(bdnews24.com, March 25, 2011)
The first time I saw her, though not in real life, was when I was taken to see Taming of the Shrew, the Hollywood version of the Shakespeare classic, many years ago. She is introduced through a peephole in a large wooden door, as a pair of startlingly beautiful violet eyes, heavily made up, which hold anger, aggression, a strange shyness and something that could only be called ‘star power’. Some years later, I saw her again, this time as a photograph at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; she featured in a wonderful black and white image as Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, with heavily kohled eyes and slick hairdo, a gold snake coiled against her magnificent bosom. I was stunned by that photograph, not just because it showed off more cleavage than I knew existed when I was that young, but by the power of those eyes, the direct gaze, the firm resolution shining through. Elizabeth Taylor, I understood, was a star, a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood, a lady who was more than a woman, a complete diva.
As I grew up, I learned more about the star and the person behind the makeup. She was Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, born in England to American parents, brought up in the United States, known all over the world. She was, by the time I could read, more than just an actress, she was all celebrity, all scandal, all glamour and gossip. Her love story with Sir Richard Burton grabbed headlines all the time; even as she divorced him, she called him the greatest love of her life. And she had many – movie stars and politicians, even a construction worker. Marriage happened to her eight times, twice to Burton, and once each to Nicky Hilton, Michael Wilding, Michael Todd, Eddie Fisher, John Warner and Larry Fortensky. When someone asked her why she kept repeating the act, she said, “I don’t know, honey. It sure beats the hell out of me.”
As an actor, Taylor was seen in blockbusters and flops alike. She started acting when she was all of nine years old in There’s One Born Every Minute, and worked in a number of films, transiting neatly into more adult roles with no trouble at all. From Lassie Come Home to National Velvet, she was a star by the time she was 12. In Conspirator (1949), at just 16, she moved to a grown up character but Father of the Bride (1950) was the production that brought her into adult roles, big time. Some years after that, her southern belle accent in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof steamed up the screen as much as her passion with Burton in Cleopatra, but she took home two Oscar awards for her work in Butterfield 8 (1960) and Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966).
Perhaps best known in the life that was Elizabeth Taylor was her collection of jewels. The famed 33.19 carat Krupp diamond and the 69.42 carat Taylor-Burton diamond are perhaps the best known of her enormous collection, apart from the 50 carat La Peregrina, a teardrop shaped pearl that she almost always wore. She channelled her passion for sparkling stuff to start designing for the Elizabeth Collection, touted as “fine jewellery with elegance and flair”; even her designer-label fragrances mirror the jewel theme: White Diamonds, Black Pearls and Passion. As she aged, Taylor segued from her short shorts and babydoll frocks into more matronly kaftans and wraps, often making a ridiculous picture, trundling along carrying extra weight on her tiny, top-heavy frame, loaded with spectacular jewels. Her glamour was never doubted, but her style statement was, with talk show hosts and comedians alike making fun of her.
As her acting appearances faded into minor roles and then none at all, her philanthropic activities increased, keeping her in the public eye to some extent. She was more recognised as a social activist, with AIDS awareness, research and treatment being top of her champion-list. Taylor fought illness – suspected lung cancer, a benign brain tumour, skin cancer, pneumonia, congestive heart failure (which finally brought about her death) and alcoholism, surviving them all with some help from devoted doctors, various love interests and her indomitable will to survive.
The legend Taylor died, at the age of 79. She was a grandmother ten times over, with four children and four great-grandchildren and a host of friends, alive and dead, from the still-gorgeous Debbie Reynolds to the late Michael Jackson. Eulogies have been written about her, the star, and many more will follow. But for me, that image of beautiful violet eyes glowing through the peephole in a large wooden door is what she will always be about. That, and the knowledge that she was a true diva who even dictated before she finally passed away that her own funeral be 15 minutes late!
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
Stand up and be counted
(bdnews24.com, March 18, 2011)
Every now and then our front door bell rings and there stands a stout little gentleman carrying a huge bag, smiling a small smile. He takes his shoes off, comes in and sits down at our dining table, unfurling a huge roll of papers almost larger than he is. Taking a sip of the water I serve him, he coughs gently and then uncaps his pen. He looks up, smiles, and begins his task for the moment, asking us the most intimate of questions, ranging from how old we are to what we do and how many air-conditioners we have in the house. None of us take any offense at the personal nature of his examination, since we know that he is merely doing his job, and a rather arduous and painstaking job, at that. He is a data collector for one of the most ambitious tasks that India has been set: to get every single individual recorded, labelled, registered and all that good stuff. This will be valuable not only from the point of view of doing a general census, or a count of all this country’s citizens, but also help to implement what is known as the Unique Identification scheme, whereby every Indian has an special identity card that lists all their personal details, making is easy for everything from the collection of government pension to finding someone in a criminal database. It will act as a combination social security card, a voter identity card, a ration card perhaps, and a general means of identification, eliminating all the various papers that are so necessary in the process of applying for a passport, a gas connection, a visa, and much more. Whether this scheme will work or not remains to be seen, since it is rather ambitious and dependent on an organised system of data collection and analysis, as well as an efficient and systematic manner of presenting that collected date and issuing the unique identity card at the end of the whole lengthy, tedious and bug-ridden procedure.
I read recently that in Bangladesh the 5th population and household census kicked off earlier this week. As always, as in India too, the most prominent citizen of the country, its leader, the President – Mohammad Zillur Rahman in the case of Bangladesh and Pratibha Patil for India – was the first to stand up to be counted, as the saying goes, thereby hopefully setting the example for the rest of us to cooperate with the people and the process that they are trying to work on. The five-day-long process will result in data about the total number of people in the sub-continental nation, especially on their age, sex, ethnicity, religion and social and economic status, which will be useful in planning and implementing schemes for development and progress. As in India, Bangladesh also has a ‘floating population’, as it is called, which finds a home, however temporary, wherever possible, be it in a bus depot, train station, on the pavement, or under a bridge. These people, too, will be counted, though it will be a fairly difficult task.
