Friday 18 October 2013

`The Past` reviewed

 
This is the second of the 2013 London Film Festival offerings that I saw on its first showing at the Curzon Chelsea last night. Directed by Asghar Farhadi (who also made the award-winning `A Separation` some 2 years ago – see my Review of 2011), it is an intense psycho-drama from the perspective of Ahmad (Ali Mousaffa), Iranian husband of Marie (Berenice Bejo), the central female lead, who returns to Paris from Tehran after a four year separation to finalise their divorce at her behest. He is immediately drawn into her dysfunctional and emotionally draining relationships with her teenage daughter Lucie (Puline Burlet), her, Marie`s, new lover Samir (Tahar Rahim) and his rebellious 10-12 year old son Fouad, with many strands to their interactions and daily lives.  He tries to understand the dark layer of antipathy and bitterness and to mediate between the warring parties, and to generally keep them from falling further apart as he resumes his former role as the gentle, kindly father figure to Lucie.      
 
The Past as title is intriguing because what we are treated to really is a snapshot of the Parisian characters` present, as it were, during the 3 or 4 days that Ahmad is visiting them – the precise timeline is not spelt out - though in order to make sense of it he does have to dig into what has led them to the point where they are at.  To that extent, their immediate past is relevant. He sees this in all its raw complexity. The plot thickens when it is revealed that it was Lucie who had shopped Marie`s love-email exchanges with Samir to Samir`s wife Celine which had apparently led to her attempted suicide and to end up in a coma as a result.  As if this was not complicated enough, we also learn that Celine had suspected Samir to be having an affair with his illegally employed shop-assistant who in turn had provided Lucie with Celine`s email address out of a grievane of her own.  We also learn that Marie is pregnant with Samir`s child and that she has had several previous affairs, facts which are a running sore with Lucie and contributed to her sense of anger and alienation.  
 
All these stark and shifting realities are played out as the narrative moves along at a relentless pace, with strong echoes of `A Separation`, particularly in the court sequences, though the divorce itself proceeds less dramatically and acrimoniously than in the earlier film. The Paris backdrop is captured in minute and fascinating detail. Every performance is superb, especially that of the child-actor Elyes Aguis who plays Fouad. His anger tantrums (symptomatic of a psychological trauma caused by the actions of the adults around him) in the scene where he violently kicks at the door of the bedroom when he is locked in by an angry Marie, or the one when he is made to apologise to Ahmad for raiding his suitcase for the presents that Ahmad had brought for the children, or where he refuses to leave the metro train while travelling home with Samir, are all executed absolutely brilliantly.
 
The movie ends inconclusively, and that merely reinforces its underlying essence as a portrayal of all the principal characters - of Marie and Samir, of the semi-grown-up Lucie, and also of Fouad and his playmate Lea, another but much younger daughter of Marie who watches them all as a silent, helpless observer - at a critical period in their unhappy lives. Do we feel compassion or empathy for any of them?  For the children certainly but none for Marie, who is least deserving, and a little for Samir.

Ahmad however remains largely an enigmatic outsider. So just as he wades into the situation, like the lone rider with a mysterious past in a western who comes in to clean up the town`s baddies, so we too are merely witness to a family drama that slides into a slow denouement. He came, he saw and he left. The past is over.

This film, like `A Separation`, too will no doubt win Farhadi well deserved plaudits. 

               
RAMNIK SHAH
(c) 2013
Surrey, England
 

 

  

Friday 4 October 2013

Theroux`s last African hurrah!


Paul Theroux knows Africa well.  He spent six years teaching there in the 1960s and has since travelled extensively across the length of the continent.  Several of his best selling books through the decades were based on or inspired by his African experience. `The Last Train to Zona Verde: Overland from Cape Town to Angola` (ISBN 978-0-241-14367-4 Hamish Hamilton h/b © Paul Theroux 2013) is his latest and may well be his last in the classic travel literature genre as far as Africa is concerned.  It is best described as a lament for a place that he had come to love and feel at home in, now turned into a `futureless, dystopian, world-gone-wrong, Mad Max Africa of child soldiers, street gangs, reeking slums, refuse heaps, utter despair`!  But how did he come to that conclusion?

As he explains, ten years previously, at the dawn of the 21st century, he had travelled `overland from Cairo to Cape Town down the right-hand side of Africa` by road and rail, the result of which was his Dark Star Safari (2002).  So this time, `liking the symmetry of the enterprise`, he wanted to continue from Cape Town and `travel north in a new direction, up the left-hand side until ... the end of the line`!  Even at the outset though he had some misgivings: `Africa had changed`, and so had he.  He had kept reading about troubles further up in Niger and Chad and in Nigeria.  `So I left on this trip with a sense of foreboding`, because a man of his age, travelling alone in Africa, dressed in faded clothes and with minimal cheap luggage was `an easy mark`, vulnerable.  Everything pointed to it as a farewell trip.  Inevitably therefore, along the way he was to notice and reflect on the changes that have happened in the last few years, mostly for the worse, and to question his own motivation and value judgments.  The most overwhelming sentiment that he wrestled with all through the trip was `What Am I Doing Here`?

More about that later but let`s start at the beginning.  He recalls that ten years previously, a mixed-race clerk at Cape Town`s central station had refused to sell him a ticket to Khayletisha, a notorious African township, telling him not to go to a squatter camp because he would get robbed or worse - (the incident is described in graphic detail in Dark Star Safari)!  This time, he takes a taxi to the surrounding shantytowns, reproaching himself that in doing so he was no different from the many American and European visitors for whom `slum tourism` has become a fashionable feature of their South African safaris: gaping at the substandard dwellings of the natives, `unfit for human habitations` in overcrowded, `dirty, disorderly and crime-ridden` streets – even more so now than `in the days of apartheid`- and sampling the local cuisine and beer in the many shebeens and gourmet restaurants that had sprung up in the notorious township of Guguletu to cater for them, as also for `Cape Town foodies ... not just for the meal but [also] for the novelty of the filth and menace of their surroundings`! 

