy, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mohandas Karanchand Gandhi and Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar. Since when did the writings of these gentlemen become ‘jihadi literature’? Since I did not magically transform into a jihadi by reading the political thoughts of leading political theorists and philosophers, I completely fail to comprehend how anyone could metamorphose into a jihadi by being exposed to political writings or philosophy. By categorizing people into binaries like ‘nationalist’ and ‘anti-national’, we are unflinchingly playing into the hands of the Parivar which has been eyeing JNU as some kind of a site for conquest for quite some time. The right-wing, conservative, virulent and subversive ideology of ‘either you are with us or with them’ again divides people in unhinged, ubiquitous groups, mitigating any scope for diverse thought and action. That a particular strain of thought might be a rational choice for someone while for another it might be quite the opposite does not register with the proponents of such binary vision. Institutions like JNU have over the years produced rational individuals who value human freedom more than anything else and the seeds of it are sown in an atmosphere of independence and creative freedom that the campus fosters. This is what remains the primary task of universities – to encourage free thinking individuals – however radical, however political. But, alas, what good can come of preaching to the converted.

From “staged” live broadcasts to Muslim villains

It would be appropriate perhaps to begin any explication on “Islam” and” media” by making a very fundamental distinction. The distinction is conceptual, political, and socio-cultural—between “Islam” and “Islamism” or those who practice Islamism—“Islamists”. Islam, faith for more than 1.57 billion followers across the globe, can be, for ease of purpose, defined basically as a monotheistic and Abrahamic religion, articulated by the Quran—considered by its adherents as the verbatim word of God and by the teachings and normative examples of Muhammad, believed by the followers of Islam to be the last prophet of God. “Islamism”, on the other hand, permeates from the inexhaustible need for a group of people, referred to as “radicals”, to work towards the establishment of an Islamic super-state—an international comity of Muslims sans modern national boundaries, predicated on the concept of “brotherhood” or ummah. Such an Islamic super-state would, of course, draw its sustenance from Islamic jurisprudence or the Shariah. Having made this fundamental distinction, it would be proper to ascertain the role of the medium of mass communication or the “media” in portraying or representing “Islam” and “Islamism” through images, reportage, analytical writings, expositions, and its creative arm—cinema . A recent news snippet being circulated on Facebook highlighted the attempt being made by CNN to not only file false reports and relay fictional messages from Syria, but to go a step further to “stage” news segments with actors in order to beam them to television screens across the world -- a clear indication of the length the media can traverse to “create” news in the absence of anything substantial. Such a scenario can increasingly be discerned with regard to dispatches from across the Muslim world. The casual refrain remains—“Islam is not the sore area, Muslims are”—while showcasing the activities of the Islamists. Yet again, the fact remains that a clear distinction is a must between Muslims and Islamists. All Muslims are not Islamists, and therefore not dangerous and inimical to peace and security in the world, political order, and democratic processes. In a bid to perhaps outdo the nearest television news or newspaper rival, the modern news media tends to conveniently gloss over these subtle yet powerful differences. News emanating from Egypt could be regarded as a case in point. In a conscious attempt to discredit the Egyptian military’s actions against the Muslim Brotherhood, which are condemnable to say the least, the Western media, for instance the BBC , appears to be mollycoddling the Brotherhood—the largest Islamist movement in Egypt—whereas, in principle, and in keeping with the anti-Muslim (read anti-Islam) sentiment post 9/11, they should have been condemning the Brotherhood. A dichotomous situation, it exemplifies the manner in which the media, Western media in particular, first creates news, then dictates world opinion on issues, such as the Egypt crisis, and then finding that there are classic ambiguities, withdraws from the scenario leaving the viewer, audience or reader trying to glean the true picture from the cloud of confusion. Are we dealing here with Islam or Islamists, therefore, remains the oft-repeated question. Closer home, the Indian television news media appears to have made a name for itself in dealing with issues of critical importance, primarily those related to inter-communal relations in a multi-religious and multi-ethnic milieu, with a thoughtless and high-handed approach, predicated on mundane to outright sub-standard research. Although exceptions prove the rule, the Indian television media has emerged as a great follower of its Western counterpart, completely disregarding generic and conceptual binaries in its attempt to garner rating points and other commercial benefits. The justification for various acts of mindless terror provided by the Indian Mujahideen is often conflated with what opinion the Indian Muslims have on the outfit, as if their thoughts and aspirations are the fuel for the activities of the group. An incident in the recent past about a Minister claiming that the Muslims of India, including himself, are unaware of the existence of the Indian Mujahideen caused a furore on television news channels, with anchors clawing panelists with innuendo, criticism, and barbs of all kinds . Perfectly fine, with the caveat that it is actually and very nearly possible and plausible that a majority of Indian Muslims are really unaware of the existence of the Indian Mujahideen! In an undergraduate class I teach, a majority of the students, almost all Hindu, except for one Afghan, could not, when asked, go beyond an extremely basic understanding of the RSS. Some could barely just manage the full form. By the logic television news anchors employed to argue against the Muslims who are unaware of the existence of the Indian Mujahideen, these youth could also be labeled anti-social or even anti-national. I find it terribly uncomfortable to separate the two scenarios as the import of the argument remains inextricably embedded in a graphic attempt by the Indian television news media to create a Muslim Frankenstein. It summarily smacks of double standards. Beyond the realm of 24x7 news and the great media circus played out on television screens every single hour of the day, another grand vehicle of mass outreach and communication—cinema—has been, on several counts, successful in keeping narrative structures as well as the Muslim characters it creates and publicizes, within the confines of the dominant discourse on the Muslims. As “negative” and “positive” Muslim characters battle for discursive space in popular Bollywood cinema, with film narratives almost always culminating in a victory for the positive over the negative Muslim, the status quo remains undisturbed. The status quo, in this scenario, again leads to a binary opposition between two conceptual positions—the Nehruvian conception of the Muslim as a vital element in the project of nation-building viewed against the largely exclusionary right-wing majoritarian discourse. Discernible in the narratives of post-9/11 “terrorist” films, are responses to global trends that impute meanings to the actions of Muslim characters by placing them in a global context. The character of the terrorist, therefore, has changed from being a homegrown victim of communal riots or state apathy to international radicals and Islamists, based in the West. The recent trend towards “secularization” of on-screen Muslims in popular Hindi films primarily adheres to the hegemonic discourse characterizing them as individuals and as groups seized by the tendency to gravitate towards violent behavior, thereby straightjacketing the Muslim as belonging to a monolithic community. Here again, the differences in the manner in which the two dominating teleological forces shape the conception and representation of the Muslim emerge on the surface. It, therefore, seems like the on-screen Muslim ultimately gets the raw end of the stick, whichever way the picture is turned. The dominant narrative has continuously produced characters that appear to be exact replicas of each other, which in my view, does not augur well for Indian cinema in general. It remains implicit that the representation of the members of a particular community should not necessarily only either caricature them or demonize them. The ethic of secularization and the extant necessity of a Hindi film narrative to positively stereotype the Muslim character while adhering to the dominant discourse, therefore effectively defines the nature of representation of the Muslim in popular Hindi cinema. It would not be prudent to eliminate the contribution of the print media, particularly the vernacular newspapers, to the larger imagination of Muslims, Islam and Islamists, not necessarily in that order. Gujarati language newspapers—Sandesh and Gujarat Samachar —during the 2002 riots in that state played a pivotal role in the dissemination of information (read misinformation) with regard to both the Godhra train tragedy and the involvement of the Muslim minority in the communal frenzy that followed. By making use of incendiary headlines and baseless reportage, the vernacular media in Gujarat not only aided and abetted the state government in letting the state burn it actively supported the perpetration of violence against Muslims. Basic rules of responsible journalism were flouted by the vernacular dailies, while on the other hand, the English language media made feeble attempts at maintaining some semblance of balance. The reporting of the Seelampur riots in Delhi (1990) and the Bhagalpur riots in Bihar (1989) are also concrete examples of the use and abuse of language to allude certain impervious connotations to events that never really took place. The ethic of objectivity, very obviously, also eluded the press, especially the vernacular press, in the aftermath of the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. The imagery of the Muslim created by the varied arms of the mass media has remained somewhat in sync with each other and it would be important to state here that any significant diversions from the norm do not seem to be the future of media imagining and representation. In an age of image manipulation, staged live broadcasts, abuse of language, and construction of the cinematic villain as opposed to the on-screen hero, expecting remarkable transformations in representation would be an ephemeral fallacy.

