Anindita Sengupta

I love Rahman. I’ve loved him ever since I was a little girl and first heard his music in Roja. I am very happy that he won the Oscar. I would have been happier if he had won it for his best work (which Slumdog certainly isn’t) and if it didn’t take a white man’s film to precipitate this recognition. But I am happy.

Slumdog Millionaire is another matter. I can’t pretend to be surprised considering opinion polls all over the Internet predicted its win. But at a certain level, I am astonished. It’s beautifully shot and I loved the soundtrack. Some of the scenes were memorable. But an Oscar? Really?

Most people who’ve had a problem with Slumdog seem to parrot the same boring (and to my mind, ridiculous), pseudo-patriotic argument of ‘how dare anyone show our dirty underbelly’. The one we carefully keep layered up in all seasons. I have no problems with anyone showing anyone else’s underbelly. What I do have a problem with is weak story and bad acting. And then there’s the small matter of realism.

Now, clearly, there’s ‘reality’ and there’s reality. Slumdog specialises in one kind. There are the mutilated beggars, the prostitution, the evil mafia but it’s all so nicely sugarcoated with the big story of Redemption and Hope that in the end, all one walks away with is a happy song and visions of them dancing beside empty trains. The mutilated beggars, the prostitution, the domestic violence, police cruelty — all of it forgotten with a humming tune.

Because the movie cleverly skirts around the other reality. The one that happens to real people as opposed to movie people. The one in which poor boys do not know the answers to all the quiz questions because, well, the lack of education? — it’s a bit of a hindrance. The one in which it takes more to rescue a trafficked girl than two teenage boys with one gun. The one in which the simpering heroine is not saved by the love of a good man and has to either cope with the mess — or find her own way out.

Now, I’d be okay with all this skirting around reality (after all, I’m an avid Bollywood consumer) if the movie wasn’t being talked about as ‘realistic’. The fact that it is being talked about as realistic makes me think that many people are seriously delusional. Or there are two kinds of reality and people like one kind but not the other.

Bring on the slums, dude, but throw in a good ol’ love story, will ya? And make it, you know, hopeful?

Okay, so let’s move on to what’s worse about the movie. What’s worse about the movie is its hollow messaging as Mitu Sengupta at Alternet points out:

The film’s real problem is that it grossly minimizes the capabilities and even the basic humanity of those it so piously claims to speak for. It is no secret that much of “Slumdog” is meant to reflect life in Dharavi, the 213-hectare spread of slums at the heart of Mumbai. The film’s depiction of the legendary Dharavi, which is home to some one million people, is that of a feral wasteland, with little evidence of order, community or compassion. Other than the children, the “slumdogs,” no-one is even remotely well-intentioned. Hustlers, thieves, and petty warlords run amok, and even Jamal’s schoolteacher, a thin, bespectacled man who introduces him to the Three Musketeers, is inexplicably callous. This is a place of evil and decay; of a raw, chaotic tribalism.

Read the full thing.

Not snow geese, these. But beautiful all the same. Or at least, i think so. I’ve always liked geese despite their honking and their ill reputation as silly creatures. I think it’s because of ‘the ugly duckling’, one of my favourite fairy tale characters when i was little. Anyway, these were pets at one of the resorts where i stayed. They recently bred goslings, and grown-ups and babies were all having a jolly time in the green-brown pool.

And here is the poem ‘Snow Geese’ by Mary Oliver. Clearly, she likes geese too.

Because I’m in a book which also has Sharon Olds and Margaret Atwood. The book is Not A Muse, an anthology edited by Kate Rogers and Viki Holmes and published by Haven Books. Three of my poems — ‘Medusa’, ‘The Kitchen God’s Mistress’ and ‘Homecoming’ — are in it. It is being launched in Hong Kong on March 8. You can buy it here.

Also in the anthology are Sridala Swami, Nitoo Das.

In Kakkabe, high up on a mountain at the foot of Thadiyendamol, I meet E. Girl-woman who’s into peace and climbing peaks. I fall in love with the way she speaks — I think I keep her talking just to hear her form words. E is  from Moscow and wants to live in Nice some day, by the blue sea. She’s currently studying yoga in Mysore. She runs a tourism business through the internet using her smartphone. She could be a cliche but she’s not. She’s rather cool, in fact, though her enthusiasm for doshas and chakras is (ironically) alien to me.

We get lost a lot. On our way up to Thadiyendamol and back, we try shortcuts, jump the wrong walls, run up deeply mossed steps to the other side of the mountain. There is a feeling of constantly traveling sideways. Then there are the women. At a dead-end in the forest, a bland white house and in the verandah, a woman who fixes us with her mad eyes as if she knows our deepest secrets. Later, after a crossing of streams, a tribal woman who smiles in relief as if she likes unexpected guests, gives us water from her groundwater tap. I am struck by our differences, all of us, women standing on the same small bit of mountain.

