festival seasons from other worlds

Perhaps the government's inimitable way of reminding filmmakers that you can't have your torte and eat it too (no matter what the signs say) (and not to be confused with tort). It's art or commerce baby; success or goodness.



Unless of course you go to another kind of festival altogether and get some special boons

Electric Plug

Electric Feather, an anthology of contemporary Indian erotica finally launched last week. It's been a while in the coming (the best things in life take their time). And since the last public erotic feather was in Mughal-e-Azam, I'd say about damn time!

I have a story in it and I'm suddenly wondering how people will respond. When I give the book to someone, sometimes I want to take it back.



Not because I have any issues writing about sex. In fact I was more or less willing to read a rather explicit passage in my story which features a starfish simile I'm kinda proud of.

But suddenly I'm coming to realise how few freely admit to fantasy and pleasure, how many are a bit squirmy about it and also, I begin to wonder how does this squirminess play out in one's more formal, professional relationships? I'm wondering if people will read, maybe even like, but hesitate to say anything because of their sense of propriety or privacy or prudishness - or need to wrinkle their noses in a camouflaging manner - as if to indicate that they aren't prudish, but isn't all this a bit, well, silly, not an enterprise to be considered? Or how may jokes about "aha, you have become a pornographer" are jokes of camaraderie and how many the camouflage that won't actually take the enterprise seriously because they find it so discomfiting.

But of course in the end, the reason you put yourself out there is to try and change something - shrug the awkwardness away by suggestion so to say.

Well, we'll see! As long as they like though, maybe it don't matter. But in a country where the most natural of things - our bodies, their smells, sensations, pleasures and peculiarities are being lost to guilt, shame and a strangely plastic, technological idea of beauty and sensuality I think it's time to read this stuff and talk about ple-aiyer at lei-aiyer as we Punjabis would say. Or talk about it loudly in libraries.

It's a pretty good collection - many styles, many ideas about/of eroticism and sex and lots of really good writing.

The editor is my friend Ruchir Joshi and it's half the reason I'm pleased too - I like doing things as part of a community and I'm happy that ongoing, tangential conversations turn into projects with and for friends sometimes.

Here's a link to his intro to the book.

Here's a review

And another

Go forth and ravish it, peoples. Salim and Anarkali would so approve.

What is Time?

I am going away for a few days. Dutifully I tell my fellow scrabble addicted friends on facebook.

Where you going? One asks.
Goa.
Oh! Socegad! She says.
Don’t be so stereotyping I say. Besides, I’m going for work.

I am in Goa for a workshop. But I also have a big deadline I need email to help me reach. The hotel is supposed to provide internet to the workshop office. A few times a day I go I go up and ask hopefully: is there internet?
I get resigned looks. Wait they say, it’s coming the hotel people said.
I also sit down, and get that hanging about haplessly body language.

A hotel employee comes up. Internet is not working aan?
No.

He walks around looking intent, but gingerly, not touching a switch or cable. He hovers above the router looking at it with the blank concern of a nephew who is visiting an aunt he has never heard of before under duress and is actually thinking of the cricket match while he waits for the visit to end.

Ok, he says and leaves, never to return.

Desperate, after a day I leave the premises in search of a cyber café.
The reception tells me, ya, it’s here only.

But sterotypes or not, I’ve heard that one before, so I advance warily looking for someone on the street to ask. But there is only the sun-baked road and a dusty Tata Safari, black.

I spy one of the firangi volunteers returning from somewhere, also with hapless body language.

Know where the cybercafe is? I ask.

It’s here. But they’re all closed for the off-season she says woefully.

How can that be? I say, with a superior laugh.
I also said that, but they said nothing’s open.

I control panic rising in my throat.

I am a documentary filmmaker. I know to turn loaves and fish into po’boys. I can wring blood from a stone. I can find a cybercafe.

I do.

Sitting in the 60 rupees an hour (what would it be in season?), deliciously cool, iWay with its apostrophe shaped cubicles I do my email and tell my colleague I’ll check for his responses at night.

I ask the girl: till when are you open at night
Girl: Till 10.30 we are open
Me: Oh, ok, great!
G: But today we’ll close 5.30
PV: Oh! So you won’t be open tonight then
G: No, night, we’ll be open till 10.30
PV: OK, so what time will you open in the evening?
G: We’ll close 5.30
PV (now feeling frazzled but acting calm): Ya but you’ll open again na? You’re saying you will be open till 10.30
G: Ya, we are open 10.30 till
PV: Right, but not today.
G (with completely ambiguous intonation): Ya
PV: Ya, open till 10.30 or ya, not today?
G: At 5.30 we’ll close.
PV: Right, so you won’t be open till 10.30
G: We close at 10.30

What should PV do now? She should shut up. But does she? No, our heroine, her redoubtable Punjabi genes fully awakened, thinks.