[Book Review] Political change in times of 24x7 television

Review of Indian Mass Media and the Politics of Change, edited by Somnath Batabyal, Angad Chowdhry, Meenu Gaur, and Matti Pohjonen, Routledge, 2011 In 2008, as America cheered and roared for change, Barack Hussein Obama, the son of an African father and a Caucasian mother, became the 44th President of the United States of America. Considering the blood splattered, radically disturbing history of the country, this indeed was a huge change. The world looked on in awe and wonder, hanging on to each word spoken by the man who many believed had irrevocably changed race relations in not only the United States but globally. Such dramatic political change seldom seen in the post-Cold War period made academicians and media pundits sit up and take notice of the subtle yet effective way in which real attitudinal change had taken place. In fact, the hope and optimism grew to such proportions that warranted a President, who was simultaneously fighting two wars, to be given the Nobel Peace Prize in anticipation of a radical shift in future foreign policy. Today, the very future of our planet is on the brink as we battle not only the reality but the abstract notion of change. At a recently concluded conference on climate change, the negotiations ended on a note not of agreement but stalemate on how much nations were willing to change in order to reverse the pattern of climate change. The last two general elections in India were fought on the agenda of change—change for the better. Interestingly, the results of the first one reversed the fortunes of the then ruling party and the second one brought the incumbents back to power stubbing the very metaphor of change in the face. As the voices around the concept of change grow louder and shriller, the examination of how much and to what extent the mass media is responding to political transformation becomes the need of the hour. A routine flip-through of the myriad news channels that dot the firmament of the Indian media industry is enough to understand the extent to which certain changes are taking place; a recent instance being the media circus that was played out on all channels, including the so-called elite, urbane, English language news channels such as NDTV 24X7, Times Now, Headlines Today, and CNN-IBN, concerning the standoff between the Indian government and the gregarious crowd-puller, Baba Ramdev. One has to only watch the news channels with some degree of continuation to gauge the depth to which each of the competitors will plunge to go one up on competition. If news channels have traversed beyond redemption on their quest to the top, other forms of the media too have responded to the slow yet steady political change that has swept the country. Indian Mass Media and the Politics of Change, edited by Somnath Batabyal, Angad Chowdhry, Meenu Gaur, and Matti Pohjonen, collects essays on such responses and presents them in the form of an extremely readable volume. The book begins by examining the various methods in which the Indian news media conducts kangaroo court trials in full public view even before the real upholders of justice pronounce their verdict, in full evidence in the manner in which the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks have been presented and the debates conducted by the media. John Hutnyk, in his essay on the news television in India, compares the images of terror inflicted on the psyche of the viewer on an hourly basis to the advent of the Kali Yuga for the mass media. The definition of the Kali Yuga narrated by Sumit Sarkar in his treatise Beyond Nationalist Frames: relocating postmodernism, hindutva, history, as he draws from the Mahabharata takes into account all strands of human behaviour, positive or otherwise, to definitively create the imagery of the Kali Yuga in the form of disorders in nature, oppressive alien kings, Brahmans corrupted by too much rationalistic debate, overmighty Shudras no longer serving their caste superiors, and women choosing their own partners, disobeying and deceiving husbands, and having intercourse with menials, slaves and even animals. Hutnyk posits this imagery of the Kali Yuga to articulate his statement on the state of televised news media as we see the news not as realist commentary on what is going on, but as commentary within frames. He calls this Maya. Illusion. The chapter studies how the malevolent power of television, as a system of images, as representation and network, as imaginary, permeates understanding and shapes a kind of state-sponsored or endorsed cosmology of fear and anxiety, as seen in the nation and even worldwide. The news media thrives on this culture of fear. The author quotes CNN-IBN Managing Editor Rajdeep Sardesai as saying that TV is now increasingly entertainment and so is news; fear too has become part of this package of entertainment that is beamed into our living rooms every single day. In his bird’s eye look at the nitty gritty of how news is produced, Somnath Batabyal draws on extensive ethnographic work on two Indian television channels, Star News and Star Ananda and makes the case for a detailed analysis of how the liberalization of the Indian economy has changed news production practices in India. Amidst the unprecedented explosions of news channels in India, the national project is now being re-imagined in complex ways within these very practices where the Sales, Marketing, Research and Human Resources departments battle for editorial control of what is ‘news’. Behind these fragmented and conflicting narratives of change within the newsroom, the article warns, are increasingly corrosive ways through which the corporate policies of Indian television are taking over the production of news content, thus, providing a snapshot of broader commercialization and corporatization of the national project of India itself. Meenu Gaur’s article looks in detail at one of the key aspects of the imagination of change in India: through its cinema. The article focuses on the popular yet critically acclaimed film Roja and makes a case for a more contextual analysis of positioning films in the broader teleological narratives of change and how the Indian nation is imagined vis-à-vis its relationship to secularism. A close reading of the film tells us how the Hindu right has reared its head in India as a political force and looks closely at the limits of Indian secularism itself where the Muslim is seen as the ‘national failure’. Such periodization of films in relation to national events, in this case the Kashmir crisis, is problematic in understanding films as they often force the more polyphonous readings of films into simple narratives of change. At the micro level, the nuances of the practices in films made in B-town India are the focus of attention for Ratnakar Tripathy and Jitender Verma, who reflect on Bhojpuri cinema, music and language. Dwelling specifically on the role that the emergence of the Bhojpuri cinema and music has had in the construction of the Bihari identity and its many contradictions, the article looks at the complex nexus of language politics, poverty, regionalism and migration taking place in contemporary India. The article sees these representations as reflecting the core anxieties, dilemmas and despair of a changing India, especially outside its metropolitan centres. In his article on sex in the metropolitan centres, Angad Chowdhry looks at the different ways in which the hysteria over youth sexuality has been implicated in how change is imagined. Taking into account the various instances of MMS scandals and the ways in which people have used mobile phones to record themselves having sex, the article looks at how the shifting ways of adolescent sexual practices, technological mediations and moral panic about these, interact in complex ways. Kriti Kapila’s structured articulation of the ways in which sexuality is represented in the mainstream media attempts to understand the hidden meanings in the first ever major sex survey in India, where much-debated changes to Indian sexual norms are looked at critically as examples of how statistics and other narratives of change are used to produced the impossible object of Indian sexuality and intimacy by the mass media. Moving away from sexuality, Angad Chowdhry and Aditya Sarkar look at the complicated ways in which politics and change interact. It focuses on the phantasmagoric representations of change in the Obama and the BJP’s electoral campaigns and the complex labour politics of the mills in Mumbai, the articles takes on a ghostly narrative of how historical events should be understood in the present analysis. The book also gives credence to rapid changes in the digital media (naturally important in this digital age) and how they have problematized both academic research into these technologies as well as the practice behind creating them. The article argues that because of the speed of development, we need to come up with a new method of creative experimentation to keep up with the pace of change. In his tribute to the work of the exemplary journalist P Sainath and his theories of the ‘other’ India which is seldom represented on television screens and on celluloid, Naresh Fernandes argues that hidden somewhere behind the glitzy images of conspicuous middle class consumption and prosperity, remains a vast barren India with depressing levels of poverty. This is the mass reality of Indian which has been largely forgotten by the corporatized mass media. A volume of immense value to students of the mass media and those interested in the finer aspects that make up this behemoth known as mass culture, the book could have done with a more careful reading, especially with regard to the language. A number of readers, for instance, would find it difficult to distinguish the meaning of ‘electorate campaign’ from ‘electoral campaign’.

