I'm not sure whom to give citation credit for this one but I got it from a friend who got it from another friend...you know how the chain goes. I was going to write (read: technically rant) a post about marriage related stuff that's come up in conversations with some of my gal-pals and, inevitably, annoying relatives but this one just begged to be shared:
Once upon a time, a guy asked a girl "Will you marry me?"
The girl said, "NO!"
And the girl lived happily ever after and went shopping, dancing, camping, drank martinis, always had a clean house, never had to cook, had sex with whomever she pleased... did whatever the hell she wanted, never argued, didn't get fat, travelled more, had many boyfriends, saved more money, and had all the hot water to herself. She watched chick flicks, never football, never wore frickin' lacy lingerie that went up her ass, had high self esteem, never cried or yelled, felt and looked fabulous in sweat pants, and burped, swore, and farted all the time.!!!
[Personal Disclaimer: nopes I don't hate men and wouldn't mind finding Msr. Almost-Perfect and put on the "wife" hat...but if I keep meeting the men I have I'd rather live it up like this gal - sans the farting, swearing, burping bits that neither sound all that pleasant nor are aspirational - since I just can't quite wrap my brains around "shaadi" in the abstract like some folks I know but more in that in another post].
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Monday, October 09, 2006
Baby Steps
This half of LTLWI (Learn To Live With It!) has had ample time to ponder over lots of stuff for the past 2 weeks, especially the last week when I was prescribed bed rest. Posts on these forthcoming over the next few weeks as and when I get a chance
One of the things that occupied my attention most was how times have changed - probably because I was trying to de-stress in order to recuperate as per the doctor's orders and strict parental warnings :-). When I think about the time my grandparents' were in their 20s or 30s the visual that pops into my head is that of a group of people gathered together for an evening dinner, relaxed yet animated with their unique verve and gusto...perhaps a light cool breeze blowing through the windows sans noise or any other kind of pollution. When I think about my parents generation in the same age the visual is quite similar with perhaps some technological gadgets thrown in. When I think about the generation to which I belong I see an individual walking hurriedly on a generic Manhattan street, juggling a cup of coffee so huge that it would equal the amount consumed by a family of 3-4 in the days of yore, answering a perpetually ringing cell phone, looking frazzled...kind of like those scenes in music videos or ads where everybody else on the street is a blur but the individual on whom the focus is appears almost crystal clear.
As I continue pondering over this visual, what strikes me most is that my generation is so busy taking huge leaps all day but the scale of achievements is fairly limited when compared to the kinds of achievements that those of my parents and grandparents tribe can boast of. What do I mean? I'll take myself as an example - I think my most significant achievement to date will probably be completing my Ph.D. at the end of this year (Inshallah). When I think about what my parents had done when they reached my age I hear stories about raising a daughter; taking care of their families; running successful businesses; excelling in their jobs/careers; having time to spend with their families (which was almost always an extended family beyond the statistical parents and 2.5 kids unit); as well as initiating and becoming involved in civil society movements that created not just waves, politically speaking, but concrete change...whether that was challenging military governments in power or unionizing students. When I hear about the kinds of things that filled my grandparents' younger days I'm even more amazed: they went to work/school; organized huge gatherings with family and friends using even the littlest, most inconsequential excuses to do something; raised kids; enjoyed the environment in which they lived; and in between all of this they participated in a movement that created a nation (Pakistan) and uprooted themselves lock, stock, and barrel to come live in this new home. And here I am running around frazzled trying to accomplish nothing nearly as momentous but so incredibly busy and stressed out that I've landed myself in bed, insanely sick. Yes my dissertation involves writing about stuff related to the nation that my grandparents and parents have helped build and shape respectively but clearly the task is nowhere close to the same magnitude. Yet for some reason, for the last 3-4 years, I find myself freaking out at the prospect of taking time out for Eid or around New Years or when it's someone's birthday and there's a dinner planned because I just can't let myself stop lest one of the balls I'm juggling doesn't stay up in the air and falls to the ground. [To be fair though, most deadlines I've faced seem to clash with other stuff...of course maybe I need to plan ahead and procrastinate less...or maybe reorganize the way in which I keep those balls up in the air without breaking into a sweat which is what this post is about.]
Not that my attitude is representative of everyone I know; similarly not everyone is doing the things my parents or grandparents did. The example is meant more to illustrate the irony that folks from my generation are always busy taking huge leaps, completely stressed out, expressing their frustration and fatigue; contrast that with the other two generations and they did so much and all with so much panache, so much elan. It's not the scale of accomplishments that I'm trying to compare; the ntent is certainly not to preach that we need to start serving a purpose larger than us - perhaps in another post ;-). Rather, in contrasting the two I'm just trying to highlight the fact that those folks didn't get as frazzled even with so much on their plates.
What's changed? Lots but the thing that stood out the most for me was what I call the "baby steps" factor. My parents' and grandparents' generation did a lot because they were trying to do a little each day. An hour here, an hour there, a dash of 15 minutes for something else. My generation tries to take gigantic leaps in a whole bunch of things and where do we land? If you're me, then in bed because the madness needed to stop. If we're trying to lose weight, it's the latest diet fad or pill that promises a miraculous 15-20 lbs in mere days rather than a healthier loss of 3-5 lbs every month through diet and exercise. If we're writing a film, it has to be the best darn film that covers everything and then some re: the subject it's about. If we're going to be good parents we think it has to be at the expense of everything else, every other role we could and/or want to play in life...and thus you have marriages breaking up because parents, in trying to be good mothers and fathers, have forgotten that they're also spouses - you have resentful stay-at-home moms or working mothers each of whom thinks she's failing somehow...and the list goes on.
