Bollyspace

KANK Stank at Toronto

2006-09-17T07:21:00.000-05:00

From the NY Times:

India's ``Never Say Goodbye,'' at three hours and 12 minutes, was one of the longest feature films at the festival, and it was the first Bollywood feature to win a coveted Gala showing.

But the audience at the press and industry screening started drifting out after the first hour, and India's DNA Web site grumbled there were only around 20 reporters at a news conference that would have filled a stadium in India.

Link.

The Return of Begum Para

2006-09-17T07:09:00.000-05:00

From The Hindu, on the return of a siren to Hindi cinema:

It's probably the longest ever break from acting? The news is that Begum Para, the sex siren of the 1950s, is returning to Bollywood. Though the sparkle in her eyes remains, the svelte, sexy figure is gone; so have the quicksilver movements. These do not matter as Begum Para is playing a grandmother in Sanjay Leela Bansali's next film, "Sawariya" starring newcomers, Ranbir Rishi Kapoor and Sonam Anil Kapoor.

Story here.

Amol Palekar and sexuality

2006-09-13T11:51:00.000-05:00

I know, sexuality isn't the word that comes to mind when one brings up Amol Palekar. Middle class hero, middle cinema, or ramprasad dasrathprasad sharma and his twin lakshmanprasad dasrathprasad sharma spring readily to mind (revisit Golmaal here). Palekar doesn't make the news often, the hype surrounding Paheli being the sole exception.

But true to his middle-cinema roots, Amol Palekar has been exploring themes that no big-name director in Bollywood would touch. Can you think of anyone who would tackle a relationship between a rural girl and transvestite dancer (Daayra), or the sexual awakening of a queen in 10th century B.C. (Anaahat)? Having done this to critical acclaim, Palekar is now ready to release Thaang/The Quest, which deals with the "sexual incompatibility between an urban married couple."

From Rediff, an interview with Amol Palekar.

TV via Amazon.com

2006-09-08T06:46:00.000-05:00

From the BBC:

Backed by top Hollywood studios and TV channels, including Warner Brothers and CBS, Amazon Unbox will offer programmes and films direct to users' computers. Amazon's move into the online media business reflects huge growth in the demand for digital entertainment.
Computer and iPod firm Apple is widely expected due to unveil a similar service on 12 September.
Amazon's new download service is currently only available in the US, and offers TV shows for $1.99 (£1.06) per episode and movies for between $3.99 and $14.99.
Amazon Unbox should work on any personal computer that runs the Windows XP operating system and has broadband internet access.

Story here.

Film History Nugget: L. V. Prasad

2006-09-07T18:00:00.000-05:00

This week's Friday Review in The Hindu has a piece on a film personality who holds the "rare distinction of acting in the first talkie films of three languages." L. V. Prasad, it turns out, has been part of at least 65 films as either the producer, director, actor, or writer, over a span of more than 5 decades! Akkineni Lakshmi Vara Prasada Rao, it turns out, better known as L. V. Prasad, was awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke award in 1982, and a few days back, a postage stamp was issued in his honour.

Excerpt from The Hindu:

Like many aspiring actors, he too nurtured a wish to become a movie star and boarded a train to Bombay with just Rs. 100 in his pocket. He sneaked out of his house leaving behind his wife Soundarya Manoharamma and a toddler daughter. For 21 months, they did not know his whereabouts. Nor was he aware that he had lost his daughter. When nothing happened at the Kohinoor Studio gates and he was robbed of most of his money, he took shelter at a tailor's shop opposite the studios. The tailor got him a job in Venus Pictures but the company neither made any movie nor paid him. He worked during the evenings in a carnival for a salary of Rs. 1.50 per day, acted in bit roles in silent films and did odd jobs of carrying reflectors and camera stands.
He then joined Ardeshir Irani's Imperial Film Company and acted in bit roles in Alam Ara (1931), India's first talkie. H. M. Reddy was an assistant director with Irani then. The same year Irani produced the first Telugu talkie Bhaktha Prahlada and the first Tamil talkie Kalidas, both directed by H. M. Reddy. As a company employee, Prasad had acted in both the talkies, as Chandaamarkulu and temple priest respectively. Thus he had the rare distinction of acting in the first talkie films of the three languages.

More on L. V. Prasad here, and his official website here.

Can you do dethrone King Khan?

2006-09-07T17:55:00.000-05:00

From The Hindu, about a new reality show on Indian TV that seeks to find the next big superstar, sponsored by Fair & Lovely Menz Active:

SaharaOne Television is all ready to cash in on dreams. The channel is soon to launch "Super Stars", a reality show that identifies not an actor or a singer or a dancer, but a superstar. One hundred twenty contestants have been short-listed from auditions held in Ludhiana, Delhi, Kolkata, Bhopal, Mumbai and Lucknow. The jury will consist of actress Urmila Matondkar, choreographer Shiamak Dawar, Kishore Namit Kapoor of "Kapoor Acting Lab", designer Anna Singh and guest directors and actors. Viewers will also vote via sms.

When the show launches, 10 contestants will try to convince a studio audience and television viewers that they are more than Amitabh Bachchan.

Whole story here. More about the show here.

Upperstall reviews Lage Raho Munnabhai

2006-09-07T09:02:00.000-05:00

In Upperstall's review of Lage Raho Munnabhai, I found this bit particularly interesting:

Remember the times when NFDC and Films' Division continually tried to create and promote socially-relevant films? How that idea transmogrified into (a kind of) parallel cinema and gave birth to many good films by equally good filmmakers (a more recent example in Gowariker's Swades )? But Lage Raho Munna Bhai simply redefines the very concept of such a film. You can have stars, you can have songs and dance, you can bargain with exhibitors and multiplexes (and win), you can have side-splitting humour, your leading men can portray goons and chase girls, and you can STILL make a very effective film with great cinematic value and social relevance! Surely this is genius.

The reviewer is right, I think, in getting us to think about LRM as a film that doesn't fit neatly into categories like "commercial" or "parallel." The broader context within which a film like LRM is being made is important to acknowledge here, particularly the relationship between cinema and the state. The state's relationship to cinema is no longer defined by "developmental" concerns, which is what led to the establishment of NFDC (National Film Development Corporation). If anything, initiatives like FRAMES demonstrate ways in which the state has, over the past 8 years or so (beginning with the landmark 1998 decision to grant industry status), actively sought to reframe its relationship with cinema. And unlike in the NFDC-phase, it is very difficult to pin down genres that define this latest phase of the state-cinema relationship. It is tempting to suggest that the Karan Johar variety of films are the dominant genre, but for every K-Jo disaster, there is an Omkara and a Lage Raho Munnabhai.

An M.A. in "entertech"?

2006-09-07T08:27:00.000-05:00

From the NY Times, about Arizona State University's approach to media/film studies:

...the course, called Entertainment and Technology, part of the film and media studies program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, is anything but an exercise in ivory tower esoterics.
Instead it is the start of a new program to grant an undergraduate certificate, and eventually a master’s degree, in the nascent field the university calls EnterTech — where entertainment meets technology — with the idea of preparing young professionals to work in the warp-speed world of a changing Hollywood.

Whole story here.

Arrival Stories

2006-09-07T06:36:00.000-05:00

This story in the Chronicle sparked memories of my own arrival in Athens, Ga, in the fall of 1999. Like the students in this story, I too sent emails to various "officers" of the Indian Students Association at the University of Georgia, and received detailed information on how to get to Athens from Atlanta. I was received by a couple of "seniors" who asked the standard questions within minutes of meeting me: where are you from? where did you do your undergrad? do you have funding? what are you going to study here? At one of their homes, in a part of athens dubbed "jamuna nagar" (james town), I answered many more questions, and received much 'gyaan' on navigating life in a small southern town. Needless to say, they fed me well (chole), and with a couple of phone calls, arranged an apartment that was within walking distance of the journalism school.

Read the whole story here.

Doordarshan Documentary Alert

2006-09-05T09:06:00.000-05:00

Patwardhan has never had it easy with Doordarshan (DD). His award-winning films have been screened worldwide, to much acclaim (and of course, controversy), but DD has always stayed away tfrom them. In 1998, a Selection Committee justified their decision not to telecast the film on DD:

The documentary entitled 'Father, Son & Holy War' depicts the rise of Hindu fundamentalism and male chauvinism without giving any solution how it could be checked. The violence and hatred which is depicted in the whole documentary will have an adverse effect on the minds of the viewers.

Now, nearly 8 years later, the Supreme Court has directed DD to screen the film.

..."Father, Son and Holy War", a two hour, two-part documentary critique of the male psyche and its relationship to communal violence, which was completed in 1995. The film was passed without cuts by the Central Board of Film Certification and it went on to win two National Awards in 1996 for Best Social Film and Best Investigative Film.
Now, finally, the TV audiences across the country will get a chance to watch the film, included among the 50 memorable documentaries in world cinema by Europe's DOX magazine.

Story here. Full text of the judgment here.
[picture link]

Vaettaiyadu Vilayaadu

2006-09-05T09:02:00.000-05:00

Malathi Rangarajan reviews Vaettaiyaadu Vilayaadu:

Neat linear narration marks Seventh Channel Communications' presentation and Photon Factory production, `Vaettaiyaadu Vilayaadu' (U/A). Come to think of it, there's nothing actually new about the storyline, which deals with the constant battle of one-upmanship between upright police officers and the mafia. But when you have decent treatment (Gautham), sterling performances (Kamal Haasan, Prakashraj), terrific camera work (Ravivarman), excellent editing (Antony) and remarkable re-recording (Harris Jeyaraj), the film gains a sheen that really impresses you.

National Readership Survey 2006

2006-09-05T08:11:00.000-05:00

From The Hindu:

The National Readership Study 2006 (NRS 2006) in India is the largest survey of its kind in the world, with a sample size of 2,84,373 house-to-house interviews to measure the media exposure and consumer product penetration in both urban and rural India – and of course the estimated readership of publications. The study covers 535 publications of which 230 are dailies and 305 are magazines.

Highlights and findings here. For more information on the NRS, go here.

Women Writing (Bollywood) Scripts

2006-09-04T17:51:00.000-05:00

The recently held All India Screenwriters Conference held at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) sought to publicize the "plight of screenwriters and the quality of screenwriting in India" (story here). All the big names got together and made the right noises (Shekhar Kapur, Javed Akhtar, Anjum Rajabali, etc.). None of them talked about how the scene is changing in what has been a largely male-domainted domain.

In the world of Salim-Javed, there has been one Honey Irani (of Lamhe fame) and a few women directors like Tanuja Chandra and Leena Yadav who have written their own films. Writing another man's film is a difficult nut to crack. So are Bhavani and Venita and the half dozen other women now writing Bollywood scripts making any difference, or is it just more of the same?

Full story here. And go here to read about a screenwriter's adventures in Bollywood!

Farah Khan & Shakira

2006-09-03T07:34:00.000-05:00

"Shakira gave me only two days to rehearse and what we've achieved should make all of us in Bollywood proud," says Farah Khan when asked about Shakira's preparedness to perform a Bollywood-style number at this year's Video Music Awards held in NY city. Interview with Farah Khan here, and the video here.

2006-08-31T15:13:00.000-05:00

Don Theatrical Trailer

Writing about film style? Farhan Akhtar is your man.

Bollywoodization of Page 3: a quote

2006-08-31T14:00:00.000-05:00

One of the themes that kept coming up during my interviews with media producers and execs in Mumbai concerned Page 3, and how Bollywood personalities seem to have taken over Page 3 culture. Here's an excerpt from an interview I did with a TV producer:

Page 3 started off with high-society. But in the mid-90s, Bollywood started becoming cool, and the line between high-society and film became very blurred. There used to be a separate page for cinema, and a separate one for Page 3, and gradually, the characters on the two pages started crossing over from one page to another.

This was also the time when Bollywood was no longer about Govinda - it was about Shahrukh and Adi chopra and Karan Johar. And I'd even say it was Karan Johar mainly - he was the poster boy. He was a mahalakshmi kid who went and made one of the biggest blockbusters of all time. on the one hand, he was making films with his childhood friends in them, like Kajol. On the other hand, he was hanging out with Avanti and Yash Birla and his friends were Rhea Pillai...socialites, you know.

Adi was very media shy. Karan was really the guy who made Bollywood cool, and brought in the crowds who previously used to look down on Bollywood films. And in time, the socialites also realized that it was cool to invite Bollywood stars to their parties. These stars were no longer like Govinda and Mithun - they were cool, suave, very cosmopolitan, very global.

Dor, starring Shreyas Talapde

2006-08-31T08:19:00.000-05:00

We will soon see Shreyas Talpade, who played Iqbal to much acclaim, essaying the role of a Rajasthani man who helps a murderer's wife track down the victim's wife. Produced by Sahara One, written and directed by Kukunoor, and starrring Talpade, Ayesha Takia (as the victim's wife), Gul Panag (murderer's wife), Girish Karnad, and Pratiksha Lonkar. The film releases this September.

I liked Iqbal a lot, and thought Teen Deewarein didn't get enough attention. While I hope this film translates into moolah for Kukunoor, I also hope he stays in the space of off-beat cinema that is being carved out in India now. More here, and here. [Pic from IndiaFM]

One year as ABD!

2006-08-30T19:59:00.000-05:00

Around this time last year, I made the transition into that realm of great uncertainty known as ABD! I'm still there, making some progress. But there's a ways to go before I can emerge from the quicksand-like zone marked all-but-dissertation and move into one where I'll be almost-bloody done.

For the most part, these early days are fun. I'm writing a chapter, and doing a good job of thinking about the chapter and not the entire dissertation. I still like my topic. When friends ask me what I'm working on, I am able to give them a satisfactory answer in less than a minute. I don't snap at people who ask me how the dissertation is coming along. I planned ahead and came up with a routine that lets me be civil and cheerful: furrow eyebrows, nod slowly, say "it is coming along," and wait for the other person to follow up or be gracious and change the subject.

And you know what? I'm putting in my "fifteen minutes" every day, and that's that.

Feel like a smatterer? Its a good thing!

2006-08-29T15:17:00.000-05:00

Feel you know a little bit here and there? Familiar with the ideas of a few big names, in two or three disciplines which intersect with your interests in some ways? Nervous you'll be hauled up for not knowing enough? Feel like a smatterer? Smatter away then! It may not be a bad thing, says this crusty old scholar-critic [see last paragraph, if you're not inclined to read the whole thing!].

BAFTA Goes Bollywood

2006-08-29T09:14:00.000-05:00

Last month, BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) organized a three day series "designed to celebrate and explore contemporary Bollywood cinema." In addition to screening hits like Rang De Basanti, K3G, and Dil Chahta Hai, the series also roped in prominent UK media personalities to conduct interviews with Shahrukh, Aamir, Karan Johar, Yash Chopra, and Preity Zinta. The interviews are long (35-40 min), but there are some interesting segments (for e.g., the part where Aamir explains why he prefers hearing scripts to reading them, and how different directors have their own styles of narration - at about 8 minutes in).
(via Naachgaana)

Chaya Geet: Film Music, Fandom, and Memory

2006-08-28T19:49:00.000-05:00

The day after I arrived in Athens, Georgia, to begin graduate studies (august, 1999), I walked to a computer lab on campus, logged on, and discovered rec.arts.movies.local.Indian (r.a.m.l.i) and rec.indian.music.misc (r.m.i.m). Over the next few months, I spent many happy hours browsing through discussions (and occasionally participating) of heroes, heroines, villains, playback singers, and music directors of Indian cinema (mostly Hindi cinema) with other fans, many who were graduate students like myself.

Several fans on rmim and ramli also set up websites of their own using space provided by their college/university or sometimes, using services like geocities. One such fan - Sami Mohammed - was a particularly active member of rmim, and also a fan of Naushad and Rafi. A grad student at Lehigh, Sami also developed a series around the popular film music show (on All India Radio's Vividh Bharati) Chaya Geet. The series, as he describes it, is a small tribute to my favorite Vividh Bharati announcer (and Chhaya Geet hostess) Kanta Gupta."

