The Symphony of Meretricious Wounds

After my initial post several weeks back about the rules of how to write an Indian novel in English, some people asked me if I was being too harsh. I disagreed and explained, either via emails, on Twitter or over various pints of beer in random pubs, that I was completely, utterly and absolutely correct, and that everything I said or did could be proven empirically.

I am still somewhat surprised why people bother arguing with me. They know I'm always correct, but I suspect it's like a mind gym for them - a bit like trying to sharpen their limited intellect against the whetstone of my brain.

Anyway. We digress.

My rules of writing an Indian novel in English (henceworth referred to as "IWE") ruffled some feathers, but then what would I be if not the ultimate feather ruffler? And imagine my glee at finding a work of non-fiction, written by an Indian doctor of medicine in English about cancer. What did Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee choose to title his work? A very humble, and not at all bombastic "The Emperor of All Maladies".

(Cue the smell of freshly ground chillies as they hit hot mustard oil in a California kitchen. Children play noisily on the floor as a fat Tamil woman, stoic in the face of her own sexual futility and loveless existence, prepares dinner for an uncaring doctor of a husband who spends his days in pathology labs having tumultuous bacteria-ridden sex with a blonde resident)

Anyway. You get my point.

So I was berating the ridiculousness of this title on Twitter, when the inspiration struck: I too would create an IWE. And not only that - I would write an IWE ON TWITTER.

So, dear reader, presented to you below, in all its glory, is my Twitter Indian Writing in English. my TIWE, if you will. The text below is a direct collation of my series of tweets relating to the subject.

I'd like to write a novel called "The Symphony of Meretricious Wounds". It would be a fantastic exemplar of Indian Writing In English.

It'd revolve around a young man, in his late 20's. He' be American, but of Indian heritage. I would call him Surya. Or Sunil. Or Jack.

Jack would be from South India. Preferably Kerala. That would allow him sensual brown skin. And the use of coconuts as sexual innuendo.

He would live in the East Village, leading a hedonistic lifestyle of sex, drugs, rock'n'roll & denial of his own ethnic heritage.

But in Jack's past lurked a deep, dark family secret that an aloof father, a hapless mother & a retarded sister would never resolve.

The secret would craft and shape Jack's entire identity, forcing him to run away from his family to New York. They lived in Menlo Park.

This secret was so powerful, so terrible & so unspeakable that nobody in Jack's entire extended Keralan family ever spoke of it.

The secret was this: Jack did not like coconut in his masala dosa.

Long had his mother sobbed at little Jack's refusal to eat coconut with his food. His father beat him, his sister made faces at him.

His many aunts, redolent in heavy silk saris, reeking of jasmine & oiled hair, whispered when he came to family get-togethers.

His cousins pointed and laughed at him, refusing to let poor Jack join in their little Keralan games. Jack played by himself.

The family crisis came to a head when his father, in a drunken rage, tried to force feed him dessicated coconut. Jack nearly died.

His mother screamed as his father kept slapping teenaged Jack, shoving handfuls of coconut into his mouth. His retarded sister drooled.

After all, what kind of good Keralan girl would marry a boy who didn't eat coconut?

Jack was taken to the hospital that night. New Jersey doctors pumped his stomach clean of all coconut. Social services was called.

Social Services took Jack away from his abusive, coconut-force feeding father. He was put up with a large Croatian family.

The Croatian family did not eat coconut. Jack was happy.

Jack grew up, went to university, and met a good Hungarian girl. He moved to Manhattan, became a photographer & built a life.

And then it happened.

He was walking through Union Square when he bumped into a beautiful Indian woman. She wore kajal in her eyes. And bangles.

Her name was Shakuntala. Or Katyayini. Or Jane.

Jane was fresh off the boat from India. She was studying politics at Columbia. She was opinionated. She oiled her hair.

She'd carry mango pickle in her coat pocket. In the middle of heated intellectual debate, she'd pull out a piece, suck it & go "ooh".

Her sex appeal was off the charts. It was also largely predicated on sucking bits of pickled fruit. Jack was smitten.

Jack & Jane had a tumultuous affair. Their relationship was marked by long walks by the Hudson, debates about Sartre & lots of bad sex.

Jane was the one who made Jack watch his first non-Fellini film in years. Thanks to Jane, Jack watched Rajnikant. In Robot.

It was to Jane that Jack finally described his underlying dislike of coconuts. He slowly opened up to her, verbalising his loathing.

As softly as she could, Jane whispered, "But Jack, if you hate coconuts, you hate yourself."

"You are a Keralan American, raised by Croatians, denying the everlasting allure of coconuts. You are the ultimate coconut, Jack."

Jack stared at her fat naked body in bed. He was thunderstruck. She had struck him at his white, watery core.

Unsure of what to say or do he did reacted viscerally. He started hitting her. Because what was an IWE without domestic violence?

Jane screeched as he held her by her plait & slapped her. But her coconut oil had done the trick. Her plait slipped out of his grasp.

Racing to the kitchen she hurled the first thing she could find at him. It was - but of course - a coconut. It hit Jack on the nose.

Jack stopped still in his tracks. His nose was broken. Yet again he was rushed to the hospital in a coconut-related emergency.

Mt. Sinai doctors set his nose straight. "How strange", said the weird Telegu doc. "Why waste a good coconut like this?" Jack agreed.