I've heard friends blame everything from the quality of nutrition to living in more demanding times for our state of mind today. Maybe those also play a role but I really think that the main problem is that there's so many sprints packed into our day as we run around trying to get things done working our way up and down our list of priorities that we just don't know how to run a marathon (i.e. do everything with as much grace, as much elegance, as much flair as our parents and grandparents) - in fact, we'd probably collapse!
Consider this: when we learnt to walk as kids we started off crawling, onwards to standing up straight while holding on to things and others, then standing on our own, then walking holding on to someone else's fingers and other things, and, eventually, to managing to waddle before we progressed to what we recognize as a "normal walk". Literally, baby steps and not a race against time!
So here's my resolution: I'm going to take steady baby steps rather than mammoth leaps. IMHO, this is probably more conducive to a more fulfilling state of being. I'd rather picture myself in a relaxed social setting where I can actually see faces as opposed to a busy street crawling with people that remain faceless even if I try to peer harder.
Check back with me in about 4 weeks to make sure that I meant what I said and it isn't just the boredom that inevitably accompanies social confinement aka bed rest.
Perhaps you'd like to try it too...i.e. "baby steps", not the "in bed" bit?
[FYI: Copyright information for the image in this post: Copyright ©2006 by freebabypictures.net]
Thursday, October 05, 2006
How apropos!
I subscribe to this "quote/thought of the day" type service. I thought that the one that was delivered to my inbox today was particularly suited to this blog, i.e. the attitude both Asad and I tend to have 99.9999% of the time, so I thought I'd share. Of course this is more gingerly stated than our "Learn To Live With It" bit....po-tay-to, po-tah-to, to-may-to, to-mah-to, either way:
"Your life becomes the thing you have decided it shall be." – Raymond Charles Barker
I couldn't nod my head more vigorously if I tried! In fact, this could be my personal mantra. I think it also explains why I have an extremely limited amount of patience with folks who complain endlessly about stuff that happens to them without taking charge and working towards changing things. Yup I believe in destiny, I know and can see that shit happens but I also believe in handling things gracefully and making lemonade out of lemons. So for all you sitting there in neutral, I say shift gears and shake things up for the better.
[In case you're curious, here's a brief bio blurb about Barker from the e-mail I received: Raymond Charles Barker was an influential American minister and author in the mid-twentieth century. He wrote such books as The Power of Decision and Treat Yourself to Life, on ways to change subconscious patterns. He became president of the International New Thought Alliance in 1943, a group practicing the religious philosophy developed in the late 1800's by Phineas Quimby, with early proponents including Ralph Waldo Emerson. Unity Church and Divine Science are among its later offshoots.]
"Your life becomes the thing you have decided it shall be." – Raymond Charles Barker
I couldn't nod my head more vigorously if I tried! In fact, this could be my personal mantra. I think it also explains why I have an extremely limited amount of patience with folks who complain endlessly about stuff that happens to them without taking charge and working towards changing things. Yup I believe in destiny, I know and can see that shit happens but I also believe in handling things gracefully and making lemonade out of lemons. So for all you sitting there in neutral, I say shift gears and shake things up for the better.
[In case you're curious, here's a brief bio blurb about Barker from the e-mail I received: Raymond Charles Barker was an influential American minister and author in the mid-twentieth century. He wrote such books as The Power of Decision and Treat Yourself to Life, on ways to change subconscious patterns. He became president of the International New Thought Alliance in 1943, a group practicing the religious philosophy developed in the late 1800's by Phineas Quimby, with early proponents including Ralph Waldo Emerson. Unity Church and Divine Science are among its later offshoots.]
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Thoughts on the "Sati Savitri" (read: The Nice Girl Whose Sexuality & Emotional Quotient Is Non-Existent ) archetype and a poll-of-sorts
I'm piggybacking here on Asad's post "I wonder how they got on with it..." as well as Mizz's comments in response to that post.
[Irrelevant aside: my general absence from this blog for a while can be explained by the fact that I've had craploads to do; the frequent posting since yesterday has to do with the fact that I'm sick and in bed, can't quite work but my brain is still racing so anticipate on seeing me around these environs quite a bit over the next few days as I work on recuperating.]
What I'm going to talk about is specific to my experiences growing up in Pakistan as well as continuing to experience life as [partly] Pakistani (nationally/culturally speaking) even after moving to the US in 1994. Why the explanation? Because the "we" I'm speaking of here is a "Pakistani we" as in that's where I'm coming from. This is not to diminish the fact that a "non-Pakistani we" might have gone through the same experience but just to ground what I'm about to say in a specific empirical context.
I know that "Sati" and "Savitri" are figures in Hindu mythology. Without getting lost in the details (since they aren't quite what this post is about and I'd have to do a whole lot more research to talk about that which would mean taking time away from the dissertation that I can't afford), I do recall that these were women of great courage and strength in that they stood up for their rights - what others might describe as "fighting The Patriarchy" but I won't (if you ask me I'll put up a separate post one of these days explaining why :-)!) - and fought for what they thought was just or simply what they wanted. I do remember something about their displays of courage being connected with men whom they wanted to be with or save somehow but don't quote me on that. Either way, the picture of these two women are individuals who wanted to live life (and the after-life) on their own terms is a far cry from the concocted archetype they've inspired. Extremely bizarre, yes? Why do I say that?
