Sexy in the City

Be forewarned. This is hardly going to be your desi take on the Carrie Bradshaw-Samantha what's her name brand of feminism. Quite the opposite in fact. I am not going to beat around the bush here. I hated the fact that Samantha was waving those darn condoms in a public space supposed to be the souk- in the face of the bewildered "Middle-eastern" men. We could all see how hard she was trying to make those pumped up breasts remain in place and the skin remain intact by applying hummus.
See if you are a desi woman, you have probably remained very secretive about your beauty rituals. Why let the man see what goes on to get the perfect shape of eyebrows right? I for one have found feminism to be a very distorted notion in America. Coming from a country where couples can be beaten up for kissing in park to a place where there is PDA galore, hems rise and flash, one would wonder how desis react to such a drastic change in situation. Admittedly, it can get a little confusing and then liberating. You don't have to worry about the lechy dude in his dhinchak Lancer cat-calling if you dare to step out in your mini or don't cover your arms.
I like to believe am a through and through Dilliwalli. So it came as no surprise that sitting in California, I was mulling and writing about Delhi, excavating every possible artifact that I could- to make the setting of my novel in progress come alive. I was born and raised in the city and then traipsed through the city while shooting my documentary film projects and all my memories of the city are collapsed into a huge colorful palette. I can never forget the city- the roads named after freedom fighters, the large leafy trees and the white houses, eating icecream at India gate, the rude autowallahs, the snobbery I inculcated during my time at an uppity women's college and then going to the urban slums of Delh to do "research" only to realize that what strikes my fancy is the way women gathered around a flat screen TV to watch Tulsi Mihir Virani and children enamored by Pokemon.
Over the years, my notion of what constitutes an "urban" India has become distorted. I have to place the word "urban" in quotes simply because it doesnot remain a generic term anymore. Cities are no longer urban and urban spaces are no longer exclusively cities. It can not be- simply because dreams are no longer exclusive to cities. I have always been a fan of film noir- the gangsters, the gun shots, the chase sequences, the femme fatale, the sleazy bars and the nice at heart prostitute who gets shot at the end for helping our hero. So when a film claims to be a city film about women in a city- my radars go up. There have been two in the recent past in fact- one claiming to be the desi version of the other. Aisha and Sex and the City II. I have mulled over this entry for a long time and for some reason couldn't come up with an appropriate title. So sexy in the city it is..considering how many films do a double whammy of being the woman in a particular city- the fashionable-career woman in New York, the socialite woman in Delhi, the small town woman who goes to Mumbai to make it big! We have our roles for women defined and we better fit into these typecasts..else, you know what- all hell will break lose. Women like Aisha (pleae watch the latest film Aisha) might have to marry a poor BPO sector boy from Bahadurgarh and women like Carrie might have to settle for only one apartment in NY (poor her! sob sob) and take care of children without nannies.
See there are a couple of issues here. It is not just about looking good and wearing the Malino Blahanics and walking to the grocery store (oh..hang on! these women don't goto grocery stores. They wine and dine out and drink coffee to get rid of their hangovers. Hamari Aisha has to be a little more gharelu than that. So she bakes lest those fingernails get haldi in them.) The parallels are obvious. It is not just about being sexy and romping around the city. It is also not just about spending all that money to buy that Coco Chanel dress from Emporia Mall or Fifth Avenue. I wish it were that simple. It is about who has the right to look sexy. And while it seems alarming to even write this-- sexiness comes with a class spin in our supposed new genre of female lib movies also known as chick flicks. Think about it. How convenient it is to tie up money with your English speaking abilities and your accent to how you dress and which pubs you hang out in. The action happens in the billboard cities- Mumbai could be Manhattan and Gurgaon could be Dubai. Literally. But I only wish that the filmmakers didn't reduce feminism to such cheap quotients of capitalism and then try so blatantly, so hard to maintain the actually banal and irrelevant status quo. No wonder the Bahadurgarhi girl gets the accountant's son. And hamari apni laadli Aisha has to get the suave Wharton return boy. How convenient!
Come on. I thought cities were supposed to be less class stratified than that. They were supposed to spaces where people landed with ambition and dreams. Since when did dreams begin to get a class spin and since when did uber elite (and actually quite obnoxious at that) women start universalizing the struggles of every woman? Ofcourse Aisha and Carrie love their lives. They have to. They have rich husbands and rich fathers to take care of them. And ofcourse they have the right to look sexy in hot pants. Unlike the other lesser mortals of women (who by the way are completely non existent from the scenario) traveling in autos, buses and subways- accumulating the grime and filth of the city, these women are always seen hailing cabs or climbing into Daddy's chauffer driven cars. Class,status,profession, what and whom you can desire, sex appeal, speaking English (it is a different matter how Punjabified Aisha's own accent was) - they are all corollaries of each other.
A couple of years back, while doing a research project on cinema and cities, I chanced upon a hilarious and witty film called UP ke Bunty aur Babli- a direct take off on Bunty aur Babli that was made by Shaad Ali. The only difference was that the dreams of UP ke Bunty aur Babli had been scaled down- they stole tractors and cows and sang songs in the fields. That was the only difference- scale. Who cared about class and status? Those were things that were meant to be acquired in the course of the film. India A, B, C, D..we love attaching these labels. But what perhaps often goes unnoticed is that with devices like the satellite, cable TV and internet- dreams and aspirations can in no certain way remain restricted within class. Manhattan is within everyone's reach. Come to New Jersey if you don't believe me. And Carrie and gang..well, I have gone hoarse screaming about the absolutely trite nature of white feminism with their utterly foolish ambitions and escapades. One film critic in India actually had the nerve to call Aisha "the desi version of Sex and the City". I shuddered at the comparison. Or maybe both films deserve a comparison to each other- not only for the lack of satirical value but also for the "let's charge it to daddy's credit card" kind of feminism.
Come on, give us a women a little "credit" now.

