Indian Writing

We went to Indigo Deli last night with a friend. For A~ and me, it was our last dinner going out as just the two of us - because today we’re bringing the Little Person home. From now on, we’ll be a unit of three.

A~ and I had always wanted to adopt a child. A few months ago, we started looking for an approved agency that was on the list of CARA, the Central Adoption Resource Agency, and found one that was located conveniently close to our workplaces (this helps, because there is a fair bit of paperwork). They had a relaxed, matter-of-fact attitude to adoption. We liked that.

Within weeks the Home Study was done, the paperwork was ready and then it was just a matter of waiting. One morning I got a call on my phone. They had a baby to show us. Baby A was six months old, being cared for by a foster family, his papers were all set for adoption, and - would we like to meet the paediatrician first, or the baby?

As if there was any doubt about it. We saw Baby A first. It was a sunlit Friday morning, a morning perfect for love. Baby A was asleep, his pink cheeks flushed with the heat, but as we bent over him to look at his tiny sleeping form, he opened his eyes. We took him all around the neighbouring school campus. He looked at the trees, crows, children with sleepy interest. He smiled.

Such excitement - we’re bringing Baby home today. The entire family is coming to meet him. My parents are already here, my brother and sister-in-law arrived late last night, and my sister and mother-in-law will arrive tonight from Cal. Everyone wants to see Kutty Papu!

Via email from Abodh:

The Welfare of Stray Dogs (WSD) is an animal welfare NGO that sterilizes and immunizes stray dogs. We also have an adoption program for abandoned pets and pariahs, an on-site first–aid program and an education and awareness program in schools, colleges, streets and slums. WSD has so far sterilized more than 30,500 stray dogs and impacted the lives of thousands more through first-aid and adoption.

WSD spends Rs 1,50,000 per month on the above activities and we depend on the largesse of donors to fund these activities. One of the methods of
raising funds to sustain our costs is our regular garage/jumble sale and we are having one from May 25-27, 2007 (Friday-Sunday) at Bandra Reclamation.

On Sale would be L.P.’s, Cassettes, C.D’s, Artefacts, Glassware, Crockery, Crystal, Gift Items, Linen, Clothes, Furniture and Electronic Items at THROW AWAY PRICES !!!

The proceeds of the Garage Sale would be used to fund the above–mentioned programs.

Venue : Shop No 16, ONGC Complex, Next to Candys, Opposite Leelawati Hospital , Bandra Reclamation, Bandra (W), Mumbai.

Date : May 25-27,2007 (Fri-Sun) Time : 11 am to 6:00 pm

For more information you can call WSD on 23733433 or e-mail wsdATwsdindiaDOTorg

Please visit the garage sale and help support the stray pooches!

What a superb film.

The memory game…

Helen of Troy or Helen of Bombay?

Saw it again last night at the Ray fest. Not very smart of the organisers, was it, to screen the films sans subtitles? Added to which, the sound was bad and there were frequent stoppages.

One of the saddest books I have read in a long time. I might write more about it later; meanwhile here’s Anita’s post about the book.

Here’s Robin David’s blog, where I found this Time Out interview of Robin David by Naresh Fernandes.

This blogpost by Hindol Sengupta on the IBN website is objectionable on so many levels. Not only for its lack of understanding of things like democracy, citizenship, nation-building, but also its lack of respect for spelling and syntax. Here’s a sample:

This is a country that prides on it English-speaking, entrepreneurial youth (sic). We who represent India to the world. But we don’t vote do we? And why don’t we? Because there’s no one to vote for! Where is my leader? The truth is, I don’t have one. And that, as sophistication deserts our politics, means perhaps one day I will have to leave.

I’m tempted to comment on that last line but it speaks for itself.

Read the whole thing to find out why, among other things, “the middle-class, educated, metro-bred, Christian-education raised, young” writer couldn’t have “an great conversation” (sic) with his cameraperson.

The Ghost Dance from Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, via Amardeep.

I came to Mitra Phukan’s novel rather late, but I’m glad I got to it finally. It’s lovely.