[Book Review] Bollywood theory revisited

Review of Reframing Bollywood: theories of popular Hindi cinema by Ajay Gehlawat, Sage, 2010 At the outset, it would perhaps be apt to say that in order to locate the origin of a theory in the larger universe of an existing, living, dynamic realm of identification, construction, and production of culture in the form of moving images, film in other words, it becomes increasingly necessary to substantively define or describe the nomenclature ascribed to the industry that produces mainstream, popular films in Hindi. The popular Hindi film industry, or Bollywood, a moniker that brings together the place of production—Bombay or Mumbai—and the nature of cinema produced—often described as formula-based or masala productions—that depend on straight-jacketed storylines and characterizations. Reframing Bollywood: theories of popular Hindi cinema by Ajay Gehlawat attempts, from the introductory chapter itself, to put forth a comprehensive and susbstantive definition of the term Bollywood and its production. The fact that the Bombay film industry is now being viewed as an important site for the production of cultural artifacts with worldwide influence, especially on the Hindi-Urdu-Hindustani-speaking communities, not only located in South Asia, but across the world, places the focal lens squarely on the existing theories that govern the modes of production as well as the nature, conscience, and the impact of the product, which in this case are films. Gehlawat in his book refers to the almost two dozen theories that have emerged over the last few decades and their corresponding theorists who attempt to categorically deconstruct the term Bollywood and provide a standard definition of this relatively newly constituted field of cultural production. While theorists, such as Ranjani Mazumdar and Wimal Dissanayake resist the temptation of designating Bollywood cinema as ‘India’s national cinema’ (Mazumdar 2007; Dissanayake 2003), it does emerge from the writings of others such as S Gopal and S Moorti that the Hindi film industry is unquestionably nationally dominant. Some see it as a trivializing, pejorative, and dismissive term, exemplified by the fact that till recently, scholarship on Bollywood was considered an academic non-entity as Bollywood itself was relegated to a B-grade sphere. In the course of the book, Gehlawat notes and rightly so that the Bollywood film is a particularly hybrid art form, blending theatrical and cinematic elements as well as First World and Third World cinema methodologies, plus an assortment of Western and indigenous genres, such as the musical, dance drama, and melodrama, to name a few. This mix, known in Bollywoodian terms as masala, has been critiqued by film-makers and theorists alike, including Satyajit Ray who described the viewership of this genre as ‘tired untutored minds with undeveloped tastes’ (Ray 1976). Sudhir Kakar, in the 1980s termed popular films as ‘infantile’ and ‘escapist’ (Kakar 1989). In order to liberate the study of Bollywood from these theoretical constraints, the author attempts to take a first step towards situating it in a filmic paradigm. He takes recourse to Christian Metz and his contention of cinematic voyeurism (Metz 1982) as well as Sumita Chakravarty’s metaphor of ‘impersonation’ (Chakravarty 1993) to locate Bollywood films in the sphere of film theory. He attempts to develop the concept of ‘impersonation’ as applied by Chakravarty as a method of constructing a narrative of Indian popular cinema and national identity, and take it further and use it in a way of problematizing the concept of national identity and indeed Bollywood as a national discourse. Gehlawat considers it more effective to see Bollywood as engaging in what Baudrillard (1987) terms ‘ecstacy’, that is, the simultaneous transcendence and dissolution of a form, through the trope of spicy mixing of genres, or masala, that the typical Bollywood film indulges in. Reframing Bollywood within such a postmodern frame produces a conception of ‘Indianness’ rooted in a dialectics that undermine the polarizing oppositions that critics continue to associate with its internal and external structures. Such an exposition embraces the hybrid nature of Bollywood cinema and celebrates what critics and theorists have been designating as ‘contamination’ of the genre. The author, furthermore, in the process of reframing Bollywood in such a manner, develops a new relationship between popular Hindi cinema and theories of post-coloniality. Each chapter of the book addresses a specific theme, whereby controversial and problematic theorization is revoked and analysed in depth. In exploring how theatrical and religious paradigms are utilized by theorists of Bollywood, Gehlawat, in the first chapter, concerns himself with the way in which Bollywood films create private spaces in which erotic encounters frequently occur, thus contradicting the logic of the devotional paradigm, which considers such depictions taboo. Further, he presents the Bollywood song and dance sequence as a more radical form of narrative interruption than its Hollywood counterpart in the second chapter titled ‘The Bollywood Song and Dance, or Making a Culinary Theatre from Dung-cakes and Dust’. This chapter closely compares Hollywood musicals with Bollywood films, taking examples, such as Dil Se (1998) and Aa Ab Laut Chalein (1999), examining how Bollywood song and dance sequences differ in crucial ways in their structuring than Hollywood musicals. Moving ahead from the previous two chapters, but at the same time building on them, Gehlawat analyses the alleged oral nature of Bollywood cinema and states that these films perform a crucial role in promoting rural literacy, often viewed by large masses of Indian subalterns living in rural and semi-rural conglomerations. In doing so, this chapter applies key concepts from postcolonial theory to the study of Bollywood, challenging several key premises underlying the discourse of subaltern studies, through a close reading of sequences from the classical 1965 film, Guide. The emergence of a homosexual subtext in contemporary Bollywood cinema, with Kal Ho Na Ho (2003) and Dostana (2008) as case studies, is the key point of reference in the chapter ‘Ho Naa Ho: the emergence of a homosexual subtext in Bollywood’. In the process, this chapter reconsiders recent scholarship on this subject, particularly Gayatri Gopinath’s book Impossible Desires (2005), by questioning the implied repudiation of homosexuality in popular Indian culture, arguing instead that recent Bollywood films engage in such homosexual subtexts both knowingly and playfully. The chapter also draws upon Judith Butler’s concept of ‘gender parody’ to reveal and simultaneously destabilize the larger ambivalence existing within Bollywood cinema, which on the one hand recognizes homosexual elements, but at the same time on the other hand, stresses upon its heteronormativity. The book concludes with a chapter focussing on the recent phenomenon of ‘crossover Bollywood’ cinema and reformulates notions of Indianness and Bollywood itself in an era of the non-resident Indian. It avoids invoking classical nationalist paradigms and argues that Bollywood has been instrumental in creating more fluid and transnational forms of cultural identity in the 21st century. Even as Gehlawat considers and studies specific paradigms in each of the chapters, one single underlying thread that runs through the book is a close focus on the song and dance sequence in the Bollywood film, whether as a private realm, as a form of narrative interruption, as a method of reorienting both film and viewer, as a queer moment in an otherwise straight narrative, or as a supra-space which enables characters to traverse the globe. The book designates the song and dance sequence as a reframing device, which allows the films and their characters to rearticulate their visions and desires, and enables the viewer to indulge in a bit of both. Gehlawat, therefore, argues the Hindi films without the song and dance sequences would not be considered Bollywood films. Reframing Bollywood opens up Bollywood to a multiplicity of meanings that challenge hegemonic claims regarding its composition and implied modes of spectatorship, and in this way repudiating any one fixed, essentialized meaning. It offers a series of oppositional views of Bollywood films and its implied audiences and of the latter’s interaction with the former. A hyperkinetic cinema, such as Bollywood requires the process of reframing, which in cinema parlance means being mobile, stands opposed to static or the frame. This study successfully draws attention to all those elements that have been overlooked by previous and continuing theorizations and provides an understated methodology that looks to transcend and dissolve the very notion of essential otherness. Of immense use to scholars of cinema and students of media studies, this book is an intervention that will greatly and definitely benefit the ever-expanding universe of scholarship on popular Hindi cinema.

[Book Review] Representing trauma

Review of Mourning the Nation: Indian cinema in the wake of Partition by Bhaskar Sarkar, Orient Blackswan, 2009 Representation, of all genres and kinds, in the media and elsewhere take on a meaning outside the boundaries of human discourse and behaviour. It takes on greater and more worthy connotations as the process subsumes the depiction of communities, both communal and caste, genders, sexualities, including various marginal groups and collectivities. Similarly, representation in cinema too presupposes its role both as a mirror of the social milieu and as creating or constructing identities. Ella Shohat and Robert Stam have argued that contemporary media shapes identities. By facilitating an engagement by distant peoples, the media “deterritorializes” the process of imagining communities. The form of representation in cinema, particularly mainstream, also undergoes changes as time passes and the epochs change, as articulated by Andrew Spicer in his study of masculinity in British cinema through the War and the post-War years. In the 1920s and 30s, two forms of the male were prevalent on the British silver screen—the debonair gentleman and the alternative, working class buffoon. Mainstream Hollywood cinema’s attempts at portrayal and representation could be gauged from the narrative of Barry Levinson’s 1996 classic—Sleepers. The film sensitively moves through the autobiographical story by American novelist Lorenzo Carcaterra as it examines the representation of male rape. One of the finest and few films to venture into the analysis of sexual brutality and forced penetration, Sleepers is a laboratory for the study of how sexual violence is represented in film. Closer to the Indian experience, a number of films, released after the landmark year, 1947, have depicted and represented the calamitous vivisection of the sub-continental mainland into what was then claimed as the Hindu India and the Muslim Pakistan. While M S Sathyu’s Garam Hawa (1973) tells the story of the tribulations of Hindu and Muslim families tied together by years of amity and trust suddenly having to defend their honour against those who were friends and peers, B R Chopra’s Naya Daur (1957) pits traditional knowledge and technology against the markers of modernity in the backdrop of the bloodsoaked independence. Mourning the Nation: Indian cinema in the wake of Partition by Bhaskar Sarkar traverses familiar territory by studying the concept of mourning in Indian cinema in the post-Partition period, but does so through a careful examination of not only films but also Tamas, a serialized narrative on the brutalities of the Partition based on Bhisham Sahani’s novel of the same name. The book endeavours to trace the depiction of the historical event through the following five decades. It also investigates the notion of nationalism as identity movements continue to rage across the world, the most recent examples coming from North African states such as Tunisia and Egypt where largely youth-driven movements succeeded in deposing dictatorial and brutal presidential regimes. Even though the contexts are different, the arguments for freedom and recognition of identities and freedoms remains the same. The author posits the argument that the partition of India is a particularly harrowing moment within a larger trauma of the Indian modern, especially within the larger canvas of the postcolonial states such as India. The agency postulated in favour of the act of imagination of a nation, particularly in the Indian context takes on a larger role. This process of imagination, which forms the centerpiece of the Indian nationalist movement, aided and abetted greatly by the proliferation of print capitalism across the sub-continent also reflects in the portrayal of the post-independence developments and the tryst with modernity in Indian cinema. Interestingly, the symbolism of freedom is almost entirely punctuated by a sense of loss and deep sadness. The language of mourning is also comparable and similar in various cinematic examples, negotiated through the use of words such as sadma, chot, aghat, and so on. The hermeneutics of mourning thus takes on the Freudian principle of delayed consequences of trauma, reflected in five decades of Indian films. In Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1995), the author finds a Western parallel for the unfolding of the effects of collective trauma as time passes. He differentiates between the various forms that the act of mourning can take—explicit or subterranean, direct or displaced. The process of mourning moves from understanding, memorializing and finally, overcoming loss. To solidify his argument, the author begins his academic exercise by tracing the earliest presence of the Partition in films, both documentary and mainstream. He begins with Shabnam (1948), a Filmistan Studio production and The Agony of the Partition, produced by the Films Division in the same year. While Shabnam articulated the trauma of the Partition through the rhetorical image of a child on the back of a donkey even though the film per se had little to do with the Partition. In the post-independence period, films generally undertook a hegemonic project of representing the essential markers of nation building, which was carried out through a careful strategy of influence and imagination. Thus, Indian cinema, or Bombay cinema in particular, set off a project of creating a national culture. Filmindia, the popular magazine from Bombay, hailed cinema in 1948 as a “medium that can, and should, be the eyes and ears of the nation”. Hindi cinema experienced the results of its nation-building role through popular music, an integral part of the Hindi film narrative. The popularization of classical forms of music lent gravity to the claims put forward by the Hindi film project that a hegemonic discourse had to be supported and deployed for the purpose of constructing a culturally unified nation. The year after independence, 1948 also witnessed the successful run of Raj Kapoor’s Aag, which posited a mature protagonist against the haloed precincts of the Indian education system inherited from the British, who walks away and discovers his true talents in the world of theatre and drama. The film celebrated the breakaway, rebellious hero and as a result provided a new allegory of independence. The act of walking away and charting his own course lends itself to a rather momentous description—the process of nation building required throwing away the yoke of colonialism and embracing freedom in all its glory. In the 1950s and 60s, only a handful of films addressed Partition directly and at length, notable among them being, Lahore (1949), Nastik (1954), and Chhalia (1960). These films reframed cultural memory to uphold particular versions of identity, community and nationality. A notable fact described by the author captures the essence of the turmoil that the partition brought about in the Bombay film industry in the form of the letters received by the magazine Filmindia from its readers who worried about the whereabouts of Muslim actors and film-makers such as Noor Jehan and music composers Ghulam Haider, who ultimately migrated to Pakistan. Kashmir emerged as focus of not only a vituperative political debate but a tumultuous reminder that representation in cinema holds within its process the creation of new and distinctive narratives. A film titled Kashmir (1950) extolled a virulent brand of Indian nationalism to counter the dispute over the province, echoes of which could be heard in Mani Ratnam’s Roja (1992) and the more recent Lamha (2010). The project of building a nation found resonance in the development of Bengali cinema through the general recognition of a national imperative to develop a vital cultural field, including a representative cinema, as part of wider attempts to consolidate nationhood. Bengal, which saw itself as a cultural construct different from the Hindi film industry moved towards building a strong culture industry. In view of this argument of building a strong culture, the choice of what should or should not be represented gained an impervious importance. This process of “selective representation” became critical in establishing the parameters of a national culture. The conflict between the Bombay and the Bengali film industries could be viewed as the central message of the Hindi film Samadhi (1949), a film that depicted the life and times of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. Doyens of Bengali films have since claimed that Bombay films have misrepresented Bose in more ways than one and have consequently presented him as a larger than life figure in Bengali-language cinema. Through the analysis of Nastik and Dharmaputra (1961), the author explicates the mode of representation of violence during partition. Both films present communal violence in brief, stylized scenes, the shift from a realist to a consciously presentational mode, sidestepping ethical problems associated with screen representations of brutality still raw in popular memory. Lahore went a step further, stayed away from directly portraying violence on screen and rather dwelt on the subjective dimensions of human suffering as a result of Partition. Later, Garam Hawa predicated the disastrous impacts of the partition on the lives of a large Muslim family living in Agra. A tale of two brothers posits one against the other as they battle circumstances, impulses, and finally violence. The book also includes a specific examination of Govind Nihalani’s Tamas primarily because of the longevity principle. While a film lasts for three hours, Tamas was a five-hour long television miniseries, thus reaching out to many more viewers. This ensured a continuum and a steady transmission of messages through the film. Also the fact that the miniseries was aired on television four decades after the Partition makes the impact an example of direct yet displaced trauma. Through television, the brutality and the violence was brought back into the lives of the viewers, perhaps as an attempt to collective coming to terms with the trauma of the partition. The book also seeks to engage the conceptual underpinnings of processes such as globalization and religious nationalism through the act of mourning the past. (The review was first published in The Book Review, Vol. XXXV, Number 3, March 2011)

