The Revenant and Heroes

Hugh Glass gobbles up a raw fish; he bites into a piece of still warm raw bison liver and vomits right into it; a grizzly bear rips his flesh, leaving his bones visible; he pulls out the entrails of a dead horse and then snuggles into the carcass to keep himself warm. There are steep falls; animals and men torn to the barest. 

Here are a few random thoughts on The Revenant, in no way a review or even an analysis.

I usually wince when there is any violence, overt or covert. I shut my eyes for a few minutes. While watching The Revenant, I did not. There could be two explanations, both worrying: Either I have become immune to such scenes or the violence in the film is gratuitous, a sort of play-acting between big hunters and hunted with their positions alternating. 

The former reason may be ruled out, for I subsequently noticed that I continue to be squeamish even while watching National Geographic. But I am also not quite ready to dismiss the film’s bludgeoning aggression to gratuitousness simply because of Jim Bridger. 

Bridger and his demons

Jim Bridger and his face. A face registering pain, anger, loyalty, pusillanimity, and guilt. A face held together by wisps of gossamer that seem to have been jaded in the weather to give it a certain ruggedness. A face that can break. A face that deserves to be punched one minute and caressed the very next.

I did not know who the actor was. (Will Poulter, it turns out.) I have the advantage of distance — distance from Hollywood, even as trivia. In fact, it is only after watching the film that I got to know it is loosely based on a real story. Therefore, for all the difficulties a film crew faced, we realise that the reality must have been far worse. Yet, my appreciation of the film increased with this knowledge, for it could then be seen as a tribute to a period of hardship, of struggle, and of man and beast fighting for the same space and becoming like each other. 

Even in the much talked about skirmish with the bear scene, and despite the fact that after a couple of minutes of relentless assault it becomes a pantomime, the questions stand out: Was Glass pushing his animalistic limits or was the bear fighting for her humane space in protecting her cubs? 

The demarcation between man and beast is often blurred, and the moral queries are as much the animal’s as the human’s. Hugh Glass finding shelter in the carcass of a horse has a Pieta-like resonance; it is more familial than his relationship with his son, Hawk. For, the latter comes with the strings of fealty. Glass is concerned about co-traveller and opponent John Fitzgerald [Tom Hardy] killing Hawk, “because he was all I had”. Whereas the horse, belonging to another camp, helps him escape, proving to be useful even in death. 

Hugh Glass carries his son Hawk

Digression: I can imagine how in a Bollywood film, the hero would have named the horse Raja or Shera and the steed would have even shed a tear in the last moments! Perhaps I am replaying all this in my mind without the melodrama, although The Revenant has many moments of melodrama and of stylised pauses.

Leonard DiCaprio said in an interview:

They’re [Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki] very specific about their shots and what they want to achieve, and that — compounded with the fact that we were in an all-natural environment, succumbing to whatever nature gave us — was something that became more of a profoundly intense chapter of our lives than we ever thought it was going to be. It’s epic poetry, an existential journey through nature, and this man finding a will to live against all odds. Yet he changes, nature changes him and I think those elements changed him while we were doing the movie.

Glass’s pursuit of living is more than about survival for exacting revenge. He wants to live to be heroic. Part of the reason may have nothing to do with being left to the elements. It could be Hollywood. I do not keep count of awards. I have not watched enough DiCaprio films to be a fan. Exultations like, “Leo owned the Oscars” do not impress me. But, the first thought that came to my mind as The Revenant opened was indeed, “So Leo owned the Oscars?” 

The Revenant has several layers that will be visible only after the Hollywood star mask is scraped off. I am not an actor or one who even understands the intricacies of the craft. What I do know is that one should see the character, and not the actor, much less the star. 

Some critics have pointed out that Fitzgerald stands against Glass because he is a racist and cannot imagine why a white man would have married a Pawnee woman and then felt so protective about his half-Native son. But, while he does sound racist (explained as his own experience of being partially scalped by one), Fitzgerald is as much a fighter as Glass in the survival sense. He has plans for the future — despite the tortuous journey ahead, he wants to carry a heavy burden of pelts that they worked to get and that would be profitable. He agrees to stay back with a badly wounded and almost dead Glass who he’d prefer dead only because he is promised $300; it will buy him a home. He is the Ordinary Guy who makes an immobile and directionless Glass seem extraordinary. 