Unable to face Jane after that scene, Jack walked aimlessly across New York. He listened to pretentious American rock on his iPod

Finally, unable to avoid the issue any longer, he went to the curry shops in Murray Hill. He was a man on a mission. A coconut mission.

Walking into a South Indian restaurant, he sat down beneath the large statue of Ganesha. Incense sticks filled the air. Rose petals too

"What would you like to yeet?" the obsequious waiter yasked him. Jack drew in his breath. "Bring me... a coconut masala dosa".

The waiter brought the dosa, hot, steaming and full of coconutty goodness. Jack stared at it, his face impassive, unyielding, immobile.

Suddenly, an old Bollywood song came on the radio bleating in the corner. It was a song Jack's mother sang to him as a child. Badly.

And as he sat there in a curry shop in Murray Hill, with a broken nose, staring at a coconut masala dosa. Jack softly began to weep.

Because if you were a 20-something man who hit his girlfriend & had his nose broken by a coconut, you would weep too. A LOT.

But most importantly, Jack wept because as he sat in a grubby curry shop in Murray Hill, he realised the worst thing of all.

He had forgotten his pants at the hospital and was walking around town in a hospital gown.

The. End.

The 10 (okay, 13) Commandments of Writing Indian Fiction in English

For those of you who know me (or at the very least read my blogs or tweets) you may recall that I am a fan of fiction. By virtue of my ethnic origins, I also bear more than a passing interest in fiction written by writers from the South Asian subcontinent. Including that written in English.

Indian authors have written in English for decades now. However, only recently has the work that they've produced taken on an international dimension; with the Indian community spread far and wide across the globe, publishers have discovered a new genre in fiction: the indubitable Indian Writing in English (henceforth known as IWE). This happy interest in all things Indian has also been mirrored by a growing non-desi interest in South Asian fiction. So just as much of Britain finds going for a curry part of the norm on a Friday night, so do literary types in Bloomsbury offices and Hampstead flats find reading the latest product of the dusty subcontinent gratifying in an intellectually suggestive way.

This international interest, has, of course, opened the flood gates to thousands of Indians, educated in the English language, to try their hand at writing the great Indian novel. (No, not The Great Indian Novel - that's already been written by some former UN bureaucrat) But what these poor souls, all frantically rushing to hurl their mediocre Indian childhoods into a word document, do a quick "Find - Replace" for major character names, and then add a title don't realise is that there are very clear rules to be a successful writer of Indian fiction in English. The title of IWE is not one lightly bestowed or easily won.

However, because I am a kind and nurturing soul, I've taken the liberty of codifying the main principles of how to write a novel in order to win the title of IWE. Stick to these, oh mediocre writer, and all will be well. Watch the plaudits come rolling in, the publishers lining up at your door, and the pundits gushing over your shoddy tale in the weekend edition of The Hindustan Times.

The Ten (okay, Thirteen) Commandments

1. Thy Book Must Have a Title That is Strange & Wonderful. Also Very Long.

2. Thy Narrative Style Must Be Long Winded With Disjointed Grammar. And Much Punctuation. Badly Used.

3. Thy Male Characters Must Be Misogynists, Brutal & Uncaring. Or Sensitive & Caring. But Only If Gay. Or Dead.

4. Thy Female Characters Must Be Sexually Frustrated, Oppressed & Withered. Or Wild, Wanton & Uncontrolled. But Dead.

5. Someone In Thy Fiction Must Have Magical Powers. Or Purport To Have Some. Preferably a Grandparent. Preferably Female.

6. Thou Shalt Write About The Sordidness & Poverty Of India. Thou Shalt Not Ignore Caste or Religion-Based Violence.

7. Thy Novel Must Have Long Passages Devoted to Indian Food & Its Preparation. They Must Be Boring. And Accurate.

8. Thou Shalt Write About the Healing Powers of Spices. And Not Ignore The Sexual Tensions Inherent In Green Chillies.

9. They Characters Who Live Outside India Must Return to Discover Themselves. And Be Desperately Unhappy Wherever They Are.

10. Thy Prose Shalt Be Peppered With Much Vernacular. But Italicised & Used Like a Foreigner. Like French. Or English.

11. Thy Novel Shalt Have Tales of Lust. Preferably Incestuous. Or Consummated Amongst Pickles. Or Spices. Or All Three.

12. Thy Characters Shalt Always Have Bad Sex. Straight Sex will be Dull & Unsatisfying. Gay Sex Shalt Be Rancid & Devious.

13. If Travelling Abroad, Thy Brahmin Character Shalt Debase His Purity Via The Medium of Alcohol, Meat & White Women.

And as some old crabby God said to the Israelites in the Middle East - keep my commands and live; and my law as the apple of thine eye.

Now go forth and prosper, ye maggoty rats.

Another Year Past

The fireplace flickers in the wind.

Long, undulating tongues of yellow flame, deep blue hearts inside, leap up against the cast iron flue as the wind rushes down the chimney. In front of it, almost impervious to the furnace-like heat, he sits. Pensive, he gazes into the flames, the glass of Bordeaux by his side slowly losing flavour as its absorbs the heat radiating across the room.

It is late at night; the footfall and raucous chatter of the tourists from the nearby hotels that dot Bayswaters’ period squares have fallen silent. Only very infrequently is the silence on the streets disturbed by the sound of a London black cab driving another reveller home after a night spending money – whether hard-earned or not is irrelevant in London’s overpriced venues – to go home for rest, and possibly recuperation for another day, another drunken revel.