Some of the themes that Sami developed seem to emerge from grad student life in the U.S. in the early-mid 90s, before the Internet, CDs, and VCDs enabled direct and immediate contact with the world of Indian cinema (exams special, FORTRAN 94, Insomnia). Other song lists are developed around emotions such as intezaar (waiting) or bichhaRna (separation) - themes that Chhaya Geet was known for. From what I can read through now at Sami's site and rmim archives, it is clear that this series was a tremendous hit with the hundreds of other rmim-ers.

I like Sami's site for both personal and academic reasons. It is a terrific archive that can help us account for the role of grassroots cultural production in the emergence of an Indian cinematic cyberpublic, well before dot-com companies like IndiaFM and Indiatimes entered the picture (more on this later). And on a more personal note, it resonates deeply with my own sense of being a "fan" of Indian films and film music, and why radio shows like Chhaya Geet, television programs like Chitrahaar, and later, shows like Pepsi Ungal Choice on Sun TV were so important as spaces for fan expression.

As I've mentioned earlier, the "fan" is a marginalized figure in India, thought of primarily as a rowdy (an imperfect citizen in aesthetic, cultural, and political terms). Sami, and other fans on rmim and ramli, are anything but rowdies. And what is more, for many of these fans, it seems shows like Chhaya Geet and Binaca Geet Mala constituted a "virtual" community, a site of participatory culture that was "safe." By safe, I mean both anonymity, and the fact that film music has always occupied an ambiguous "middle brow" position where cultural definitions were concerned (my parents didn't bother me when I tuned in to Chhaya Geet, but they didn't like it when I hung around a street corner fan association!).

Perhaps every fan letter that anchors like Ameen Sayani read out loud on Radio Ceylon and All India Radio served to legitimize a mode of being a fan who was neither a "rowdy" nor a "rasika" (high-culture connoisseur). When Kaanta Gupta opened each episode with the lines, "chhaya geet sunne walon ko Kaanta Gupta ka namaskar," perhaps she brought together a community of fans, convened an adda, if you will, that lasted a mere 30 minutes, but came together each night at 10:00 p.m. Little surprise then, that "recreating" these shows on the Internet evoked such nostalgic and joyous responses from hundreds of other fans with similar experiences.

Ugly Betty? Betty la Fea? Jassi?

2006-08-28T17:37:00.000-05:00

"Yo Soy Betty, la Fea" ("I Am Betty, the Ugly") first traveled to India and became Sony TV's smash hit Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin. And now, with Salma Hayek's backing, the Colombian telenovela comes to the U.S. as Ugly Betty.

There's been enough written in anticipation of Ugly Betty on ABC's primetime lineup this coming fall, but for the most part, people haven't mentioned the India connection (except here). I think it is worth bringing up the India connection if only to recognize that there are many circuits of global media flows that are not driven by media corporations in the U.S. or the U.K., "south-south" cultural and economic exchanges that took place well before globalization (as a primarily west-driven phenomenon) became a buzz word.

"Ugly Betty" is an interesting case also because India's encounter with telenovelas goes all the way back to the early days of Doordarshan! We would not have spent hours watching Basesar Ram, Bhagwanti, Lallu, Chutki, and others if not for Miguel Sabido, the man credited with developing the first "soap operas for social change" in Mexico during the late 1970s. The story goes:

"[Sabido] travelled to India with David Poindexter, who was working at the Population Institute, a nonprofit organization that focusses on family planning. (The following year, Poindexter founded the program that would become P.C.I.) The two met with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the Indian health minister. When Sabido asked the health minister what proportion of India's population had access to contraceptives, he answered, "A hundred per cent." As the meeting ended, Sabido told me, Mrs. Gandhi took him aside and said of her minister, "That man is a liar!" She then approved a Sabido-method telenovela for a state-run network. The show, "Hum Log" ("We People"), which went on the air in 1984, became one of the most popular dramas in Indian history."

More on Sabido here, and here's an interesting account of how Sony execs in India were convinced that "an ugly woman as the star of a series" would work.

Gandhi and Tagore: Against/Post Nationalism

2006-08-28T06:08:00.000-05:00

Excerpts from a thought provoking essay by Ashis Nandy in a recent issue of EPW.

"I am treading on dangerous ground. Not only have I drawn attention to the eccentric hostility of our national poet to the idea of nationalism, I have diagnosed the nationalism of the Father of the Nation as fraudulent. Worse, I have read his assassination's nationalism as the genuine stuff, grounded in dominant contemporary ideas of sanity and rationality."

"Fortunately for the Indian nationalists, secular or otherwise, the evil influence of the two maverick thinkers I have discussed is waning. We are now proudly moving towards the genuine stuff - the real, textbook version of nationalism about which Ernest Gellner once said that you do not have to examine its contents in different parts of the world, for they are always the same. That is, paradoxically, nationalist thought is never nationally distinctive; it is globalised by definition. And it was so decades before globalisation became a buzz word."

Go here to read "Nationalism, Genuine and Spurious: Mourning Two Early Post-Nationalist Strains."

SRK on Kamalhassan

2006-08-25T05:36:00.000-05:00

Gautham Menon, the young director who wowed Tamil film audiences with Kaaka Kaaka, must be pleased with initial reactions to his much-hyped Vettaiyadu Vilaiyadu. Starring Kamalhassan, Jyothika, and Prakash Raj, with music by Harris Jeyaraj, the film seems to be doing well. Anyways, last week's Friday Review featured an interview with Gautham Menon and for some inexplicable reason, the interview opens with SRK's thoughts on Kamal. And oh, the interview itself seems little more than a place-filler.

"I walk down the road and people want to kiss me. I'd never do all that to anyone. Not Mr. Bachchan or Mr. Rajnikant. The exception is Kamal. I asked him if I could touch him when I first met him," said Shahrukh Khan during the shooting of Dil Se. "He has an amazing sense of using space. When he plays an old man his gait and the way he stands is enough to convey his age. He doesn't need make-up. I find him greater than Dustin Hoffman and De Niro put together, I know Kamal can make you cry with a look in his eyes. I know his pauses. He has an amazing sense of timing that he knows the audience likes. He's a technician par excellence. That kind of knowledge and control every actor should strive to get," said `King Khan' with a look of adoration in his eyes.

Bollywood Flicks on AOL.com

2006-08-25T05:24:00.000-05:00

AOL enters the online video business in a bid to fight firms like Movielink, CinemaNow, and Netflix. And what's more, AOL offers a surprisingly large number (more than 600) of Bollywood films, including some recent hits like Fanaa.

From the NY Times [link]:

AOL said yesterday that it would offer movies from four major Hollywood studios for downloading on its Internet video service.

AOL, which is owned by Time Warner, said films from 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Universal Pictures and the Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Group would be available for download on AOL Video for $9.99 to $19.99 a movie. Link.

Binaca Geet Mala: Early Years

2006-08-16T19:43:00.000-05:00

Ameen Sayani recalls, among other fascinating details, Binaca Geet Mala's early years on Radio Ceylon. Article here.

"For all of Rs. 25, I was required to select the songs, produce, script and compere the programme, and also sort the mail. The programme involved a competition and we expected 40-50 letters. The first episode brought 9,000. Within a year, that number touched 60,000. We had to shelve the competition and introduce a countdown show."

If you've played cricket...

2006-08-16T19:28:00.000-05:00

Played a few hundred hours of cricket growing up? Think that's enough to have a feel for what exactly transpires in the middle when Rahul Dravid is batting? Rohit Brijnath asks you to stop cribbing about slow run rates and reflect, even if only for a moment, and marvel at what cricketers do. Article here.

When Brett Lee bowls, he propels the ball at a speed beyond our understanding; 150kmph is meaningless to us, we have no frame of reference.
From 22 yards, most people would not see the ball, would not register its course, before it arrives at their throat to complete an involuntary tracheotomy.
Yet in these fractions of a second, as our brain arrests, Dravid has seen, recognised and categorised the ball, sent a message to his hands, legs, body to arrange themselves, blending memory and reflex and anticipation and knowledge, and as his bat rises, and soft hands ensure the ball drops right down to his feet, here's what you and I think. Dammit. No run.

Heart Attack? Don't Bother Calling for an Ambulance

2006-08-13T08:28:00.000-05:00

Scott Carney, my friend from Madison who is currently in Chennai, writes about what the U.S. could learn from India about healthcare. He is impressed by the fact that it is possible to walk into a doctor's office and get treated without any fuss. No forms to fill out, no worries about insurance. Even at a private clinic, the treatment is affordable and at government hospitals, it is free. I agree - I've had the experience of coming down with the flu in the U.S. and having to wait for one whole day before I was treated by a nurse practitioner. It is very, very frustrating.

Scott admits that there are other major problems with healthcare in India. To my mind, one of the most serious problems concerns emergency services. My father recently died of a heart attack, and my mom managed to get him to a clinic near home with the help of a neighbor who owns a car. The clinic arranged for an ambulance, and he was taken to a bigger hospital nearby. At the hospital, it took nearly 45 minutes for a cardiologist to arrive.

No ambulance with flashing lights and a shrill alarm speeding past vehicles that move to the side of the road (in an area like Malleswaram, on Sampige Road, there is no side you could move to even if you wanted). No code blue, a la Grey's Anatomy. Too little, too late. Everyone recognizes that my mom did the best she could under the circumstances, but it wasn't enough.

A day before we left Bangalore, I came down with a bad throat infection and went to my mom's doctor, who is also a cardiologist. Minutes after I reached the clinic, a family arrived in a van and out rushed a middle-aged woman. She asked the clinic staff for a wheel chair, took it outside, and with the help of two of her neighbors who had accompanied her in the van, managed to get her husband into the wheelchair. The doctor came out, felt his pulse, and realized right away that he had had a heart attack and was in a critical condition.

But he could do little else. His clinic wasn't equipped to deal with such an emergency. He did not know how to get an ambulance. The receptionist did not know either. She did not even have phone numbers of major hospitals handy. I ended up calling a call-taxi service using my cell phone, and until the taxi arrived, I was out on the road, trying to flag down cars. None stopped. And there wasn't even an auto in sight.

Eventually, the doctor called a friend of his at a nearby hospital who then arranged for an ambulance. Now this ambulance, as we found out a full fifteen minutes later, was a Maruti Van with the back seat taken out and placed lengthwise. That's it. No flashing lights, no oxygen tank. The driver had just woken up, and was still dressed in his lungi and banian, and arrived alone. So the driver, the patient's neighbor, and I somehow managed to get the patient off the wheelchair and into the ambulance. We were clumsy - we had no idea if there was a proper way to handle him. We might have contributed to his worsening condition. And I don't know if he survived.

I went in and asked the doctor if this was par for the course and he nodded. It is very frustrating, he said. This was a doctor who had worked in the U.S. for more than two decades before returning to Bangalore. "Unlike in the U.S., where the county or the city provides emergency care - at least an ambulance which gets you to a hospital - there is nothing like that here," he said. "The Bangalore City Corporation does not provide this service. If you call 102, a number listed in the phone directory, no one picks up. Trust me, I've tried."

If you don't have a car, if you don't have neighbors who own cars and are at home at the time, if you live in a part of the city where autos aren't easy to find, or if you have a medical emergency late at night, you're in trouble. All you will have left is a crushing sense of guilt that you did not/could not do enough to save your loved one's life.

As I said earlier, I had this experience a day before I left Bangalore. So I did not have a chance to make some calls and find out what emergency health services the City of Bangalore or the State of Karnataka provides or are expected to provide. I hope to do this in October, when I'm in Bangalore next.

KANK: Review Roundup

2006-08-12T07:21:00.000-05:00

Rediff's Raja Sen writes that "the characters are cardboard, the setting is glitzy, the songs are tiresome, and the story oscillates between high melodrama and slapstick hilarity, going nowhere." He concludes: Damn, it still hurts. Think it'll take a couple more viewings of another film with a limping leading man to soothe the pain.

Taran Adarsh, at IndiaFM.com, has nothing but praise. "Just don't expect KANK to be a typical candyfloss entertainer. Or an archetypal fare that Bollywood is known for. In those 3.06 hours/22 reels, Karan packs in some solid stuff." Evidently, Taran Adarsh believes reviewing or critiquing a film involves one of two things: gush about it, or declare it a dud. And how does he outline KANK's merits? By alerting us to dialogues in the film that are eminiently cringeworthy: "The spat between SRK and Preity on one hand [Preity: 'I wear the pants in this house'], followed by the heated argument between Abhishek and Rani [Abhishek: 'You can't even bear a child'] is amongst the most remarkable portions in the film." Yes, remarkable indeed.

The NY Times' Neil Genzlinger wonders "why Mr. Johar’s cinematic eye seems stuck in the land of Playboy videos, shampoo commercials and early MTV." Perhaps Mr.Genzlinger hasn't seen Mr.Johar's attempt at recreating the Archie-comics era in 90s India in his superhit debut, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. The review is kind though, and concludes: But those looking for subtlety and sophistication should not have wandered into this film in the first place.

Indiatimes.com plays it safe, saying "after a while we have a Bollywood film that’s as easy to admire as it is to enjoy." They couldn't possibly afford to get SRK on their bad side. Newbies in India would be mistaken for thinking Filmfare is in many ways SRK's mouthpiece. But no, hang on. Just when you think the Times group couldn't really sink any lower, they decide to give you a "quick roundup of all the juicy tidbits" with this headline: Get the skinny on all the KANK-y stuff. *blech*

But thankfully, Nikhat Kazmi over at TOI gives it to us straight: Too long. Too tedious. And strangely plastic. No, this time, Karan Johar seems to have got the formula skewed.

It does seem clear that after KANK, a lot more people are going to wary about anything Karan Johar decides to do next. And Abhishek Bandekar at Naachgaana expresses hope. "Karan Johar was inspired to make Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna(Never Say Goodbye), his study of love and its complex nature in these rapidly changing times, after a single viewing of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset. For the sake of all of us, may his DVD collection burn and/or the library he rents titles from run out of classics."

Kannada Cinema: 1934-2006

2006-08-11T06:14:00.000-05:00

From The Hindu: The mega portal of Kannada cinema Chitraloka is throwing a feast for cineastes on the occasion of Suvarna Karnataka. An exhibition of 2,500 stills from films released between 1934 and 2006 will be on display at Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce, beginning August 14.

Filmfare on the Web: Early Days

2006-08-10T20:33:00.000-05:00

The Wayback Machine is truly remarkable! Working on a chapter that looks at the role played by the Internet in enabling Bollywood's global flows, I really really wanted to take a peek at what some of the big-name sites were like way back when the Web was a new-fangled thing. Sites like Rediff, Indiatimes, and IndiaFM. The Times Group was one of the earliest of the media houses to go online, and along with the Times of India and Economic Times, Filfmare also went online as early as 1996! Here's a peek at 2 such pages. For more, go here.

2006-08-10T13:25:00.000-05:00

Making of Where's the party tonight?

Yashraj does know how to promote a film. "Where's the party tonight," ask Abhishek, Shahrukh, and Preity and lead you into a typical Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy disco number, but which also has a key role in pushing the story forward. NDTV carried this promo. And oh, don't forget to scroll down the "explore more videos" section for all the NDTV Night Out stuff and a sweet little fanvid with all the stills that have been released.

Making of Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna

2006-08-10T12:52:00.000-05:00

If you're one of those who loves to bitch about K-Jo films but will go see it twice anyway (and then buy the DVD because K-JO movies grow on you), here's something to keep you going until the film hits a screen near you. SRKPagali has uploaded the "making of KANK" (aired on NDTV and ZEE). And IndiaFM.com has also announced that you'll be treated to a trailer of Dhoom 2 when you go to see KANK (both distributed by Yashraj Films).

