Ever since the time I read about Keats and Co. gathering at The Mermaid Tavern, discussing poetry, opium and other intoxicating ways of the world, my heart’s desire has been to engage in something similar, despite the knowledge that when my circle of friends gets together, we mostly talk about who is dating whom. But, since hope springs eternal in the human heart, I imagine that one day I will be sitting in one of the SoBo coffeehouses, surrounded by a group of less talkative friends, drinking cheap, delicious cups of tea and sharing our recent Musaic ventures.
I would necessarily prefer one of those Irani restaurants, where the cash in your purse lasts longer than the food. These are a refreshing change from the other posh coffeehouses that line the Mumbai shoreline, those corporate empires of creamy cappuccinos and club sandwiches. You step inside the restaurant filled with elegantly cushioned chairs and palm fronds. After much thought about the prices and less about the food per se, you order the cheapest item on the elaborate menu. To provide the illusion that your chicken sandwich is worth the amount you are paying, you nibble on it with ladylike grace and make sure the minutes stretch to make an hour at least. And then you step outside, again with feminine charm, resolving never to step into this place again, unless there is an anniversary discount happening.
No. None of this ridiculously expensive jazz, please. What the amateur writer knows best is to save her few hard earned rupees, the material outcome of overcoming obstacles such as writers’ blocks and publishers. This is why humanity set up Irani restaurants. A plate of butter bun, more substantial than the size of the cookies priced elsewhere at forty rupees apiece. A simmering “chai”, spiced with what you will – a dash of cardamom, a hint of ginger, a sprig of lemongrass, a dab of cream…Here, hungry souls find their salvation in the midst of inspiring aromas.
The scene which keeps recurring in my mind is the time when my friends and I sat around the plain tables of an Irani restaurant, enclosed among the busy, winding streets of Mumbai. We had had a luxurious evening, and our palate had been the field of communion for a variety of flavours. Biscuits, buns, custard puddings and masala sandwiches had streamed towards the table from the kitchen. Towards the end of the evening, when we were savouring our third round of coffee and tea, two friends realised their common passion for Ghalib. And lines of poetry in alternating voices ascended in the air along with the beverage vapours.
It is an absolute pleasure discovering these little restaurants that do not have elaborate advertisements. You find them on one of those rainy days when you are dripping wet and lost in the meandering streets. You seek refuge in these bustling outlets. And, to while away the time, you buy yourself a hot cuppa, in a glass tumbler and it warms you from within. And you buy yourself another. And another. Then, when it stops raining, you find your way back home. And then you write about it.
My two friends who had discovered their common love for Ghalib got married a year later. This is why humanity set up Irani restaurants.
What price love? What price inspiration?
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
MIA CASABLANCA, SU CASANEGRA
When Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman starred in the legendary movie Casablanca, they never knew that this city could become the vicious tyrant of Nour Eddien Lakhmari’s Casanegra. Their city was one in which lovers reunited, wrongs were righted, peace was restored and poetic justice reigned supreme. Casanegra, simply, has none of these. This is The Black House - “black as your fucking mother’s asshole”.
Lakhmari’s 2008 release is a movie that surrounds the parallel lives and concerns of Karim and Adil, both unemployed and both dreamers. These youngsters realise very young that money can work miracles in their city (as in any other). Karim has a senile, paralysed father and needs to support his family of four. Adil struggles with an abusive step father. These boys seek escape from the harsh realities of their lives in their own unique ways. Adil dreams of illegally migrating to Sweden, land of snow and beautiful women, while Karim lazes the streets of Morocco in a suit and often stops at the door of Nabila, a beautiful classy antique dealer. The movie is an intense but gentle depiction of desperation, frustration, powerlessness, exploitation and, in spite of it all, love and friendship.
In the persuasion of their dreams and friendship thicker than water, these two get involved with Zrirek, an infamous bloodhound of the neighbourhood. Karim and Adil get associated with this merciless gangster and are sent on a series of missions to accomplish, only to falter and fumble, sometimes successfully achieving their goal and sometimes not.
