Why I Won't Stay Silent In The Face of Injustice

Some of you have asked why I'm making a fuss about the racist attack on my sister, my friend & me from a few days ago. So I'm sharing my Facebook status of a couple of days ago to explain what I'm hoping to achieve:

"In the last 48 hours, the sheer number of the messages of support, love and concern that I've received following that horrible racist attack on Sunny, our friend & me (thankfully they weren't hurt physically) has reminded me that I am privileged to count some wonderful people as friends and family. People from all around the world have reached out to express their shock, their support, their regret, and their love. For that, I am grateful.

There is another element in these messages, though, that worries and deeply upsets me; that so many people's messages included their own experiences of suffering racist abuse, whether in London, in the UK, or in other parts of the world. It infuriates me that this is something that people I love & care about have had to experience. It angers me that so many messages suggest that "this is just the way of the world." And it reinforces my resolve to not let this slide.

Bringing my assailant to justice is just one part of it; making sure that the Met Police change their behaviour when confronted by such an incident is more important for me. I am privileged enough to have a voice, to be the "right" kind of person whose concerns can get airtime & attention, and it is my duty to make sure that the next time someone calls the police after being attacked they are treated with more compassion and sensitivity.

And finally, as someone with a voice, it's also my duty to make sure that I challenge the sort of vile discourse currently playing out in the UK media, where immigrants are being demonised and racial hatred is being legitimised through the comments of all major political parties. Because to stay silent in the face of injustice is to be complicit in it.

Thank you all for being such amazing friends."

And The City of Dreams Burns...

I'm angry. Very angry.

Tonight is the third night in a row that various parts of London are beseiged by rioters; groups of youth vandalising shops, burning cars, attacking bus drivers and generally terrorising their neighbourhoods. I've spent much of the evening texting friends, trying to ensure that they are safe & haven't been stranded or affected (too much) by the violence spilling out into the streets.

And the anger inside me keeps building.

Why am I angry? Because it is happening to a city that I love and care very deeply about. London is one of my favourite places in the whole world. As the city that I have lived in & call home (despite the efforts of its public transport system, its government or general miserable weather) I find it a comfortable, welcoming, dynamic, international and utterly fabulous place. I am very proud to identify myself as a Londoner, as one of the millions who has been a part of this city & its fabric for the past six years. I was a Londoner the day that the IOC announced London trouncing Paris in its bid for the 2012 Olympics. I was a Londoner the following day when bombs ripped through the London tube, and I had to walk for three hours along the river to make it home. I was a Londoner that day in September 2008 when the markets opened the weekend after Lehman Brothers collapsed (in fact, at that time, I was one of the bankers that worked night & day to get through the mayhem of September 2008).

And I was a Londoner that day in August 2009 when I returned to the city after several months away backpacking. I had been to 3 continents, 14 countries, some amazing historical sites, some poignant memorials to human achievement and human depravity. And despite all that, I felt nothing but a sense of coming home that day that I landed in Heathrow. I was back in London.

I was home.

And so, when I watch the news, when I see the streets and suburbs devastated and damaged, I feel nothing but utter rage against the criminals who feel it acceptable to vandalise the city that is home to so many people like me. People who may not be from the UK, people who would not be missed probably by millions of people across the UK if we left, but people who by virtue of who we are and by virtue of making this amazing city our home make London the place that it is.

People who are Londoners, through & through.

So many days later.

I've been terrible at blogging these past few months. So much happening, so much not happening. So it's been infrequent posts.

So that's what I've been doing these past few months. Lots of travel - Greece, France, the USA, Germany, Spain (Ibiza), India, and France again. Now looking forward to spending New Year's in Berlin, my favourite city in the whole wide world.

So many books too. And ever since I bought my iPad, it's been amazing at how much I find reading ebooks so therapeutic. I've downloaded so many old classics too, including Cicero, Virgil and Thackeray.

So I apologise for the lack of a blog post. And at the same time, I don't really mean it when I say I'm sorry I haven't posted about my life.

Because I've been too busy living it.

Self-Centred Introspection

Another late night in London.

My insomnia kicks in on the strangest days. Today, after a week of insanely busy days at work, with a social calendar that's packed to the brim, I thought I would sleep like a baby. Fat chance. It's now 2:30 and I'm still awake; bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, willing to go out for a run, or a drink, or both. Probably not a good idea, but there you go.

So here I am, in a garret bedroom in Notting Hill, with the windows open on this warm summer night. My laptop is warm on my lap; the duvet lies pushed down around the end of the bed. I've got Florence + The Machine playing on Spotify, and a table fan whirring softly in the corner.

It's at moments like this that I have to love my life.

Nothing special, nothing important. Just a single moment when I can look around, at a life that I've built slowly, painstakingly, bit by bit. I've gotten to a place where I think I am, if not happy, then at least...serene, calm, comfortable.

Not content, though. Never content. Always trying, always struggling, always reaching. Things need to be done, places must be visited, lives must be improved upon. It is difficult to not always want to achieve. Especially when in my own head there are so many failures, so many shortcomings, to compensate for.

Dreams, ambitions, goals. All shorthand for the misery that we can cause ourselves by wishing for too much. For trying too hard. For staying so hooked into the whole system that we forget to stop and measure the moments, minute, infinitesimal, that make up this fragile life of ours.

I think it was a schoolteacher - one of the Dominican friars at my Catholic school in Namibia - that introduced me to the Latin saying, per aspera ad astra. To the stars through difficulties. The same teacher told me that if you aimed for the stars, you'd get to the treetops.

And I always wondered how unsatisfying those treetops would be, especially when you kept looking at the stars that you missed out on.

Self-Centred Introspection

A half moon rises over the high rise council estate flats of Notting Hill.

Deprivation.

The moon is blood red. Dust in the air, prismatic reflections of pale light. Wisps of cloud fleetingly linger over the semi-circular cusp of reddish-white in the air.

Il pleut toujour sur les maisons de Londres a minuit.

My heart - the half that remains with me - cries with the weather. The other half, the half that I gave you; the half that you wrenched away from me - rests with you. Happy, sad, uncaring, I know not.

Do you stay awake at midnight, wondering if I'm thinking of you, the way that I do, standing here at the window of a garret room in West London, staring at a moon that stays suspended mid-air, close enough to reach out and touch, far away enough to be just out of reach?

I don't want to fuck up anything. I just want to be with you.

But its too late for that. I've already fucked things up, taken it to a point where we're beyond redemption. And now all that is left to me is this moment, standing alone in a cold room in an empty apartment, where all that is left to keep me company are my memories.

And this, a blood-red half-moon, lingering in front of my face, the way that you do.

Just out of touch.

Self-Centred Introspection

He sits, eyes, closed, on the Bakerloo line, right opposite him. Hair black, his Japanese eyes screwed tightly shut, mere slits against a face pockmarked with rashes and pimples. The faded grey of his backpack (waterproof, durable, outdoorsy, careworn, used) flat on his lap. His fingers, - rapid, prismatic, a blur – move the small plastic cube, almost inexorably.

Turning, turning, turning.

The tyranny of symmetry. The rules are simple: red adjacent to red, blue next to blue. Orange all on one side, white on another. Miscegenation is the enemy, order, purity, a bland monotony the idyll to be striven for.

It has taken the man only two stops (Baker Street to Edgeware Road) to complete the Rubik’s cube.