The silence, and the lassitude that envelops the neighbourhood could be depressing. For someone naturally melancholic as him, though, the quiet stillness that fills London streets during the Christmas holidays is restful. For the first time in days, he has had time to think.

And to reflect on another year gone past.

Professionally, things could not have gone better. A pay rise of almost 60% over the course of a year is nothing to complain about, especially in this economic climate. He’s always restless, but there’s nothing new about that. Better to be restless than to be complacent, in any case, right?

Travel – a long standing love – has been good this year. It all kicked off with a week long excursion to Bali with friends, followed by New York in February. There was a brief hiatus in spring, but following a weekend away in France for a friend’s wedding, it’s been a (primarily) European rollercoaster – Berlin, Amsterdam, Athens, France again, Ibiza (for the first time) and then a week long adventure in India in November. And now, here at the end of the year, he has a weekend in Berlin to look forward to and to welcome in 2011.

Love. How was that in 2010? It could have been better. But then, it could have been worse. Much worse. Perhaps the greatest thing about his love life in 2010 was learning to love himself, to learn what was and was not acceptable, and to be honest. To the other person, but most importantly, to himself.

And so with little to complain about, and a great deal to be thankful about, he gazes into the fireplace, saying a small prayer of gratitude to the gods for the decisions, and happy coincidences, and accidents of circumstance, that have brought him to this place.

And that allow him to hold his head up high and look forward to a new year, and look forward to it with hope and excitement.

Dear reader, he bids you a very Happy New Year!

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.

Bending Race

So tonight I'm supposed to be in a good mood. I've had a great, relaxed weekend, watched some quality cinema, and also had an excellent first date. So this blog post should really shiny & happy, with lots of little gold stars twinkling at the edges.

Instead, this one is going to be a rant.

And the reason for the rant is pretty straightforward. For a change, it's not about something that's happened within my personal sphere of influence, but rather something that I saw in the public realm and that really, REALLY pissed me off.

So we're all on Facebook, right? (If you disagree with this statement, you're either in denial or just an imbecile for not remembering when you joined the site). And we all have friends whose photo uploads show up in our news feeds. And sometimes you find one that catches your attention, so you click on it.

And then, when the pic opens up full-size (or optimum size, if you must be technologically anal), you realise that it shows you something that makes your blood boil.

This picture below is what I saw, and when I saw it in full size, that's exactly what it did.

Now don't get me wrong. I usually love Glee. I think it's done wonderfully well in taking characters that are typically stereotyped in popular US TV shows and has brought them mainstream. So the characters in the show, despite being complete freaks by normal US social standards, are depicted as just "one of us" - young, ambitious, sometimes confused, teenagers who are misfits in their social surroundings for any of several reasons, and who really have the same dreams, aspirations and hopes that any human being of that age has.

So why the rage, you might well ask? Well - all I will do is point you to the third square in the first row. That's right - that's supposed to be Tina Cohen-Chang, the girl who has a goth fetish, a thing for Artie, and a voice to die for. Yet despite ALL the nuances of her character, she is reduced to being "the Asian one" for the poster. Not because there isn't more to her character - not by any stretch of the imagination - but because, when you're looking to identify her, it's somehow ok to call her "the Asian one" and get away with it. Note how the chubby black girl (see what I did there?) who plays Mercedes gets away with being the loud one, and even the whacky Mrs Schuester is granted the glory of THREE whole lines of text and gets to be "the one most likely to fake a pregnancy". So I guess we can't call "the fat black girl" that anymore, and we can't call the gays the gays, but those Asians - who f*cking cares? They're all yellow anyway.

Somehow though, all that the designers of this damn poster did when they pulled Tina's strap line together was that the only thing that seemed noteworthy about her was that she came from an ethnic group that currently makes up ~50% of the world population. WOW - WHAT AN INCREDIBLY UNIQUE IDENTIFIER FOR THE CHARACTER.

So this rant is probably slightly reactionary, but what amazes me, time and time again, is just how backward the US can sometimes be in its approach to race and issue. Other places in the world are getting better at this - though not by much - but somehow public culture in the US seems to stubbornly want to stick to retrograde definitions and identifications of race, culture and identity.

And for those of you who think that this is a one-off phenomenon, all you need to do is look at the current controversy around the latest "Avatar - the Last Airbender" movie, with its incredibly problematic lactification of clearly non-Caucasian characters, its controversial casting calls, and ultimate degradation of quality that has created a massive online backlash.

And you know what pisses me off most about this? It's that a show that has done so well with other issues that have been traditionally taboo in US television had to be the one that still fucked up like this.

Bah, humbug.

Self-Centred Introspection

Another excerpt from the story that I'm currently working on. Something I've refined this evening, during yet another spell of insomnia.

Where is the place that all stories begin? Is there a single point from which all our narratives flow, a single indescribable nucleus, where all our pasts, our presents and our histories are determined? And if such a point exists, could we ever trace our steps back to that place, that wellspring of our human-ness, to redraw the paradoxes and petty tragedies of our frail existences? Is it that, then, which we seek all the time as we go through life, apparently aimless but in actuality searching for that which can never be found?