Because the archetype paints a picture of a submissive woman who lets life happen to her. She has no desires per se, especially sexual ones. She's expected to want to have sex or display physical affection only when a man expresses this need for it. There's nothing about this woman that isn't "Pure" or "Holy". She'd probably put "Miss Goody Two Shoes" to shame. She's emotionally restrained yet oddly enough the fact that she doesn't want to have sex to satisfy her own needs somehow means that her love for you is purer, truer, more intense. (Even more strange considering that it's probably kind of natural to be affectionate towards the person you love however you display that affection). You get the picture....
How does this figure into my life or generally in a Pakistani or "Desi" woman's life? First, you spend your teenage years receiving (generally unsolicited) advice not so much by folks older than you but your peers of roughly the same age and sex making the case - either explicitly or implicitly but always reminding you nonetheless - never to do anything "physical". Btw, that sounds like a really strange phrase to me logically speaking - if you're in the same room as someone else aren't you physical-ly in the same space as them? Yes, yes I know that's not what "physical" means in that context. What's the rationale? It would still make sense to me if it was a roundabout way of trying to keep teenage pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases at bay.(Yes I've heard of contraception but I honestly don't think know any 14 year olds who would have been or are) But the concern was generally of the "guys don't marry bad girls" (read: guys don't marry girls who engage in physical displays of affection) variant.
In your 20s you're supposed to either get married or be in relationships leading to marriage sooner rather than later. What's the story then? You're still going to have to put up a "Sati Savitri" act because you "won't be able to hook him". That continues into your 30s although people stop talking about it as much. Or rather the conversation shifts so that most of the married women (because of course we should have achieved marriage-hood before stepping beyond 25!) go into convulsions if you talk about "it" aka your sex life and whether or not you enjoy "it", initiate "it" and the romantic getaway you have planned etc? The advice then is to "play hard to get" because you don't want your husband to think you're a "slut" and because he should have to work to earn your love (huh?). Umm if I have someone in my life whom I love, then why do I need to play it cool - emotionally, physically, etc - to have "it" or to let him have "it"? More basically even, what is "it" that I'm supposed to be getting and why should I have to play hard to get "it"? Shouldn't the showing of love go hand-in-hand with nurturing any relationship? Nopes, apparently playing Sati Savitri does if I believe the herd.
I'm also amused by the emphasis on showing restraint when it comes to "physical acts of affection". This is further complicated by the fact that you aren't ever supposed to go up to a guy and ask him out or if you're already in a relationship be the first one to tell him you love him or that you want to marry him lest you undermine your purity - if you're too forward he'll never marry you.
My $0.01 - if there's never any display of love or affection on my part why the hell would any guy want to be with me? What would be the point even? Also, isn't marriage an arrangement in which emotional security and commitment are numero uno...IMHO at least?
Why am I rambling about this? 4 things that irk me:
1) Are we, as women, expected to orient everything we do in life towards getting and staying married* (asap)?
[*Just to clarify, by using the phrase "staying married" I don't mean to imply that people should be walking out their marriages left, right, and center....for me getting married implies staying married but if you're stuck in a relationship that's destructive you have every right to- and should - leave....hence the differentiation because I don't think getting married = staying married irrespective.]
2) Presuming that marriage is about companionship, developing emotional bonds further, and also starting a family I don't quite see how you would accomplish that if you were busy playing The Frigid Bitch?
3) From the general consensus, it seems like the Sati-Savitri doesn't make the first move romantically either. That's just plain tedious.
4) For the most part, I've always heard this advice from women. This is not to say that there aren't men who don't think like that but I'm not quite sure what's going on the other side of the fence. I wonder if women are making this up - after all my species has a tendency to fault men excessively using the Mars/Venus stereotypes unabashedly and often unthinkingly. Yup it's good for a laugh but it's strange that we would actually try to make sense of our relationships from the kind of check-list you find in these books. For example, I saw this segment on The Today Show (NBC) a few weeks ago. The details are fuzzy but there was a male author and a female psychiatrist who had a practice of her own counseling couples and had also written some kind of odd advice book for women on how to land men or some such thing. Both of them were asked to talk about what men wanted from women. I felt that the psychiatrist submitted to all the stereotypes eventually suggesting that guys only like meek, mindless women who never make the first move. The author sounded a bit more realistic in that what he sounded said more like the relationships I've been in or observed. Perhaps I found his words more credible because they resonated. Also his book was based on in-depth interviews with men whereas the psychiatrist just seemed to be ranting. But I digress. What I wonder is if men *actually* want to be with Sati Savitris or is this something women have made up in the name of preserving a particular kind of identity? Just on a practical level, wouldn't men want to try less to guage the other person's emotions? Wouldn't it be easier for them if they didn't have to keep guessing all the time. Yup there's something to be said for "keeping the mystery alive" but the Cold Fish that is the Sati Savitri takes it to an extreme IMHO.
So here are a couple of questions (this is the "sort-of-poll" bit...let's call it an "ur-poll") that I'd like to throw out there:
Q1: Is the Sati-Savitri someone you find appealing or a bit of a drag or somewhere else in between?
Q2: Like Asad mentioned, if a woman makes the first move does that make her "too aggressive", "a pervert", etc in your books?
Blog-readers: your answers and/or thoughts about anything else that occurred to you while reading this? I'd love to hear from both the "hazraat" (men) and the "khawateen" (women)....but if you're the one who loves to preach sati-savitriing as a way of life then it'd be okay if you held yourselves back...discriminatory perhaps but who said we were interested in being politically correct, right Asad?
[Irrelevant aside: my general absence from this blog for a while can be explained by the fact that I've had craploads to do; the frequent posting since yesterday has to do with the fact that I'm sick and in bed, can't quite work but my brain is still racing so anticipate on seeing me around these environs quite a bit over the next few days as I work on recuperating.]
