Three Women, Three Films - Nargis, Madhubala and Meena Kumari

I was thinking to write about Sahib,Bibi aur Ghulam.I saw it first as a child about 15 years ago,and its impact can be gauged from the fact that with this single viewing, I still have a clear visual memory of most of its scenes.But as I thought about the film, I started to ruminate on Meena Kumari's  eternal representation as a 'trapped woman'. The 'Bibi' is so completely powerless in this film. She is so suffocated by traditional mores that even when she does something rebellious-becoming a drunk-it has to be couched in the familiar language of morality.It's only obeying her lord's orders,after all.
In the end, even her pathetic wish to have a grand funeral - with her ornaments intact,so that people know that a woman of good family has died- is denied. She is buried like a piece of rubbish in a dark corner of the haveli which was her life long prison.Sahib.... has certain components of the Gothic tradition.There's a decaying house, male persecution,female psychological breakdown in the face of this domination,a sense of doom-these are familiar Gothic motifs.However,Meena Kumari played this character in film after film.Even her swansong 'Pakeezah', the titular character cannot, herself, break out of the societal mould to which she is constrained.Only men can fully rescue her-she can't autonomously escape it.
This inability to take action is by no means common in other heroines of the era. Nargis in 'Mother India' suffers suffers and suffers some more.She is equally assailed by the patriarchy.But the climactic end does show her taking action against her son.He sins against her moral code and she reacts by killing him.However negative and desperate this may be, it is an act of courage and individual choice.Meena Kumari would've probably killed herself.
The third woman in this triumvirate is Madhubala,in her role as Anarkali in Mughal e Azam.Most filmmakers would have concentrated on the two men,not developing her role further than to serve as cat's paw between them.Anarkali does display these shades-collapsing theatrically between the two men.However,her travails,incarceration and defiance of the Emperor's authority are delineated well.She even gets to aim the choicest taunt at Akbar.He called himself z'ill alla fil'arz, or the shadow of God on earth,the closest that a Muslim can approach to God.For such a man,to be told that he was a 'banda' and not 'khuda' is an outright negation of his authority and a testament to Anarkali's spirit.
My favorite of these three is, and always will be , Meena Kumari.I don't know if  her personal history was reflected in the roles filmmakers offered to her,her real life predicament inspiring the pathos she brought to the screen.I'm hardly the first person to advance this hypothesis. I just wish she was given an opportunity to create a different,more autonomous persona, once in a while.

the phenomenon of Vidya Balan

Some years ago a rather unusual girl debuted. she was pretty and had a nice smile and  acted rather well for a new comer.the movie gave her role space but the hero was, if you understand my meaning, very much the hero.so how did this girl, talented but by no means spectacular,suddenly metamorphose into India's most critically praised and commercially successful heroine?
Vidya Balan isn't malleable.Physicality does limit the roles you can play. Bollywood loves the average girl-averagely tall,attractive,and pan Indian in appeal( think Kareena Kapoor).the emphasis is 'girl',if you look even a little more mature,'aunty' is the label you must accept.she must not burst out of these limits.she can do work that showcases her role,as long as she doesn't make a habit of it,and become (God forbid) a parallel film actress.
so to reiterate the question: How?by understanding herself.she switched her strategy from papering over her weaknesses to displaying her strengths.the kind of work one receives in any industry depends on smart positioning.she was a good actress initially-now she is the only actress who plunges into her role without the standard Bollywood safeguards.she also understood that a multi faceted actor is exactly that-and one of the facets must include sex appeal.this increased her commercial viability to the extent that Vishal Bhardwaj was willing to cast her-crucially,unlike  Konkana Sensharma in Omkara-in the pivotal,femme fatale role,rather than as the subsidiary heroine who knows how to act.
Vidya's broken the glass barrier to an extent that no one,least of all Bollywood heroes,thought her capable of doing.this has produced wide adulation and some rather snide remarks about her weight and age.she doesn't need to overcome them.all she needs is to continue as she is.they'll surely die of envy.