She has a story too. But perhaps the only truth in that story, hidden deep within a web of perceptions, opinions and delusions is that it has no single beginning. Like all stories, it is born anew at every single instant, but also dies in that instant, and is condemned to never be repeated ever again. For her story, like all stories, is nothing more than a string of innumerable instances, microcosms and random events intricately strung together, which each moment almost bearing no relation to the one that came immediately before, or the one that will follow it only a second later

And that is why when she looks for a place to begin, to find out where it all started and where things were inexorably set it motion (oh, that cliché), she is unable to identify a single point, a single over-arching instant in her life to start.

But stories are born to be lived, to be told, to be passed on from the lips of one generation to the next, carrying within them the seeds of destruction that all humanity is inherently drawn to. Years later, she will look back onto that night and recognise that it was her one chance at sanity, for succour, and yes, for redemption. But that redemption can only be achieved through her narration, standing in an invisible confessional box, her past lives and sins surrounding her as clearly as angels and demons richly carved in dark mahogany.

And so she must find a place to begin, to find a single place in her past from where she can stand and begin to draw the tangled threads of her past three years into a single cohesive weave, finding patterns and order where none perhaps have, never will exist. On this night, as she drives all through the night through the rain that hammers the North Indian plains in August, smoking endless cigarette after cigarette, she will force herself to remember.

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.

Self-Centred Introspection

Another night, another memory of you.

I always sleep naked. My skin, hot, feverish, sexual, burns against the cold touch of the duvet cover. Normally, your naked form next to me kept me warm, the pale expanse of your back a figura to warm myself against in the cold of the London night. But you've left, so I'm left here to my own devices as I look to warm myself in this, the coldest of London summers.

Damn you. You left me bereft of everything.

But still, we soldier on. Call me a hundred times, and I'll come to you, atleast a hundred times. It's the price I pay for giving you my heart that one, innocent time. If I weep from one eye, then you tell me - how can I keep the other one closed?

Self-Centred Introspection

A few years ago, someone in New York gave me a black Moleskine notebook, and told me that I should use it to write down my thoughts when I'm feeling pensive. I took the book, and then forgot about it for a couple of years. Last year though, while packing for my six months of travels, I found that notebook in my desk drawer and decided to take it on a whim with me.

Funnily enough, I started writing in it only about half-way through my travels, when I felt that I had accumulated so much to say and write that I had to put it down before I forgot. So I finally started the first entry one afternoon in Angkor Wat, after spending several hours contemplating the incredibly humid, worn-down beauty of the temples there. Since that happy time, I've begun carrying it around even though I'm no longer travelling and will often scribble a few sentences in it. Usually this happens when I'm on the tube in London, since public transport allows you to observe so many different people anonymously, while letting you stay secluded in your own little world.

So from today, I'm going to start (selectively) putting up some of the excerpts that I've written down. I'm going to tag these posts "Self-Centred Introspection" since that's exactly what they are - my thoughts about me and my life, with no real purpose, meaning or intent.

So here it is - the first one.

Today I’m at peace. Things are calmer, my thinking is clearer. I understand what it is that I need to keep me happy.

That doesn’t mean that I am automatically happier. But that I know – intellectually, rationally, calmly – what it is that I need to do to be so.

Tourists wearing A&F in the District Line. My eyes shut, I see flashes of your naked chest as I rest my head on it. The sexy, acrid smell of your armpits, the hair brown & curling; I can hear your sighs as I recall our lovemaking.

The air in this train is cold, crisp, damp. Spanish filters through the soft strains of the music on my iPod. I rejoice in the minute details. The ruff of my jacket against my neck, unshaven, scented, stubbly. The taste of that last beer lingers in my mouth. The cold of the glass partition seeping into my shoulder as I lean against it.

I am told that memories are made of this.

My Name is Singh and I am who I am

I had first heard of My Name is Khan back in the summer of last year, after Shah Rukh Khan was, somewhat ironically given the plot & premise of the movie, held at US immigration for a few hours as the airport authorities found him suspicious on the basis that his surname was “Khan”. The story was soon dropped, but for a few hours, the rapacious Indian media feasted on the bones of the scandal. (As an aside, I love using the word “rapacious” – it reminds me of the Velociraptors in the Jurassic Park movies)

So going to see the movie last night with an Austrian friend who is rapidly sinking into the quagmire that is Bollywood-mania, I had a pretty good premise of what the movie would be like. My concerns were primarily around the fact that the movie was a Karan Johar production, especially since KJ is never quite known for being subtle or discreet, but prefers to hammer in the ham & emotion with a sledgehammer. Don’t get me wrong – I love my good ole’ Johar flicks – but I was intrigued how a filmmaker of his ilk would treat something as sensitive as racial profiling in the USA in a post 9/11 world.

This blog-post is not meant to be a review, so I won’t spend much time going over the fundamentals of the film. But the reason I’m writing this piece is because there were many elements of the story yesterday that resounded quite closely with me, and that I found particularly affecting. And at the very end, for me, a film is only successful if it can relate to you personally; the big bang glamorousness of a blockbuster is only as good as the emotions it can generate in your heart. That is why the first Star Wars worked, while the more recent additions to the franchise don’t. And that is why My Name is Khan is, at least in my eyes, a successful film.

