On the 12th of april 2004 senior BJP leader Lalji Tandon’s friends decided to celebrate his birthday by distributing 12000 saris to poor women from in and around Lucknow. Hundreds of women lined up early that morning for the booty. Allegedly at some point, perhaps impatient with the never ending queue, the organizers started flinging saris at the crowd. A stampede ensued killing 21 women and an infant and injuring several others. Filmmaker Nishtha Jain visited the area with a camera and her crew curios about what really happened that morning and why. Her journey and its findings are documented in her film 6 yards to democracy. Starting from testimonies by women who survived the incident and relatives of those who did not, Jain widens the angle to look at the state of women in the concerned area in general- perhaps seeking to understand why they might have risked their lives for the gift of a single sari.
Jain’s film is not a well thought out argument, but a journey of discovery that she invites you to take with her. It is neither comprehensive, nor cohesive and while looking into housing and employment problems when the filmmaker’s gaze gets transfixed at the lack of sanitation and latrines for women, you are stuck there with her engaging in her quiet outrage against the abominable indignation of their daily lives. Clearly the conditions that so stump her might offer no new insight to those in the know but the sincerity of her reaction should move them afresh. Jain’s vision is permeated by a lyrical humanity that is often missing in documentaries of this nature, whose agenda tends to become clinical and impersonal. The women she speaks with are not merely witnesses in favor of her argument but characters she gives space and time to. Tender shots of them marveling awkwardly at the grandeur of a five star hotel, applying make-up or singing a bittersweet folk song layer their testimonies. But the journey into their personal spaces is at the cost of certain facts that do not find their place in the film. And it is precisely those facts that amplify its relevance.
Attempting to ‘buy’ votes violates the election commission’s code of conduct. Even though news channels gave a lot of attention to the event it was mostly in the form of political cross fire between personalities. As with election coverage in general, the real issues of the people concerned were lost in airing campaign trails and opinion polls. The official death toll was debated to be half of the real number. Lalji Tandon was given a clean chit and the others accused got out on bail by manipulating legal technicalities. The educated television viewer was too busy deciding the fate of film stars to protest. The accused issued a statement claiming the stampede was a result of the hysterical stupidity of the victims. Maybe they have a point. If our poorer classes still believe democracy has something to offer them, even a free sari, they must be stupid.
(the article originally appeared in Mumbai Mirror)
Showing posts with label india. Show all posts
Showing posts with label india. Show all posts
Monday, September 8, 2008
Jahaji Music- Playing out exile
Winds put out small fires and fuel the larger ones. The same could be said of distances and passions. Indian expatriates have struggled to hold on to a piece of their country and the struggle has often expressed itself through distinct musical sub-cultures from Birmingham to Jamaica. Surabhi Sharma’s documentary Jahaji Music follows singer Remo Fernandes as he travels into the Caribbean islands to discover the music of a culture where it has often been the means and the end of survival.
The film is mounted as an impressionistic collage of fragmented narratives, which do not always link up . The camera sets the pace for the journey with lingering long and mid shots, which soak up the city and culture scape, turning curious and intrusive when the rhythm picks up.
We drive into the heart of Trenchtown with Bob Marley’s teacher and Rastafarian philosopher Mortimo as he pays tribute to the land that nurtures the greatest of artists while remaining decrepit with poverty, violence and political neglect. The trance like beats of the steel pan (a musical instrument that “came from nothing’ when the colonial government imposed a ban on the African drum) set the mood for volatile protest songs against the system, the police and even the queen of England. There is a more uplifting chat with a visual artist in the Savannahs and dancehall queen Stacey. Denise Belafon takes us through the performance of her new song “I want an Indian man” in her characteristic saucy style and talks of the protests that followed from the Indian community as she stripped off her sari mid song.
Indians were shipped into the islands in nineteenth century and they landed with little except seeds and songs to work their way into an alien culture and country. Generations later it is hard to tell them from the majority of the population except for the pictures of Indian deities that adorn their walls and the strains of Karan Johar’s ‘Mahi Ve’ which waft around as they go about their daily chores. Popular musicians from the community have worked hard at being accepted into the local music scene and are mindful of not sounding like ‘foreigners’ when they sing. Soca and Calypso have shaped their identity and they are acutely aware of that as is evident when Rikki Jai croons “hold de Lata Mangeshkar, give me Soca” but then he follows it up promptly with Bindiya Chamkegi revamped to fit into Soca Rhythms. Clearly they are not up to abandoning their Indian cultural heritage either. Most of them do not speak or understand Indian languages but they must assimilate their popular folk and film rhythms into their music to complete their expression. Lyrics are written and translated for them by their mothers or grandfathers often. And strange as it may sound to hear “sanwariya hum hu chalab tore saath” in a distinct Caribbean accent it packs the same emotional punch as it would in non descript north Indian village.