What I'm going to talk about is specific to my experiences growing up in Pakistan as well as continuing to experience life as [partly] Pakistani (nationally/culturally speaking) even after moving to the US in 1994. Why the explanation? Because the "we" I'm speaking of here is a "Pakistani we" as in that's where I'm coming from. This is not to diminish the fact that a "non-Pakistani we" might have gone through the same experience but just to ground what I'm about to say in a specific empirical context.
I know that "Sati" and "Savitri" are figures in Hindu mythology. Without getting lost in the details (since they aren't quite what this post is about and I'd have to do a whole lot more research to talk about that which would mean taking time away from the dissertation that I can't afford), I do recall that these were women of great courage and strength in that they stood up for their rights - what others might describe as "fighting The Patriarchy" but I won't (if you ask me I'll put up a separate post one of these days explaining why :-)!) - and fought for what they thought was just or simply what they wanted. I do remember something about their displays of courage being connected with men whom they wanted to be with or save somehow but don't quote me on that. Either way, the picture of these two women are individuals who wanted to live life (and the after-life) on their own terms is a far cry from the concocted archetype they've inspired. Extremely bizarre, yes? Why do I say that?
Because the archetype paints a picture of a submissive woman who lets life happen to her. She has no desires per se, especially sexual ones. She's expected to want to have sex or display physical affection only when a man expresses this need for it. There's nothing about this woman that isn't "Pure" or "Holy". She'd probably put "Miss Goody Two Shoes" to shame. She's emotionally restrained yet oddly enough the fact that she doesn't want to have sex to satisfy her own needs somehow means that her love for you is purer, truer, more intense. (Even more strange considering that it's probably kind of natural to be affectionate towards the person you love however you display that affection). You get the picture....
How does this figure into my life or generally in a Pakistani or "Desi" woman's life? First, you spend your teenage years receiving (generally unsolicited) advice not so much by folks older than you but your peers of roughly the same age and sex making the case - either explicitly or implicitly but always reminding you nonetheless - never to do anything "physical". Btw, that sounds like a really strange phrase to me logically speaking - if you're in the same room as someone else aren't you physical-ly in the same space as them? Yes, yes I know that's not what "physical" means in that context. What's the rationale? It would still make sense to me if it was a roundabout way of trying to keep teenage pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases at bay.(Yes I've heard of contraception but I honestly don't think know any 14 year olds who would have been or are) But the concern was generally of the "guys don't marry bad girls" (read: guys don't marry girls who engage in physical displays of affection) variant.
In your 20s you're supposed to either get married or be in relationships leading to marriage sooner rather than later. What's the story then? You're still going to have to put up a "Sati Savitri" act because you "won't be able to hook him". That continues into your 30s although people stop talking about it as much. Or rather the conversation shifts so that most of the married women (because of course we should have achieved marriage-hood before stepping beyond 25!) go into convulsions if you talk about "it" aka your sex life and whether or not you enjoy "it", initiate "it" and the romantic getaway you have planned etc? The advice then is to "play hard to get" because you don't want your husband to think you're a "slut" and because he should have to work to earn your love (huh?). Umm if I have someone in my life whom I love, then why do I need to play it cool - emotionally, physically, etc - to have "it" or to let him have "it"? More basically even, what is "it" that I'm supposed to be getting and why should I have to play hard to get "it"? Shouldn't the showing of love go hand-in-hand with nurturing any relationship? Nopes, apparently playing Sati Savitri does if I believe the herd.
I'm also amused by the emphasis on showing restraint when it comes to "physical acts of affection". This is further complicated by the fact that you aren't ever supposed to go up to a guy and ask him out or if you're already in a relationship be the first one to tell him you love him or that you want to marry him lest you undermine your purity - if you're too forward he'll never marry you.
My $0.01 - if there's never any display of love or affection on my part why the hell would any guy want to be with me? What would be the point even? Also, isn't marriage an arrangement in which emotional security and commitment are numero uno...IMHO at least?
Why am I rambling about this? 4 things that irk me:
1) Are we, as women, expected to orient everything we do in life towards getting and staying married* (asap)?
[*Just to clarify, by using the phrase "staying married" I don't mean to imply that people should be walking out their marriages left, right, and center....for me getting married implies staying married but if you're stuck in a relationship that's destructive you have every right to- and should - leave....hence the differentiation because I don't think getting married = staying married irrespective.]
2) Presuming that marriage is about companionship, developing emotional bonds further, and also starting a family I don't quite see how you would accomplish that if you were busy playing The Frigid Bitch?
3) From the general consensus, it seems like the Sati-Savitri doesn't make the first move romantically either. That's just plain tedious.
4) For the most part, I've always heard this advice from women. This is not to say that there aren't men who don't think like that but I'm not quite sure what's going on the other side of the fence. I wonder if women are making this up - after all my species has a tendency to fault men excessively using the Mars/Venus stereotypes unabashedly and often unthinkingly. Yup it's good for a laugh but it's strange that we would actually try to make sense of our relationships from the kind of check-list you find in these books. For example, I saw this segment on The Today Show (NBC) a few weeks ago. The details are fuzzy but there was a male author and a female psychiatrist who had a practice of her own counseling couples and had also written some kind of odd advice book for women on how to land men or some such thing. Both of them were asked to talk about what men wanted from women. I felt that the psychiatrist submitted to all the stereotypes eventually suggesting that guys only like meek, mindless women who never make the first move. The author sounded a bit more realistic in that what he sounded said more like the relationships I've been in or observed. Perhaps I found his words more credible because they resonated. Also his book was based on in-depth interviews with men whereas the psychiatrist just seemed to be ranting. But I digress. What I wonder is if men *actually* want to be with Sati Savitris or is this something women have made up in the name of preserving a particular kind of identity? Just on a practical level, wouldn't men want to try less to guage the other person's emotions? Wouldn't it be easier for them if they didn't have to keep guessing all the time. Yup there's something to be said for "keeping the mystery alive" but the Cold Fish that is the Sati Savitri takes it to an extreme IMHO.