The reason for this is pretty straightforward – MNIK is a film about being different, not being typically like the others around you, and about having the courage and conviction to embrace the identity that is yours, regardless of how well that lets you “fit in”. Rizwan Khan is, in the movie, the ultimate outsider, who through his entire life inhabits liminal spaces. In India, his minority status is based on his religion. In school, he is bullied by peers for his autism. At home, his brother resents him for being the centre of his mother’s attention. In the broader US community, he is an immigrant. In the US Muslim community, he is a vocal moderate willing to challenge fundamentalists, who marries a Hindu divorcee with a child (herself a minority). But the Khan we see in the movie is someone who is at peace with his own identity, in whatever the circumstances. He is not necessarily able to understand why other people do not like him, but at no point do we see him turn around and say, “I wish I was not Muslim / autistic / brown ..."

And for me, this is where the success of the movie lies. Unlike other commentators, who have moaned at length about how "unrealistic" the movie is, I don't really give a damn (especially since most of the same commentators had raptures over an equally improbably Inglourious Basterds.) I don’t care how “cognitively realistic” the movie was, but how "emotionally realistic" it was. I don’t need to know why Rizwan Khan travels the length & breadth of the US, in his attempts to meet the US President and tell him that he is not a terrorist by virtue of his name. Fundamentally, none of these elements really matter.

Perhaps my perspective is skewed by my circumstances. I am an Indian national who has lived less than a third of my life in the country of my nationality, but my identity is intensely Indian, primarily founded on a childhood travelling with parents who were diplomats. I was not born in India, but in Pakistan, which means that unlike other NRI’s who travel back to India, I am now increasingly subjected to intense scrutiny at Indian immigration, where officers are perplexed that someone who was not born before Partition can have an Indian passport even though he was born in Pakistan (the same happenstance raises eyebrows at many airport check-in counters, immigration barriers, and cocktail parties). And even though I am proud to be an upper-caste Rajput Hindu with an impeccable lineage that I can track back hundreds of years by name, I find much in religion to be tedious and ritualistic; something that is exploited by clergies to keep the masses in check.

But the results of this upbringing are ubiquitous. I find that India drives me insane, but outside the country I am one of its most impassioned (and I would hope, erudite) defenders. I have lived much of my life overseas, and as a frequent traveller on an Indian passport have the infinite joy of having to apply for millions of visas ahead of any journey. At the same time, the idea of giving up my passport for a more convenient one, though attractive from a purely pragmatic point of view, is quite emotionally difficult. I have friends who are activists of all sorts across the world – ranging from LGBT campaigners through to aid workers in Haiti, through to American Muslim university professors, much like Khan’s hijab-wearing sister-in-law in the movie, who wear the scarf not out of any circumstance of familial or gender-based suppression, but out a sense of identity and protest. Many times my friends have opinions or views that I cannot agree with. At the same time, the reason we are friends is because we are able to accept that we are inherently different, and are friends because, not despite, those differences.

And so perhaps because of these circumstances I was touched by the movie last night; and this is why the movie is "emotionally realistic". Rizwan’s message of being true to yourself, regardless of circumstances or environment, was a strong, touching and most importantly, personally relevant one for me. It reminded me that there are many other people out there in the world who are as different as I am from the others around me, with different hopes, aspirations, dreams and identities; people who cannot claim to be from any “majority”, but that ultimately it is important to remember that despite being different, it is still possible to be yourself.

And perhaps, even, to be happy.

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.

Shoddy Scholarship is No Excuse for Stupidity

The UK media and blogosphere is currently convulsing over the BBC’s decision to let the odious head of the racist and xenophobic British National Party onto its leading political TV show, Question Time. I am going to spare myself the need to hold forth on whether the decision by the Beeb was appropriate, and will also refrain from commenting on the performance (for let’s not pretend that all the participants were not putting on a show for the eight million viewers who tuned in) on Question Time. I have been following both right & left wing commentators with some interest, if only because as an expatriate of non-Caucasian origin in the UK, the rise of the BNP within UK domestic and international politics has a direct impact on my decision to continue living in London and paying UK taxes.

In general, the tone of the comments have varied from anguished handwringing over how the BBC’s decision to provide a platform for the BNP was to legitimise its opprobrium in the national discourse, while others have focused on how the BNP is only becoming a force majeure through the inability of mainstream political parties to tackle “sensitive” issues like immigration. Occasionally, there are slightly more obtuse debates over why parties like the BNP have been able to take on a significant share of votes, focusing less on specific issues and more on conceptual frameworks.

Into this final space fearlessly strides Times journalist and commentator Antonia Senior. In a piece on Friday, 23rd October 2009, she claims that the reason that far right politics and views have gained traction is through a persistent and pernicious application of “moral relativism”, and an unwillingness on the part of contemporary (read white) Britons to take an absolute position on any issue (“I’m right, and you’re wrong”). She argues that this is primarily predicated on three factors: an unwillingness to be painted racist in a post-colonial world, where any promulgation of the virtues of a Western cultural standpoint smacks of racial and cultural imperialism, a sense of being “shackled” by the moral relativism inherited by contemporary British commentators, and due to a decline in faith across Western societies; it is much easier to adopt absolute views when you have a little faith – look at the US evangelicals so furiously arguing against gay marriage.

Before I get further into the details of her arguments, let me first preface my own comments by saying that in the entire maelstrom of comments that this 1 hour TV show have triggered in UK politics, Senior’s is one of the few that, by choosing to focus less on specific (and perhaps therefore limiting) issues, and more about public discourse and wider narratives, as well as the underlying philosophical and moral frameworks that underlie them, provides an interesting analysis of UK debate and the mores that underpin it, both in mainstream and virtual media.

