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