At the end of the day`s wanderings however he insists on taking a train back to Cape Town from Khayletisha. His driver/guide reluctantly agrees, thinking that it will be safe as he is heading back to the city centre against the flow of the rush hour traffic in the opposite direction, and so it turns out, just about. He ruminates on the transition to majority rule and the ensuing transformation that has taken place in the country, but to him post-apartheid South Africa is a disappointment, largely because of its continuing socio-economic inequalities along the old racial fault-lines.

From Cape Town, then, he starts on his journey proper, by taking `The Night Bus to Windhoek`, on a one-way ticket, covering a distance of nearly a thousand kilometres.  It was `a leap in the dark, northerly, in the direction of the Congo`, with a motley collection of fellow travellers, representing the `whole colour spectrum, of South African racial identities   ... black, Indian, Cape Malay, "colored", Chinese and some beefy Boers, all of us headed to Springbok and the border, and perhaps across it`.  Along the way, he muses over all that he sees and the people he interacts with, and the book is peppered with descriptions, conversations and critiques in the Theroux/Naipaul travelogue tradition - indeed there are strong resonances with Naipaul`s The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief (see My review of 2012, entry no. 13 under Books, below). He crosses the border into Namibia, on foot: `There`s an equality in pedestrian border crossings ... no first class, no fast lane, no preferential treatment`. 

He finds Windhoek to be a delightful, civilised, uncrowded city in the German mode (with wide streets, orderly traffic, neat houses) and Namibia a vast country as a whole with a sparse population and a pleasant environment.  He likes the rugged landscape and the laid-back lifestyle of its varied people.  He feels least troubled here.  But things turn ugly when he reaches Angola at what he calls `The Frontier of Bad Karma`!

His guides had been full of warnings but had assured him that if he followed their advice, he would get over the border without a problem.  If the formal requirements for a foreigner to enter Angola were strict, the actual entry was far worse: rough, undignified, humiliating.  As an old man on foot with minimal luggage, he was `treated with the casual abuse reserved for the contemptible souls who walked across the remote border`, shoved by the crowd around him and shouted at brusquely by the immigration official who kept him waiting for hours, so different from the more seasoned and valued travellers (diplomats, businessmen, oil company executives) who would `breeze through the international airport on the red carpet and praised the country`s manners and modernity`. 

From the border, then, it was really a series of hair-raising rides and near misses from disaster of one kind or another.  He had to entrust his life and limb to men like Camillo, who drove with drunken rage and recklessness along unmade roads.  `The look of Angola was not just the ugly little town[s] and the slum[s] of shacks but also the ruin of landscape, of the stumps of deforestation and the fields littered with burned-out tanks, of rivers and streams that seemed poisoned, black and toxic .....(a)nd not the slightest glimpse of any animal but a cow or a cringing dog`.  The old land mines from the decades-long civil war had wiped out even the remaining wild life not eaten up by starving people!

Ever since setting out from Cape Town, he had been nagged by a morbid thought that he `might not return, not just to Cape Town, but home; that I was setting off to suffer and die`!  This feeling deepened as he struggled along.  `In a life of travel, I had been in awful places and taken foolish risks, and I had survived ... as the Fortunate Traveler` but he feared that at some point his luck would run out!  On this trip, there was just a steady accumulation of bad karma, even though he did have some positive encounters, as with Akisha Pearman, an American expatriate teacher of English who had been living on her own in Luanda for two years, and another American, `Nancy Gottlieb, who had lived in Angola, mostly in Benguela, for seventeen years, and ... (o)ne of [whose] several projects was running an English language school`.  These and other dedicated people did try to make a contribution to the betterment of the local people, but to Theroux it all seemed futile in the face of everything, of overwhelming odds, of a culture of want and neglect. 

All through his journey across Angola, Theroux is conscious of the chequered history of the country: its past of slavery and the forced labour regime that replaced it under Portuguese colonialism, the civil war that followed; and the continuum of economic exploitation, the rise of a ruling elite and the dire state of the country`s dispossessed and its failing infrastructure fuelled by rampant corruption and misappropriation and the siphoning off of the `oil, diamond and gold` revenues.  The country`s wealth was being squandered, while the ordinary folk eked out a starvation level existence.  In his most damning indictment of African dictators, he likens Angola`s Jose dos Santos to `(t)he murderous, self-elected, megalomaniacal head of state with the morals of a fruit fly, with his decades in power, along with his vain, flitting shopaholic wife, his hangers–on, and his goon squad`, a la Robert Mugabe! 

Rolling north along the coast towards Luanda, he observes that while `as a fleeting bird of passage`, he had `nothing to complain about`, he could not but be struck by `the misery of Africa, the awful, poisoned, populous Africa; the Africa of cheated, despised, unaccommodated people, of seemingly unfixable blight: so hideous ... the new Africa`!   The book is replete with passages like this, based on personal observation and study of books, academic literature and other documented material.  He also noted the increasing Chinese presence at all levels of the economy, even `Chinese children with Angolan nationality`!

In Luanda, then, he takes a reality check.  Enough is enough.  `In Cape Town at the start of my journey ... I had dreamt of ending it in Timbuktu.  I was headed in that general direction.  I had traced a provisional itinerary on my Africa map that led me northerly, zigzagging from Cape Town to Angola, and (somehow) from there, via the Congo and Gabon and Cameroon, through Nigeria and onward to the fabled city in Mali`.  What lay before him however was a relentless string of West African shantytowns where the locals lived `the dog`s life, where gardening was impossible, water was scarce and fuel – firewood or charcoal – usually unavailable` and where they `muddled through by menial jobs, casual labour or whoring or handouts, or crime ... so bereft of hope`! 