The documentary is an emotional and musical journey worth taking. And deep in its folds lies an uncomplicated answer to the raging debate of who is the ‘real Indian’. A real Indian is someone you can take out of India but you cannot take India out of.
(The article originally appeared in Mumbai Mirror)
The film is mounted as an impressionistic collage of fragmented narratives, which do not always link up . The camera sets the pace for the journey with lingering long and mid shots, which soak up the city and culture scape, turning curious and intrusive when the rhythm picks up.
We drive into the heart of Trenchtown with Bob Marley’s teacher and Rastafarian philosopher Mortimo as he pays tribute to the land that nurtures the greatest of artists while remaining decrepit with poverty, violence and political neglect. The trance like beats of the steel pan (a musical instrument that “came from nothing’ when the colonial government imposed a ban on the African drum) set the mood for volatile protest songs against the system, the police and even the queen of England. There is a more uplifting chat with a visual artist in the Savannahs and dancehall queen Stacey. Denise Belafon takes us through the performance of her new song “I want an Indian man” in her characteristic saucy style and talks of the protests that followed from the Indian community as she stripped off her sari mid song.
Indians were shipped into the islands in nineteenth century and they landed with little except seeds and songs to work their way into an alien culture and country. Generations later it is hard to tell them from the majority of the population except for the pictures of Indian deities that adorn their walls and the strains of Karan Johar’s ‘Mahi Ve’ which waft around as they go about their daily chores. Popular musicians from the community have worked hard at being accepted into the local music scene and are mindful of not sounding like ‘foreigners’ when they sing. Soca and Calypso have shaped their identity and they are acutely aware of that as is evident when Rikki Jai croons “hold de Lata Mangeshkar, give me Soca” but then he follows it up promptly with Bindiya Chamkegi revamped to fit into Soca Rhythms. Clearly they are not up to abandoning their Indian cultural heritage either. Most of them do not speak or understand Indian languages but they must assimilate their popular folk and film rhythms into their music to complete their expression. Lyrics are written and translated for them by their mothers or grandfathers often. And strange as it may sound to hear “sanwariya hum hu chalab tore saath” in a distinct Caribbean accent it packs the same emotional punch as it would in non descript north Indian village.
The documentary is an emotional and musical journey worth taking. And deep in its folds lies an uncomplicated answer to the raging debate of who is the ‘real Indian’. A real Indian is someone you can take out of India but you cannot take India out of.
(The article originally appeared in Mumbai Mirror)
PONDICHERRY- Comment Francais Est Cela
Pondicherry is part of the holy trinity of Indian tourism with Goa and Rajasthan. A former French colony, its relatively recent French past is trumpeted through glossy brochures that promise you a glimpse of the capital of food, film, fashion and ultimate European snobbery for an overall price less that the airport tax at Paris.
As you negotiate with the merciless Chennai traffic, street names you cannot pronounce or remember, and taxi drivers who are religiously rude, you clutch on to that Pondhicherry Guide for dear life and dream of the exotic French names that fill its pages. Names as difficult to pronounce as those in Chennai but infinitely more inviting to minds steeped in the charms of Godard, Voltaire, Flaubert and Proust (in fact one of the most prominent streets on the map is named after noted dramatist, author and Nobel winner Romain Rolland).
But after over three hours on the road when you finally read the sign ‘Welcome To Pondicherry’, the landscape doesn’t magically transform into a Parisian suburb or French countryside. Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi are still struggling to outsmile each other from lifesize hoardings and the street is clogged with ramshackle stores selling every conceivable coconut product. We had entered the city through its Tamil quarter, the wasteland of locals that once surrounded the island of French revelry within.
Fighting a surge of disappointment and doom, we made our way to the French quarter and were relieved to see a dramatic shift of cityscape. The filth gone, the streets neatly cobbled and rows of candy-coloured homes with white fences and romantic verandahs greeted our dreamy eyes and we began to ask our way to Hotel De L’Orient on Rue Romain Rolland in our best faux French accents.