PV (craftily): Today you’ll close at 5.30, right?
G: Ya
PV(to herself – aha!):So when you close at 5.30, after that what time will you come back and open it in the evening (phew, covered all angles) before closing it at night
G: Don't know

Beat
Beat
Beat

PV(defeated): What time do you open in the morning
G(airily): 9.30
PV (meekly): Ok, thank you

Well, at least I wasn’t asking her for directions. Stereotypes or not!

But not all conversations in Goa were so dead-ended. Some opened up like a box and starlings shot out.

here's looking at you kid

If ever a writer had a drawl it is Mohammad Hanif. Whether it was the utterly fantastic, bitterly funny A Case of Exploding Mangoes or this piece on moving back to Pakistan, I always see the narrator leaning against the door frame, a cigarette in his mouth, drawling out the lines, the indolence masking the irreverence.

Although we've received it more commonly through American pop culture, this dry drawling style does of course exist as a tradition in the sardonic rhythms of parts of South Asia, in the erudite, ironic observations of litterateurs...

It is a glamour-evoking fabulousness indeed as styles go.

Walking along the Karachi seafront after returning from London, I worked myself into a self-righteous rage at these young women in black burkas hanging out at the beach when they should have been at school or in some mosque praying for our collective salvation. But then I looked closely and found out that many of them were on a date. Some were actually making out, in broad daylight, with men with beards. Covered from head to toe in a black robe, this is quite a spectacle – and provides just the right combination of challenge and opportunity. Walking on the beach with my wife the other day, we stared at a couple who were exploring the full possibilities of the burka, using their motorcycle to lean against. With the Arabian sea lapping at their feet.

At the other end of the fashion spectrum, nattily dressed fashionistas on TV have started mixing piety with plunging necklines. (We have two 24/7 fashion channels. Also three food channels and, at the last count, five religious channels.) They talk about their last shopping trip to Dubai by pouting "masha'Allah" (God willed it) and conclude their plans for next season's collection with "insha'Allah" (if God wills). Depending on what else is happening in the name of religion on that particular day on the news channels (23 and still counting), I find it either very cute or another precursor to the destruction of our civilisation as foretold by the leading magazines.

The Other Bhabhi imparts a moral lesson for all girls

While Savita bhabhi may not be able to bestow her largesse on the world for the time being, the other bhabhi who is such a shining light in my firmament has returned after a long absence in the papers although I did scour everything for news of her on Sanju bhaiya's 50th birthday.

It's not a very specatcular resurfacing, but it is a reliable one.

Ah Manyata! If only she had been my bhabhi during the boards I would have topped - even in Maths!

If only she had taught me some lessons in youth, I would have avoided many a bitter romantic season instead of haring off here and there to pursue my goals, desires and other icky feminist things- Stand By Your Man!

Manyata pushes Sanju to work, work, work

Shahanaz my dingbat aunt has taken it upon herself to make me a star wife. It has suddenly become her life’s aim to marry me off to some filmi type so that the both of us can become red carpet regulars, schmoozing with the stars while her kitty gang begs her to get introduced to Shahrukh, Hrithik, Salman... She’s finally gone loco I tell you, as she is convinced the most stable marriages take place in Bollywood. To be fair to the old bat, she isn’t tripping on prescription medication, but has discovered a brand new trend in movie-land, thanks to the travel agent we share. Emraan pampering Parveen is not a rare occurrence in B’wood, even Sanjay Dutt is interested on spending quality time with wifey. He is planning a long holiday with Manyata to the US. But Manyata isn’t happy! Some women I tell you. She’s been egging him on to concentrate on his work and not divert his attention again.

Can’t blame her, says my mum. Because after his brief political stint ended, Sanju is seeing some of the best days of his film career, despite the failure of Luck. He has Ajay Devgan’s All the Best, Blue and Rahul Dholakia’s Lamha to look forward to. And of course, there’s Munnabhai Chale America too. So Manyata and his close friends, we hear, are keen that Sanju capitalises on the movies he has right now and signs on a few more. In fact Manyata has approved a few films for Dutt, while he just wants to holiday with her and is busy trying to convince her to chill.

She though ain’t interested. She takes her role, as the driving force behind him, very seriously and is pushing him to work much harder. She has agreed to holiday with him once Munnabhai goes on the floor next year and the shoot commences in, where else but, America.

Smart move, no? If heroines have pushy mothers, then our heroes have their wives.