About E, what stays with me are not the specifics so much as a ‘mood’, the air she carries about her — of adventure bordering on foolhardiness, and the kind of innocence that Indian girls must lose pretty quickly. E is not wary, furtive, careful, or cold around men she passes on the streets. She smiles, says hello. They look bemused, shy or amused depending on their age and general proclivities. When I am with her during these exchanges,  I look away, am often caught between grimace and smile. You see, I’m not used to such warmth with strange men. I’m more the ‘look through – look down – look sternly ahead’ kinda girl. This difference in our behaviour makes me think of the places we grew up in, the ways in which we grew up.

I wonder what it would be like to walk down a road and not see men as  potential trouble. To not shuffle or scuttle or sidle by.

***

After I got back, I rather instinctively googled  ‘russia women’ to find out more about gender constructs in modern-day Russia.  I say ‘instinctively’ because if I had stopped to think, I would have remembered the stereotype and expected the gadzillion dating and marriage sites I was hit with. Of course, I quickly modified my search with ‘gender relations’, ‘freedom of mobility’.  But I discovered little because the sea of dating sites and other stereotypes swamped everything else.

There were more putrid examples like this, but also reasonably innocent-sounding ones. This blogger talks about this phenomenon in some detail:

According to Google, all Russian women strive for one thing: a marriage with a foreigner. The first link that came up stated “All Russian Women Want to Escape from Russia” –  with an only intention of finding a foreign partner, of course….The ‘Russian woman’ as been turned into a brand by the internet.  I am surprised no one has registered the Russian Woman trademark yet. (Or has someone?)

Clearly, we have no other desires but to popularize ourselves with handsome foreign strangers who will whip out their cyber guides, make us borsch, and will then whisk us away from our homeland. Do women in other cultures have a better digital reputation?

So using the same, rather loose attitude-mapping tool, I googled ‘India women’. The top link was something about ‘100 beautiful Indian women’ but most of the other links on the first page dealt with women’s problems in one form or another — an article on the Mangalore bar attacks, a UN report on women’s status, a dated, bleak census report on women’s health. And I wondered if all of us are just traveling sideays after all, in our own corners of the world.

It’s cool. It’s cheeky. It’s clever. I’m talking about the Pink Chaddi Campaign. Women all over the country are gathering pink chaddis and sending them to Muthalik as a Valentine’s Day present. The plan is to strike disgust in the teensy little non-heart of our chief moral guardian — and to loudly assert the fact that the bogeymen of morality, dignity, chastity etc cannot be used to take our freedom away. Gifting panties may seem like a softer option than dung bombing his house but it makes a strong statement on our collective lack of ’shame’, the one quality he’s trying so desperately to instill in us.

And apparently, the organisers have planned a press conference to announce this because the point is also to generate talk. By cleverly using the media, these hoodlums have been spreading their propaganda far and wide. Time to pay them back in their coin, what?

So, pitch in with your panty power. The collection point is:

BANGALORE
The Pink Chaddi Campaign,
C/O Alternate Law Forum,
122/4 Infantry Road
(opposite Infantry Wedding House)
Bangalore 560001
Karnataka

Contact person: Nithin (9886081269)

Oh, as an aside, female underwear has been used as ammunition before.

As the bus rolls up a gentle incline, I stretch and shift in my seat, give up my frail attempt at sleep. It is 4 am. All night we have been traveling through small towns, the road a luminous rush outside the window, all sounds blocked by the antiseptic hum of the Volvo.  In 30 minutes, we will reach Virajpet and I will find myself stranded at a deserted bus station, but I do not know this yet.

I pull the curtain aside to trees outlined against the dark like giant ghosts.  The iPod beats a tune. I feel clear, unfogged. This is unusual — I am not a morning person. Forests at night can be suffocating in their density, a jumble of shadows. But the plantations of Coorg are different. Orderly in their beauty. Immensely cheerful. I catch some of this, even at this hour, like this.

A little later, I stand shivering at Virajpet bus station, cursing the cab driver who has not turned up. It is the darkest hour of night and the town looks scary as sleeping towns tend to. Nearby, a parked auto rickshaw with three men inside talking in low murmurs. A truck glows lurid yellow under a street lamp. There may be people inside but I’m not sure.  I try to look as inconspicuous as possible, given the fact that my jacket is fire-engine red. I  distract myself by thinking of how I will relate this little adventure once I’m home and safe.

When my cabbie arrives — Raja who has a bad cold and no handkerchief — I am relieved, as if I have met someone I love after many years. I collapse into the seat and forgive him. Because he has clearly dressed in a hurry. Because I am tired and need to pee. And because I love Coorg and am full of the joy of that.

The road from Virajpet to Kakkabe, higher up at the foothills of the Thadiyendamol peak, takes 45 minutes at this time. The road is smooth and Raja is friendly without being familiar. He asks me where I am from. Bangalore, I say. ‘No, native place?’ I hesitate. ‘Calcutta?’ I offer. ‘He seems satisfied, as if I have confirmed something. He has lived his whole life in Virajpet. I try to imagine the boundaries of his life.

We reach the home-stay an hour later and I tumble into my bed for a nap after watching dawn break over the hills. I wake up after two hours and step out of my room to this.

***

Blog posts on the trip may seem a bit disjointed. This is because I was in Coorg and Kabini to do some resort reviews and can’t say much without impinging on my stories.