The Tigress Gets an Outing...

Stories are weird beings. Sometimes they jump out, fully formed like Athena, from your head and take very little polishing. Or else, they seem to begin with a scrap of memory, or conversation, or just an image and feel like an interminable CPWD project. And those, like CPWD projects, even when they are complete, feel a bit spiky and ugly and a bit off. And then, sometimes, it seems that decades of memory, fantasy, speculation, experience and conviction, all come together to form a tight little knot. Something of the sort happened last year, when I wrote a tiny story about a woman suicide bomber.

Somewhere in the back of my mind were the horrific images from the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi - one reason Dhanu seemed like a good name for one of the characters. Then there were images from Mani Rathnam's Dil Se, all green and humid like memories of my childhood in the north east. And overlaid on the top of it all was the hegemonic discourse primarily from western media and governments that insists that suicide bombers are either deluded dupes, hate-filled fanatics or psychotic killers. No Hollywood or European director is going to a take a chance with a film like The Terrorist or Dil Se in the near future!

But more specifically there was a telephone conversation about the Aamir Khan-Kajol starrer, Fanaa! Some friends who had lived over two decades in the USA (and have returned since to India) called me up in distress and fury. How could a terrorist be shown to have a "love life," they asked. Wasn't this a mafia-run Bollywood pandering to the nefarious Middle East? Wasn't this threatening the Indian nation-state and indeed, all morality? Wasn't this sympathy for a mass-killer undermining the morale of our law enforcement officers and soldiers?

All their arguments were distilled from post-9/11 American media, with resounding echoes in the various European ones. In face of their passion, all my arguments sounded hollow, sentimentalist, pathetic even. I pointed to the ways the film echoed Mother India, that it was about taking a stand against "terrorism" even when it was at personal cost. That in India we walked a fine line that ensured that we didn't succumb to seeing any "other" as non-human. But to no avail! My friends remained angry and distressed. And I found myself wondering why they believed a "terrorist couldn't love anyone"!!

Perhaps it was that question that provided the final spark for the story. From nearly fifteen years of wondering and questioning why some people chose to kill by dying, a tiny narrative was born. It brought together every news report and book I had ever read about terrorism. And yet, strangely enough, it went back to those first images of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination with blood-soaked pinks and greens, of fragments of flowers in the midst of the charred horror. And to those initial identi-kit sketches of Dhanu in the newspapers.

Not surprisingly, the story as it was born, set itself in Sri Lanka. With its deep emerald woods. With rich silks and heavy perfumes. With a Black Tigress at its centre! And it distilled all that I had read and heard and watched for over fifteen years.

I have been saddened by some of the responses I have received for the story. It is not a justification of those who die to kill. It is not even a justification of those who kill. The story questions all of life that drives them to such a step. It is a step at understanding. Because as my grandmother always told me, "with understanding shall come the solutions."

The story, Tomorrow the Tigress Will Hunt, is out now in the new issue of The Drawbridge, along with a lot of other thought provoking writing.

I think its a sad story. And one that makes me angry. And its a story that needs to be told.

Chaiyya Chaiyya and The Inside Man

The other day a friend basically forced me to watch Spike Lee’s 2006 venture, The Inside Man.

That sentence needs explanation: given my current location in the throes of writing over fifty thousand words analysing cinematic practises, watching movies has slipped from its prime position as entertainment. Movies are work at the current time and I don’t need to do any more work than is absolutely necessary.

On the other hand, the aforementioned friend felt that I needed to watch Lee “bookend” his film with one of my all time Gulzar-A.R. Rahman favourite songs: Chaiyya Chaiyya. And so I did!

And have been confused ever since. Admittedly I am not alone in this state.

Question is: Why? Assuming that Spike Lee plans his movies and their effects carefully, what does Chaiyya Chaiyya contribute to the flick? Other than of course another attempt to cash in on the growing “Bollywood” craze. Oh how I hate that unavoidable tag!

I was disappointed, I have to confess. I did have visions of Denzel and Jodie doing a train-top routine a la Shahrukh-Malaika. Or given the racial politics of Hollywood, at least an Owen-Jodie two-step shuffle. But no such luck! The song just shows up during credits, with no real contribution to the movie it bookends.

Of course Western critics are equally baffled – which I suppose is a good thing! My favourite response came from TimeDispatch.com that explained: “The end credits and the opening titles, incidentally, are enlivened by the peppy Bollywood hit song "Chal Chaiyya Chaiyya" from the movie "Dil Se." The song does not seem to have anything to do with this movie -- no one dances on top of a train -- but it is a hip way to reassure the audience that nothing too bad is going to happen.”

Really? That is where globalization meets Lost In Translation! Or rather when any form of “manageable models” of making meaning are nonexistent. Poor TimeDispatch.com reviewer of course has no clue of the original movie, Dil Se.

Obsessed lover-boy chasing sulky suicide bomber until they can blow themselves to bits in picturesque Old Fort setting is definitely my definition of something "too bad” has happened!

Sigh….the joys of globalization!