Over the next couple of days we were to discover that not a single person you will encounter anywhere (except the odd French tourist wondering if all this is French what is he) can comprehend let alone pronounce the fancy French names unless they are broken into a catchword and heavily Tamil-ised.
Anyway, now settled in the breathtakingly restored and uniquely designed French property all that was left to do was seek the ghost of the foreign culture. Since the most foreign film running in the halls packed with gaudy Tamil capers was Jodhaa Akbar and the most fashionable item on sale a second-hand Marks and Spencer dress discarded by a broke Brit, our best way in was going to be food. Everywhere we were assured that the finest French cuisine is available around the corner at Rendezvous, the tourist Mecca in town. With visions of Champs-Elysees cafes and Van Gogh’s café at night floating in the mind we climbed the stairs to what turned out to be a Goa-beach-shack in Pondicherry. Plastic chairs, a blackboard scribbled with ‘specials’, tubelights and innumerable un-bathed foreigners- this was a repast to hippie-land, not French elegance. The most French dishes on the vegetarian menu were stuffed pancakes and a cucumber and tomoato salad with ‘french’ dressing (it is also amusingly their highest selling dish), so we settled for mash, fries and vegetarian gratin (of dubious ‘continental food genre’). The place is owned by the very affable Vincent Mathias from Mumbai who has managed to retain a chef or two from the French times to stir up the couple of French dishes, like baked oysters and fresh duck liver pate, that dot the meat/seafood menu. But even their flavour is greatly compromised by the paucity of authentic ingredients. The affordable pricing of the menu makes it impossible for him to source expensive ingredients from abroad. Satsanga and Le Club, the other two most populous haunts of the quarter are similarly done up shacks. While the former has a mammoth menu with a number of dishes sounding promisingly French, they are almost never available. Instead you’re served pasta, steak and garlic bread, edible only for their grease. Le Club used to be run by the Allaince Francais but the current management serves a multi-cuisine fare with Chinese, Indian and continental prepared apparently with interchangeable spices.
We figured we might have to turn to the posh hotels for a true experience and made our way to Le Dupleix. Chef Kumar at their restaurant admitted that authentic French food was hardly to be found anywhere in the city now. Influences from Europe, Vietnam and India had seeped into their dishes too and bearing testimony to his admission was the alarming curry leaf and lentil tarka on our custard fish. Next in line was the Promenade, a modern airy sea-front property, where we skipped the regular coffee-shop buffet and looked for the fare advertised as chef Lionel Wincent’s specialty. The menu again was multi-cuisine and the French dishes had been adapted to local tastes. The advertised chef was nowhere to be seen and had apparently left two years ago. The local chefs who claimed to have designed the menu were not sure how to define what they were serving.
Expectedly tired we gave up our pursuit and settled for a meal at our own hotel on the final evening. The co-chairman Francis Wacziarg, of the Neemrana group that owns the place being French we mildly hoped to be less disappointed. But that was settled as soon as our cheese platter arrived with a bottle of Indian wine from a very sparse wine menu (so much for French!). Even the cheeses were not from France and dominating the palette was a disgusting bland cheddar generously studded with roasted cumin seeds. The main course had a large section of ‘Creole’ food. Creole is a term generally associated with a kind of cuisine that is popular in Louisiana but the Puducherry-ites have appropriated it to describe anything they make with south Indian spices, which is not too rich and hot. Their claim to the term is derived from a group of people (of mixed Asian and European blood) called Creoles who were settlers in the French colony.
Sitting on the concrete seafront later that evening at the tourism department run La Café (snacking on croissants that tasted like egg-stuffed gujiyas) and watching children climbing a gigantic Gandhi statue, we talked of how much one could enjoy this very unique town if they were not burdened with expectations of French exotica. There was another thought that brought a smile- the idea of India might be elusive but one thing is for sure, wherever we go and whatever comes to us, we will steep in our colours till it is undistinguishable. We know no subtler love.
As you negotiate with the merciless Chennai traffic, street names you cannot pronounce or remember, and taxi drivers who are religiously rude, you clutch on to that Pondhicherry Guide for dear life and dream of the exotic French names that fill its pages. Names as difficult to pronounce as those in Chennai but infinitely more inviting to minds steeped in the charms of Godard, Voltaire, Flaubert and Proust (in fact one of the most prominent streets on the map is named after noted dramatist, author and Nobel winner Romain Rolland).
