rahul and the gay movement

rahul gandhi, it would seem, according to cnn-ibn is the new gay icon. and the story goes that section 377 has more of a chance of being defeated now that his aura is gaining ground. just how is that assumption made is not clear in the news story as he has not been heard making any statements in support, or for that matter, against the gay community. what is, though, is the reason why he is popular among the lgbt community according to the channel. it dutifully begins the story with a stereotyped (read effeminate, whiny voiced) gay man lusting after rahul’s sexiness and cuteness and how his dimples are adorable. naturally this is the reason why the case against 377 has new hope. and then you wonder why people don’t take the issue seriously.

big day on the mall

the news channel proclaim a new messiah to save the world from financial doom, the man in question plays his part to the hilt. the speech attempts rousing crescendos and sound-bites that have repeat value and ends up as rhetoric heard many times before. to use a tacky metaphor, the flame of my cynicism fanned by the hot words of too much chomsky :) makes me raise an eyebrow and wonder whether the grand hope being proclaimed merely because the man is black? or is the change going to be more substantial?

terror tv

and as it still goes on the silence in the house is rare. the television has been on almost continuously from 10 o’clock last night with the high pitched voices of excited reporters filling airtime by repeating the same three observations over and over again, in their eyes a perpetual bewilderment and exhaustion as they stand outside the hotels making their cameramen follow the contours of the buildings one window at a time hoping for some new developments- or hoping, like all of us are, for it to end. in sudden sharp bursts the emptiness of activity is broken by shots and gunfire and we imagine red carpeted corridors with the fragments of the departing bodies of dark shadowy figures.

we feel under siege. the randomness of the violence makes us prisoners in our homes. on the streets phantom cars drive with possible gunmen wreaking havoc but the streets in the evening seemed normal on the surface. yet it seemed like something was not quite right. the conversations in the corner markets were not as effusive, the lights seemed slightly more dim. the ‘spirit’ is exhumed again to make us all feel better- or we wait for its demise so we can prove that anything can die.

in between the shots of the distraught reporters on location experts like prahlad kakkar sit in the studio and wonder about the irresponsibility of the police because of an image he saw where the ats chief according to him wore his armour ‘casually’. if i was frustrated by the befuddled shivraj patil in new delhi making statements i was positively pissed with those vultures advani and jasvant singh who are hanging around the oberoi to feed on the media frenzy there on the eve of the elections. how can i forget that phtograph? running wild and scared at vt wearing a t-shirt and jeans, he could be one of my students, except for that mad look in his eyes and the gun in his hand. 20 years old and so removed from everyday life that he is willing to give up his life while taking so many for the sake of an abstract ideology.

its been a horrific month that does not seem to end.  i find coincidences that make me shiver. it was only yesterday that i bought and started to read thoman pynchon’s ‘gravity’s rainbow’ in which the war is not over in london as unpredictable and random violence is unleashed when mysterious bombs can drop down anywhere in the city. the air is thick with the possibilities of anything. i am going to stop reading the book. i am tired. this needs to stop. 

food porn

i did not know that ‘food porn’ was a well known term. i am anyway completely obsessed with cooking shows on tv. for someone who hates to cook this is truly a voyeuristic delight. no show titillates so much as nigella lawson’s. the close close ups of ripe fruits, luscious flesh, dripping syrup are all seduction with no hope for climax. and there is also her clipped british accent as she naughtily describes in loving detail the smell of and the texture of the blueberry pie, turns sideways and bites into the steaming hot freshly baked purple.

the scripting of reality – laguna beach

laguna beach is the oddest show. the real lives of rich teenagers are re-enacted as a reality show by themselves. begging the obvious questions about art and real life and which dictates and informs what, it gets even more complicated when it is unclear what is fiction and what real if everything is enacted and scripted but the consequences of the actions affect the world outside the frame of the camera. the problem of the perpetual performance in front of the camera is acknowledged unabashedly by the way the show is conceived and shot. Everything ends up being part of the game, even us sitting on this side of the screen don’t know when and how we end up on the other side acting as viewers.

threw a tantrum / addicted to music shows / hooked to nusrat /finished 'sabbaths theater'

threw a tantrum yesterday at this coffee bar ‘ the gossip café’ on link road yesterday evening. they refused to serve us water asking us to buy it instead. i have no idea how they got permission to open a restaurant without having a water connection. and the sad thing is that most of the customers seem to accept this denial of a basic right in a restaurant as a given- demurely accepting it as part of the rules for the new globalised city.

