It has been a while since my last post. I have been in the United States for the last month, and while I thought I would be going home, canvasing for Hilary Clinton, sharing her victory over glasses of wine with my mom and writing a bunch of quippy posts and coming back. But only the first and last of those things happened, and in between my life has been a strange and polarized mix of horror, pain and fear for my country, and the euphoria of being home, of seeing so many people who I love, of reveling in Ramen shops and bakeries and amazing coffee and good red wine. I am grateful that I was home in the United States for this, I am, because being in India would have been so much worse on some level for me, so isolating, at least, that’s what I think it would have been like, I suppose I’ll never know. So I gave a lot of money (relative to my life, of course) , and signed a lot of petitions, and had long talks filled with tears and anger and rage and pain and laughter with some of the smartest best people I know, and made action plans and called my senators and called Paul Ryan, who somehow is now like the most reasonable person at the table, remember how that happened? Me neither. I saw theater, life affirming joyous theater about the Vietnam War, and Drag Queens, and Alexander Hamilton. I went to museums and spent time with objects from ancient Jerusalem that have seen empires rise and fall and watched the tides of history foam red with blood, looked at paintings that were the sole voices of the Mexican revolution, marveled at pretty gowns from the 17th century and vases from Ancient Greece and serpents from 13th century Mexico and tried to remember that life is long, and the world, somehow, miracle that it is, keeps on turning. I met babies, and the parents of babies, some terrified, some hopeful, but all in love with their wobbly noisy messy piece of the future. I met my editor, and my agent, because oh yes I suppose I should mention that I sold my first novel and it will be released in the spring of 2018, stay tuned for updates I guess. But I haven’t been writing, really. Not here, at least.
When speaking with my friend Sarah about the helplessness you feel when you can’t control the future, and everything that is happening feels terrifying and out of your control, as it does right now in the current American political situation, we were talking about how we could contribute to anything we believed in. Period. And she said, well, you’re a writer. So I guess you’ll write about it. And I thought, I guess I well.
Years ago my husband, Mr. India, back when he was just some dude I was dating, gave me a book called The Home and the World. It’s a novel set in Bengal in the early 1900’s, and it’s a love triangle set in the context of the Bengal independence movement. A husband educated in the West, his provincial wife, and the charismatic local rebel leader, all dance around each other, and it’s wonderfully done. But the thing that struck me about it recently is the way the husband and wife want impossible things from each other in very real ways. She wants to experience her husband the way she expects to, the way she’s been trained to see him, as a god, a provider, her authority and master. He wants a modern wife, someone who will be his equal, his partner. They both want the same things for Bengal, but it’s the ways the things they don’t understand about each other that destroy them on some level (oh, spoiler alert I guess). At the time, I liked the novel, and Mr. India and I talked for a long time about the paradigm of marriage within it. The title is one meant to polarize, to call into contrast two parts of life, private and public, and the way one is infiltrated by the other.
But this is 2016 and I am not a traditional Indian wife, I’m not an Indian wife at all. And our lives are infiltrated by the world, in fact, that’s how we often pick partners now, the way we chose to approach the world together. And there are challenges, to being vastly different in your backgrounds, believe me, there are. But this November, now December, I feel very grateful that I am with someone who thinks very differently and as an extension has different expectations about the world. In fact, I’m even grateful to be living in a place that conceives of the world so differently than the United States. Hard as it can be to come back, and it is hard, really, the transition is the hardest part and I dread what thing will enrage or sadden me before I get used to India again, I do, but India has given me a perspective I never would have had, and Mr. India has given me a way to think about this post-Election world that I feel lucky to possess. So I will share this with you, just in case it helps. And if it doesn’t, thanks anyway for reading.
When I was sobbing and despairing, which I still do, ps, I’m sure most people who feel this way will for a while, and that’s alright, it was initially difficult that Mr. India didn’t feel the same way. But then, I knew, how could he? After all, I didn’t have the same emotional reaction to India’s recent efforts to eliminate black money and double down on corruption the way he did, how could I expect him to be living in the same kind of anguish I was? Anguish is, by the way, someone told me recently, a kind of moral responsibility, and if that’s not the best term to describe this, I don’t know what is. But beyond the initial alienation I felt, the how-dare-you-not-feel-how-I-feel which, of course, is insane, because no one ever does, and can’t, and shouldn’t, an outside perspective did a lot more good than harm.
Because the one thing Mr. India told me that reminded me of something I sort of understood but hadn’t realized until I’d come to India, was that the United States has a democracy that is firm and robust, made strong through years of existence. Living in India, a fragile democracy if there ever was one, I still forget how young the government here is, how old my own is, how much we depend on checks, balances and precedent. The United States is the oldest colonial democracy, the longest running show on the political Broadway of life, it’s the Fantasticks, Phantom, Book of Mormon someday. You don’t run this long without figuring out how to deal with bad cast members, shitty directors, old costumes and bad crowds, right? Mr. India’s confidence in the American system, an outsider’s confidence, came at the time I most needed it. I need it still. And he reminded me of that thing I had been so conscious of on a small-scale in day to day life in Mumbai, that systems here very rarely work, at least, in contrast to a system in the West. For example, if you tell your congressman something, he’s legally obliged to deal with that. That’s a real part of the way things work. If you tell a politician something here, well, cool story bro. You get the representation you pay for here. Now, you could say that in the West too, in the US, but it’s not so excruciatingly literal, and for some reason I take comfort in that.
Another lesson I’ve learned, which is one that made me feel stupid, horrible and small, is that I really think that the United States was better than India, in terms of hate, prejudice, polarized living, awareness, all of it. I thought somehow our foundations as people were built on something different, better, really. And we aren’t. No one is above hate, or prejudice, and I shouldn’t have thought that we were. That was my own prejudice, my own ignorance, and I’m most ashamed of that.
India is a country that has known for long time that every section of society is living in a different reality. I guess that’s probably how most large countries feel. And that’s clearly how the United States works too, but I didn’t know that. And I know it now. And the biggest lesson I can take from that is that we need to do better, we cannot be complacent in that. Because a few Americas will turn into a thousand. There are and always have been a thousand Americas. And India is working, slowly, slowly, but all the time, to fill that gap. So must we.
Usually I start these posts with a quote. Today I’m ending with one, from a New Yorker article about cleaning the Ganges.
“India is a land of discouragement. If you’re not discouraged by the harsh summers, then you are discouraged by the cow eating your plant, or the motorbike or tractor or car that is running over your plant, or the neighbor who is plucking the leaves from it just for fun as he is going by. If you can’t deal with discouragement, India has no place for you.” – Navneet Raman, the chairman of the Benares Cultural Foundation
Perhaps the reality is the world has no place for the easily discouraged, for those who give up. I am living in a place that is full of problems, problems on a scale beyond those of the United States in very real ways, they just are, but there is still the work, the people who believe in it, work for it, who refuse for be discouraged. If nothing else, I am glad to be here, and to have learned that. We have no right to be discouraged. I have no right to stop writing, silly nothing it might be to put out into the massive void that exists. Discouragement is a trap. India knows that. So must we. So must I.
Fall foliage.
Art helps
Snake knots abound.
I guess the trend in 1000 was just beards that became your face.
The cure for everything is salt water, sweat, tears, or the sea.
You and me both
In my absence my cat has torn out a bunch of his fur so I guess he and I are on the same page, emotionally.
When a person is accustomed to 138 in the shade, his ideas about cold weather are not valuable….In India, “cold weather” is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.
– Following the Equator Mark Twain
Someone recently asked me what fall was like in India. Honestly, I have no idea. The weather recently turned from the monsoon season, which was days upon days of pouring rain, flooding our courtyard and the streets around us, to sweltering weather. So I guess fall is…something like that?
Last year, I moved to India in September (GOOD Lord), at the tail end of the season. This year, the season stretched on into the high holidays, and I celebrated Rosh Hashanah in the basement of a tiny synagogue in the heart of South Bombay, waiting for the rain to pass.
It is a strange thing to live in a place where it rains for months, and then doesn’t rain for months. Still, the extremes of India actual have highlighted an aspect of Indian behavior I had not previously understood. I thought Americans, specifically East Coasters, were obsessed with talking about the weather, but that’s nothing on Indians. Every time I talk about a place, or we visit a place, or people come back from a vacation somewhere, within five minutes someone will ask about the weather. How was the weather? Did you have good weather? Is the weather generally good? I went away for the weekend just for the weather.
I personally don’t think much about the weather in a larger sense. I mean, I look it up, so I know what to wear, but in terms of travel, it doesn’t dictate many of my decisions. Frankly, it just doesn’t affect me much. Which is probably a good thing, given where I currently live. I was reading a travel forum before I moved to Mumbai, and a woman from England had asked where she could travel in India if she didn’t like temperatures above 70 degrees farenheit. The advice from the forum? Don’t go to India.
So it’s always interesting to me that other people ask how the weather is wherever I go. Part of this might be a product of the fact that my parents consistently planned vacations for us during the winter, usually around Christmas because A. we are Jewish so who cares about Christmas and B. It’s the off-season for many European countries, sneaky travel tip! So the idea of traveling for the sake of going somewhere with better weather has never been a part of my understanding of traveling. But here, I suppose because the weather is so….present, that does seem to be a part of the logic.
Mr. India and I recently went to Cambodia, and I will say, this is the time to go, it’s much cheaper because it’s not the high season. We had an amazing time at Siam Reap, exploring ancient temples and palaces, devouring Cambodian cuisine, luxuriating in the culture, but the first thing many people have asked us has been, How was Cambodia? How was the weather?
Somehow weather is synonymous with experience here. Could it be that a whole nation is so deeply affected by the climate? And how is that even possible when it’s so hot all the time and it’s all most people I meet have ever known? I mean, does someone from Mumbai go to a slightly cooler place for the first time and kneel down and kiss the ground or something? Does it become their mecca? If that’s the case, why does Mumbai have TWENTY MILLION PEOPLE LIVING THERE? India, you gotta start LIVING YOUR PRINCIPLES. If you like cooler weather so much, go pursue it!
Having been here a year now, I still have people asking me how I do it, that is, how do I live in India? How do I deal with the weather? I don’t know, really. Copious amounts of skirts? A commitment to natural fibers? An investment in many ice trays? Accepting the things I cannot change? Embracing the way of tao? Maybe all of the above!
