Why do parents bring their children to watch an ‘A’ rated movie???

In the heat alert regions in India, one is left with very little option to spend weekends/vacations. No T.V shows and no constant shower (the tap water is ever ready to boil eggs/ tea leaves) can help you bat out the heat. Summer has been pretty tough this season.

We had some good movies released this Friday and thus the best way was to watch back to back movies to evade at least a days’ heat. Hopping to the first one which had started a good 15 minutes before we entered, I realized I was in for a jolly good temper rise. And guess what, it didn’t take too long!

An  ‘A’ rated movie was houseful . To be honest I did not know it was ‘A’ rated till I woke up this morning to check in the censor board rating for the movie. Poor husband, he had to bear earful! I felt humiliated sitting through something that was less than entertainment, more than humiliation. Explicit violent scenes, adult encounters, profanity, expletives most of which I couldn’t follow. There were applauses, whistles at every adult dialogue delivered. Rightly said by a distributor “in India movies are made for whistleblowers.”

By the time intermission happened I was writing a note on the movie on my cell phone. Why was I there? My husband enjoys all those maar-dhaar,(read action films), now he wouldn’t have preferred going unaccompanied plus we had the plans to watch back to back movies.

Intermission: surprise!

I know most wouldn’t be. There were parents with their grown up and growing up kids, kids who question their parents for all they cannot follow. These kids were out with their parents watching their favorite action hero John Abrahm in adult act, molesting, raping his beau, cursing her b**c*** everytime he needed her. Lets forget the bloodied scenes which grab the EQ factor.  

Soon I had walked out of my personal trauma for having to sit through the movie to buy little peace for ourselves. I was all over the theatre mentally.

pic courtesy : google

Taking children below 18 years to an A rated movie, who are these parents: accidental?! While I am very very sure most of my friends wouldn’t even spare a thought of watching a movie like Shootout for Wadala, I went through a gamut of emotion putting up with the language: both verbal and anatomical. When I a full grown adult had gone through so much, how could parents with children in the theatre obliterate the thought of the kind of influence their children were pushed to through the explicit scenes of violence and sex?

We are in anyway a regressive lot, and through unlocking the key to participate in contents highly damaging, how can they be sure that the next teenaged rapist could not be their son!? Our earlier generation in any case doesn’t like to discuss matters related to sex and violence, let alone counseling them at a time when need be.

We are running through a rough time, molestation and rapes are almost  settling down as the norms of Indian states. And this is the time when a picture like Shootout to Wadala releases to full packed audience with uncivil content. With most schools/colleges/universities on a break, it is disheartening movies such as this are out there to let out ones anger, frustrations through sexual exploitation. What melted my eyes was when I overheard a kid asking his dad “papa, john kya kar raha hein?” ( "papa, what is John doing?") I really wanted to overhear the response too which the papa didn’t, he just pacified him by handing over his pepsi bottle!

Ones out of the movie hall, I did see couple of my students too but I knew I couldn’t be moral policing them. After all they were adults!

The question I returned home and got arguing with my company is that the theatres must get far more responsible in restricting the children below the prescribed age. The censor board too needs to check on the season the films are released. Summer breaks are a great time for getting into the theatre and therefore films with adult content should be out keeping in mind a point such as this. There is another attitude that Indian parents have to probably get over with, “mere bachche hein, tujhe kya problem hein”(my kids, what is your problem)? 

The problem is these are the children who will become the citizens of a nation. And one cannot completely be certain if they will take home accolades or public mash.

( we couldn't manage tickets for the second movie for all the shows we had planned to watch).  

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http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/movie-review-why-shootout-at-wadala-is-a-new-low-in-hindi-cinema-758879.html?utm_source=voices&utm_medium=hp

http://www.mumbaimirror.com/entertainment/bollywood/Parents-kid-about-A-films/articleshow/20039962.cms

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-05-06/parenting/36763263_1_anger-attacks-rage-parents

déjà vu

'Gone are the days when we were strong and our land voiced our opinions'
After the KSU rally, even i was taken aback by the violence that followed but i supported their cause. However, it surprise me now as how people are quick to condemn these acts without consideration as to why such act happen. In any revolution, violence has always been a vital part of the struggle if the continuous plea for reforms and development falls on deaf ears. How long can we shut up and eat hay while the powerful eat cakes? Why are we allowing ourself be the minority in our god given land. It is our right to fight with might. How dare they threaten us with trade ban(as per shg times report) and how dare they try to dictate us.
I say long live the KSU, and other ngo's who got balls to fight for my right.
I say Awake oh Khasi people and see that we are now the minority.I say long live the KSU, and other ngo's who got balls to fight for my right.I say Awake oh Khasi people and see that we are now the minority.