Filmy Trivia: Teaser-Ad

2006-08-07T10:24:00.000-05:00

From Screen (July 16, 2003):

Back in 1940, a dramatic WANTED and a passport size picture of Sadhana Bose immediately drew attention to the release ad of Kum Kum - The Dancer. The crowd-pulling gimmick went on to say that a charming pickpocketer who commits highway robbery, had picked the pocket of the zamindar's son and robbed him of his heart. She had then married him and robbed his father. After that, she had come to Bombay and robbed the cinema loving audiences of over Rs.13,000 in one week. People were warned that this dangerous criminal was now in the city and could be spotted by her beautiful dancing in Kum Kum. "For other points of identification, visit the Imperial Cinema today at 1 p.m., 4, 6:30, and 9:30."

"NRIs are the villagers of India," says King Khan

2006-08-07T06:06:00.000-05:00

If he hasn't quit yet, what is Shahrukh Khan smoking these days? In an interview with Mayank Shekhar (Mumbai Mirror), Khan holds forth on many a topic. Here's what he has to say about NRIs and the K-JO genre:

MS: How do you explain being the prime draw among NRIs?
SRK: The technical reason is the return of the cinema in the '90s after VCRs became outdated. We did 'yuppie' films that featured English-speaking actors. However, let me also tell you that NRIs are the villagers of India. You meet them and they go, "What you are doing yaar; I don't know what the f*** is happening, yaar". They went abroad from Amritsar, Pind; and even now, 90 per cent of NRIs are from the villages of Gujarat'. The South Indians are the only educated people you will find abroad and they are not the greatest audience we have. We have a South Indian film audience but they are not our NRI audience. The bottom-line is that we are again catering to the same people.

The rest of the interview here.
(via Indian Writing)

Trisha Fan Club

2006-08-06T08:19:00.000-05:00

And now, Trisha, an in-demand heroine in Tamil cinema, has a fan club. This is not an online fan club that might fizzle out in a few months, but one that aspires to function like a Vijaykant fan club. From Behindwoods:

The fan club of a heroine may give an idea of a ragtag group of loyalists who whistle loudly at every appearance of their favourite lady on screen, but this fan club is far from that sort of thing.

As soon as this club was they decided to sponsor all the needs of 10 orphan children. They also constantly monitor and take care of the needs of a home sheltering those with impaired mental development. They also give away educational aid to deserving students from economically backward classes.

Trisha is not the first heroine from Tamil to have a fan club dedicated to her name; one existed for an actress, not too many years back. But this is surely the first time that such a fan club has steeped into social activism.

And yes, they have a flag too! Red, blue, and a star in the middle with Trisha's picture in it!

Aran: Shot in Kashmir, Amidst Gunfire

2006-08-06T07:55:00.000-05:00

Poland just won't do, decides an ex-army man turned producer. R. B Choudhary, who has helped filmmakers like Mani Ratnam plan film sequences in border areas, talks about his experiences shooting Aran (starring Mohanlal).

They pushed realism to the limits.Producer R. B. Choudhary, director Major Ravi and the crew plonked themselves in the turbulent terrain of Kashmir, for nearly a month (27 days to be exact) amidst real gunfire, for the shooting of `Aran.'
"Generally I never go to the sets; nor do I travel with the unit. But `Aran' was a different ball game ... a high-risk project, because we were shooting in Kashmir. I couldn't sit here in peace when my people were working under potentially perilous conditions," smiles Choudhary. He stayed with the crew in Kashmir for all the 27 days.

Full story here.

Film Music as Solace

2006-08-05T07:23:00.000-05:00

An hour before the kick-off of the Convergence Culture Symposium, I received a call from my sister saying my father had suffered a heart attack. She added that the doctors didn't think he would make it. I rushed to the airport, got my tickets changed, and a few minutes after I got past the security check, I got another call saying it was over. He was gone. I've been in Bangalore the past few months, and am now back in the U.S., trying hard to get on with work. It's been slow and agonizing, but I am now able to persuade my mind to think about that, ahem, "long paper" I need to write.

I considered using this space to work through what I was going through. But it has taken me this long to accept, and not just understand, a change that in its finality is nothing but excruciating. I now hope to blog regularly, and not just about filmy stuff. But for now, I will mark this return with a note about film music.

After the traditional period of mourning, and the feast on the 13th day which marks the end of mourning, all our friends and relatives left, leaving me and amma at home. For the first time after my father's death, we were left alone with our thoughts. It was difficult, to say the least, to continue living in an apartment that seemed eeriely empty yet reminiscent of time spent with anna. While we tried our best to stay occupied - visitors, shopping for groceries, cooking, watching television - there were times when we would just sit quietly, afraid to talk lest we break down again, inconsolable. The one thing that provided much comfort during those initial days was, strangely enough, film music. And in a way, the radio - which he would leave on all day long, switching stations constantly - became an object that helped amma and me smile at times. "I would get annoyed at times," said amma one morning. "Some nights he would fall asleep with the radio on, and I would have to find the remote in the dark and switch it off." The Matinee Show on Radiocity 91.0 FM, Chaya Geet on All India Radio at 10:00 p.m., and much else to fill up the rest of the day.

As I heard songs that I remember anna enjoying and humming, it seemed a nice way to mourn. At times when it felt like there was nothing left to hold on to - no diary, no letters, no last words at the hospital - film music was a balm for grief. And one song in particular resonated with much of what I was feeling: kal ho na ho. I recognize that the song may mean little to many people, and might even sound utterly corny. But I found the lyrics of the song, and the affect it produced under the circumstances, very comforting. It helped me come to terms with the idea of moving on, and reminded me to cherish relationships.

Convergence Culture Symposium@MIT

2006-04-24T15:24:00.000-05:00

"There Is No Box! In The Matrix, we learned that there is no spoon – only the idea of a spoon. Stuck in an old paradigm – shatter it. Let's stop talking about "thinking outside the box." There is no box! Let's rewrite the code of consumer relations and branded entertainment. What happens next is up to us."

The schedule for the the first symposium of the Convergence Culture Consortium (C3) group at MIT (April 27-29) is now online. C3 is one of many experiments that the Comparative Media Studies program has developed as a way to figure out how a humanities-oriented media studies program can churn out critical thinkers and media professionals who can have an intelligent conversation without rolling their eyes and calling each other names. Thanks to Parmesh Shahani, friend and mentor, I've been involved with the group and will be giving a talk about Bollywood Inc. on April 28 (Session 6: I'm Getting Desi). This is the first time I'll be addressing (faffing to) an audience of media industry professionals, who will, needless to say, be interested less in the political economy of the dotcom sector and more in my opinion on untapped business opportunities.

So I'm off to Boston on Wednesday. Punjabi Dhaba at Inman Square, pizza at Emma's, mango tofu from a food truck, and of course, chai and addabaazi with Parmesh, Sajan and other good friends.

ImaginAsian: Bollywood and the U.S. Market

2006-04-23T07:53:00.000-05:00

For long, folks in Bollywood have struggled to figure out the best way to promote and distribute their films in overseas markets like the U.S. Until a few years back, producers would sell distribution rights to someone in the U.S., and that was it - they had little or nothing to do with the promotion or exhibition of the film after that. And this process itself was, like all things in Bollywood, poorly organized. With biggies like Kishore Lulla (Eros) entering the fray, this process has improvied considerably over the past decade or so. And Web-based promotions are one way for studios/producers to stay in touch with their NRI audiences and seek ways to go beyond the NRIs and attract non-Indians as well. Now, A new venture, ImaginAsian Entertainment, seeks to alter the way Asian films circulate in the U.S.

...an ambitious ethnic brand that has expanded from a low-powered television channel to a vertically integrated media empire in less than three years. As chief executive, Mr. Hong oversaw January's opening of ImaginAsian Pictures, which announced the controversial Korean drama "Green Chair" as its first acquisition. The film, which unsettled American film festival audiences with its intense story of a woman and her under-age lover, will open this summer on the Upper East Side at the ImaginAsian Theater before moving on to ImaginAsian Home Video and ImaginAsian TV, which reaches 4.4 million households in markets including New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

That rapid growth has drawn attention from India to Indonesia, with studios whose past dealings with American distributors have often ended with their movies re-edited, shelved indefinitely or quietly shuffled straight to video. In a business climate increasingly inhospitable to foreign films, ImaginAsian plans as many as 12 theatrical releases by the end of 2007. [NY Times]

So far, their success story where Bollywood is concerned is Rang De Basanti, which "grossed more than $18,000 in its opening weekend at the ImaginAsian last January, the second-highest per-screen take in the city behind "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story." Read the whole story here.

Who is Vikku Vinayakram?

2006-04-22T08:51:00.000-05:00

Vikku Vinayakram is a master percussionist (ghatam) and can attract crowds even if he is the only performer on stage. But an accompanist getting such attention is a recent development in Carnatic music tradition.[image]

Lakshmi Subramaniam, author of From the Tanjore Court to the Madras Music Academy: A Social History of Music in South India, has a short piece in EPW on the changing position of the accompanist in the Carnatic music tradition. Explaining how the accompanist was pushed to the margins as part of the construction of a performative ideal in which the vocalist and the audience came together in an "interiorised acoustic space," she argues this does not work any more given Carnatic music's "patrons" are no longer only the middle-classes of cities like Chennai and Bangalore, but also NRIs in Cleveland and Chicago.

...percussion has reinvented itself as a key instrument in fusion and has begun to enjoy an almost mythic status with western audiences...also because the modern classical performer has reinvented himself seeking not the nation or its middle class as his patron or deity as the case may be, but the global audience where the perception of the instrument as well as its player occupies a different register. Here the accompanist whose self-definition as an independent artist, whose music blends easily with world music and contributes to its range and repertoire, whose personality, projection and imagination are not trapped within the confines of prescriptive and even
arbitrary notions of “spiritualism”, “classicism” and “tradition” exercise a different agency and command a different rapport with the audience.

vicious spring season

2006-04-21T12:12:00.000-05:00

A beautiful day, bright sunshine, the first leaves and flowers of the season...good reasons to open all the windows and shutters and let the gentle spring breeze waft through, thought the baristas at the coffee shop I frequent these days. Little do they know of my struggles with an unseen but paralyzing force known as pollen. A couple of minutes is all it takes - a sniffle and a cough and you know you're up against it. And when your eyes begin itching and watering, you know you're down.

So here I am, sipping my iced chai latte, wondering how unfair it is to expect "15 minutes of writing" when focusing on the screen for more than a minute makes one's eyes water. Very unfair, no? Maybe I should go read Amardeep's posts on theory, blogging, and Spivak. Might spark some ideas, you know (if some Spivak quote doesn't give me a headache).

Maya Bazaar

2006-04-21T06:14:00.000-05:00

Says this piece in The Hindu about Maya Bazaar, a delightful film which hit the screens in 1957, and is still invoked as one of the best mythologicals ever made in India:

If any NRI asks you to suggest ways to teach Telugu culture just ask him or her to introduce them to Maya Bazaar first. Further, if they seek to know about their uncles, aunts and cousins back home, bring in their names, "look this is your Balarama..."

This film also has one of the most memorable songs ever - one in which a giant with magical powers gets into a kitchen, and polishes off all the food there while singing the praises of the different dishes on offer - kalyana samayal sadam, kaigarigalum pramadam, andha gaurava prasadam, idhuve enakku podhum...a ha ha ha ha ha, a ha ha ha ha, a ha ha ha ha, a ha ha ha...

Synopsis and other details here.

The Only Star of the Kannada Film Industry

2006-04-21T06:02:00.000-05:00

In the Friday Review (The Hindu), Manu Chakravarthy takes a shot at analyzing Rajkumar's position as Kannada cinema's only star:

Rajkumar represents the consolidation of various cultural and political upheavals in the erstwhile Mysore State and the present day Karnataka. Rajkumar who begins his film career without a strong ideological consciousness gets drawn into crucial political and cultural debates because of historical exigencies and cannot escape becoming an icon. Because of these compulsions, the path of the actor branches out in several directions compelling him to play roles not quite matching his basic temperament. It also explains the loss of direction and the disappearance of an organic perspective as far as the Kannada Film Industry is concerned, which, trying to capitalise on the superstar's public image, gives up fundamental political and cultural questions. Interestingly enough, the story of Muthuraj becoming Dr. Rajkumar is also, in a broad sense, the history of mainstream Kannada films.

Rajkumar emerged as a product of the times, symbolising the aspirations of the people. That ethos was captured in Rajkumar's 100th film Bhagyada Bagilu where the superstar declared his omnipresence with the song "Naane Rajakumara... Kannada thaayiya premada kuvara" (I am Rajkumar, the lovable son of mother Kannada).

"We mobilize ideas, not people"

2006-04-20T06:50:00.000-05:00

Following up on my snarky post about the NPR story on Rajkumar fans going berserk in Bangalore...

What annoys me about the focus on violent fan behavior is the manner in which well-intentioned journalists and commentators continue to marginalize fan practices as a whole. And what is *really* irritating about online publications and blogs which have commented on the Rajkumar episode is their complete neglect of other modes of fan expression that are a click or two away. A couple of clicks is all it takes to encounter a vast networked realm of participatory culture surrounding various aspects of Indian cinema. But no, it is the rowdy fans who make easy targets. Nothing complicated about that - they're rowdies, they're working class youth with no jobs, they're auto drivers who are prone to drink and get into brawls, they're not educated and hence easily lured into violence by politicians with vested interests. Here is a brief take on why this isn't productive at all. More in the days to come...

"We would never venture into street battles, that's for sure. We mobilize ideas, not people." So said the moderator of an online fan group I was chatting with a few days back. Interestingly enough, this was when Rajkumar's rowdy-fans were burning buses, police vans, and disrupting everyday life in Bangalore. While Rajkumar wielded considerable political clout, he never entered politics. To get a sense of cinema's connections to the realm of politics proper, we need to shift our gaze eastwards, towards the state of Tamilnadu. And it is in relation/opposition to fan-politics in TN that we need to understand the emergence of the Internet as a vital new space of participatory culture surrounding Indian cinema.

On September 14, 2005, Tamil film star Vijaykant h announced his entry into politics by converting his fan association into a political party. The Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK, National Progressive Dravidian Party) was launched at a conference organized by the Tamilnadu Vijaykant Fan Association, with the secretary of the fan association, S. Ramu Vasanthan assuming the role of general secretary of the DMDK. The fan association’s flag has been adopted as the party flag as well. For several months preceding this conference, members of the fan association worked tirelessly to publicize and raise funds for the conference. Pointing to the fan association’s preparedness for political activity, one news report noted, “what stood him in good stead was the organization and structure of his fans' association, which is built in the form of a political party with units at the village, panchayat, town, district and State levels” (Subramanian, 2005).[1]

Around the same time in 2005, fans of renowned music director A. R. Rahman were hard at work organizing a concert in Bangalore. These guys managed everything from promotions and ticket sales to stage construction and crowd control on the day of the concert (October 8, 2005). As part of their effort to gain recognition as the “official” Rahman fan group, they also decided to present Rahman with a gift—a montage, composed of thumbnail images of all his album covers, which formed the contours of his face. Faced with the prospect of buying expensive software, a group of fans (who run a design company called 3xus.com) went on to develop their own software. After many sleepless nights of painstaking coding, they finally got to meet Rahman and present the gift. A few days later, they learned that Rahman liked the gift and planned to display it in his studio in Chennai. This is a story of fan activity that mainstream media completely ignored.

Acknowledging these fans’ perseverance, technical and marketing savvy, and global network established through online activities, Rahman and his team have decided to collaborate with them to promote and organize concerts in different cities worldwide, evolve new modes of music distribution, and work together to tackle piracy.