The problems involved with an exercise of this magnitude are not few. Even as teachers, municipal workers and various others, primarily volunteers, are added to the task force, the word needs to spread from the government that this kind of process is going to be implemented and must be completed within a certain viable timeframe. Of course, organising the whole thing and getting it in the right gear at the right time is in itself a huge job. But worse still is the problem of getting the citizens, for whose eventual benefit it will all be done, to cooperate. In India, there have been reports of people not being polite to the data collectors – that is perhaps the least of the issues that need to be addressed. For most, it is a matter of genuinely not having the time to sit down and have responses recorded – in Mumbai, or other big cities, where families tend to be nuclear and both adults go out to work, the coordination between those who have the information and those who need the information is perhaps the most difficult step in the entire process. There have been stories written of where people are home but refuse to open the door, refuse to give the information being asked for or just refuse to entertain the data collectors once they know why the doorbell has been rung by a stranger.
Once all the information is gathered, it needs to be sifted, analysed, channelled, used, to best effect. Census taking is not a spy story being acted out; it is a useful – valuable, in fact – exercise through which the people who live in and belong to a particular country can be helped by those with the power and authority to do so.
Every now and then our front door bell rings and there stands a stout little gentleman carrying a huge bag, smiling a small smile. He takes his shoes off, comes in and sits down at our dining table, unfurling a huge roll of papers almost larger than he is. Taking a sip of the water I serve him, he coughs gently and then uncaps his pen. He looks up, smiles, and begins his task for the moment, asking us the most intimate of questions, ranging from how old we are to what we do and how many air-conditioners we have in the house. None of us take any offense at the personal nature of his examination, since we know that he is merely doing his job, and a rather arduous and painstaking job, at that. He is a data collector for one of the most ambitious tasks that India has been set: to get every single individual recorded, labelled, registered and all that good stuff. This will be valuable not only from the point of view of doing a general census, or a count of all this country’s citizens, but also help to implement what is known as the Unique Identification scheme, whereby every Indian has an special identity card that lists all their personal details, making is easy for everything from the collection of government pension to finding someone in a criminal database. It will act as a combination social security card, a voter identity card, a ration card perhaps, and a general means of identification, eliminating all the various papers that are so necessary in the process of applying for a passport, a gas connection, a visa, and much more. Whether this scheme will work or not remains to be seen, since it is rather ambitious and dependent on an organised system of data collection and analysis, as well as an efficient and systematic manner of presenting that collected date and issuing the unique identity card at the end of the whole lengthy, tedious and bug-ridden procedure.
I read recently that in Bangladesh the 5th population and household census kicked off earlier this week. As always, as in India too, the most prominent citizen of the country, its leader, the President – Mohammad Zillur Rahman in the case of Bangladesh and Pratibha Patil for India – was the first to stand up to be counted, as the saying goes, thereby hopefully setting the example for the rest of us to cooperate with the people and the process that they are trying to work on. The five-day-long process will result in data about the total number of people in the sub-continental nation, especially on their age, sex, ethnicity, religion and social and economic status, which will be useful in planning and implementing schemes for development and progress. As in India, Bangladesh also has a ‘floating population’, as it is called, which finds a home, however temporary, wherever possible, be it in a bus depot, train station, on the pavement, or under a bridge. These people, too, will be counted, though it will be a fairly difficult task.
The problems involved with an exercise of this magnitude are not few. Even as teachers, municipal workers and various others, primarily volunteers, are added to the task force, the word needs to spread from the government that this kind of process is going to be implemented and must be completed within a certain viable timeframe. Of course, organising the whole thing and getting it in the right gear at the right time is in itself a huge job. But worse still is the problem of getting the citizens, for whose eventual benefit it will all be done, to cooperate. In India, there have been reports of people not being polite to the data collectors – that is perhaps the least of the issues that need to be addressed. For most, it is a matter of genuinely not having the time to sit down and have responses recorded – in Mumbai, or other big cities, where families tend to be nuclear and both adults go out to work, the coordination between those who have the information and those who need the information is perhaps the most difficult step in the entire process. There have been stories written of where people are home but refuse to open the door, refuse to give the information being asked for or just refuse to entertain the data collectors once they know why the doorbell has been rung by a stranger.
Once all the information is gathered, it needs to be sifted, analysed, channelled, used, to best effect. Census taking is not a spy story being acted out; it is a useful – valuable, in fact – exercise through which the people who live in and belong to a particular country can be helped by those with the power and authority to do so.
Monday, March 14, 2011
PABLO BARTHOLOMEW
(Hindu Sunday Magazine, March 13, 2011)
“This is where I grew up,” photographer Pablo Bartholomew says of Mumbai, the city he knew - and still does - as Bombay. “It is a real city, a hard, intense place.” Bartholomew came to the city in his late teens and did a lot of his work on the urbanscape of the metropolis there – “This was a way of discovering a new city,” he explains. He showcased his ‘discoveries’ recently with a show called Chronicles of a Past Life - '70s & '80s In Bombay at the Sakshi Gallery.
But much of what he saw then and viewers could see in his show is no longer real. The photographs are a mnemonic for those who remember the city in the 1970s and ’80s, but are unfamiliar vignettes with that otherworldly touch of the perhaps-known for those who came after. Bartholomew also did some modern-day exploration, “walking around, and found that some of the places are not there anymore - the building I shot my pictures from is not there, the scene I shot is no longer there. There are places that have closed down. This is a function of time and change; everything changes. These are passings and passages of time. Bombay (as he and so many others who know an older, less harried city call it) for me becomes a bit of a passage where I go back to some of the older places where I had breakfast or lunch or dinner and I continue to do that today because in some way it is reinforcing memories or feelings that I have of or for the city.”
But the draw was not the much-vaunted ‘charm’ of the metropolis. It was something more, something else, something that went beyond definition. Bartholomew does not think that “Bombay ever had charm. It had a vitality. It had a democratic way that it treated many people of different faith, colour, belief; outsiders were absorbed in as long as they had something to offer the city.” But with all that, too, change has been inevitable. “I think that fabric to some degree has changed, there have been migration changes, so maybe there are many more North Indians here now. Earlier, the Parsis, the Goans, people from the South stood out much more than the Punjabis, but now I think maybe the equation has changed. There were always South Indians – Keralites, people from coastal Karnataka and Mangalore. That is what made the city so exciting and interesting! You had all this mixed with a healthy dose of Muslims added in.” The people were the driving force, the momentum that has made Mumbai the commercial capital that it is today.