can you imagine such a situation in a udupi or an irani? where the waiter says ‘no drinking water – only bisleri’. and when after asking many times for the manager when we finally do manage to talk to him- he reacts by shouting back. saying “do not create a scene in the restaurant”. as if the problem is not that they are patently illegal- the problem is that we are letting other people know what they have a right to. he says that he was just about to make arrangements ‘for us’- as if the basic rights of the other customers being violated was not an issue.

and when i think about it- this is not the first time this has happened but its one of the few times that i have reacted. unfortunately i think i have become inured to these daily violations of basic rights. i am glad that we created a scene there. after all today we pay money to access public space and shell out cash for water only because we prefer submitting silently than raising a ruckus. we help in smoothening the processes of that are increasingly diminishing public sphere.

addicted completely to music talent hunt show zee sa re ga ma pa. last nights mega show was a melodrama and music fest with daler mehndi belting out rang de basanti with the boys and this non-stop medley of bhangra hits with the girls with some bollywood thrown in for good measure. laloo was special guest for the folk song episode and though my personal favourite amanats smooth bhojpuri song or even maulis sexy ‘namak’ were good, the night belonged to mussarats soaring nusrat and aneeks easy bhojpuri folk.

am hooked completely on nusrat again becaue of the show. from maula ali and the qawwalis to the indipop. yesterday ranjit, sonal and me had a discussion on which version of ‘tere bin nahin lagta dil mera dholna’ we preferred. one is the tackily produces indipop version and the other the smoothened fusion version on ‘night song’. i love the former for the way in which his voice hits those high notes and sets them on fire and when low it feels like the note can barely control the latent power in his voice. it lies rumbling beneath waiting to explode. i find the fusion version pretty but in a overly decorated kind of way. the over production dulls the edge. i actually find that to be true of even kailash khers new song ‘saiyyan’. beautiful song but a little overcooked.

finished 'sabbaths theater' - philip roth. a story of a depraved ex puppeteer who loses all when he loses his mistress. to be with this horrific man through the book might have been excruciating of it was not for the humour and intelligence by which roth gets us to go from hating him, to sympathizing with him and end up identifying with him as he journeys half mad towards self destruction through his obsessions and fear of death.

rakhi sawant

i love rakhi sawant- as pretty much everyone whom i spoke to does, who saw her looking hot in a manish malhotra sari with karan johar on sunday. her brazen sexuality and her innocence, her matter-of-factness about her silicone lips, the nips and tucks she has had; and her strange mixture of self-deprecating humor and yet complete self-centeredness seem strange. she talks about herself in the third person as if the persona she has created is not her. as a character study she is incredibly fascinating. a classic rags to riches story, with a deserter father, a conservative mother, a family to look after, casting couches and a supergirl costume. on ‘lola kutty’ she wore the costume on the show and asked the country to admire her thighs before breaking out into rajnikanth and chiranjeevi imitations. for a change lola had no quick one-liners and just had to laugh (‘at’ or ‘with’ her – is a question that we all have to answer whenever we giggle away at rakhi)

twisted into a strange cocktail by the glare of the spotlights of the media, she is great headline material. on ‘big brother’ if we got to see the ‘real’ her- it seemed to be the same persona as the music videos and the interviews. silly, stupid, sexy in an in-your-face way; we tolerate her, and even seem to love her idiocy and her street-smartness. i wonder whether there is something extremely sexist about this. i don’t think we would have tolerated the same traits in a man. somehow we assume to be her ‘patrons’, looking down at her as much as we seem to enjoy her antics. i remember when madonna in the 1980s had just begun her career and was shamelessly using her sexuality to get attention. she seemed to know exactly what to do to make the media dance to her tune. it is another thing that the songs themselves were ridiculously catchy. i wonder whether rakhi is as much in control of her destiny. she does not seem to be. she is merely a media created animal. the media is using her, she is not in charge. her persona is one that attracts us; but might bore us soon, fickle patrons that we are.