Violent conflicts between Vijaykanth fans and cadres of political parties like the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), cinema halls being vandalized, and film stars contemplating a career in politics by mobilizing their fan associations certainly make more sensational copy compared to a group of highly educated, technically skilled fans who discuss film music on the Internet. To those familiar with the history of cinema’s links to politics in states like Tamilnadu and Andhra Pradesh, Vijaykant emerging as a political candidate is no great surprise. Indeed, when one raises the question of fan activity in Indian film culture, the standard response, among journalists and academics, is to point to Tamil and Telugu film cultures where fan associations devoted to former stars like M. G. Ramachandran and N. T. Rama Rao have played pivotal roles in their political careers. As the editor of Filmfare explained to me, “you’ll find crowds outside Amitabh Bachchan or Shahrukh Khan’s house. But never that level of passion as you’d find in the south. There is no organized fan activity around Bollywood. No one asks Shahrukh to float a political party or threatens to commit suicide just because his film flops!”

But continuing to frame fan activity in Indian film culture in terms of devotional excess or in relation to political mobilization in south India will only mean turning a blind eye to the many important transitions in the way cinema is experienced today, and the ways in which the new media industry is inviting and structuring participatory culture. And new forms of imagination, sociality, and production of locality that the Internet has enabled in the Indian context.

[1] In an earlier interview, Vasanthan had explained the fan association’s preparedness for political activity: “only nominally our movement works as a welfare organization. In fact, it functions like a political party. We have 35,000 units and each unit has at least 100 members” (Subramanian, 2004).

Brokeback Bharat: Queering Bolly/Hollywood

2006-04-14T06:49:00.000-05:00

Alternative Law Forum (ALF) - a terrific space in Bangalore that focuses on queer activism among other things - has just released a video titled "Brokeback Bharat." Juxtaposing a series of clips from Hindi cinema - like Amitabh and Shashi Kapoor in the shower, Jackie Shroff and Anil Kapoor in a closet, Saif and SRK in Kal Ho Na Ho - the video asks us to consider joining the fight to "break the silence and join the campaign against Section 377, Indian Penal Code that criminalizes homosexuality." (via email from Parmesh)

If you're interested in in "queering Bollywood," ALF has a terrific set of videos and articles here. Don't miss the Kal Ho Na Ho remix! image: from ALF's Queering Bollywood.

NPR Baffled (film star, bandit, mob violence...)

2006-04-13T07:55:00.000-05:00

On the way to the coffee shop this morning, I was pleasantly surprised to hear NPR’s morning edition carry a story about Bangalore – a story about Dr. Rajkumar. What can I say, they try.

The NPR correspondent in New Delhi (let's call him John) sounded genuinely baffled – he just could not understand why tens of thousands of (mostly) young men would leave work and school and pour out on the streets to catch a glimpse of a movie star in a transparent coffin. To the good folks at NPR, Dr. Rajkumar was just a movie star. As the newsreader (let's call her Mary) in Washington D. C. asked, and I paraphrase: “tell me John, he’s not a politician, he’s just a movie star. What is up with these crazy mobs of young men who’re attacking and burning buses, and fighting cops, and the cops are using tear gas and calling for reinforcements? This is so third world…”

John had little to add. “I don’t know Mary (pseudonym), I mean, a TV station here in Delhi is lighting candles. I really don’t know what the big deal is...these folks here are batty I tell ya...”

Mary continues: so John, tell us a little more about this film star. He is an icon there isn't he? He doesn't smoke, he led a good life...

[Yes, go ahead, this really is an ROTFL moment]

John: Yes Mary, he has acted in over 200 films and is a legend in Canada cinema.
[yes, he meant Kannada]

Mary: And wasn't he once kidnapped by a bandit?

John: Yes he was, by the notorious bandit Veerappan who had a moustache I greatly envy...anyways, he was held captive in a jungle for nearly 2 months.

Film stars, mob violence, a bandit kidnapping the star, a chief minister accused of flying in to meet the bandit to pay the ransom amount...its a bit too much for a foreign journalist, no? I mean which journalism program can possible train folks for something like this. I hope John gets a chance to experience cinema in spaces that are nothing like the comfy multiplexes of New Delhi. If you haven’t watched a Rajkumar or a Rajni or a Chiranjeevi film in a cinema hall in south India, you really won’t get it.

Much as I would like to dwell on the fan phenonmenon in south India, and my own experiences with fan activity in Madras and Bangalore, I'll just point you all to Srinivas' pathbreaking work on fan practices in south India. While you read up, I will go get my coffee, disable the wireless connection, and get to work...

Remembering Pudumaippithan (1906-1948)

2006-04-12T22:08:00.000-05:00

In Frontline, the life and work of one of Tamil literature's most influential storyteller:

In Tamil literature, Pudumaippithan is to short story what Subramania Bharati is to poetry - an inspiring pioneer who scaled the peak with creations that have stood the test of time. Both continue to have their readerships decades after their death. Endowed with an analytical mind and a creative skill of outstanding merit, Pudumaippithan, in a creatively active period of less than 15 years (1934-46), wrote nearly 100 short stories and an equal number of essays on a variety of subjects, besides 15 poems, a few plays and scores of book reviews.

Kathavacaks & Feudal Remnants for the Info Age

2006-04-12T15:52:00.000-05:00

While browsing through the "media" section of Indiatogether, I came across an interview with Arvind Rajagopal on the India Shining campaign, and more generally, on media's role in electoral politics. Most of what he has to say in the interview is now old news of course, but two little nuggets caught my attention:

To a question about differences b/w Engligh and Hindi language media, Rajagopal responds:

News reporters editorialize far more in Hindi television news, because they are usually better-educated recruits from the Hindi press. What is interesting is that they often echo the kathavacak tradition, where a story-teller is also engaged in moral exhortation, not simply reportage. As such their rhetorical range is greater, although when viewed from the perspective of English news it can seem didactic or opinionated.

And I would add that the figure of the sutradhar is an apt one if we consider how someone like Amitabh Bachchan does much more than just explain the rules of the game to contestants in Kaun Banega Crorepati. Btw, youtube has the KBC episode in which Sania Mirza and Lara Dutta teamed up to play for a charity :)

And about American-style news influencing the way news is done in India:

Fortunately or unfortunately, many people still do not rely on the media for their ideas even if they are exposed to it. This reflects a culture that is a blend of feudalism and state authoritarianism. Politics is an expression of power rather than of opinion in this context, and liberalism is mainly an aspiration. The result is that people distrust what leaders say. In India, few people believe speech is ever free. They also watch what they say. For example, when opinion polls are taken, people don't always tell the truth. This provides protections that should not be underestimated, as the recent elections showed. It is ironic that the remnants of a feudal culture can serve as people's defenses in the information age, where everything is supposed to be known and regulated.

Karnataka's Dr. Raj ("annavaru") Dead

2006-04-12T06:18:00.000-05:00

Karnataka's matinee idol, superstar Rajkumar, died of cardiac arrest in Bangalore a few hours back. He was 77. Born on April 24, 1929 in Gajanur, Karnataka, Rajkumar made his acting debut in 1954 in Bedara Kannappa, and went on to star in over 200 films over nearly half a century. Some of his popular films include Bangaaradha Manushya (The Golden Man), Kasturi Nivasa, Gandhadha Gudi (The Temple of Sandalwood) and Jeevana Chaitra. (CNN-IBN). Go here for more details.

Rajkumar was the only actor in Karnataka who had the kind of fan base and political clout that one sees in Tamilnadu and Andhra Pradesh. And while he often intervened in political matters (like the Cauvery water-sharing dispute b/w Karnataka and Tamilnadu), he did not decide to get into the electoral process and become Karnataka's NTR or MGR.

Bappi Lahiri and Apache Indian!

2006-04-09T13:03:00.000-05:00

Bappi Lahiri, the music director who has rocked Bollywood with songs like You Are My Chicken Fry (Rock Dancer, 1995) and some genuinely melodious numbers like maanaa ho tum, behad hasii.n (Toote Khilone/Broken Toys, 1978), now plans to collaborate with the man who brought together bhangra, reggae, and Bollywood in a song called Arranged Marriage - Apache Indian. With help from a Viva Girl (Anushka), the item number will be called "Cabaret." Article here.

Now Bappi Lahiri's music has always had a global sensibility - remember, he is the baap of Bollywood music directors who derive "inspiration" from many musicians around the world. And if when he was bored of being "inspired," he went on to work with such stalwarts as Samantha Fox (for the film Rock Dancer) and Boy George (Love Story 98)! And Apache is no newbie in Bollywood - he's worked with none other than A. R. Rahman on a movie called Love Birds.

Update: Help from US for Rs.50 FM Station

2006-04-06T10:09:00.000-05:00

From DNA (hat-tip to Ramya):

A private United States radio has offered help in restarting the one-man FM Radio Mansoorpur-1 that was run from a hutment in Bihar's Vaishali district for four years before it was shut down for not having a licence. Project director Stephan Dunifer of Free Radio Berkeley said he would help Raghav Mahato restart 'Radio – Mansoorpur-1'.

The news about the raid and the subsequent shutting down of the FM station appeared in a portal on Bihar run by Sudhir Kumar, following which Free Radio Berkeley sent an email to Kumar seeking details of Mahato. The US-based radio said it was prepared to gift a 15-watt transmitter and antenna to Mahato to run the station.

The 2ft 5in hero

2006-04-05T06:59:00.000-05:00

Tamil and Malayalam cinema now have a new hero. 2ft 5in tall, Ajay Kumar is making waves as the shortest man to become a hero in the filmi world. From the BBC:

In his debut feature, Atbhutha Dweep (Wonder Island), Kumar performs stunts, rides a horse at 45 kph and cavorts with a lover.
The film, with a cast of 360 dwarfs defending their kingdom, has been a box-office hit. "I think the image of hero has changed. I am not glamorous like other superstars but viewers like the talented, character artiste in me," says the shortest actor in Indian cinema.

Also known as "pakru," Kumar has been sought out by the Malayalam filmmakers, the TV industry (he is shooting for the popular series Five Star Thattukada), Bollywood (no surprise there), and, if the stars are aligned right, Atbhutha Dweep might find its way to Hollywood!

Writing (with breaks for koffee with karan)

2006-04-04T20:07:00.000-05:00

I spent the last few weeks agonizing over interviews and notes I had scribbled while in bombay and delhi, trying hard to figure out what kinds of narratives I could develop about cinema's intersections with new media. I did manage to write up chapter outlines, half of which sound decent and might turn into interesting chapters. In the process, I confronted an anxiety that must be familiar to many a grad student - wondering why anyone should deem this little project of mine interesting, and how every other dissertator in the world seems to be tackling questions that are so much more interesting and worthwhile. And I'm happy to report that I now feel (with help from my good friend Ben) that this anxiety might not be a terrible one to live with.

Oh, and it helps that I can tune in to Koffee with Karan :) I discovered today that you tube has quite a few episodes of Karan chit-chatting with the stars and starlets of Bollywood. There's Abhishek and Preity, Abhishek and his dad, Shahrukh and Hrithik, Shahrukh and Hrithik's wives, and many more! As they say, "no one brews coffee and conversation like Karan can!"

The life and times of an H-Bomb

2006-04-01T12:44:00.000-06:00

I'm thrilled to hear that Jerry Pinto's book on the vamp/dancer/actress who defined Hindi cinema in many important ways has just been released. As I discovered a few months back when I sought him out for contacts in bombay, Jerry is an incredible storehouse of information on Hindi cinema, and is arguably the best person to have on your side if you intend doing fieldwork in Bombay.

Titled Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb, the book grapples with quite a few interesting questions:

Why did a refugee of French-Burmese parentage succeed as wildly as she did in Bollywood? How could otherwise conservative families sit through, and even enjoy, her "cabarets"? What made Helen the desire that you need not be embarrassed about feeling� How did she manage the unimaginable: vamp three generations of men on screen?

And here's a 3-part interview where Jerry talks about how he went about making sense of Helen.

The Story of a Shirt and a Fish

2006-03-30T11:55:00.000-06:00

One day, Paul Seabright went to buy a shirt. This shirt, he realized, was made of cotton that was produced in India, from seeds that were developed in the U.S., included artificial fibre made in Portugal, colored with dyes composed of substances from six other countries, has a collar lining that came from Brazil, was stitched on a machine from Germany, and was assembled in Malaysia.

This story behind the shirt prompted an article about how incredible it is that many an object we purchase and consume is manufactured and distributed around the world "without the intervention of any overall controlling intelligence." Seabright mulls over how natural this seems to millions who live in the "industrialized west," and goes on to narrate a wonderful little anecdote to make a point about the efficiency of the invisible hand:

After the break-up of the Soviet Union I was in discussion with a Russian official whose job it was to direct the production of bread in St Petersburg. “Please understand that we are keen to move towards a market system,” he told me. “But we need to understand the fundamental details of how such a system works. Tell me, for example: who is in charge of the supply of bread to London?” There was nothing naive about his question, because the answer (“nobody is in charge”), when one thinks carefully about it, is astonishingly hard to believe. Only in the industrialised West have we forgotten just how strange it is.

As Amit Varma points out, this is a nice story to use when faced with arguments about the continued importance of central planning and government intervention. But that phrase in the anecdote - nobody is in charge - in my opinion, comes with ethical blinders. It reminded me of another story - Darwin's Nightmare. This is a story of a fish (Nile Perch) that was introduced into Lake Victoria in Africa.

The Nile Perch, a voracious predator, extinguished almost the entire stock of the native fish species. However, the new fish multiplied so fast, that its white fillets are today exported all around the world.

Huge hulking ex-Soviet cargo planes come daily to collect the latest catch in exchange for their southbound cargo… Kalashnikovs and ammunitions for the uncounted wars in the dark center of the continent.

This booming multinational industry of fish and weapons has created an ungodly globalized alliance on the shores of the world’s biggest tropical lake: an army of local fishermen, World bank agents, homeless children, African ministers, EU-commissioners, Tanzanian prostitutes and Russian pilots.

The filmmaker, Hubert Sauper, was interviewed on NPR a few weeks back. When asked who, in his opinion, should be blamed for this state of affairs, he didn't have an answer. Things were so complicated, it is difficult to identify who/what was controlling things. He used a phrase - fragmentation of responsibility - to suggest how impossibly difficult it is for activists to intervene in situations such as this. Who, indeed, would an activist first talk to? The friendly Soviet pilots? World bank agents? The prostitutes? Let us leave aside this complicated question of activism aside for now.

Let us return to the story of the shirt. Where Paul Seabright falters, I feel, is in not bothering to point out that the story behind the shirt is so much more complicated. He writes that the story of the shirt he "bought represents a triumph of international co-operation." Perhaps. But isn't there more to cotton from India grown with seeds developed in the U.S.? Doesn't a story of the shirt Seabright bought also carry traces of the upheavals in thousands of farmers' lives that the seeds from the U.S have wrought? Doesn't the shirt's story spiral out to include stories of hundreds of farmers committing suicides over the last few years? When he says "international co-operation," should he not consider the story of how the rules for co-operation were framed, and who got to speak up at these discussions?

I'm not suggesting that every story about a shirt track the myriad other stories that can indeed be told. What I am suggesting is - does the phrase "nobody is in charge" explain much, or does it in fact mask much more than it explains? Won't Sauper's approach - of mapping as carefully as possible, the many (seemingly bizarre) connections between various actors - help us tell better, truer and more engaging stories about the shirts we wear and the fish we eat than Seabright's distant "nobody is in charge" attitude?

Happy Gudi Padwa !

2006-03-29T20:06:00.000-06:00

Gudi Padwa is New Year's day for Maharashtrians, and in 2006, it will be celebrated on March 30th! I have fond memories of celebrating gudi padwa - no school, new clothes, terrific food (with the sole exception of the spoonful of a concoction which contained leaves and flowers from the neem tree), and helping mom decorate the "gudi," a long pole atop which sits a small brass pot which holds a coconut, covered with a nice piece of cloth and decorated with leaves from the mango tree :)

Needless to say, many a story is spun around why we celebrate gudi padwa. Some say this is the day Brahma created the Universe, when the satyuga (the age of truth) was inaugurated, and when Lord Rama returned to Ayodhya after slaying King Vali.