So here are a couple of questions (this is the "sort-of-poll" bit...let's call it an "ur-poll") that I'd like to throw out there:
Q1: Is the Sati-Savitri someone you find appealing or a bit of a drag or somewhere else in between?
Q2: Like Asad mentioned, if a woman makes the first move does that make her "too aggressive", "a pervert", etc in your books?
Blog-readers: your answers and/or thoughts about anything else that occurred to you while reading this? I'd love to hear from both the "hazraat" (men) and the "khawateen" (women)....but if you're the one who loves to preach sati-savitriing as a way of life then it'd be okay if you held yourselves back...discriminatory perhaps but who said we were interested in being politically correct, right Asad?
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Folks, it's a movie not a manual on how to live your life...some thoughts via/on "Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna"
Maybe it's just "us" i.e the folks I know and yours truly- our conversations often involve TV shows we love or movies we watched. If everyone involved in the conversation has the same opinion it usually evolves into a scene-by-scene fanfest. If not, I've noticed that it somehow explodes into a commentary about life and the way things and/or we "should" be.
I've found myself involved in conversations of the latter kind over a Bollywood movie "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna" (Never Say Goodbye) or KANK as it's come to be known. If you'd like to know more about the film, follow its link on this website: http://www3.dharma-production.com/
The interest and hype in this movie was not only generated by the fact that it has been made by one of Hindi cinema's top directors and that the actors were played by the crème de la crème of the Bollywood film fraternity but also because of the subject: marital infidelity. Apparently we in the "East" or "South Asia" just can't have our marriages falling apart because that's sacred. Hence bad marriages = taboo; films about it = you gotta be kidding, that's sacrilege and then some! Doesn't matter that the gossip circulating the local grapevine has hefty doses of "who is cheating on who?" and "who is getting divorced (again)?"....guess it becomes "real" and triggers the vocal chords of the moral police only when it's on celluloid?
Back to the film though...my own (unscientific) survey (ok not quite) reveals that some people loved KANK, more were outraged; the important thing, IMHO, is that so many watched it and continued to talk about it afterwards.
In the midst of all this talk about KANK some thoughts about the place of films (and other popular culture forms) in our talk about life fell into my head so here goes:
1. If the subject of a film makes you uncomfortable, don't go in expecting to find something else that, in your opinion, will redeem it. When you come out of the film don't crib about the heinousness of the subject either - you knew what it was going to be about.
2. Related to #1, I can't for the life of me fathom why we expect films to have a socially-responsible message that is in cognizance with the norms and values we hold or think we ought to. For some reason, we aren't outraged in quite the same way about newspaper editorials that we allow into our homes everyday -- even when we disagree vehemently with the content most of us either ignore/dismiss it or vent a little steam and then go on about our daily lives. But films seem to be imbued with a multitude of notions that render them as "sacred space" for the most part. If it isn't mindless entertainment (by which I mean ridiculous comedies with bawdy humor), it should have some kind of message - explicit or otherwise - about the way life ought to be lived. Why can't films be taken simply as a perspective on some aspect of life? Can't we digest them as texts that represent rather than preach? What I'm trying to say is that it's not the strong reactions that bewilder me as much as the fact that we can't forgive films for presenting an opinion with which we disagree or can't support. I certainly don't approve of infidelity, marital or otherwise, but should that make me go into a livid rant over a film like KANK that simply represents what happens to relationships when someone is unfaithful? I doubt it....again films, besides being entertaining, are simply a specific take, a specific perspective, a specific representation. Does it mean the director condones cheating on one's spouse? Not necessarily - as he's also clarified repeatedly in TV and magazine interviews. But even if he did, does it take away from the movie-watching experience? Does it make a less well-made movie because the director's moral register is different from ours? Does a movie's morality govern whether or not one should watch it? Perhaps...it's a personal choice but I personally think that's expecting too much of a film. What never ceases to amaze me is that when we read an editorial on the rampant corruption of our governments we let them get away but let's hang the 30-something director from a noose for depicting something that we ought not to be engaged in. [Relevant aside: civil society in Pakistan might not be dead, it's just numb to the things we romanticize it as being engaged in.]
3. Of course that just means that there is something powerful about the medium itself...at least in the Indian and Pakistani contexts (something I've learned not only through experience but through my dissertation research over the last 3-4 years) in a very specific way. Personally, there's something about sitting in a dark movie theater with surround sound that makes movie-watching larger than life and strangely life-like...I feel the music, the ambience and it moves me.