***

He walks calmly into the stationers. Stillness. Life here is calm, ordered, comprehensible. In the neat ruled sheets of Pukka Pads, in front of the walls of coloured plastic folders, ring binders and clutch pencils he finds a strange tranquillity. Things are not complicated here, decisions lose the menace of their implications. His decisions are bounded by the cardboard ends of the notebooks that he peruses. Sex is merely the static that burns his fingertips as he runs his hand against the wall of paper in a brightly lit store in Notting Hill. Simplicity.

Reflections on New Years Past...

In less than two days, most of the world will be ringing in the New Year (why do I feel it necessary to capitalise those two words?) and also the New Decade (there go those capitals again...) Not surprisingly, with the onus of having to look forward to the ten years ahead, I've gone all nostalgic on the year that's just gone by, and cannot help but think back to where I was this time last year.

People generally are supposed to have something interesting to do on New Year’s Eve. Normally, I’ve been quite good about avoiding the damp, windy and cold weather that plagues London around this time of year, and have spent the past two years in cities with SNOW, as opposed to sleet. So much better, no? So two years ago it was Paris, and last year it was Berlin. Berlin was definitely the more fun of the two getaways, though that may have had to do with the insane amounts of partying that I managed to indulge in. I went clubbing on New Year’s Eve, and ended up at Berghain, this truly terrifying, massive industrial hellhole spread on three floors in East Berlin. The place has a basement that closes 45 minutes after the club doors open, and what happens in the basement, stays in the basement. I left the club (not the basement, I can assure you) at 7 am, and there was a queue a mile long to get INTO the place at that hour. The Germans can party, I tell you.

Funnily enough, my most vivid memory of that morning is choosing to hop straight into a cab home, ignoring my initial (and ultimately wiser) urge to hop into a kebab shop and pick up food. On getting back to the apartment I was staying in, I realised just how ravenously hungry I was, and as no other shops were open at the time, ended up having to sate myself with a day-old Danish pastry and some apple juice. I spent the 1^st of January going to bed on an empty stomach.

Some might argue about the inauspiciousness of such a start to the year, but perhaps going hungry just made sure that I stayed hungry the whole year. Not for food, thankfully, nor shelter, but for new experiences. As much as a cliché as that is (and that’s a lot of “as”-es in a phrase) 2009 has been a fabulous year; time spent travelling, quitting full-time employment to do so, being adventurous, both in my professional life and my personal, my social and my love life. It’s meant not being content with the status quo, not being happy to be complacent. It’s meant forcing myself out of my comfort zone, doing things I might not have done in previous years, pushing myself.

It’s been absolutely terrifying.

But equally so exhilarating that I can’t believe I didn’t do this before and also cannot imagine going back to the way things were in 2008, or indeed in the years before then. I think I’ve figured out now how I want to live my life, and that’s not at all a bad thing.

Unless you’re my liver, I guess.

Changes slow and gradual

It’s been some time since my last post; not as long as previous absences from this blog, but still, a gap significant enough for some momentous developments to have occurred in the interim.

First things first – I’m now back at work. As of the beginning of this month, I re-entered the workforce, after nearly eight months away from professional life. The time I took off in the middle has been one of the happiest, most emotionally and personally satisfying periods of my life; it was a gap wherein I managed to travel across three continents and fourteen countries, visiting friends, family and places that have long been on my radar. I can look back and feel truly fulfilled. 2009 will go down in my life as the year that I visited my first World War II concentration camp (Auschwitz), my first villa holiday (Spain), my first visit to Venice, my first trip to the land of the Sound of Music (Salzburg), my first visit to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, my first visit to Borobodur in Indonesia and my first visit to some amazing Indian heritage sites (Khajuraho, Agra & the Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri).

As lists go, that isn’t an unimpressive one, methinks.

But as is the case with all good things, this period too had to come to an end. I returned to London and regular life at the end of August, and pretty much had a job lined up by the end of September. I don’t want to sound arrogant, or full of myself, but I have to give myself a pat on the back for finding a job in an economy in recession, during one of the worst downturns in the past century. Most importantly, not only is it a job that pays the bills, but it’s also a job that I like and fits into my own personal career growth and plans.

After five years in the big bad world of international finance, M&A and executing on corporate transactions, I was quite keen to try my hand at something more entrepreneurial, more dynamic and ultimately more fulfilling. My new job offers me a lot of what I was looking for and didn’t have in my previous job, which ultimately cannot be a bad thing. So I don’t think it’s out of order to be a little proud of myself. If that is arrogance, then so be it.

So it will not be long now before I have to update my profile (up there on the top right corner of this page) to read differently. Luckily for me, I will not have to edit the strap line for the blog; I am (still!) a former banker. Whether my current lifestyle will entitle me to the “part-time traveller” label remains to be seen.

As for the sometime cynic, well, why spoil a good thing?

But there have also been some other happenings worthy of mention. A dear friend came to visit me at the end of October, flying across from Amsterdam to spend three days in the cultural hotspot that is London. Despite having lived here in this crazy, amazing, cosmopolitan city for six years, I often forget (or perhaps as a result of living here, I am inured to) the many wonders that make London the brilliant place that it is. This is why I love it when friends from other places come to visit; it forces me to reorient my own perspective on this city that I have no shame in calling my own, to see it through fresh eyes, and to remember to appreciate the little things that make it frustrating and so enjoyable at the same time. My friend is a bit of a culture vulture, and so for the three days that he was here, we managed to hit three different art galleries. On Friday, it was off to the Tate Modern at South Bank (after a brunch at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre right next door) to soak in the splendours (or not) of the Pop Life exhibition. Saturday included a mad dash to Abercrombie & Fitch (friend’s boyfriend in Amsterdam had sent a comprehensive shopping list that needed to be filled) and as always, I was mostly horrified by the store, its insane crowds – there was a queue to get in! – its unapologetic sexualisation of the male form, and the unbelievable attractiveness of its ridiculously good looking yet utterly incompetent staff. Brains + beauty is clearly a very rare combination.

Saturday evening included a trip to see the eclectic Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Royal Academy, which was, to my mind, one of the best sculpture exhibits I’ve visited in a very long time. I loved the mix of textures, colours and just the sheer scale of all the pieces on display. It was then time to hit Soho on Halloween, which itself was a mad experience; Dutch friend is intellectually familiar with the holiday, but it is often hard to translate the sheer exuberance that people in London take to dressing up. (As someone who was walking around with vampire fangs, I have to admit I was not immune to the frenzy).

And so finally to Sunday; an early morning trek out to Southall for some mooli parathas, chai and masala dosa for breakfast, some Indian spice & Ayurvedic product shopping, and finally a quick prawl around the many little DVD stores before it was back to Central London for some Damien Hirst at the Wallace Collection, before wrapping up the weekend with a Sunday roast lunch at a cute little Notting Hill pub.

Ah, London.

And so it is that I enter the third week of my new employment this week. Christmas is around the corner, Oxford & Regent Street already have their festive lights up, the shop windows are full of holiday cheer, and it will soon be time for my own Christmas tree to make an appearance.

And before long, it will also be time for another blog post.