It’s hard for me not to be judgmental or roll my eyes when people eagerly ask me about the weather. I mean, I’ve just described the magnificent culture of Siam Reap, the astounding temples, the way I was so happy climbing up and down massive structures left over from the Khmer Empire and you want to know what the temperature was? On some level, I do still feel that this is petty, a silly concern. Who cares what the weather is like as long as you are seeing or doing something amazing? As long as you aren’t caught in massive mudslides, or freezing to death, what does it matter? But that said, perhaps that is in fact a privileged position, the perspective of someone who comes from a land of variety and is therefore in some ways less fatigued of the sameness that Mumbai represents, that much of India, frankly, represents.
That being said, maybe I’m just a strange person whose mood isn’t affected by the heat. Because I will say that days upon days of pouring rain left me sleepy and filled with cabin fever, eager to march out into the messy wet streets of Mumbai just to keep from going a little insane. But who knows, maybe next year I will be so used to it that I sew myself a few waterproof bubbles and roll around the town.
There is only one thing that actually feels different to me about this season, actually, and it’s the blooming of the Scholar’s Tree. This tree had white flowers that emit a heavy glorious smell, momentarily banishing all of the not-so-nice aromas of human waste and rotting garbage that otherwise make up the perfume of an Indian city. I noticed it last year in Kolkata, and this year I smelled it in Mumbai. So maybe the weather here wont help you out, in terms of changes, but that just means there are other, subtler, ways of seeing time pass on by. Happy Fall, everyone!
Some views of Siam Reap
Who can notice the weather when you see a thing like this?!?
Lost causes written on the wall.
The lizard who lives in our apartment and refuses to pay any rent.
Snuck a peak down an ally, saw a garment worker sleeping.
Cadfael says cool because he’s basically the Fonz.
You have to hedge your bets to keep people from peeing on your wall.
“Siddarth Malhotra has a love affair with Katrina Kaif. Their ups and downs is basically the entire movie.”- IMDB description of Baar Baar Dekho
“I feel it is important not to get overly obsessed and overly carried away with just the physical aspect. There is more to beauty than just the physical appearance. You are also a complete person, and a woman should have an identity beyond just the way she looks.” -Katrina Kaif
If alien life got it’s hands on most movies, regardless of the country of origin, and then came to Earth, I think they would be rather disappointed at how the expectations don’t support the reality, attractiveness-wise. Because if you only knew the human race through film you would think we were all really really pretty. It’s a well acknowledged truth that stars have to be attractive, with some exceptions, rarely, frankly, female. I guess when you spend a few hours looking at a giant version of a person, you prefer for that person to be as anatomically symmetrical as possible. If Shakespeare’s tragedies were all about nobles, then our love stories are all about pretty people. If we wanted to watch mediocre looking people fall in love, I guess we would just look at ourselves, right?
I’ve talked more than once on this blog about colonialism. It’s almost like it’s a theme…so when we discuss a recent Bollywood film, Baar Baar Dekho, it would be impossible not to talk about one of its two stars, Katrina Kaif. Who is Katrina Kaif? If you aren’t India, you probably don’t know who the hell she is.
Not to worry! That is, in fact, why I am here! Ms. Kaif is a half-British half-Kashmiri lady who grew up in England and has taken the Bollywood industry by storm with her leggy beauty, moderately competent dance moves, and total lack of acting talent. She originally spoke very little Hindi, and was dubbed by better hindi speakers in her films, because dubbing is a real thing that still happens in India and everyone is very okay with it despite the fact that it is appalling to those of us raised with Singing In The Rain as our filmmaking template. Seriously, dubbing? Is still a thing? COME. ON. You have two jobs, actors. Moving where they want you to move, and saying what they want you to say. You get great clothing, and people slap the food away from your hands, and lots of people want to have sex with you. HOW IS DUBBING STILL A THING?
Beyond that, there is a surprisingly large group of Indian actresses who are basically British, in nationality and upbringing, which makes them citizens, ps, and somehow that gives them easy entrance into Bollywood. It’s almost like there is still this feeling that the British are better than other people so someone who is half British or raised in England is somehow superior to other people. This is a personal theory. But…also could totally be a thing. How is that ALSO still a thing?
AND HOW IS THIS ACTRESS WHO LITERALLY CANNOT ACT HER WAY OUT OF A GUCCI BAG A THING AS WELL?
Funny you should ask.
This is how Katrina looks when you, like, don’t get it.
This is how.
This is also how.
It’s like no one has seen a woman in a swimsuit before. Seriously.
This is one of the best paid female stars in Bollywood.
In the US you would totally have had to release a sex tape to become a Katrina-level symbol without, you know, genuine ability. But that’s India for you! So anyway. This is Katrina. Accept it, it’s happening. She’s a whole thing. When aliens come, she might be their queen. Until then? Feel free to feel all the feelings. GOD KNOWS I DO.
TO THE MOVIE! I got a chance to see this one in Singapore, in a theater with subtitles, so I don’t have screenshots, just movie stills. Lame. We shall all have to carry on!
So. Baar Baar Dekho means “Look Look Again”, which…will not end up having much to do with the movie at all. That’s going to be a theme, things not making sense, things happening once and never coming around again. It’s a magical magical world of mystical things. Get excited.
In the first five minutes of this movie, we get all that backstory that we will ostensibly need to understand what this story is about in a dreamy montage under a song. Jai grows up in India, while Diya (whose mixed-culture parents seem strangely unhappy all the time and I thought this was foreshadowing divorce because the Indian dad just couldn’t deal with the British mom until they moved to Delhi and suddenly were all smiles again) meets him at a young age. Lesson one! Intercultural relationships can be saved by a move to Delhi!
They are best friends, sharing candy and what not, and swinging in a field on a wooden swing because that seems like something that could regularly happen in pollution-clogged Delhi. Alright. Jai and Diya move from playing doctor to, uh, playing doctor, that is, having a bunch of sex as teenagers. Jai’s father also dies at some point, and he has a brother who we do not see until much later but don’t worry that will never truly matter. All that matters is these two crazy kids rolling around and loving each other like crazy! Lesson two! Love is the most important thing as long as it’s for a lover and not pesky people like family members etc.
Sidenote, young Diya has glasses, which look amazing on Katrina, almost like she is a real live person with thoughts and feelings, and young Jai (Siddarth Malhotra, oh we will get to him, don’t worry) doesn’t have glasses, but then later he does and she doesn’t? I guess that’s how couples work? Maybe Mr. India and I will just, like, switch prescriptions soon. Lesson three! A couple can only have one pair of glasses in India. Choose wisely!
Anyway, these two have literally never spoken to anyone their own age but each other, according to this introduction. It’s like Flowers in the Attic without the incest! Jai is into math, as evidenced by the fact that he writes numbers on windows (where I come from we call this vandalism) and Diya is…well she ends up being an artist but we have no idea how that happened. Just more Katrina magic, I guess!
So as grown ups, Jai, in a sweet vest but no jacket like a douche, is giving a lecture on some math something, and all his female students are trying to screw him with their eyes, like that scene in Indiana Jones except in no way as clever.
Our India Jones here gamely keeps describing math things, and somehow this makes him two and a half hours late to his long-time girlfriend’s first ever art opening AT WHICH SHE IS DECLARED THE NEW FACE OF MODERN INDIAN ART! Damn, artistic success is easy in India! Legit not a single show and already a game changer. Lesson number 4! The Indian art scene is super easy to break into! Lesson number 5! Traffic in Delhi is appalling. I’ve learned that firsthand.
Diya’s work is this weird pseudo-silk screen stuff with like geometric designs and mandalas and photographs of Indian ladies from the past. It’s not great, but I wouldn’t hate it in a waiting room for a doctor’s office, or in a dimly lit hotel bar. She’s no Amrita Sher Gil, that’s for damn sure. BUT! It DOES up our jobs for women counter by one! Yes, there is one job for women representing in this movie! For those playing along at home, we have Doctor, Migrant Worker Turned Sex Slave, Calendar Girl, Actress, Model and NOW Visual Artist! People say she’s a painter but we never see paint (or work or tools of any kind) so let’s just assume she’s a visual artist and leave it there. We will be thinking this through at LEAST as much as the production team for this movie did!
Anyway, Diya is not thrilled about her dumb mathematician boyfriend’s complete inability to tell time but she forgives him because he throws a flower at her or whatever. They sit at a restaurant celebrating her opening that he missed and somehow, despite the fact that they must have entered together, he asks if she ordered him food, like, did she call ahead I guess? And she says yes, all things covered in butter, because he wants to have a heart attack asap. Lesson number 6! Indian mathematicians have no concept of basic nutrition. Because she knows how much butter he likes, he mentions they are like a married couple and that’s her opening! Girlfriend wants him to lock it down. He likes it, put a damn ring on it.
Here is where this movie gets weird. He has known this girl his whole life. Presumably they exchanged v-cards, what with all that rolling around they did in the opening montage/song nonsense. More than that, he has to know her, like, life goals. The movie implies they literally have been besties forever. But suddenly he is like, marriage, you say? Is that an island off the coast of Portugal? We can go there, sure! He asks to think about it, looking like she’s just tried to peg him. Look, it’s totally understandable that in a couple who have been together for a long time and met super young one person would be ready for a commitment that the other would not be. But is it really realistic that they wouldn’t discuss it? Ever? That she at no point would have been like, I would like you and I and a priest to get together for TWELVE HOURS and we circle the fire and walk out hitched! (There will never be a HIndu Vegas equivalent for this reason, I’m telling you.)
Then, he meets her dad. Again, someone he seems to have known since the age of six who he is looking at like “the hell are you stranger danger?”. Lesson number 7! Amnesia is very common in Indian mathematicians. He is like, I got this job offer to teach at Cambridge! Gotta take it!
That is where we are all like, Cambridge? Really? That’s your big one? No, it’s great, but you are a mathematician, dude. Don’t you want MIT? CalTech? Stanford? Zurich? That being said, when you google “best math universities” Cambridge comes up so….that’s clearly what the people making this movie did. Also, I guess, because Jai has fantasies of the days of the Raj. Lesson number 8, you can take the British out of India….
But Diya’s dad is like, eff that noise, son! If Diya wanted to go in England she would totally already BE in England because she has a British passport! (Ummmm, doesn’t he know about her work in the Indian art scene? What is this family?) Jai and Diya’s dad then debate about what Diya wants without talking to her one time and it’s uncomfortable. Her dad is like, her life is in Delhi! Jai is like, my work is in Cambridge! Diya says nothing because she is not there. COME on.