Till next time readers..
Cheerio!
Travel Bee

Strange encounters for the desi kind

There are three dreams that any Bengali would love to fulfill: eat and drink themselves to death (no wonder Bengali households are stocked with Digene and Gelusil), travel around the world (yes, the monkey cap is the best friend), and revel in arts and music (from Rabindranath to the Beatles- everyone is "ours").
So when a desi Bengali woman gets to fulfill even one of these pursuits in a place that has practically fallen off the map, one would obviously expect some strange encounters, right? (like meeting yet another member from Bong land..yes, we are omnipresent!). There were encounters alright- not the exuberant sorts that would make you jump off the seat...but the more shadowy, whispery sort- the kind that tickle you on the neck and then vanish into nothingness.

When I dreamed of Llano del Rio that night, a dusty, stony world filled my vision. The crisp light bouncing off the mountains sharpened the shadows of trees. Two men stood in a pit surrounded by sandy dunes and watch each other. Their eyes twitched on the golden, rugged faces. A slow drip of water fell in to a bowl of cowboy hat. A confident hand reached towards a black leather holster. A cloud of red dust got kicked up by the hooves of horses as a gun fired in the silent air.

The great American hero even in his violent and destructive acts, emerges as the symbol of hope and an agent for attaining utopia in a world ridden by treachery, devils and savages. This is where I encountered American history- not in the unequivocal narratives of my history textbook but in these formula films that tell stories of moving westwards, expansion and conquering frontiers. I wished for the desert sanctuary to be filled with these vivid men on horsebacks because the idea of searching for a socialist city in the global palace of capitalism seemed slightly perplexing.

When I travel to a new place or within a new place, I am scared of getting lost in unfamiliar surroundings. I have never been good with maps. The arrow marking the north confuses me because I never know how to orient myself. For a long time now, I have learned to rely on landmarks. I try to memorize the names of the most insignificant stations and obscure buildings. I know that a Metrolink train stops at both Tustin and Irvine but an Amtrak train stops only at the Irvine station. Time is of utmost significance between landmarks. When I take the Metrolink from Los Angeles, I start packing my bag as soon as my train reaches Sylmar to get down at Newhall. There is not enough time between the two stations to get up and make my way to the door. And if I get lost, I have no qualms in stopping people on the roads and asking for directions.
But as we set out to visit the Utopian site of a colony named Llano del Rio that the American Socialists had envisioned in 1914, my usual travel gear failed significantly. Miles and miles of sprawling barren land filled the way from Newhall to Llano del Rio. Black rock faces and dry bushes, charred from the recent fires in the Los Angeles county rose up to face the surprisingly harsh November sun. No walking sticks would even mistakenly find their way there. There were no pedestrian sidewalks, crossings or subways. One arresting bend of the road, like many others had a sign warding off pedestrians. Masses of shimmering gray concrete had taken over the topography of the desert. Streams of cars and trucks flowed past us in to the urban wilderness. A couple of romantic names like Singing Hills Drive and Littlerock are the only diversions that I can now recall. Despite being in a car with my classmates, all united in our attempt to seek this historical site, I felt as though I was straggling in the landscape of sameness. The desert seemed to have an effect of sucking one in to temporary amnesia- to keep its mysteries and secrets alive- so that no one can go tell it to the rest of the world.
And so I tried to keep up by noting down everything in an “almost stupidly” manner like Perec suggests. In the colorless forms, standing out against the spotless blue sky, there were miles of walled subdivisions. There were million dollar condos. The condos had pools, golf courses, gyms, spas and jacuzzis. Jack in the Box, Wendy's, Taco Bell, Mc Donalds, KFC, CVC pharmacy, Ralphs, Vons, In and Out, KFC, CVC, In and Out. The subdivisions began to flounder as the beat started to repeat itself. The number of cars thinned down as we crossed a little shop of horrors selling goblins. The site, as indicated by a Google map, is located on the elbow of Pearblossom Highway, tucked away in Antelope Valley.