Book Reading by Amitabha Bagchi from his novel “Above Average”
Chief Guest: Mahesh Dattani

on Wednesday, 23 May 2007, 7.00pm, at Crossword Bookstores, Kemps Corner, Mumbai

*****

A Reading of Revathy Gopal’s Poems

by poets Arundhati Subramaniam, Jane Bhandari, Menka Shivdasani, Anand Thakore
followed by three short remembrance speeches

on Friday, 1 June 2007, at 6:30 pm in the Audio-Visual Room, 2nd Floor NCPA, Nariman Point, Mumbai.

*****

“Ochre as the Earth”

A Spoken Word Performance

by Sharanya Manivannan

on Sunday, June 3rd 2007, 9 pm, No Black Tie, 17 Jalan Mesui, Kuala Lumpur.

Entry fee: RM15

This 90-minute long spoken word performance of original writing by Sharanya Manivannan will be the first full-length feature performance in Kuala Lumpur by a poet residing in Malaysia.

“My parents have been selling flowers for 30 years. I have been helping my mother since I was born.”

Selling from four in the morning to nine at night, stringing flowers through the day, throwing them away if the flowers wither…

“We shower the flowers on our goddess just before they wither. What comes from her goes back to her.”

More here.

The Oxford Concise Dictionary of World Place Names, edited by John Everett-Heath, apparently lists Bangalore as a land of Bengalis where people speak Bengali.

More here.

I agree with some of Eunice de Souza’s reservations about the book when she writes:

I wish I could be as enthusiastic about the book as many reviewers seem to be. Given the subject, the book seems glib, too polemical to offer new insights. For instance, in a passage likely to be quoted frequently, Changez tells us that he was “pleased at the slaughter of thousands of innocents” when he happened to catch on television the Twin Towers being destroyed. He is “caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought someone to her knees.” In case the hearer is disgusted, he reminds him of the “joy” Americans feel at “American munitions laying waste the structures of your enemies”.

To reduce the savagery of human history to scoring debating points is to seriously undermine the narrative. Changez claims he is not a “sociopath” and can feel for others. But what sort of person of any nation or faith can feel pleasure at such destruction? Can one really watch a desperate woman trying to leap from one of the top floors of the burning Tower and think “symbolically”?

…. America too, we are told, is retreating into “nostalgia” after 9/11. It doesn’t help that when the speaker hears she committed suicide, he goes to see the actual spot and thinks, “It was a beautiful spot to commit suicide.”

By and large, Changez’s voice is mock-courtly rather than “courtly”, and this gives the rather thin narrative a sense of menace. But the choice of monologue as a form limits the book to obvious jibes. America is too easy a target, and Mohsin Hamid lets himself off too lightly.

“To many in the west, Indian fiction is characterised by large mournful tomes about families and feelings, written by such authors as Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai and Rohinton Mistry.”

The others read Shobhaa De.

Goopy Bagha poster!

Well, three films: Aranyer Din Ratri, Pratidwandi, and Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne. At Inox. See the Ghost Dance on the big screen!

Sherpas have worked as porters, fixed ropes, set up camps, and generally been essential and invaluable support for Himalayan expeditions. When Hillary summited Everest, Sherpa Tenzing summited along with him.

It’s incredible that it should have taken so long, but Apa Sherpa and Lhakpa Gelu Sherpa are leading an all-Sherpa team up Mount Everest for the first time ever.

This Indian Express report by Shamik Bag quotes Lhakpa:

“Many Westerners come to Everest and make hollow promises that if we get them to the top they will help but we never hear from them again. They disappear like a crow flying in the fog.”

In a couple of days, the Sherpas will reach the peak. Good luck to them.

“I felt that so often in life we complain about systems and societies and here was an option to do something without complaining. This was a chance to come back and do something for an institute that I believe is vital to the country.”

When was the last time I heard such words?

Lovely interview of Leela Samson by Baradwaj Rangan.

“Ee gaon ki ladkiyan bahut damdar hai, inka chhedo nahi, maarin tumka.”

Vandana Yadav, a Class 8 student in Devamau village near Lucknow, was stabbed 17 times while fighting off an attack by three young men near her village. But she survived the attack and later identified the goons. The village is proud of her. The whole story here, reported by Shirin Abbas for Lucknow Newsline.