Why I hate Bollywood

So if you’re a regular reader of this blog (or even someone who’s stumbled across this site via my Twitter or my blog, or are just a friend who’s here out of curiosity) you will be very aware of the fact that I am what could be described as a die-hard Bollywood fanatic. Perhaps one of the best things about living in Central London is that it is very easy to access the latest cinematic offerings at mainstream cinemas at Piccadilly Circus, unlike some other geographies where Bollywood movies play in suburban desi ghettoes (this is also probably yet another reason I dislike Singapore...)

Having said this, there are several things that I either find singularly irritating about my relationship with Bollywood, and with Bollywood’s relationship with me. One of these many irritants is how Bollywood has made me into a strange combination of champion and pimp (a pimpion?) Insidious, devious, underhanded, it forces its way into all my relationships – friends, lovers, colleagues – and I end up pitching for it everywhere. There have been so many random conversations – acquaintances in pubs over beer, lovers in bed after sex, random strangers on transcontinental flights – where what starts out as chitchat ends up turning into an unsettling blend of passionate sales pitch, courtroom defence and self-righteous admonishment of ignorance.

Now while you might say that it serves those idiots who dare broach conversations with the strangers next to them on transcontinental flights right to have me bite their heads off, imagine what it does to your sex life. And I always feel that some of my friends have gotten too cautious about what they say in front of me, out of an overweening fear that it may unleash the Bollywood beast.

The thing is, in my own pimpion head, it’s a simple equation. If you plan on maintaining any modicum of a relationship with me, in whatever capacity, you will have love the Bolly; not necessarily as much or as passionately as I do – it’s not too cool to be too eager or desperate – but enough to get me. And if you can’t get to that special place in your heart where you love it as much as I do, where if you could you would marry it and have lots of little Bollywoods, then at least show me that you respect my love of it. It’s the same as how I choose not to make disparaging comments about croquet to friends who I know can think of no better way to spend a mild English summer’s day knocking clunky wooden balls through metal hoops with even clunkier mallets. I may not get it, but I will respect your right to risk sunburn and potentially broken toes.

So yeah, I kinda hate Bollywood for making me into such a raving fanatic. I hate how it turns me into a Bolly-vangelist who deep down feels that everyone who doesn’t believe will burn for all eternity in some antiseptic Iranian / French cinematic graveyard (all monochrome and bleak) without ever a rainbow coloured dance routine to brighten up the day. (Note to self: can you burn for all eternity in a graveyard? Oh what the hell; it’s an Indian thing to mix metaphors...)

The other reason I despise my addiction with Bollywood is because it’s just so damn relevant to what’s happening in my life, and in the lives of my friends and family. Just when I get lulled into this sense that my life can be considered to be unique, individual, or just distinctly my own, something comes along that just proves that despite India and Bollywood being such massively post-modernist narratives, we’re all really just part of a wider piece.

Bah, humbug. This, however, totally contravenes all attempts to reinforce my inherent coolness by doing things that are supposed to be unique, different and not so mainstream that the world’s largest commercial film industry can make blockbusters around the broader themes.

For example, when I was growing up, everyone who was Indian would rush to the USA for postgraduate study. How typical, I thought. I was going to go somewhere else. Somewhere hatke. The UK had been a big destination post-Independence, but had slowly lagged behind as the USA took over as the main destination of brown brainiacs in search of a Masters’ degree in something (if not a PhD). That’s it, I thought – I’ll look at programmes in England.

And then what happens? As soon as I start my research, Bollywood had to run across and start filming every second song over here. Starting out with Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Main Prem ki Deewani Hoon, Mujhse Dosti Karoge... it was like, so you want to go here? Look, if you’re lucky you may run into Rani Mukherjee! And it’s not gotten any better these past few years that I’ve chosen to live here. Salaam-e-Ishq and Love Aajkal have significant portions filmed in London, a city I’ve lived and worked in for the past six years. It’s like, wtf? Go somewhere else!

Alright, I know you’ll argue that my being here in London and Bollywood’s presence here are not unrelated. (No, TBS, it’s not as if an entire film industry is stalking you). Both the UK, and London in particular, have strong links with India, not least because of a large diaspora community, and there are a large number of Indian expatriates who come here to study and work for a few years. Some stay on, some return home. So yeah, you’re just part of a wider trend. Chill.

Well, okay. I might buy your argument there. But it’s not as if this is the only instance. There are distinct moments while digesting the latest Bolly news that I get a sense that at some cosmic level, someone is having a massive cinematic laugh at my expense. So last year when I was gearing up to go to Delhi for the wedding of a good friend, Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na came out, along with famous song Pappu Can’t Dance Saala. Listening to those lyrics, I realised that my friend, the would-be groom, was actually Pappu. (Hey, hey, Pappu ke paas hai MBA, karta hai France mein holiday... I even think he had a Rado watch before he hid it to avoid too many comparisons. And yes, my friend can’t dance either.)

Okay, I know you’ll argue that again my friend is merely typical of a broader genre of Indian men who are well educated, travel and have poor rhythm and fashion sense.

So how do you explain these last few “coincidences”?

Fine, I decide - the UK is a but-obvious choice for anyone who’s Indian and making movies. What with 200 years of colonial rule, maybe it was going to be difficult to pretend that there’s no real link between the two countries, especially since the damn Kohinoor diamond’s still over here. Meanwhile, I’ve spent the past few years exploring other parts of Europe, hoping to find the next city for me to move to (NB – given my itinerant childhood, I get this uncontrollable desire every few years to uproot myself and find a new home in a new country. I’ve realised that the smart thing is not to fight it; rather, I should facilitate the move by pre-selecting the next destination before the urge kicks in, just to speed up the transfer process.) I’ve now also decided that I don’t want to go to a place that is mainstream, popular with Indians or something that’s made it to a Bollywood movie.

So in 2007, for the first time, I get my ass out to Berlin. One weekend, and I’m in love. The place is unbelievable. In 2008, I’m back again with work for almost a full week, and it’s just reinforced the attraction. This is it, I decide. It’s funky, it’s cool, it’s unique, and nobody will film a dance sequence here. It’s a beautiful city, but it doesn’t have that Bollywood aesthetic. I’m safe.

And, then, back in London, after a couple of weeks, I read about how Shah Rukh Khan is planning to film the sequel to Don in Berlin.

Bah, humbug.

And finally – the icing on the cake - a recent one that’s just reconfirmed that I’m being stalked. By an entire frickin’ film industry:

My sister, a good Indian girl (she was born in a good family in the city of Varanasi – you can’t more desi than that) has been seeing a Brazilian guy for the past eighteen months. Both sets of parents – one Indian, one Brazilian – came to the UK to allow both families to meet, so it’s been all fun and games, really. The one thing that struck me when they started going out last year was how, despite a life spent in four different continents, in fairly international communities, where international relationships are usually a norm, not an exception, while I’ve come across Indians with Europeans (French, German, English), Indians with Australians, Canadians, even Japanese, I’ve never encountered an Indian-Brazilian couple. So in many ways, I liked to think that my sister’s breaking new ground. I mean, India – Brazil is just not spoken of unless you’re talking about BRIC economies.

And then I go to India in June and figure out that the latest new actress is this woman who plays good Punjabi Sikh girl Harleen Kaur in Love Aajkal. The catch? Her real identity was kept secret until after the movie was released. She’s BRAZILIAN!!!!!!

DAMN YOU BOLLYWOOD!!! STOP STALKING ME!!!