Fizgerald and Glass confront each other

Towards the end, when Fitzgerald is finally dying, Glass pushes him upstream to meet his fate. Heroic Glass does not take the responsibility to kill him for killing his son; he leaves it to god,  a lesson we are told he learned from the Native American who had nursed him for a bit, which again shows he has not learned too many lessons himself. His version of god seems to be the Arikara on the other side of the river who are certainly not going to spare Fitzgerald. Makes one wonder about Glass and his moral prism. 

Glass has no motive except to mourn for the fact that he has nothing to live for anymore, instead of finding a reason to live. Even the young Bridger, perhaps the youngest in the team, takes the risk to stay behind with someone who might die any minute. Bridger is a hero because he sees duty as beyond doing a job, and when he does leave Glass, he not only leaves behind his canteen but also an image of a caring person who is not so much saving his own life as preferring to stay away from witnessing one who he admires give up on life.

In the end, does Glass give up? He looks blankly ahead and then straight at the audience. His Native wife* floats in and out of his dreams with aphoristic fervour telling him that in a storm if you look at the branches you will see them bend but the trunk will not. Glass has internalised this, but then so does everyone else who is not yet dead. 

---

* Grace Dove who played the role of his wife tweeted: "Not gonna lie... Pretty bummed I didn't get an invite to the #Oscars."

Hello...hellow

I finally say hello to Hello. Stray wisps had come flying suggesting that I try and follow the trail where music gets drowned in the deluge of drama.

I like drama.

Hello leaves me unmoved. Can you hear me? Yes, I say it leaves me unmoved, and words of loss usually move me immensely. In fact, words move me as much as silences do when both seek to communicate.

So here I am, with Adele on my stomach. My breathing synchronised with her whispers and whimpers. I am lying down in bed. A Sunday afternoon in December feeling the late winter upon me.

I like the sound of hello, any hello. It is the beginning, even of the end.

Why does this Hello not work, then? Why is this Hello like the stretching of elastic, and not the thread that links? Why does it seem that the mundane is overwrought with the weight of ennui — to say that I've tried, I've tried, I've tried...

Running out of time? Hello! We do not know how much time is there to be able to measure its running out.

What does "hello from the outside" mean when it is the heart that breaks or is broken? There is no outside then. Not even when we break our own heart. It happens. Can you hear me? No? That's the outside. When you can't hear the sound of another's self-destruction.

"Did you ever make it out of that town where nothing ever happened..."

Is she hoping he has or delighting that he hasn't? Is it that nothing ever happened or something never did? Does another's stillness bother us when we are escaping from the noise or when we remember noises fondly?

Hello...could have been a deep sigh. Instead, it is a phone connection with too much static. Or, is she speaking from a phone that's dead, crying to herself about herself?

Is the hello just a question mark hanging in the air?

Sunday ka Funda

Symbols are not ritualistic. They often have deeper connotations. Ganesh Chaturthi is being celebrated now, but not many would ponder over what the elephant god means. One need not even be a believer to comprehend these symbols that seem more like a manual for ethical living. Rituals and deification, and marketing, alter the very nature of spiritualism and faith.

Spiritualism does not need the crutch of blind belief.

Somebody has filed a FIR against film director Ram Gopal Verma for these tweets:

• “The guy who couldn't save his own head from being cut , how he will save others heads is my question? But Happy Ganpathi day to morons!” • “Can someone explain how someone can cut off a child's head who was just trying to protect his mother's modesty? Am sure devotees know better”.
• “Can someone tell me if today is the day Ganesha was originally born or is it the day his dad cut his head off?”
• “Does Lord Ganesha eat with his hands or his trunk?”
• “I would really love to know from Lord Ganesha's devotees a list of what obstacles he removed in all the years they prayed to him.”
• “Happy Ganesh chaturdhi. .may this day 29th aug bring prosperity and happiness to everybody so that there will be no problems from 30th aug.”
• “I think my films are flopping only becos of my attitude towards Gods. ..I wish I can become a devotee.”

Although some might seem insulting, the general tone is childlike. Children often pose valid, if uncomfortable, queries. All religious fables have one given meaning, and the rest are open to interpretation.

For that, one needs to have an open mind that can read between the lines.

Umbrellas under the sky

The umbrellas are out, and the city weather is such that they only serve as accoutrement. Mumbai rains are more about tarpaulin sheets as awnings; water collected in little pools is muddy, dirty. Yet, there is something uplifting about grey skies and a downpour. I know this is a luxury only those who have homes and windows can afford. I know that newspaper pictures showing slum kids enjoying the rains are really about the water they rarely get to see. I know.