So what does one do to celebrate gudi padwa in upstate NY? No decorated gudi, but we make do with some wonderful kheer!

BBC Program on Desi Personalities

2006-03-29T18:28:00.000-06:00

From DNA:

He’s covered the Olympic Games, tiger waves in new Guinea , global warming in Western Samoa, wars in Cambodia and tons of cricket. Now, Michael Peschardt, Australian correspondent for BBC, is looking forward to his new show, ‘Peschardt’s People’ that airs April onwards.

Peschardt samples lifestyles of the most famous and infamous people in the Asia-Pacific region. Author Shobhaa De, tycoon Dr Vijay Mallya and actor Preity Zinta are the three Indians he has on the show. “These are just a few people heard of in this region. This show brings out the beauty and wonder of these people and where they live,” he says.

Quick, what's the word for "gene" in Kannada?

2006-03-28T18:20:00.000-06:00

I speak Kannada, but I've never heard someone use a Kannada word when they needed to use "gene" in a sentence. Ehsan Masood, in this article in Open democracy (via 3quarks daily) on the use of English for scientific research and writing suggests much is at stake.

The bulk of scientific research these days is reported in specialist journals published in Europe and the United States – and in the English language. Unless scientists in other parts of the world take more of a lead in innovation, languages such as Urdu will continue to need to "borrow" words such as "gene", "fertiliser", "biological", "pesticide" and "steroids".

And, as Masood rightly points out, the emphasis on English stems from a recognition that to be part of a scientific community and contribute to dialogues at global levels, there is no escaping the English language.

Carnatic musicians and Mimicry

2006-03-28T12:02:00.000-06:00

In a few weeks from now, Carnatic music fans (or rasikas, if you prefer) in Bangalore will buy season passes to concerts that are held annually to coincide with Ramanavami (the mythical hero Rama's birthday) celebrations. This is Bangalore's version of the much more large-scale and prestigious December music season in Chennai. My parents attend these concerts, and usually tell me stories of how many youngsters are entering the Carnatic music scene, and how well they render some of their favorite compositions. And I've always been struck by how musicians' "originality" is evaluated on the basis of how well they render a centuries-old composition. To many who are not fans, this appears to be little more than mimicry and repetition, and Carnatic music is deemed a performative tradition that does not value "originality" in the sense of authoring new texts.

I've always struggled with this myself. I've enjoyed listening to my mother play the Veena, and knew at an intuitive level that she liked playing some songs over and over again not because she wished to imitate her guru, but because she truly enjoyed those songs. But I've also been a bit uncomfortable with accepting that mimicry is an art in itself. I'm not sure what Carnatic music aficionadoes would think of my drawing parallels with African American expression, but here's what Zora Neale Hurston says about how black aesthetics have been misread because of a "fixation on European notions of authorship and originality":

The Negro, the world over, is famous as a mimic. But this in no way damages his standing as an original. Mimicry is an art in itself. It it is not, then all art must fall by the same blow that strikes it down...moreover, the contention that the Negro imitates from a feeling of inferiority is incorrect. He mimics for the love of it...he does it as the mocking bird does it, for the love of it, and not because he wishes to be like the one imitated.

As I read this in Siva Vaidyanathan's book (Copyrights and Copywrongs), it led me to wonder how notions of authorship work in the world of Carnatic music. Is authorship "demystified," with the major concern being how well a performer renders a composition and how well s/he evokes a certain "bhava" (emotion) in the audience? Is the great Thyagaraja an author in the modern, legal sense of the term? Does a raaga have an author? Does the notion of "intellectual property" make any sense when we consider Carnatic music?

when I struggle for words...

2006-03-27T21:17:00.000-06:00

I got some writing done today, but not enough, and the quality of the prose leaves much to be desired. On days like these, when I struggle for words and writing becomes frustrating and onerous, I tend to re-read passages that have stayed with me over the years. One of my favorite pieces of writing is an essay called Television Melodrama by David Thorburn, and one passage in particular always makes me pause. I read the passage a few times, ponder how some authors express so well what we often deem ineffable, and then return to my writing, reinvigorated. Here it is (the second sentence is my favorite):

"In order to understand television drama, and in order to find authentic standards for judging it as art, we must learn to recognize and to value the discipline, energy, and intelligence that must be expended by the actor who succeeds in creating what we too casually call a truthful or believable performance.

What happens when an actor's performance arouses our latent faculties of imaginative sympathy and moral judgment, when he causes us to acknowledge that what he is doing is true to the tangled potency of real experience, not simply impressive or clever, but true - what happens then is art."

Update: Rs.50 FM Station Shut Down

2006-03-27T06:35:00.000-06:00

From Bhojpuria.com (via Commons-law listserv):

A Central Government team raided Mansoorpur village in Bihar and shut down an FM radio station that was being run illegally. It was cheap and had become a part of the local community but ironically was also illegal. The residents of Vaishali may soon have to do without their favourite radio station - FM Radio Raghav Mansoorpur 1.

The state government is also not interested to have this FM Station run, as it has been running without a license. But the owner of Mansoorpur 1 and its fans are protesting the move. "Everybody here will protest. We all get a lot of information from this channel," a fan of Mansoorpur 1, Mohan says. "People won't get any information. We advertise the Pulse Polio program, give news. Nobody listens to tape. Everybody enjoys listening to my station," the owner of Mansoorpur 1, Raghav says. Run from a hut, it is the only source of entertainment for the villagers in and around Mansoorpur.

To read about FM radio licenses, and the short-sightedness of the Indian govt. when dealing with radio, go here, and here for a short take on the different phases of FM licensing.

Spike Lee goes to Bollywood...

2006-03-25T17:59:00.000-06:00

That's right. Spike Lee decided to tap into the wonderful world of desi film music and picked up one of Rahman's best numbers, Chaiyya Chaiyaa (from Dil Se) to open his latest film (Inside Man). Michael Dequina (of Cinemarati) writes:

Lee even plays more or less the entire track over the whole main title sequence (though the version used sounded like the slightly abbreviated 2002 remix for the Andrew Lloyd Webber-produced stage musical Bombay Dreams and not the original 1998 movie version), and then he plays a faithful new remix version over the entire closing crawl; the only major deviation in the reprise are some additional Terence Blanchard-contributed strings and a couple of surprisingly unobtrusive English rap verses contributed by Panjabi MC.

Many will dismiss this as nothing but Hollywood's nod to what is still an "alien," mis-interpreted, and grossly underestimated film industry. But then, these are the traces that some grad student might find intriguing as s/he plots a dissertation on the Bollywood-Hollywood encounter of the late 20th and early 21st centuries that is unfolding even as I write this.
(Sumati, thanks for the link!)

Simply South, #1

2006-03-24T12:44:00.000-06:00

There aren't too many actresses in the Kannada film industry who can claim they've held their own against stars like Rajkumar. Here's a short piece on Kanchana, an actress who has worked not only with every major male star in Kannada cinema, but even with MGR and Sivaji Ganesan!

Meera Jasmine, in a very short span of time has impressed many (she won the National Best Actress Award in 2004). In this interview, she talks about her roles so far, and says she would consider acting in Hindi films if roles like those Shabana Azmi has played come her way.

"From a period drama to an action thriller, there's something for everyone this summer," says this report on what the Telugu film industry has in store.

And finally, a look at the different roles Urvashi, brilliant in many a comic role, is playing in films and on TV.

Simply South Fridays

2006-03-24T06:36:00.000-06:00

Every Friday, this blog will feature links to interesting stories from the world of Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, and Malayalam cinema. Why, you ask? For one, much work needs to be done to interrogate how "Bollywood" has come to define Indian cinema for much of the world. Two, The Hindu's Friday Review does a nice job of reporting on entertainment from cities that are media capitals in their own right - Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Thiruvananthapuram - and I learn much from those stories. And finally, the name. Simply South was a show on [V] back in the 90s which showcased regional films once a week. For a kid growing up in Bangalore, those 30 minutes were much-needed affirmation that the south (and not just Bombay) was also "cool," to be able to shout out, "we are also like this only!"

p.s. [V]'s line in India was: We are like this only. It was brilliant. It said: so what if you're a fan of Madhuri Dixit? It is your pop culture damn it, and if you think Madhuri is better than Madonna, so be it. Tell the world: we are like this only. So for somone like me, who liked Madhuri but also thought superstar Rajni was wicked cool, [V] didn't offer much. We were also like that only, but what to do...we were never cool enough for the bambaiyyas (folks from Bombay).

The first radical, realist, feminist film from India?

2006-03-23T17:31:00.000-06:00

The current issue of HIMAL has a very interesting piece on an Assamese filmmaker, Jyotiprasad Agarwalla (1903-51), and his 1935 film Joymoti. A polymath - he was a playwright, musician, poet, and writer - for this film, Agarwalla was producer, director, script writer, lyricist, music director, art director, choreographer, costume designer and editor all rolled into one!

Altaf Mazid writes:

He made only two films, far less than other filmmakers, yet with his first film alone he could be distinguished as a radical auteur of all India.

Joymoti, released in 1935, added a new chapter in the chronicles of Indian cinema, primarily in the discourse of realism. Further, Jyotiprasad was the only political filmmaker of pre-independent India, though there were many in post-independent India, starting with Ritwik Ghatak. Above all else, Joymoti is a nationalist film in its attempts to create a cultural world using the elements of Assamese society. It is the only work of its kind of that period.

The rest of the article is a really informative take on the many influences that shaped Agarwalla's work, the remarkable circumstances under which Joymoti was made, how he went about building a film studio (Chitraban), his understanding of how "innovative cinema" could be articulated to anti-colonial sentiments in India at the time, and how examining Joymoti can help us think through the question of "realism" in the world of Indian cinema. As Altaf Mazid, the author of this piece points out, so far, discussions of realism have been confined to mainstream Hindi cinema. "Even the phrase ‘regional reality’, which has been used for Pather Panchali," he suggests, "could be redefined by going back to this work of Jyotiprasad’s."

Altaf Mazid, a Guwahati-based filmmaker, has worked over the past few years to restore Joymoti. Go here to read an interview with Mazid where he describes how he went about restoring the film, and his plans to get the film into the international circuit.

Pic: Jyoti Prasad Agarwalla editing Joymoti
Pic Credit: Mitra Phukan

1-800-India

2006-03-20T15:05:00.000-06:00

I watched Wide Angle's (PBS) documentary on outsourcing and the call center industry (1-800-India) last night, and let me just say, many a scene was cringe-worthy. The film does well in focusing on one operation - GECIS, in Gurgaon - instead of attempting to map the call center industry in multiple cities in India. The film also does well in approaching the call center industry as one that has transformed urban life in many, many tangible ways (leisure/entertainment, housing, food, transport, shopping, and so on). But what could've been an interesting examination of contemporary urban India ended up being a stereotypical take on the "effects" call center jobs have had on the young women who make up nearly half the workforce.

While some of the stories rung true, for the most part, the discussion was framed in terms of women in India being "liberated" and finding a sense of "gender equity" thanks to their call center jobs which have forced their friends and families to rethink gender norms. And lest the womens' stories allow any ambivalence to creep in, the voiceover ensures you interpret the documentary correctly: it is about Indians having to "balance traditional Indian family values with Western-style social and economic mores" (Wide-Angle). Tiring.

Convicted Criminal? Bollywood beckons...

2006-03-20T07:11:00.000-06:00

From the BBC:

When little-known Bollywood director Nabh Kumar Raju was looking for six actors to star in his movie on the underworld, he had one criterion: they should have committed or had a brush with crime at some point of their lives.The movie, called Hitlist, is based on six criminals getting together in India's financial capital, Mumbai (Bombay), and making a list of all the important people they intend to target.

"If real criminals or people who have had personal experiences with crime and law come forward and act in such a movie, then it is not acting for them, it becomes real. All the characters become themselves in the movie and dialogues will not seem like dialogues but actual conversation."

I suppose no one told Mr. Raju that back in 1996, a Kannada film (Om) starred actual Bangalore gangsters. My "regional" self gets all hot and bothered when journalists who report on "Bollywood" never cast a glance south towards the Tamil, Telugu, or Kannada film industries.

Ghulam, part two?

2006-03-19T22:15:00.000-06:00

I wonder if Aamir Khan has heard about his namesake in Britain - a 19 year old lad billed "The Great British Pakistani Hope". Would the Khan who made one of Bollywood's decent boxing movies (well, at least he sang well...aati kya khandala) be interested in spinning a story around the "well-adjusted" Muslim "multicultural role model"?

Crossover films & the discourse of Corporatisation

2006-03-19T10:42:00.000-06:00

Dev Benegal, of English August and Split Wide Open fame, has announced his next venture into "crossover" filmmaking will revolve around the famous Indian math whiz Srinivasa Ramanujan. Benegal will be collaborating with a Brit actor-director, Stephen Fry, who has also been interested in making a film on Ramanujan's life. As anyone who grew up with parents and teachers (in tamilnadu, particularly) who considered proficiency in math the only sure sign of intelligence will admit, Ramanujan's name was invoked very often. I, for one, can't wait to see this film.

This is interesting for another reason - this film will "mark the teeing off the co-production between India and the United Kingdom; Fry is also in India for the official signing of the India-UK Film Co-production treaty" (Mid-Day). Such treaties need to be seen as part of a larger struggle over "corporatising" the Indian film industry. While TV has led the way here, the last few years have seen many, many attempts to quantify the different elements of the film apparatus. Consider this from the Indo-British Partnership Network:

The Entertainment Industry is currently worth Indian Rupees (INR) 166 billion ($4.3bn) and is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20 per cent by 2007 generating INR 419 billion ($9.4bn): Source KPMG.

A much needed Corporatisation of the industry is taking place with growth of professional management, accountability and the incorporation of best practices across the industry sectors.

We need to create a bridge, on which the UK and Indian Creative Industries can meet, facilitate business to business deals, access markets for content, leverage the creative and technical expertise, production and post production facilities, professional management skills and finance.

The important question "corporatisation" raises is this: how well do discursive constructs like "culture industries" or "creative industries" travel? How do we assess claims that "Bollywood" is now a global culture/creative industry? Can the markers and terms of a creative/culture industry in the 'West' - a free market economy, intellectual property, a fully commercialized culture industries sector, certains norms of creativity, etc. - be taken for granted in the Indian context? We need to examine carefully how consensus regarding "corporatisation" is being brokered - no easy task, considering the range of players involved (producers, directors, actors/actresses, distributors, dotcoms, the Indian state, NRIs/diaspora, banks/insurance firms/other financial institutions, and so on) all of whom bring their own desires and anxieties to bear on negotiating Indian film industry's entry into a transnational cultural sphere. And as we do this, we will come up against the limits of "creative industries," which will, in turn, push us to rethink key terms like creativity and intellectual property.

Bollywood in China

2006-03-18T16:27:00.000-06:00

I first learned about Hindi film music's popularity in China when I met a fellow grad student's mom who was visiting from Shanghai. The conversation presently turned to music, and to my utter amazement, she began singing a song (translated version) from a Raj Kapoor movie. Needless to say, I was fascinated at meeting someone who had been part of a generation that got to enjoy Indian cinema in China.

If someone gave me the money, I'd be thrilled to document China's encounter with Hindi cinema in the decades following the cultural revolution.*sigh* For now, I'll just point you all to a story in this week's Sunday magazine of The Hindu:

"The first time I heard a Hindi movie song I was four-years-old and I remember thinking it was music from heaven, so beautiful that I could listen to it again and again," recalls 24-year-old Hou Wei. She smiles dreamily and launches into a word-perfect rendition of Chadti Jawani Meri, from the 1971 Asha Parekh-Jeetendra film "Caravan".

But Hou Wei is not just any starry-eyed, Bollywood-infatuated youth. She is in fact one of Beijing's hottest entertainers having in the last couple of years become a sought-after performer at parties, weddings and restaurants, where bedecked in sparkling saris, she belts out a wide range of Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu songs.