So he asks himself: `Why would I wish to travel through blight and disorder only to report on the same ugliness and misery?`.  In pondering this, he does acknowledge that the `blight is not peculiar to Africa`.  While `Luanda ... and Cape Town and Jo`burg and Nairobi` may `greatly resemble, in their desperation, their counterparts in the rest of the world`, he did not want to get drawn into thinking about those other places in the midst of the hell-hole he was in.  He had `spent a life of travel sleeping in strange beds and dining on sinister food` and `only mildly objected`, because it is in the nature of travel to be uncomfortable`.  But he did object to insult. `You can stay at home and be insulted; you don`t need to go ten thousand miles to be jeered at ... yelled at, heckled, cursed, or pestered, as began to happen with greater frequency on my trip`.  It was undignified, even though the `pushing and being shoved and biffed by impatient oafs (was) not the worst of it`.  He found it increasingly distasteful to have to fight both his way in and out of and to travel for hours on end in miserable buses, `with piss stops and children with the squitters and chickens dying in baskets and shouting passengers` being driven by inept drivers.  `Like the single woman ... the weak-looking or undersized stranger, the loner or wanderer at night` he too, as an older traveller, was prey to being bullied or fleeced. He did not feel safe and wondered `What am I doing here?`.

But ever so mindful of balance and fairness, he reminds himself that he was often asked: `You didn`t see the wealthy areas ... the great houses!`.  But he did.  He `peeped through the perimeter walls and saw the sentry boxes, the private clubs and the gated communities` and was even `welcomed in some of these ... tiny enclaves, mere precious islands in a sea of wreckage`!

For half a century, he had travelled the world and been in the unlikeliest of places and survived all kinds of near disasters.  But Africa had defeated him.  Perhaps it was the notion of travel itself.  But it was more than that.  He was conscious of time wasting, the clock ticking insistently, of `travel as deja vu`.  Maybe that was the conundrum: he was after `something new, something different, something changed, something wonderful, something weird!`. Not even the temptation to board `the brand-new Chinese-made train ... that could bear me in relative comfort east .. 265 miles into zona verde – the green zone of Angola`s bush` would do for a lifelong rail enthusiast like himself. `Not this time`
  
He had found the answer to `What am I doing here?`: leave.  And so Theroux cuts short his planned northward jaunt across to the Sahara.  African poverty had often reminded him of what lay in his own country`s backyard: `the poor in America, living in just the same way, precariously, on the red roads of the Deep South, on low farms, poor pelting villages, sheepcotes, and mills – people I knew only from books, as I`d first known Africans – and I felt beckoned home`! 

RAMNIK SHAH
©2013
Surrey, England

Wednesday 18 September 2013

From Film Archives: `Well Done Abba`

I posted this on the A/O forum on 23 October 2009:


This year`s London Film Festival is on and as usual we are treated to an eclectic mix of offerings, "Well Done Abba" among them. I saw it on Tuesday.  A Shyam Benegal`s film is always something to look forward to, and so one went in with high expectations. But though immensely enjoyable, reflecting on it afterwards I wondered if it was that different from the standard Bollywood fare of romance, drama, music and entertainment.  In India, it may well be classified as an art movie, but to a western audience, what comes across is a fairy story of the good triumphing over or trumping the bad with a happy ending.  That said, yes, it deserves plaudits for technical detail and presentation, narrative, location and, above all, casting and acting.

 
The hero is the simple-minded Armaan Ali, a chauffeur working for a big Mumbai business executive, who has to explain to his boss why he should not be sacked for overstaying his home leave by two months, and so he launches into his tale of woe and wonder.  He is a widower who has left his young daughter to be brought up by his socially irresponsible twin brother and his wife back at home.  His return there is the beginning of a complex sequence of misadventures involving corruption and greed at every level of local administration when he is misled into applying for a government grant under a scheme for helping houseowners below a certain level of income to enable them to sink a well for fresh water supply in their properties.  We see how the system works and how he gets sucked deeper and deeper into it.  But it is a comedy - a light hearted look at the working of Indian politics and society in its most basic functional modes.  In short, it is a delightful satire, with a serious undertone. 

 
So we get drawn into the small-town life of the community, predominantly Muslim, that Armaan Ali navigates willy-nilly.  This is beautifully captured (and indeed in some respects it resonated with the American film that I had seen the day before, The Exploding Girl, set in upstate New York about a couple of college students returning home on vacation to find that nothing much happened there while they wrestled with their youthful angst).  The various characters, ranging from the police inspector to the civil engineer to the local tax officials to the village headwoman - all their personal, professional and domestic flaws and foibles are bared with sharp humour while on the political front the hypocrisy and double-dealing of the legislators and the government are exposed mercilessly. 

 
But it is Armaan Ali`s feisty daughter (played by Sammir-Minissha) who steals the limelight when it comes to getting him out of the trouble that he lands himself in.  There is also the romantic angle, in the shape of the idealistic young mechanic who, while initially pursuing Armaan Ali`s good-for-nothing brother for a small debt, falls for her and their romance develops as she begins to reciprocate the feeling.  But the fault-lines of the film are the many incongruities and implausibilities that abound: how is that the daughter who is otherwise so rebellious and outspoken is meek and malleable in other respects, why Armaan Ali could not have phoned his boss to beg an extension of leave and how come he seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of ready cash! These and other flaws do not exactly mar our enjoyment, because we go along with the flow of the narrative and the many twists and turns of the plot to see where, or rather how, it is taking us. We get some useful glimpses into the social mores and realities of life in their particular regional and religious context, such as issues relating to arranged (or coerced) marriages to rich Middle-Eastern predators for cash.  The scenes involving the sex-crazed shenanigans of the civil engineer who has to win over his reluctant wife are titillating, while other marital or domestic situations are sensitively handled, with a keen eye for the comic.  And without giving away too much, suffice it to say that there is some ambiguity in the end, for it is not clear if the undeserving or discredited bad guys exactly get their just deserts.

 
From the post-modern Indian perspective, yes, it does presumably have a certain artistic appeal to the intellectual class.  Its core message is clear enough: in India nothing is straight (No full stops in India, a la Mark Tulley!); the small man or woman always has an uphill struggle to get round bureaucracy and corrupt policemen, politicians and the proverbial pimps.  That everything has a price in the form of a commission or bribe.  That is all very well.  How this is conveyed is the essence of the cinema as an art form.  But to my thinking, how it translates, in cross-cultural terms, into a universal theme is where global considerations come in, and here one has to make some allowances, which intelligent world viewers would do anyway, even if they may be unable to relate to the plot or understand its many reference points.