4. More specific to the movie, if we are going to judge the actions of the characters, the actors who played them, and the film-maker then some thoughts:
a) Dev, the character played by Shahrukh Khan, is not the lovable guy this actor is used to playing. You might detest the character with every fibre of your being but isn't that really proof of the fact that he's a good actor in that he can make you believe in the emotions that he's depicting.
b) Yup the character played by Abhishek seems to quite a few like the perfect husband (I beg to differ though which doesn't mean it wasn't enacted well - because he did a great job playing that character- but I guess I just don't envision spending my life with someone whose personality seems a bit unidimensional at times, especially in the earlier half) so that fact that the character of Maya (his wife in this film) leaves him and cheats on him isn't believable. Umm go back to the first 10 minutes of the film - she's having (more than) second thoughts right before they get married. Should she have not married him in the first place if that was the case? Yes. Does she have to pretend to be happy when she feels they aren't compatible? No. But that sounds fairly judgmental as well. The character cheated on her husband because she just didn't feel it was right with him or just because it was more right with someone else. I'm inclined to let it go at that. Why? You can't rationalize emotions ....sometimes things are the way they are because they are the way they are...period.
c) The charges, grounded in various ridiculous sounding reasons that are just too narrow-minded for me to even write down, that Karan Johar (the director) doesn't understand human emotions and relationships. Umm, maybe he didn't make a film about your emotions and relationships but that doesn't mean he represented these inaccurately. I'm not so sure we ever really represent things accurately whether these are understanding our loved ones' thoughts or recollecting a conversation and sharing it with someone else...but that's a transcendental path I won't walk down on, at least not in this post :-).
5. Consider this if you will; if not, humor me for just a little longer. In talking about the cultural politics of everyday life, Shotter proposes a new kind of knowing which is a "knowing from within". To summarize the idea, which will inevitably result in butchering from oversimplication so I hope you'll pardon that, the ways in which we act and make sense of our world are shaped by our interpretations of how people have acted in similar situations in the past and what we want the future to look like. It is in this process that the world(s) we inhabit are created/recreated. To me, that includes what we describe hurriedly as culture, values, morals, norms, traditions etc. It is through this process that we know who we are. In layman's terms, knowing from within is kind of like saying and/or acting on the basis of "this is how we do it". In those actions that we perform thinking this, we solidify certain ways of being i.e. the "we" and social phenomena i.e. the "this". Where does the future come in? Well by acting that way we've oriented ourselves towards the future in that we're seeing to preserve certain identities, certain ways of being. Where do films come in in all of this? Simple....I think when we watch a film we rely on this "knowing from within" to make sense of this text...that effectively defines the contours of how we react to the stories, the plots, the actors, and the film-maker. So yes I can see how the reactions have formed. But the point I'm trying to get to is this. Do we really have to be so close-minded that we can't even respect the fact that someone else might be coming from a different place? This is not the same as accepting it necessarily; I think you can still detest this film or anything else for that matter. But when I think about Shotter and when I look around myself it's upsetting to see that people just don't make an effort to give people room to think differently, behave differently, act differently to the extent that they pronounce it as wrong and reprehensible. Couldn't it just be that the circumstances of their "knowing from within" led them down a different path? Hate it, sure; but give it room enough to consider it "logical/sensical (yes I know that isn't a word but it goes with what I'm trying to say) embedded within or nested in a particular perspective". Some might call this giving someone else the "benefit of doubt" - I'd call it the "benefit of alternative interpretation/sense-making".
Okay tirade over. And if you still haven't seen the film, it's official DVD release is scheduled for this month. And if you haven't heard the music as yet, you're missing out on some of the best film song compilations ever. I'm pretty sure A.R. Rehman will sweep the awards this year for Rang De Basanti but if you ask me Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy have come up with a soundtrack that's much more listenable and really does enhance the tone of the film.
[PS: Yes I'm aware that the title of the post is quite a mouthful....let's not point out the obvious ;-)!]
I've found myself involved in conversations of the latter kind over a Bollywood movie "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna" (Never Say Goodbye) or KANK as it's come to be known. If you'd like to know more about the film, follow its link on this website: http://www3.dharma-production.com/
The interest and hype in this movie was not only generated by the fact that it has been made by one of Hindi cinema's top directors and that the actors were played by the crème de la crème of the Bollywood film fraternity but also because of the subject: marital infidelity. Apparently we in the "East" or "South Asia" just can't have our marriages falling apart because that's sacred. Hence bad marriages = taboo; films about it = you gotta be kidding, that's sacrilege and then some! Doesn't matter that the gossip circulating the local grapevine has hefty doses of "who is cheating on who?" and "who is getting divorced (again)?"....guess it becomes "real" and triggers the vocal chords of the moral police only when it's on celluloid?
Back to the film though...my own (unscientific) survey (ok not quite) reveals that some people loved KANK, more were outraged; the important thing, IMHO, is that so many watched it and continued to talk about it afterwards.
In the midst of all this talk about KANK some thoughts about the place of films (and other popular culture forms) in our talk about life fell into my head so here goes:
1. If the subject of a film makes you uncomfortable, don't go in expecting to find something else that, in your opinion, will redeem it. When you come out of the film don't crib about the heinousness of the subject either - you knew what it was going to be about.
2. Related to #1, I can't for the life of me fathom why we expect films to have a socially-responsible message that is in cognizance with the norms and values we hold or think we ought to. For some reason, we aren't outraged in quite the same way about newspaper editorials that we allow into our homes everyday -- even when we disagree vehemently with the content most of us either ignore/dismiss it or vent a little steam and then go on about our daily lives. But films seem to be imbued with a multitude of notions that render them as "sacred space" for the most part. If it isn't mindless entertainment (by which I mean ridiculous comedies with bawdy humor), it should have some kind of message - explicit or otherwise - about the way life ought to be lived. Why can't films be taken simply as a perspective on some aspect of life? Can't we digest them as texts that represent rather than preach? What I'm trying to say is that it's not the strong reactions that bewilder me as much as the fact that we can't forgive films for presenting an opinion with which we disagree or can't support. I certainly don't approve of infidelity, marital or otherwise, but should that make me go into a livid rant over a film like KANK that simply represents what happens to relationships when someone is unfaithful? I doubt it....again films, besides being entertaining, are simply a specific take, a specific perspective, a specific representation. Does it mean the director condones cheating on one's spouse? Not necessarily - as he's also clarified repeatedly in TV and magazine interviews. But even if he did, does it take away from the movie-watching experience? Does it make a less well-made movie because the director's moral register is different from ours? Does a movie's morality govern whether or not one should watch it? Perhaps...it's a personal choice but I personally think that's expecting too much of a film. What never ceases to amaze me is that when we read an editorial on the rampant corruption of our governments we let them get away but let's hang the 30-something director from a noose for depicting something that we ought not to be engaged in. [Relevant aside: civil society in Pakistan might not be dead, it's just numb to the things we romanticize it as being engaged in.]
