Indian Writing

I’ve just started reading a new collection of stories by Mamang Dai called The Legends of Pensam. The lovely cover illustration is based on a painting by Ozing Dai, which in turn is based on an illustration by Shiavax Chavda (reproduced in Verrier Elwin’s A Philosophy for NEFA). The book is a collection of interconnected stories about the Adi tribe who live in the Siang Valley, the valley of the Siang River, known as the Tsangpo in Tibet. I’ve read only four stories so far, and they are wonderful.

I’ve travelled in Arunachal Pradesh many years ago and hope to travel there again some day. The places I visited then were some of the most beautiful I have ever seen.

From the author’s note at the beginning of the book:

There are few road links in their territory. Travel to the distant villages still entails cumbersome river crossings, elephant rides and long foot marches through dense forest or over high mountain passes.

But the old villagers who walk miles every day say: ‘When you look at the land you forget your aches and pains.’

In HT Style today, the news that Atul Agnihotri is going to make a film out of Chetan Bhagat’s second novel One Night@A Call Center. Here’s Agnihotri on what he sees in the book:

“The right combination of contemporary situations and mysticism… A beautiful story which got me fired and inspired… combined mystique with modern values related with religion and spirituality.�

“I see this book as having a global appeal because it’s so Indian and so from the soil.�

*****

“There will be a KANK show starting every half an hour.�

– Sonali Shroff of the Fame Group of theatres. Fame Andheri will have 15 and Fame Malad will have 17 shows daily.

I can just imagine it. Armies of families marching in every half an hour to see K-Jo’s Different Take on Relationships.

One has also been assured that the film will have a Roses-moment (shudder), a Good Advice moment (double shudder), and several ‘tense-filled moments’ (km, this is for you). It will have many ’spats’, and it will have Shahrukh Khan. It will also have such immortal lines as “I wear the pants in this house!” and “You can’t even bear a child!”

I have a vexed relationship with K-Jo’s movies. I generally like reading his interviews, and I enjoyed Koffee with Karan. I like his relaxed responses to Ram Gopal Varma’s juvenile digs. I like the song and dance routines in his films. Whenever K-Jo makes a new movie, I look forward to the great event with anticipation, buy tickets well in advance - and once the experience is over I look back at it with amusement and fondness. It’s only during the three hours and more of the film itself - not only the serious weepiness, but also the visual cliches - Rani’s fluttering eyelashes, SRK’s quivering cheeks - that I begin to choke and imagine that I’m dying.

I remember we were watching K3G in Cal one winter night in Menaka Cinema. There’s that moment when Hrithik meets Kareena, and she says, I’m Poo. So this guy in the audience jumps up and shouts, “I am Jotayu!”

I loved that.

So why has feminism always provoked such hostility? Unlike other radical movements, feminism is calling for something many women and men find difficult: a profound change in the power relations between sexes — not only in the public sphere, but also, much more trickily, in the private sphere.