Unfortunately, merely undertaking some form of intelligent discourse analysis is not sufficient, especially when the conclusions that are reached are as flawed as Senior’s. She argues that contemporary debate is heavily tinged by moral relativism, a framework that, according to her, is intellectually bankrupt within philosophy itself, and that it is “incoherent, logically flawed and utterly tired.” The only reason it has any currency today in wider debate is because it prevents the awkwardness that is triggered by taking on moral / ethical absolutism. How very British indeed – let’s adopt a philosophy that helps avoid embarrassing moments over afternoon tea.

The problems with her article are so numerous that it is difficult for me to find a single space to begin. Perhaps her entire premise is exposed in the single sentence, “The relativist’s position is that all cultural views are equally valid, unless your culture is that of a white, male racist.”

Actually, NO. Relativism, when applied properly, and FULLY, turns around and says that all cultural views are equally valid, but – and this is where Senior misses the point – within their OWN frames of reference. Therefore, if you want to be a bigoted white racist, that is your issue, provided you apply it to YOUR framework. So if you DON’T want to hang out with black or brown people – don’t. That does NOT mean you stop them from entering your local pub, since that local pub may be a part of your framework, but it is not exclusively of your framework. So if you don’t want to sit next to a darkie, then don’t go to the pub; stay at home, which is (hopefully) exclusively part of your framework. If, however, your adult daughter decides to start dating a black man, that again becomes a problem, and your home may also no longer be an exclusive part of your framework. The point is this - moral relativism does not define the rules of engagement between differing world views, does not say that violently disparate opinions must mutually coexist, or that “everyone must get along”. Moral relativism merely states that all opinions and perspectives must be viewed within the prism of their individual circumstances. So in our example, moral relativism doesn’t tell you how to get along with your daughter’s black boyfriend. It does turn around, however, and say that within your world, if you want to hate a black person, that’s your issue. Don’t make it your daughter’s.

Yet another problem with Senior’s article is that she manages to confuse moral relativism, as propounded by thinkers like Sartre, with moral nihilism, which seems to assume the absence of an objective (universal?) morality. So very few cultures, if any, seem to suggest that theft is acceptable; is this an example of multiple cultural moralities co-existing, or is it the case that there is perhaps a “meta-morality” that pervades across all cultures? In either case, Senior seems to argue for abandoning what it has taken decades of philosophical and intellectual effort to achieve – the ability to adopt non-ethnocentric frameworks when assessing different cultures, and to be able to move away from imperialised racist constructs when approaching anthropological and cultural studies – to adopt the classical 18th and 19th century white European approach which looked at all non-European cultures as those of “noble savages”, that placed the burden of a civilisational mandate on the white man (a.k.a. the white man’s burden) and to speak of rights and wrongs.

Perhaps not unsurprisingly for someone who advocates the abandonment of moral relativism, is that Senior then goes on to commit the even greater crime of essentialism; the idea that a complex, multifaceted concept like “culture” can be reduced down to a single practice, on the basis of which it can be judged as being superior or inferior to another culture. She does this through her use of the example of female genital mutilation in Middle Eastern and African cultures. Senior’s rationale is that the prevalence of a moral relativistic framework within the UK prevents feminists from taking on a practice that is harmful to millions of women. It can only be shoddy scholarship that lets Senior take a massive leap here with the statement,

“Take female genital mutilation. I think it is an abhorrent, evil crime. Yet the woman slicing out the clitoris of a child with a rusty knife thinks she is doing the right thing. Clearly, one of us is absolutely right and one of us is deluded. If your culture believes in genital mutilation and mine does not, then my culture is right and good and yours is wrong and bad.” (emphasis mine)

What Senior does in this seemingly innocuous statement is incredibly dangerous. To turn around and assume that because a particular practice (in this case, FGM) is prevalent in a specific culture, EVERYTHING within that culture is equally horrific, and therefore available to be judged in terms of right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, drags us back right into the 18th century. Her analysis here is equivalent to someone turning around and saying, “It was a Christian German culture that provided the cultural and political framework for the rise of the SS and the Nazis within Germany, which in turn led to the mechanised murder of 12 million people in Europe, including Jews and Roma, therefore everything in German culture is bad, including Nietzsche, Bach, Schopenhauer, Beethoven, etc.”

But you see, nobody would say that, because all good British commentators are well versed with the wonders of German intellect and their enormous contributions to European culture. Therefore any analysis of the rise of the SS and anti-Semitism within Europe is carried out with much greater intellectual honesty and with careful scholarship. It is much easier, when operating from within so clearly a Eurocentric worldview to dismiss other cultures, other voices, other narratives as being “wrong and bad”, and to get away with statements like the one Senior makes.

If I was to even step away from the mediocrity of Senior’s scholarship, though, I could perhaps find it amusing how her own theory does not hold to the whole BNP debate. To assume that the reason the BNP are able to occupy an increasing space in UK politics is due to an inability of other politicians to turn around and say, “You’re wrong” is clearly NOT borne out by the one hour of badgering that took place on Question Time with Nick Griffin. I personally struggled to see a single instance where any one person addressing Griffin didn’t turn around and say, “well, you’re not really wrong, but..”