3. Of course that just means that there is something powerful about the medium itself...at least in the Indian and Pakistani contexts (something I've learned not only through experience but through my dissertation research over the last 3-4 years) in a very specific way. Personally, there's something about sitting in a dark movie theater with surround sound that makes movie-watching larger than life and strangely life-like...I feel the music, the ambience and it moves me.
4. More specific to the movie, if we are going to judge the actions of the characters, the actors who played them, and the film-maker then some thoughts:
a) Dev, the character played by Shahrukh Khan, is not the lovable guy this actor is used to playing. You might detest the character with every fibre of your being but isn't that really proof of the fact that he's a good actor in that he can make you believe in the emotions that he's depicting.
b) Yup the character played by Abhishek seems to quite a few like the perfect husband (I beg to differ though which doesn't mean it wasn't enacted well - because he did a great job playing that character- but I guess I just don't envision spending my life with someone whose personality seems a bit unidimensional at times, especially in the earlier half) so that fact that the character of Maya (his wife in this film) leaves him and cheats on him isn't believable. Umm go back to the first 10 minutes of the film - she's having (more than) second thoughts right before they get married. Should she have not married him in the first place if that was the case? Yes. Does she have to pretend to be happy when she feels they aren't compatible? No. But that sounds fairly judgmental as well. The character cheated on her husband because she just didn't feel it was right with him or just because it was more right with someone else. I'm inclined to let it go at that. Why? You can't rationalize emotions ....sometimes things are the way they are because they are the way they are...period.
c) The charges, grounded in various ridiculous sounding reasons that are just too narrow-minded for me to even write down, that Karan Johar (the director) doesn't understand human emotions and relationships. Umm, maybe he didn't make a film about your emotions and relationships but that doesn't mean he represented these inaccurately. I'm not so sure we ever really represent things accurately whether these are understanding our loved ones' thoughts or recollecting a conversation and sharing it with someone else...but that's a transcendental path I won't walk down on, at least not in this post :-).
5. Consider this if you will; if not, humor me for just a little longer. In talking about the cultural politics of everyday life, Shotter proposes a new kind of knowing which is a "knowing from within". To summarize the idea, which will inevitably result in butchering from oversimplication so I hope you'll pardon that, the ways in which we act and make sense of our world are shaped by our interpretations of how people have acted in similar situations in the past and what we want the future to look like. It is in this process that the world(s) we inhabit are created/recreated. To me, that includes what we describe hurriedly as culture, values, morals, norms, traditions etc. It is through this process that we know who we are. In layman's terms, knowing from within is kind of like saying and/or acting on the basis of "this is how we do it". In those actions that we perform thinking this, we solidify certain ways of being i.e. the "we" and social phenomena i.e. the "this". Where does the future come in? Well by acting that way we've oriented ourselves towards the future in that we're seeing to preserve certain identities, certain ways of being. Where do films come in in all of this? Simple....I think when we watch a film we rely on this "knowing from within" to make sense of this text...that effectively defines the contours of how we react to the stories, the plots, the actors, and the film-maker. So yes I can see how the reactions have formed. But the point I'm trying to get to is this. Do we really have to be so close-minded that we can't even respect the fact that someone else might be coming from a different place? This is not the same as accepting it necessarily; I think you can still detest this film or anything else for that matter. But when I think about Shotter and when I look around myself it's upsetting to see that people just don't make an effort to give people room to think differently, behave differently, act differently to the extent that they pronounce it as wrong and reprehensible. Couldn't it just be that the circumstances of their "knowing from within" led them down a different path? Hate it, sure; but give it room enough to consider it "logical/sensical (yes I know that isn't a word but it goes with what I'm trying to say) embedded within or nested in a particular perspective". Some might call this giving someone else the "benefit of doubt" - I'd call it the "benefit of alternative interpretation/sense-making".
Okay tirade over. And if you still haven't seen the film, it's official DVD release is scheduled for this month. And if you haven't heard the music as yet, you're missing out on some of the best film song compilations ever. I'm pretty sure A.R. Rehman will sweep the awards this year for Rang De Basanti but if you ask me Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy have come up with a soundtrack that's much more listenable and really does enhance the tone of the film.
[PS: Yes I'm aware that the title of the post is quite a mouthful....let's not point out the obvious ;-)!]
Monday, October 02, 2006
I wonder how they got on with it..
I have never been a fan of porn. This may come as a surprise to my male comrades, but I am being honest. I have watched it, and owned it. I have sat there and watched it intensely- you know what I mean. But porn has always left something to wish for. Like all the porn in the world put together would probably not be able to make me watch the whole tape (or cds, dvds, mpegs and what have you) more than once. This probably just suggests that my disposition towards porn is not obsessive, but there still is some charm in porn, mind you. That charm lasts a few minutes (ahem!) and that's it.
Occasionally, when I think about the erotic moments in my life, most of my naughty thoughts are triggered by some of the stupidest of movie scenes. I am not joking. For instance, while watching Sleepless in Seattle and that last scene on top of the Empire State Building, I wondered how the two of them got on afterwards... How did they actually make the most of being "sleepless in Seattle" while they were in midtown Manhattan on the 5th Avenue?