Travelling thru' the Big Apple

(The following posts are excerpted from my trusty Moleskine travel diary that I carried around in my backpack and wrote in occasionally while backpacking. The excerpts below were all written when I was in New York or Philadelphia in August 2009 for a week.)

Time flies when you're having fun.

Life in the crazy Big Apple is hectic, busy, stressful, not so cheap. Fancy bars, stylish restaurants; Brooklyn / Fort Greene is the new hip, Chelsea / West Village is getting jaded. Meatpacking is SOO pre-recession darling.

So we get to new places. Everything is transitory here. 230 5th, Plum, all of them are 2007. 2009 has a new list of places, new cool spots, new cool looks. Looking pretty ain't worth shit if you're not looking pretty in the right places.

Everything is transitory here. But everyday, you're not here. Every instant, I mutate into something else.

Where're you from? They all ask me. What's your backstory? What makes you who you are? It's a series of questions asked with a strange blend of uncaring casualness and somewhat discomfiting curiosity. New Yorkers aren't supposed to care. They've seen it all, remember (after all, everything happens in New York, doesn't it?)

So when they ask, not out of a habituated boredom - just the closing verse of a well-rehearsed liturgy - but out of a genuinely actuating desire to find out, it's much more uncomfortable.

Perhaps there aren't that many brown multi-lingual ex-bankers with a pierced eyebrow and a serious sense of personal style in this world after all. Not everyone can be glamorous, you know.

*********

I haven't stopped thinking 'bout you, you know. There have been times that I've wondered what it would have been like to have gone travelling these past four months with you. What if you had kept me company, if you had been there?

Fantasising about you sticking around is never a good thing. It's not going to help me get over you, now is it? But did you think that I'd have moved on, so quickly?

Do you miss me? Do you think of me? मेरे लिए भी क्या कोई उदास बेकरार है?

*********

Last day in the Big Apple.

Hanging out in the Upper East Side. Art galleries, Iranian contemporary painters. Holding myself back from making a deposit for a 55 inches (square!) canvas. Only 35 grand. Yes, its US dollars, but that's still like 25 grand sterling. Not cheap.

I like it here in NY. Not like it was in 2007; hostile, alien, unwelcoming. 2009 NY is like the NY of my childhood, when I felt like I was a part of the city. Funnily enough, NY is not home anymore; not the way it was when I was growing up, and I have a strong feeling that it will never be home; not in the warm, comfortable way that London has adopted me over these past five years. But London is European, English, Indian, worldly; whereas this place is so decidedly one thing: American.

Life is manic here; you feel like the alien that you are each and every minute. Either you conform, fit in, become that most unnatural of things - a New Yorker - or you remain alien, touristy, a foreigner.

I "know" this place; it is familiar to me as an adult in the same way that London was, but whereas London was a place that I got to know through the prism of my first adult debacle, my sorrow and my intellect, New York is what I know from a happy and warm childhood memory; warm, fuzzy, hazy, with big shoulder pads and clashing colours, but still familiar and known.

It helps that this time I haven't been treated like a criminal at immigration. I know that I'm a single brown man, but seriously, how many terrorists have had my good looks and impeccable sense of fashion and personal style?

But this time, I don't really mind. I enjoy being the outsider, living in liminal spaces. I've realised that I've grown up always being on the periphery, so why start trying to fit in? In London I sound Canadian; in the US they're not quite sure, and the poor Canadians keep going, "what the f*ck?"

(Warm and muggy August afternoons in the Upper East Side; Central Park is four blocks west of this Starbucks cafe. The radio plays kitschy American shock rock pop.)

And of course, being exotic never hurts in the bars and clubs. "You're beautiful" is not an uncommon thing to be told, especially here in New York. Random checkouts on the street, in shops. Bearded, tattooed, clean shaven, pierced, twinks, rough trade; all good. The girl on the subway who wouldn't look away; the guy in Whole Foods this afternoon.

Maybe I'll hit the Lower East Side this afternoon. Gay it up a little.

Puddles of green coolant shimmering in the summer haze beneath the white van pulled up in front. Gay rights campaigners trying to get people to care in this, the most indifferent of world metropolises. My Starbucks iced green tea (grande, unsweetened) strong, bitter, healthy.

People are good looking here, but often quite tediously slow. So much effort, primping, preening, pumping, running, plucking. If you're not beautiful, you're automatically ugly. Not much of a choice, but the food here is so super fortififed, the portions so huge, that it's a bit of a default option if you're not killing yourself in the gym.

Puerto Rican shop attendants stunned at my knowledge of Spanish.

*********

So the Lower East Side absolutely rocks. Far grittier, grimier and down-at-heel than the much fancier and trendy West Village & Chelsea area that I'm staying in right now. Perhaps, if I ever moved here, I'd end up trying to live in the LES or East Village. Chilled, relaxed, grungy; immigrants, rent control, graffiti, almost a Ladbroke Grove / pre-trendy Notting Hill as compared to South Kensingon / Mayfair in London.

Note to self: places that are called Chelsea are almost always pretentious and quite expensive. Not that that's a problem; au contraire, its quite nice to have places like that around, if only to keep the wannabe trendy and tres hep guys out of the actually cool and happening places.

I'm writing this entire post in XES Lounge, a fantastic little bar on 24th St, near 7th Avenue. Speaking to a guy who works here called Derek Tod. We both agree that people should do what they want with their lives, as long as it makes them happy. Not a bad approach, if you ask me. But then, I wouldn't disagree now, would I? I quit a job in banking to be happy. Poorer, definitely, but infinitely happier.

New York (or should I say the Northeast) is very recession aware. People are shopping smarter; denial is the new cool. You save today, spend later. Credit cards are soo 2005.

So this is it. I'll go back to the fancy 2-bed Chelsea pad where I'm crashing with a friend, go out for dinner with R&D. We get along, despite distances, in time and space, despite different realities, different world views, different expectations from life. R&D are mainstream; cool, funky, but mainstream. I, on the other hand, voluntarily seek out the periphery. Liminal spaces; always at the fringes.

Peripheral in the straight world. At the edges in finance (you're not supposed to kick the money in the face and walk off, remember?) Liminal in the brown world (not an immigrant, not Indian either). And don't get me started on the gay scene.

Damn. I'm a fr*cking minority. That Polish Jewish grandmother didn't help my efforts at mainstreaming either.

A Veiled Insult

Serendipity is a word that we apply to happy, unexpected but ultimately personally satisfying discoveries; things like finding that perfect little café that has the best cheesecake in the whole city. Sadly, no similar word exists (and if it does, I certainly am not aware of it) for discoveries that are unexpected but can be quite distressing. Sometimes, personal epiphanies or revelations about oneself can fall into this category too. I had a similar “eureka” moment on the ubiquitous London Tube some weeks back, and it has taken me a long, long time to come to terms with all three major components of that biblical moment: the actual discovery , the events that triggered it, and my own personal reaction to realising what it was that I had found out about myself.

What happened is this – I boarded a Tube train some time back, my mind focused on Jeff Buckley’s cover of Hallelujah on my iTouch, and took theonly free seat available opposite a Middle Eastern couple. Unlike other Middle Eastern / Arab Muslim couples, however, who tend not to be incredibly expressive in public, this one was generally quite “couple-y”, holding hands, whispering softly to each other, feeding each other cookies out of a bag from Cranberry; you know, just generally being very lovey-dovey. Nothing too out of the ordinary for a normal train journey in London, albeit with one surreal twist.