[Book Review] Riot Politics: Hindu-Muslim violence and the Indian state

Ward Berenschot, Riot Politics: Hindu-Muslim violence and the Indian state (London: Hurst and Company, 2011], ISBN 978-1-84904-136-2, xi + 236 pp., Price £ 25.00 Compared to almost 30 years spent in the largely riot-free capital, Delhi, I lived in the communal riot-prone Ahmedabad city for less than three years and this doesn’t put me in any pedestal of authority to review Ward Berenschot’s scholarly ethnographic work of relative significance in a hugely volatile present. I review Riot Politics in relation to works on communal and collective violence in South Asia by scholars such as Paul R Brass (The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India and Theft of an Idol) and Steven Wilkinson (Religious Politics and Communal Violence). While Brass has studied the regularity with which communal violence between Hindus and Muslims and anti-Muslim pogroms have occurred since Independence, Wilkinson takes recourse to in-depth field studies to ascertain that the transformation of a communal skirmish into a full-scale riot, in large measure, is aided and abetted by the inaction of the political class and the administrative machinery to reap electoral harvest. He asserts that the worst riots have taken place in India since representative government was established in the mid-1930s and they have largely occurred because elected state governments were openly partisan or because, for political reasons, they delayed taking action to prevent the violence and encouraged hesitation among the district officials. Instances such as the pre-Partition violence in Calcutta in 1946, the Bombay riots of 1992-93, the anti-Sikh riots in 1984, and the anti-Muslim Gujarat pogrom of 2002, among others, validate Wilkinson’s assertion. Using a restrictive definition of riot-proneness, yet another study by Ashutosh Varshney and Wilkinson pointed out that the incidence of communal riots is skewed towards urban India in general and towards 24 cities in particular. This, however, does not establish that the rest of India remains riot-free. The study provides statistical evidence to prove that since the worst-hit cities are scattered across India, communal riots are endemic to the country. Brass further complicates the discussion by raising a pertinent question—why is a violent situation, where the number of Muslims killed, particularly by police bullets, is disproportionately more than the number of Hindus, termed a riot and not a pogrom based on religion? He states that the master narrative of communal violence in India rests on two assumptions. First, riots are spontaneous acts by motivated and angry groups. Second, such situations arise out of the prejudices and hostilities between the two communities. In several of his works, Brass demonstrates conclusively that the above explanation is by no means satisfactory for large-scale Hindu-Muslim violence or anti-Muslim pogroms. Berenschot enters the arena of scholarship on communal violence in India with his interesting work Riot Politics. He claims to provide a novel approach to understanding the processes that lead to the violent outbursts of communal strife. The work is based on an elaborate fieldwork comprising interviews and conversations with a number of local Gujaratis in the Isanpur locality of Ahmedabad city, where some of the worst riots occurred in 2002. Significantly, the conversations suggest that the violence in 2002 was in fact a planned and organized event coordinated by a relatively small group of people. In stating this, the author rarely goes beyond what has already been made amply clear by scholars like Brass, Wilkinson, and Varshney –that communal violence in India is an event organized with electoral and political gains in sight, which also perhaps explains the larger number of Muslims killed in all such incidents. Berenschot’s book carries many fascinating snippets of his conversations with local social workers-turned-rioters and other witnesses who provide verbal evidence of the involvement of VHP and BJP workers in riots. The author’s argument relies heavily on his exploration of the nexus between politicians, state officials, and musclemen, called bahubalis or goondas. He contends that these local musclemen are employed by participant politicians, who foster them to foment and instigate riots and rioters –a fact that, I am afraid, has already been made by scholars, journalists, documentary and creative film-makers. Riot Politics, therefore, studies the Gujarat riots in great detail and builds on the existing arguments, but does not really break new ground. The book’s value lies in its meticulously collected rich ethnographic data.

Encounters: to be killed like dogs

I recently read a rather pointed, well-researched and blow-by-blow account of the encounter that had the ATS progenitor, A A Khan pitted against the notorious gangster, Maya Dolas (born Mahendra Vithoba Dolas) close to 14 years ago. The piece that appeared in the Mumbai tabloid, Mid-Day obviously was inspired by the release of Bollywood's latest take on Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs -- Shootout at Lokhandwala. The film dramatises the encounter which according to some accounts was stage managed by the police to eliminate the foulmouthed Dolas at the behest of underworld don and Dolas' estranged boss, Dawood Ibrahim. Others critiqued it as cold blooded murder by the men in uniform of five petty criminals who possessed less than half the ammunition carried to the site by the police. The police used more than three hundred to kill five.



Perhaps a case of being overprepared? Were 300 policemen required to tackle five men? Is it fair to not allow the criminal to have proper recourse to justice and a trial? After all, every man, woman, and child born free has a right to be heard. Why does the police prefer to 'Shoot to kill' when arresting the man alive could lead to vital leads in very many cases? The gangsters could have been caught alive and tried for murder, extortion, arson, whatever.



