| June 27, 2005 | Monday | Jumadi-ul-Awwal 19, 1426 |
Demystifying our mythical heroes
Under the weather
aA VERY dear friend of mine is not keeping well these days. But, bless him, he is continuing to work. For his personal manoranjan, I reproduce below a passage on the Indian cinema written by Beverley Nichols in 1944. It is from his book, Verdict on India. It reads:
LET us go to the pictures, and see an Indian film. It was the first thing I did, when I was well enough to hobble about again, and it would seem that no other Englishman has ever had such a wild idea before.
‘What are Indian films like?’ One used to ask.
‘Good heavens, how should I know?’
‘But haven’t you ever seen one?’
‘Seen one? An Indian film? Really!’
Blank amazement greeted the suggestion that it might be interesting to see an Indian picture. And yet, the films are a living mirror of a nation’s life; even if one did not understand everything that the mirror showed, it would surely repay a few hours of study. I was particularly anxious to visit the studios themselves, and after a little wire-pulling obtained permission to witness the shooting of a big historical picture which was being made within a reasonable distance of Bombay. Let us make the trip together.
The film star sat cross-legged on the floor of the studio, occasionally dipping her spoon into a bowl of freshly sliced mangoes, iced and glistening and golden. With a gesture of her pretty hand she beckoned to a coolie to move the fan nearer to her; and as he did so its breeze stirred her hair — her own fabulous hair, which rippled far below her waist in an enchanting cascade.
It was overpoweringly hot, and as something seemed to have gone wrong with the mike, I decided to go outside for a breather. To reach the door one had to step about a dozen nearly naked coolies, who had seized the opportunity to lie down and sleep in the dust. It wasn’t at all like Hollywood in that studio. It was even less like Hollywood outside.
Imagine a group of shabby Edwarian houses, built of white stucco, clustering near the main road of a Bombay suburb. Down the road passed an endless stream of the rumbling bullock-carts which form the eternal background of the India pageant. The coconut palms were noisy with big black crows and the burning skies echoed with the perpetual ‘ghee-wee’ of kites. At the entrance gate stood an attendant in a mauve and white pugree, lost in dreams under a tangled mass of morning glory.
Then I turned round, and saw a gaunt building of steel and concrete, painted in staring letters ‘Stage Number Four. No smoking.’ The impact of East and West was startling.
In the corner of the yard was a very beautiful tree, with a gnarled trunk the colour of old ivory, and thickly-clustering glossy leaves that Cezanne would have loved, leaves that seemed to drip green paint into the shadows below. My friend pointed to it.
‘I’m going to paint that tree,’ he said.
‘You’d better hurry up. The director said they were enlarging the studios, and they’ll be cutting it down’.
‘They’ll never cut that tree down. It’s a pipal, and a pipal is sacred; if they cut it down they might as well blow up the studio; nobody would work here any more.’
So this was the pipal — the same tree which Rama had climbed when he hurt his leg! Well, it was certainly a lovely thing. And if India has to be cluttered up with sacred objects it is just as well that some of those objects should be trees; it is a pity that there are not a few sacred trees in England. Nevertheless, when you come to know India better, you begin to feel that at times the sacredness of pipal is somewhat overdone. It spreads its shade far and wide, in the mountains and the valleys and the cities of the plains, and sometimes it spreads it in the most awkward places. Bang in the middle of narrow streets; just over the one spot where a builder wants to put a septic tank; right outside the windows of a room where it is vital to have light. To make a very bad pun, local government in India is largely government of the pipal, by the pipal, for the pipal.
We walked over and stood in the shade of the tree. It was cool and pleasant here, and it seemed a good place to collect a few statistics from my friend, who was one of the most knowledgeable men in the business.
‘How big is the film industry in India’?
‘Pretty big, and getting bigger everyday. For instance, there are over a hundred production companies. Their chief centres are Bombay, Calcutta, Poona, and Madras, and between them they employ about 80,000 people’.
‘What about the movie theatres?’
‘Well of course, they vary tremendously, from air-conditioned palaces like Metro in Bombay to bug ridden barns with wooden benches in the smaller cities. Even so, there are over 1,600 buildings capable of showing talkies’.
‘What about the villages?’
‘The vans go out to them. Little travelling talkies — about 500 of them. They usually show one long religious picture, and a government “short”. Some of the shorts are pretty good; they give elemental lessons in sanitation, first aid, rotation of corps, etc’. ‘And the stars — what about them? what sort of money do they earn? And what sort of people are they?’
‘Let’s go back to the studio and see for ourselves’. It was late in the afternoon when we returned to the studio. A love scene was in progress, but somehow, it never seemed to get going.