"Would you like me to seduce you?" is perhaps the most suggestive and seductive yet comforting line I have ever heard. I mean just the tone of it makes you so comfortable that you can say anything from "Hmmm... yes please and now!” to “Can we do it tomorrow? Not feeling too good today.” I first heard this line in a George Michael song, ironically. And when I watched The Graduate a week later I could not stop thinking about how Mr. Hoffman would have gotten on with it all? Although, this time the movie did show him getting on with it a little bit, but my imagination still ran slightly away from safe quarters. Even now when I think of this scene, I can not help but hum "Here is to you Mrs. Robinson" with thoughts that Simon and Art surely did not have in their minds when they sang this song.
I have realized curiosity has been a major trigger of thoughts not so healthy in my life. I remember once, in the absence of any sexual orientation during my mid-to-late teenage years, I ordered a book on sex education that was being distributed free of charge by an Anglican Church somewhere in Australia. I don’t remember which part down under it was but it is one where they do not play any cricket, I think Darrel Hair comes from there.
Nevertheless, the book landed at my place in Karachi three months after I requested a free delivery. After carefully reading it one day, I conveniently forgot to hide it and left it by my bedside, obviously to be later discovered by everyone in my family. They kindly refused to ever mention it to me and put the book on my pillow to suggest that my dark secrets had been revealed! It was, and still is, one of the most embarrassing moments in my life. And hush, we did not and still do not ever talk about it.
But here is my point, erotic scenes in the movie are far more exciting then any hardcore porn in the world. I have been living with this philosophy for so long that I would not debate this any further here and will move on to not talking about porn.
The movie scenes carry a sense of intimacy, in addition to their exotic nature. Some of my all-time favorite ones would be the ones everyone would usually suspect. But apart from the more explicit ones, there is a whole list of scenes that have that curiosity factor, wanting to see something happen but not actually seeing it.
Did you ever think how sacred the life in bed would have been for Amitabh and Jaya Bhaduri in Abhi Maan? Tere mere milan ki yeh raina, naya koi gul khilae gi... You may not like me for it, but yes but I did also think about Shahnaz Shaikh and Asif Raza Mir in An Kahi.... cute couple you have to admit! Yes, and of course falling in absolute lust with Zeenat Aman in Qurbani? I mean holding back some of the emotions while watching it was a big sacrifice in itself. Ham tumhe chahte hain aise…
By this time, you probably think I am a pervert bastard. I am not, I beg your pardon. I am just being honest. And you know what, if it is not real life, it is the imitation of real life that excites you the most.
I work in broadcast media.
Occasionally, when I think about the erotic moments in my life, most of my naughty thoughts are triggered by some of the stupidest of movie scenes. I am not joking. For instance, while watching Sleepless in Seattle and that last scene on top of the Empire State Building, I wondered how the two of them got on afterwards... How did they actually make the most of being "sleepless in Seattle" while they were in midtown Manhattan on the 5th Avenue?
"Would you like me to seduce you?" is perhaps the most suggestive and seductive yet comforting line I have ever heard. I mean just the tone of it makes you so comfortable that you can say anything from "Hmmm... yes please and now!” to “Can we do it tomorrow? Not feeling too good today.” I first heard this line in a George Michael song, ironically. And when I watched The Graduate a week later I could not stop thinking about how Mr. Hoffman would have gotten on with it all? Although, this time the movie did show him getting on with it a little bit, but my imagination still ran slightly away from safe quarters. Even now when I think of this scene, I can not help but hum "Here is to you Mrs. Robinson" with thoughts that Simon and Art surely did not have in their minds when they sang this song.
I have realized curiosity has been a major trigger of thoughts not so healthy in my life. I remember once, in the absence of any sexual orientation during my mid-to-late teenage years, I ordered a book on sex education that was being distributed free of charge by an Anglican Church somewhere in Australia. I don’t remember which part down under it was but it is one where they do not play any cricket, I think Darrel Hair comes from there.
Nevertheless, the book landed at my place in Karachi three months after I requested a free delivery. After carefully reading it one day, I conveniently forgot to hide it and left it by my bedside, obviously to be later discovered by everyone in my family. They kindly refused to ever mention it to me and put the book on my pillow to suggest that my dark secrets had been revealed! It was, and still is, one of the most embarrassing moments in my life. And hush, we did not and still do not ever talk about it.
But here is my point, erotic scenes in the movie are far more exciting then any hardcore porn in the world. I have been living with this philosophy for so long that I would not debate this any further here and will move on to not talking about porn.
The movie scenes carry a sense of intimacy, in addition to their exotic nature. Some of my all-time favorite ones would be the ones everyone would usually suspect. But apart from the more explicit ones, there is a whole list of scenes that have that curiosity factor, wanting to see something happen but not actually seeing it.
Did you ever think how sacred the life in bed would have been for Amitabh and Jaya Bhaduri in Abhi Maan? Tere mere milan ki yeh raina, naya koi gul khilae gi... You may not like me for it, but yes but I did also think about Shahnaz Shaikh and Asif Raza Mir in An Kahi.... cute couple you have to admit! Yes, and of course falling in absolute lust with Zeenat Aman in Qurbani? I mean holding back some of the emotions while watching it was a big sacrifice in itself. Ham tumhe chahte hain aise…
By this time, you probably think I am a pervert bastard. I am not, I beg your pardon. I am just being honest. And you know what, if it is not real life, it is the imitation of real life that excites you the most.
I work in broadcast media.
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