Bartholomew believes that with the positive has come a downside that is not always healthy. “I think the city still has that buzz and craziness of driving itself, but the infrastructure has defeated it. If you look at what is happening in North Bombay – Andheri West and beyond – it is totally chaotic and haphazard. Some things in the South may never change, until those buildings fall or some really strong builder lobby takes over, which they are always trying to do.” And he is not against progress in any way, though he rues the shape it sometimes takes. “If there is a fire and a building comes down, there is always a chance that a new horrible structure will come up. But it is not as if they will rebuild it in historically the same manner, because there is really no value for that today. That is a matter of sadness.” According to him, “The city fathers here never really bothered about the future, it seems, because they came from somewhere else probably, from rather dull and low education backgrounds which didn’t allow for them to have concerns of a certain type. The concerns were probably of lining their own pockets instead, not necessarily in thinking of a greater, larger good for a city so that it could continue to live and breathe.”
He articulates many of the concerns that dog today’s Mumbaikar and are beginning to find expression in urban development now. “Take the suburban train services – they should have been revamped years ago so that the system could have a different kind of infrastructure and carry more people. The introduction of more different and innovative kinds of transportation – the development of waterways, for instance - would be hugely useful. But maybe those who could have done it did not think all this through well enough at the time. Things could have been done years ago,” but are still only wishes in the minds of some who have to navigate Mumbai’s bustle every day!
Bartholomew’s camera also looks at change from the point of view of preservation, a kind of record of a not-too-distant past, one that is yielding perforce to a ‘new and improved’ cityscape that is not necessarily aesthetically better. Consider the mill areas, he suggests, they are “also being redone, but the whole thing is going bananas with the way in which these vertical structures are coming up! Are the buildings in tandem with the larger city? What does it all represent? Nobody cares, nobody thinks these things through. Frankly, it’s all about money and politics,” he avers. Bartholomew brings up the oft-made projection of Mumbai becoming like Shanghai, the fastest growing city in China and one that is often made an example of in discussions on development and progress. “Shanghai is like New York on steroids – a supercity with super infrastructure and the semblance of arriving into the new century, even though not everything is ideal there either. There is also ambition and drive, but not as much corruption, not to the degree that it stalls certain kinds of progress being made in a positive way.”
In the capturing of an ethos that is soon vanishing, down to the smallest architectural detail, Bartholomew has an intimate understanding of what a softer, gentler, more mellow Bombay once was. And he feels that “You can still have the old stuff and do innovative things in other areas that are not offensive and in your face but address space and the needs of a city. Nariman Point (the central business district, as it were) may have been the worst idea that the city developers had – it brought everybody down to the South end of a narrow island, making them need to travel down there every day to work and then back home. Did Bombay and its people need that sort of movement? Things could have been diffused to maybe the central part of the city (Bandra-Kurla), to meet a different dynamic need.” The loss of a certain lifestyle, even a kind of habitat, as seen in his black and white images, was perhaps due to the fact that “When everything gets choked, people have to do something about it. In China, when they build a city out of nothing, they first put in the infrastructure and then invite in industry and people to live there. Here it is the other way around: you come and build and settle, then you get water and electricity and transport and roads.”
Some of his images are especially poignant, faces that show poverty, hunger, deprivation, but never a loss of spirit, that great spirit that is often mentioned whenever the city is hit by crisis, be it bomb blasts or terrorist attacks. There is the watchmaker in his tiny booth, the daily-wage labourer in his singlet, the dabbawalla, the trucker, the beggar, all living in a city that was and still is all about dreams. “The country was in some ways happier then,” Bartholomew believes, “nobody was so rich or so poor, or it was less apparent. Now the divide is so great between the rich and the poor in the city. It is a miracle that we do not have levels and layers of violence like Brazil and some parts of America. The greater danger is now the rural-urban divide and the trouble caused by it, by the uprising of the most deprived and prejudice-laden. It could happen very fast to the city.”
A dire note, but one that indeed rings true. But for Bartholomew, the city is special enough, important enough for him to be as involved and opinionated as he is about it. As he has said in his show, “Bombay offered me and thousands of others like me…the opportunity to be cradled and mentored professionally. It gave friendship, food and shelter and the chance to be discovered, the chance to become someone.” Today, this photographer is ‘someone’ with a voice that speaks through images that are a true chronicle of a city that once was, that will always be.
“This is where I grew up,” photographer Pablo Bartholomew says of Mumbai, the city he knew - and still does - as Bombay. “It is a real city, a hard, intense place.” Bartholomew came to the city in his late teens and did a lot of his work on the urbanscape of the metropolis there – “This was a way of discovering a new city,” he explains. He showcased his ‘discoveries’ recently with a show called Chronicles of a Past Life - '70s & '80s In Bombay at the Sakshi Gallery.
But much of what he saw then and viewers could see in his show is no longer real. The photographs are a mnemonic for those who remember the city in the 1970s and ’80s, but are unfamiliar vignettes with that otherworldly touch of the perhaps-known for those who came after. Bartholomew also did some modern-day exploration, “walking around, and found that some of the places are not there anymore - the building I shot my pictures from is not there, the scene I shot is no longer there. There are places that have closed down. This is a function of time and change; everything changes. These are passings and passages of time. Bombay (as he and so many others who know an older, less harried city call it) for me becomes a bit of a passage where I go back to some of the older places where I had breakfast or lunch or dinner and I continue to do that today because in some way it is reinforcing memories or feelings that I have of or for the city.”
But the draw was not the much-vaunted ‘charm’ of the metropolis. It was something more, something else, something that went beyond definition. Bartholomew does not think that “Bombay ever had charm. It had a vitality. It had a democratic way that it treated many people of different faith, colour, belief; outsiders were absorbed in as long as they had something to offer the city.” But with all that, too, change has been inevitable. “I think that fabric to some degree has changed, there have been migration changes, so maybe there are many more North Indians here now. Earlier, the Parsis, the Goans, people from the South stood out much more than the Punjabis, but now I think maybe the equation has changed. There were always South Indians – Keralites, people from coastal Karnataka and Mangalore. That is what made the city so exciting and interesting! You had all this mixed with a healthy dose of Muslims added in.” The people were the driving force, the momentum that has made Mumbai the commercial capital that it is today.