Back in the days, it was the mother of one such kid who sheltered me from sudden showers. I was walking to school, and had conveniently ‘forgotten’ to carry an umbrella. While raincoats were bad enough, umbrellas too conveyed a need for playing safe that my new teenage mind was naturally not inclined to. I stood beneath a tree as the downpour continued. She worked as a sweeper at the school. Hesitant at first (we are a casteist society), she finally asked, “Aaogi (will you come)?” Of course! In the seven-minute walk, she took care to cover me even as her sari was getting drenched. I still remember her face.

A painting by Leonid Afremov

I like faces under umbrellas – they look vulnerable, especially if the brolly is a foldable one. These became fashionable accessories, the two-fold and later the three-fold. Unfurling they looked as though a camel was getting up. Occasionally, they caused embarrassment when they refused to open up or the button got stuck.

My uncle once gifted me a fuschia-coloured one. It was a regular ‘ladies umbrella’, and it always seemed as though one was blushing. The flush of youth, the carefree gait as though one owned the damp roads that reflected light.

A scene from 'Shri 420'

Romance and umbrellas have a history. Two people sharing an umbrella signals proximity, and also the whole drama of wetness, hair dripping, faces aglow, and the low hum. This scene from ‘Shri 420’ epitomises it. Raj Kapoor and Nargis singing, “Pyaar hua iqrar hua, pyaar se phir kyon darta hai dil…(There is love, and an admission of it, yet why is the heart so afraid of it)” Perhaps because like the showers, there is no “manzil” (destination)?

Chaplin used the umbrella for other reasons

The large black umbrella is ubiquitous in the streets. They may come in different varieties, but the sturdy one with the curved handle stands for the person who has nothing to gain and nothing to lose. It was there is R.K.Laxman’s cartoons of the common man. And it is there in Chaplin, the tramp, the guy who does not think about winning or losing, and bumbles his way through life that is often slippery. And slip he does, rain or no rain. It also acts as a crutch, something to hold on to when things go a little wrong or one’s own resolve is a bit shaky.

The black stands out against the mélange of colours, not only of other umbrellas but also of the shades that dot the Indian landscape, from paan spit to dead flowers, to neon clothes, to kitschy posters.

Umbrella tree - street art

This piece of street art is not Indian, but such a fine tribute to the umbrellas that have been a part of my monsoons. Some were lost or got stolen as they stood propped up outside stores or in buckets…and some just closed themselves on me.

© Farzana Versey

Couples DO consciously uncouple

If you have not walked down that street, stop spraying near every lamppost. Those commenting on how others decide to term their personal lives is the stuff of gossip, and does not in any way express the concern for relationships they claim to uphold.

The phrase under the scanner, and that caused sniggers, is 'conscious uncoupling', used by Hollywood actress Gwyneth Paltrow and her musician husband Chris Martin after a decade of marriage. It was a joint statement, but Paltrow has had to bear the brunt of "sickly self-serving twaddle". This should tell us something about the stupendously 'unconscious' lives making lobotomised decisions that are holding forth.

Parting is never easy. In intimate relationships, you have to reclaim yourself. You do seek euphemisms, because it has to do with how you project your life from past to future. You feel like shit even if you are the one to opt out. You feel like shit even if you knew it was coming. You feel like shit when you stand bare and look for warts because you must have screwed it up. You feel like shit as vultures view your vulnerability with binoculars.

You have to look the voyeurs in the eye, with their happy shared-diaper duties, joint-account couplings, looking for your availability, your blotches. You feel like shit. But you have other things to do, even if the relationship was your priority, and not just because you were given the keys to the kingdom in a barter. You may not even have a signed piece of paper. You just have your dignity.

You may not utter the D word or mention the breakup for months, years.

Gwyneth and Chris had to announce it because their lives are public, and they did so gracefully:

"...we have come to the conclusion that while we love each other very much we will remain separate. We are, however, and always will be a family, and in many ways we are closer than we have ever been. We are parents first and foremost, to two incredibly wonderful children and we ask for their and our space and privacy to be respected at this difficult time. We have always conducted our relationship privately, and we hope that as we consciously uncouple and coparent, we will be able to continue in the same manner."

For anyone to assume that only celebrities have to deal with verbal issues to break the news reveals ignorance. On legitimised kingsize beds, in denial about their compromised existence based on mortgages and suspicions camouflaged as concern, they do you.