Ditto for Sohrabuddin Sheikh, Ishrat Jahan, scores in the Kashmir Valley, Khwaja Yunus, Javed Ahmad...many more. Yes Sohrabuddin Sheikh was a criminal, an extortionist. But the Gujarat police have no records to show that he was a Lashkar militant, the charge on which he was shot in cold blood. What about Kausar Bi? Was she also a militant? Ishrat Jahan -- university student, amateur tutor, shot point blank in an 'encounter' in Ahmedabad. How on earth was she shot in the head and chest if she was fleeing and trying to escape the police? The windshield of the car she was travelling in was smashed completely. The rear shield was intact. How? Khwaja Yunus -- software engineer in Dubai, picked up after the Ghatkopar blast in Mumbai, never returned home. The police has been accused of killing him in custody. The 1993 Mumbai blasts led to a flurry of arrests and torture recounted impeccably in S Hussain Zaidi's book and then filmed to perfection by Anurag Kashyap in his project which goes by the same name. The film showcases the torture scenes brilliantly, the macabre violence of it all is outlandish and scary. Thus, it is but childish to either believe or expect the police to adhere to and abide by rules. If the police manual permits torture, in fact lists it as the only method to extract information, then it is but usual that the men in uniform do not think twice before torturing suspects. And mind you, these men (sometimes women) are only suspects. The question then is -- Is is fair to get down to torture purely on the basis of suspicion?



Coming back to the Lokhandwala encounter, the police denies that the underworld bosses has any hand in the encounter and claim that it was absolutely legitimate and true. The incident had been forgotten until film-maker Apurva Lakhia (of the Mumbai Se Aya Mera Dost and Ek Ajnabi fame) decided to dig into the past and come up with a film on the encounter that shook Mumbai in 1991. He has been accused of glorifying violence and creating iconic figures out of misdirected youth ending up as gangsters. Shootout at Lokhandwala is a violent film. After all it is based on an extremely violent episode where a lot of blood was spilt. Not only did the police put the lives of close to a hundred and fifty Mumbaikars at stake by firing indiscriminately at the dilapidated flat where Maya Dolas, Dilip Bhuwa and three others were holed up for some weeks, it also converted the entire residential area into a war zone for close to six hours at the end of which the five gangsters were killed and two policemen injured.



So does the film justify the methods adopted by A A Khan? Apurva Lakhia would like to think so but Shootout... actually ends up not taking sides at all. If anything Maya Dolas emerges as a somewhat wronged antagonist who was not allowed a shot a justice. I have written about the film in the other blog I frequent and write for -- Passion for Cinema. I'll extend my argument a little bit here and say that the police went overboard. And Lakhia goes overboard in trying to make a case for Khan and his boys while all he ends up doing is convert Maya and his gang into reel heroes. Let me explain. SI Javed Sheikh, drafted into the ATS by Khan specifically because of the wide network of informers he had in the Muslim dominated areas as well as the underworld drags one of the men out of the building, alive, before Khan shoots him down in full view of the heaving, screaming crowds. 'I said Shoot to Kill meaning shoot to kill,' he says before gunning down Maya's cohort. The fact that the shooting happened in front of a thronging crowd made it look like a spectacle. The 'Breaking News' phenomena is made full use of the film as television journalist Meeta Mattoo (yet to decipher if the real encounter was filmed or not) played by Diya Mirza follows the cops to Lokhandwala. She questions the ethics of the encounter throughout the film, from the first frame to the last. Her expression after having witnessed the killing of the criminal says it all. Disgust is writ large over the character's face even though she happens to be an admirer of Khan's ways. The police, according to the rules are supposed to shoot a man only in extreme circumstances and that too below the knees to decapitate the person. This is true even for encounters. Under no circumstances are they supposed to cross the line. But they do, day after day across India, there are reports of encounter killings. Ahmedabad gangster Abdul Latif was shown bail papers, ordered to escape and then shot at. Hardly an encounter!



Thousands have disappeared in Kashmir and never returned. The lucky ones have found column space in newspapers as victims of fake encounters. Others are just numbers, statistics. The police (as also the army in Kashmir) is said to have staged fake encounters to boost their chances of promotion and to bag the cash award that comes with the killing of every militant. And mind you, all these men killed in so-called encounters are all 'dreaded' terrorists who pose a grave threat to the safety and security of India. After investigations by independent agencies and the media, the men turned out to be carpenters, teachers, tailors, farmers, shepherds, and even informers.



Two men were killed in a staged encounter in New Delhi's Ansal Plaza some years ago. Eyewitnesses recount that the men were brought in a police jeep, the bandobast was complete with coffins and shrouds to take the bodies away. People too scared to bat an eyelid later said that the men were pushed out of the jeep and asked to run...the police shot them dead after a perfectly staged drama that went on for more than two hours. Just before Diwali, the encounter of alleged militants was a feather in the caps of the Delhi police.



This is not to say that criminals are to be left free to hurt the society even more and not taught a lesson. The nature of the lesson needs to be questioned. The police went to Lokhandwala with an 'intention' of killing Maya Dolas and his men. The police manual describes and defines an encounter as an act of self defence. 300 people and Khan himself certainly did not need self defence. Thus, the encounter was intentional, cold-blooded. Was killing the only option? The film does not answer the question. Instead it raises many more. One of them is, well -- was killing really the only option? Repeated over and over again by Dia Mirza. Lakhia's attempt at glorifying the police actually doesn't work that way. It does otherwise propelling the ethical debate into the public domain. Amitabh Bachchan's question in the courtroom is misplaced and melodramatic. Would you be confronted by a gangster or the police? Ask the riot victims in Gujarat who were directed towards the murderous mobs by the police? Ask the families of the 14 Muslim men killed by the police at the Suleiman Bakery in the Bombay riots? Ask the wives of those who have disappeared without a trace in the Kashmir valley? The answers would be apparent.


The film comes at an apt time. Televised debates have been held on the question of encounter killings in the past few weeks after the Sohrabuddin story broke. But Bollywood has from time to time dwelt on the issue. Ab Tak Chappan was apparently based on encounter specialist Daya Nayak's life. Company, D and Sarkar looked at the underworld quite effectively. Black Friday was an exceptional film. Shootout attempts it...and succeeds to a great extent. Bollywood finally creates a desi Reservoir Dogs-lookalike in the form of Maya Dolas and his men after attempts such as Kaante and the ilk. By putting police encounters back in the limelight, the film, even though overtly dramatic in parts is a great try. The sepia background makes Swati Building where the encounter happened look sinister, almost imposing. The battleground becomes the backdrop of a perfect potboiler. Masterfully edited, Shootout at Lokhandwala is crisp and pithy, something a film such as this rides on. And more importantly, it put the encounter question back in the minds of the people. But will there be a public outcry? One is yet to see a public outcry in cases involving the lowly and the downtrodden. Yet one question still remains-- will Manu Sharma, Santosh Kumar Singh or even Vikas Yadav, the offcpring of powerful men ever be killed in encounters?

My take on Shootout at Lokhandwala

This has been a busy week particularly with regard to my film viewing schedules. Started with Life in a Metro which should have been named Sexual Life in a Metro as all Anurag Basu did was dwell on sleazy underbelly of corporate culture and human relationships. Fair enough, to each his own. The other film I watched was Shootout at Lokhandwala. Given a choice between romance and guns, I’d go for guns any day. The film comes hot on the heels of the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case grabbing headlines and eyeballs in the media. Less importantly are the Khwaja Yunus custodial death case and another fake encounter case in Gujarat that of Javed Sheikh who was gunned down in cold blood by the Rajasthan and Gujarat police in 2004. All three cases are preceded by a long and sordid history of fake encounter killings and the people with blood on their hands are the usual suspects – the police and the armed forces. Kashmir has seen the worst encounters over the past many years. Some of them find publicity and media coverage and become iconic while the rest (and the numbers are staggering) remain stacked in the dusty alleys of the establishment.

Was the Maya Dolas encounter in 1991 a real one? The Bombay High Court ruled in favour of the Anti-Terrorism squad being led by Aftab Ahmad Khan, which planned and executed the whole operation. Human rights activists and citizen’s group thought on the contrary. The encounter they said was a set-up. Khan had been on the D-gang payroll and had been sounded off after Dolas got too big for his boots. The families of the five men who were killed (and according to Shootout…quite brutally at that) petitioned the court saying that their children were killed for a crime they did not commit. However, all records (I have done some research on this) state that Dolas was indeed an extortionist who fell on the wrong side of Big Bhai in Dubai and was killed in a police encounter which involved loads 327 policemen and sophisticated weaponry and put the lives of close to 102 men, women and children living in the heavily populated Lokhandwala area on 16 November 1991 in danger.

The film does not provide answers to this vexing question. But is it supposed to? I don’t know. It is a film-director’s take on an incident, which has long been lauded as the longest encounter ever in the annals of the Mumbai Police. In portions, the screenplays veers towards hero-worship of the police officers involved in the operation, there are other sequences where the film-maker makes an attempt to provide a humane face to otherwise ruthless gangsters. It is much like a see-saw. The film begins with three large blood stains on the lane in front of Swati Building, the residential block which had housed the Maya and his boys for weeks and ends with the bloodied faces of the slain criminals. Was it correct to hound the men in the fashion that the Mumbai police chose to follow? The question is raised over and over again by a television reporter (played by Diya Mirza) fuelling an ideological and ethical debate.