I say OCCUPY MEGHALAYA!!!

This is a Facebook status of a group with little less than thousand members liking its posts and the page.To have a status such as this only indicates the insecurity of a small community that has stayed curled up in its beautiful hills, contented within its gyre. A paradise for many, the land hasn't as yet "developed" much. 

 Just four days back on the 4th of April 2013, the violent rampage of a vibrant location in Shillong stood as a reminder. Demand for an inner line permit, demand for asking the outsiders to go back (Indians have replaced Simon who are now to go back!), call for occupying Meghalaya just jogged most of our memories who grew up in a volatile part of India steered by a certain students' union that it is a déjà vu for those who have been living with it since the attainment of statehood status from Assam in 1970.

Most of these chaps who indulge in the brutalizing the "others" act after a nod from the students' union. Unleashing the well nurtured hidden anger leads to  loosening of the purse strings of the pacificists. More hooch flow, some celebratory non-tribal bashing and then the world becomes rosy again. Staying "Indian", though by accident comes with its share of benefits, best understood by the minions of those who swear on their blood for their identity and trade it with the first possible sign of a better life. 

The saddest part is Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya often is in news for wrong reasons. In any case mainstream media like the Govt in the center refuse to acknowledge their existence. There is either Chinese incursion or the ethnic riot which manages a few second airtime and couple of hundred words in the print. Rest do not matter. 



Incidences like this only reopen the wounds and keep it festering. 

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Back Sizzler

Our age-old slavery to the language not at all ours but tried hard to assert so...

Verbally there are many many unregistered tell tales we exchange but for those written, they become documents.

21st century and we are striving hard to market ourselves as English speakers.

 Sharing with you a sizzling menu I came across in a restaurant between Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad.

This is not a Gujarat story, but a testimony of desperation and assimilation.

Ask a commoner on his desire to learn English, gleefully he'd say," Madam, vaav badhta hein, loug hamare baton par dhyaan dete hein"( Madam, our stock rises, people pay attention to our words.)

Where is home, away from home…

For some of us who are lifelong jugglers, moving from one place to another confront a world if not hostile a little antagonistic for sure. While mingling with the host community, most migrants go through some kind of alienation, more or less the similar kind of otherness.

The resistance can be from both parties, the host and the migrants or either of them.

Today, retirement from work place settles us. The young are on a constant move: the migratory birds. Better opportunity, better life calls the shot. This call brings with it several tests, with few rewards, sometimes a lot of pain. Most youngsters have learnt to flow with the stream. Very few, go through self imposed isolation. (On one hand while we like to believe that we are global citizens, we tightly hold our small little pieces of perceived identity close to us)

I have been travelling all along.

During my growing up days my father being a Govt. employee went through numerous transfers. So we got to see a lot of the world we had to constantly struggle to make our own. Then came a time when my father decided upon stationing the family while he toured around with his transfer orders. We settled in a place I was born in. That became my native, so did it for the other members. We are a small family of four. But each one of us was born in different parts of the country. Only I benefited living in my birth place. 

If today I ask my family members to shift from my birth place (I have a decade back left the place), the simple straight unanimous chorus would be a loud “NO”. Reasons are too many. Even if that is not our native, we were migrants. My father happened to be there because of his uncle, my mother and their two children for him. But the place has grown within. The local tribe takes away the cake.  Educated, soft-spoken, their impromptu smile sets them apart from the rest of 634 indigenous groups recognized in India. The English climate too becomes a strong reason.

From the local taxi drivers to the kong (an honorific for the Khasi ladies) selling betel nut, each one of them would greet you with an easy smile. You might not know the language and they not yours but the language of smile and the response to a greet melts one. A total stranger greeting the other from the opposite side would always bear a response. Such was my birth place.

I am talking about Shillong and its aborigines.

We have grown up in the sharp divide between the ‘them’ and the ‘us’. The antagonism between the natives and the settlers date back far before my father’s birth. Political divide the powerful reason. We learnt to rest this divide under the carpet. In schools, colleges, market, locality we spoke about everything but the dissever. In between though competition of throwing the best banters continued. I personally never experienced such exchanges nor was I a witness to such splashes. Stories from friends’ friends, friends’ brothers, drew close a house warm-up evening.