To the wedding! Jai hates it. He’s like, we said it would be intimate! There only seem to be about fifty guests there so who knows what his problem, there were over 300 people at my Indian wedding, or so it seemed, and everyone was like, what a nice intimate affair and I cried on the inside a bunch. Jai is having tantrums all over the place, mostly while people are measuring him (which is also strange because the wedding is the next day so why is a tailor still taking his inseam and why is he trying on hats and stuff? These don’t feel like last-minute decisions. Lesson number 9! For your Indian wedding, have an elaborate suit made same day! Avoids all stress about weight fluctuation! Costs a little more but it’s worth it!
Everyone is like, the hell, Jai, you are marrying the best person! Don’t you see how hot she is? (That second part is the subtext). His friend Raj (Rohan Joshi, a comedian who is in the movie for NO APPARENT REASON) and his wife who is not given a name so I will dub her….Bookcase! (Sayani Gupta, who I personally love, ps, she was in this short film called Leeches which is amazing and she is amazing, watch the trailer here, it’s super excellent) shows up and is like, what’s your deal, dude, you are acting like a non-real movie person! But Raj doesn’t understand! Jai wants to go to CAMBRIDGE and do VEDIC MATHS because apparently that can affect SPACE TRAVEL because this movie does not really know how academia works. Actually that probably could be possible, but this movie really doesn’t know how Cambridge works. Or how being a mathematician works. If he could affect space travel, wouldn’t that offer have been from NASA? Or a school with any kind of space program attached? COME. ON.
Jai also pisses off the pandit (priest conducting the ceremony the following day) by being like, do we have to do seven circles? Can we do three? I’m in a rush. RUDE. I did seven circles, Jai! You think I didn’t have other stuff I could have been doing with my time? You think you’ve the only person who has ever sat through an Indian wedding and thought, is all this necessary? You think Diya couldn’t be using that time to make her terrible Pottery Barn art? For a mathematician ostensibly interested in astrophysics, you sure think the world revolves around your ass.
Lesson number 10 starts now, but doesn’t kick in until later. Do not piss off your pandit. He will mess you up.
Anyway, they have a dance number which shows everyone how hot Diya is, so Jai looks like even more of a dick.
Her jewelry is actually pretty great in this scene, though, her whole outfit is just on point and I love this style and her printed lengha combo. Don’t judge, this song was dumb, I had to keep myself invested somehow!
Diya then takes Jai to the apartment she has bought for the two of them with help from her father and he has a total meltdown, shouting about how he wants other things in his life rather than marriage and a family and what about his math dreams, Diya? His Cambridge math dreams? This is, yet again, a moment where this makes literally no sense because if they are people who have known each other forever then why doesn’t he just tell her about his interest in working abroad? Why didn’t he tell her when he applied for the damn job? Jobs don’t just COME to you, there isn’t a bat signal out there for academics. You apply to them. I tell Mr. India when I order a new pair of shoes. I sure as hell am not making professional plans without at least dropping him a TEXT. What is this relationship? I guess it’s mostly sex and swinging on that swing they have in the middle of Delhi somewhere.
Lesson number 11! Successful Indian relationships are based on a total lack of conversations about lives, goals, futures or needs.
ANYway. This scene is so painful to watch because these two people are just. So. Bad. At. Acting. You can seriously see Kaif trying to make herself cry over and over again and then the camera just blurs focus kindly, like, it’s okay, baby, it’s okay, we can edit around all this I promise. I liked Malhotra in Kapoor and Sons, but here he has the emotive qualities of dry wood. So they “fight” and “feel” things and declare their relationship over and Diya leaves and Jai gets drunk on like a sip of champagne because he is bad at drinking, just like every other damn thing he’s bad at. Diya, you have no personality but you are hot as hell. You can do better. I promise. Move on.
Diya does not take my advice. Instead, Jai passes out because he’s again, terrible at drinking, and wakes up ten days later on his honeymoon in Thailand. Some guys just can’t handle Delhi, am I right? No, it’s a time travel thing he can’t control. That’s the whole premise of the movie. The audience finds this out slowly over the course of the next hour or so but it’s so mind-numbingly stupid I’m just going to tell you right now. Basically Jai pissed off that priest, (remember lesson number 10?) so the guy, Rajit Kapoor, who is WASTED in this movie, is taking his revenge by pushing Jai through time and forcing him to realize that people are more important than math. Or something. Sort of? Basically, Jai is about to go screw up his whole like by focusing more on work than his marriage, his children, etc. We are going to see this in a series of jumps to the future.It isn’t doing to make any kind of damn sense mostly because yet again THAT’S NOT HOW BEING A PROFESSOR WORKS! If this guy was going to be an investment banker, a surgeon, something that legit takes up all your damn time then SURE, fine, why not? Or if they ever showed him doing actual mathematical research, caring about a theory, working on it, obsessively searching for answers, SURE, I GUESS do. But given that neither of those two things are happening, I call bullshit on this whole situation. Look, anyone can be a self-absorbed asshole of a parent. You don’t need MATH to be that way. You can just…be that way. ARGGGGH.
Ahem. Back to it then, shall we? So honeymoon in Thailand, because Diya and Jai are Indian basic bitches. Lesson number 12, Indians love honeymoons in Thailand. Give Vietnam a try, guys! They dance around and Kaif looks aMAHzing and sings this song that the guy I saw this movie played thirty more times in the next three days after we saw the movie. He is not Mr. India. But I did almost kill him.
She does the dumbest dance but what does it matter, she looks so insanely good. She wears like five outfits in this song and none of them cover her midriff.
This swimsuit is so cute. They laugh and sing and dance and whatever, and Diya asks Jai why he loves her and he says “because you’re my wife” and she does not immediately slap him so she’s a better woman than I.
When he next wakes up, it’s two years later and they are in England and she’s about to give birth and furious that he wont wake up and drive her to the hospital. We know it’s England because it’s snowing but when he gets to the hospital it’s a bright sunny summer day. Long drive, I guess. She has the baby and Jai also realizes the pandit is there (that’s real commitment to a relationship, does he does this for all the people he marries to each other? Lesson 13! After an Indian wedding, your pandit is going to be real invested in your life! Get ready!) and tries to work out how math is taking him forward in time but really just uses a white board to write “Ten Days-Two years”. It’s that kind of brilliance that probably made him so attractive to Cambridge.
He keeps going forward into the future. Lesson 14! In the future, we all have to dye part of our hair a weird color. I know, I know, I don’t want to either but what can we do, it’s the rules. He realizes he will eventually get a divorce from Diya, which horrifies him.
Surprise to no one, future Diya keeps it tight, future Jai moves towards a beard and sweater vest situation.
He tried to figure out how this will happen, but misses the basic facts of being a non-present father to his two children (he gets a second one in there somewhere) and husband and instead assumes he has an affair with his friend Bookcase. Remember her? Love her. In avoiding said affair by…spending a bunch of time with Bookcase (Jai’s logic must be math logic that is too intense and mystical and vedic for the rest of us I guess) Jai misses Diya’s London premiere art show ( I can’t even….). Jai, you aren’t missing much, her work has literally not evolved in any way. Also, sidenote, the gallery owner tells her all the work sold that first night. I guess a lot of overpriced cafes needed wall art. Anyway, Jai thinks he’s fixed it by not having an affair, conveniently forgetting the way he let his wife down, ignored his daughter and missed his son’s soccer game. Sigh.
Once again, Kaif tries and fails to cry.
Jai wakes up old at his mother’s funeral and although he thought he had fixed his marriage, Diya has in fact left him for that gallery owner who sold all her art. The age make up is excellent and the future looks cool with digital curtains and this very interesting cremation situation. But that hair thing is still there, sigh. Maybe I’ll do like a teal or something. Keep it fun.
Jai then lives the day of Diya’s London gallery opening once again, but this time he realizes he should spend less time avoiding an affair with bookcase by spending all his time with bookcase and more time being a decent human being. It works! He is finally returned to Delhi (ugh, bummer) and wakes up, hungover from that one bottle of champagne, and goes off to find Diya and apologize.
She takes him back because she knows no other way, and they marry. He thanks that priest who is like, see, I told you, magic is better than math, am I right? Sure. That’s the take home here.
Then, they do a song that was released two months before the film itself and made people feel this movie would be a fun and funny romp, instead of the sweltering logically screwed nonsense that it is.
Raj and Bookcase! She’s so cute. Love her.
So, 14 lessons means it’s a little light on the learning opportunities, but upside we got a new job out of it for women. How did this do on the Bechtel test? Massive massive fail. Actually, as I think about it, not only does Diya not speak to other WOMEN, Diya barely speaks to ANYONE in this movie other than Jai! Not her parents, not her supposed friends, a line here and there but mostly she only exists in scenes with Jai. OH my god, what if she really DOES only exist in Jai’s mind?!?! Not only would that account for Kaif’s frightening lack of human emotions but it would also make this a MUCH more interesting movie! She’s a ghost-fantasy-sex dream! That’s why she’s so hot! That’s why nothing makes sense! It’s all Jai’s dream! That’s brilliant!
Or not.
Shhhh. Just look at her perfect stomach and forget the rest. That’s clearly what we are all supposed to be doing here, anyway.
India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire. With her everything is on a giant scale — even her poverty; no other country can show anything to compare with it. And she has been used to wealth on so vast a scale that she has to shorten to single words the expressions describing great sums. –Mark Twain, Following the Equator (1897)
Here the goddess Durga is riding some kind of dinosaur, which is a change from her normal tiger, because you gotta keep stuff fresh.
I have now been living in India for almost a year. A YEAR. Take a minute, let that one sink in. A year of my life has been spent living in India. Sure, I traveled other places, but I am a person who has been effectively LIVING in INDIA for a year. Holy. Cow.
When I was back in the US a few months ago, more than one person asked me if it was strange to be back. My answer was always the same. It’s not strange to be back. It’s strange to live in India.
This is actually what I see when I walk down the street. In Bombay. The most sophisticated urban oasis in India. Right? You see what I’m working with here?
But more than cows, what I’ve seen more of over the course of this past year are gods. Gods, everywhere.
Today marks the start of Ganesh Chaturthi (it goes on for days, though, it’s rare anything is just one thing here). Technically today is Ganesh’s birthday, which feels a little strange because of the many myths about Ganesh, the majority of them agree that he was shaped out of clay by his mother, Parvati, when her husband Shiva went on one of his walkabouts. Shiva then struck his head off Ganesh’s body when he came back, presumably because he thought Parvati was cheating on him with a new boy toy, and when he realized that this was not in fact the case, grabbed a head off an elephant and put that on the body. No one ever talks about what happens to that elephant, though….