Bartholomew believes that with the positive has come a downside that is not always healthy. “I think the city still has that buzz and craziness of driving itself, but the infrastructure has defeated it. If you look at what is happening in North Bombay – Andheri West and beyond – it is totally chaotic and haphazard. Some things in the South may never change, until those buildings fall or some really strong builder lobby takes over, which they are always trying to do.” And he is not against progress in any way, though he rues the shape it sometimes takes. “If there is a fire and a building comes down, there is always a chance that a new horrible structure will come up. But it is not as if they will rebuild it in historically the same manner, because there is really no value for that today. That is a matter of sadness.” According to him, “The city fathers here never really bothered about the future, it seems, because they came from somewhere else probably, from rather dull and low education backgrounds which didn’t allow for them to have concerns of a certain type. The concerns were probably of lining their own pockets instead, not necessarily in thinking of a greater, larger good for a city so that it could continue to live and breathe.”
He articulates many of the concerns that dog today’s Mumbaikar and are beginning to find expression in urban development now. “Take the suburban train services – they should have been revamped years ago so that the system could have a different kind of infrastructure and carry more people. The introduction of more different and innovative kinds of transportation – the development of waterways, for instance - would be hugely useful. But maybe those who could have done it did not think all this through well enough at the time. Things could have been done years ago,” but are still only wishes in the minds of some who have to navigate Mumbai’s bustle every day!
Bartholomew’s camera also looks at change from the point of view of preservation, a kind of record of a not-too-distant past, one that is yielding perforce to a ‘new and improved’ cityscape that is not necessarily aesthetically better. Consider the mill areas, he suggests, they are “also being redone, but the whole thing is going bananas with the way in which these vertical structures are coming up! Are the buildings in tandem with the larger city? What does it all represent? Nobody cares, nobody thinks these things through. Frankly, it’s all about money and politics,” he avers. Bartholomew brings up the oft-made projection of Mumbai becoming like Shanghai, the fastest growing city in China and one that is often made an example of in discussions on development and progress. “Shanghai is like New York on steroids – a supercity with super infrastructure and the semblance of arriving into the new century, even though not everything is ideal there either. There is also ambition and drive, but not as much corruption, not to the degree that it stalls certain kinds of progress being made in a positive way.”
In the capturing of an ethos that is soon vanishing, down to the smallest architectural detail, Bartholomew has an intimate understanding of what a softer, gentler, more mellow Bombay once was. And he feels that “You can still have the old stuff and do innovative things in other areas that are not offensive and in your face but address space and the needs of a city. Nariman Point (the central business district, as it were) may have been the worst idea that the city developers had – it brought everybody down to the South end of a narrow island, making them need to travel down there every day to work and then back home. Did Bombay and its people need that sort of movement? Things could have been diffused to maybe the central part of the city (Bandra-Kurla), to meet a different dynamic need.” The loss of a certain lifestyle, even a kind of habitat, as seen in his black and white images, was perhaps due to the fact that “When everything gets choked, people have to do something about it. In China, when they build a city out of nothing, they first put in the infrastructure and then invite in industry and people to live there. Here it is the other way around: you come and build and settle, then you get water and electricity and transport and roads.”
Some of his images are especially poignant, faces that show poverty, hunger, deprivation, but never a loss of spirit, that great spirit that is often mentioned whenever the city is hit by crisis, be it bomb blasts or terrorist attacks. There is the watchmaker in his tiny booth, the daily-wage labourer in his singlet, the dabbawalla, the trucker, the beggar, all living in a city that was and still is all about dreams. “The country was in some ways happier then,” Bartholomew believes, “nobody was so rich or so poor, or it was less apparent. Now the divide is so great between the rich and the poor in the city. It is a miracle that we do not have levels and layers of violence like Brazil and some parts of America. The greater danger is now the rural-urban divide and the trouble caused by it, by the uprising of the most deprived and prejudice-laden. It could happen very fast to the city.”
A dire note, but one that indeed rings true. But for Bartholomew, the city is special enough, important enough for him to be as involved and opinionated as he is about it. As he has said in his show, “Bombay offered me and thousands of others like me…the opportunity to be cradled and mentored professionally. It gave friendship, food and shelter and the chance to be discovered, the chance to become someone.” Today, this photographer is ‘someone’ with a voice that speaks through images that are a true chronicle of a city that once was, that will always be.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Disaster strikes Japan
(bdnews24.com, Friday, March 11, 2011)
Traditionally, historically, the Japanese are very stoic people, who prefer to show no emotion, never betraying how they really feel. But right now, in a new time and space where grief outweighs any age-old norms of behaviour, the need to express anguish, shock and pain is overwhelming. The small country with a big honour code was hit by an 8.9 magnitude earthquake at 1446 local time, Friday, triggering tsunami that reached about 10 metres in height. Buildings have been shaken, people even more so.
The epicentre of the 20 mile deep quake was 373 kilometres from Tokyo, the capital, where tremors were felt, power lines failed, fires spewed smoke, skyscrapers tottered, cars fell off bridges and people feared for their lives. The enormous waves generated carried with them cars, houses, boats, trailers, animals and human beings inland and out to sea, leaving destruction, devastation in their wake. Cell phones buzzed overtime as anxious relatives and friends tried to get in touch with each other, reporters tried to get one up on the news as it happened and rescue teams rushed to get to where help could most be used.
The disaster was not limited to Japan alone – tsunami warnings have been issued elsewhere through the Pacific region, particularly in Russia, Indonesia, Guam, Taiwan, the Philippines and Hawaii. And it comes as the highest on the scale of two previous quakes off the Japanese island of Honshu, 7.2 on Wednesday and 6.3 on Thursday morning.
The results of any such natural disaster are immediately visible. Roads and buildings are cracked, perhaps even collapsed. Public transport services are, for the most part, halted, at least until it is declared safe for them to start again. There is a strange darkness, lit by the occasional flame of burning debris, an eerie silence prevails, into which the smallest noise could be the herald of more destruction, possible death. From the human point of view, fear rules over all other emotion, showing on faces, in actions, as reactions. Instant friendships are formed as a kind of shield against that feeling of being alone, being afraid, being possibly hurt, perhaps even killed. Some of these bonds last for ever, since they are forged in moments of such stress, when each moment, every expression, is written on the soul, as it were, in letters of dark permanence.
As the authorities scramble to get essential services working again and some semblance of normalcy into everyday life, rescue and recovery personnel start the heartbreaking task of finding victims, human and animal, helping, healing, saving, burying, consoling. But that is possible only once nature stops its terrorising stirring up of the earth and ocean, calming to a state of comparative peace.