Take this from Jan Moir in Daily Times:

"An irony-free chunk of classic Paltrow pretentiousness, it made them sound like two camels detaching from a desert train in search of tastier macro-biotic foliage...Like a pair of tights who suddenly find out that they were stockings all along. Being ‘consciously uncoupled’ certainly made breaking up the family home and ‘co-parenting’ nine-year-old Apple and Moses, seven, seem like something holistic and pure; an experience you’d order at a wellbeing spa, along with the coffee enema."

Besides the use of terrible metaphors (unless she has an organic acquaintance with camels), this bilge will not fathom that It is holistic to be conscious when you make a life-changing decision. Being free from dithering is pure.

It is pure when you don't live on dregs of how you are measured. It is holistic and pure to not be stuck in a groove of a fake smile and the warmth of nostalgia for what you were when you are. It is pure when you are fair to the roads you travel through, not just the moss that's gathered around you.

When you decide to uncouple, you can't just 'unconsciously' walk away into the sunset.

© Farzana Versey

Sunday ka Funda

"No, you can't lose a broken heart..."

You can. There are takers for shards...to recycle, perhaps, to want to bleed, to find some sheen in those pieces. But, more importantly, this is for those of us who do not think things out, who are upfront, and who finally do ourselves in...


"Take a walk
Think it over
While strolling neath the moon
Don't say things in December
You'll regret in June

Weigh your remarks
Before you speak
Or you may be sorry soon,
Don't be erratic
Be diplomatic
To keep your heart's in tune

Cruel harsh words
Often spoken
Will upset your applecart
So don't lose your head...
Cus, you can't lose a broken heart..."

▶ Billie Holiday - You Can't Lose a Broken Heart (HD) Officiel Seniors Musik 

Sunday ka Funda

Do things ever leave? Maya, illusion or reality, hovers around in stray thoughts, words. Its - her - presence is so all-pervasive that even if she has taken up space, her existence seems less hurting than the constant memory where even her aches like falling leaves are not soundless. Or is it only perception, or the fear of her, of her quiet exit?

"saavan ke kuchh bheege bheege din rakhe hain

aur mere ek khat mein liptee raat padee hai

woh raat bhulaa do, mera woh saamaan lautaaa do"

A few wet days of rain are there

and in my one letter a night is encased

Take that night away, but do return my belongings.

The subtle pathos of Gulzar's poetry is also dryly taunting. Emotions are 'samaan', things. They take shape, become real. Maya does not merely haunt; she lives.

Sunday ka Funda

"''Home' is any four walls that enclose the right person."

- Helen Rowland

I like the tagline: "Har ghar kuchch kehta hai" (every house speaks). For a paint ad, this seems like an obvious choice. But how often do homes talk or convey anything?

This ad in some ways is all about stereotypes — the armyman's discipline and the woman leaving her maternal home. While the emotions are subtly conveyed, through his concern for decorating the bedroom like the one in her house, a mere replication does not take a relationship forward.

Nitpicking aside, the words and feelings stay with you.

"Tell me whom you love and I will tell you who you are."

- Arsene Houssaye

Sunday ka Funda

“All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last.”

- Marcel Proust

The devil reporter wears emotions?

A rape apologist is somebody who condones rape, not one who reports on its verdict. The Steubenville trial has concentrated on making a devil of a reporter by comparing what she said with the terrible online comments. How concerned about rape are those who merely ‘followed’ the herd to outrage about the news?  All those who downloaded or watched the YouTube clips are as much rape apologists as Poppy Harlow. 

The CNN site and others have got many hits. Yet, who has bothered to even mention that she called it a “serious crime”?  That is just so tame and obvious, isn’t it? So, this quote from her has made it:

"Incredibly difficult, even for an outsider like me, to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart."

The screenshot reproduced by Mashable has the incessant query, “Not one word about the victim.” What do they want to know about the victim that has not been already reported? Is this a spectator sport? Trent Mays and Ma'Lik Richmond were sentenced for raping a 16-year-old by a juvenile court. Why are rapists punished? Because society needs to understand that they are committing a crime against women, against another human being. 

The idea is to make an example of them, and what better way than to mention that they were star football players and good students who had indeed lost it all for behaving in such an atrocious manner. Is this not the message that has to be sent across to other young men that, whoever you are, if you commit a crime, then this is what you get? 