All day there have been parades in the streets, loud bands playing music as people carry sculptures of Ganesh around, setting off fireworks and freaking the hell out of my cat.
A photo sent to me today from my mother-in-law. There is a Ganesh idol under there, somewhere.
Gods are everywhere here. For a secular democracy, this cup overruneth with gods. But what can you really expect? India is excess. If I thought New York was bad, given that when you have a good idea everyone else in the city seems to as well (i.e. that first sunny warm spring day when everyone is in Central Park eating lunch, etc.) But here, it isn’t just that everyone had the same idea, it’s that everyone called their family and everyone they’ve ever met to come with them. And there just isn’t ROOM for all that. So people spill out everywhere, there is humanity oozing out of the city’s every pore.
Which is part of why there ARE gods everywhere. You see, India has this problem (just the one, you ask?) with public urination. Well, I say problem because that’s how I view it but I…might be alone in that. Because you can just see people, and by people I mean men, urinating. Everywhere. God (gods) know I have. It is, apparently, totally socially acceptable to just pee anywhere here, which would make a lot of drunk frat guys happy but does very little for me. Some men try to find a discrete corner, or some shade, but some barely put in any discernible effort, stepping off the road and unzipping right there. I’ve seen more people peeing in public here than I’ve seen well-paved and maintained roads. That should really tell you something…
So anyway, something people do here is that they put images of gods up on their buildings to try to deter potential urinators. I guess in India you can count on reverence before you can bank on social consciousness.
The thing is, though, sometimes they like to play the odds:
So here you’ve got two Hindu deities…
This famous guru.
AND. Because, the more the merrier, right? These guys:
I may not understand much about Hinduism, although I’ve bought a few new books, so I sure keep trying, but the one thing I have started to comprehend is this sense of elasticity, that historically it has bent and twisted and absorbed things into itself, enrobing anything new in its amorphous whole. We live quite close to a Christian neighborhood, and the shrines here look exactly like Hindu ones, with offerings of marigold wreaths and coconuts. See, that’s the thing about polytheism, isn’t it? Everything can be incorporated. Everything can fit into it. When the Portuguese came to India, they intended to convert, and convert they did. But really, can you actually defeat Hinduism? Only one party is fighting a war. The other just accepts everything, making it all part of the same thing.
The struggle, therefore, to explain differentness, or a lack of that feeling that all things are essentially the same and all part of a continuum, can be a challenge. I had a conversation once with a friend, born and brought up in India, where I asked about the gods. Do you have favorites, I asked? Or, really, do your parents have favorites? I’ve met one, maybe two people my age and background in and outside of India who actually feel religiously Hindu, that is, that they invest in and care to unpack and explain. So I ask about their parents. Anyway, I was, unconsciously, treating the gods like trading cards or pop icons, asking which they liked best and why, when he explained that really, his parents just follow this one god. So I asked about that, and he said it’s basically monotheism. So I said, well, do they only believe in one god? No, he said, but they believe in one god most. Doesn’t that count?
So there you go. What do you do with a difference of understanding like that? Hinduism is inclusive, if for me, totally opaque (although I have real hope about these books!) but it doesn’t leave room for you to NOT be a part of it. As in, you are accepted, but not as something separate. Insisting on separatism is a rejection, one that causes conflict. Or at least, confusion. On some level, I know that when I don’t participate in some Hindu holiday, some people know it’s because I’m…not Hindu, but other people really just think I’m being a lax Hindu, like so many of their own children.
But at least I’m getting included.
As I wrote this, my neighbor came over to bless me and give me a coconut she had prayed over. It’s something people apparently do for married women, so that’s why did she did it. She knows that I’m Jewish, she was very impressed by this fact, she teaches Shakespeare tuitions so she, like my mother in law, likes meeting someone she can associate with Shylock (with no negative connotations! India’s tiny Jewish population, which has dwindled with the years, hasn’t left the country with much space for anti-semitism). Still, I got a coconut. Which is very nice, after all, she prayed for health and happiness for the recipient. And, it has eyes. So it can be my new friend now.
She also gave me what my friend Becca would deem “Hindu shmutz” for my forehead.
It came with leaves and a lime too. Obviously.
I’ll have to look up its meaning in one of my new books.
Everything you see is wild, grotesque, unnatural, forbidding, utterly wanting in verisimilitude, an refinement, with nothing to purify and raise the people, with everything fitted to pervert their tast and lower their character -James Kennedy, London Missionary Society
Benares is holy. Europe, grown superficial, hardly understands such truths anymore. I feel nearer here than I have ever done to the heart of the world; here I feel every day as if too soon, perhaps even to-day. I would receive the grace of supreme revelation…the atmosphere of devotion which hands above the river is improbable in its strength; stronger than in any church that I have ever visited. Every would-be Christian priest would do well to sacrifice a year of his theological studies in order to spend this time on the Ganges: here he would discover what piety means. – Count Hermann Keysering visiting Benares in the 1920’s.
So those are…two feelings about Benares. I don’t know that I share either of them. But I do know that I saw Benares, like I see many Indian cities, from the back of a car. That’s not to say I don’t walk, because I do, or that Benares isn’t walkable, although it’s really not, but the concept of a city being walkable, being a nice place to walk, being walking oriented, is not, to my knowledge, apparently part of the concept of an Indian city. Which is ironic given how many people must walk, how many people can afford nothing else.
When people ask me about India, the thing I always end up talking about is the contrast, the proximity, the claustrophobic and troubling quality that sees slums next to million dollar properties next to temples next to schools next to bars next to sewage. In the West we hide our poverty, it is true, and our poverty looks different, and our middle class looks different, and there aren’t quite so many things in between, but here there are no words that I know of in English to describe each rung on the social ladder, each incremental step that separates people from each other. But the separation between many people and me could not be clearer, it’s the glass of the car I’m in as I watch the city slide by.
The photos here may look, you might feel, cliché, like all the photos people take when they go to India. And that’s totally fine. Because these are the things you see in every Indian city I’ve been to so far, and that’s why I photographed them.
I usually spend a lot of time on this blog, and all my blogs, talking, but this time I will duck out early and leave you with a lot of photos. And if they are cliché, at least I know they will be used by many people when googling india+images, so…I’m basically famous already.
“Twenty-five centuries ago, at the least, it was famous. When Babylon was struggling with Nineveh for supremacy, when Tyre was planting her colonies, when Athens was growing in strength, before Rome has become known, or Greece had contended with Persia, or Cyprus has added lustre to the Persian monarchy, or Nebuchadnezzar had captured Jerusalem, and the inhabitants of Judaea had been carried into captivity, she had already risen to greatness, if not glory. -Reverend M. A. Sherring, a mid-19th cent. missionary in Benares
Although any point along the Ganga can serve as a pilgrimage site, a number of especially powerful thirthas (sacred crossings) along her banks allow pilgrims to cover multiple spiritual bases with a single visit. Banaras is the largest and most visited of these thirthas, presenting itself as Kashi (“the luminous”), an otherworldly abode that rests Shiva’s trident and grants instant liberation to all who die within its boundaries.
Skanda Purana (IV.I.28:80), p.40 (Aghor Medicine: Pollution, Death, and Healing in Northern India (3 February 2008)])
The longer I spend in India, the less I understand Hinduism. I’ve expressed this sentiment before, I know, but I’m going to spend this post talking about it, so I might as well re-iterate it, for those of you would aren’t taking extensive notes of reference for each of my blog posts.
There are many people who come to India for a spiritual experience. I am not, as you probably know, one of them, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to understand what’s going on here, especially given the fact that I married into a Hindu family. I’ve always been excited to share aspects of Judaism with my in-laws and Mr. India, regardless of their own interest. I’m pretty sure they range from polite interest (Mr. India) to confused tolerance (my mother in law) to complete disregard of practice but fascination with culture (my father in law) to rare moments of total lack of registering (my brother-in-law, who recently asked why we weren’t going to the US for Christmas this year).
So anyway, I would really like to understand something about Hinduism, but I can’t help but feel I’m getting further and further away every time I try. Every ritual feels so fundamentally different, and because Hinduism is practiced so differently home to home and temple to temple, and because there seems to be a strong split between individual prayer and priestly ritual, and because there is no collective aspect of the religion in a way that mirrors Judeo-Christian prayer structures, and because its regional, and town to town, and culture to culture, and god to god, the ways to NOT understand Hinduism seem bigger than the ways TO understand it. Honestly, between my research for my new novel and general curiosity, I can honestly say my understanding of Islam has really grown as my Hindu knowledge has shrunk. Irony, thy name is India.
Of course, some might say I’m making a mistake trying to unify what has essentially always been an amorphous and individual practise, that the very concept of “Hinduism” as a whole is laughable, an external colonial projection first by the Turks and Timurid-Mughals, then by the British and the Portugese. Some might say that there is no definition of Hinduism, but they know it when they see it. But what can one do, if one wants to try, but dive in, knowing that much may never be clear?
So I was rather excited to visit the holy city of Benares in the state of Utter Pradesh, neighboring state of the much reviled Delhi (which I have detailed here). After all, as the quote above details, Benares is ancient, beyond ancient, and its been holy for as long as it’s been in existence. The city, also known as Varanasi and Kashi, its ancient name, is dedicated to Shiva, its mythological founder, and it’s also allegedly the birthplace of Buddhism, as the site of the Buddha’s first sermon in the nearby enclave of Sarnath. It is one of the world’s oldest continually inhabited settlements, with archaeological remains dating back to the 20th Century BC. The city grew as an economic and cultural center, producing muslin and the famous silk in addition to other goods, and it became a cultural center in the Mauryan and Gupta periods, the home of the sub-continent’s great intellectuals and the birthplace of numerous significant pieces of poetry and literature. It’s reputation as an intellectual center grew even as Adi Shankara, the hindu philosopher credited with the unification and establishment of the central concepts of Hinduism, established that the city officially be dedicated to the worship of Shiva. Although waves of invasions from different groups of primarily Muslim rulers lead to a decline in the city’s prominence and the destruction of some of its temples, the Mughal Emperor Akbar’s interest in the city led to a revival in the 16th century, just in time for his great-grandson Aurengzeb to try and destroy it again 100 years later. Kids, am I right?