 
At the (second) showing that I went to, the task of explaining the film and conducting the Q&A fell on Boman Irani, the lead actor whose rendering of Armaan Ali was simply brilliant, because Shyam Benegal had already left London.  He was as good on his feet as on the screen.  He said that the film script had been put together from two or three short stories and, when I put to him, was happy to confirm that unlike the driver in Arvinda Adiga`s White Tiger (or indeed in Martin Scorsese`sTaxi Driver), his was a much benign and likeable character.   Looking at him in person, one could be in no doubt about his acting talent and hinterland.  His performance in person was as articulate and wholesome as it was in the movie.  Well Done Abba indeed!
 
Ramnik Shah
(c) 2013
Surrey England

From Film Archives: `Gandhi My Father`

I posted this review on the A/O forum on 10 August 2007:

This film opened both here and in India simultaneously a week ago and we saw it last night.  It has received warm critical reviews and I would unhesitatingly echo them here.  Unfortunately we missed the first 5 or 10 minutes of it, because of car parking  problems, but it was not difficult to get into the pulse of the plot as it unfolded, even though at first the sanitised characters in their fine costumery and expensively made up facial images in the opening sequences did seem to convey an imitation of the modern Indian tv soap. 
 
The advance publicity had suggested that this is a film about Harilal, Gandhi`s eldest son, and his relationship with his saintly father, the Mahatma; but it is more than that.  We are given a richly dimensional portrait of not just Harilal but of both his parents, and of his wife Gulab as well.  What comes through so strikingly is that theirs is a complex relationship at all levels.  As the film picks up speed, we get drawn into the dynamics of their collective and individual  lives through the vicissitudes of time and space, and interplay of action and emotion.
 
In the early scenes, we see a youthful and handsome Harilal marry a shy and pretty Gulab with whom he is clearly in love but whom he has to leave behind in India while he is commanded to join his father in South Africa.  For some reason the older Gandhi, then in full swing as a rising attorney there, was reluctant for Gulab to join them in South Africa but charmingly caves in after his English secretary persuades him to and so Gulab does arrive.  However, Gandhi continues to control not just his household, holding the purse-springs, but also to dictate what Harilal should do and not.  He neglects Harilal`s education and thwarts the young man`s ambition to go to England to train as a barrister like himself.  He directs him to take part in the `satyagraha` struggle in South Africa and Harilal willingly does so, always wanting to impress his father as an adoring and obedient son, who worshipped the heroic figure that Gandhi had become.  Harilal was in complete awe of him.  Gandhi failed to notice the effect he was having on Harilal until in a poignant exchange between them Harilal exposes his inner turmoil, after Gulab had left him and returned to India with their children, bidding him to stay on and serve his father `s cause.  At that point, we see the beginning of a mature relationship between the two, but a long and troublesome long journey lay ahead for both of them.  At any rate, Gandhi grants Harilal`s wish to join his wife and children and so the action switches to India.
 
Harilal tries to make an honest living and to be a good husband and father to his children in Ahmedabad but his limited education and lack of business and practical acumen militate against that.  It is only the fact of being Gandhi`s son that helps him to keep afloat, often as a recipient of the largesse of benefactors who were propelled by the Gandhi name or connection to prop him up, or even to exploit him, as some unscrupulous big businessmen did.  His sense of being a failure deepens as one scheme after another proves to be a disaster.  His marriage falls apart.  He becomes an alcoholic.  He even changes religion to become a Muslim, though later he was to repent and revert to Hinduism.  He was a classic lost soul, clutching at straws.
 
All this of course takes place against the background of Gandhi`s triumphant return and rise to the status of a `Mahatma`, as the undoubted leader of the freedom struggle and the father of the nation.  At every significant twist and turn of the narrative we see the two come face to face - either when Harilal comes back to the family home after his wanderings (even a spell in jail) or when the paterfamilias goes looking for him in an effort to reconcile and persuade him to rejoin the fold and more importantly the freedom struggle.
 
But as noted above, this is not just about Harilal and his father.  His mother (Kasturba, `Baa`) has an important part to play in all the drama, right from the beginning to (her) end.  Like all women who are caught between an extremely powerful or dominant husband and a rebellious offspring, she recognizes the force of the conflicts and dilemmas inherent in such a situation and tries to play the role of the arbiter and adviser, never abandoning (as no mother of course would) hope that Harilal would some day fall in line.  The spousal relationship between the Mahatma and Baa too is beautifully captured, through the different stages of their lives.
 
We are of course familiar with Attenborough`s `Gandhi`.  There are many strong resonances of that here, in both the South African and Indian scenes, with some historical news footage thrown in - of marches, meetings and demonstrations etc. Remember the sequence in `Gandhi` when he tends to his ailing wife, as she is nearing death?  Well, we are privileged to witness this and what leads to it in delicate detail.  It is as moving as it was in the first `Gandhi`.  And then the movie (as well as the real-life plot) moves relentlessly to its climactic end, with the day of partition and reckoning for Gandhi, and the quick end of both father and son in that order, the latter`s as tragic, in a different sense, as that of the Mahatma!
 
I am still savouring the aura of the film, and relieved to some extent - because I had been led to believe that it might lead us to rethink our opinion of the Mahatma.  No, of course not.  There are many examples in history of great men and women who have a hidden private life or who undergo many inner turmoils, often on account of their children.   Once Gandhi realised he had failed Harilal, he came to terms with that, but he also sought to impress upon Baa that Harilal had to take responsibility for the consequences of his own actions as he was an adult.  He  himself  had a greater calling, and cause to serve.  But he cared and was caring all the same.  
 
I wouldn`t be surprised if it is nominated for next year`s Oscars in the foreign language category.  `Foreign language`?  Yes, it is in Hindi, but one hardly notices that - the subtitles and the subject-matter are so gripping that one can follow the dialogue effortlessly, imperceptibly.  This coming from me whose grasp of Hindi is poor is a tribute indeed.  The technical presentation is superb too, as is the acting -  Harilal is played by Akshaye Khanna, Gulab by Bhoomica Chawla, Mahatma Gandhi by Darshan Jariwala and Kasturba by Sheffali Shah.  The director is Feroze Khan, who has also co-written the script with Chandulal Dalal.   The music, in particular the singing of `Ragupati Ragav Raja Ram` is beautifully rendered too.  I am hurrying with this and have compressed it somewhat because I am so excited to report about this unique film experience.  Don`t miss it.
 