The village maiden was making sheep’s eyes at a young man with swelling chest. If ever a girl was saying ‘come on’ she was saying it, and if ever a chest were swelling because its owner was activated by ‘coming on’ instincts, this was the chest in question.
But nothing happened, nothing, that is to say, in the nature of a clinch. The eyes shouted ‘come on’ in even louder accents, the chest swelled to bursting point (till, in sympathy, one found oneself puffing out like a pouter pigeon), fingers were twined, necks were arched, eyelashes fluttered like the wings of moths — but no clinch.
‘This can’t go on’, I found myself muttering. ‘But really, no. All this titillation. Something will snap, burst, come undone’. And Sotto Voce I said to my friend:
‘When is he going to kiss the girl?’
‘Kiss her? he echoes in astonishment.
‘Yes, kiss her...when?’
‘Never.’
‘But why not?’
‘They never do’.
‘What — those two? Is there anything the matter with them’?
‘No. Not only those two. Nobody.’
‘Nobody kisses?’
‘Nobody never. Not on the Indian screen’.
I took a last hasty look at the swelling chest. It was as the French say about steaks — aupoint. Something was about to burst. This was past endurance. I grabbed my friend’s arms and we went in search of a fresh lime juice.
While drinking it, I learnt the astonishing history of the kiss on the Indian screen. Astonishing because it is a history that has not yet begun to be written.
The kiss is taboo.
Only once, ten years ago, in a gipsy film called ‘Zarinah’ did an iconoclastic director allow a male star to press his lips against those of a female star. It may not be true that a large numbers of people immediately jumped from high buildings, to propitiate the gods, but it is true that there were angry scenes in the theatres, meetings of protest all over the country, and a unanimous outcry from critics.
‘Disgusting Western degradation! Keep the Indian screen clean!’ So ran the headlines.
Other peoples’ money is always interesting. Here are some financial facts about India’s Hollywood. For one a star may get as high a fee as 75,000 rupees, which is about $25,000. If she does three of these a year, which is quite possible, she is actually better off than if she were in Hollywood, because Indian income tax (even when the collector manages to extract it, which is seldom) is a fleabite compared to the British or the American.
This fortune she cherishes with remarkable diligence. No big cars, no grand houses, and not even a hint of a gigolo. Bombay’s Beverley Hill is a quiet suburb which does not boast a single swimming pool. No tourists ever go to see it, no photographers even pry their way over the garden walls. When the star walks out to her taxi in the morning, nobody turns his head. There is no demand for ‘personal appearances’ in India.
Maybe she lives so quietly because her career is so short. Its end is as sudden as its beginning. Strange as it will sound to the Western director, an Indian girl may be starred in a full-length role within a few days of her first screen-test, and neither she nor anybody else sees anything odd in it. She twinkles brightly for a very few years — three is considered quite a long life — and then, suddenly, she disappears. The public have had enough of her. Why, nobody seems to know. She may be prettier, she may be a better actress; it makes no difference. Out she goes.
Compared with the wages of the stars, the wages of the rest of the personnel are modest, and of the writers, pitiable. For the complete scenario and dialogue of a full-length film an author considers himself lucky to receive two hundred rupees, which is about sixty dollars. That is one reason why Indian films are marking time. But there are others, as we shall see. We can best illustrate them ‘on the set’.
It was refreshing to hear Kashmiri resistance leader Yasin Malik speak his mind on Mahatma Gandhi and Bhagat Singh last week. In a wide-ranging discussion on Karachi-based FM89, with a web-radio link available to listeners in Delhi as elsewhere, Malik offered the view that Gandhi’s non-violence would not have worked without the support of his British quarries who ruled India.
In his view, the non-violence strategy was allowed to succeed to thwart revolutionary leaders like Bhagat Singh. A wider left movement was beginning to assume an ominous form too. This is not a new theory. But it was interesting that it came from Malik who has toggled ideologically between non-violence to gun-toting militancy to be back again with non-violent methods of fighting for his idea freedom.
Malik is not an established historian whose word should count for much. But there is a kernel of truth in what he says. A few days ago I was paying my respects to Tipu Sultan at his simple but well-maintained mausoleum in Srinrangapattnam, about 15 kilometres from Mysore. He fought India’s British rulers as very few have. Tipu’s grandchildren were last reported to be working as rickshaw pullers in Kolkata.
Look at the composition of the erstwhile princelings who adorn the Indian parliament today as elected MPs or even those who were never elected but gained a backdoor entry through the Rajya Sabha. And then look out for the heirs of Bahadur Shah Zafar, or Rani of Jhansi among them. These people had led a major rebellion against the menace of colonial rule way back in 1857.