There were positive curfews we grew up with; positive meant lot of TV watching, cricket playing, catching up with neighbors, sharing delicious meals, paving secret ways through one’s kitchen garden to another’s! Most children born and living between1960-2000 grew up with these positive bandhs and curfews. There were troubles; there were murders, the usual bloodshed: the natives vs the settlers (mostly Bengalis, Biharis and Nepalis). All who bossed around were the local students’ union. The govt. invariably gave in to their demands. Deep inside we always wished otherwise for the sheer disappointment of losing a long vacation. Resistance from the govt. meant longer strikes, longer breaks from time-tabled studies.

I still recollect how chilling it was to walk all by myself holding my younger sibling after we were dropped by our school bus in a deserted city which suddenly went through curfew. Everyone in the broad day light had reached home, since we studied in an outskirt school and travelled to a no-outsider zone Mawlai, invariably travelling out of Mawlai took a long hour and half to reach home. The sound of my naughty boy shoe still, reverberates.

More than fear it was sheer thrill of being in command of the situation that made the moment special. On reaching our locality, some local boys applauded my courage. Felt good, when my parents took a sigh of relief and said they were in panic of waiting for our safe return. The local goons had been monitoring each outsider’s house. Such was the fear of growing up in an acknowledged disturbed region.

It is, I am told a different place now.

Today, in a free world where we move in& out of our homes at any time, celebrate Indian festivals makes us feel good. Nightlife was beyond the boundary of imagination in Shillong those days. Days wrapped up by 6 p.m. By dusk most people deserted the streets. Nights certainly weren’t fun at all. The TV volume too had to be very low, and we huddled close to the TV sets. It was only sleeping & studying we managed to do. Childhood fizzled out under blankets.

But, these are not all. There has been curfew-free, politically peaceful time when we caught up with our neighbors, friends. Shillong had all the right elements for making a world-denizen. From discussion on books to enjoying listening to rock bands, from cultural festivals to All Souls’ Day procession: we had real quality time. Great academicians to poets, from Lou Majaw to Writers’ meet : Shillong has always been at the helm of such activities in spite of the disturbances. We grew up fairly well. Well enough to face a world geographically, literally known to us.

Standing alone in a place that faces the Arabian Sea in its west, the being finds it pretty challenging now more than often to face a crowd who has enjoyed ‘freedom’ to the fullest. All that my birth place nurtured me with most often perspires through the rough brows of the people I have to be now, a part of. A greet today is received with remarks like, that’s not Indian (!). In India we aren’t formal. In India there is no privacy, etc etc.

Looks like I come from a different planet. All the niceties I have brought in from my birth place fail me when I am all out to melt, all out to discover oneness.

It’s nice to hear phrases like ‘a home away from home’, I am out to discover…

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nirbhaya/ asmita...call me by any name..

A part of me has had an eternal death....set ablaze in secret! My conscience was raped long ago...I have since then only brought “a thousand trills and quivering sounds till they faint and languish by degrees, And at a distance die.”  You call me Damini, call me Nirbhaya…but never India’s daughter…for had I been that, her daughters she could protect. Let loose are her beasts to see that each day Nirbhayas are feasted upon…

I died in the thorny bushes, in the marshes of wetlands, 

between the high decibels of thousand horns, in the hands of those who grappled, groped over the meat I carried, amongst strangers,fathers, uncles, cousins and friends. The one who bore me shed tears to cleanse off the muck and chanted: "we will in tears be one!" 

your words no longer tell me I am your daughter.

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16th December'2012

Peace, be yours

This is the first year he missed …wishing me on my birthday. And this very year I don’t have him around …to complain.

For a street in Hyderabad it was just another road mishap that killed an august young man, for me, it was the sudden shut down of my Confession box. My buddy was gone. Aakash as he supposedly nicknamed himself was an ‘anytime friend’ you could call up/open up to. A great human being, a superb friend (a true ‘yaaron ka yaar’), a caring son& a protective brother.  I was fortunate I had a sneak peek to all the faces he put on as we journeyed together since the time I had actually shunned the social world. His famous line still guides me: “you have to gamble to test the pros and cons of a situation”. What a gamble!

People he spoke to will take some time to brush aside his masculine voice. His pronunciations, his sentences loaded with practical solutions had been awe striking. 

It takes a lot of pain to write about one of your best friends in past tense!

I met him through a friend of his who happened to be my poetry buddy. While three of us often engaged in collaborative poetry writing, we enjoyed our walks in a busy Laitumkhrah –Beat House street(Shillong) churning out our collaborative poems, laughing, pulling words from here and there, thinking of a title for the poetry. That’s where and when Aakash and I bonded fast. Poetry led our hands and unlike the popular belief of ‘going around’ we had our friendship blooming in our respective poems and collaborative too.