British control and pro-Hindu kings gave the city a break from the constant waves of temple-destruction, and several major universities were founded, allowing the city to recover a bit of its air of intellectual melting-pot cum religious pilgrimage destination. Now, millions of people visit Benares yearly to bathe in the Ganges, to pray at the KashiVishwanath Temple, or one of the other 23,000 temples in the tiny city, or, most importantly, to die. To die in Benares and be cremated on the ghats is an extremely holy act. Which makes sense. Because you really wouldn’t want to live there.
One might think that this extremely Hindu city with its deep significance to so many, not only a massive tourist site but a fundamentally essential place for Indian Hindus would, in these days of rising Hindu fundamentalism, with a Prime Minister famous for his nationalist Hindu agenda, be, in some way, well preserved.One might think that a place with such a rich history, such an enduring tradition, would be India’s Vatican, and be cared for and treated like Mecca, like Jerusalem, like the many holy cities it pre-dates. One would, in fact, think all of these things….but then, one must think about India.
Because this, my friends, is what Benares looks like:
My in-laws do a pilgrimage to Benares every year, with another couple, friends of theirs who have been doing pilgrimages to Benares for the last few decades. Interested in its history and lusting for its silk, I decided to join them this year, and Mr. India and I make the two-hour journey from Mumbai to Benares for three days in the city of Life.
On our first day, we are ushered in and out of the KashiVishwanath Temple at lightening speed, the hundreds of people pouring into the space and pouring their offerings onto the lingam as a priest drones and guards push. The area around the temple is a rabbit warren of horribly narrow streets, barred to cars but clogged with motorcyclists, cows, cats, people selling offerings, and disgusting puddles best undefined. Because we had to take off our shoes before we could walk thought the mess this is the part the sticks out to me the most, my feet tip-toeing through scum and mud, my head hastily covered by a scarf, my mind completely confused. People were waiting in line for blocks to enter the temple, all for thirty seconds at most with the holy emblem of Shiva, jostled from behind, crushed up against the person ahead, moving through the tiny temple as workers cleared out the soggy flowers in back of the shrine, poking through the garlands and bouquets for something valuable.
When we emerged, I asked Mr. India what it meant. Hr shrugged, as clueless as I was.
I had hoped the holy city would impart some kind of revelation for me, or at least give me the chance to witness the devotion of others, to watch religious ecstasy, to see the history of Hinduism unfold in the present. We walked to the Ganges, swollen with the monsoon rains, and I asked Mr. India what he felt. This is his holy river, the mighty majestic life-giving waters, sweeping through India like a dowager countess. He shrugged again. All we could hear were the honks of a thousand motorcycle horns, hawkers trying to sell us a thousand pieces of junk, and bathers in the river, pilgrims in orange who during this auspicious month walk barefoot from miles around.
They bathe, and pray, I suppose, and then walk back.
I’m not really sure why.
Returning to the hotel, we watched a movie on Benares, a conversation with a priest about the magical powers of the city, it’s resonance, it’s energy. As we lay back, our feet finally clean, learning about the city we had been so disappointed in, we nodded along. Yes, that seemed like a beautiful place to visit. Such a shame we hadn’t found it.
Somewhere underneath all the rumble and decay, under the ads and the wires, I know there must be something special about Benares, some history, some glow of power. But you can’t see it underneath all of the mess, and you can’t find it unless you are looking so hard. You have to want to feel something in Benares, I suppose, you have to know that it’s there and be so certain of that knowledge that that carries you through the mess.
Still, spiritual resonance or not, the city as a historic site is collapsing on itself, and if Modi is as Hindu as he claims to be, so intent on restoring Hindustan for Hindustanis to its former glory, the least he could do would be to put some time and effort into restoring this holy city and making it look like the layered historically significant place that it is. My in-laws agreed with me, telling me to write to Prime Minister Modi, remarking that nothing gets done in India until a white person tells someone to.
Well. Here’s hoping, then, that he reads this blog. That’s pretty likely, right?
Some more images. See if you can spot the pretty underneath all the rest:
Here we are again, with another highly anticipated (I assume) post in my “What Bollywood can teach you about India” series. I know, you’ve been awaiting this eagerly, checking back here daily, just looking for another film recap/life lesson treasure trove. Well, look no further! Here we are.
Mr. India recently politely pleaded with me to stop making fun of movies he likes, because apparently my snarky comments are not as universally appreciated as they clearly should be. I can’t make any permanent promises, i.e., 90’s Bollywood Cinema, I’m coming for you! but in the spirit of marital happiness and nonsense things like that, this entry’s subject matter is sure to delight him, and hopefully you as well.
Ah, gentle reader, it is this moment when I must bring up a hotly debated subject, and that is, women in India. What are they good for? Having tons of children, obviously, overpopulation says what? but what ELSE? Lots of stuff! Like, looking good in clothing (that’s called modeling), or looking good in movies, (that’s called acting). And probably other things too, as we learned in Udta Punjab, women can also be doctors, if they are cool with getting stabbed, and migrant workers, if they are cool becoming sex slaves and heroin addicts. So you’ve got options, is the point.
In all seriousness, India has changed in its landscape of women and their role in the public sphere, from the northern adopting of the Mughal veiling and zenena or harem practices in the 1600s, to the kingdom of Kerala which was traditionally ruled by women, to the re-introduction of women in the public space as part of the Bengali Renaissance and the last queen of Kerala giving up her throne to a man (you can read about that here, I’ve heard the book is excellent), to Indira Gandhi, to the rise of women in the workplace, to the decline of women in the workplace (read this article if you want to be really sad). But India is still a place where child marriage runs rampant, dowry deaths happen every day, girls are treated as second class citizens, traded and commodified, forbidden to work, and made the policemen of their own virtue, blamed for sexual assault, judged for bare skin, viewed as property. Then, of course, there is the more insidious and subtle repression of the upper classes, the well-educated, which has its own pathways and projections, varying family to family and person to person (and marriage to marriage). Here, the concept of Western feminism is familiar, even longed for, but it’s hard to skip steps in terms of cultural paradigms and learned values, so you end up with women who like an idea of feminism that frees them, but find it at odds with the expectations of their families and even their own feelings about relationships and men.
And obviously, we will find that reflected in our Bollywood observations, will we not? So let’s tally up our Bollywood job count, so far we know of four jobs a woman can do in India, doctor, migrant worker turned sex-slave, model, or actress. COOL. Now, here is a fifth one! Calendar Girl! Which brings us to the title of our film, which is, in fact, Calendar Girls. What is a Calendar Girl? A Calendar girl is a girl who poses in a sexy way for a calendar, so like the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition but also telling you days and months and holidays and things like that. I have yet to see a sexy swimsuit calendar in India, but obviously I’m not looking hard enough, because the entire premise of this movie is that this is a real job that exists and is important. The director, Madhur Bhandarkar, has already made a movie about models, and one about acting, so the next obvious choice is this one, I guess.
Now, Bollywood Hungama says: “On the whole, Calendar Girls can be watched for its wholesome entertainment value, hard-hitting drama and engaging narrative.” As for me, on the other hand, I saw this movie over someone’s shoulder on a plane and I was intrigued and concerned, so when I got the chance to watch it on a digital platform I was like, yes, let me spend two hours of my life doing that. And boy am I glad I did, because the lessons, they were a coming! So, with no further ado, I present, Calendar Girls:
This is the calendar photographer, who talks about what a big deal this is. If it was REALLY a big deal, wouldn’t it be HBO? Not Showtime? Heyo!
This movie begins setting up the premise because again no one thinks this is a real thing or a real job, so the way they let the audience know how important it is to be a calendar girl is literally to say the title over and over and over again and talk about how BIG it is and how IMPORTANT it is and how the calendar is the OPPORTUNITY OF A LIFETIME like it’s an admission to college or a cruise or something instead of putting on a bikini and getting your photo taken.
Lesson #1! Being a Calendar Girl might be the biggest thing you can do with your life in India. Men, sucks to be you!
So we get to meet all the Calendar girls and this is important because we are setting up CONTEXT and FAMILY STRUCTURE and DIVERSITY and all that matters a lot and then never matters again, for the most part.
First, there is Mayuri, who is totally my favorite one. She is from this supportive selfie loving family in Rohtak, in Haryana. When you look up this town you get a bunch of news about rape cases so that’s…nice.
Paroma, who wears the sad face of a family that doesn’t support her and an ugly scarf to go along with it, is from Kolkata.
Nandita, from Hyderabad, is from a family of CEOs, because that’s a thing I guess, but she’s pretty excited to skate by on her looks. Also, how stiff is the competition for hottest Calendar in India? This is like winning “best Cambodian food in Oslo”.
Nazneen, who is, gasp, Pakistani, leaves her boyfriend in London to do this calendar (what is the recruitment process for this like?) and his limited grasp of English shows in his choice of insult. It’s cheap HO, dude! The system fails so many…
And finally, Sharon, from Goa, who is bright and ready for an adventure and has this terrible volume forward hair that is big here. You know what else is big? HER HORRIBLE SCRUNCHIE. YOU CAN DO BETTER, SHARON!
The guy who makes the Calendar looks like a woodland sprite but talks about why the Calendar is his favorite of his many businesses because in this digital age where porn is all over the internet I cannot image this paper calendar of scantily clad women doesn’t sell like gangbusters. Lesson #2! The best businesses are weird obsolete ones.
All the girls feel that the calendar will change their lives, but it’s very clear that it’s Sharon we should be plugging into because she’s doing it for all the right reasons, i.e. changing her life, not the wrong ones, i.e. having boys look at her body. Sharon just wants a bigger life! She symbolizes this by LITERALLY running away from her larger, tanner friend:
Run, Sharon, before her small town mentality and less represented body contaminates you!
So anyway, these girls go to shoot this calendar, and the photographer, Timmy, gives them champagne and makes them talk about their sexual history because that’s a normal workplace conversation.
Lesson #3! Before having your photo taken by a professional photographer in India, you need to tell them about losing your virginity. Sharon is candid, because that’s what Sharon IS, guys, god, Nandita spins a lesbian homework break fantasy, Paroma sets up a boyfriend who left her because of his ambitions, this will come back around again, Nazneen talks about her high sex drive, and Mayuri, my favorite, talks about making out with a boy in a barn because she’s still got her v-card firmly in hand. This never comes back again but I would totally watch a movie that is Mayuri going on a road trip to lose her virginity.
Then there is this photo shoot and you see the important and difficult work of being a calendar girl. I don’t know why there are five of them when there are 12 months, shouldn’t there be 12? Or at least 6 so everyone gets two months? Who decided this!?
I love that they have this photo shoot with a lion. CALL PETA.