Another fallout of disaster of this kind is the effect that it has on the economy of the nation concerned. This time, the Japanese yen has fallen sharply, while the Nikkei index and June futures slid downwards. The trend has been seen across Asia, where economies are just starting to recover from the recession that hit so hard a couple of years ago. So it comes as a kind of double – multiple, really – whammy, where a nation and the countries around it are affected by a single stroke of an uncontrollable force that leaves behind a general and overwhelming devastation.
What is truly frightening is that while Japan is a well-known hot spot – from the terrestrial perspective, where the earth’s tectonic plates more than occasionally clash – so many other regions are also suffering the effects of natural upheaval. New Zealand is still shell-shocked by the massive quake earlier this year. China was rocked this morning by a tremor even as it is still trying to recover from recent shakes. The north of India, in the Leh Valley, is in the process of rebuilding from earth slides. And so on and so forth. Is someone up above, some higher power, some divine authority, not pleased with what we humans are doing to the earth today? Is this series of disasters retribution for man’s sins? While this kind of thought may not be especially rational or even logical, one does wonder why…
Can a nation and a people recover from such trauma without permanent scars? Japan has had to deal with the lion’s share of the nightmares that can befall any people. In modern history, there have been natural disasters that cannot easily be counted, from earthquakes to floods to mudslides and more. There was the black period where the atomic bombs brought hell to the islands, where places and people are still recovering, generations later. There have been wars and political upheavals, killings and greater pain that can be imagined or expressed.
And each time, every time, like the mythical phoenix, the country has managed to get back on its collective feet and make greater progress, gaining its position as one of the most advanced in the world. This time, too, it will happen, once the shaking stops.
Traditionally, historically, the Japanese are very stoic people, who prefer to show no emotion, never betraying how they really feel. But right now, in a new time and space where grief outweighs any age-old norms of behaviour, the need to express anguish, shock and pain is overwhelming. The small country with a big honour code was hit by an 8.9 magnitude earthquake at 1446 local time, Friday, triggering tsunami that reached about 10 metres in height. Buildings have been shaken, people even more so.
The epicentre of the 20 mile deep quake was 373 kilometres from Tokyo, the capital, where tremors were felt, power lines failed, fires spewed smoke, skyscrapers tottered, cars fell off bridges and people feared for their lives. The enormous waves generated carried with them cars, houses, boats, trailers, animals and human beings inland and out to sea, leaving destruction, devastation in their wake. Cell phones buzzed overtime as anxious relatives and friends tried to get in touch with each other, reporters tried to get one up on the news as it happened and rescue teams rushed to get to where help could most be used.
The disaster was not limited to Japan alone – tsunami warnings have been issued elsewhere through the Pacific region, particularly in Russia, Indonesia, Guam, Taiwan, the Philippines and Hawaii. And it comes as the highest on the scale of two previous quakes off the Japanese island of Honshu, 7.2 on Wednesday and 6.3 on Thursday morning.
The results of any such natural disaster are immediately visible. Roads and buildings are cracked, perhaps even collapsed. Public transport services are, for the most part, halted, at least until it is declared safe for them to start again. There is a strange darkness, lit by the occasional flame of burning debris, an eerie silence prevails, into which the smallest noise could be the herald of more destruction, possible death. From the human point of view, fear rules over all other emotion, showing on faces, in actions, as reactions. Instant friendships are formed as a kind of shield against that feeling of being alone, being afraid, being possibly hurt, perhaps even killed. Some of these bonds last for ever, since they are forged in moments of such stress, when each moment, every expression, is written on the soul, as it were, in letters of dark permanence.
As the authorities scramble to get essential services working again and some semblance of normalcy into everyday life, rescue and recovery personnel start the heartbreaking task of finding victims, human and animal, helping, healing, saving, burying, consoling. But that is possible only once nature stops its terrorising stirring up of the earth and ocean, calming to a state of comparative peace.
Another fallout of disaster of this kind is the effect that it has on the economy of the nation concerned. This time, the Japanese yen has fallen sharply, while the Nikkei index and June futures slid downwards. The trend has been seen across Asia, where economies are just starting to recover from the recession that hit so hard a couple of years ago. So it comes as a kind of double – multiple, really – whammy, where a nation and the countries around it are affected by a single stroke of an uncontrollable force that leaves behind a general and overwhelming devastation.
What is truly frightening is that while Japan is a well-known hot spot – from the terrestrial perspective, where the earth’s tectonic plates more than occasionally clash – so many other regions are also suffering the effects of natural upheaval. New Zealand is still shell-shocked by the massive quake earlier this year. China was rocked this morning by a tremor even as it is still trying to recover from recent shakes. The north of India, in the Leh Valley, is in the process of rebuilding from earth slides. And so on and so forth. Is someone up above, some higher power, some divine authority, not pleased with what we humans are doing to the earth today? Is this series of disasters retribution for man’s sins? While this kind of thought may not be especially rational or even logical, one does wonder why…
Can a nation and a people recover from such trauma without permanent scars? Japan has had to deal with the lion’s share of the nightmares that can befall any people. In modern history, there have been natural disasters that cannot easily be counted, from earthquakes to floods to mudslides and more. There was the black period where the atomic bombs brought hell to the islands, where places and people are still recovering, generations later. There have been wars and political upheavals, killings and greater pain that can be imagined or expressed.
And each time, every time, like the mythical phoenix, the country has managed to get back on its collective feet and make greater progress, gaining its position as one of the most advanced in the world. This time, too, it will happen, once the shaking stops.
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Saas-bahu, soap opera, and life of a woman
(BDnews24.com, March 8, 2011)
Every year, once a year, the world goes crazy with all sights focussed on women. International Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8, becomes a marketing opportunity, with the spotlight set on the female buyer, or the female for whom buying happens. In other words, it becomes a marketing scam, almost, with lots of special offers, special events and even more special celebrations.
And, once it is all over, once the sales have ended and the salons and cafes empty, things quieten down, fade back to normal and assume a veneer of normality, it is as if nothing ever happened; the woman is still what she was before the hype and hoopla and all her importance, as assumed or granted for that one day, or even one week, reverts to whatever it was originally. It is as if nothing every happened. The woman never was in the spotlight.