Palash Krishna Mehrotra and The Butterfly Generation

I did not read Eunuch Park, Palash's inaugural book of short stories.It had very positive reviews , but I have a cynic's view on too much gushing over a person with an illustrious pedigree - too much can be bought in India with your father's credentials, and  literary merit must be earned.however I picked up TBG because of a sneaking fondness for 'India' books. The kind of things that are well researched,often well observed,in which the writer tries to dissect and analyse a country famously resistant to both these processes.It is entirely possible to write a good book about it and have most Indians pick it up and feel that most of it is outrightly unauthentic and wrong.the writer being usually  foreign. But Palash  has a 'both observer and observed' heft on the material, and this makes the book truer then many with similar objectives.he is of my generation too, and this made me identify with both the author and the people he chronicles in the book.It is structurally amorphous - a Writer Looks At Post Reform India and The Modern Generation in aim,and travelogue cum memoir in realization.Along the way he talks about  ragging,girls,bands,Bollywood(obligatory)servants,stand up comedy....and  how different these used to be just a few years ago.Pretty par for the course,in the context of these kind of books,but where he scores is that he's grown up here,knows what he's talking about and has some original analysis to share.He also remembers the days when kids used to fight to stay up and watch DD,to the time they shifted to FTV, to the present obsession with the Net.People who grew up during this brace of years have a unique perspective, and I hope that others too write books like this one.
Since the book is episodically divided, I'll  choose the one's I liked the most- the Yellow Umbrella, the one on ragging, and the first one focused on Delhi.The chapter on servants, the least.It's shallow in its sociological analysis(including a misapplication of Srinivas' Sanskritization theory).Palash does'nt extend his analysis of Delhi's working class to the rural UP-Bihar milieu it hails from and its caste-honour linkage.He also hasn't extended the India he writes about to the young people who 've stuck to the  conventional professions-law,medicine- and their perspective on their lives.But these are minor gripes.Such a book's challenge is to focus on what to talk about,and Palash does this capably.

Television trauma : how times have changed

Once upon a time ( well,just about ten years ago) Indian television was much better than cinema. In those days it was very difficult to launch a small,experimental film.Obviously there weren't any multiplexes, and none of the smaller production houses such as UTV had yet come into being.This meant that a whole lot of directors,actors and writers who wanted to create distinct,unusual stories were stymied by the mainstream's inability to take a risk.Naturally, TV emerged as an attractive choice for talent : risk was mitigated by the scale of what you undertook,and if you were smart enough,an  single episode was enough to bring your story to the viewers.I particularly remember a show on Star called Saturday Bestsellers ( if memory serves me correctly).Actors such as Irrfan Khan, Tisca Chopra and Kay Kay Menon formed a part of its revolving cast. They were episodic one hour stories. There was a particularly gruesome one on honor killings,long before the subject caught so much national attention.A group of bumbling farmers live in a little village in Rajasthan. Their sister is in love with a low caste boy (Varun Badola) who lives nearby-both are terrified that her brothers will find out and retaliate. The farmers go out, en masse, to the city to buy a tractor.Various antics ensue ( think rustic hijinks in the tone of Salman Khan in Dabangg) ,the farmers come across as charming,and their naive enjoyment at the city's novelties is beautifully portrayed.At the end of the day, they pile into the tractor like children tired after a day of play.On the highway,while going home,they spot Varun Badola going home on his bicycle. The mood changes - they want to demonstrate their vehicle's superiority, and the two begin to race.They try to overtake the bicycle but cannot;in a moment of spontaneous cruelty,they crush him under their wheels. On the deserted highway,no one comes to know.The last shot is of the boy's sweetheart,wistfully looking towards the highway,probably trying to spot him one last time.The metaphorical battle of the bicycle and the tractor,though simplistic,is effective.
A more humorous one centres around a newly married couple(Irrfan Khan and Tisca Chopra).They move into one of those small 'two room sets' deemed appropriate for a new family.Their landlord is a Subhash Chandra Bose enthusiast ,verging on the border of eccentricity and insanity. The landlady (Himani Shivpuri) is respectful and caring towards him;but it's clear that she's very well aware of her husband's state of mind and carries on regardless.Irrfan himself is very well pleased with a pretty,docile wife and domestic comfort.But gradually,he begins to feel that his landlady's becoming increasingly softened. He perceives her loneliness,her daily struggle,her need for warmth and companionship. Many times she tries to seek him out and spend some time together.This marks her out as a woman (to his mind)  who might be persuaded to become a little fallen.In the ending scene-
Landlady: mujhe aapse koi baat karni hai.
Tenant(silly smile):jo baat aapko kehni hai,mujhe pata hai.main kuch dino se yahi soch raha tha...
Landlady (aghast): Renu ko koi aadmi roz milne aata hai-yeh baat aapko pata hai?
The End. And the end of this long post too.