Senior’s column in many ways makes me despair of leading publications in the UK. There are so many well (possibly over-) paid commentators in all the leading papers, and most of what they publish is such bilge that its quite depressing. Perhaps that is why I am increasingly beginning to rely on the blogosphere for intelligent analysis, as opposed to the mainstream media, who I now only really trust with breaking news (though after the balloon boy fiasco earlier this week, one has to question the wisdom of even that decision)

Bollywood Troop Rally!

A friend of a friend is currently in Turkey, there to learn dance, and not surprisingly is being harassed to death about teaching her classmates how to shimmy and do the Bolly . She's struggling a bit with ideas, and since youtube isn't readily accessible in Turkey, can't even do an online crash course. So come on folks - spread the love, spread the dance, and send her your suggestions!

Check out her dilemma here.

Damn those f*cking cliches...

Live your life. Live every hour, minute, second of it. Live it to the fullest, soak in every little experience that you can squeeze into this short, temporary, fading life of yours.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying light.*

It’s such a fucking cliché.

We hear these empty phrases, hollow platitudes all around us. Pop psychology on t-shirts, sappy crap on cheap ceramic mugs retailing in hippie markets. We hear these paeans from spiritual guides, holy leaders, wise old men sitting on park benches. Narratives excerpted and summarised from idiotic TV talk show celebrities, feel-good messages on the back covers of self-help books. Desensitised, we smirk and sneer, disparage and mock both the message and the messenger. We are so sophisticated, caught up in our modern, culturally evolved and intellectually superior pursuits. Our cynicism inures us from the inanity of triteness.

Except when something happens, something to shake us out of our sarcasm, our derision, our hyper-intellectual disdain.

Today I had one of those moments. A pleasant enough afternoon, spent with a former co-worker recounting travel anecdotes. It was a surprisingly warm autumn day in London, despite the clouds. Trendy coffee shop with a Kiwi theme (the country, not the fruit). Kitschy Maori art, Buddhist statues (how that’s Kiwi, I don’t know, but there you go). All in all, not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.

Then, returning home. A quick cursory glance at my email inbox, only to find a note from my parents. An aunt, a distant cousin of my mother, had died this afternoon in a hospital. Several days of high fever, jaundice, complications, finally leading to liver and kidney failure. She passed away this afternoon.

I can only hope it was painless.

I am not devastated. I am not heartbroken, I am not shattered. I hadn’t seen her for four years, and didn’t even know that she had been unwell, so it wasn’t as if we were close.

But the news did manage to shake me, in my little intellectual world, up a little. And part of the reason is because the news just reinforced just how insufficient, how fragile, and how terribly short this life of ours is. (There’re those damn platitudes again).

But it’s only at times like this that you realise just how true each and every one of these fucking clichés are.

So tonight I remember a woman, who was kind, gentle, slightly eccentric (but then, if you’re in my family, you’d have to be) and had a lot of love and affection for everyone. Someone who desperately loved her three children, who fought for them, who travelled further emotional and cultural distances for them than perhaps many of her own siblings would have, and who was ultimately a fighter when she had to become one for them.

And when the shock, and the sorrow, of her passing away has worn off, I will try and remember not to mock the many platitudes, the kitschy pop psychobabble that we find all around us, and try not to sink into my cynical derision of them quite so soon. Because no matter how stupid they all sound, in the end, you realise that they’re all absolutely fucking true.

RIP, dear aunt.

* Excerpt from Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night"

Let the Right One in - the Live Blog!

Kicking off: Okay then. First time for a live-blog on The Buddha Smiled. I keep meaning to try this, and should have really done this before, but hey, better late than never. Starting out with Swedish vampire horror movie, “Låt den rätte komma in” (or "Let the Right One In", which was the title under which it was released in English markets) may sound unorthodox, especially since I tend to focus on Bollywood on this site, but hey – why do things by the book? You can read a short bio on the movie here, but otherwise, let’s just say that its a 2008 Swedish film adaptation of a vampire horror novel of the same name, written by John Ajvide Lindqvist. So – here goes nothing!

Menu & Set up: This has a pretty creepy sounding soundtrack. Loving the close up of falling snowflakes though....time to hit Play!

01:20 min: I want a name with strange Scandinavian characters in it too. Maybe I should rename this blog, ”The Büddhå Smiled".

06:53 min: Okay, so within five minutes we’ve established the Oskar, the lead character, is a bit of a school misfit, who reads creepy books that allow him to decipher forensic evidence and also gets bullied around a little in school. New neighbours in the apartment / housing complex, but is it just me who would find it odd that people moving into a new place would choose to board up windows? It’s like, HELLO! Your new neighbours aren’t the Joneses, they’re bloodsucking ghouls who are afraid of the sunlight. Also – they moved in after dark, and live in Sweden, a country clearly reknowned for long sunlit hours. Duh.

15:37 min: ”A person who kills children is certainly capable of taking the subway two stations. Or walking a mile.” This is clearly why child slayers are threatening - they’re able to use public transport.

16:39 min: Okay, this kid is officially weird. His parents are divorced, which may explain some of it, or it could be a lack of sunlight, but seriously, most pre-teens collect stamps or seashells, not newspaper clippings relating to murders, massacres, genocides, violent crime and gang wars. Also, why can he not get a normal haircut?