Hou Wei will be traveling to India this month to "learn more about the culture" and to "find a suitable teacher."

"I have never had any formal training in Indian music and I feel this is a big disadvantage," she says. "But I have big dreams and if I try hard enough I can achieve them."

Wouldn't it be terrific if Hou Wei was roped into a film-music based TV-show? How about pairing her up with a music director in Sa Re Ga Ma Pa?!

What happened to the chapatis?

2006-03-17T09:46:00.000-06:00

I recently saw the much-hyped Mangal Pandey: The Rising, and came away sorely disappointed. While the film was unsatisfactory in many ways, one thing bothered me greatly: there was no mention of chapatis.

I grew up hearing about the mysterious chapatis that were circulated in the Awadh and Bengal regions during the weeks leading up to the 1857 sepoy revolt. My history textbooks said so, and so did the comics. Why, oh why, did Ketan Mehta not include chapatis in his tale? Wasn't Farrukh Dhondy, the man who wrote the script, aware of the 21st century Sepoy who continues to track mysterious chapati? Hasn't Farrukh Dhondy read Homi Bhabha? Didn't anyone tell Ketan Mehta that a scene or two of chapatis being passed around and puzzled British officers might have added some spice to the film?

"Songs for a Song"

2006-03-15T09:19:00.000-06:00

Over the last 2-3 years, ringtones have been much hyped as a new revenue stream for producers. "Royalties from mobile phone ringtones are soon expected to replace sales of CDs as the chief source of income for music makers around India," reported siliconindia. Expectedly, songwriters began asking for a piece of the action. Producers, who claim complete ownership, aren't too thrilled about such demands. While this hasn't been sorted out, here is an interesting piece of trivia on how this issue played out in the good old days of All India Radio (AIR).

Back in the 80s, AIR paid producers Rs.1 for a song! And incredibly, this rate was unchanged since the time broadcasting was introduced in India! Film music was what kept Vividh Bharati going - without film music, AIR-babus could never have increased advertising rates the way they did (a 400% increase, says one Screen report). I found information on protests by producers, but couldn't dig up anything on how this was resolved.

Crushing Piracy

2006-03-15T09:08:00.000-06:00

"The jumbo sized problem of software piracy in India is symbolically stamped out by an elephant at Nehru Place in New Delhi..."
[Times of India, 24-09-1999]

Immigration Test, Dutch Style

2006-03-14T20:05:00.000-06:00

I rubbed my eyes in disbelief as I read about this on India Uncut. This really takes Norman Tebbit's ideas re "assimilation" to a whole other level. I googled a bit and came across a story on another proposal that only Dutch be spoken on the streets. What is Iron Rita thinking?

Two men kissing in a park and a topless woman bather are featured in a film that will be shown to would-be immigrants to the Netherlands.The reactions of applicants — including Muslims — will be examined to see whether they are able to accept the country’s liberal attitudes.

Those sitting the test will be expected to identify William of Orange and to know which country Crown Princess Maxima comes from (Argentina) and whether hitting women and female circumcision are permitted.

Other key details from the story:

Applicants will sit the exam at one of 138 embassies around the world. They will answer 15 minutes of questions and those who pass the first stage will have to complete two “citizenship” tests over five years and swear a pledge of allegiance to Holland and its constitution.

A spokeswoman for Verdonk [that's Rita Verdonk] said an edited version of the DVD would be available for showing in Middle Eastern countries such as Iran where it would be illegal to possess images of homosexuality.

Pandit Nehru & the poet Nirala: an anecdote

2006-03-13T10:15:00.000-06:00

Guha narrates a delightful story in a piece on Nehru and Nirala by way of suggesting that "the statesman and the poet belonged to an India that was very different from the one we live in." For more on Nirala, go here.

"MANY years ago, the anthropologist Triloki Narain Pandey told me a story featuring Jawaharlal Nehru and the poet Suryakant Tripathi "Nirala". The Prime Minister had just returned from a visit to the People's Republic of China. He was addressing a public meeting in his hometown, Allahabad, where Nirala then lived and where Triloki Pandey then studied. The poet sat in the front row, bare-bodied, his chest rubbed up with oil — for, he, a passionate wrestler, had come straight from a session at the akhara. He cut a striking figure, the shining torso contrasting with the white beard and shock of white hair.

Nehru accepted a garland or two from his admirers, before launching into his speech. "I have come from China," he began, "and heard there a story of a great king who had two sons. One was wise, the other stupid. When the boys reached adulthood, the king told the stupid one that he could have his throne, for he was fit only to be a ruler. But the wise one, he said, was destined for far greater things — he would be a poet." With these words, Nehru took the garland off his head and flung it as an offering at Nirala's feet."

$1/Rs.50 Radio Station in Trouble

2006-03-13T09:13:00.000-06:00

A BBC story about an FM radio station run by Raghav Mahato in Mansoorpur village in Vaishali district of Bihar received much attention a couple of weeks back. Raghav set this up with transmission equipment that cost him about fifty rupess, and for close to 12 hours each day, informed and entertained villagers in a 20-km radius.

Amarnath Tewary writes for the BBC:

"Good morning! Welcome to Raghav FM Mansoorpur 1! Now listen to your favourite songs," announces anchor and friend Sambhu into a sellotape-plastered microphone surrounded by racks of local music tapes.
For the next 12 hours, Raghav Mahato's outback FM radio station plays films songs and broadcasts public interest messages on HIV and polio, and even snappy local news, including alerts on missing children and the opening of local shops.

Sad news is, this station is now in trouble. Raghav's attempts at broadcasting is illegal under the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1933, which stipulates: no person shall possess wireless telegraphy apparatus except under and in accordance with a licence issued under this Act. If BAG Films, a company that has now obtained a licence to operate in Muzaffarpur, decides to report/sue Raghav, "hecould be punished with "imprisonment which may extend to three years, or with fine which may extend to one thousand rupees or with both" (Bhojpuria.com).

Image credits: BBC

Rationalism in India: Immanuel Kant vs. Emperor Akbar

2006-03-12T17:13:00.000-06:00

I will begin by saying I know precious little about either Kant or Akbar – this post is more about the choices that two desi academics have made in recent writings on the history, culture, and politics of India (Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative Indian, and Meera Nanda’s article which explores the cultural contradictions of Indian modernity).

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Meera Nanda has been one of the most vocal critics of the “scientism that pervades modern Hinduism,” and has taken to task not only the right-wing types who have done much to conflate the Vedas with science, but also scholars of a postmodern persuasion who have (according to Nanda) bought into the notion that modern science “has no special claims to truth and to our convictions, for it is as much of a cultural construct of the West as other sciences are of their own cultures.”

I have been reading about these debates (and I will admit, as an admirer of the writings of Shiv Visvanathan and Ashis Nandy) over the past few years, so Nanda’s essay in the Feb 11, 2006 issue of EPW concerning the “cultural contradictions of India’s modernity” was one I read with much interest. Before we grapple with why modernity in India feels “incomplete,” “superficial,” and “even schizhophrenic,” Nanda argues in this essay, “we must first understand what the transformation of reason that the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment set in motion.”

So Nanda invites us to consider a few lines from Kant’s famous piece, Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?:

“Enlightenment is man’s release from this self-incurred immaturity [which is] his inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another…Sapere aude! “Have courage to use your own reason!” that is the motto of the enlightenment.”

She goes on to write:

“Kant’s call of ‘Sapere aude!’ was simultaneously an invocation of a new standard of reason meant to challenge all a priori truths that we accept out of faith, cultural conditioning or overt indoctrination.”

And in a subsequent paragraph, deploring how the conflation of the Vedas with science is an affair that has been going on ever since science and technology were introduced in India in the 18^th century, she notes: “Indian rationalists, in comparison, have never enjoyed the same degree of cultural hegemony. The marginalisation of rationalism in India’s cultural politics is a topic for another day and another essay.”

It is this point about “the marginalization of rationalism” that caught my attention. I wondered if Nanda could not find any dialogues on rational thought within India that pre-date Kant and other influential European thinkers? And if she did, why did she choose to invoke Kant and not a figure from Indian intellectual history? Surely, Nanda is aware of how for centuries, we have heard that analytical reasoning and critique are quintessentially ‘Western’ and were introduced to the rest of the world post-Enlightenment. I was just not comfortable with her decision to use Kant’s phrase – Sapere Aude – to invite us to reflect on our “incomplete” and “schizophrenic” modernity. It is “our” modernity, damn it. And if it seems incomplete by Kantian standards, so be it, I felt.

Let us now turn our attention to Amartya Sen’s collection of essays. In this book, Sen challenges “promoters of a narrowly Hindu view of Indian civilization,” and those who have “tended to view the harking back to ancient India with the greatest of suspicion.” His goal in the book is to examine how a consideration of India’s “argumentative tradition,” or the “extensive and ubiquitous reach of Indian heterodoxy,” might influence our understanding of the history, culture and politics of the subcontinent (p. ix).

Sen offers a sweeping introduction to the tradition of reasoning that has been part of India – all the way from the Vedas to thinkers like Ram Mohan Roy. The first chapter of the book includes a section on “Science, Epistemology and Heterodoxy,” in which he narrates an incident from the Ramayana worth quoting at length:

"Javali, a skeptical pundit, lectures Rama, the hero of the epic, on how he should behave but in the process supplements his religious scecpticism by an insistence that we must rely only on what we can observe and experience…follow what is within your experience and do not trouble yourself with what lies beyond the province of human experience (p.26)."

Could Nanda not have used instances such as this to reflect on “our” modernity? Ok, perhaps the Ramayana is a text that is irretrievable from the clutches of the likes of L. K. Advani. But how about the great Moghal Emperor Akbar?

Sen brings to light a phrase that Akbar championed: rahi aql (the path of reason). Nanda would perhaps argue that such examples do not help because they are still connected to the domain of religion, that even debates on “rationalism” were never fully separated from the realm of the religious or the metaphysical. Perhaps, yes. But if the central concern here is to fight against the “streak of scientism in modern Hinduism” (Nanda), isn’t it just as critical to re-assess the history of “rationalism” within India and to use that to critique on-going attempts to read science into the Vedas?

To my mind, rahi aql (the path of reason) is as powerful and evocative as Sapere aude (dare to know).

New Media, Old Fears?

2006-03-08T09:28:00.000-06:00

This is what Screen had to say about the filmi world on March 8, 1991.

- Yes, that is Mohanlal sporting a hoosiers sweatshirt!
- S. P. Balasubramaniam, we are told, recorded 8 songs in a single day for B. B. Films Combine’s I Love You (music by Raam-Laxman)
- Maniratnam’s Anjali has been adjudged best film in the Cinema Express Awards for 1990...

...and so on. I could spend days delighting over such trivia. But the reason this issue of Screen caught my attention is the headline in the right-top corner which reads, “Fight for total ban on Cable TV.” T. Shankar and Ayyappa Prasad write, “In a massive show of solidarity, the meeting of all sectors of the film industry held at the South Indian film chamber auditorium here on March 1 ratified the earlier decision to close down indefinitely. Accordingly, all film activity will come to a halt from March 11.” They go on to report, “Nothing less than a total ban on the operations of the cable TV network in the state will satisfy the industry.”

It is also instructive to note that just a week before this call for a “total ban” on cable TV, a thousand-strong delegation of film industry personnel (including actors Kamalhassan and Rajnikant) had marched along Mount Road in Madras (now Chennai) to the State Guest House and presented a “memorandum demanding the ban of cable TV operations” to Mr. Karthikeyan, advisor to the Governor of Tamilnadu (T. Shankar, Screen, March 1, 1991).

Shankar goes on to report, and it is worth quoting him at length:

“Unlike the pirated movie cassettes, which have to move from hand to hand, cable TV can spread like wildfire enveloping entire residential complexes at a time. The resulting loss to the film industry, in the bargain, cannot be recouped. The safety of the film industry, thus, can no longer be assured unless drastic measures and immediate steps are taken to arrest this pernicious and illegal practice.”

In an issue of Screen dated March 15, 1991, we learn that the Tamilnadu (TN) High Court acted swiftly and ruled, on March 7, that “running a cable TV network is a violation of the TN Exhibition of Films on Television Screens through VCR (Regulation) Act, 1984” (T. Shankar). Essentially, film industry representatives across the country (there are stories of similar protests in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Bombay), were arguing that screening films at video parlours and via cable TV was leading to immense losses at cinema halls where exhibitors were paying a fee and obtaining a license to screen the films.

A few days later, on March 22, 1991, Screen reported that a meeting in Bombay (held on March 14th) and attended by representatives of producers, distributors, exhibitors, and video rights holders “ended on a promising note with an agreement to release the video cassettes in India and abroad after 15 days of the theatrical release” (V. Verma). In Karnataka, chief minister Bangarappa announced, “cable TVs, video parlours, and dish antennae will not be given licenses to operate in the state since it had adversely affected the growth of the film industry apart from it being a bad influence on the younger generation” (no politician can resist commenting on wayward youth). And in Tamilnadu, it was decided that video and cable TV rights will be granted by producers only via distributors’ associations and that too, after 5 years of the film’s theatrical release!

Let us remember that 1991 is when homes across urban India encountered a new entrepreneur: the cablewallah. Enterprising young men were assembling dish antennae on rooftops and stringing wires to hundreds of homes in a neighborhood, charging a monthly fee of about 75-100 rupees. Back in 1991, all we saw on cable TV was Star TV, BBC World Service, MTV, Star Sports, and a “video” channel on which the local cablewallah would screen the latest films (two shows a day – one in the afternoon and one at night!). This is what scared the film industry, and exhibitors and distributors in particular.

I am interested in this moment of convergence (antagonistic, as it may be) between the film industry and the “new” medium of cable and satellite TV because it adds further evidence to what media historians know: contexts change but the arguments remain consistent. Entrenched media systems will do all they can to protect their turf.

I’m not sure, however, that this scenario played out when the film industry(ies) in India encountered the Internet. While many in the industry are very concerned about DVD piracy (and music piracy via the Web) and are struggling to combat it, on the whole, the film industry did not panic when the Internet became the hot new medium of the late 90s and early 2000s. One easy explanation is the number of homes/eyeballs: when compared with cable TV, PC and Internet penetration in India is quite insignificant. But I wonder if the manner in which the film industry reacted to the Internet has more to do with the new medium being a “diasporic” one. This moment of convergence between film and the Web coincided with the growing importance of the NRI figure to cinema, and the gradual institutionalization of diasporic audiences as a “market.” The Internet, as a new medium, was less a threat to established markets and more an opportunity to understand, target, and monetise the diasporic market.

I’ll return to this theme over the next few weeks as I work on an outline of the first chapter of my dissertation – an industrial/institutional analysis of the convergence between cinema and “new” media in the Indian context.

Conference Notes: 2 papers

2006-03-06T22:28:00.000-06:00

It is always difficult to navigate, enjoy, and learn at a large conference, especially when 15 or more panels are held in parallel. Size notwithstanding, I had a wonderful time at the SCMS conference and of course, exploring Vancouver.

SCMS is, as I mentioned in my previous post, the conference to attend for those involved in film and media studies. So it is as much a space for networking and meeting friends as it is for getting a glimpse into cutting edge scholarship in the field. Like with other discipline-specific conferences, this one too is dominated by a handful of established graduate programs.

The panel on “Indian Cinema,” as I explained earlier, was constituted in part because the Society for Cinema and Media Studies continues to labor under the “national cinemas” paradigm. I sympathize with those who have to read through hundreds of abstracts and organize them into panels. It is certainly difficult to put together panels such that individual papers (written without an organizing theme in mind) speak to each other. But I also wonder how much time the organizing committee spent thinking about papers that addressed different aspects of cinema in India. Not only does this relegate students and scholars who study “non-Western” media to the fringes of the conference, it makes the task of engaging with film/media theory difficult. More on this in a separate post.