Spending wintry afternoons at his luxuriant home with his gorgeous mom around, I had the privilege of knowing some great people living in the gigantic three-storied building, otherwise left gazing at by the passers- by. Listening to him was no doubt a pleasure but to his mom was a treat! A wonderful cook with good taste in interior decoration& a mother who reminded me of Gertrude (D.H Lawrence’s Sons&Lovers) investing her emotion on her children especially the scion of the family- the only son. I never got to meet her other child: a daughter. Time swept, one fine day, I break open the marriage proposal I had from a man known well to him& he was as any friend would keen to know if I was sure. While I couldn’t at all give in to a hundred percent consent, he kept reminding me I must consider it with seriousness and that for a while must keep aside my professional workloads.

Soon in few months time I was married. Both of us left Shillong. While I headed for Ahmedabad, he for Kolkata. We were in touch. Gradually he became my confession box bearing all the secrets, listening, suggesting, guiding me in ways very practical. He was not much into holistic speech or quotes but reasoned out practically. There were times I was certain our paths would never meet for each of us had our careers to be hooked onto. 

Call it fate, call it fortune. My husband handed over a transfer order for Kolkata & there we were. He became a constant star. Like any other friend he’d be around. We had great fun: travelling, talking, picking up best writes etc. He loved food but for medical reasons he could never have a tummy full meal. He appreciated the daal-bhaat(Pulses-rice),potol tarkari(Pointed gourd curry) I cooked , he relished them as “barir khawa”(homemade food). Destiny: it was a dinner away from his room that took him away from his family& friends.

For not very long time, we managed to be together in Kolkata. He left for this city Hyderabad while in a month’s time we had a transfer back to our former location. Since then Aakash resumed being my draft, storing chapters of my daily life.

Today as his sleeping body reaches Shillong, that lane would mourn the death of a wonderful boy with golden heart. While his parents are yet to know, my heart sinks at the imagined sight of seeing his mother, my Gertrude.

Like me, many other friends of his have lost a confession box and the mother her young son. Dreams held in her eyelids today shall give him an eternal shower.

Rest in Peace my friend: (28/11/2012), you know I miss you…

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Koham Koham: Who am I?

I am my mother’s flesh& blood. I carry my father’s principles& beliefs. The knowledge I have is all I picked up from the world just in and outside home. If you say I am informed, that is from the education I have had. Torrent of faces we come across each day, some end up teaching us a thing or two…from our best friends’ to our living partners, from a vagrant to a Mr. Moneybag, each a teacher, giving lessons of life…not from affixed syllabi. They too are teachers to be thanked…& yes, our lovely teachers in academia who have spent years working on us: how do you thank them? We give them smiles, we give them recognition (I do not mean awards, nothing bind them), we acknowledge their presence in our lives. We tell them, we miss you.

During School days, we wished every school teacher. From the college days weeding begins. We choose, greet & send them cards. As we walk out of those formal walls, we pick up few from those walls& gradually begin to see the larger world emerge as a teacher. The good and the bad, the beauty and the beast: all are teachers. We become what we pick from each one of them.

I thus am you.  

Dear world, thank you for being a great teacher!!!

And the wait...

Love ones said to me

He loved to take a walk in a rain squatted lane

Clement, cold,curly

Lovers silence’ won his heart

Their fingers crossing warmth

Made him smile.

In the corner of a deep curtained room

Love has just left me

With a hope

For a little shower…

And

The wait hangs on

In the shelves of my petite heart.

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To Summer

The silent sky

a dull white, jaw dropping wide sigh

tells'em to stay quiet

its the summer

with a cane in his hand

has come all the way

warding off the clouds somewhere,

thousands miles from where I nuzzle now..

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Bengal-Ground Zero

Not so long ago, when I was growing up in Shillong(Meghalaya), Kolkata, WB was heard to be a brobdingnagian city with spread out arms. It had huge Anglican churches, schools, reputed colleges, libraries, pandemic roads one would likely get lost if crowd was in mood to sway you. I remember pleading my dad to handcuff me whenever he took me there. I was petrified of that place.

Nothing much has changed from thereon. Today, it is my hubby who literally handcuffs me as we trod across the lanes of Kolkata (if I am blessed to walk).

Transfer to Kolkata is showing us different layers of life and almost forces on us to see the other side of human face.