Right, so then the calendar comes out and instantly it changes lives! That’s what calendars do! Lesson #4, the calendar is not just a device of time-telling in India, it’s a portal to a new life!
Paroma sees her ex at some Bengali function in Mumbai where she is the guest of honor (take that, parents!) and they are all flirty and whatever. They have all the chemistry of a physics class, so their whole thing is useless.
He looks like he would totally kill you and make a tent out of your skin.
Eventually they hook up, and you get to see right up her skirt, because this is how she dresses for events. Hey, if I had that body I probably would too.
Sharon meanwhile is working as a model until her agent spreads rumors that she is sleeping with him. I don’t really know why you would do this, as it sounds so terrible for business and also how does that get your client hired? But that’s Lesson #5 for you, most people in the entertainment industry are creepy leeches who care more about spreading a rumor that they’ve had sex with you than about getting you jobs which would pay them a commission.
Sharon is so mad she wasted this jumpsuit on this moment.
Mayuri becomes an actress and she is amazing. I don’t know about her talent, but girlfriend PLAYS. THE. GAME. I feel like this is supposed to be negative for the audience, because she’s a little calculated and takes a job just for the money (which….IS WHAT A JOB IS), and I guess she’s supposed to be represented as dishonorable or whatever but I love her. She knows how important social media is so she cultivates her twitter following and leverages that into movie roles, she’s nice to everyone on set and posts selfies with everyone, director to camera crew, and she even teaches her manager a thing or two. I love her.
She goes to a funeral and turns it into a PR opportunity. She could totally have a shot at winning the game of thrones.
I would watch a show that’s just her and her manager riding around in a car together, talking shop.
Nazneen, of course, because she is Pakistani, gets an acting job but then faces a weird specific protest against Pakistani actors, which I’m fairly certain isn’t a thing because this guy is Pakistani and he’s doing okay…
But anyway, Nazneen is literally protested like she goes to work and there is a protest just for her. Which, hey, that’s sort of thoughtful, right?
So specific!
WRONG! It drives her directly into a life as a professional escort! Lesson #6, Pakistani immigrants in India are THIS CLOSE from becoming escorts. It’s a constant danger zone!
And Nandita! What’s up with her? So, she meets some guy at a party and he takes her to his stud farm (surprisingly not a euphemism) and he’s super rich and he’s like, marry me? And she’s like, I literally have no skills so why not!
NO IT’S NOT. THIS IS EVERYTHING THAT IS WRONG WITH WOMEN BEING TOLD THAT MARRIAGE VALIDATES THEM AS HUMANS. ARRRRRRGH.
Sharon is blacklisted as an actress, but she then starts working in entertainment news and then becomes a hard news anchor in Delhi. That’s all fine I guess, whatever, it’s no Mayuri conniving her way onto a set and then WILLING the actress she plans to replace to get sick so she can take the role all while getting her ass a condo in Mumbai! Mayuri FTW!
Nazneen, of course, is having a super horrible escort life and then when Nandita and Harsh, her playboy husband come to town, he hires her for the night.
What could be sexier than telling a woman this?
Nazneen makes the sad faces of having sex with a friend’s husband against your will and it is the most acting this actress does all movie.
Meanwhile, in what SHOULD be the most interesting plot line, Paroma gets involved with a cricket fixing scheme that is simultaneously very small but somehow also quite large? I don’t know, some cricket player wants to bang her, so her boyfriend is like, no, you shouldn’t, really, I don’t want you to, but…if you wouldn’t MIND, and she’s like, anything for you, Baby!
She mostly just stands behind him in a bikini, but that seems to work for him, takes all types I guess, so he agrees to throw the game with some buddies. Man, cricket is really easy to fix!
But unfortunately she’s too high off her victory to notice that cops are literally following her everywhere.
Also, this happens, and it’s amazing:
They are literally throwing money around! Lesson #7, when you get a bunch of cash in India, you’re going to need to compile it and throw it around. That’s just the thing you need to do.
Oh, in case you were wondering, this is the face you make when your friend mentions her husband might be cheating on her and he was inside of you like, ten minutes ago:
You can SEE this actress trying so hard. But her sad dead shark eyes eat emotion.
Nandita complains to her in-laws who are like, oh, honey bunny, it’s so weird that the guy you spent TWELVE HOURS WITH before agreeing to marry did this to you! But in our family, it’s just a form of stress relief. TRY YOGA, GUYS! Also, this family is rich, and you can tell because of their house:
Lesson #8! Being rich in India means you live in a weird Versailles knock-off surrounded by terrifying statues. I would not want to be rich here if this is the only way to do it…
Nandita cries sad tears, but what can she do, SHE HAS NO OTHER SKILLS. I guess now she can add “being cheated on” as a skill. Look at that, Nandita! Learning new things!
Paroma gets caught by the police who are always following her and probably have become her next door neighbors and maybe also friends. They arrest her while she’s talking to school children which is a dick move. Lesson #9, the police in India have no tact.
Her boyfriend has abandoned her, and her family bails her out but disown her a second time, because the first one didn’t stick I guess. Lesson #10, disowned comes with a do-over!
She then gets offered a reality tv show which she takes because much like Nandita she has no other skills. I mean, it’s no throwing money around, but what can you do?
Oh, and then Nazneen, who wants to quit the escort business, agrees to one last job, but then gets drunk and flees it and totally is hit by a truck and dies.
But if that was too subtle an ending for you, don’t worry, Sharon, as always, has you covered:
So in the end, Nandita is pregnant, Paroma is doing reality tv, Nazneen is 6 feet under, Mayuri continues to rule the world, and Sharon gets engaged to her boss? Which is random and makes no sense but HOW CAN YOU BE COMPLETE WITHOUT A MAN? HOW?
The worst part is? This movie, this insane totally out of control totally demeaning and strange and perverse movie, passes the Bechdel test. These women have relationships, they talk about stuff other than men, they have dreams and needs and goals and desires, but it’s all contextualized in this totally bizarre world in which being a Calendar girl is a real thing. Instead of owning their sexuality, they are all either trapped by it, or they escape it by being above such things. The characters who have sex, Paroma and Nazneen, are used, diminished, and left empty and with nothing. The characters who don’t, i.e. Sharon and Mayuri, triumph. Nandita gets caught in a trap of convention, but in the end she stays in it, content with her baby if not her marriage. For a movie about modern women, this film feels beyond dated.
“When I was a schoolboy in England, the old bound volumes of Kipling in the library had gilt swastikas embossed on their covers. The symbol’s ‘hooks’ were left-handed, as opposed to the right-handed ones of the Nazi hakenkreuz, but for a boy growing up after 1945 the shock of encountering the emblem at all was a memorable one. I later learned that in the mid-1930s Kipling had caused this ‘signature’ to be removed from all his future editions. Having initially sympathized with some of the early European fascist movements, he wanted to express his repudiation of Hitlerism (or ‘the Hun,’ as he would perhaps have preferred to say), and wanted no part in tainting the ancient Indian rune by association. In its origin, it is a Hindu and Jainas symbol for light.”- Christopher Hitchens
The only time in my life that I have ever seen a swastika and felt okay about it was when I first saw them film version of The Producers, a glorious film that should be required watching for all able-bodied film enthusiasts and Mel Brooks deniers. My parents, kind and responsible people that they are, showed me the movie when I was about 9 or 10, and although they had to explain the Kafka joke in the beginning, most of it made perfect sense to me, and solidified a childhood crush on Gene Wilder which I’ve never really dealt with and should probably talk to my therapist about at some point. Which is good, because I was totally running out of material otherwise….cue hysterical laughter.
Anyway, when they create a broadway production about Hitler (spoiler alert, I guess, but it’s the whole premise of the film and also why haven’t you already SEEN it come on!?) they have this musical number called “Springtime for Hitler” and you know what? How about we all just watch it real quick:
Fun fact, I don’t know about you but when I watched this video the required ad was for an Olay Face Whitening cream and I can’t help but think Hitler would have approved, don’t you? Shudder. Anyway, during the dance they make this moving swastika, and it was the first time I really felt okay seeing a swastika of any kind. Because for Jews, hell, for anyone whose history is affected by the European aspect of the World War II, the image is synonymous with the Nazi party, which for me personally is synonymous with genocide. And as a Jew I feel personally connected to that genocide, although frankly, as a human I feel personally connected to genocide, so I can honestly say I would probably react to the swastika similarly regardless of my religion, although some part of me thinks the full physical revulsion I feel when I see it might be specific to being Jewish. Then again, I don’t know, I’ve never been not-Jewish, so maybe everyone feels the same way I do. But I do know that I really don’t love seeing swastikas. I mean, who does?
Hindus. Hindus do. But not because they are all pro-Hitler (although I did meet this kid who was super excited to tell me about his distant relative, the freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose, had met with important world leaders like Adolph Hitler and I had to find a subtle way to tell him not to lead with that the next time he meets a non-Indian) but because it’s a symbol of good fortune. It comes from the Sanskrit for “all is well”, and while it’s existed for thousands of years, and has, like so many other Hindu things, taken on a lot of different meanings over time and throughout the sub-continent. But it’s generally positive and associated with luck, fortune, well-being, and Lord Vishnu, and Surya, the sun-god. And probably like a thousand other things, Hinduism has an adaptability that rivals the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle in its mind-bending nature.
So although the Nazis perverted the symbol, making it a symbol of racial purity and supremacy, and therefore we in the West stay far far away from it unless we are making a World War Two themed film (just in time for Oscar season!) it’s everywhere here. Literally. Everywhere.
Or is it? It feels like it’s everywhere to me, because I’m not used to it being anywhere. It’s like cows. I feel like there are cows everywhere here. I see a cow most days. That is infinitely more cow than I’ve ever seen in a Western city. My expectation of the number of cows I should see in a city is zero. Therefore, there are cows everywhere here, because there are more than zero cows. Mr. India thinks it’s weird that I think there are cows everywhere, but that’s because HIS expectation for how many cows he should see in a city is anywhere from 10 to 10,000. So it’s all about expectation.
And I don’t expect to see swastikas. I don’t want to see swastikas. Swastikas make me feel uncomfortable and unsafe. But I can’t avoid them here.