On to the papers I really enjoyed…

There were two papers that I found particularly intriguing. Bhaskar Sarkar presented a paper that sought to examine film music in Indian cinema as a defining narrative element. If one were to agree that melodrama is the genre that one identifies most easily with Indian cinema, Sarkar’s focus on the melos (musical) part of melodrama will be an important addition to film scholarship on Indian cinema. Songs, as anyone familiar with cinema in India knows, are composed well before shooting for the film is completed. In some cases, the dance sequences are choreographed and shot well before the rest of the film is shot. In spite of this fragmented mode of manufacture, the songs work wonderfully well in the film. This is the puzzle that Sarkar engages with in his paper ("The Mellifluous Illogics of Bollywood Musicals").

The other paper dealt with one of my favorite Maniratnam films – Kannathil Muthamittal. Priya Jaikumar’s paper, “A New Universalism: Terrorism and Film Language in Mani Ratnam’s Kannathil Muthamittal (Peck on the Cheek, Tamil, 2002),” took on some of the heavyweights of film and cultural studies in India who were worried about Maniratnam. Rustom Bharucha, M. S. S. Pandian, and Tejaswini Niranjana were among those who argued that Maniratnam’s Roja was “fascist” and “communal.”

Jaikumar went on to argue that these scholars get it wrong: maniratnam’s films are more centrally concerned with fears of a loss of regional identity (Tamil), and the need to shore up urban Chennai as a site for the production of a Tamil identity that is translocal in nature (think SUN TV and its circulation around the world).

Off to Vancouver: Society for Cinema & Media Studies Conference

2006-02-28T06:18:00.000-06:00

Yes, folks who make a career out of watching film and TV (and lately, those who spend way too much time with their playstations and x-boxes) have a society of their own. And every year, they get together in wonderful cities worldwide (London, in 2005), present papers with a lot of impressive jargon, and persuade themselves that media studies is where the action is and to hell with the snooty Ivy League schools who don't consider media studies a discipline in its own right. I decided to join the fun this year, and will be presenting a paper titled "Filmi Addas: Indian Cinema, New Media, and Participatory Culture."

I'm part of a panel on Indian cinema. Does a paper on new media and fandom fit in with papers that deal with "Nishant/Night's End" (Jyotika Virdi on Shyam Benegal's film), "Dr. Kotnis ki Amar Kahani" (Neepa Majumdar), or "Genre, Masculinity and the Hindi Crime-melodrama" (Meheli Sen)? Tsk...tsk...only conference newbies would ask such a question. Unless you submit a panel proposal, you are at the mercy of the conference organizers and given they deal with a large volume of submissions, what could be easier than putting papers on Indian cinema into one panel? Is it frustrating to be tagged as the "bollywood guy"? Sure. But as my good friend Ben says, hey, I'll ride that wagon if it gets me a job!

I'm excited though! Vancovuer is a fun city and an absolute treat if you're a foodie: so far, Ben and I have identified a sushi joint, a south Indian fusion restaurant, and a bakery that makes 30-40 different kinds of cupcakes! And, Jyotika and I have planned an outing to the desi part of Vancouver to hunt for cheap DVDs! I'm hoping the conference venue has free wi-fi, and if so, I'll certainly blog as the conference unfolds. If you've been to Vancouver and have ideas on where to go and what to do, pl let me know.

Bollywood Women in ASCII

2006-02-28T06:04:00.000-06:00

For those of you who did not experience in the Internet in the pre-browser, pre-broadband days, this is how Bollywood fans kept themselves amused - creating ASCII images of their favorite heroines (male geeks dominated the early days of the Web). Go here for quite a collection of Bollywood babes in ASCII. Predictably enough, TMBWITW gets three attempts. The geek that I am, I ended up trying to match ASCII images to a photographic ones - fun was had, try it! And oh, the guy who maintains this site takes requests too!
(thanks Arvind).

Chamki, Aancho, Googly, and Boombah!

2006-02-27T06:29:00.000-06:00

These are names of Sesame Street characters when they debut on Indian television screens. Called Gali Gali Sim Sim, the show won't feature the Cookie Monster or Rosita. What we have instead is an inquisitive 5-year old (Chamki), Chamki's best friend who loves to read (Googly), a storyteller who takes you places (Aanchoo), and a friendly, cuddly lion who loves to dance (Boombah, from Boombagarh!).

As Asha Singh, director of education and research at Sesame Workshop, explains, the cast will include the local Muppets Chamki, Aanchoo, Googly and Boombah, as well as several human characters representing different regions and religions."

This latest instance of Indianizing a television show is a collaborative effort between Turner International and Miditech. Turner has bragging rights when it comes to TV for kids in India - Cartooon Network India and POGO are a staple of every kid who lives in a cable TV household. And Miditech, run by the Alva brothers (who did some cutting edge stuff on DD, a show called Living on the Edge comes to mind right away), are today production unit with immense credibility and a reputation for innovation.
(via televisionpoint.com and CNN.IBN)

MTV-Desi: Time to Think Beyond the Hyphen

2006-02-24T06:09:00.000-06:00

Here is a commentary piece I wrote for the Convergence Culture Consortium (Comparative Media Studies program) at MIT.

In a recent white paper detailing the centrality of fan communities to media ecologies around the world, Sam Ford and other C3 advisors use the phrase “pop cosmopolitanism” to refer to youth integrating media properties from other cultures into their own everyday lives. They also write that international fan communities play a crucial role in expanding interest and the audience base for media properties, especially in the Asian case. I want to explore this idea here, and argue that examining such fan communities teaches us two important lessons:

We can no longer think of culture industries like Bollywood solely in terms of “national” identity – Bollywood is no longer a film industry tethered to India and “Indianness,” and
Companies like MTV-Desi would do well to think outside and beyond the paradigm of hyphenated identities where Bollywood is concerned.

Let me begin with my own experiences in fan communities that cohere around Bollywood. The day after I arrived in Athens, Georgia, to begin graduate studies (august, 1999), I walked to a computer lab on campus, logged on, and discovered rec.arts.movies.local.Indian (r.a.m.l.i). Over the next few months, I spent many happy hours talking about the heroes, heroines, and villains of Indian cinema with other fans (many who were immigrants like myself).

In this community, I was pleasantly surprised to see second-generation Indian-American fans, participating from their position as ethnic minorities taking to Bollywood as a resource to fashion a hybrid cultural space that was both Indian and American. What really took me by surprise, however, was the presence of non-Indians in the group. How did they learn about Bollywood? Some had watched a film at an international film festival in their city, some were fans of Hong Kong cinema and had learned about Bollwood from other film buffs, and Indian friends in college or their neighborhood introduced some to the cinema. These non-Indian fans of Bollywood watched films, reviewed them for others in the group, asked questions about the films and aspects of Indian culture they did not understand, became devoted fans of some stars, and some even went on to learn Hindi!

Today, r.a.m.l.i is not where the action is. There are countless multimedia websites, discussion forums, and blogs devoted to every imaginable aspect of Indian film culture; subtitled DVDs are available not only in Indian grocery stores, but also at your local Blockbuster and via Netflix; dance clubs regularly include Bollywood numbers; major cities in the U.S. now have cinema halls that regularly screen Bollywood films; Bollywood, in short, has more than a foothold in American public culture. This story of Bollywood’s early days in America is one that hasn’t been told, and there are some important lessons it holds for both academic and corporate worlds.

#1. Fan Studies and the Question of Global Media

Academics studying fandom often ask how fan studies can “go global.” And media companies ask how they can cash in on the current interest in Bollywood. What we need to recognize is, historically, the cultural geography of Bollywood fandom has always been global. Instead of asking how to study fandom in different media/cultural contexts, we need to recognize that a focus on such transnational fan communities will help us better understand how media circulate and get hinged to varied aspirations around the world. And crucially, how a “non-Western” culture industry like Bollywood becomes a part of the mediascape in countries such as the U.S.

#2: Beyond the National

Fan communities that cohere around the films, music, and stars of Bollywood also tell us that we need to think beyond the “national” as the most important scale of imagination and identity-construction. Over the last decade, it has become clear that the creation of Bollywood properties – films, music, apparel, web portals, mobile games, etc. – is an enterprise that takes place in many locations around the world, and involves people with different affiliations and stakes that criss-cross regional, national, and diasporic boundaries. Bollywood, in other words, cannot be understood in terms of a “national” cinema industry limited to the boundaries of the Indian nation-state or restricted in its imagination by rigid definitions of “Indianness.”

#3: Fan Communities as Archives

The collective intelligence of fan communities can also be conceived in terms of an archive. Not only did early Bollywood fans gather and share trade and press coverage relating to films and stars, many discussions that took place in forums such as r.a.m.l.i grappled with what it meant for non-Indians to begin engaging with Bollywood. These discussions provide a very useful starting point for understanding how new cultural forms enter, circulate, and gradually become part of a wider public culture. For corporations and ethnographers alike, these conversations can provide clues into what it is about a new cultural form that fans find intriguing, what attracted non-Indians to Bollywood in the first place, what was the learning process like, and crucially, how these early adopters became opinion leaders in their homes and communities.

#4: Moving Beyond the Hyphen

At a time when Bollywood is re-imagining itself as a global culture industry, how do we understand experiments such as MTV-Desi? It is no doubt a safe strategy to tap into an identified niche market of South Asian-American youth and count on them to bring other consumers into the fold. But what the story of Bollywood fandom in the U.S. suggests is this: focusing on an ethnic market comes with the risk of neglecting attachments to Bollywood that do not follow lines of ethnicity or nationality. MTV-Desi needs to look outside the world of hyphenated identities and start paying attention to fans like Muffy Saint Bernard – r.a.m.l.i regular, author of Planet BollyBob, drag queen who has performed her Bollywood song-and-dance routine at an L.A. screening of Kaante (Thorns)), and has written about why she rejected Coronation Street and took to Bollywood instead!

Early Bollywood Fandom

2006-02-23T06:25:00.000-06:00

I was scouring the web for archives of groups like rec.arts.movies.local.indian and rec.music.indian.misc and came across this wonderful, wonderful compilation of humorous dialogues from Hindi films, Ajeet jokes(some made up, but equally funny), and even transliterations of some memorable adverts that made Doordarshan such a riot!

Here's one of my favourites (unfortunately, translations don't always work):

The scene: Pran is looking through a telescope at a safe from afar. He turns to his henchman and says (in the famous Pran style):
Wo safe Johnson & Johnson ka hai. Iss duniya mein sirf teen log use khol sakte hain.
(That is a Johnson & Johnson safe, only three people in this world can crack it open)
Kaun boss, kaun? (Who boss, who?)
Johnson, Johnson, aur main (Johnson, Johnson, and me!)

I wish I'd been part of such early Usenet fun! By the time I got on to r.a.m.l.i, a couple of trolls had all but destroyed what must have surely been a nice group. In fact, it was through r.a.m.l.i that I got to know of folks like David Chute, one of the earliest film critics in the U.S. to write knowledgeably about Indian cinema.

As English as daffodils or chicken tikka masala!

2006-02-22T08:32:00.000-06:00

In a recent article on the "Uses and Abuses of Multiculturalism," Amartya Sen recounts a description of "unquestionable Englishness of an Englishwoman in a London paper: She is as English as daffodils or chicken tikka masala." After this and many other delightful anecdotes, Sen writes:

Yet the weight of British public opinion has been moving, at least until recently, quite strongly in the direction of tolerating--and even celebrating--cultural diversity. All this, and the inclusionary role of voting rights and non-discriminatory public services, have contributed to an interracial calm of a kind that France in particular has not enjoyed recently. Still, it leaves some of the central issues of multiculturalism entirely unresolved, and I want to take them up now.

One of the issues that he takes up speaks to the recent cartoon controversy. Sen writes:

while religion or ethnicity may be an important identity for people (especially if they have the freedom to choose between celebrating or rejecting inherited or attributed traditions), there are other affiliations and associations that people also have reason to value.

At the cost of sounding a tad frivolous, I would suggest that fan communities that cohere around popular culture artifacts that circulate globally (think anime, Bollywood) are one such space where affiliations and stakes criss-cross regional, linguistic, national, and religious boundaries. Article is in The New Republic (free registration).
(via 3Quarks Daily)

Work and Surf!

2006-02-20T08:24:00.000-06:00

Finally, I think I have found a coffee shop in Buffalo where I can work and surf! I tried a few places last summer when studying for prelims - a Starbucks (too cramped), Aroma (on Elmwood, too small), and Spot on Elmwood (a bit too noisy) - and ended up spending most of my time at a library on the UB campus. And last week, a friend suggested taking a look at the Spot coffee shop at the intersection of Delaware and Chippewa. Perfect! Large place, great house brew, enough outlets for every customer with a laptop, and, free wi-fi! This might well be where I write my dissertation in "15 minutes a day!"

Arrival Stories

2006-02-17T15:40:00.000-06:00

I’ve read a number of ethnographies that begin with “arrival stories” – about one’s early days in the field, interesting encounters with informants that shape one’s project in important ways, and sometimes, reflections on one’s position in relation to informants/questions/community, etc. And returning “home” to do “fieldwork” makes arrival stories all the more interesting. I was ready for arrival stories of my own. I wasn’t at all prepared, however, for arrival in the U.S. at the end of one phase of fieldwork.

After a long time spent in the field, isn’t returning home also an arrival story? Customs. The friendly immigration officer. Winter. Cold cereal for breakfast. Calling cards to hear mum’s voice. The silence – after 4 months spent in busy neighborhoods in cities like Bangalore, Bombay, and Delhi, a quiet neighborhood in a town in upstate NY, in the middle of winter, is quite a jolt. It has taken me nearly two weeks to get back into the rhythms of life in the U.S., two slow and long weeks.

Have I thought about blogging these past few weeks? Yes. Did nothing blogworthy happen the last few weeks? Sure, plenty. So, why the silence?

Arriving at the end of fieldwork simply means entering another site, one where you are alone with your interviews and archival materials. You have to come to terms with why you left in the first place. Dissertation. The space between fieldwork/research and writing is most certainly not easily divided – research means going back and forth, letting the fieldwork shape the writing and in turn, allowing the writing process to shape further inquiry. But the first time you cross over and are confronted with having to write is one that is very, very anxiety inducing.

Was the fieldwork any good? The interviews sounded good, but how in god’s name are they going to lead to inferences and arguments in a dissertation? Do I have to do more archival research? Maybe I should plan another trip…

Such thoughts and more defined my arrival.

As I gradually move out of this liminal space of arrival and begin dealing with the pains and pleasures (?) of dissertation writing, I will rethink and revive Bollyspace. Stay tuned.

2 week break

2006-01-20T05:19:00.000-06:00

I'll be traveling over the next two weeks to Chennai and Kolkata. While web access won't be a problem, I'll be busy with wedding-related work. Expect notes on all that and more early next month!

"I'm in the Internet"!

2006-01-16T02:45:00.000-06:00

As I was writing about my interview with Onir, the person next to me in the cybercafe received a call. It was his boss.

"Hello, yes boss, i'm on lunch break"

I suppose the boss wanted to know how long his lunch breaks lasted.

"No boss, just 30 minutes. Then on the way to the client's office, I thought to quickly check email."

Boss didn't catch on.

"I'm in the Internet sir, in the Internet."

Man deserves a part in a desi rip-off of The Matrix, no?

Who can compete with Karwa Chauth?

2006-01-16T02:34:00.000-06:00

Bombay cinema going global has helped low-budget “indie” filmmakers, is a common refrain these days. “Going global” points not only to production practices and marketing techniques that consciously address audience worldwide, but also the emergence of multiplexes in urban India. And if not for multiplexes, and the multiplex audience, a film like My Brother Nikhil (MBN) would never have done as well as it did. Even 6 or 7 years back, a film like MBN would not have stood any chance against big-budget tear-jerkers with lavish song-and-dance routines and the inevitable karwa chauth sequence.