being indian, it is my birthright to....

being Indian it is my birthright to:
call random strangers 'auntie' and 'uncle'
speak at least three languages and swear in two
clap and shout in movie halls without embarrassment
refer to Rajnikanth as God
actually understand cricket
have a cast iron digestion toughened by eating at road side dhabas
go to the hills in a state roadways bus and sit on the roof
visit any religion's holy places and feel comfortable in all
understand that be Indian,it doesn't matter what your birthplace is.It's a deeply felt emotion, an investment in the idea of India that makes you its citizen.

The Morality Trilogy :Part 1

Morality used to be simple in the fifties. One was allowed to be wistful but never cynical...
Main zindagi ka saath nibhata chala gaya
Har fikr ko dhuan se udaata chala gaya
Any moral impasse could be smoothened over by remembering  motherly virtue and goodness.A post - Partition nation needed the comfort of a secure social order.People wanted to forget its collapse.

Satyakam is an interesting film, and would be worth  watching just for Dharmendra's performance,perhaps the best he ever gave.It is a departure  from the straight path narrative of the films of the time. None of the simple solutions that these films offered could resolve Satyakam's central dilemma-Is honesty carried to an extreme a vice? It devours him - his values degenerate into an  obsession- his family suffers,he dies in misery.But the end is on a redemptive note- his adopted son (just a child) can unflinchingly face a traumatic truth about his parentage.And proves the worth of his father's convictions.
The film  can be lugubrious because of its subject-it is the story of a man's decline and death,and there are are few moments of relief indeed. It's the acting - and the unusual theme- that keeps the viewer involved.

P.S. It is the only mainstream film of the time that has a rape victim who actually attempts to lead a normal life.Though what's happened to her is shown as something that vitiates her life forever (which is something I didn't like) at least  a measure of sensitivity is shown , something that  isn't for sure even in contemporary films.And for a deeper  understanding of the film, look here

Manu Joseph and unreasonable man

reading Manu Joseph's book Serious Men, I must admit at surprise at the almost unanimously positive reviews it got. Prize winning books aren't of a universally smooth flavor,of course. But one does expect the standard of writing to be uniformly high. most of Serious Men is well written and acute, the rest of it, however, somehow spoils the impact of the book. Manu doesn't get the Indian scientific establishment exactly right -its squabbles and posturing are too overt (and while caste based politics are rampant in all Indian institutions,most people are careful about expressing their views in the open,fearing a backlash from 'the other' clique). And how does the godawful Oparna Goshamulik end up as the only woman in the institute? Science is, in fact, an eminently 'respectable' and 'marriageable' profession for an educated girl to follow in our society-Joseph could have underlined her alienation from the institute in another,more authentic way. Her character seems so invented,a femme fatale in a labcoat , luring Arvind Acharya to his downfall and disappearing. The women  (except Acharya's wife) get short shrift,existing only as marginal characters in the men's lives. But then the book's title does demonstrate its focus.