Though the movie has been hailed as a depiction of the underbelly of the city of romance, I feel the director has chosen to highlight the poignancy and the humour even in the most hopeless and brutal situations. Zrirek, the feared don of the city, looks like an imbecile in his love for Nico the dog, the manly bargirl and songs. On their first mission, the two friends are too polite to threaten their victim and later too capricious to be careful. The director has given his audience a Casablanca infested with class stratification, poverty and stone hearted capitalists but he also chooses to highlight the vulnerable side to the budding gangsters who are immature, fanciful and playful. At times, they seem almost unprepared for the lessons of the world.
The director has given his audience a complexity of character. Adil and Karim are similar but also different in temperament. As the story unfolds, we realise that the cautious Karim is the one who bashes up people while the impulsive Adil is the one who schemes and secretly covets money. There is also a subtle probing into what it means to be a man. The boys appear macho and stoic and initially are forced to suppress their softer sides. Lakhmari’s work is definitely a fine probing into human nature and its indiscernible depth without appearing pretentious. You may feel at certain moments in the movie that the plot seems contrived. It is, however, given the generosity of thought in the movie, forgivable.
Casanegra is a work of precision. The mis-en-scene are diligently balanced and lighted, an architectural delight. The movie, in spite of being fast paced, has the contradictory fluid and unhurried pace of camera movement. The movie is visually stunning and captures it protagonists sometimes as demi-gods and sometimes as vulnerable youngsters. The frames are expansive and uncluttered at the same time. The twin cultures of degradation and affluence and seen throughout the movie. The city never leaves the frame - its colonial houses, winding streets, its corporate towers and garbage piles are available everywhere. When it’s white it looks ghastly, when it is dark it appears crowded with life. Richard Horowitz has done an incredible job as the music director and provides the lift required to a story of hardships and broken dreams. The movie is thus an absolute delight to the senses.
You will soon realise that Casanegra is not only about the squalid side to the city, but also the dark side to oneself. Adil and Karim are constantly pitched between the choices they have to make. Their struggle to escape is not only from a pitiless city, but also from the pain and anger in their own lives.
The movie is definitely not a sardonic parody of gangster life. Its mockery of ambition is sensitive to its characters and is definitely a wholesome look at the city’s conditions and its citizens. There are strugglers, survivors, victors and losers. The movie, without becoming sentimental, has the power to move the audience not through pity, but rather through an affirmation of life and relationships.
Watch this movie. There is no “We’ll always have Paris”. There is only Casanegra.
WARNING: This is no Slumdog Millionaire either.
Casanegra was screened at the Mumbai Film Festival 2009
Casanegra (2008)
Nour Eddien Lakhmari
Starring Anas Elbaz, Omar Lotfi, Mohamed Benbrahim et al
214 min
Arabic
Lakhmari’s 2008 release is a movie that surrounds the parallel lives and concerns of Karim and Adil, both unemployed and both dreamers. These youngsters realise very young that money can work miracles in their city (as in any other). Karim has a senile, paralysed father and needs to support his family of four. Adil struggles with an abusive step father. These boys seek escape from the harsh realities of their lives in their own unique ways. Adil dreams of illegally migrating to Sweden, land of snow and beautiful women, while Karim lazes the streets of Morocco in a suit and often stops at the door of Nabila, a beautiful classy antique dealer. The movie is an intense but gentle depiction of desperation, frustration, powerlessness, exploitation and, in spite of it all, love and friendship.
In the persuasion of their dreams and friendship thicker than water, these two get involved with Zrirek, an infamous bloodhound of the neighbourhood. Karim and Adil get associated with this merciless gangster and are sent on a series of missions to accomplish, only to falter and fumble, sometimes successfully achieving their goal and sometimes not.
Though the movie has been hailed as a depiction of the underbelly of the city of romance, I feel the director has chosen to highlight the poignancy and the humour even in the most hopeless and brutal situations. Zrirek, the feared don of the city, looks like an imbecile in his love for Nico the dog, the manly bargirl and songs. On their first mission, the two friends are too polite to threaten their victim and later too capricious to be careful. The director has given his audience a Casablanca infested with class stratification, poverty and stone hearted capitalists but he also chooses to highlight the vulnerable side to the budding gangsters who are immature, fanciful and playful. At times, they seem almost unprepared for the lessons of the world.