'city of gods' - young men and violence

in the ‘city of gods’ in a whirl of frenetic camerawork and episodic storytelling we enter the world of a favela in rio de janeiro. here unemployment and poverty, coupled with a culture of testosterone fuelled and peer pressure fostered aggression, ensnare young men in an unending cycle of violence. is this the result of a particular form of urban renewal, shifting the poor to the periphery, making the relationship in between them and the rest of the city strained and strange? as weapons and ammunition are easily at hand for young men to cling to as crutches in a disintegrating society, they provide them with token symbols of self-worth.

simultaneous to this is the middle class denial of the violence within and the great retreat into thicker and more impenetrable shells. when a korean kid runs riot in an american university the big push in not towards ridding the streets of guns but towards making higher compound walls. maybe it’s a male thing. in the photographs that cho sends nbc, making himself into a freely distributable media image he dons military fatigues, a crew cut and stares into the camera like the hero of an action film. his glare towards the camera, the symmetrical frames, the gun pointing directly at you are carefully (re)constructed from remembered fragments of a heavily loaded visual culture. real life is dictated by the mythologies of live televised wars, computer games and film.

big brother , big boss

i stopped watching or even trying to watch ‘big boss’ when rakhi sawant was evicted for the first time. now she is back and i don’t feel the need to return to the cat-fighting, bad hair-days, sweat pants and t-shirts of b-grade celebrities. now the shilpa shetty racism controversy in ‘big brother’ has reminded me of the absurd nature of the show- the fish tank in which strategically chosen characters snap each others heads off while brushing their teeth, washing clothes and cooking dinner. what happens when this fish tank sits in our living rooms every day and we watch this room within the box of the tv set play out its drama of survival? and survival in a world where the good and the bad are not so easily distinguished. to stay in the room the strategies have to be cunning. friends have to be made who want you around; while to stay on the audience must be seduced into liking you – for who you are (or at least purportedly so).

every week we are to watch this drama of death play itself out as one member leaves the room. is this box a place to let reality release itself from a world where all appearances are merely denials of the real gruesomeness that defines us? is this the violence that we crave for in a world where the cushions of political correctness and good behavior seem to have numbed us from the brutality that is our essence? perhaps the show reminds us about who we are and why in spite of our puny little bodies, our delicate clawless hands and our weak jaws carrying tiny blunt teeth ; we sit pretty at the top of the food chain.

noida

pardon me for being pissed, but after an hour of watching footage of the upper class jerk who raped and killed 35 children, chopped them up and buried them in his backyard with help of his servant- then probably sold their insides to international organ traders; and then watching politicians pass the buck around shamelessly - the bjp blames samajwadi blames bjp blames congress; and then suffering through the sensationalistic sentimentality on all the television news channels; and the panels of experts - sociologists/psychologistss / criminologists each hogging their 15 minutes of fame to peddle their wares.. i have lost all faith in the humanity of the privileged.

riot

the question is this.. unless buses burnt in bhandup did we bother to know about a dalit woman being raped and murdered in nagpur? or were we too busy reading about abhishek bachchan and aishwarya rai going to benaras because they were both manglik.

aargh!

reality tv / so-called ‘talent’ tv india style is loud, brash and annoying as hell. whether its nach baliye, jhalak dikhlaja, or ‘sar re ga ma ‘the contestants are usually eager to please, smiling all the time and begging for votes from the great indian middle class through sms. the women are demure and look like the mannequins from saas bahu serials, the men try hard to be likeable by playing the ‘sport’, the hosts shriek instead of speak, the sets dazzle and overwhelm with grossness, the make up makes faces into ghoulish masks, the clothes are horrifying and the judges invariably bollywood.

its trashy tv without any compunctions. none of the talent is even worth mentioning. it’s all a battle for the favours of what is imagined to be the lowest common denominator- the sentiment, the irrationality, the ridiculous regressiveness that is testimony that we expect the worst from ourselves. like the time the blind singer boy who cant really hold a note was ousted from the competition but was gotten back for the sake of ratings and then begged the audience to vote for him “because sound is the only thing he has in his life”

manipulative shtick , did i hear you say?

oh yes.. and yet i sit glued to the damn television set watching mediocrity parade itself in all its brazen glory. it is grinning idiotically at the camera with overly lit toothpaste smiles, hairdos like birds nests, sets in polythene and plaster of paris, clothes of polyester and sequins, and sounds that are screeching like nails on a blackboard from the living room calling me to it.

wait for me, mom.. i want to know who wins!