One recalls other crimes, including mass murder and terrorism, where the convicts has been deemed insane. This results in covert sympathy, which is far worse.

You might ask: why was it difficult for a reporter or the news anchor to discuss emotions? Check out the comments. Anger is also an emotion. Pity is an emotion. Had the judge let them off, most people would have reacted emotionally. It was difficult to sit in the courtroom probably because both of the convicted got up and apologised to the family of the victim; one broke down. It is not about sympathy for their crime, but for their response to being punished. I would judge Harlow harshly had the verdict been innocent and she had said that this was an incredibly emotional moment watching as these two footballs stars and good students could return to a new life that awaited them. This was not the case.

A report further states:

(Candy) Crowley turned to legal expert Paul Callan who sounded almost apologetic when explaining how the rape conviction will mean that the Steubenville rapists will now be registered sex offenders and how that "will haunt them for the rest of their lives." None of these things said were untrue. But the tone was certainly a little off.

How does anyone decode that the tone was off? As I said, the report was about the trial, not on the rape. The emphasis ought to be on the rapists who will be tainted for the rest of their lives. This is as it should be, for the usual narrative is that it is the victim who is so tainted and who has to live with this all her life.  If, for the sake of argument, the tone sounded apologetic, it does not reverse the judgment. It brings to the fore that whatever anyone might feel those two young men will have to live with it, their futures have been mucked up. Justice has been done.  

Ohio attorney general Mike DeWine said after the verdict, "As I said already, any rape is a tragedy. But, it is even more of a tragedy when that victim is continually re-victimized in the social media."

This is what people should understand, instead of a typical knee-jerk reaction.

But, then, it is becoming increasingly impossible to do so.  Online abuses by anonymous blokes are being spread around by women, giving even more ammo to them.  How many of those reading these get sensitised? It just becomes part of the sickening term ‘rape culture’ that even well-known commentators use with impunity.

One report while rubbishing CNN – that I do not admire, anyway – talked about how the circus has just begun. Well, the moral high-standing falls flat on its face when you decide to ignore the crime and only watch the ensuing performance. How many referred to the victim while pulling up those who they think are rape apologists? Online warriors are primarily online voyeurs. This is being an apologist, too.

There is also a clear hierarchy regarding who to feel sympathy for. A few days ago in Mumbai, four men sodomised a eunuch, stubbed him with cigarettes, poured kerosene on him and threw him out of the moving car in which they committed the crime. Has there been any reaction to it except for a newspaper report? For all those who participate in the Gay Pride parade and offer lip sympathy to the LGBT community, this still remains an area of darkness. One of the reasons is that liberalism is all about accepting, but not questioning crimes towards the community as well as within it.

© Farzana Versey

Sunday ka Funda

“Neither can the wave that has passed by be recalled, nor the hour which has passed return again."

- Ovid

Yet, we always wait...sometimes for nothing in particular. This song probably has nothing, but it lulls, it soothes. It makes one realise that waiting is all about the slow pace of understanding every moment going away...

Love Anarchy

Kang Yi stripped down to a thong while a young woman gave him love bites. Performance art is almost always controversial. What was the significance of this one staged on a podium at a Guangzhou auditorium?

He said: 

“It's a critique of the concept of chaotic love. I hope that my art piece will call out to today's youth to seek out the excellent genuine love and feelings of traditional China.”

A young woman, a student, spent an hour and a half bruising him with her lips. His chest, abdomen and arms were soon covered with hickeys. It is pertinent that he chose to stand in a Christ-like pose. If we use this as metaphor, then he sees excessive expression of love as no different from hate, of being nailed to a Cross, all to save his people.

The report states:

He also donned tree roots in his hair to signify time and tied three roasted chickens to the plank across his shoulders that positioned his body into a cross-like shape.

Does Time here denote going back to an age where love was mostly devoid of feeling? The roasted chickens covey death as well as sustenance. It is about survival.

Chicken skinning, cooking, carving are as much part of modern-day culinary tradition as they were in rudimentary form in the early days.

By trying to demonstrate what is wrong about such love, Kang is in fact making it seem desirable. He is the centre of that universe where a woman submits to him. His stoic stance is less of a saint and more of a taker. The master commanding that his needs be ministered to. His hot flesh waiting to be bitten into. And his being tied up frees him from having any commitment.