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Dan, sitting in the front of the car, playing the role of the navigator in the desert, pointed to a narrow, brown trail and yelled, “I spot Utopia.” Caroline's car dipped and swerved on the unpaved road before coming to a halt. There were no similarities to the photographs that I have been looking at. Instead a parking space for helicopters greets us. We backtracked towards Pearblossom Highway.
As we reached the site of Llano, a familiar view of the ruins took over. Familiar only because of having seen a vast range of photo archives struggling to keep a utopic past alive. Photographs give you a sense of fixity in a new place, despite the body being in a state of flux. But sometimes there is a danger of knowing too much and a pleasant surprise being spoilt. Milt Stark was our official guide for the day. Almost eighty-five years old and a resident of the Valley since 1923, he was the co-founder of the Antelope Valley Heritage Foundation, an organization established in attempt to save important historical, archaeological and biological sites in the Antelope Valley. As we went trooping in to the depths of the ruins with Milt Stark directing us to the history of alternative future, I found myself not discovering the banal details like the color and the texture of the stone surfaces anymore, but noticing and excavating artifacts that lay buried in the middle of Milt Stark's memory and the surrounding mountains turning blue under the sun. We walked through the skeletons of the fireplaces marking the location of an old hotel building. Wandering down a little further was the remnants of a water creek, a cannery and a field stone cistern. A pile of copper cans lay strewn around, almost as if people had dropped them in haste and fled the miseries of the colony. Stark said that people in the colony had used them for storing food. And the glorious cinema hall, post office and California's first Montessori school seem to have disappeared in the desert soil.

As Stark started to speak, the figure of Job Harriman began to shroud the silent, ghost colony. Disillusioned with the state of politics and an economy bending down in Depression, Harriman and his associates set out to set up a model commune according to the Marxian school of philosophy, based on the idea of surplus value for the common good. The means of production were to be owned jointly and equally by the colonists and they were to share the benefits of surplus labour. In Stark's view, a major reason for the Colony's failure in its quest for Utopia lay in the fact that the colonists were not grounded in the principles of socialism. At the end of the day, they just wanted their pay of four dollars a day and shirked their duties, wanting the largest share of the commissary. A wide difference of opinions and in fighting escalated between the colonists as the colony itself grew over matters of agricultural produce and its distribution.

In a letter (dated February 21, 1918) to a prospective colonist, a Llano committee member explaining the rules and formulae of peaceful cohabitation writes-

"Remember, should you come here, that this is no heaven. We can't do the impossible. We haven't an Utopia. You'd think we were some lumber town if you dropped in just now. It will be that way for some time. Also we haven't a bank in the sky out of which we can coin money or power. We must work with what we have and do as all pioneers do overcome by sheer force and persistence. Would like to have you become an installment member. The Ten dollars you send here monthly will help develop the place, you can see that.
If you are in doubt about anything please write at once.

Fraternally
LLANO DEL RIO COMPANY of Nevada.

Membership Department.

E.S. Wooster,
Dict. Williams.