Yes there is occasional lip-service or notional respect shown to them even today. But look carefully and you would find many an heir of those who had colluded with the British against the rebellion led by the last Mughal emperor well ensconced in the power structure. But none of them, if I am right, are related to those who fought colonialism with their lives.
Soldiers and satraps who were loyal to the British are usually toasted as our martial races. The Gurkhas, the Sikhs, the Coorgs – name them. Tipu Sultan fell to a direct shot on his head in 1799, but only after thrashing his foes black and blue. When a TV serial was made on him some two decades ago, the government of the day, in which the Hindu TV abrigade had a major say, allowed it to be shown only with an accompanying alert that the story was not based on historical facts –as though everything else that was peddled for consumption by the gullible TV watchers stemmed from pure unalloyed history.
The Coorgs colluded against Tipu, as did the Marathas and the Nizam.So much for patriotic fervour of our so-called martial races. But the best comment in this strange realm of myth-making comes not from an emotional outburst of a Yasin Malik, but from closely analysed historical facts.
In a seminal paper on the material foundations of colonial war efforts, Prof. Indivar Kamtekar of Jawaharlal Nehru University has come up with some rare gems that scoff at the theory of martial races
More than two million Indian men joined the Indian Armed Forces during the Second World War. These soldiers served in Africa, the MiddleEast, Burma and Europe. Some units, like the Fourth Indian Division,became legendary. “Stories about the Indian Army were proudly told, as if with a military band playing in the background. The government of India boasted that the Indian Army was the largest volunteer force in history. In a strictly legal sense, the men were indeed volunteers who enlisted of their own will; but most of them, desperate for jobs, were forced to join up through necessity,” Kamtekar argues.
In order to meet the army’s increased demand for manpower, old rules were relaxed to permit recruiting officers to enlist men who were underweight. Their dietary intake before enlistment was far from being satisfactory. An anaemia investigation team was created. Army doctors, impatient with euphemisms, performed ‘feeding experiments’ on the new recruits. A soldier’s progress on the standard Indian army ration was monitored, and the results were later published by the Indian Council of Medical Research. It was found that in north-west India: ‘Irrespective of age or initial weight every recruit gained 5 to 10 lb of weight on basic army ration alone, within 4 months of enlistment and this gain continued at a diminishing rate thereafter’.
This is what it meant, in terms of access to food and medicine, to join the army; and this is why ‘volunteers’ enlisted. The malnourished young men who enlisted bore little resemblance to the ideal soldier of the British Indian Army. Ever since the late nineteenth century, thebest Indian soldier was supposed to be a tall and lighter-skinnedpeasant, wheat-eating, healthy, handsome, loyal, straight forward, strong, and from the northwest of the country — a peculiar assortment of attributes, dignified by the grand title of the Martial Race Theory, revels Kamtekar. In peacetime this theory of recruitment ensured that the Punjabi peasant provided the backbone of the army. In wartime, when the army became corpulent through its intake of malnourished soldiers, its Punjabi peasant backbone began to give way.
Kamtekar compares the gallantry of our so-called martial men with the casualties suffered in Western societies that cut across social strata.
The elder son of Anthony Eden, British Foreign Secretary from 1941 to1944, was killed on the Burma Front. Maurice Hallett, the Governor of the United Provinces, presided over the annual police parade in Lucknow the day after he was informed that his son had been killed. Even the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, worried about his only son, especially when he ‘had a telegram this morning to say that Archie John was seriously wounded, no details’. He was soon to learn that while his son’s right hand was slightly damaged, his left hand had been amputated as a result of wounds sustained on the Burma front.
“The Indian upper classes, for whom joining the army was a matter of choice, were much less vulnerable,” argues Indivar Kamtekar. The current debate on secularism and communalism of Indian and Pakistani leaders is sterile. The real question has been raised by Yasin Malik and Indivar Kamtekar.
The last time Waheeda Rehman was in Kashmir was to shoot for a film 26 years ago. Last week, it wasn’t business. The legendary actress was there to meet 30 children of Rahat Ghar, a shelter for orphans and widows. Associated with an NGO, Pratham, Ms. Rehman distributed salwar suits and blankets and had a long chat with the shelter’s children.— jawednaqvi@gmail.com
It wasn’t too long, but it was hot – the spell that Karachi has just gone through. It would seem dry for a period and then turn steamy. Power breakdowns or shutdowns were a regular feature, leading to street protests in some neighbourhoods. In the evenings, many thanked God for a roof – no, not over their heads, but – under their feet so that they could sit out the electricity brown-offs in whatever breeze that was available. Some rummaged around in cupboards to find out whether any of the old hand-held punkahs were left.