The woman whose lips too would have tired after 75 minutes of such activity is just a tool for his needs. Had the performance shown her writhing or expressing some emotion, it might have been ‘chaos’. Besides, the nature of physical love is subject to how two consenting adults choose to ‘perform’ it. No one is privy to what the traditionalists did in their bedrooms. Chaotic love is not one-sided, unless it is exploitation.

Emotional love is more often about an individual pitted against another. Two people cannot feel the same for each other with similar intensity and the nature of that love will witness varied shades along the way. This does cause turmoil. Tradition cannot save it. If anything, people have been forced into dismal relationships because tradition left them with no option but to follow the rules of the game as reckoned by their roots. This happens in most societies even today.

Kang is merely a revivalist who is using exhibitionism, much like a man enjoying life in a nudist colony trying to sell clothes to others. 

- - -

Images: Daily Mail

Many-layered women and memories: Yash Chopra's lamhe

How often have some of us quoted the lines, “Main aur meri tanhai aksar baatein kiya karte hai” (my loneliness and I often talk to each other) and “Kabhi-kabhi mere dil mein khayal aata hai” (sometimes, my heart thinks these thoughts)…they encapsulated the cinema of Yash Chopra and of many of our own lost and found memories.

He has been called the King of Romance, and perhaps rightly so, but I’d not limit him to that. There are two ways of seeing a movie – the way in which it is projected and the emotional chord that touches us. I do like the sight of large expanses of tulips and love expressed in song right in the middle of these flowers, but it is in the tight close-ups, the speaking eyes, the quivering lips, the short lines and longer monologues that we may find something more to relate to.

Yash Chopra was most certainly not making candyfloss, and I am not saying so because he is no more. I cannot think of a single weak woman in any of his directorial ventures. Even in Deewaar, made famous also by that one line “Mere paas ma hai” in the conflict between the two brothers, between good and evil, it is so obvious that the mother figure had nurtured the good. The son was not making the choice; she had made him capable enough to have her close to him. And in the death scene, when the bad son lies in her lap, he does not need any god. His retribution is complete.

It also quite blatantly showed a non-traditional woman, despite smoking and living with the man, as someone in control of her life. There did not appear to be any judgement passed on her, nor did it look like the guy was doing her a favour and making a good woman of her.

In Kabhi Kabhi too there was the ‘other’ man/woman. Imagine a situation where a woman on her wedding night sings a song based on the poetry of the man she was in love with. Here was readymade material for a tear-jerker. Instead, she chooses to move on and build a beautiful and happy life. The man, now the other, also happens to be the other to his own wife, who when taunted with her past (and a daughter from that relationship), chooses to confront him about his double standards and makes ready to leave rather than live with the hypocrisy.

In Trishool, the ‘encounter’ scene between father and abandoned son relied on just one truly cutting sentence, when the younger man tells the older one, “Aap mere najaaiz baap ho" (You are my illegitimate father).

Yash Chopra did deal with 'irregular' relationships within the ambit of mainstream cinema. That is why it was difficult to hail him for these qualities and instead many chose to stick to the romantic genre, which can actually mean so many things.

Take Daag. Much of the film was relegated to the indoors, in the dark. A man with two wives, reuniting with his old love and having to stealthily convey it, “Mere dil mein aaj kya hai, tu kahe tau main bataa doon, teri zulf phir sawaroon, teri maang phir sajaa doon…mujhe devta banaakar teri chaahaton ne pooja, mera pyaar keh raha hai main tujhe khuda bana doon”. Trapped in circumstances, all he can do is ask her if she will permit him to express his feelings. The stream of worship-godliness is woven into this narrative.

With Lamhe, he broke so many shackles. A girl falls in love with the man who was in love with her mother. Of course, she does not know it, and her mother did not know about his feelings either, since she was in love with someone else who she married.  Here too, the young woman is strong-willed, expressive and even when she discovers the truth, she makes him realise that he loved an idea, a thought. Those moments – lamhe – were lost.

I find it strange that this is seen as the Elektra Complex (in fact, it is mistakenly referred to as the Oedipal Complex). Freud is a good way to study anything, but the girl grows up without even seeing the man, who is her guardian. She is also in love with an idea, expressed with birthday gifts that she leaves unopened. It is that heartbeat of meeting him when she is old enough and sees a man, a male, who she first had a vague idea about and who became real enough to fantasise about.