Ramnik Shah
(c) 2013 (edited)
Surrey England

Tuesday 17 September 2013

From Film Archives: `The Journey` (Yatra)

I posted this review on the A/O forum on 30 October 2006:
 
This was one of the many offerings of the London Film Festival, currently in its second week (having opened with The Last King of Scotland - the one about Idi Amin).  We saw it on Thursday at the National Film Theatre on its first showing (each exhibit has two).  Written and directed (in Hindi, with English sub-titles) by Goutam Ghose, it is described in its own self-publicity as "(a) superb must-see film, in which .... Ghose elicits powerful performances from an acclaimed cast including Nana Patekar, Deepti Naval and the ageless Rekha"; and so it is and so he does, though I have to admit that I didn`t think so at first!
 
I was, alas, less than impressed when the film ended and so didn`t feel inclined to participate in the Q&A session that followed with Ghose, who had come from India for the presentation and who stood just 10 metres from where we were sitting.  So why did I feel that way and why have I changed my mind?   To begin with, maybe I was subconsciously put off by his introductory remarks about the film, before it began, in which he spoke of it as a product of his own upper middle-class environment.  He certainly did not lack in modesty; but then considering his 30+ year record of film-making, with some notable successes and awards, even though he may not be so well known outside India, such confidence was perhaps understandable.  I thought there was a touch of pretentiousness about it, but on reflection maybe it was just the way many `desi` Indians do rather unself-consciously think of themselves!  Then being ensconced in the second row from the front made it a little uncomfortable viewing for me, and thirdly, I could not, as an outsider, relate to its purely Indian social nuances and local reference points - but then that is me, whose intellectual and cultural orientation is Western.
 
Well, the film sort of grows on you; at least for me it acquired a meaning and fell into place more in retrospect than there and then. The `journey` is a yatra on a multiplicity of levels where, as the blurb tells us, "fact and fiction tensely oscillate".  Ostensibly there is an elaborate facade of a writer constructing a story that assumes the garb of an imagined past but one which soon dissolves into both a living reality and paradoxically, at the same time, an enigma of surreal, if tragic eternity. If that sounds too vague and poetic then that is exactly the intended effect. The artificial constructs of the structure notwithstanding, the essence of the plot is simple enough: Dashrath (played by Nana Patekar), a respected village schoolmaster, with a wife and two growing children and an elderly mother to look after, has his tranquil existence turned upside down when he comes upon a woman (Lajvanti, played by Rekha) in a most distraught state lying in the bushy wilderness of the surrounding countryside.  She used to be a `nautch` girl but had become the resident mistress of a local `raja` or landlord who was not averse to exploiting and abusing her when it suited him (here is our first song and dance routine, beautifully performed, with the usual horde of hissing middle-aged men squatting on the floor, deliriously drunk and doddering about excitedly).  She has been serially and violently raped and abandoned.  He takes her home, gives her shelter and his wife and family gently nurture her back to some sort of normality when her `owner` and protector sends his henchmen to claim her back and to threaten him with dire consequences if he does not `deliver` her.  So they all leave the village and trek to the big city where he finds her a secure place.  So far so good, and there is no hint of any impropriety or emotional entanglement.  But it is after Lajvanti leaves his protection that he falls for her and from there on, it is reminiscent of Dr Zhivago, the idealistic doctor`s passionate affair with Lara, whose life goes through a series of twists and turns of epic proportions before it ends in a tragic denouement.  

When the film opens however, the transformation of the village schoolteacher into a successful author, his embracing of the `nouveau riche` lifestyle of contemporary upper middle class Indian society, with all the standard comforts that go with it, has already taken place.  And so from there on, it takes on an episodic quality, with all kinds of flashbacks and flash-forwards as well as the unfolding of the sequences that provide continuity and cohesion to the composition as a whole.  This is interwoven with the underlying ambiguity about the essence of the film: is it Dashrath`s tale or one that he has created, with a large dose of self or wish fulfilment? 
 
In his opening, pre-show remarks, Ghose had referred to the new India, its vibrant economy and consciousness being part of the cross-cultural ways of our post-modern global era.  He demonstrates this in telling ways: Dashrath`s (by Indian standards) ultra-modcons of domesticity - the hi-fi, the cable tv, the fridge/freezer, the telephone and other gadgets - and outside, in the city (Hyderabad) the shopping mall, the car and the mobile phone - all this is the changing face of the country, no doubt.  This is not all.  We see early scenes of marital affection between Dashrath and his wife, involving lip-kissing, and later on casual and graphic sex between peripheral characters (a `Sex in the City` style young business executive and a budding film maker to whom Dashrath has confided his whole life story, which is the outer casing of the film, as it were, during a train journey to Delhi to receive a literary award).  So the picture we get here is indeed of an India that is on the move, in more than one sense.  But there are incongruities too.  For example, the two grown up children (son and daughter) of the family are too goody-goody and all their internal dynamics are too tame, for those of us who are used to a much less sentimental approach to human interactions.  Even so, when the wife and the mistress meet (in circumstances) which had best be left unsaid here) the lack of any empathy between them while understandable in one sense is too stark as a dramatic conclusion.  The stiffness of their encounter is too jarring a note on which to end the film.      

I have touched only on the basic elements of the film, which has a layered complexity in terms of narrative, characterisation and performance.  The brevity of the publicity blurb is indeed true in its core message.  All the acting is superb, and so is the music.  Rekha does surprise us with the sheer virtuosity and physicality of her dance numbers, both traditional and modern.  A google search will reveal Ghose`s impressive credentials.  He is a Bengali, born in Uttar Pradesh, and clearly at home in both Hindi and Bengali.  `The Journey` is his own creation, not based on or adapted from someone else`s, but he comes from a long line of distinguished Bengali and Hindi film makers (a  la Satyajit Ray and Aparna Sen) and so their influences must inform his works too.  The theme of sexuality and adultery, was most recently explored in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, albeit from a diasporic Indian perspective.  Here it is in a home-grown context, but even so deep down one can sense a resonance with great Russian literature where personal pleasure is tempered with feelings of guilt and remorse and notions of crime and punishment play such a decisive part in family sagas.