This city of joy is for sure joyful in the eyes of many my close friends who have claimed to love it for being the centre of culture, heritage, literature, art, food and have gone all gaga over it. Yes, independently, such claims go unrifled. Ignore all those that happen to your car when your neighbor teaches his kid to scratch on it. Turn a deaf ear to the day long political lectures rattling from the loudspeakers. Narrow lanes are not a problem at all if one enjoys human touches! Forget your vehicle; you’ll come back adorning it with paan stains. The neighborhood shopkeeper refuses to give you the grocery because someday you might have purchased something else from the other one who is affiliated to the opposing party.

Politics, politics and drum full of it is in the air.

Driving 4/5hours away from the state capital: one would instantly understand why Shyam Benegal, Mrinal Sen or any art director’s dream location ends up being Bengal& outskirts of it. Deep forests, palm trees, dirt tracks, oodles of water bodies ( pukur) and spread out fields. Women folks draped in traditionally 9mtrs saris. Picturesque! Handpumps still in use. The wells still on the main road and women folks just out from perfect movie scenes form queues and carry water pots on their hips and heads. Any photographers, movie makers dream place. Aha!

As night falls, one understands and confronts darkness. One wonders if one traveled through a time warp. No electricity, no poles in sight. Electricity supply from generator comes at a premium: a bleak possibility across large tracts of rural Bengal. The sound of vehicle brings out people from their warm hideouts. Sound of night insects, crickets, animals haunts as one stands wondering to find a way out.

Having met a father who fell on my knees howling and cheeks wet, I was astounded for a minute before the movie shot. His son was killed by unidentified men and his body immediately fuelled political machinations. In death a village boy attained martyrdom. The parents denied the last rite.

Sunk in tears, they sat silently at the threshold of their mud house, as the eerie silence gnawed at their very being.

The noise of silence struck from all around. Fear propelled denial of information when one looks for them. The village assumes a dumb look. No one knew them when we didn’t.

As they begin to talk in inaudible voices, from nowhere a crowd gathers. Threatened and curious eyes greet us with looks of a cornered lamb. Wolves lurk behind. We had to move. Move quick before the dark gets darker. And so we did. Speeding out of the dirt track for almost an hour till we reached the pitched road, we carried along the silence of the grave. Uneasiness loomed large. Words in Jangalmahal travel fast… faster than us…

Second fear was to cross the infamous Jhitka forest. Yes, life granted. We pinched ourselves to believe we were breathing, reached human habitation. Grabbed fresh air, refueled and in the darkness of the wintry night the hamlet left behind to settle down and whisk out of sight as the dusts covered the scenes and we wheeled our out.

India then came to me in amazing form. It was lost in all its glitz and glamour, malls and marketed monuments. All the wall breaking pronouncements have fallen off. These were places 21 centuries behind. The hamlets we see from the windows of moving vehicles remain the same. For some reasons, Peepli live just gets life for few seconds and then sidelined from the mainstream. What happens to hundreds, thousands of Peepli’s, no one wastes a wink. Poverty tourism of the scion continues as Kalavati’s son in law in Vidarbha kills himself for debt. Dimpled youth icon still draws huge crowd in colleges. India indeed shines.

Does it really make a sense to diary this account or for that matter does any news piece make a difference? Somewhere, somehow a little change may follow. Hope can only ring aloud.

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She

Everyday

from behind the betel nut leaves

a day just lays treat

swaying low and high

swinging even now

when you sigh

from a distance

miles, miles away

flapping sounds of Ganga

leaves me tingled,

Howrah in his majestic silver

marshals Bengal.

“Durga,Durga!!!”(*i)

All around

in clay, on the walls, on the sleeves, tattoos too.

Kali Maa*(ii) not left behind

the dry dung lanes,

dingy hour-basis inns

sprawling dense ponds

her hands

full on her long, well-done plaits

She leaves you loved.

Playful, petite, pleasant she

“Doesn’t she look old?”- asks Harun

the slave gets an answer

“yes, some three hundred years old.

was a priestess when I first saw her.”

“Joba”(*iii) she insists,

on every visit,

you pay.

She corrects you: “Rakta, Rakta Joba”*(iv)

when you meet next.

A decade back, she was in Dakshineshwar

now I see her

singing high notes

from the papaya branches,

the niddling coconut trees

the grey clouds, the trampled ghats(*v)

Now

left to every passers by

Even those who play “slogan- slogan”.

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(this is a poetry keeping West Bengal as a base, a fraction of its part plucked …)

*i: regular phrase used by Bengalis,a form of Goddess

*ii: Goddess Durga’s other form

*iii: Hibiscus (Hibiscus schizopetalus)

*iv: blood,blood Hibiscus

*v: river landing

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