The director has given his audience a complexity of character. Adil and Karim are similar but also different in temperament. As the story unfolds, we realise that the cautious Karim is the one who bashes up people while the impulsive Adil is the one who schemes and secretly covets money. There is also a subtle probing into what it means to be a man. The boys appear macho and stoic and initially are forced to suppress their softer sides. Lakhmari’s work is definitely a fine probing into human nature and its indiscernible depth without appearing pretentious. You may feel at certain moments in the movie that the plot seems contrived. It is, however, given the generosity of thought in the movie, forgivable.
Casanegra is a work of precision. The mis-en-scene are diligently balanced and lighted, an architectural delight. The movie, in spite of being fast paced, has the contradictory fluid and unhurried pace of camera movement. The movie is visually stunning and captures it protagonists sometimes as demi-gods and sometimes as vulnerable youngsters. The frames are expansive and uncluttered at the same time. The twin cultures of degradation and affluence and seen throughout the movie. The city never leaves the frame - its colonial houses, winding streets, its corporate towers and garbage piles are available everywhere. When it’s white it looks ghastly, when it is dark it appears crowded with life. Richard Horowitz has done an incredible job as the music director and provides the lift required to a story of hardships and broken dreams. The movie is thus an absolute delight to the senses.
You will soon realise that Casanegra is not only about the squalid side to the city, but also the dark side to oneself. Adil and Karim are constantly pitched between the choices they have to make. Their struggle to escape is not only from a pitiless city, but also from the pain and anger in their own lives.
The movie is definitely not a sardonic parody of gangster life. Its mockery of ambition is sensitive to its characters and is definitely a wholesome look at the city’s conditions and its citizens. There are strugglers, survivors, victors and losers. The movie, without becoming sentimental, has the power to move the audience not through pity, but rather through an affirmation of life and relationships.
Watch this movie. There is no “We’ll always have Paris”. There is only Casanegra.
WARNING: This is no Slumdog Millionaire either.
Casanegra was screened at the Mumbai Film Festival 2009
Casanegra (2008)
Nour Eddien Lakhmari
Starring Anas Elbaz, Omar Lotfi, Mohamed Benbrahim et al
214 min
Arabic
Monday, November 9, 2009
OF MEN, ANIMALS AND ANIMAL’S PEOPLE
A REVIEW OF INDRA SINHA’s ANIMAL’S PEOPLE
There are those novels that work as a parable should. There are those novels that are bereft of allegory. And then there are those that live between these clear lines of definition and that is the key to their success.
Such a work, Indra Sinha’s Booker short-listed novel Animal’s People, is set in the aftermath of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. However, unlike much of the media these days, this novel is a staunch attempt to override the urge to sensationalize the horrors of the event while simultaneously being faithful to the reality of the difficulty in attaining justice for the victims. Animal’s People is the story of the struggle of the victims in Khaufpur (reminiscent of Bhopal and coughing) against the machinery of the powerful American industrialists. It is the eternal story of the underdog’s war against the master. David against Goliath. Luke Skywalker against Darth Vader. Man landing on the Moon.
But, before you can dismiss the novel as another heavy piece of factual analysis (something writers with mediocre imagination are indulging in these days), enter Janvar a.k.a Animal. The novel revolves around this seemingly tough but vulnerable boy of nineteen and hence gains its poignancy. Animal is born deformed because of the gas leak, and walks on all fours, thereby gaining his name and losing the normal stretch of human anatomy. Is he the stereotypical character who is “ugly outside but beautiful inside”? No. Animal is as much as an adolescent as the average male is. More so, he is unpredictable and intriguing. Animal embraces his handicap not through a cloying sweetness of character, but by alienating himself from others. He makes his handicap obvious before any one can feel pity or repulsion towards him. Sinha’s curious character leaves readers wanting to know more about him.
The novel, thus, is also Animal’s journey through adolescence; it is the celebration of his coming-of-age. Studying the nuances of legal procedures becomes as important as appearing macho to the woman of his dreams, rivalry in love is as important as saving a little girl’s life, personal anxieties and dreams are as important as attaining justice in a system designed to defeat the voiceless. The novelist stays true to this vision of life throughout.