But at the other end of the world, the film is bound to come to America (and Australasia and E Africa) too (it may already have?). The new Bostonians there may find in it an echo of the old - a kind of Merchant-Ivory treatment, in reverse, as it were, of morals and manners, and mere mortals.  If it should happen that some of our members have a chance to see it (and meet the director) maybe they could ask him this question: why is it that the film - set in Hyderabad of all places, which otherwise makes a point of portraying a 21st century India with all its technological advances and is about a successful writer who consciously writes in long hand - does not showing us a computer screen anywhere, either in his study-cum-sitting room, or anywhere outside, whether in the bookshop where he is signing copies of his book for his admiring readers, at the hotel in Delhi where he is guest of honour at the award ceremony, in the call-centre for an outsourced American corporate client where his daughter chucks her job in disgust, or in any of the other public places that we are taken to?  He is clearly making a point about it, but what?

That said, do go and see the film: it is a cinematic experience of art par excellence.

Ramnik Shah
(c) 2013
Surrey England

From Film Archives: `Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna`

I posted this review of Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (Never Say Goodbye) on the GlobalEar forum on 09 September 2006:
 
This is a Bollywood blockbuster indeed, but with a big difference. It is not set in India .... but rather in New York, and is about the lives of Indian diasporans there (and by implication in the West generally). So it is a puzzle as to why the film was not made in English, as it easily could have been, with the bilingual actors using their own authentic voices for an equivalent Hindi version. After all a lot of the dialogue in whole or part is in English, reflecting the true life-style of the characters it portrays anyway.      
 
Be that as it may, the readily decipherable English subtitles (which also appear when English is spoken!) do make it easy to follow the movie (more so if one has a smattering of the lingo), which however is long, too long at 3 hrs and 13 mins! The first hour or so is just plain poppycock: caricature of the traditional Bollywood-style extravaganza of carefully choreographed dance, colourful costumes and loud accompanying music, scenes of surreal shenanigans and a mixture of brash baffoonery and bashfulness - enjoyable no doubt to the mass loyal followers of Hindi cinema, but embarrassing for the critical viewer because of its lack of intellectual subtlety and nuance. This is no art movie; it is a commercial production for a vast global market that now spans across continents from India to the Middle East to Africa and to Europe and North America in the West and Australasia in / and the Far East.

But what is so especially novel about the film, so we are told, is that it deals with a taboo subject: of adultery and sexuality, in a very explicit way, which goes against the grain of the standard Indian movie fare. That kind of social realism may be seen as a revolutionary departure in a wholly Indian setting, but not one involving NRIs (`Non-Resident Indians` a term that, alas, is open to misconstruction and challenge because it takes no account of the varied nature of the Indian diaspora which comprises not only those who actually hail from the sub-continent and may retain Indian nationality but also the progeny of those who left its shores generations ago to form immigrant communities in diverse colonial societies in the far corners of the British Empire, eventually to settle in Britain or other parts of the West, more appropriately called `persons of Indian origin` or PIOs). So the movie-makers are to be congratulated for daring to touch on a sensitive issue in a way that would not be offensive to their multi-million mass home audiences. For them this is truly a `Bollywood blockbuster` because it stars a galaxy of their heart-throbs: Amitabh Bhachan, Sharukh Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Preity Zinta, Abhishek Bhachan et al, and contains all the gimmickry and other associated elements designed to appeal to and entertain them.

The plot, shorn of its hype and many pointless highways and byways, can be reduced to a simple scenario: of how two mis-matched couples struggling to cope with their unhappy marriages and moral dilemmas born of a cultural inheritance that inhibits their freedom of action and even expression of sentiment, come to terms with their inner emotional and personal conflicts. This broad theme is explored against the background of the daily hassle and struggles of living and working in the world`s greatest metropolis, though the city portrayed in this movie is not the New York of Manhattan or Marathon Man - the backdrop scenery has not the same dynamic edge.

The real life father-son (Amitabh and Abhishek Bhachan) also play the same character roles in the story as Sam and Rishi respectively. Their celluloid affection for each other (greetings of "Hey, dude" as well as genuine and feigned exclamations of exasperation that often pass between parents and grown up children) may or may not be mirrored in actuality, but in the movie it strikes a poignant note. The older Bhachan`s sexual antics come across at first as those of an ageing playboy bent on making up for earlier missed opportunities but later these give way to a paternalist concern for the welfare of his son and more especially of his daughter-in-law and protege Maya (Rani Mukherjee) even though she is cold and unfeeling towards her husband, and in fact advises her to get out of an unloving marriage rather than endure it. There are of course lots of twists and turns to the story, with the other couple (Rhea - played by Preity Zinta - and her good-for-nothing hubby Dev) weaving in and out of focus as Dev and Maya get drawn ever closer to each other through a succession of romantic trysts.

After all the early silliness, it is when the movie moves on to the plateau of relationships that it begins to hold our serious attention. When confidences are exchanged and there is a corresponding build up of empathy and understanding all round, we do feel drawn to the characters, with the one exception of Dev, played by Sharukh Khan - a cantankerous and truly obnoxious figure masquerading as an Al Pacino verisimilitude - his speech full of `shit`, his manners equally crude, his demeanour gruff - (think of A Scent of a Woman or Dog Day Afternoon) - except that he doesn`t quite pull it off! If his foul-mouthed temper was the result of a sporting injury that finished off his career as a rising football star, and if his damaged psyche dictates all his actions, then that does not sit well with the notion of spiritual redemption through love. His domestic relations with his wife (a smart business executive) and mother-in-law are never too well disposed, but it is his cruelty to their only son that is so shocking that not even the rather limp attempt to bring about a soft reckoning between them at the end mitigates the sheer horror of his total unsuitability and indifference as a parent.

The absence of chemistry between the married partners of each couple leads to their inevitable rupture but the tantalising expectation of a cross- affair between Rishi and Rhea never materializes beyond some chaste exchanges, while we are allowed to witness the one and only sexual encounter in a hotel room that is the denouement of the movie (a la Madame Bovary), albeit rather suggestively than in sequenced detail, as the fulfilment of their illicit desire by Dev and Maya. There are all kinds of peripheral goings on and other loose ends all of which have to be tied up somehow, which is done either hurriedly or half-heartedly - hallmarks of a long story that is short on direction!