But how much of this is industry myth/logic? I had an opportunity to interview Onir, the director who financed, made, and marketed MBN, and here are some things I learned from him.

To begin with, the “multiplex audience” is a catch-all term that explains little. Audiences that watch films in multiplexes are diverse – not only do they vary (taste, spending power, etc.) from one region of the country to another, they vary within the same city. In Mumbai, for instance, MBN did very well in Bandra but sunk without a trace in Ghatkopar.

Second, promos work only for the opening weekend and maybe a few days after the opening. Into the second week, a film’s fortunes depend pretty much on word-of-mouth advertising. And when a film like MBN isn’t running house-full by the second week, exhibitors immediately pull it out of prime evening slots and give it an afternoon spot. Who, as Onir asked, would skip work and watch a film like MBN in the middle of the afternoon? In other words, if you don’t have a big banner supporting you, you cannot hold on to the best spots and screens in a multiplex.

Third, films like MBN have always done well in the international cinema circuit. But over the last decade, with “Bollywood” entering this space aggressively, a film like MBN now has to compete with a Veer Zaara.

Fourth – NRI audiences. Again, a very diverse audience is often stereotyped as one that watches Indian cinema for nostalgia value and little else. So films like Tango Charlie get released in theatres in the US and UK, but MBN or Hazaaron Khwahishen Aisi struggles to find an exhibitor.

And finally, NRI conservatism. After a screening in Chicago, one woman asked, “what kind of message is this U-certified film giving to Indian youngsters? And why did you make a film on homosexuality and AIDS when you know that AIDS affects more heterosexuals in India?” Onir went on a 11-city tour of the US, and says close to 80% of the audience was non-Indian. And the one screening that was held in a very desi venue – the Naz cinema hall in LA, only 30-odd people turned up.

AIDS and gay rights versus the karwa chauth genre. Right. That's fair.

Amitav Ghosh's latest

2006-01-13T23:40:00.000-06:00

"It is when we think of the world the aesthetic of indifference might bring into being that we recognize the urgency of remembering the stories we have not written." These are lines from "The Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi," an essay in Amitav Ghosh's latest book. A collection of essays that have been published in publications such as The Nation, The New Yorker, and Granta, every review I've come across so far has nothing but good things to say. Pico Iyer's review here and the LA Times here.

Wasps

2006-01-12T03:02:00.000-06:00

I met a friend from Madison for lunch today, and we spoke about wasps. He studies them - he spends hours in an arboretum in Madison watching them go about their business. While I vaguely knew that wasps were social creatures (feeding the young is a collective job, for e.g.), I didn't know much else. Until today. By way of explaining his dissertation project, my friend went regaled me with many a wonderful wasp tale.

The one I found most interesting concerns reproduction. Apparently, wasps in Madison flutter their wings to create a vibration around the nest, which in turn influences the wasps in their larval state. Vibrations influence some hormonal changes, which then have an impact on the way the larva develops into a wasp. This is his hypothesis, by the way.

And what do wasps in other parts of the world do? Well, there is wasp colony at the Indian Institute of Science here in Bangalore. Wasps here bang their heads against the nest which also results in vibrations (of a different frequency). Fascinating, no?

Growing Old in Bangalore: a Snapshot

2006-01-11T06:59:00.000-06:00

An uncle and aunty I know in Bangalore have a son who works in Glasgow, Scotland. He is their only child, and after nearly a decade, they are now used to their son being away and have also accepted the idea that he is not going to move back. They know they will grow old together, alone.

Uncle and aunty have a nice routine - wake up early, go for a walk (which includes visits to temples along the way), eat a light breakfast, read the newspaper and chat awhile, lunch, a nap, afternoon cup of coffee, uncle goes out to get groceries and veggies, dinner, news on TV, and to bed early. Except on Saturdays.

On Saturdays, uncle carries the telephone handset and keeps pacing around the house waiting for his son to call. Uncle and aunty both know that he will call around noon. But they will not put the handset down until have heard his voice.

Backlog

2006-01-11T06:43:00.000-06:00

I have a folder in the C:\ drive called "Interviews." This folder now occupies a large percentage of drive space - close to 40 interviews. But, *sob*, they're all sound files. I had resolved to spend weekends listening to the interviews and transcribing them. But tell me, when you're in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore, is it really possible to lock yourself up in a room and listen-type-listen-rewind-listen-type and so on for hours on end? I have notes - i was good about that. After a long day of interviews, I'd sit and jot down some of the most interesting parts of the day's conversations. But *sigh*, transcribing the whole interview?

do women have to be rowdies to be fans?

2006-01-09T07:28:00.000-06:00

I saw a wonderful clip from Sandakkozhi on SUN TV a few days back, a clip that spoke directly to how women’s fan desires and attachments are never taken seriously (or even acknowledged).

The scene unfolds in a cinema hall where a Rajnikanth film is being screened. Initially, we only hear a lot of noise – whistling, comments, yelling, dancing on the seats and in the aisles, and so on. All par for the course, with one exception: the voices sound feminine. Only when the camera moves in a little more do you see the young women behaving like “rowdies.” A group of college-going women have taken over the job that we tend to associate with men in the front rows.

The camera then pulls back and we see some reactions from others in the hall who are completely surprised and to an extent, pissed. A couple of guys in the back row (who happen to be one of the women’s brother and his friend) are horrified and whisper to each other: “look at her, she’s behaving like a rowdy…I don’t want to be seen here, it’ll be such a disgrace (Maaname poghudhu).” The others are simply too stunned to react. One man, sitting right behind these women, tells them to keep quiet and how un-womanly their behavior seemed – he gets shouted down, his wife tells him to shut up, and the fun continues!

Fan activity is a realm of film culture that scholarship on Indian cinema is yet to address in systematic fashion. The two notable exceptions are Srinivas’ pioneering work on the relationships between fan associations and major stars in the Telugu film industry and Sara Dickey’s analysis of fan associations in Tamilnadu (part of a book, Cinema and the Urban Poor in South India).

Building on scholarship on Tamil cinema that has examined the relationship between the construction of stardom and the politics of mobilization, Dickey provides a very useful ethnographic account of this aspect of fan activity in Tamilnadu. She does, however, ignore the possibility of fan activity that might not necessarily be “public” in the sense of there being a neighborhood fan association that meets at street corners, at tea-shops, outside cinema halls or other such spaces. Indeed, her analysis circumscribes fan activity in Tamilnadu as that defined by working-class (often lower caste), male youth in visible, public spaces.

A significant problem with this notion of a fan association as constituting a “public” relates to the question of gender. For instance, Dickey uncritically accepts responses from women who claim that they are not members of fan associations because it would not be looked upon kindly by their family members and would make their reputations questionable in the neighborhood. Just because women aren’t out whistling and hooting in cinema halls or forming neighborhood associations doesn’t mean they aren’t fans, no?

In what terms would Dickey describe the desires and attachments of thousands of “respectable” middle-and upper-middle class women who constitute the primary readership for Tamil magazines like Kumudam and Snehidhi which include a lot of film-related content? How would Dickey read a scene like the one I describe above? Do women have to be "rowdy-like" to have their fan desires acknowledged and understood?
[Image from behindwoods, Meera Jasmine, heroine in Sandakkozhi]

Indibloggies 2005: why I will vote

2006-01-08T09:29:00.000-06:00

Bloggers’ efforts have been talked about (not always in postive vein) a lot over the past couple of years. Every respectable newspaper and magazine has reflected upon the influence that bloggers have had in re-shaping news/information flows and thereby, public opinion to some degree.

As someone who has benefited tremendously from the many wonderful bloggers working, as Amit Varma points out, "just for the love of it," I believe their influence lies in the insistent, everyday-ness of their work. Success stories of mobilization around an issue abound – like the time Sepiamutiny played a key role in organizing protests against a racist DJ. But the larger significance of blogs might rest in the sheer range of voices that are in conversation with each other on a daily basis.

Terrorism & immigration, rural development & technology, outsourcing & globalization, music & race relations, cinema & cultural identity – complex issues that inspire heated and often jargon-filled discussions in academia. Blogs bring these down to earth, personalize them, and provide a space for us to talk. In the process, there are pointless shouting matches that make me throw my hands up in despair. But for most part, the conversations have forced me to rethink some strongest convictions about myself , those around me, and the many worlds I live in. And what’s more, it is immense fun! For all these reasons and more, I will pay my dues by logging on to this site, and cast my vote for those who have made the future of the Web that much brighter.

Film Promos: questions

2006-01-07T23:45:00.000-06:00

Forget the movie. How was the promo? What new gimmicks did a promo introduce? And, is the promo a hit?

Yes, people these days actually talk about a movie promotion being a hit or a flop. Take Rang De Basanti, for example. Rahman’s music, esp the title track, is already a hit. Aamir sports a brat-pack college look. And the film’s promotions are all over the place, so much so, it is impossible to move around in a city like Bangalore without being reminded of the film sooner or later…the film, even before theatrical release, has enveloped the city like a skin (that will be shed in time for the next big film promo). [Note: Aamir’s contract for Rang De Basanti stipulates his participation in every promotion. He was part of the show at Mumbai’s Crossroads Mall where he walked the ramp in Provogue designed clothes, the film’s fashion tie-up, and obliged screaming fans with a little dance.Pics here].

Film publicity these days is no longer limited to print ads and theatrical trailers. While print and hoardings remain key advertising channels, most films these days have multiple “media partners” – comics, radio, TV, Internet, Cell phone networks, fashion labels. Most films, it would be fair to say, have a transmedia life much before they hit screens across the country and abroad. It is almost as if the promotion blitz generates a narrative that, in pre-convergence era, would only emerge after the theatrical release.

While much of it can be dismissed as hype, I wonder if this is a feature of post-celluloid cinema that is here to stay. At one level, the entire promotion package is nothing more than an attempt to get audiences to the theaters for at least one weekend (following which it is pretty much word-of-mouth advertising). Hype helps to an extent, yes. But is this only a new marketing mechanism that is struggling with an old problem – box-office returns – or is there more?

There is a certain mix of elements: a montage of song clips, scenes that intrigue, and dialogues that are striking (comedic, melodramatic, horrific, etc.). This is the basic package. Then there is the microsite, which gives you a little more: behind the scenes stills, detailed information about cast and crew, production notes, wallpapers for your computer, an A/V gallery of trailers and song-clips, and a link to a discussion forum. Further, a tie-up with a channel like MTV or [V] leads to popular shows on these channels re-worked with the film’s content. Like MTV’s “Naughty Hour” for the film Neal n Nikki. These shows generally include interviews with the main characters in the film, the director, producer, script and dialogue writers, and sometimes, the music director(s).

So in many ways, the film itself is only one component of a cinematic experience that is dispersed across many spaces. Different elements of films are re-packaged as brands or commodities that circulate across multiple media and thereby, enter different circuits of consumption as well. The question that all this raises is: if the film today is much more than the 2-3 hours that one sits through in the cinema hall, what kind of a narrative are we experiencing? What does such a dispersed narrative do to notions of the “film text”? What kinds of demands does this make of us, and how does the industry respond to the ways in which we now use new media technologies (cell phones, iPODs, etc.) at our disposal? Through such usage, what kinds of social networks are being created? What implications do interactions in filmic-social networks have for our understanding of relationships between cinema and public culture?

[image from bollywood501.com]

Parallel Trajectories of the WWW: an Anecdote

2006-01-02T23:47:00.000-06:00

Pleasure and entertainment, I claimed, were not a part of the vocabulary of ICT4D initiatives in rural India. Let me recount a story. I was in Madurai, visiting different kiosks with another academic (an American professor) and were accompanied by two people who had done wonderful and painstaking work to set up the kiosks and were responsible, in many ways, to ensure that the kiosks functioned well. One kiosk, we were told, was proving to be a problem because in the evenings, the PC there was being used to watch films and sometimes, porn. The professor I was with clicked his tongue and asked what was being done about this “problem.” And I recall being amused that no one anticipated something like this happening in a kiosk run by two young men!

I bring this up to point to how a certain mode of using the computer and the Web was construed as being a disciplinary issue and clearly outside the ambit of “development.” How could these boys watch films and porn when the kiosk was set up with the goal of helping the village and its denizens “leapfrog the industrial revolution?!”

I don’t mean to underplay the project leaders’ concern – a space that gets associated with a group of men watching porn isn’t one that women are inclined to visit on a regular basis, to consider one very obvious dimension of the problem. And I am not suggesting that ICT4D initiatives think creatively about using porn as a hook to getting rural India online! There are many serious problems to be addressed (English as the language of the Web, for instance) before the Web as a medium becomes a part of everyday life.

The question is, are there lessons to be learned from the way other “new media” are now as much a part of rural as urban India?

Parallel Trajectories of the WWW (Part I)

2006-01-02T23:24:00.000-06:00

I spent last summer (2004) in rural Pondicherry talking to people in villages where the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation had set up information kiosks (thagaval maiyyam) with Internet connectivity. And the year before that, I spent a summer hanging out in the outskirts of Tiruppur (near Coimbatore, in Tamilnadu) trying to understand how people made sense of the Web. My own experiences with the Internet in

India

has been via cybercafés in Bangalore and now, through interviews with a number of media execs running dotcom companies. I am struck by the very different careers that one communications technology has had in

India

over the same period of time. It seems that

India

’s experiments and experiences with the Internet can be traced along two parallel trajectories. (It is also clear that a community of practitioners, funding agencies/venture capitalists, policy-makers, and academics has developed around each path. There are some very interesting points of intersection, but more on that later).

On the one hand is the emergence, over the last 6-7 years, of the dotcom sector in India. Spurred on by the development of the IT industry as a whole over the last 10-15 years, a number of India-specific websites and portals have established themselves as key spaces in the world wide web. Portals and sites such as Indiatimes, Rediff, Sulekha, Yahoo-India, and Indiafm are all established players in the Web business. Further, while PC penetration in India is still very low, there is little doubt that the Internet, as a new medium of communication, is firmly entrenched in the urban imagination. In a city like Bangalore, cybercafés are ubiquitous – so much so, I’d even claim that they rival the darshinis in terms of presence!

Much of the urban middle class is now conversant with cyber-terms such as email, chat, surf/browse, webcam, and so on. I’ve been using cybercafés in Bangalore for nearly 7 years now and can confidently say that the demographics of Internet usage, while dominated by the 14-30 age group, has gradually expanded to include middle-aged parents who correspond with their relatives in different parts of the world (if not within India). The Web now is as much a part of these folks’ media ecology as satellite TV and FM radio.

Now consider another life that the Internet has had in India. In rural India, the Internet has been enmeshed in the
discourse of ICT4D – Information and Communication Technologies for Development.There have been a number of interesting and high-profile experiments carried out, with varying degrees of success, by a range of actors. Some of the well-know ones include MSSRF’s work in the Pondicherry region, n-Logue/Tenet /IIT-Chennai’s work in the Madurai region of Tamilnadu, the Akshaya project in Kerala, and Drishti’s project in Haryana. [for a more comprehensive listing, see this report]

In rural India, the Internet has largely been introduced as a wonderful new tool for “development.” Radio and television failed us, but the Internet, now this is going to be revolutionary, has been the general sentiment. It is another matter that we are yet to witness an ICT4D project that has succeeded either in terms of usage or financial sustainability. Again, please go here to read more about these and other problems.

So powerful has the rhetoric of “leapfrogging the industrial revolution” been that info-kiosks and telecenters in India are viewed exclusively in developmental terms. The burden of “leapfrogging,” it would seem, was placed squarely on rural Indian. Millions of dollars have been spent on ICT4D initiatives, vast rural tracts have been “integrated” into the new communications network, software programs have re-worked to suit different local languages, and hundreds of volunteers have painstakingly set up IT centers in hundreds of villages. Yet the question of pleasure and meaning is never asked. Pleasure and entertainment, it would seem, are the province of urban, English-speaking elites.