Indra Sinha has provided the reader with a verbal extravaganza of a novel written in English, Hindi and French. There is a generous dash of every possible Hindi and English swear word and can therefore prove educational in this direction also. (When in anger, remember Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People). There is also the consistent attempt to tease the English language out of its upper class connotations in the novel. The People of the Apokalis (apocalypse), the Jarnalis wearing Kakadu shorts (Journalist and Crocodile shorts), the American Kampani (you are getting the hang of this game, I am sure) and other such maniacal contortions of language that Animal indulges in are not only the achievement of the writer but also the victim’s spite of the master’s language.
The novel is a promise of Sinha’s mastery over language and the intimate depiction of the adolescent; however, it is not his best work so far I believe. At some point, the novel seems to be spinning around a given centre of gravity and had it not ended where it ended, you may be compelled to wish it to end. The oscillation between languages, though innovative, could prove difficult to the monolingual. Sinha, as he caters to an English audience, tries his best to weave translations of Hindi and French into English in the narrative, but perhaps runs out of ideas. There is definitely scope for laurels in Indra Sinha, but it is very surprising that this novel should be short listed for a Booker. But if Obama may win a Nobel, perhaps pigs may fly too.
Animal’s People by Indra Sinha
Pocket Books: 2007
Rs 395
There are those novels that work as a parable should. There are those novels that are bereft of allegory. And then there are those that live between these clear lines of definition and that is the key to their success.
Such a work, Indra Sinha’s Booker short-listed novel Animal’s People, is set in the aftermath of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. However, unlike much of the media these days, this novel is a staunch attempt to override the urge to sensationalize the horrors of the event while simultaneously being faithful to the reality of the difficulty in attaining justice for the victims. Animal’s People is the story of the struggle of the victims in Khaufpur (reminiscent of Bhopal and coughing) against the machinery of the powerful American industrialists. It is the eternal story of the underdog’s war against the master. David against Goliath. Luke Skywalker against Darth Vader. Man landing on the Moon.
But, before you can dismiss the novel as another heavy piece of factual analysis (something writers with mediocre imagination are indulging in these days), enter Janvar a.k.a Animal. The novel revolves around this seemingly tough but vulnerable boy of nineteen and hence gains its poignancy. Animal is born deformed because of the gas leak, and walks on all fours, thereby gaining his name and losing the normal stretch of human anatomy. Is he the stereotypical character who is “ugly outside but beautiful inside”? No. Animal is as much as an adolescent as the average male is. More so, he is unpredictable and intriguing. Animal embraces his handicap not through a cloying sweetness of character, but by alienating himself from others. He makes his handicap obvious before any one can feel pity or repulsion towards him. Sinha’s curious character leaves readers wanting to know more about him.
The novel, thus, is also Animal’s journey through adolescence; it is the celebration of his coming-of-age. Studying the nuances of legal procedures becomes as important as appearing macho to the woman of his dreams, rivalry in love is as important as saving a little girl’s life, personal anxieties and dreams are as important as attaining justice in a system designed to defeat the voiceless. The novelist stays true to this vision of life throughout.
Indra Sinha has provided the reader with a verbal extravaganza of a novel written in English, Hindi and French. There is a generous dash of every possible Hindi and English swear word and can therefore prove educational in this direction also. (When in anger, remember Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People). There is also the consistent attempt to tease the English language out of its upper class connotations in the novel. The People of the Apokalis (apocalypse), the Jarnalis wearing Kakadu shorts (Journalist and Crocodile shorts), the American Kampani (you are getting the hang of this game, I am sure) and other such maniacal contortions of language that Animal indulges in are not only the achievement of the writer but also the victim’s spite of the master’s language.
The novel is a promise of Sinha’s mastery over language and the intimate depiction of the adolescent; however, it is not his best work so far I believe. At some point, the novel seems to be spinning around a given centre of gravity and had it not ended where it ended, you may be compelled to wish it to end. The oscillation between languages, though innovative, could prove difficult to the monolingual. Sinha, as he caters to an English audience, tries his best to weave translations of Hindi and French into English in the narrative, but perhaps runs out of ideas. There is definitely scope for laurels in Indra Sinha, but it is very surprising that this novel should be short listed for a Booker. But if Obama may win a Nobel, perhaps pigs may fly too.
Animal’s People by Indra Sinha
Pocket Books: 2007
Rs 395
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