PS--Almost forgot to mention that we found no enclosure in your letter. Did you neglect to send it?"
As I walked along the dusty lanes of a dead Llano, I thought about this letter and the contradictory nature of its foundational philosophy seemed to loom larger than the greed and mental attitudes of the colonists. It was perhaps not just the harsh realities of the surroundings (it was discovered that an earthquake fault line diverted much of the colony's water supplies) and the quarrels amongst the people that spelled a slow disappearance of the colony, but money, capitalism and socialism themselves formed an unfaithful triad. Job Harriman's utopia was ultimately premised on an industrial enterprise, the off shoot of which was to be a system based on equal opportunities. But I wondered if the author of the graffiti knew this as he sprayed “APOCALYPSE SHORTLY” on the very ground that Harriman must have walked on.
In an undergraduate class of social anthropology, I had read a fascinating account of how traditional societies such as those of the agricultural communities of the Kwakuitul tribe in the Pacific North West, are marked not money or goods of monetary value. Instead a symbolic idea of exchange perpetuates the idea of economics through the traditional feast of the Potlatch. A Potlatch is a grand feast and a large presentation of goods that aim for not only a reciprocity and redistribution of wealth, but in fact maintain the kinship structures of the society.
As I left Llano and Stark and the traces of Harriman behind I felt that perhaps Utopia was never the aim of the colony. It was perhaps a chapter of struggle in history to capture an alternative frontier of value systems. It offers no clear answers and remains mystical much like the desert itself. Or perhaps the desert has the ability to lock up the past in its vast expanse and the men of the desert - Harriman, Stark and the cowboys seek nostalgia in the loneliness.



Travel Bee is getting a little spooked out here, dear readers..
Till next time..
Safe travels!

How I Met Your Father while learning to cook Bhindi

In the words of my sister.."You can write well. And you can cook well." Hmmm.."So what could your job options possibly be?"..Hmm.."Maybe write a cookbook." She broke out into spasms of giggles and here I am recording her words in my blog..she really did provide some food for thought.

Ok, the amount of cooking I know can barely fill a postcard, let alone a cookbook. But I am convinced that Americans have completely bulldozed and romanticized the concept of kitchen, food, cooking and grocery shopping. Think about it- don't all the romances have the horrendous, icky diner and the utterly delectable man wrapped up into the same scenario? She spills wine on his expensive shirt. He finds the trace of mustard above her lips incredibly cute. She meets the man of dreams in the dog and cat aisle of the neighbourhood grocery store. And don't be surprised if the man of her dreams is the pizza delivery guy. Yes, pizza and sex-- buy one get one free. Something is screaming capitalism to me right there, but you know what-- lets get back to the food.

You see..if you are a desi woman like me..brought up in a Bengali bhadralok household, chances are that all you have ever done in your life are poda-shuna (aka reading, writing and mugging- the necessary pursuits that will make you conquer the world), and maybe singing, dancing and painting (one, two, three or all of the above) and if you have a super liberal family like mine- karate could be one of your traits too.
So needless to say, you would have little regard for the khana, pakana and bartan-dhona. You would be able to recite Yeats, lambast Baudrillard (yes, apparently hyper-reality is passe now..hmmm) and have a poster of Edward Said in your room (America has little regard for him, but let's just remain in kitchen politics for sometime)- you will probably not be able to tell those dals apart (and no, rajma and chanas don't count).

This is the slightly strange thing about desi men, though. The few that I have encountered have turned out to be excellent cooks- one of them claimed to know how to make kale soup and yams (now this is getting fancy) and the other one actually made the perfect paranthas and looked at me with complete disdain when I managed make scrambled eggs look like they had been in the range of some intense crossfire. No sanskaar women of this generation have, I heard him smirk. Well, if you have played cricket with eggs at the age of four, you will have little reverence for produce and other natural products. I probably shouldnot be writing this. When the economy runs dry, the number of eligible men shrinks too. Paisa, makaan- all dabaoed beneath the ground. Oh well..the feminist in me is kicking in..