Yash Chopra’s last film as director was Veer Zaara. It is perhaps one of the finest ‘messages’ in terms of communalism, Indo-Pak relationship, prisoners (real and caged by love), and nostalgia. However, he did not stop at the pining. He gave it a fitting ending. Yes, I did wonder why the Pakistani woman came to India and lived her life as she would if she had married him. The answer lies in every moment he spends in chains behind the prison walls, incarcerated without trial, aware that he was protecting her honour. This sounded old world, to an extent even regressive. How important is such honour? But this was early years after Partition; it had to do with families, reputations. It had to do with love that had to be silenced.

Greying, but still running about and active, she does not regret the life she chose. She built a new life, without any monument, without fanfare. We know of it only towards the end when he is free, aided by a strong and empathetic woman lawyer. We know if it when he holds up one of her anklets from those many years ago, not as shiny anymore, that he had kept as remembrance.

 “Main pal do pal ka shaayar hoon

Pal do pal meri kahaani hai

Pal do pal meri hasti hai

Pal do pal meri jawaani hai.”

Sahir Ludhianvi conveyed this best in the Kabhi Kabhi song - My poetry, my life, my identity, my youth are but for a moment or two…only those who create lasting impressions understand the value of such evanescence. 

PS: I have not named the characters deliberately, for as I implied in the beginning it could be you, it could be me.  

Sunday ka Funda

"The kindness I have longest remembered has been of this sort, the sort unsaid; so far behind the speaker's lips that almost it already lay in my heart. It did not have far to go to be communicated."

- Henry Thoreau

But some silences are helpless, forced by nature. The striving to communicate becomes a cry.
Watch this truly touching Thai commercial for life insurance:

 

Bollywood’s Killing Fields

Her life is pornography. Even as their bare bodies are entwined for a few minutes of pleasure, Mahi Arora is capturing the scene on her camera.

I know a wannabe Mahi from years ago. Strange hands splashed whipped cream in her cleavage, crawling higher and lower than needed, the movements robotic. There was awkwardness in her demeanour. I watched this helplessly at a photographer’s studio. The girl and I both rookies, our silences bought by fake dreams. She was a struggling actress and I was there to capture that struggle, write about it, take the message to the world. I felt like a lowlife. And when I did speak, the response hit me: “We are preparing her for the movies.”

This was foreplay where everyone wanted to be a part of what might be a success story. Kingmakers, rag makers stitching clothes so close to the skin that the needles poked into pores. 

***

The film Heroine has been panned by critics because it uses clichés. By turning away from clichés we often lose out on truth. It is superficial in parts because Bollywood is superficial.

The casting couch is a reality few want to accept even if they have made the mandatory visit to The Permanent Suite.  After the first time, it ceases to be about sex or even power. The “heroine ka rate-card” reveals how she is being degraded to fight for every endorsement, party invitation, paid guest appearance at some rich person’s wedding as the bride’s friend and not a celebrity. The diva is now a hanger-on, acting that part in real life so that she can retain the title of superstar.

I wept during the film not because Kareena Kapoor has torn every emotion to reveal shreds, but because I thought about whipped-cream Shanti. A name so common it had to be changed. It did not alter her destiny. Her foundation lay thick on the face, ending at the jawline, revealing another shade of neck. She was the tacky adornment in a few films that released in seedy cinema halls. Then, she disappeared.

I saw her a while ago at a televised award function. She was clapping away, her makeup a bit garish but not gauche, and a new body that she could afford to buy. Her rate-card had been made. She did not need to act anymore. Her applause was genuine. It was for a contemporary who had made it. She knew what their respective prices were. This was happiness projected.  

***

Every day brings a new story of desperate measures to seek attention. Some years ago when I read about a starlet’s tale of woe, I knew there was something amiss. She called up a newspaper office in an agitated state to talk about a photographer who was blackmailing her. She said, “The pictures were taken of me in a bathtub, but there was no indecent exposure. It’s no big deal, but I just felt they should not be published anywhere.”

So why was she making a big deal of it? If she believed that a picture in a bathtub did not constitute indecent exposure, then what was she worried about? Nobody pushed her into it. She had posed for them, some had been printed, and she had not objected at the time. The photographer would not gain much, for the supply of women in bathtubs exceeded the demand. But, by creating a buzz, she sent out a message to those who mattered – the filmmakers – that she had no qualms about posing in such a manner. She had to rescue her soap bubble existence.