But after over three hours on the road when you finally read the sign ‘Welcome To Pondicherry’, the landscape doesn’t magically transform into a Parisian suburb or French countryside. Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi are still struggling to outsmile each other from lifesize hoardings and the street is clogged with ramshackle stores selling every conceivable coconut product. We had entered the city through its Tamil quarter, the wasteland of locals that once surrounded the island of French revelry within.
Fighting a surge of disappointment and doom, we made our way to the French quarter and were relieved to see a dramatic shift of cityscape. The filth gone, the streets neatly cobbled and rows of candy-coloured homes with white fences and romantic verandahs greeted our dreamy eyes and we began to ask our way to Hotel De L’Orient on Rue Romain Rolland in our best faux French accents.
Over the next couple of days we were to discover that not a single person you will encounter anywhere (except the odd French tourist wondering if all this is French what is he) can comprehend let alone pronounce the fancy French names unless they are broken into a catchword and heavily Tamil-ised.
Anyway, now settled in the breathtakingly restored and uniquely designed French property all that was left to do was seek the ghost of the foreign culture. Since the most foreign film running in the halls packed with gaudy Tamil capers was Jodhaa Akbar and the most fashionable item on sale a second-hand Marks and Spencer dress discarded by a broke Brit, our best way in was going to be food. Everywhere we were assured that the finest French cuisine is available around the corner at Rendezvous, the tourist Mecca in town. With visions of Champs-Elysees cafes and Van Gogh’s café at night floating in the mind we climbed the stairs to what turned out to be a Goa-beach-shack in Pondicherry. Plastic chairs, a blackboard scribbled with ‘specials’, tubelights and innumerable un-bathed foreigners- this was a repast to hippie-land, not French elegance. The most French dishes on the vegetarian menu were stuffed pancakes and a cucumber and tomoato salad with ‘french’ dressing (it is also amusingly their highest selling dish), so we settled for mash, fries and vegetarian gratin (of dubious ‘continental food genre’). The place is owned by the very affable Vincent Mathias from Mumbai who has managed to retain a chef or two from the French times to stir up the couple of French dishes, like baked oysters and fresh duck liver pate, that dot the meat/seafood menu. But even their flavour is greatly compromised by the paucity of authentic ingredients. The affordable pricing of the menu makes it impossible for him to source expensive ingredients from abroad. Satsanga and Le Club, the other two most populous haunts of the quarter are similarly done up shacks. While the former has a mammoth menu with a number of dishes sounding promisingly French, they are almost never available. Instead you’re served pasta, steak and garlic bread, edible only for their grease. Le Club used to be run by the Allaince Francais but the current management serves a multi-cuisine fare with Chinese, Indian and continental prepared apparently with interchangeable spices.
We figured we might have to turn to the posh hotels for a true experience and made our way to Le Dupleix. Chef Kumar at their restaurant admitted that authentic French food was hardly to be found anywhere in the city now. Influences from Europe, Vietnam and India had seeped into their dishes too and bearing testimony to his admission was the alarming curry leaf and lentil tarka on our custard fish. Next in line was the Promenade, a modern airy sea-front property, where we skipped the regular coffee-shop buffet and looked for the fare advertised as chef Lionel Wincent’s specialty. The menu again was multi-cuisine and the French dishes had been adapted to local tastes. The advertised chef was nowhere to be seen and had apparently left two years ago. The local chefs who claimed to have designed the menu were not sure how to define what they were serving.
Expectedly tired we gave up our pursuit and settled for a meal at our own hotel on the final evening. The co-chairman Francis Wacziarg, of the Neemrana group that owns the place being French we mildly hoped to be less disappointed. But that was settled as soon as our cheese platter arrived with a bottle of Indian wine from a very sparse wine menu (so much for French!). Even the cheeses were not from France and dominating the palette was a disgusting bland cheddar generously studded with roasted cumin seeds. The main course had a large section of ‘Creole’ food. Creole is a term generally associated with a kind of cuisine that is popular in Louisiana but the Puducherry-ites have appropriated it to describe anything they make with south Indian spices, which is not too rich and hot. Their claim to the term is derived from a group of people (of mixed Asian and European blood) called Creoles who were settlers in the French colony.
Sitting on the concrete seafront later that evening at the tourism department run La Café (snacking on croissants that tasted like egg-stuffed gujiyas) and watching children climbing a gigantic Gandhi statue, we talked of how much one could enjoy this very unique town if they were not burdened with expectations of French exotica. There was another thought that brought a smile- the idea of India might be elusive but one thing is for sure, wherever we go and whatever comes to us, we will steep in our colours till it is undistinguishable. We know no subtler love.
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