But on television, life assumes a different hue. Through the day, in India, the soap factory is fully occupied, churning out endless variations on the age-old family saga. Some of these are comic, full of fun and slapstick humour, a never-ending series of tired jokes, defunct humour and, often, tactless and downright silly lines.
There are clichés galore, from the characters to the words they speak with such intent to the settings, the progress of events and the situations themselves. But somewhere, somehow, the makers of these ‘serials’, as they are called, have managed to top the right vein, capturing an audience that is loyal, steadfast and believing of any fare dished out to it. And the woman, often the protagonist, is in clover…or on celluloid, as the case may be.
The classic genre of soap opera on Indian television is the ‘saas-bahu’ serial. In any one of these, there will be a young woman who, as the show progresses through various episodes, gets married. The wedding itself is an opportunity for the heroine to go through various traditional rituals, the actual process depending on the community the show is based within, and in doing so, to showcase a number of products, from saris to makeup to jewellery to whatever a woman needs to be her best. On the way to that stage of the story and the woman’s life, there will be drama, with tears, angst, joys, playfulness, familial bonds, comedy and whole lot of fun, for both viewers and actors alike.
And there is a character evolution too, in a physical sense. The girl starts out in jeans, salwar kameez, even skirts, then, once she is married, almost as if she has crossed a rubicon that cannot be re-negotiated, she changes into saris. From a simple, non-jewelled, uncovered head and light-hearted mien, she suddenly metamorphs into a more serious avatar, one that is sari-clad and decked out in the most impractical jewels.
From a young person who would jump and skip down stairs, chase other children around the house, garden or college grounds, she moves into a realm where she has to walk elegantly, slowly, without that exuberance that is supposedly typical of a single young woman, taking on the weight – perhaps of responsibilities – of an adult.
Once she is part of her marital home, as it is known, the young woman becomes someone else. She has to live by new rules, learn new traditions and customs, even call a stranger ‘Mother’. She cannot, by the fairly strict laws of soap opera-dom, access her parental home, her parents and siblings, her closest friends, her former life, as it were, without the relevant permission from not just her husband, but his parents as well. She now belongs to her new home and must abide by its customs.
When I first saw an Indian (Hindi, to be precise) serial of this kind of genre, I was amazed, amused and then horrified. I did not and could not believe or accept that young woman today would change so drastically, so dramatically, becoming so different from her normal personality. I would never allow that to happen to me, I insisted, even as I watched open mouthed, seeing the transformation happen night after night on the small screen.
And then I started meeting women who had actually gone through it in real life. There was the woman in the gym I go to, for instance, who had to battle her marital home and everyone in it to be able to create some kind of life outside it, to become a salon owner and find her own feet. After the sudden tragic death of her husband, the only support she had in her blooming, she had been closeted in her own home, her freedom to live and choose taken away from her.
Just a few days ago I heard that she had won that independence again, but with the threat hanging over her head that her children would be taken away from her if she brought any disgrace to the family name. And this is a young woman in Mumbai, a big city.
Most of the soaps are set in smaller towns, since this kind of regressive ambience can be found there. There is also a familiarity for the viewers – they identify with the travails the heroine and her ilk go through and cheer them on when they win, occasionally gasping in horror as they do something beyond the norm established by tradition and often age-old but constricting familial habits.
Along the way, there is a feeling that this kind of family situation, this kind of closed existence is supportive and comforting, without the risks that feminine independence carries with it, but it is also restrictive, stultifying and amazingly painful for a spirit that, under ideal circumstances, should be allowed the freedom it needs to bloom and be all that it can be: a woman who knows her power, her strength and her ability.
Every year, once a year, the world goes crazy with all sights focussed on women. International Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8, becomes a marketing opportunity, with the spotlight set on the female buyer, or the female for whom buying happens. In other words, it becomes a marketing scam, almost, with lots of special offers, special events and even more special celebrations.
And, once it is all over, once the sales have ended and the salons and cafes empty, things quieten down, fade back to normal and assume a veneer of normality, it is as if nothing ever happened; the woman is still what she was before the hype and hoopla and all her importance, as assumed or granted for that one day, or even one week, reverts to whatever it was originally. It is as if nothing every happened. The woman never was in the spotlight.
But on television, life assumes a different hue. Through the day, in India, the soap factory is fully occupied, churning out endless variations on the age-old family saga. Some of these are comic, full of fun and slapstick humour, a never-ending series of tired jokes, defunct humour and, often, tactless and downright silly lines.
There are clichés galore, from the characters to the words they speak with such intent to the settings, the progress of events and the situations themselves. But somewhere, somehow, the makers of these ‘serials’, as they are called, have managed to top the right vein, capturing an audience that is loyal, steadfast and believing of any fare dished out to it. And the woman, often the protagonist, is in clover…or on celluloid, as the case may be.
The classic genre of soap opera on Indian television is the ‘saas-bahu’ serial. In any one of these, there will be a young woman who, as the show progresses through various episodes, gets married. The wedding itself is an opportunity for the heroine to go through various traditional rituals, the actual process depending on the community the show is based within, and in doing so, to showcase a number of products, from saris to makeup to jewellery to whatever a woman needs to be her best. On the way to that stage of the story and the woman’s life, there will be drama, with tears, angst, joys, playfulness, familial bonds, comedy and whole lot of fun, for both viewers and actors alike.
And there is a character evolution too, in a physical sense. The girl starts out in jeans, salwar kameez, even skirts, then, once she is married, almost as if she has crossed a rubicon that cannot be re-negotiated, she changes into saris. From a simple, non-jewelled, uncovered head and light-hearted mien, she suddenly metamorphs into a more serious avatar, one that is sari-clad and decked out in the most impractical jewels.
From a young person who would jump and skip down stairs, chase other children around the house, garden or college grounds, she moves into a realm where she has to walk elegantly, slowly, without that exuberance that is supposedly typical of a single young woman, taking on the weight – perhaps of responsibilities – of an adult.
Once she is part of her marital home, as it is known, the young woman becomes someone else. She has to live by new rules, learn new traditions and customs, even call a stranger ‘Mother’. She cannot, by the fairly strict laws of soap opera-dom, access her parental home, her parents and siblings, her closest friends, her former life, as it were, without the relevant permission from not just her husband, but his parents as well. She now belongs to her new home and must abide by its customs.