My only problem with the film is the unnecessary and useless song and dance sequences and characters like the bar dancer (Aarti Chhabria) and Bua (Tusshar Kapoor). Kapoor not only failed to portray the sharpshooter to any devastating effect, his command over dialogues was grotesque. He should probably only stick to comic roles and leave the gangsta flicks to Vivek Oberoi. It was nice to see him come back into his own after the searing role in Company. He is superb as Mayabhai, the young extortionist who rebels against the D-Company. Rohit Roy is decent enough in a small role while Shabbir Ahluwalia, Ekta Kapoor’s blue-eyed boy makes a foray into Bollywood as RC, the young associate who cannot get over the fact that he murdered a family in cold blood.

Scenes to die for? Quite a few. ACP Shamsher Khan kills one of Maya’s cohorts (played by Aditya Lakhia) in front of the media, police, and Lokhandwala residents. It is effective, gory, and sets the pace for the rest of the sequence. But again it is difficult to judge the tenor of the filmmaker’s ideological leanings (whether in favour of the police or ethics in general) from this one scene; however it does raise a few questions about the methods the police uses to bring criminals to its knees. At one level the film propagates the infallibility of the police’s patriotism while on the other it raises a few uncomfortable queries about the fact that criminals too need to be treated like human beings and have rightful access to the institutions of law and justice. The verbal duel between Maya and ACP Khan too is well-shot and modulated. Dutt is a model cop – uncorrupted, patriotic, and dedicated and he does a brilliant job of his role (as usual).

Yes, one more thing. The presence of just too many stars from the commercial pantheon pulled the film back a bit. But who could have played Maya better than Vivek Oberoi?

Attending a script writing workshop with Anurag Kashyap

Writing for me is catharsis. There is nothing else in the world that gives me as much pleasure than string a motley group of words together to create a sentence. The feeling of being a creator of anything, even if it is a mere sentence is too great and immense. It is for the same reason that I watch films. To fathom at the creative ability of anyone and everyone associated with it. A film is a grandiose exposition of one’s innate desires.

Thus, when I started writing my first ever script in life (thanks to Smriti), I found voice for all the distress that has pulled me in all directions possible. My protagonist is all that I can never say in public or write formally..even in a PhD thesis that I plan to write sometime in future. He fights the system but is warped in his communal consciousness. Not because he is a fanatic or a fundamentalist but because all he was always looked at with suspicion, humiliated and systematically destroyed by the society. A society that is slowly breaking down…ruthlessness and fear gnawing at its entrails. I write because I want to. It’s all that I ever have wanted to do. And yes, as Leo Rosten once said…’the only reason for being a professional writer is that you can’t help it.’

Are there any guidelines for writing a script? How long should it be? What are the essential elements of a script? These are some of the questions that came up at a workshop on script writing conducted by Anurag Kashyap in Delhi recently. I happened to be a participant there. ‘A story is each his own. There cannot be a style sheet for writing a story. It’s entirely up to you. It’s your story. Just write,’ was Anurag’s dictum for aspiring script-writers and filmmakers. ‘You need to go out there and try to make your life.’ More often than not the discussion shifted to Satya and more recently Black Friday. At one point, Anurag quipped, ‘Can we get beck to story writing? The Black Friday compliments can happen outside…’

Watching Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window followed by a reading of the original story by Cornell Woolrich of the same name on which it was based was good fun. It was fascinating to watch how a story is altered in order to adapt it for the silver screen. Anurag then told us about the way Hollywood functioned at the time of the making of Rear Window, pretty much the same way as our very own Bollywood functions today. There are certain elements that are a must for any and every screenplay, for instance a female lover, a romantic angle, and so on. It was amazing to learn the inner nuances of movie making. Anurag’s description of how Satya came about was enriching though I thought that only a Ram Gopal Varma could afford an exercise like that. There were instances that he narrated of the compromises film-makers and screen writers have to make to do their own thing.

I was however humbled by the immense insight Anurag has into world cinema. The man’s an encyclopaedia on world cinema, its origins and current trends. And I am not saying this for saying sake. He truly is. And it was great to have met him. Finally!

Pray for me, Brother

A R Rahman does not stop surprising me. ‘Pray for Me, Brother’ is an exceptional composition. The modulations, especially towards the middle of the song when Rahman reaches a vocal crescendo are out of this world. Gave me goose bumps. Brilliant vocals, mind blowing music, and the presence of the genius make it one in a million. Amazing!
One goes deeper and discovers that the song as been composed under the aegis of the UN and who better to lend voice and music to an idea that germinates at the end of the road for floundering humanity that A R Rahman, the epitome of cultural amalgamation and religious unity. One of India’s greatest exports to the world of international music, he deserves every accolade that he gets. The song serenades, cajoles and forces you to think. The world’s getting smaller, but every one’s having problems making the distance. There’s death, destruction and destitution. And no one’s willing to take the first step towards reconciliation. Rahman does it with this song. The song has the potential for bridging gaps wherever they exist – a great mascot of world peace and human co-existence.
The video is cutting-edge. Neat editing and cuts make it a stunning sequence. The last scene of an African-American man embracing a Caucasian white girl is symbolic of whatever the song stands for and advocates. Another still of famine-stricken children in Darfur is mind-numbing. There’s hunger and squalor. There’s pain and pity. And Rahman evokes emotions any which way. With new-found success with his immensely improved vocal strengths (with Tere Bina from Guru becoming a huge hit) the musical genius is on his way to the hall of fame. If he has not reached one already, that is.
And this, mind you is not the first time he has attempted something like this. But ‘Pray for Me, Brother’ is by far his best attempt at theme-based music. Written against poverty and hunger an in consonance with the UN Millennium Development Goals, the song is a brilliant portrayal of the urgent need for more food reaching the famine-affected people, aid reaching the war-ravaged million, and a change of heart in general.

The Amar-Shahrukh imbroglio

The Amar Singh-Shahrukh Khan controversy has been a talking point lately. My first reaction – Ha ha ha ha ha! Then the Samajwadi biggie shot himself in the foot and made disparaging lewd remarks against Gauri Khan. My reaction – what do you expect from a man like him? Further (and this, guys is the height of it all) some idiotic Samajwadi folks turned up outside Shahrukh’s house and started sloganeering against the Khan. In all of this, Khan’s kids got a real shock and started wailing. Now obviously, it did not go down well with Shahrukh. He came out all guns blazing saying that he was a ‘demented Pathan’ and was madly protective about his family, would do anything to protect then, etc.,etc.
This Amar Singh is a strange character. He is forever part of filmi gossip for all the worng reasons. When Amitabh Bachchan wants to save up on import duty, he gets Singh to explain (to the media and everyone who cares to lend an ear) that Abhishek Bachchan’s birthday gift was his car after all which (for whatever reason) remained parked in the Bachchan residence! And he expected everyone to believe that. Well…
He also gets into certain dangerous liaisons with lissome Bollywood beauties, has lovey-dovey talks with them over the telephone, and remarks ‘meri abhinetriyon se achchi jaan pehchaan hai’. Haan haan aapki baat hum samajhte hain.
But what attracts men like him to Bollywood? We have ample examples of politicians hobnobbing with industry biggies in both reel and real life. Amar Singh is the epitome of the wily politician on the prowl in Dreamland. And whom does he have for company? The Bachchans, no less. Being enveloped in controversy is routine for him. What makes me curious about the guy is his clout in the industry. It also makes me scared. If the industry is somehow controlled (maybe not directly) by people like him, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out the way ahead for the industry. Why can’t the industry rid itself of someone like him and get on with making ‘good’ films? I seriously think we need to think beyond ‘certain fixities’ in Bollywood and move on. There’s simply too much talent lying around.

Down with K serials

Just following up on the ‘domesticated’ comment Amitabh Bachchan made…well not so recently. Reminds of the K serials! Those dreaded, dreadful, awful, disgusting, diatribes against the liberation of women and everything that comes with it. I sometimes wonder if Ekta Kapoor actually believes in whatever she makes. I hope not for if she does then hells nigh! Women of the world unite! Against this nauseating assault on womanhood, modernity, and the progression of thought that does not seem to end and trust me there’s more muck coming from the K stable.

Its good, in these days of the Parvatis and the Tulsis to rewind and go back to the era of Humlog and Buniyad, not to forget the delightfully hilarious Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi and of course Mr Yogi, a unique celebration of the common man and his uncommon dreams.

All we get to watch today are painfully slow and agonizing stories (or should I say profiles?) of ultra-rich, incredulous, pathetic families where women are made to dress in ruddy chiffons and lounge around the house indulging in the worst kinds of familial intrigues. The men have no jobs (or so it seems). Oh yeah! They happen to be business tycoons and own plush mahogany offices…but rarely seem to go to work. Tycoons too need to work, don’t they?

I am reminded of Shridhar Kshirsagar’s Khandaan broadcast on good old Doordarshan some twenty years back. A gripping story of two feuding business families, skillfully crafted. Just that my father did not allow me to watch it (said I was too young for a programme like that, etc). However, I vaguely remember Shekhar Kapur and Kitu Gidwani in pivotal roles. Later, I happened to read some commentaries on the serial. Mahesh Bhatt’s Swabhimaan too succeeded in holding my interest for a while but as in all things written by Shobha De, the serial too went the sex-and-sleaze way.