But life went on, mercilessly. The daily wage labourers toiled under the sun while so many of us bemoaned the weather ensconced in air-conditioned offices. An old Karachi hand said on Friday that the corner had been turned; the wind direction had changed. But Saturday morning was as thick and humid as any last week. Till the early 60s at least, many houses did not even have ceiling fans. The sea breeze would cool the city; now it has been blocked by the dense construction all along the beaches. There weren’t then so many centrally air-conditioned buildings and ACs in the city and therefore less exhaust. Nor of course so many cars, or so many people. It all builds up, and so it’s not just the global warming that is to blame.
Perhaps also today’s generation has gone softer. They haven’t weathered a world without ACs (not even desert coolers), refrigerators, cooled cars and buses, UPSs and generators. Or perhaps some of us writing like this have simply grown old and slip easily under the weather.
Eyeing National Museum
An archaeology enthusiast, a colleague took visiting relatives to the National Museum the other day to see one of the finest collections of artefacts highlighting the rich cultural heritage of 5,000-year-old Indus civilization. He knew he would have a hard time explaining to them why the artefacts were not properly kept and displayed.
But in the museum he had to do another kind of explaining. He and his relatives were not a little surprised to see army men roaming the lawns of the museum. They first thought that the army men were on an education trip to the museum. But then they saw tents pitched on the lawns of the museum with machine gun-mounted four-wheelers parked hard by. Army-owned trucks, jeeps and double-cabin pick-ups occupied the car park.
In the building of the museum, the visitors were further surprised to see that the auditorium had been taken over by army officials. A couple of other rooms had been converted into a mess.
A nosey journalist, the colleague asked the officials on duty why there were army men in the museum. He was told that they would swing into action if employees of the recently privatized Pakistan Telecommunication Company sought to take the law into their own hands.
The colleague recalls that the Rangers and other law-enforcement agencies occupied many educational institutions and health centres in the same way. They first moved in on a temporary basis only to subsequently occupy the buildings. He fears – and so do museum employees, by the way – that the army will continue to occupy the National Museum even when the PTCL privatization crisis is over.
Remembrance of things past
Caught up in a traffic snarl in the sweltering summer heat may be an unnerving experience, but a colleague has the right attitude. While inching her way towards the traffic light, and unruffled by the vitriol unleashed by fellow drivers cursing her meandering style of driving, she generally turns her thoughts to childhood memories of summer vacations contemplating the future under the shade of a tree or at the beach.
She has learned to ignore the frantic honking behind her, thinking of the deep purple jamuns waiting to be picked off her neighbour’s tree whose fruit-laden branches leant over the wall of her home.
Howls of protests mean nothing to her now, as she comes to a sudden stop just in front of the traffic queue upon confronting an orange light turning red. She is only reminded of the huge orange sun dropping below the waves years ago when the tide would almost come up to the beach hut, bringing with it shells and pebbles that were later taken home and varnished into glittering sea jewels. Those were the days when she and her friends would make sandcastles and let the seawater fill the moats. And that was the time when it was still possible to drag out a foam mattress covered with plastic sheeting to sea and ride on the crest of the waves.
Now she rides home on these memories, stopping by the fruit vendor’s where the strong smell of mangoes and a sudden gust of wind, the much-awaited prelude to the monsoons, remind her that in some things, the break with continuity is not always total.
Sweet and abundant
Have you heard of ‘toata-pari’, or parrot-fairy? Well, it is nothing but a variety of mango. Some people insist that when you slash this mango a little deeply, an insect (parrot, or fairy) flies out of it, thus giving it its name. People who love mangoes, however, do not concern themselves with what magical tricks a particular variety has up its sleeves. They simply follow the criterion set by Ghalib for good mangoes – they should be sweet and abundant.
So mangoes in the city as well as across the country are abundant and sweet this season. This is despite the growers’ lament that production has dropped. People are relishing them in their natural form, in juices, milk shakes, ice-creams, jams, pickles and many other mango-based dishes. There have been mango parties and mango festivals to celebrate the emergence of the king of fruit.
Sindhri, which has been here for a month or so, has got its true golden-yellow colour. The fleshy variety retains its sour tinge, but it is still delicious. To challenge the popularity of this Sindhi brand, Chaunsa has begun trickling into the market from the farms of southern Punjab. The green-skinned Langra has reached its ripe age and has acquired traces of yellow.
If Chaunsa is the ‘monarch’ of the ‘mangodom’, Anwar Ratole fully deserves to called its ‘prince’. There are people who eat no other variety but AR. They must wait for a while as the variety has not yet obtained its traditional sweetness and fragrance.
With prices as low as Rs15 a kilogram, even low-income people can afford the fruit. In the villages, it is often eaten with roti and makes for a very satisfying meal.
— By Karachian
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