The man had a long, unkempt and straggly beard, and was walking around in a long djellaba/thawb/dishdasha that could have done with either a wash and darn, or possibly a binbag. The woman was wearing a long black burqa and had a full facial niqab, with a tiny little crack in the face for her eyes to peek through. But that was not all; not only did she have several layers of veils on, she was also wearing black gloves on her hands - from the part of her hands that protruded from the long billowing sleeves of her cloak, they caught the light in that weird way that cheap synthetic faux opera gloves that you can buy at your local costume shop do. I could almost imagine her wearing elbow length opera gloves, and who knows, potentially a black off-the-shoulder evening gown underneath her many-layered veil. All very bizarre, especially that given the warm weather and bright sunlight, the black material was a portable heat sink.

So why am I taking this much time to describe how this couple was dressed? For a very simple reason: the sight of this otherwise so ordinary couple filled me with completely unexpected, and at the time, inexplicable, rage. My sudden anger at seeing this couple dressed in what would be a totally unremarkable way in the Middle East, including that "Western" idyll of Dubai, totally caught me completely by surprise. I spent the ten minutes or so that I was in that carriage sitting opposite them listening to Jeff Buckley's dulcet tones, trying to calm down, not looking at them and generally trying to come to terms with the fact that I was very, very angry. And I was very glad to get off my train after a couple of stops, with a chance to walk and clear my head. But once my rage dissipated I had to spend the remainder of my journey, and several days afterwards, trying to get my head around what it was about that perfectly ordinary, typical couple that had angered me so much.

What was particularly galling about the episode was that I like to think of myself as a multicultural citizen of the world; someone who is truly a global person, able to live in anywhere on the planet (well, except Singapore, maybe) and accept and appreciate diversity in culture, food, music, dress, religion. And having spent time in countries where the sight of women in full black veil is not uncommon (try walking through the old city in Istanbul, Delhi, or even East London, and you would be hard pressed to avoid them) I could not fathom what it was about the couple, and particularly about the woman in the opera gloves, that really drove me over the edge. After several days of introspection and having discussed my reaction with several friends, I think I'm beginning to understand the causes of my rage. It is always very difficult to talk about Islam in today's world, and I know that what I will say may be construed as being incendiary, but in the spirit of independent, liberal analysis, and in the interests of freedom of speech, here goes nothing.

Essentially, there were two particular aspects about the woman in the niqab and opera gloves that got me angry. And they had to do with how the veil was a symbol of broader interactions concerning the woman in her own life, and her interactions with me as a random passing stranger; a stranger you share space with in public transport, but do not actually verbally communicate with.

With regards to the woman herself, I don't know why she was veiled. The standard, often immediate, assumption made about a woman in a veil is that she is oppressed and has been coerced into wearing it, or that she would be risking honour killing by choosing to discard it. It is also the easiest and most accessible assumption to make about the veil, particularly in societies where the majority of women are not veiled. However, I have also met several people where the adoption of a hijab has been a personal choice, usually as a consciously forged link with a heritage, but also often as a very visible form of personal protest – Turkish women being a classic case in point. A (Muslim) female friend in London also once told me that sometimes a woman can choose to wear a veil (usually a hijab) as an educated adult in the West as a way of registering political protest in today's Islamophobic geopolitical environment, but also as a means of demonstrating an awareness and acknowledgement of her own sexuality and as part of the process of sexualisation into an adult. There have been several news articles in the mainstream UK media about women choosing to adopt a full niqab out of personal choice.

That is not to say, however, that all women wearing the niqab in the West do so out of personal choice. Furthermore, given that personal decisions are coloured by the lenses of our upbringing and our environments, I don't know whether the woman in the tube wore a full veil out of free will, or because that was what she had been brought up to do. But my anger surrounding her being veiled was partly driven by my own implicit assumption that she had somehow had been coerced into being fully veiled; an assumption that was reinforced by her obviously intimate interactions with a man himself dressed in a way as to facilitate easy identification as a conservative Muslim man. I realise that this part of my anger was possibly based on a preconception on my part, and therefore probably the more irrational part of my being angry. It is also the pettier and baser part of my own anger, something that does me no favours, but therefore all the more necessary for me to challenge and confront as a (previously) hidden prejudice.

What is not so easy to explain away as irrational is what the niqab implied with regards to the woman and her interaction with me as a co-passenger in London's public transport. The entire premise of wearing a niqab is to protect yourself from the gaze of strange men; men who as strangers might be driven to uncontrollable lust by the sight of an unveiled face, or the sight of an ankle or wrist. The veil hides, covers, shields, but most importantly, protects, the wearer from the attention of strange men.

So by choosing to wear a niqab in public in London, this woman was making a statement about the potential people she would be likely to encounter on the street, ordinary people like you and me. The veiling of her entire body in public was a statement that as a random (male) stranger in her Tube carriage, I was a threat. I was assumed to be incapable of controlling my sexual urges, and that the safest thing she could do to protect herself was to cover herself up fully to remove the slightest threat of temptation. The wearing of the opera gloves was the reinforcing element that catapulted me over the edge. Not only was I unreliable as a purportedly healthy male, I was so much of a threat that every last vestige of flesh that could be concealed had to be; who could say that the glimpse of a fingernail would not send me over the edge and turn me into a boorish caveman, bursting with lust and full of dishonourable intentions?

And so by choosing to wear a niqab, by branding me (not personally, but as a random male stranger on the street) and a threat, this woman had insulted me and my ability to interact as a civilised member of society in public; or perhaps she was calling into question our assumptions that existing societal structures would be in a position to protect her. Historically societies have developed rituals and norms around "protecting" women, particularly so in Asia where concepts of family honour are intrinsically tied to the "virtue" of women. And if it was the 12th century and if I was a Safavid soldier at the siege of Jerusalem I could understand the assumption being made by a veiled woman that all men were potential rapists. But to perpetrate the niqab in Central London was perhaps taking things a little too far.

Now don't get me wrong - I don't mean to say that women are not harassed while walking down the street in many parts of the city by men who find it easy fun to wolf-whistle or to (in more unpleasant situations) actually grab or pinch some body part; in India this goes by the anachronistic and incredibly ludicrous phrase of "eve-teasing". But at the same time, there is an important distinction between wearing what you want, regardless of its suitability for the neighbourhood you walk through and in wearing a full niqab with gloves and black shoes to prevent the slightest chance of skin being exposed.

I suspect that I would probably not mind the full veil as much if I was in a country where the social norm was for women to be veiled, in as much as my choosing to live or visit a place where such traditions exist would involve a subconscious acknowledgement of that tradition, and of accepting it within my own consciousness. However, when in a culture where a woman being veiled is not the norm, then I have to call into question what the act of wearing a niqab is about. Is it about exercising religious freedom? Is it about personal choice? Is it about a right to be able to discriminate against complete strangers on the basis that they are strangers? And if a woman choosing to wear a niqab is exercising religious freedom, what about my own personal right to not be insulted?

I don't have the answers - not yet - but hopefully I'm asking the right questions...

Blood on my lips, holy red wine

It is dark outside, and I am lost in my own private purgatory.