When I first saw an Indian (Hindi, to be precise) serial of this kind of genre, I was amazed, amused and then horrified. I did not and could not believe or accept that young woman today would change so drastically, so dramatically, becoming so different from her normal personality. I would never allow that to happen to me, I insisted, even as I watched open mouthed, seeing the transformation happen night after night on the small screen.
And then I started meeting women who had actually gone through it in real life. There was the woman in the gym I go to, for instance, who had to battle her marital home and everyone in it to be able to create some kind of life outside it, to become a salon owner and find her own feet. After the sudden tragic death of her husband, the only support she had in her blooming, she had been closeted in her own home, her freedom to live and choose taken away from her.
Just a few days ago I heard that she had won that independence again, but with the threat hanging over her head that her children would be taken away from her if she brought any disgrace to the family name. And this is a young woman in Mumbai, a big city.
Most of the soaps are set in smaller towns, since this kind of regressive ambience can be found there. There is also a familiarity for the viewers – they identify with the travails the heroine and her ilk go through and cheer them on when they win, occasionally gasping in horror as they do something beyond the norm established by tradition and often age-old but constricting familial habits.
Along the way, there is a feeling that this kind of family situation, this kind of closed existence is supportive and comforting, without the risks that feminine independence carries with it, but it is also restrictive, stultifying and amazingly painful for a spirit that, under ideal circumstances, should be allowed the freedom it needs to bloom and be all that it can be: a woman who knows her power, her strength and her ability.
Monday, March 07, 2011
Salaam Bombay
(The Times of India Crest Edition, March 5, 2011)
Chronicles of a Past Life - '70s & '80s In Bombay, photographer Pablo Bartholomew’s show at the Sakshi Gallery in Mumbai is “the street photography side of my work,” Bartholomew says. Since a lot of it had been done “in Bombay (as it was then), it was appropriate to have the first viewing in this city.” He came to the metropolis at the time as a kind of escape from his life in a Delhi that was all about bureaucratic correctness, his father’s name and a turbulent teenage existence. For him, acceptance came, he says, “not for whose son I was, but for my skills and talents”. This exhibition, a “manifestation of my outer world, my associations with the city and its people, known and unknown”, as he himself describes his work, is Bartholomew’s way of “paying my dues to this city and its people” In the process, he managed to not just record his discoveries in black and white film, as a kind of archive of a gentler, more serene and yet vibrant city, but a “place that came to be called home”. In a way these images tell the tale of a significant slice of Bombay’s history, of a time that can never be recaptured, a time that was a kind of bridge between history and progress, between the vestige of a foreign rule and the impersonal face of a modern present.
Of the many originally chosen for the show, there are only about 10-15 images that have not been hung, Bartholomew explains. After all, “You can’t have everything – this is 112 images, quite a huge show in contrast to the 40-60 pictures normally done. I felt that there was so much of the city that I wanted to show, plus there was space that was available and I wanted to configure it densely, since that is also the way the city is. To have that sense of density and show off the subcultures” as ‘sets’ in distinct areas of the gallery “was also what i wanted to do”.
A visitor wanders through those sets, those streets, those subcultures, seeing “some rather obscure architectural details, views and streets, very minimal, no traffic, more of a graphic element, as if you approach the city, as it were. There are shots of sport, old cars, Irani restaurants, the rain, people in the city - the worker, so essential to every function, the dabbawalas, the pushcart guys...There is also a tribute to the old people.” An old man in a solar topi, his face lined with the experience of ages; a watchmaker, sitting at his tiny table, wearing his sadra and cap, bent over his almost-forgotten craft; a wizened couple in a seemingly but deceptively romantic situation, their faces hidden behind a newspaper...
As a whole, the exhibition is tribute to the city itself, its physicality – “open views of the cityscape, the sea with buildings, some at Worli, some at Nariman Point, windows into the walls, more sort of intimate spaces of a city.” Bartholomew has also “built a table with pictures of people –so many who to some degree touched me, and some not at all: poets, writers, theatre people, film people, friends, scattered on that table in a very haphazard manner – something essential to my life in the city.” And there are the sleepers, religious iconography, some things that you see as cutouts, signs, symbols, the inanimate.
As Bartholomew explains, “I think people react to these pictures differently, depending on what vintage they are. If you have been around in the ’70s into the early ’80s and were teenage and above and are now in the 50s like me, it serves as a function of memory, reminds you of certain things that may have happened” around the locations captured on camera. “For younger people, it is a sort of surprise to engage and understand Bombay as it was, and rediscover things that they may not know at all except through what they have heard. It is curiosity, voyeurism, nostalgia - it all depends on what appeals.”
Chronicles of a Past Life - '70s & '80s In Bombay, photographer Pablo Bartholomew’s show at the Sakshi Gallery in Mumbai is “the street photography side of my work,” Bartholomew says. Since a lot of it had been done “in Bombay (as it was then), it was appropriate to have the first viewing in this city.” He came to the metropolis at the time as a kind of escape from his life in a Delhi that was all about bureaucratic correctness, his father’s name and a turbulent teenage existence. For him, acceptance came, he says, “not for whose son I was, but for my skills and talents”. This exhibition, a “manifestation of my outer world, my associations with the city and its people, known and unknown”, as he himself describes his work, is Bartholomew’s way of “paying my dues to this city and its people” In the process, he managed to not just record his discoveries in black and white film, as a kind of archive of a gentler, more serene and yet vibrant city, but a “place that came to be called home”. In a way these images tell the tale of a significant slice of Bombay’s history, of a time that can never be recaptured, a time that was a kind of bridge between history and progress, between the vestige of a foreign rule and the impersonal face of a modern present.
Of the many originally chosen for the show, there are only about 10-15 images that have not been hung, Bartholomew explains. After all, “You can’t have everything – this is 112 images, quite a huge show in contrast to the 40-60 pictures normally done. I felt that there was so much of the city that I wanted to show, plus there was space that was available and I wanted to configure it densely, since that is also the way the city is. To have that sense of density and show off the subcultures” as ‘sets’ in distinct areas of the gallery “was also what i wanted to do”.
A visitor wanders through those sets, those streets, those subcultures, seeing “some rather obscure architectural details, views and streets, very minimal, no traffic, more of a graphic element, as if you approach the city, as it were. There are shots of sport, old cars, Irani restaurants, the rain, people in the city - the worker, so essential to every function, the dabbawalas, the pushcart guys...There is also a tribute to the old people.” An old man in a solar topi, his face lined with the experience of ages; a watchmaker, sitting at his tiny table, wearing his sadra and cap, bent over his almost-forgotten craft; a wizened couple in a seemingly but deceptively romantic situation, their faces hidden behind a newspaper...