When I was in graduate school, one of my teachers who is Indian and married a Jewish man joked about the swastika squad at her wedding, how she had friends pull them down if they saw them so her in-laws wouldn’t have to deal with them. But I can’t do that here, because it’s not India that needs to adapt, it’s me. I can’t ask the entire country to put away their swastikas (this is the most I have ever used the term swastika, ps) any more than I can rid cities of cows. My expectations don’t alter realty, they just make it harder to deal with, sometimes. But I don’t mind the cows. It’s really hard not to mind the swastikas. Of course, Indians will helpfully tell you that this swastika is going the other way. Which, that’s lovely, but come on, not exactly the point. After all, I don’t see swastikas here and assume that the people responsible for them are Nazis. I don’t assume India is a Nazi nation. But in the same way that I wouldn’t want to see images of guns everywhere, I don’t want to see images I associate with Nazism everywhere. Who would?
And yet, here I am. Living a life surrounded by swastikas. And it is a largely great life, much more like the musical in The Producers than the events the fake musical is based upon. And luckily, or unluckily, of the many things that can make you feel unsafe in India, swastikas really don’t feature high on that list. So while it might never be possible for me to change my first reaction to the symbol, the sensation of discomfort that I feel every time I see it, the bounce back is increasingly quickly. Maybe you can’t shift your instincts, but you can control your reaction afterwards, or at least you can try.
To some extent, being out in the world is all about a war between your expectations of what the world is, and the reality of what the world is. Perhaps not everyone’s move involves being confronted constantly with a symbol that makes them quite so uncomfortable, but hey, I guess I’m one of the lucky ones.
At some point a few weeks ago, I looked around, and I realized that while I still saw every swastika on the road, I didn’t notice them in the same piercing way I had initially. They have, to some extent, normalized for me. I do still think about the fact that I live in a world of swastikas, I do still see them, but they’ve become, to some extent, a part of the landscape of India, just another of the many things you have to accept as part of normal life if you live here. Cows, swastikas, open sewers, guys shaving in public. The list, as no doubt it is destined to do, keeps growing.
Maybe I can re-train myself to see Gene Wilder when I see them. Adaptation comes in many forms.
Okay, the swastika is one thing but Mein Fricking Kampf? COME ON. Who is buying this? Big seller, Kolkata street seller?
The West sometimes doesn’t understand Bollywood, but they can definitely understand how Bollywood influences people. –Anurag Kashyap
Welcome to a new feature on this blog, which I have entitled “What Bollywood Can Teach You About India”! Here, I will be discussing the many things that a Bollywood film can teach a non-Indian newcomer about India! It’s going to be deeply exciting, and filled with snarkiness and spoilers, so please, if you don’t want to know exactly what happens in the movie discussed or you plan to be deeply offended by sarcastic humor-oriented critique of that movie, look away now.
To start this thing off right, I’m going to talk about a new film whose release is the cause for much controversy and conversation, Udta Punjab. Loosely translated to “Punjab is flying” or “Punjab is high” this film examines the issues of drug sales and addiction in Punjab, the state in India that was carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey during partition, the home of the most represented ethnic group in Bollywood, and a place in which some 60% or more of the youth population of the state are reported to be addicted to drugs, primarily your hard-core options, i.e. heroin and it’s cheaper but no less deadly alternatives.
Now, first and foremost, this is a very serious issue in Punjab, and I applaud the film for tackling it, the actors and crew for working on it, and the fact that beyond anything else, the film has supported a dialogue and a national awareness that could potentially lead to change. Regardless of the story, or whatever snark I’m about to heap on it, the film is well done and the effort is significant and important and pays off with a product that many people find moving, gripping and emotionally resonant. And that, more than anything else, is a triumph.
THAT BEING SAID, onto the life lessons of Bollywood!
Okay, to Udta Punjab starts with this awesome and difficult to watch montage of people in Punjab doing drugs. That’s tough, going from club drugs to rural addicts and showing the issue reaching into every sphere and class. Oy. People doing drugs in an abandoned railway car. That’s not what the British had in mind when they built you those, India!
On top of this is the work of Tommy Singh. Lesson #1! Tommy is a common and acceptable name in Punjab. Cool. Good to know. Tommy is super into drugs and he sings about it, and yet everyone is REAL surprised when he gets arrested for drug possession in, like, twenty minutes. Guys. He was very clear, did you not hear the lyrics? Lesson #2! In the Indian music industry, being literal is a plus, both for your fans, and for the police. Tommy is supported by a family business situation because he’s Indian and that’s how it works. That’s nice. It’s good to stick with tradition.
Meanwhile you have an unnamed woman played by Alia Bhatt, so I’m going to call her Alia Bhatt. She’s from Bihar, she likes field hockey, she doesn’t like her new position working the fields. When she finds drugs thrown over the Pakistani border (aw, thanks, Pakistan! Also, this never comes up again, that this one packet of drugs is, like, thrown over the border, but all the other drugs are just manufactured in Punjab and then everyone is like, those drugs were worth so much money but then everyone else seems to just bring the drugs in on trucks so, like, what was that one dude doing throwing heroin like a discus over the Pakistan India border, like aren’t there enough problems in terms of India Pakistan relations? And then everyone just has heroin all the time and clearly they aren’t waiting for another border throw so I’m not sure how drugs actually get anywhere in Punjab but it frankly doesn’t seem like an efficient system and maybe that’s for the best. ) Alia Bhatt is like, what is this? I will take it, and keep it, and then I will figure out it’s worth money, and then I will sell it! But selling heroin is apparently a lot harder than selling weed in college which is a shame because I think Alia Bhatt would make a great weed dealer. She’s a terrible heroin dealer, mostly because she doesn’t know what heroin is, like, Jesus, Bihari Alia Bhatt, do you not listen to Jazz????? Lesson #3! Biharis don’t know about Miles Davis.
So Alia Bhatt is captured after destroying the drugs and forced to sexually service the drug dealers in recompense for the heroin she destroyed, and when she fights back they inject her with heroin which leads me back to the whole but how do they have all this heroin to waste on Alia Bhatt if they are only getting it by random evening throws over the border I don’t understand the scale of this organization! Also, everything that is happening to Alia Bhatt is awful and painful to watch. Lesson #4! Punjab doesn’t seem like a great place to be a woman.
Somewhere nearby but also potentially far away? (Lesson #5! Punjab is both small and large. It’s whatever size you want it to be!) a police officer named Sartaj played by Diljit Dosanjh who wears a uniform when he has to but sweater vests any chance he gets takes kickbacks for letting drugs into (the border? the region? unclear) and feels totally cool about that because think of how many sweater vests he can buy with that money!
Lesson #6 is maybe the biggest lesson of all after the really important drug one, and it is, SWEATER VESTS ARE ALSO A PUNJAB BASED ADDICTiON. The sweater vest is real, and alive, in Punjab. The sweater vest count for this movie is legit out of control. No one is immune to its wooly unattractive charms. Men, women, people fighting for and against drugs, the sweater vest is the one true unifier of Punjab.
Even Kareena Kapoor Khan’s character, Dr. Preet Sahni, wears, like, four different ones. They button up the front and they are hideous. Her hair is also not great, but that’s actually kind of lovely, because it reflects the kind of strange misguided hairstyles I see a lot here in Mumbai in that it has this weird front pouf thing which makes women look like 1980’s diner waitresses and it also has a strange and egregious number of clips and scrunchies. It’s troubling, because no one needs that to keep their hair in place, and it’s concerning, because you want better for the world. I’m glad they did that, because it feels very real to me. Lesson #7, that hair is out there, and it’s real. Someone needs to open up a ballerina bun how-to business in Punjab because that would make a fortune.
Lesson #8? The police are hella corrupt in Punjab. Sartaj gets a massive kickback for letting drugs come in across the border (is it the border? A checkpoint? UNCLEAR.) and he uses that kickback to support his family, included his dead-eyed younger brother Balli who is also getting a kick…out of heroin! Or something kind of like it! Also, everyone else like sleeps in the courtyard but somehow that kid has his own room where he can do all his heroin-like stuff. I don’t get how that family allocates space. But I do know that you can tell something’s off with that kid because he never wears a sweater vest. Sartaj is one of those “not in my house” willfully blind guys, so when his brother overdoses and ends up in Dr. Sahni’s clinic he’s like, what, drug addiction, Punjab, this is total news to me! even though he’s letting truck loads of the stuff in daily because I guess that’s all cops do in Punjab? Seriously, he’s never even doing paperwork or anything, he just arrests Tommy Singh once and then mostly hangs out with other cops at a checkpoint. Lesson #8 corrected, the police are hella corrupt and also don’t really have that much to do in Punjab.
Dr. Sahni drops some truth bombs on Sartaj about drugs, the fact that everyone is doing them, and the fact that as an inept law enforcer is his, perhaps, a part of this problem. Kareena Kapoor Khan’s truth bombs are very gentle, like meringues, because Kareena Kapoor Khan spends this entire movie being a pale well-educated lady who knows how to use the internet to research corrupt politicians but has never done so before because, I don’t know, hobbies? Basically Kareena Kapoor Khan’s character is not very interesting or complex, although she does balance out Alia Bhatt in this whole virgin-whore dichotomy which really helps Udta Punjab fail the Bechdel Test, taking us back to Lesson #4, Punjab is not a great place to be a woman.
Sartaj, reeling from the truth bomb attack, puts Tommy Singh in normal people jail not rockstar jail which, just like everything else in India, looks exactly the same, but there are more people. Lesson #9, in India, money buys you privacy. Tommy is scared, because poor people are scary, and he probably knows that they don’t have any cocaine. Interesting fair point, Tommy is all about that coke, which makes sense, because he has a lot of money, but everyone else is all heroin all the way, which paints a fine line between drugs of privilege and drugs of poverty. Lesson #10, drugs in Punjab are a lot like drugs all over the world. Anyway, in prison two kids sing Tommy one of his own songs, talking about how he’s their idol, until they are shushed by an old man who reminds them that they killed their mother because she wasn’t giving them money for drugs. Which is very awful, and has actually happened, and clearly affects Tommy deeply. Or maybe he’s just thinking about his haram pant collection. It’s hard to tell with Shahid Kapoor.