The rain shatters against the thin glass of the window; the tiny droplets slapping against the clear panes before trickling down in tiny rivulets while the lightning paints silver zigzags against the dull grey of the overcast sky. I am lost in my own musings, wondering about life in general. The brightness of the giant screen in front of me flickers, it seems in tandem with the jagged lightning and occasional thunder that makes its way through the thick glass, the city laid out behind my back in amber puddles and silver glass.

You are close enough to tantalise me with a taste of your fullness; the acrid bite of your soft sweat tickles my nostrils, while the ripe perfume of your hair fills me with longing and desire. I can see a glimpse of crisp hair in the corner of my eye, and so too can I see your gently sashaying walk as I turn my head to get an eyeful of you. But you, wilful, cunning, seductive and purely a beautiful fantasy in my own head, are not even in the same room, building, city. I seek you everywhere I go, looking for you in the hordes that pack the trendy clubs all over Chelsea and Greenwich Village, Mayfair and King’s Road. I have travelled continents, gone to cities that I would never have imagined, and only occasionally have I found you, your presence lingering in a dark and seedy bar, luring me in with the idea of your symmetry, and leaving just before I get there. I clutch at straws, the barman sadly telling me of all the tricks he’s seen walk through his doors, before pausing long enough to hand me my standard gin and tonic, Rick-like, his warm and sweaty hand lingering too long over mine as he takes his payment. “Don’t wait for the love of your life,” he says heavily, the curly hair of his chest curling with droplets of sweat that show through the open checks of his undone shirt, “they never stay long enough to cause you anything more than pain”.

And so he leaves me, as always, in the darkness of my barstool, the bland bitterness of the Gordon’s biting into the back of my tongue, and I am left to contemplate the brutality of human emotion, of the sentiments that drive us to seek ever more meaning in our diurnal ellipsis of life. The snake always swallows its own tail, I muse, swigging ever-increasing gulps of my drink as my jaded eyes scan the dark solitude thrown up by the shadows in this, a bar like many other bars. Where and when you will be is a question that I can never answer, but it is one that I seek to find eternal responses to each night that I go out on the hunt. Perhaps the irony of it all is that the only immutable part of our petty and insignificant lives is in our hunt for immortality, that never-ending quest for love, longing, fulfilment and completeness. The snake will swallow its own tail, but only because that tail is no longer part of the same snake when it makes contact with its lips.

Is that then the bitter poignancy, the arid desperation of our lives? That we go out hunting for ourselves each night, condemning ourselves to failure because if we cannot find the person we were five minutes ago, how can we find someone else? That the snake swallows its tail, not out of any other reason but a desperate urge to find something, and only through this wilful act of self-destruction is it possible to find itself, to consume itself, its own essence, its complete being? Is that the ultimate aphrodisiac? I cannot have you, but I can consume myself, so that I am a giant star imploding in on itself, gorging myself on the sweet succulence of my own flesh, tasting the veracity and feral tanginess of my own life fluids in my mouth? Could I drink a case of you?

A Case of You
Just before our love got lost you said
I am as constant as a northern star
And I said, constant in the darkness
Wheres that at?
If you want me Ill be in the bar.

On the back of a cartoon coaster
In the blue tv screen light
I drew a map of Canada
Oh Canada
And your face sketched on it twice...

Oh you are in my blood like holy wine
Oh and you taste so bitter but you taste so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you
I could drink a case of you darling
And I would still be on my feet
Oh I'd still be on my feet

Oh I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
I'm frightened by the devil
And I'm drawn to those ones that aint afraid
I remember that time that you told me, you said
Love is touching souls
Surely you touched mine
Cause part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time

Oh you are in my blood like holy wine
And you taste so bitter but you taste so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you
I could drink a case of you darling
Still I'd be on my feet
And still be on my feet

I met a woman
She had a mouth like yours
She knew your life
She knew your devils and your deeds
And she said
Color go to him, stay with him if you can
Oh but be prepared to bleed

Oh but you are in my blood youre my holy wine
Oh and you taste so bitter, bitter and so sweet
Oh I could drink a case of you darling
Still I'd be on my feet
I'd still be on my feet

(Lyrics by Joni Mitchell)

Torture Relay

Almost a month after protests to commemorate the 1959 invasion of Tibet by China turned violent in Lhasa, we are seeing no resolution to either the tension within the territory, nor to the growing complexity of international politics surrounding China, Tibet and the upcoming Beijing Olympics. Activists and supporters of many causes, including Darfur, Falun Gong, the environment and general human rights, had so far struggled to broadly link the Beijing Olympics with China's generally dismal record of not respecting individual civil liberties, while supporting regimes that indulged in the genocide of their own populations. Darfur was perhaps the strongest rallying point for activists worldwide, in no small way due to the tireless efforts of celebrity campaigners including, among others, Mia Farrow. China has been able to avoid significant censure from governments on the strength of its economy.







But Tibet is proving to be a thornier issue to resolve. Perhaps as a result of, or directly due to, the stature of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, China has struggled to both brutally prevent protests in Tibet and to present a less than completely negative image in the international press. A carefully choreographed visit by foreign journalists to the Jokhang temple complex in Lhasa backfired badly when resident Tibetan monks, at no small risk to personal safety, chose to break through and directly address the journalists in an attempt to present their side of the story.



And the protests continued today in London, as the Olympic Torch completed its 31 mile tour of the city. Protestors lined the streets along the circuit, starting from Wembley Stadium, through West London, across the heart into the East. News reports suggest that over 35 protestors were arrested.

I went to the protest at Queensway station, just down the road from Notting Hill and the more exciting events of the morning, where protestors attempted to put out the torch with a fire extinguisher at Holland Park. Queensway was a surprisingly bourgeois scene, where pacific middle-aged professionals lined the streets, huddled under umbrellas while waving Tibetan flags. Some more dedicated protestors had loudspeakers and led the slogans, while a handful of Metropolitan policemen (approximately 10) were designated to control a crowd of well over 100.

A few memorable moments:

1) A Dominican friar, out in full regalia, including hood and cassock, distributing Free Tibet lapel pins

2) A family with a baby waving small Free Tibet flags

3) A woman with two dogs, both of whom followed the sloganeering with great interest

4) A police photographer openly videotaping all protesters...

I will write a further post about what I believe needs to be done as the Torch wends its way across the globe, most notably in India, but for now, I leave you with some photographs from the demonstration this morning...

Water under the bridge...

So its been almost a month (probably just under) since my last post. Thanks, everyone, who wrote in, either online, or backchannel, to ask about the burglary. There's really not that much to report - came back late on Friday night to an empty house, with my door kicked in, and without several electronics and some cufflinks. The lack of a laptop, and my inertia in going to go get another one, is primarily the reason why I've not replied to several emails. So if you were wondering why I hadn't replied, let me just say that its not you, its me!

And there is so much water under the bridge. Too much to tell and not enough time to spend several posts on each, so let's do this by themes...

Life in London

Winter has definitely set in, and today there was ice and frost on the ground in Hyde Park. We didn't see much sunlight, and there is a wet, slightly damp smell of cold weather perpetually in the air. The tube is actually comfortably warm, and Oxford Street has its Christmas lights up. I'm wondering whether it will snow, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be around to see any..