As a whole, the exhibition is tribute to the city itself, its physicality – “open views of the cityscape, the sea with buildings, some at Worli, some at Nariman Point, windows into the walls, more sort of intimate spaces of a city.” Bartholomew has also “built a table with pictures of people –so many who to some degree touched me, and some not at all: poets, writers, theatre people, film people, friends, scattered on that table in a very haphazard manner – something essential to my life in the city.” And there are the sleepers, religious iconography, some things that you see as cutouts, signs, symbols, the inanimate.
As Bartholomew explains, “I think people react to these pictures differently, depending on what vintage they are. If you have been around in the ’70s into the early ’80s and were teenage and above and are now in the 50s like me, it serves as a function of memory, reminds you of certain things that may have happened” around the locations captured on camera. “For younger people, it is a sort of surprise to engage and understand Bombay as it was, and rediscover things that they may not know at all except through what they have heard. It is curiosity, voyeurism, nostalgia - it all depends on what appeals.”
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Book review
(Times of India Crest Edition, February 26, 2011)
TENDER HOOKS, by Moni Mohsin
Sometimes a book comes along that cannot be slotted into any particular genre with any definite description. It is more than the sum of its parts, as Aristotle is erroneously credited with having said, and as a whole brings in a host of experiences that go beyond just an ordinary piece of literary creativity. This one, by British-domiciled Pakistani author Moni Mohsin, is usually classified as chicklit, but could be much more, as it entertains, amuses, enlightens and, in a strange way, educates. Along the way, it does get tedious, tiresome, long-winded, but it is good for a light-hearted giggle right through it all.
Mohsin has her finger firmly on the pulse, the idiom and the snob values of wealthy society in Pakistan – in Lahore, in this particular case. Her heroine, Butterfly, is a woman who knows her place in her context, someone who is sure of her socio-economic class, her social position, her self-importance and her family. She has a loving husband whom she adores but never really understands, except instinctively, an adolescent son who is her world, her life, her jaan, a large and often irritating family who wants more of her than she has mindspace to give, and friends with whom she believes she must not just compete and win over, but help, with no patronising nose-in-the-air flavour to it at all, of course.
Butterfly has a small problem that she needs to handle: her cousin Jonkers, fairly recently unclasped from the avaricious albeit loving arms of a slutty secretary-wife, who was “making sex appeals to him”, has to be married quickly. But the girl has to be fair, beautiful, rich and from an old-established family of the highest class, as would be suitable, at least in his mother, Butterfly’s Aunt Pussy’s mind.
But as she flits in and out of GTs (get-togethers), wedding receptions, kitty parties and girl-‘seeing’ sessions, our heroine has one aspect of the whole matter on her mind – the threat is that something dire will happen to her darling son unless the deed is done successfully. A small accident at school makes her convinced that this will indeed happen.
But somewhere along the way, conforming to the way things are done becomes less important and what Jonkers actually wants and likes seems a good idea. In sorting matrimony, social priorities and her cousin’s life out, Butterfly learns more about love, her own life and husband’s feelings and, as a bonus, local politics and protest and confesses that “I’m tau very glad that the Talibans are being given a good and proper beating up by the army. They were giving us no ends of trouble. Blowing themselves up in full bazaars at the least evocation...”.
Written in a wicked, tongue-in-cheek and entirely giggle-worthy idiom, a style that comes straight from the occasionally skewed and always busy mind of the star of the show, Butterfly, reading this book brings to mind people we all know. I see my adoptive aunt, sitting in her living room with her group of friends, playing cards and having a wonderful gossip...
TENDER HOOKS, by Moni Mohsin
Sometimes a book comes along that cannot be slotted into any particular genre with any definite description. It is more than the sum of its parts, as Aristotle is erroneously credited with having said, and as a whole brings in a host of experiences that go beyond just an ordinary piece of literary creativity. This one, by British-domiciled Pakistani author Moni Mohsin, is usually classified as chicklit, but could be much more, as it entertains, amuses, enlightens and, in a strange way, educates. Along the way, it does get tedious, tiresome, long-winded, but it is good for a light-hearted giggle right through it all.
Mohsin has her finger firmly on the pulse, the idiom and the snob values of wealthy society in Pakistan – in Lahore, in this particular case. Her heroine, Butterfly, is a woman who knows her place in her context, someone who is sure of her socio-economic class, her social position, her self-importance and her family. She has a loving husband whom she adores but never really understands, except instinctively, an adolescent son who is her world, her life, her jaan, a large and often irritating family who wants more of her than she has mindspace to give, and friends with whom she believes she must not just compete and win over, but help, with no patronising nose-in-the-air flavour to it at all, of course.
Butterfly has a small problem that she needs to handle: her cousin Jonkers, fairly recently unclasped from the avaricious albeit loving arms of a slutty secretary-wife, who was “making sex appeals to him”, has to be married quickly. But the girl has to be fair, beautiful, rich and from an old-established family of the highest class, as would be suitable, at least in his mother, Butterfly’s Aunt Pussy’s mind.
But as she flits in and out of GTs (get-togethers), wedding receptions, kitty parties and girl-‘seeing’ sessions, our heroine has one aspect of the whole matter on her mind – the threat is that something dire will happen to her darling son unless the deed is done successfully. A small accident at school makes her convinced that this will indeed happen.
But somewhere along the way, conforming to the way things are done becomes less important and what Jonkers actually wants and likes seems a good idea. In sorting matrimony, social priorities and her cousin’s life out, Butterfly learns more about love, her own life and husband’s feelings and, as a bonus, local politics and protest and confesses that “I’m tau very glad that the Talibans are being given a good and proper beating up by the army. They were giving us no ends of trouble. Blowing themselves up in full bazaars at the least evocation...”.
Written in a wicked, tongue-in-cheek and entirely giggle-worthy idiom, a style that comes straight from the occasionally skewed and always busy mind of the star of the show, Butterfly, reading this book brings to mind people we all know. I see my adoptive aunt, sitting in her living room with her group of friends, playing cards and having a wonderful gossip...
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