They no longer make the Byomkesh Bakshi’s and the Karamchand’s any more, do they? Even Tehkikat was not bad. Zee made an attempt some time back with Mohandas BA LLB, a nice amalgam of suspense and humour. The downfall has been rather dramatic what with Saat Phere..Saloni ka Safar being the highest TRP-earner on Zee (or is it across the board, I don’t know).

TV is rather unbearable to watch, what say? (Except if there is some cricket happening.)

The Ideology of the Hindi film

Have been reading a bit on the ideology of Hindi films in the past few weeks. Preparing to write a PhD proposal on construction of Muslim identity in popular Hindi cinema and hence the necessity to read. Not to say that reading has everything to do with studies and academics. Absolutely not. Anyhow, one of the first things I learnt was that while Hollywood follows the organic style of film-making where the story forms the core of all other activities associated with the production of the film, the Bombay film industry has since the early days followed the heterogenous method i.e. the finished product is an amalgamation of various specialized arts such as dance, music, story writing, comedy, etc. This encompasses the ‘formula’ that most Hindi films thrive on. A rather linear differentiation. Don’t know if films like Ankur and Manthan earlier and some of the better films being made in Bombay would fit either way.

The other interesting classification is the typographical differentiation between genres. New wave cinema, middle-class cinema, darsanic socials, musicals, and so on. While the earliest films like Raja Harishchandra and Alam Ara (of the silent era) can be classified under the darsanic social category, others like Raj Kapoor’s Sangam fall primarily in the social mould. Bhuvan Shome by Mrinal Sen and Satyajit Ray’s master works all fall under the new wave cinema category. Shyam Benegal’s Manthan and Ankur are some other works in the new wave cinema category.

The rise of the subaltern hero is exemplified in the grand and prolonged success that Amitabh Bachchan enjoyed in a period of great churning for the India polity given the socialist leanings of the policies of the Indira Gandhi government. This, as I see it is the single biggest epoch making event in the history of Indian politics in conjunction with popular Hindi cinema. The tide was changing, the common man was the flavour. Zanjeer, Deewar and Sholay, the three Salim-Javed-Amitabh blockbusters made new ground where the new political class was being feted and celebrated.

Some questions that come to my mind straightaway. What genres can we classify films like Black Friday as? Noir perhaps? Is it organic film-making? Perhaps. Will need to do more reading to figure than one out…any help is welcome.

What all was wrong with the 52nd Filmfare Awards?

Kangana Ranaut getting the Face of the Year takes the cake for me. You know guys, we are a star-starved society, we crave for icons...and Hrithik Roshan with his gymn-toned body and chiselled looks is the perfect candidate for the title…at least for the unhappy millions for whom movies are a way of getting away from daily drudgery. So Hrithik did not get the award for his performance (or should I say non-performance) in Dhoom 2 (such a bad film, it was funny to see it getting nominated). The man got the award precisely because we are slaves of the star-system in Bollywood and will do everything to keep things the way they are. So year after year, the Roshans, the Bachchans and the Kapoors will keep getting undeserved awards.
Though Fanaa was a crappy film, Kajol’s performance was above-average, if not one of her best. Deserved the award? I don’t know…
Has anyone ever considered the fact that the awards only reinforce stereotypes about actors? How many average-looking actors have won awards in the past many years? It’s all about looks in Bollywood. Or so it seems. A Deepak Dobriyal would never be nominated for the Best Supporting Actor category, would he? Such a pity. Abhishek Bachchan for KANK. Well, that movie was so bad that it being on the nominations list is the saddest day for cinema and art. It does not deserve to be called a film. And so, anyone getting an ‘award’ for that bakwaas film has got to be a case of ‘aur koi nahin mila to isko de diya’. Then again it sepaks volumes for the value we attach to art and commerce in cinema. Karan Johar is the prince of moolah and lo and behold, his movie however pathetic will end up getting nominations if not awards. And those who missed out on the Ash-wiping-her-tears act when would be mom-in-law Jaya Bachchan received some special award (yawn!), you missed the farce of the year. The fakeness of the whole act makes me cringe. It was disgustingly phony, so hypocritical that I was guffawing my guts out. I don’t know about you guys but that woman (Aish) is the epitome of pretence.

Thakeray vs. Black Friday

So Bal Thackeray wants to ban Black Friday. Says the film portrays Dawood ibrahim and the perpetrators of the 1993 Bombay blasts as heroes. Not surprising at all. Doesn’t Thackeray belong to the same gang that brought down the mosque at Ayodhya and slaughtered Muslims by the dozen in Gujarat? he is the skewed yet a living breathing manifestation of the rot that has set into the society we live in. he symbolizes the beliefs and prejudices of millions of Indians across the board. He is the epitome of the mythical entity Golwalkar called the Hindu Rashtra, triumphantly bandied about by his footsoldiers in the RSS, VHP, and Bajrang Dal. Thackeray stands for the political project that has been the cause of the most heinous crimes against humanity. Can he let a film go?
Defaming and demeaning Black Friday would give him his lost teeth. He is raring to go after the victory at the BMC hustings. Is it a surprise that he makes an unqualified statement like that? The rightist fringe has been making anti-Black Friday noises for long saying that the film ‘de-demonizes’ the (so-called) terrorists, almost ‘humanizes’ them. While they are engaged in a project that does just the opposite – demonizing the Muslims as a community. Black Friday goes against the grain, or so it would seem to those gaping out of the loony bin.
But can he ban the film? He does not hold a constitutional position, a solace to those who make up the ‘progressives’ in India, a horribly miniscule minority. But he wields immense clout with the badshahs of badmashi, the goons who can be called upon to destroy property and even lives within minutes. Therefore, if Thackeray calls for a ban, theatre owners would end up shuddering. What if their bread and butter is burnt down or broken or something? And the law enforcement agencies don’t give a damn. So a ban call might just end up working. And no one will raise a voice. Because India is already a Hindu Rashtra for many, in thought and practice. And Hindu Rashtra does not tolerate truth.

Why did Mani Ratnam make Guru?

Why did Mani Ratnam make Guru? From a glowing tribute to the spirit of human enterprise to the grittiest film ever made, the film has received accolades from all over. Genuine or generated..I don’t know. The media savvy of the people associated with the film could be one reason why the film has made it with four and five stars in newspapers and magazines across the board except Outlook. I admire Namrata Joshi for her scathing comments.
Guru is a bad film. Period. The brilliant camera-work by Rajiv Menon, artistic editing and great music notwithstanding. The film falls flat. It lacks character. It is easy to go on to the Reliance website, access the history section and get a lowdown on the rise of the company, the way in which shareholders multiplied…and so on. Why would anyone want to see it on celluloid? The propagandist nature of the film is particularly uncomfortable. Guru is blatant, in places it is even shameless. It is preachy. One does not need Abhishek Bachchan (aka Gurukant Desai) to pontificate on how Gandhi had broken the law 40 years ago only to be matched by an industrialist who flouts custom duties and all the rules, regulations, and laws of the land to end up as a tycoon. The comparison with Gandhi is where the film falters. It can only elicit guffaws and not cheers.
Ratnam also does a U-turn from his heady Yuva days and indulges in visual and verbal left-bashing. (Comrades, do we need any more bashing? Hasn’t enough been done already?) Manik Dasgupta and his crusading reporter Shyan Saxena played by Mithun Chakraborty and R Madhavan respectively are somehow in a rather sinister and cruel manner portrayed as villains who are out to get the man of the moment.
We can surely do without gutless films like Guru. If the mantra is ‘play safe’ then I am afraid, we are only running against time…not with it!

Cinema at its best

I have spent the weekend watching the two most powerful films made by two men who belong to this very woebegone and insensitive society that we have become. Let me start writing about the films with some reactions from the theatres. Parzania. Catcalls, laughter, giggles, Accha..! Oh ho! Black Friday. Why don’t you go away to Pakistan? Jai Shri Ram, more catcalls, more laughter, jeers…the works. The discerning Indian audience that we keep gloating over is nothing short of a brute, incongruous, pathetic, jingoistic, fundamentalist, fascist group of individuals. At least that is what my experience of watching these films in a social melee has been. Not surprising then that while Parzania has not seen the light of day in the one state that needs to see the film more than anyone else, Black Friday has been released without a hitch in the same state. The reasons are not hard to find.
I
Parzania not only indicts the Sangh Parivar for the 2002 genocide in Gujarat, it showcases the pain of one family to exemplify the scars of a society. What transpired in Gujarat was not only a blot on the face of Gujarat, the birthplace of Gandhi, an iconoclast of peace, it is a black chapter in the history of contemporary India. A human failing of monolithic proportions, the society in Gujarat is polarized beyond compare. Parzania says it all and much more. The film begins, and rightly so with a paen to the Almighty in the background that can be translated loosely as ‘What happened to the land of Gandhi?’ What really happened in the land of Gandhi? Parzania shows us what exactly.