27:59 min: Obviously its a good idea to be murdering people in areas with heavy snowfall. A good flurry covers your tracks, and you can use your sled to move the body through the forests.

28:22 min: Gaah – I hate vampires! Not only are they blessed with eerie good looks, immortal life and an incredible sense of personal style (have you ever seen a badly dressed vampire?) but apparently they’re also blessed with great analytical thinking capability. Atleast, this vampire does – she solves Oskar’s Rubik’s cube and leaves it out in the courtyard for him.

28:45 min: On second thoughts, this vampire girl child is probably the first one I’ve met with absolutely no sense of personal style. And what is with those hideous jumpers? Maybe its because she’s pre-teen? Nah – if you’ve been alive for that long, you’ve had enough time to develop a fashion sense. Must introduce her to Kirsten Dunst from Interview with a Vampire to help this one realise that just because you're one of the living dead and a child, there's no reason you can't dress well.

36:24 min: Vampire girl tells bullied boy who’s been recently flagellated by schoolmates to hit back. Perfect. This is why we hate vampires – they screw up with the natural order of society. Imagine if everyone started hitting back. What would happen to the world? And more importantly, who would the poor schoolyard bullies pick on?!

41:43 min: Someone needs to tell Oskar’s dad that wear high-waisted faded denim jeans with a grey Christmas sweater TUCKED IN is never going to be a good look. No wonder Oskar’s mom divorced him, if that’s his idea of casual wear. Which is a shame, really, because he's pretty good-looking. But there's no accounting for taste, now, is there?

44:04 min: Ugly middle-aged man standing at gym window watching teenaged Swedish boys in gym kit playing basketball, and nobody’s calling child services and the police? What, so perving on teenage boys is legal and normal in Sweden?

46:50 min: Vampire child’s servant (?) defaces himself with acid to avoid detection and being traced back to Eli (said vampire child) And people complain that good help is hard to find even today. Bah, humbug.

53:20 min: So vampire child’s help is dead, she’s now climbing into bed with Oskar and its all getting a little weird. Are Swedes allowed to show pre-teen loving?!

56:41 min: And I thought I had relationship issues. Imagine dating a vampire.

1hr, 05:43 min: Note to self; the next time I’m dating a vampire, remind me not to suggest mixing blood as a sign of pre-teen fealty. The situation is unlikely to end well.

1hr, 20:45 min: Do all Swedish moms wear Ikea print gowns to bed?

1hr, 21:52 min: Vampires self-combust in sunlight. Important to remember the next time I’m dating one.

1hr, 24:21 min: True love is forcing yourself into houses you’re not invited into as a vampire, so that you can bleed from your eyes and ears. That pop! sound when your eardrums go is also really nice. Unrelatedly, why does the sight of a bleeding vampire give me cravings for aloo ka paraatha and bhare mirch ka achaar?

1 hr, 26:28 min: This movie’s obviously set in the late 70’s. Nobody would dare own a TV set quite that hideous today. And there I was thinking that the random decor was just how they rolled in Sweden (all that Ikea influence, you know). So I might as well also give up my fantasies of moving to Sweden, which this movie had led me to believe was the kind of place where I could wear brown mid-calf boots and not be beaten up in the streets for looking too “alternative” (read gay). Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on Oskar’s hairstyle as well, then. On second thoughts, scratch that. Even the 70's can't be an excuse for a bad hairstyle. That one will only go so far, you know.

1hr, 32:28 min: You’ve got to love a script in which the normal human, out to seek revenge on the vampire that’s killed his friend and girlfriend, is somehow the evil one, while the evil bloodsucking ghoul that self-combusts when exposed to sunlight (a bit like leech +salt = goo) is the good one. Must recommend movie to scriptwriters of Interview with a Vampire” for lessons on how to make the vampire the popular one.

1hr, 40:09 min: Oskar is being totally set up at the gym by the guys who used to bully him, and the one he whacked across the ear with a metal stick. DUDE! Suspense is not good. Will Eli, vampire girl child, be back to save him? Only if it’s a Bollywood movie; these damn Europeans don’t know how to do feel-good. (groan)

1hr, 43:37 min: I told you these damn Europeans couldn’t do feel-good. So Eli, i.e. vampire girl child, does show up and save the day, but it involves decapitation and dismemberment. Not cool, especially when random body parts end up in public swimming pools. Now you see why I have a phobia of public pools? Who knows what’s been in there?

1hr, 45:20 min: Awww. True love is carting your vampire girl child girlfriend around Swedish national railways in a cardboard box. Chho chhweet!

And that’s it? Hmmm.... not a bad movie – definitely kept me engaged, but I can’t say it was mind-blowing. I did enjoy the live blogging experience though, so I can’t really complain. The grim landscapes of Blackeberg, Sweden, with snow-covered walkways and icy pine and fir trees does seem appropriate for bloodsucking ghouls that abhor the sunlight, but I’m not a fan. Especially since everyone and every review has been going on and on about what a brilliant movie this was. That may be a slight exaggeration, methinks.

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!!!

Why I love Bollywood

Doesn't it suck that I missed this when I was in New York in August? I would have loved to have been there at Times Square when the Bollywood flash mob hit town:



Though I have to say I'm not quite with the very weird blue and silver shirts these dudes are wearing. I have my own personal tastes in Bolly bling, thank you very much!

Maybe I should organise secret Bollywood flash mobs in London... any takers?!