I confess - whenever I read a piece I start writing Manyata bhabhi's dialogue in my head - dekhiye aap meri mat sochiye Sanjubaba-ji. Main chahti hoon ki aap kamyabi ki unchayee ko choomen - mujhe tho aap kabhi bhi choom sakte hain. Jab hamara ek nanha munna baba hoga usse kitna fakr hoga ki uske baba kitne layak actor hain. Mujhe aur kuchh nahin chahiye. Main aapke aangan ki tulsi banke rehna chahti hoon.

Melting and masculine Sanju baba heads off to another hard day of shooting.

As Manyata bhabhi has said in the past - she has more identity as Sanju baba's wife than any feminist can hope for.

Here is the smell of blood still... Who said that?!! How dare you???!!!

Manyata bhabhi aage badho hum tumhare saath hain.

and then, maybe sex is the revolution

Porn comic stars don't die they just become speech bubbles I guess.

Shor Bazaar, a band from Bombay has written a song about Savita Bhabhi which most have read about but all may not so diligently gone to look for on the day of release as I did.

For those of you more gainfully employed than I, my middle name is happy-to-serve - it is HERE

Is it great stuff ? Well the comic was punchier and funnier and struck the right ingenuous tone- this song isn't really spark-y and it loses it's opportunity to use the small thing to talk about the big thing, to somehow combine pleasure and comment - but, it's trying at least and it wants to be fun. And it's local produce people. So I'll take it for now.

waiting for a revolution (just a small one yaar)

People often say military rule will straighten everything out. And us liberals always of course fight with them - as we should.

But sometimes I feel like imposing military rule only on the entertainment business - because look what it did for Pakistan, man!

Thanks to a friend I've been watching a show called Coke Studio - which is a sort of Unplugged or Studio Sessions type show with Pakistani bands/musicians. Some of the stuff is super fabulous and I felt frustrated again that in a country the size of India we rarely have - or come across - anything particularly exciting in the world of pop music.

The normal response to that is that film music is our popular music. But I don't know - over time it has, like so much else, become so homegenised that although we hear a few good songs, they are all so similiar. Of course there are exceptions but just look - it's a country of over a billion people and so many languages and seemingly so little. A lot of singers in the film industries are really skilled singers - but with the exception of Oye Lucky Lucky Oye and to a lesser (much lesser actually) extent Dev D - haven't heard stuff that feels individual. There must be artists around the country but they don't seem to come to widespread attention.

I HAVE been listening to a lot of older Punjabi pop music lately and I think there's much more life and excitement and observational detail there, irreverence also - but Punjabi pop too has become so numbingly same now, you can get up and dance, but you're unlikely to really listen to much of the stuff (although again, many singers are very skilled).

There are so many singing contests on TV - but nothing that encourages originality of music and even HIGH individuality of performance. The need to stay in a dunlop-y comfort zone seems so strong. The obedience of it all!

It's a familiar grouse of course - that alternative culture, or commitedly independent world, doesn't seem to gain much traction in India. Everything gets sucked up into Bollywood in the end. But people need to think! What'll they do when Gulzar dies?!

I tried to watch some episodes of Launch Pad but I can't say it did a lot for me. The winners, Fardikot, can be listened to here

http://www.faridkotonline.in/audio

For me, it's a bit ho-hum - I'm hoping they can parlay their talents into something more unique or at least ringing with truth.

I know there's a few good bands like Soulmate for instance. I still am interested in whatever Rabbi does next - I've liked both his albums.
Perhaps I need to look harder - so if you know ways to correct me and inform me, please please do.


Meanwhile three tracks I really liked on the Season 2 of Coke Studio



This is supposed to be Pakistan's first girl band - two Pathan girls from a services background (oh that military motif) although they studied in the US. The song is in Dari and Pashto apparently and means - Bring me the glass that I may lose myself/I am in love with the intoxication of my beloved's eyes.

This collaboration also worked for me


I loved it when they guy from Noori sings Jo na jaane Haq ki Taaqat/Rab na deve usko Himmat/ Hum mun ki dariya mein doobe/Kaisi naiya, kya manjhdaar?

I'm trying to think of an Indian pop song recently that even casually has a thought like that in it - the declaration that everything is not cleverness and carefulness.

And this song many in India know - since Fuzon's album was very successful here and the Kagaz ke Phool type music video featuring Mr. Hotness, Shan played a fair bit on the music channels. But this version is lovely...


Of course there are those who'll say I am just blinded by the beauty of these boys. Who am I to contradict you?

On and by the way, for the sincere who happen to read this - I don't believe in military rule. It's an expostulation, not a recommendation.