Travels

4Q 2007 is definitely turning into travel season. I'm off to South East Asia with work for several weeks, and will be jetting around from one city to another. Given that its going to be about 25 degrees down there, you don't exactly see me complaining! I've never been to Taiwan before, and there's also a chance to sneak a trip to Beijing, so I'm definitely psyched! Oh, did I mention that I might try to nip across to Hong Kong and/ or Bangkok as well?!

But its not all travel for work...there was a weekend spent in Berlin, which I have to admit is the only city in Europe after London that I could see myself living in. The city has an amazingly historic sense to it, especially the parts that are close to the former Berlin Wall. It's also incredibly moving to go and actually see the Reichstag which has been restored to its pre-1933 grandeur, with the addition of a spectacularly gauche glass cupola that is totally out of place with the Gothic architecture otherwise seen.

I think that the two things that moved me the most, out of the entire visit, was walking after dark along the one stretch of the Berlin Wall that is still standing, and getting an incredible sense of being fenced in, so to speak. Given my own claustrophobia, the thought of being trapped behind a wall, unable to move because of global geopolitics, was a very disturbing feeling. And what made me even more troubled was that there are so many places in the world where similar walls and boundaries exist - the latest Israeli attempts to fence in the West Bank being a case in point.

The second most moving place in the whole of Berlin has to be Bebelplatz, a large square in the centre of old Berlin. The square is ordinary enough by itself, but its only when you look at the cobblestones and realise that this was the site of the Nazi's great book burnings does the chill set in. A German philosopher (whose name eludes me) said in the 1800's that anyone who started out by burning books would end up by burning people, and we all know how prophetic those words are. As someone who's pathologically obsessed with books and knowledge, I can't actually imagine what it must be like to be crazy enough to want to burn books. And I hope I never have to find out, or meet anyone who does...

But Berlin was not all doom and gloom - this is Germany, remember! The city has a vibrancy and feel that is gritty and exciting, with real artists painting or sketching on the streets, large tree lined avenues and grand classical buildings sitting next to districts with punks and hippies with large warehouses and industrial architecture. And of course, how could I forget...

Bollywood!

Getting back to my hotel room in Berlin at something like 2 am (yes, I was out partying...) I turned on the TV and had the somewhat dubious pleasure of watching the opening credits of Dhoom 2! In full three hour, unedited glory, there was Hrithik, Abhishek, Bipasha and Aishwarya, speaking GERMAN! I confess that my German is not good enough, and neither am I crazy enough to stay up till 5 am watching a movie that was timepass at best, but I think that my last recollection of the movie is a scene of Abhishek Bachchan going, "Wohin ist diesen Herr A?!"

(Curiously, they don't dub the songs, but because I guess it may be somewhat boring to watch a song where you don't understand the words, they edit out the verses completely...so all you get instead is a series of five minute sequences of the dancing, but just when you expect to hear, "na usko ko pata..." all you get is "crazy kiya re.....crazy kiya re..." ad infinitum... )

And finally, books...

I can highly recommend Orhan Pamuk's Black Book, (which is called Kara Kitap in the original Turkish)... a slightly surreal, dreamy recollection of a simple life turned complex, it has the best of Pamuk - Istanbul, love, Turkish identity, and that smell of winter...

Anyway, so that's pretty much where things are at this point in my life. Mad, hectic, but so far a good 2007, and one to look back at fondly. A friend said today that the past few years had been reasonably "unbalanced" and I know what he means. I just hope that I get a few more years lacking balance, because in the words of the Goo Goo Dolls, yeah you'd bleed just to know you're alive...

An Indian summer....

It's October in London, but after a miserably wet summer, a dawns bright and cheerful. There is a nip in the air, but once the fog & rain have been burnt back, the days are pleasantly sunny. Riding in Hyde Park is a pleasure, with the horses walking with a spring in their step.

Saturday has dawned cheerfully. The tall church spire that my bedroom window looks out over is dappled in a warm yellow glow as the sun nips back and forth from behind the clouds. My t-shirt is covered in fine white hair, left there by Seamus the funny little horse when he threw his head back and brushed my front with his mane. And I'm listening to what could be a melancholy song, but actually it feels so right...


I heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?

It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth,
the minor fall, the major lift,
The baffled king composing Hallelujah.

Hallelujah,
Hallelujah,
Hallelujah,
Hallelu----jah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof,
you saw her bathing on the roof,
her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you.

She tied you to a kitchen chair,
she broke your throne, she cut your hair,
and from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah,
Hallelujah,
Hallelujah,
Hallelu----jah

Maybe I have been here before,
I know this room; I have walked this floor,
I used to live alone before I knew you

I've seen your flag on the marble arch,
love is not a victory march,
it's a cold and its a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah,
Hallelujah,
Hallelujah,
Hallelu----jah

There was a time you let me know
whats really going on below,
but now you never show it to me, do you? (and)

Remember when I moved in you;
the holy dark was moving too,
and every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah,
Hallelujah,
Hallelujah,
Hallelu----jah

Maybe there's a God above,
and all I ever learned from love
was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you

And its not a cry you can hear at night,
its not somebody who's seen the light,
its a cold and its a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah,
Hallelujah,
Hallelujah,
Hallelu----jah

Hallelujah,
Hallelujah,
Hallelujah,
Hallelu----jah....

Lyrics by ?
(I've got the Leonard Cohen, Rufus Wainwright & K.D. Lang versions...)

Lost in the ashes of time....

Another late night, the moon barely perceptible behind low clouds... Autumn is here, and despite the horrors of a hellish commutes thanks to Tube staff on strike, I can't help but smile as I look out onto the city that has become a home of sorts.

So I sit in my flat, doing nothing but reading Evelyn Waugh and listening...



Here I am, lost in the light of the moon that comes through my window
Bathed in blue, the walls of my memory divide the thorns from the roses
It's you and the roses

Touch me and I will follow in your afterglow
Heal me from all this sorrow
As I let you go I will find my way when I see your eyes
Now I'm living in your afterglow

Here I am, lost in the ashes of time, but who wants tomorrow?
In between the longing to hold you again
I'm caught in your shadow, I'm losing control
My mind drifts away, we only have today

Touch me and I will follow in your afterglow
Heal me from all this sorrow
As I let you go I will find my way
I will sacrifice 'til the blinding day when I see your eyes
Now I'm living in your afterglow

When the veils are gone as I let you go, as I let you go

Touch me and I will follow in your afterglow
Heal me from all this sorrow
As I let you go I will find my way, I will sacrifice
Now I'm living in your afterglow

Bathed in blue, the walls of my memory divide the thorns from the roses
It's you who is closest


Lyrics by INXS, "Afterglow"

I KANK stand it...

Fellow blogger and film addict Filmiholic wrote an article recently for India Abroad magazine, about the travails of watching Hindi movies outside India. She posted it on her blog this week, and you can read it here. Your's truly also has an honourable mention, where I had a chance to share my Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna experience all over again...

Coming soon - a review of Kabul Express, as well as a summary of the best books I've read in the past month.

Late Night London

So it was a late-ish Sunday evening.

We had just finished watching a Hindi movie, and as usually happens at eleven p.m. on Sunday in London, we got the craving for a nice latte and custard cakes. There's only one cafe that I know of in London that is (1) open that late on a Sunday (or any day) and (2) has latte and custard cakes.

Some pictures taken during a warm summer stroll through central London.... do you know where we are?