The neighbourhood banter, the gruesome bloodletting, the pain, the anguish, the agony of living in relief camps, the inept, corrupt, and communalized police force, the spiritual quest for answers when all else fails is captured in vivid detail. The rioting mobs prepared with saffron bands, tridents, swords and petrol bombs converging on the Mohammadi Mansion, Muslim men calling up the police to be told ‘We have no orders to save you!’, the young Parsi mother screaming ‘I am a Parsi’ to avoid being attacked, the Hindu neighbour refusing to open the door to take the Parsi children in only because they were not Hindus pose a few vehement questions. That the VHP went door to door flagging Hindu houses and businesses leaving out the Muslim establishments to make things easier for their foot soldiers, listing out families by name, religion and caste a few days before the Godhra train burning incident, stockpiling LPG cylinders and other inflammable items for quick combustion with the active participation of women is common knowledge which is trumpeted as an attempt by whiny secularists to inflict insult upon Gujarat’s wounds by the right wing zealots in power in the state.


The film is woven together by the enraged renditions of an alchoholic American research scholar, in Ahmedabad to discover Gandhi. His dilapidated typewriter becomes the slate on which Gujarat’s bloodiest month get etched for posterity. The facts are there for everyone to see. Parzania does not make any illegitimate claims, it does not digress from the moot point, finding the lost boy Azhar Mody (Parzan Peethawala in the film), it does not tells us anything we don’t already know. Rahul Dholakia has only brought it all together to tell a story that needs to be told today to avoid perpetuating hate in future. The story of the Mody’s needs to be told because they represent the Gujarat of today, a silent tinderbox. One can only guess when the next riot will break out. A genocide of the kind that took place in 2002 can happen again. Cities and towns in Gujarat are strewn with markers of hate and mistrust. ‘Welcome to Hindurashtra’ say hoardings and placards along the railway line that runs through the state. The Bajrang Dal has succeeded in keeping Parzania out of theatres in the state. Can the next genocide be far away?


II

Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday, based on S Hussain Zaidi’s book by the same name is an audio-visual documentation of the meticulous planning that went into the 1993 bomb blasts in Mumbai that ripped the city apart, searing the metropolis to its soul. However, this is not what makes Black Friday an example of good film-making. Black Friday is one of the finest films to hit the marquee in the history of Indian cinema because of the following reasons:

It does not shy away from taking names. No names have been changed. The characters are flesh and blood. And more importantly, they are true to the story.

The film makes no bones about what actually led to the blasts. The Babri Masjid demolition, the riots of January 1992 in which a disproportionate number of Muslims were butchered, the inability of the police to punish those responsible for the Bombay riots, the collective angst of a battered and bruised community are all there. The fact that Tiger Memon vowed to avenge the burning down of his office by bringing the city down to its knees is startlingly captured by what the director has called the hidden camera – a particularly effective style of film-making. Black Friday stands testimony to that.

The film makes no attempt to gloss over the real provocation for Memon, his aides, and underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. The Masjid demolition footage is brilliantly interwoven into the screenplay. Kashyap’s film is candid, as candid as Badshah Khan who rattles away his reasons for participating in the conspiracy. Khan becomes the epitome of Muslim anger.

The police is not glorified. The fact that third degree torture methods were used to gather information and crack the case is established and known. The film only reiterates it. The fact that hundreds of innocent Muslims were detained without reason, beaten up, the women humiliated and molested to make the men sing is portrayed vividly. Just so that the viewer knows that ‘an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.’

The actors are brilliant. I for one thank Anurag Kashyap for not inflicting stars and their starry airs on the audience in a story that would have lost steam. It has been noticed that a film derails weighed down by the million dollar stars that have made Bollywood their haven. Underrated and underpaid, character actors often carry a film on their shoulders. Kay Kay Menon, Pawan Malhotra, and Aditya Shrivastava (Naseeruddin Shah and Sarika in Parzania) just did. They are so real, one can almost feel the raging anger, the fear, the trauma.

Everything works for the film. Despite two particularly long chase sequences, Black Friday succeeds in its mission. The director is telling a story here. A story that jolted the nation out of deep slumber. The seething fury in the voice of Tiger Memon is infectious. The understated silhouette of a brooding Dawood Ibrahim is used to good effect. One cannot just miss the striking resemblance the actor bears to one of the most feared men in Bombay.

Black Friday remains till the end true to most details of the case and the book with humour, though dark thrown in for good measure. Kashyap thus has made a film that other film-makers would find hard to replicate. If you think Madhur Bhandarkar is the king of reality cinema, go watch Black Friday. It will shock and shake you. If this is what the cinematic medium can do, it is a pity that its potential has been underutilized for so many decades in an industry crowded by a surfeit of fake and artificial icons, their families, and offspring.

Delhi

If there is any city in the world that I have known well, it is Delhi. From that foggy, bitterly cold winter night in 1982 when I – a little tramp of a toddler – flitted about on Platform Number 5 of the Delhi junction trying to jump on to the rail tracks only to be pulled away by my mother struggling with a devil of a child, to 2007, the city has grown, evolved, changed, mesmerized, ridiculed, maneuvered, stormed ahead, hankered back, played games, risen to the occasion, terrorized, been terrorized…held by strings by the gnarled hands of time.

Delhi is often compared to Mumbai, the ephemeral city of dreams where living and living well can, at times only be a distant dream. The yardsticks do vary. While fashionistas and style gurus would bow a hundred times to the charms of the intoxication that is Mumbai and lend a perfunctory yet squiggly stare to the auntyji dressing that Delhi is famous for, political commentators, twitching their thumb would point towards the hot seat of power that perches itself right here. The hump on Raisina Hill never goes out of fashion, you see and the circular arena of unbridled commotion – the Parliament House – also makes laws for the country.

This is Delhi, a thronging part-metropolis, part-Punju fortress. For many their own city of dreams. For others the epitome of jittery rush for survival and life. And the little girl who arrived here on the cold winter night in 1982 loves Delhi...!

Childhood in Delhi is ensconced in the soothing memory of the roadside eatery near school with its piping hot samosas and a pitcher of chilled Campa Cola, a yesteryear variant of the jazzed-up modern day Coke, the winter afternoon siestas in the balcony caressed by streaming sunlight, long drives through the tree-lined avenues of the diplomatic enclaves and the lanes boasting of the power elite, and the weekend trip to Children’s Park and India Gate for fun on the swings, popcorn, and a scoop of ice-cream.

Sultry summer nights would give way to shivers as winters danced in gently goading the elders to prepare for a long haul. Heaters would face repairs even as new ones arrived at the painful collapse of the old ones. Papa would run up and down the adjoining lane looking for the electrician to fix the geysers. Winters are fun in Delhi. The food even better.

Aloo tikkis sizzle as much as bar-be-qued chicken wings. Ask the Purani Dilliwala and you would know food. Just what can beat the roghan josh and sheermal at Karim’s? Try the mutton korma! Buffeted by run-down facades of old imperial structures, the spread-out eatery is a reason to smile, something that makes Delhi special. If you think Karim’s a tad far, get across to lighted evenings at the Nizamuddin dargah. Flanked by ramshackle shops that sell everything from atrocious artificial jewellery to beef kababs, the dargah beckons one and all, the smooth strains of the qawwali wafting through the by-lanes. Jumme raat at Nizamuddin is special. How sindoor-smudged Hindu housewives, burqa-clad Muslim begums, and blanched Caucasian tourists can sit together, enthralled by the beating drums and singing voices rising to a crescendo, oblivious to the strife torn world outside, without the slightest indication of mistrust and hate, is beyond me? But as they say, Delhi can surprise you in many ways.

What can be more surprising than the tall minarets, pristine balustrades, shimmering courtyards, and glistening domes of the Jama Masjid. A study in contrast to the grimy gallis spread around. The quintessential symbol of the Dilli of the Mughals followed by miles towards the south by the thronging Chandni Chowk, where masjid and mandir sit cheek by jowl. Without fuss!

Did anyone say ‘Yes, Delhi does breathe…’? In more ways than one. The walls of the tombs and fort ruins dotting the rapidly developing landscape gently move in a bizarre symphony of pain and ingratitude. Perhaps ashamed at the present.

Slowly and garrulously the city has settled into cosy matrimony with the preposterous, ignominious, often bestial artifacts of unabashed, rampant consumerism. The monuments, mosques and dargahs still stand. Only the green swathes around and across the city have melted into oblivion and rough concrete has overtaken the silky visage of the City of the Djinns.

As evening falls and the city lights up, the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer while temples erupt with the clangs of bells and cymbals, raising a paean to the almighty. Nothing else can match the magic of the ensuing jugalbandi. Delhi as stood witness to centuries of togetherness, the reality that many parts of India have lost touch with. Is Delhi losing it too? Maybe times have changed and Delhiwalas do not pay attention to it anymore. They too have started rushing through life ignoring the melancholy resolve of those who have been before.

The hauntings never do stop. Every spire in the city has a story to tell. Perhaps even a fable. If only someone had the time and patience to lend an ear. Voices come from beyond. And Delhi remains embedded in the minds of visitors and denizens alike. They say ‘You can leave Delhi, but Delhi will never leave you.’ I have experienced it. My heart has cringed for the city I love. The ubiquitous present filling in for a grand, glorious past. And yet, the little girl who stepped into Delhi for the first time in 1982 loves Delhi. For it remains a city like no other!