But despite some of these flaws, there is a kind of symmetry in the finale: relationships do fall into place, the characters do get their just deserts, and above all the message is conveyed: that just as Indian diasporans are coming to terms with modernity in the West where they have settled, so Indians back at home (the `desi` types) who hitherto have largely been the voyeurs of alien occidental lifestyles too are becoming more adept at adapting and handling them in the context of their own rising middle-class aspirations and affluence - that is already evident from the daily soap opera features of domestic Indian tv screens. All said and done, the movie is an experience not to be missed.
 
Ramnik Shah
(c) 2013
Surrey England

INDIA BLOG ARCHIVES (10) - December 2010


To get the full flavour of my India Blogs, start at no. (1) below and work your way up to (9).
My last blog however was posted on 11 December 2010 under An Indian Odyssey - 2010


Ramnik Shah
(c) 2013
Surrey England

Tuesday 9 April 2013

INDIA BLOG ARCHIVES (9) - 23 Feb 2008


This was posted by me on a/o as Msg# 25955 on 23 Feb 2008 as `Another Indian Odyssey - Pt 2` :

Pt 2: Khajuraho and beyond

From Varanasi then we again took a short flight, this time by Kingfisher Airlines (another growing independent airline, owned by the same conglomerate that produces the famous brand of beer) to Khajuraho. One can `do` Khajuraho in a single day with an overnight stay, but we stayed two nights there, partly to relax after the gruelling few days before. And what can one say about Khajuraho that you may not have read or heard about or experienced yourselves? Yes, the extant temples with their famous erotic carvings are there for all to see, but much would depend on one`s own state of mind, knowledge and the way one is guided through the complex. Our guide was not particularly inspiring and so we had to delve into our own imagination!

And since Khajuraho has been mentioned in a couple of different contexts by others, let me say at once that the infinite variety of positions and possibilities depicted in the carvings, all very visible, is so striking that it far surpasses what Clinton did (or what the CIA failed to do to Castro) with their legendary cigar!. I am inhibited by a sense of decorum from posting pictures of some close-ups of such scenes, but am sure most people on this forum are familiar with them. Since the site was discovered and perfected for public viewing, millions of people must have passed through it, and yet it has retained an aura of freshness and anticipation. We could amble along from one temple to another at a fairly relaxed pace, in perfect weather. Some wanted a closer look around and went up the long steps into one or more of the them; others were happy simply to imbibe the atmosphere and gape at the sculptures on the exterior walls of the temples. While their sensual nature is self-evident, it is mixed with a sense of the sublime as well; that is the essence of creation.

Inevitably, we also thought of our visit to the Ajanta and Ellora caves in 2005. There too is concrete and living evidence of elaborate architecture and carvings, of sensuous paintings and murals on the walls of temples and monastries (Buddhist and Jain) set in caves which were actually man-made, hollowed out of solid rock. Khajuraho however confirms that Hindu mythology has a solid foundation as far as depiction of the sexual mores of the people of that period is concerned - and of course we must not forget the Kama-Sutra, which too has been mentioned in passing on this forum lately!

From Khajuraho to Orcha, some 170 km away - another historical city, a creation of a Rajput dynasty that had ruled the middle kingdom (Madhya Pradesh) during the 16th century. `Orchha` literally means `hidden`, and it is indeed a hidden archeological treasure, in the form of a huge fort complex comprising a number of palaces and temples, combining the best of Rajasthani, Jain and Mughal traditions. There is a pervasive air of tranquility and romance that we could all but breathe from the terrace of our hotel situated right on the bank of the local river on a curve. So again, we were able to relax here before another spell of hectic sight-seeing that awaited us in during the final stage of our tour.

We drove to Jhansi, of the 1857 fame, and from there took the Shatabdi Express to Agra. These express trains are famous for their comfort and hospitality and so we found. In the air-conditioned seater class, we were served fresh tea and snacks in grand style (on journeys of 4 hours or more, full-scale meals are provided). For many Agra was the highlight, and they, we, were not disappointed. There can be no doubt: the Taj Mahal is the eternal monument. It looked more magnificent than ever; it simply shone! This was our third or fourth sighing, and it has certainly never looked better; moreover it is in the process of being cleaned up even more. One cannot but marvel at its creation, its design, its engineering and architectural perfection. Indian tourist authorities have made great strides in preserving and presenting all this Mughal heritage of the country, in terms of access and surroundings. Our lingering impressions, carried over from previous visits, of a crumbling framework are a thing of the past.
I also visited Agra Fort and Akber`s Tomb and was amazed to re-discover how massive and solid they are. There is something to be said for revisiting places after so many years. The memories one may have of them are often compressed into a few selective snap-shots, focusing on only the most obvious features, and of course as the years go by these become even more entrenched. And so coming upon them afresh opens up new vistas. More importantly, we also would have matured, acquired greater knowledge and developed other, perhaps sharper and more nuanced, faculties of appreciation. And so reappraising the past and new bits of the present becomes an adventure and a learning process in itself. That was my, our, experience - and so it didn`t matter that we had been to some of these places. That was true also of Jaipur (though we gave the standard tours of the fort, the museum, the elephant ride etc a miss and instead took a day off to be by ourselves) and of New Delhi, where again the huge scale of Lutyens` creation and of mystic of his British neo-classical archiecture combining elements of the Indian Buddhist, Mughal and Hindu influences comes as a surprise when you go around along its wide avenues to look at Rashtrapati Bhavan, India Gate etc. I spotted just one cow in the midst of the otherwise fairly pollution-free traffic on that Sunday (the old foul emitting scooter-rickshaws have been replaced by modern ones).