Warm sunny days

June is always a good month to be in London. Summer usually has decided to make an appearance, and there is (hopefully!) not too much rain around. The sky tends to remain blue, temperatures hover around the 25 degree mark, and people walk around, determined to be happy in the few short days of summer that a life in London affords you.

This June has been no different. Last weekend was the warmest, with temperatures soaring (well, not quite) to 32 degrees. The houses, built for cold and damp winters, with double glazing, insulated walls and windows that barely open, turned into ovens, roasting the inhabitants and lowering the general good humour pervading London.

And finally, beer gardens & pubs are filled to the brim (much like pint glasses) as people enjoy the longer daylight hours, weather amenable to sitting outdoors without freezing to death, and also holiday season. I am no exception to this rule, having spent over four hours in a tiny wine bar yesterday afternoon (admittedly, while the football was on!) lingering over two bottles of Chateau Reynier Bordeaux and some really good pitta & dip.

So what are you doing indoors reading this? Go outside! And if you're going for a pint, give me a shout....

Bollywood in London...

Every so often (i.e. when I'm keen to watch a Hindi movie on the big screen) or when there's a big new Bollywood production out (usually this translates into the latest SRK superhit, or the new Yash Raj annual glossy staple) I will head out to one of the many cinemas in London that show Hindi movies.

Usually, the bulk of these tend to be in the suburbs, where there is a sizeable Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi/Sri Lankan community (somewhat generically referred to as "South Asian" or more specifically, "Brit-Asian". Interestingly, people refer to French immigrants in the US as French, Germans as Germans, Belgians as Belgians, etc, without actually calling them "Western Europeans", though the term "Eastern European" is heard more and more frequently in the press & public discourse...interesting....)

Anyway, we digress...so as I was saying, usually the Hindi films will play in the suburbs, (many, like Himalaya Palace Cinema, only show Hindi movies) but ever so often, a Bollywood movie will be picked up by one of the big chains - usually the biggest hit of the year. If its a Shah Rukh movie, it WILL be picked up (that man has a fan following all over the world); the big Yash Raj ones usually get distributed as well.

As a result, I managed to catch Mangal Pandey, The Rising (or whatever that movie was called) last summer. (In a strange incidence of poetic justice, I also saw that film in the erstwhile heartland of the East India Company, the Isle of Dogs.) And today, I saw Fanaa in the London Trocadero, just off Piccadilly Circus.

This might not necessarily seem to be a big deal, but actually it is. For the bulk of my childhood, when we were growing up outside India, most people either never watched Bollywood (or if they did, never admitted to it) or openly derided them as fantastical, song & dance tripe. This wasn't just restricted to some snotty critics at the latest Trendy-with-a-capital-T New York magazine, but also a lot of the Indians we met overseas - kids of immigrants, diplomats, etc. Watching Bollywood movies if you weren't in India wasn't cool, and it wasn't something you ever admitted to. (Though given that Mithun Chakraborty was the biggest thing in Bollywood in the 1980s, this may not be completely out of place...)

But it was something that was never in debate in India - everyone saw Hindi movies, everyone knew how to play Antakshari, everyone knew every major Kishore Kumar song. This wasn't something you made an effort to keep up with; it was a fact of life.

However, that was in India. When you were outside India, and perhaps not in South Asia, Bollywood was very deliberately off the radar. The only ones who really watched Bollywood movies were the immigrants who were nostalgic for home - and they never admitted to doing it. If they were found out, it was blamed on blatantly uncool parents. Nobody else really did, did they? They all watched Hollywood!

But it wasn't just that these Indian movies weren't in English - the subtitles could easily rectify that. It was that, unlike the cooperative French, Iranian, Turkish, Korean, whatever, film industries, Indian films just didn't "fit" the mold of what good cinema was. We insisted on making really long movies, which were melodramatic, packed full of formulaic emotional plots, usually pilfered stories from big Hollywood blockbusters, and to top it all off, had to throw in at least 5 songs into each film, for which the leads would suddenly be transported into a glamorous foreign locale (usually, but not always, Switzerland). I mean, they were just SO weird! And we weren't even apologetic about it! We insisted, despite all the friendly advice from the West, to continue making the movies we made, without rhyme or reason!

And then, somewhere, somehow, things began to change. In the late 90s, suddenly, the world started to take notice. Obviously, these were still terribly kitschy movies, lacking in plotlines, darling, and absolutely totally lacking class, but I mean, they still sell! And given that the Indian economy had started attracting some attention, people were keen to see what exactly was happening.

This was the same time that the Swiss, in many ways the most pragmatic and sensible of all Europeans, realised the economic value of Indian film crews shooting in their country. They realised quickly that the biggest hindrance to the smooth flow of industry professions was the visa, and introduced the Unit Visa, allowing entire film crews to travel without difficulty on single documents. This was soon followed by renaming a modest peak in the Swiss Alps Mount India...in honour of the many Sunny Deol song sequences shot around its base!

And suddenly, many more countries began to sit up and take notice. And as Indian cinema became more technically advanced, finding new & exciting locations across the world for the latest glossy song sequence was an essential part of the script. And suddenly, if Switzerland was for the slightly unimaginative Salman Khan starrer, we had Urmila Matondkar in Namibia, Kajol & Shah Rukh in Egypt, Madhuri Dixit in Patagonia, and not to forget, Hrithik Roshan in the British Museum, which was a bit of a coup since it was the first film sequence shot inside the museum. Most recently, the Irish government has actively started wooing Indian filmmakers to its shores.

But was it all the money talking? Was that all that made people realise what Bollywood was all about? There was an obvious financial aspect to the whole attention seeking (the former NDA government also declared Bollywood a formal industry, which thus opened up the business to legal commercial funding, and also streamlined insurance policies, etc) But surely there was something else to this?

I think people have finally realised, and accepted, that Bollywood is a bigger global phenomenon than we might think. More people across the world have seen a Bollywood movie than a Hollywood one. I have heard stories from people from Russia, mainland China, Tanzania, Venezuela & Morocco about how they grew up watching Amitabh Bachchan & (unfortunately!) Mithun Chakraborty. I heard from a Chinese colleague how a movie about a dog that avenges its master's untimely death was her father's favourite, while someone in South Africa told me about the survivor of the Rwandan massacres was less interested in narrating his experiences to the Indian origin human rights lawyer as he was in taking a peek at the CD case for the latest Shah Rukh film. There have been Greek university friends who have watched Kal Ho Na Ho and started sniffling half way through the movie, while other friends have bawled their eyes out in Asoka. My former flatmate, a classic English bloke, insisted on calling his former girlfriend, now happily married to someone else, to tell her he wished her health & happiness, again after watching Kal Ho Na Ho. Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham has many stories attached, from the German who insisted on subjecting her rather surprised parents to the unedited DVD over an Easter holiday, while the gruff Afrikaner blasted its songs from his laptop for three days non stop and also made up with his estranged father (I mean, it IS all about loving your parents, isn't it?)

So what is it that makes Bollywood so popular? I don't know, and perhaps we shall never really know. Someone infinitely more intelligent shall no doubt some day start researching this phenomenon in more detail. But what I do know is that I can now walk through London, taking the tube to work, and see posters of Fanaa right next to those of X-Men 3 in the London tube. And that is already enough to celebrate. If I was in a movie, we'd be dancing down that platform right now....