It is not difficult to understand the extent people will go to in order to become automated products in phantom factories. It is a cruel world and they unknowingly make it even more cruel by sleeping with the nightmare. Often, the women hang on to men, sometimes to further their career or to portray themselves as a hit pair or to enhance self-esteem.

***

In Heroine a desperate Mahi, hands shakily holding cigarettes, liquor glasses, pills, eyes glazed with self-pity, is addicted to love. She clings to it and when she is tossed out like a squashed insect, its hair-like feet still writhing with life, she does not hesitate to use her private moments. She tells her PR agent to leak out the love-making clip with her star boyfriend. Had she captured it as a keepsake, or did she instinctively know that the only way to keep people was to be ready to risk losing them?

It happens with madams in brothels who were once prostitutes. They sting back at the new girls and the pimps with a mixture of benevolence and cunning. They are recreating their misery. The masochism psychologically scars them.

Heroine’s director Madhur Bhandarkar has created some caricatures. There is also pop psychology about people from broken homes and he is not as harsh on men. In a way, this works because the female star’s loneliness comes across more poignantly. She is leading an LSD existence, hallucinating about herself. Bollywood has amplified her persona, so when she sees it reduced in the bedroom or when her mouth tastes dust from the street, she internalises these as her own flaws. 

Clark Gable, who had a number of famous Hollywood stars as conquests, said he preferred prostitutes. “Because they go away and keep their mouths shut. The others stay around, want a bit of romance, movie lovemaking.”

He was expected to recreate in his bedroom what he had done under the arclights. That is the fantasy many of them begin to believe. And they try out various ruses on fading magic carpets.

Mahi, beaten and defeated, leaves for autumnal Europe where she can deny who she is. Is there really any escape? The Bollywood she was a part of thrives on killing identities. It is always synthetic spring here.

Published in Express Tribune, Sept 29

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Also an old post here: The Fedora in us 

When faith causes fissures

Can religion make couples drift apart? It would seem so, and the Katie Holmes-Tom Cruise divorce has put this in the public arena, although other factors might well have played a role.

"There's a gorilla in the room, and it's Scientology," said a famous attorney. It is about control, apparently. They control Tom and how he proceeds with major decisions in his life.

Other things aside, including Hollywood fame, belief systems do indeed interfere in personal interactions. If they are of an intimate nature, and have far-reaching social dimensions that involve familial ties, then there is little hope for a couple to live in a bubble.

The fact is that Katie immediately reconverted to her Catholic faith and was welcomed back into the church. Is she looking for moral validation for her act? Does the congregation make her feel less isolated? Is it a form of purging from an 'outcast' cult that she seemed to have been forced into tolerating?

She and Tom got married through the Church of Scientology. It follows a completely different set of rules. Was love so overpowering that she did not think about what it entailed? If, as reports suggest, she lived under a supposedly controlled situation, then how much of it is due to Scientology and how much because of his greater fame, his age, and the general patriarchal nature of most male-female relationships?

Besides, no religion can be interpreted in truly feminist or pro-woman terms. We may find a few needles in the haystack about progressive women, empowered women. But it is largely a man's club.

One would have thought that a quasi religion, that relies on psychology and marketing, might have sought to break through stereotypes. But, it is offering itself as an alternative. It isn't an 'unfaith'. It seems to simulate a belief system with greater ritualistic fervour. There is talk of hypnosis. All religions rely on it, although less obviously so. Only because L. Ron Hubbard, the founder, did not hear voices or fought for his people does not as a consequence make him less of a prophet to the followers. Instead of emotion, the appeal is rational. Katie was treated like a robot. Did daughter Suri togged up in designer wear become an automaton, programmed to be a label even as she wore some?

This is an intriguing thought: Is faith itself robotic? Many religions rely on the emotive nature to lure the masses (blind love?), yet talk about the practical nature of practices or their symbolic value. Staunch believers are not unlike spouses; the purpose seems to be to keep the house in order and perpetuate the lineage, to consider only one god as supreme - polytheism too uses a godhead with others as offshoots, somewhat like offspring - and to face the consequences of any sort of disloyalty. Blasphemy is like adultery. Marriage is, after all, an institution.

Similarly, other ideologies too can mess up relationships, unless there is complete fealty towards the same belief or a submergence of individual identity into that of the human god/goddess/thought leader along with an unseen power.

It is a pity that people do not consider this aspect when they decide to marry. For what you believe in, non-belief too qualifies, affects behavior, attitude, social norms. Suspension of disbelief works more for reality than for fiction.