So what does a desi woman do when hunger strikes for desi khana. And if the only vegetable that you have ever liked is the bhindi- do the foreign shores offer you the nostalgic gastronomic delight? Yes, there is little that the foreign shores don't offer you-- but I think it is looped within a political conduit. See...the first thing that you have to do is look for bhindis. Goto the grocery store and ask for okras (not ladyfingers..we desis love to call baingan brinjals and bhindis ladyfingers. If you ever say these words, the cute guy in the aisle will at best think you are an exotic beauty from some long lost island, give you a polite smile and walk away..so..watch what you say). Ok..the okras will be frozen and chopped. See ..this is what I sometimes like about America. Very no-nonsense and straightforward- allowing for little public intervention.
Else imagine the scene in your neighbourhood- next door neighbour Chintu's mummy hollering after the sabziwallah in her pink Lajpat Nagar housecoat, the flimsy fabric seamlessly curved against her dimpled thighs and her boobs sneakily hidden by the voil dupatta. She huffs out of the house and yells at the poor fellow for ignoring her. And once the poor fellow makes the mistake of stopping, she haggles with him to reduce the price from three rupees to two rupees. And very soon Raju, Bablu and Pinky's respective mummies will also join in. And perhaps the discussion will turn from price of chillies to price of saris to Ratna Didi's daughter who is marrying an MBA from god-knows-what-college in Karnataka. (Yes, they can get snooty and picky. But god lives in the microeconomic details here).
Oh no..no such drama here in America. We have little time for drama. Haggling is despicable and so are mass uprisings. And believe me, there is little drama in the cooking of this version of bhindi.
Dunk the cut okras in a microwavable bowl. Add two teaspoons of olive oil. Fry some cumin and drop into the bhindi. Add chopped onions, garlic, tomatoes and garam masala. Mix all the ingredients and cover the bowl and pop it into the microwave for 15 minutes on high. Your bhindi masala is ready..sadly without drama.
You see..I am all for some action on the streets- where Chintu's mummy is wagging her fingers at an old sabziwallah- as shriveled up as his sabzis and fighting in her nasal voice. I like that the Lajpat Nagar House of Fashion housecoat is fighting for attention with Levis Jeans. And I like that the Indian woman is claiming her public space.
Well..you will hardly find such excitement over cut okras. See America. You hardly give me anything to write about. For the last five years it was the Bush -Laden ka adbhut kissa and for the next five years it will be Obama uhauling stories of unemployment and oil spills across the country. So those gappi ladies standing at the crossing of the fish market, chatting nineteen to dozen are probably worth more than your politically correct narratives.
And as much as I am a sap and love to watch American romcoms, I never met any potential father of my children in the aisle of a grocery store. Why? Because I asked for ladyfingers. Not okras. The linguistic vagaries that my English teacher never taught me. And I wasn't even called an exotic beauty (that was the best case scenario but the worst happened to me). The guy looked at me as if I was growing horns and ran for his life.

Till next time readers..keep inventing some drama in your cooking. Who needs recipes anyway?

Cheerio..
Travel Bee

sound advice- papdi chaat speaks from Bombay

one cannot escape advice- this universal phenomenon is inevitable, unless you are a sadhu meditating in the himalayas. it's a bug that bites everyone with any human contact, in any form- direct or not. dispensing advice is rather simple, but to receive and digest it can be as difficult as pappad for your digestive juices.

before giving advice, stop and think; does that individual need any advice from you? do you, as a person, have expertise in that particular subject matter? or does the said person want to rant and only needs a good ear?

sometimes advice comes from people who could use some themselves.
from the "fraandly" neighbourhood aunty "beta, kitni moti ho gayi hai. thoda hisaab se khaaya kar. subah garam paani peelena, aur gym ki membership tumhe sonu discount mein dilwah dega. tere health ke liye hi bol rahi hoon!"..sigh.... only if the chair wasn't giving way under the weight of her humongous behind....

sometimes, when you least expect it - "I'm telling you, buy this stock, its going to sky rocket! mark my words! i'll change my name otherwise!".. well if it doesn't, what good is it to me if you change your name?!

sometimes its patriotic- "India should spend more on defense and the military! these damn terrorists should be taught a lesson!" - like that's the way to stop terrorism.

sometimes its selfish.."why don't you sell your flat to me, that way the property would be within the family and everyone's happy!" - the money, would then come in installments over decades or not come at all!

sometimes warm and friendly- "maybe you should not breakup. think twice before taking a rash decision."- now that one may actually work!

..and there are a million different facets of advice giving which i can't possibly elaborate on.
since desis give advice to each other on everything, you start expecting it and are slightly disappointed when nobody is around to give you any. being away from home teaches you this harsh truth. advice that is not only for that particular individual but helps build what we call a community.

so to all those parents, teachers, guidance counselors, doctors, spouses and friends (some who told me to carry that prestige pressure cooker to the US of A)- keep the advice flowing, coz maybe, just maybe it might actually be useful!

- Papdi Chaat (the pseudonym is a tribute to the Mexican guy who made me the dish in California, and to Sukanya who bore the brunt of the extra red chilli powder!)