Nice to see Bangalore being called “the friendliest Indian city”, but surely they can make the effort to spell Ramachandra Guha’s name correctly?

by Langston Hughes

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So, boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps.
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Eighteen short films - mostly duds, including Gurinder Chadha’s trite hijab romance; and A~ reminded me for the nth time, that he and Juliette Binoche share a birthday…

The ones that I liked:

- the first one, set in Montmartre, by Bruno Podalydès.

- Tom Tykwer’s segment about a blind boy and a young actress.

- Alexander Payne’s 14e Arrondissement, in hilariously accented French, about an American postwoman on a vacation in Paris.

- and I loved Steve Buscemi in the Coen Brothers’ Tuileries segment, with all those Mona Lisa smiles!

Saw it at Metro. Interesting stuff, looks so chilling in black and white, but it didn’t make you care for the lives of the people in it… which is kind of scary.

We waited at Rajdhani Snacks before the show. I had a kairee chaas, which was delicious, and A~ had a mango rossogolla. He thought it would be a rossogolla in mango-flavored syrup, but it was actually a standard white rossogolla cut in two and stuffed with bits of mango. Pretty good actually.

I have been waiting for someone to put my three favourite Hindi movie actors - Shiney Ahuja, Kay Kay Menon and Irfan Khan - together in a film that would use their talents effectively. How great that would be, I thought. Unfortunately, Metro is not that film.

It’s actually called, for whatever reason, Life in a…Metro. It weaves together the stories of several couples. People have been saying Amores Perros but please. I stopped counting and can’t remember the names - there were people called Shruti, Neha, etc and I can’t remember who was called who, only that the glorious Irfan Khan played a character named Monty.

Shiney Ahuja plays a struggling actor, Kay Kay plays a creep in a suit, and glorious Irfan - well, I never figured out what he’s supposed to be doing but he works in an office of some sort and goes by the name of Monty. Shiney gets into a relationship with Shilpa Shetty who is actually married to Kay Kay but unhappily; Kay Kay is having an affair with Kangana Ranaut who works in his office, but she is also the flatmate of Konkona Sen Sharma, who is Shilpa Shetty’s sister and… That’s when I lost the threads. Not that it’s very hard to remember, it’s just not interesting enough.

As for the rest of the city, everyone seems to be at two degrees of separation from having an affair with everyone else (and they’re all doing it by turns in Chachaji’s blandly decorated apartment). Which is really quite funny. The film is also not homophobic and not ageist. There’s a woman in an old age home (Nafisa Ali in an old age home! She’s lovely, but a terrible actor) and an old flame who comes back from America to woo her into a live-in relationship. Except that the old flame is Dharmendra, and when she asks him Tum wapas kyun aaye ho? He replies, instead of Kameene, main tumhara khoon pee jaoonga, that he’s ill and has very little time left…

Yes, it’s that kind of film. The script is the culprit. Trite, tired dialogues. Konkona and Irfan get the best lines, such as they are; I especially liked the scene at the beach where they’re surrounded by bags of shopping for Irfan’s impending wedding (he’s convinced Konkona to do the bride’s shopping) and suddenly Irfan gets the pre-wedding weepies. He also tries helpfully to fix up Konkona with a friend of his who has a halwai business in Lucknow and can surf the Net (can surf the Net!!) and who therefore wants a modern wife…

Kangana is good but we’ve seen her hysterical wrist-slashing antics before; Kay Kay makes a cool philanderer but gets the most hideous lines; and poor Shiney Ahuja gets Shilpa.

Oh, and it’s all held together by a group of three rockers - or at least three guys dressed in black and trying to be rockers, grimacing to some rather unmemorable music in the rain, on the roof…

Just as Kopar Khairane station is not the same as Churchgate, Metro is not the same as Mumbai. It’s not badly made, but suffers from a poor script; and it’s all too glammed up, even when it’s raining. But yes, the sad, shallow mood of the film does manage to reflect a sad, shallow aspect of this city where relationships come under so much pressure.

And it was a good idea to release it in May, weeks before the monsoon is scheduled to hit. All those umbrellas in the rain, the wet streets and buildings, it all makes you long for the first downpours of the season.