Sartaj decides he wants to fight the war on drugs, which he initially does by beating up the supplier he usually lets into the country? region? again, unclear. Sartaj thinks the drug problem is a lot smaller than it is if that’s going to be the one thing that ends the narcotics trade in Punjab. Spoiler alert, it does not, but he takes a personal day, because emotional revelations are difficult. He decides to team up with Dr. Sahni, because she is literally the only person he’s ever met who told him drugs were bad, and he has to visit his brother in rehab anyway, so, like, might as well. Also, he doesn’t really have much work as a police officer, as we’ve discussed. So they get together, and with a little sleuthing (and I really mean a LITTLE sleuthing, it takes them, like, four days to figure out how everything is interconnected and how this major politician is also somehow a drug kingpin and, like, no one else has every noticed because lesson #11, the media in Punjab does not know how to do its damn JOB) they uncover this conspiracy, break into a warehouse so they can, I don’t know, see the drugs in action? That’s less clear, and put together a printed paper folder that they somehow have to make together despite the fact that this is clearly not a two person job, because this vitally important document that holds the key to disassembling the drug trade in Punjabi is apparently at the level of a 9th grade school project. Lesson #12, Punjab has yet to hear about the zip drive or the concept of email. Punjab! Get the net!
Meanwhile, back at the drug mansion, Alia Bhatt is super addicted to heroin, although the timeline is unclear. They seem to be keeping her around both for themselves and to entertain visitors, like Sartaj’s boss when he comes by, who hilariously makes a comment about Alia Bhatt’s tiny size. One of the drug mansion denizens/workers takes a shine to Alia Bhatt and makes her take selfies with him which is totally a real thing that happens all the time in Punjab and I know because that happened to me in Punjab so Alia Bhatt and I are basically the same person now. Lesson #13, selfies are big in Punjab! One night they leave all the doors open because that’s how you run a successful drug mansion I guess, I wouldn’t know, I’ve never tried, and Alia Bhatt gets out and runs away.
Tommy Singh is giving an anti-drug concert somewhere nearby (seriously Punjab could be any size, it is so deeply unclear) but he’s having a hard time getting himself together after realizing that his pro-drug philosophy and literal lyrics have had some negative effects on the world around him. His cousin helpfully gives him some cocaine, because family cares. He tries to not do the cocaine but then he totally does the cocaine and he ruins his hairdressers hours of work by shaving the word loser into his head. Lesson #14, people in Punjab have no respect for the hard work of others! He then, in a perplexing outfit that includes not one but two vests, not of the sweater variety, but I’m saying close enough, gives a concert that is more spoken word poetry than pro-drug anthem. His audience is troubled by this, so Tommy pees on them. Note: the censor board demanded cuts to this scene, but the irony is now it looks like he’s masturbating on the crowd which is much more graphic, so nice try, censor board! The concert ends in a riot, so he runs off and meets Alia Bhatt and they talk about their dreams or whatever, and, like, cuddle in a pile of hay, and at some point Tommy claims to be twenty-two to which it is clear that Alia Bhatt, who actually does really good work in this movie, is trying not to laugh because she actually is something close to twenty-two while Shahid Kapoor is on the far side of 35. Anyway, this is supposed to be emotionally resonant or something. Lesson #15, the best way to meet someone in Punjab is on the run from your drug addiction and your problems, it’s a total meet-cute!
So Alia Bhatt goes back to the drug mansion and her selfie-boyfriend who slaps her and calls her baby and she decides to get off drugs which she does after a night of putting cloth in her mouth. Lesson #15, withdrawal somehow works fundamentally differently in Punjab. Point is, she’s okay now, heroin free and feeling good. Meanwhile, Tommy Singh decides to drop everything to find her, despite the fact that there is a warrant for his arrest and his uncle has been arrested. When confronted by his cousin who is like, are you kidding, 99 Problems, dude! But Tommy has no respect for the lessons of Jay-Z, so he goes off in his sweatshirt vest and winged sneakers to get his girl. This is the drug addled Bihari farm worker he met one time. True romance.
Remember Balli? Sartaj’s addict brother? His rehab isn’t going so well, maybe because he hasn’t heard of Alia Bhatt’s cloth-in-mouth method. So he breaks out and accidentally kills Dr. Sahni, which is a bummer because she’s just asked Sartaj out on a date. Talk about a cock-block, Balli! Sartaj comes by while his boss from the police is staging the scene to look like a break in gone wrong. He’s also discovered the folder of information which, again, is why they should have gone digital with this one. So his boss takes Sartaj to the drug mansion, which is some distance that is totally unclear away, and this is great because Alia Bhatt has gotten clean and is ready to stab her captors to death with a large nail from the wall, and Tommy’s on his way with a hockey stick biking across the region.
So everyone meets up at the drug mansion and it’s a blood bath and together they kill everyone. Drug problem in Punjab solved? Probably not. So Alia Bhatt ends up on a beach in Goa with Tommy’s family who have patched things up with him now that he’s in jail, and Sartaj, I don’t know what happens to that guy or his brother who somehow survives the movie despite having maybe 10 lines.
So! Lots of lessons learned about Punjab. I actually went to Punjab, to see Amritsar and the Golden Temple of the Sikhs, and I only really noticed that it’s a hard place for women (combine the creepy staring of Delhi with the fact that men aggressively followed us around) that selfies are big in Punjab, like the rest of India, and that the sweater vest is alive and well. So I think that Udta Punjab is a useful learning experience!
In all seriousness, the main central lesson of the film is a vital and important one, and, frankly, the story they chose to tell is not all that important in the end, because the situation and it’s stakes are already so high in real life that they extend into the world of fiction. And if this movie activates public consciousness, that’s amazing. I certainly didn’t know about this issue, and now I do, and that’s fantastic, because if someone like me, who has no context for this issue, has learned about it, I can only imagine that it will deepen the existing understanding so many people here in India have.
That being said, you can also learn a lot of incidental things from this movie too. 15 lessons from one movie? Worth the ticket price!
Note: I don’t own any of these images, I got them from the internet, but if you want to send me more, specifically sweater-vest related, please do so in the comments!
“I, however, was raised neither as Catholic nor as Jew. I was both, and nothing: a jewholic-anonymous, a cathjew nut, a stewpot, a mongrel cur. I was–what’s the word these days?–atomised. Yessir: a real Bombay mix. ”
― Salman Rushdie, The Moor’s Last Sigh
It’s not uncommon for Jews to have to explain what their holidays are to their gentile friends, neighbors, lovers and enemies. Hell, it’s not uncommon for Jews to have to explain what being Jewish even is to friends, neighbors, all of the above. Growing up attending a liberal, largely Jewish but ostensibly Quaker school, I didn’t really understand that there were people out there who didn’t know anything about Judaism. Intellectually I did, of course, because I had seen them in books and movies, and we talked about it in Hebrew school, but although I was physically living in a neighborhood with almost no other Jewish people around, my real life happened in the confines of my home and in my school, and everyone there got it. Looking back, I had lots of experiences with people who probably knew nothing about Jews at all, from my horseback riding camp in West Virginia to visiting my father’s family in Puerto Rico, but for whatever reason, willful ignorance or the blind solipsism of childhood, it didn’t register for me until I was about 16 years old. Before than, despite world history, a subject I adored, I was still fairly confident that underneath it all, everyone was Jewish.
But eventually that pleasant fantasy had to come to an end, and spending time living on a farm on the Maine Coast, my revelation of the non-semitic nature of others came, as so many things to, through butter. Coming home from my semester in Maine for Spring Break, my mother asked me,”do they leave the butter out”?, her knowing gaze reflecting the answer. Shocked, I responded that indeed they did, what WAS that? She nodded, and told me matter-of-factly, that’s what non-Jews do, they leave the butter out to get soft. Hell, they EAT butter, when the good Jewish population of my mother’s world ate margarine, as God and modern science intended.
Returning to the program, during Passover, myself and the other scant handful of Jewish kids proudly explained to the rest of our classmates over a hastily thrown-together Seder featuring Matzo Ball soup in chicken bullion broth and a combined re-telling of the Passover story that sounded more like madlibs than mezuzah. That was my first experience in explaining to an audience with no context what it was I was doing. But it certainly hasn’t been my last, especially since I moved to Mumbai.
In some ways, being Jewish is great practice for being a foreigner. Either way, you are a going to spend a lot of time carefully contextualizing your identity and life experience all while trying to make it comfortable, adaptable, and not too difficult for others to understand. You need to be able to explain your differences in a charming, self deprecating, slightly amusing way, while knowing all the time that you are in the vulnerable position of being the outsider. It can be fun, and it can be exhausting, so take it from me, do it when you’re young.
I am told there is actually a sizable ex-patriot community in Mumbai. I say I’m told, because I really have yet to meet them. I belong to an ex-pat Facebook group, where I watch people post about apartments and ask where to find decent gyms, sell their furniture when they move out of town, and promote their businesses, but I’ve never met any of these people in real life, except for the time I stopped by a departing person’s house, delirious with a fever, and picked up some baking trays.
In some ways it’s probably a good thing. One of the pieces of advice I got from someone I knew in college who had spent a year here working on this project, was not to get caught in the ex-pat bubble. Of course, to do that, I would have to FIND them first. I saw more visibly non-Indian people in the Taj Mahal than I have ever seen in Mumbai. I’m sure they are out there, but in a city of so many millions of people, somewhere between 15 and 20 million at last count (and yes, in India that is an acceptable margin of error, thanks for asking!) a handful of non-Indians is inevitably going to get lost in the shuffle. But not being able to use an ex-pat bubble as a crutch is probably on the positive side of things for me, especially given the fact that I have the unfair advantage of an Indian spouse, anyway, to smooth the way forward for me. One big benefit deserves a small handicap to even things out, doesn’t it?
So for now, I stick to Indians who have been abroad, people who have experience different cities of the world, or even India, or who would at least like to. Because it’s really lonely, constantly being different. You would think I would be used to it by now, and I am, its great preparation for a place like India, where no matter how many people post on that Facebook group, the non-Indian community (which I can’t even FIND) is still a drop in the ocean compared to the Indian one, but there is a reason we say at our Passover service “Next year in Jerusalem”, because it would be nice, someday, to be somewhere where you can exist without explanations.
Still, as I sat at my Passover seder this year, carefully once again explaining what the hell any of this is to a group of wide-eyed Indians with almost no knowledge of the holiday, my religion, or why a week with a tasteless cracker for sustenance is both essential and unpleasant, all I could think was, at least I’m not alone. Having people who will come and listen to you has its own kind of value, and while it might be nice to feel surrounded by people “like me”, the truth is, the people I want to be like are people like that, willing to listen, willing to learn, willing to try the matzoh.
A little Mumbai street art. I wonder if the views change….
Worry not, Vegins! Vegans, you’re screwed.
The mango season continues. Cezzane, eat your heart out, we will be eating these…
Screw the facebook groups, I make my friends on the street.
A lot of what I’ve been up to is trying to figure out hot weather hair styles. Monsoon, come soon, thanks.
Sorry I'm Not Saree 