To sum up then, I am truly encouraged by all that we saw. The cliche about India booming cannot be over-stated. The creativity and the huge potential of its people are there for all to see. The big cities, Delhi, Jaipur, Agra, are developing fast - buildings, roads, shopping malls, residential complexes, public spaces etc. There is a huge expansion of the infrastructure of rail, road and air communications, as well as of course on the technological front. The 1400 km Jaipur to Mumbai highway is an engineering feat, comprising 6 lanes plus service areas and accessories. The Jaipur-Delhi route is also being improved. On such visits, it is difficult not to draw comparisons with East Africa and to wonder why for example it never occurred to the Kenyans in 40+ years of independence to upgrade the one miserable narrow guage railway line from the coast to Kisumu into at least a double-track, or to similarly to modernize its road network (considering that during the recent troubles we were all reminded of the fact that the port of Mombasa serves a huge hinterland and that most of the goods traffic bound for the neighbouring countries has to travel along a single carriage trunk road from Mombasa upwards over such long distances)!

Even during our visit in the winter of 2004/5 it was apparent, and I had noted, that abject poverty had disappeared. That is definitely so. You do not see many beggars or people with little or nothing by way of clothing. Starvation is clearly a thing of the past. Yes, of course, there are street vendors at every tourist spot, but they don`t hustle you much, and in the same way the stall holders and shop keepers let you be after an initial approach or invitation. So things are changing. This is reflected in the tv programmes also of course. And then, the tourist industry as a whole has become better organized, very professional and most impressive. Wherever we went, there were many visitors, in small and large groups, of visitors from Japan, Korea, Thailand and from Europe and a few from America as well, and so many Indian tour guides speaking Japanese, Korean, German, French etc. Even the old `sing song` English of the Indians has given way to a more neutral form!

That said, of course there are all sorts of social problems and historic imbalances that remain, but these are apparently being addressed at many different levels. As most Indians will point out, India is a country of 1 billion people, and contains a vast mix of ethncities and regional variations. But something has happened - they appear to have crossed a threshold, into a national consciousness of optimism and expectation that is infecting the whole body politic.

RAMNIK SHAH
Surrey, England

INDIA BLOG ARCHIVES (8) - 17 Feb 2008


This was posted by me on a/o as Msg# 25835 on 17 Feb 2008 as `Another Indian Odyssey - Pt 1`:

And so we have done yet another Indian trip (our sixth ever, over a forty year span), this time to places that we hadn`t been to before and some that we had. In a little over a fortnight, then we took three internal flights (taking India and Nepal together), one train journey and covered the rest of the large distances by road, all in the north. Throughout it remained cold, and we had to have several layers of clothing on a daily basis, to be discarded as the day wore on. After an initial couple of days in Delhi, we flew by Jet Airlines to Kathmandu. Nepal had been on our itinerary when we first visited India in the winter of 1968-69, at a time when it was rapidly becoming a favourite destination for hippies and other Westerners, but we had to abandon that plan, simply because there was so much else to see. So it had always remained in our sights as a place to visit some day; but now forty years on we found that it has, alas, lost its charm. The mystic of `Video Night in Kathmandu` (by Pico Iyer) is missing; it is rather a crowded, tumbled down mix of unappealing streets, dilapidated buildings and traffic jams. We stayed at the `Grand Hotel`, an oasis of faded grandeur in the midst of narrow back-lanes. The absence of aesthetic sights gave the city a grim air. Everything was grey and dull and there were hardly any modern buildings with attractive frontages. It all smacks of poverty and decay; even the Durbar Square and the Royal Palace lacked glamour. But the people of course are friendly and hospitable. It was also noticeable how small in stature, though presumably quite sturdy, they are. They are also conscious of how much they have been left behind in terms of development; this is very much at the root of the anti-royalist fervour that has characterized their all but in name toppling of the monarchy. We were left in no doubt about this by our very good local guide; he was passionate about `people power` and the need to remove the sycophantic elite that surrounds the King and how ordinary people are looking up to India and China, their immediate big neighbours. While Kathmandu itself then was a disappointment, our trips out into the countryside, to Bhadgaon - the timeless and almost medieval (9th century) Newar city and Dhulikhel from where we were able to see the Himalayas at close quarters - provided a different and more gentle and picturesque perspective of the country, its geography and its people. We also visited the nearby city of Patan, with its long Buddhist history and stunning display of Newari architecture. But walking through its narrow back streets was a reminder of the general backwardness of the country. Of course Nepal is still a haven for tourists who wish to climb the Everest and engage in trekking and other mountaineering activities; so it is not exactly a bankrupt state, but the people there are now hungry for development. We of course stood out among our party of 16, all the rest being white English, and were often asked if we were Indian - Indians in Nepal are a favoured people, and India is admired and respected as a powerful and advanced neighbour, and so Indians are welcomed with friendliness as valued tourists or visitors - after all they have a lot in common in cultural, religious and linguistic terms. This reminded us of what we had found in Thailand, Cambodia, Bali etc in our earlier travels there. We decided not to take the early morning special one hour flight over the Himalayas (at a cost of £80 per person) as we had had a splendid view of the terrain, including the Everest, while our plane from Delhi did a few rounds before being cleared to land in clear weather.

We then took an Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu to Varanasi. The view from the air on approach to landing was a surprise: it was green pastures, rich farmland and a fairly developed countryside generally - contrary to what I had always imagined the place to be! And the journey from the airport merely confimed this. Although according to our guide, UP is not a rich state, this part of it certainly appeared to be. I was all mentally prepared for two uncomfortable days of ugliness and revulsion. Retreating into our hotel, the Ramada Plaza, after rigorous rounds of sightseeing was thus always a relief, but the squalor in the innards of the bustling complex that one has to traverse in order to get down to the `ghats` on the sacred river was somehow tempered by an extraordinary sense of calm acceptance that seemed to pervade the atmosphere. We trampled down those streets in the early hours, to catch the morning sequence of rituals as dawn was breaking. At that time, there were hardly any crowds and hustlers, so it was an easy passage. We watched the people as they prayed and performed their ablutions, and some who did their puja and yoga, and other forms of exercise (`danda`) etc. That there was an aura of sanctity was not in doubt. We sailed up and down the river in a boat, to look at the famous skyline of Hindu temples, `gopura` towers, Muslim minarets and Mughal domes.

Although being an agnostic and a sceptic, I personally was not moved by any of these, I have no problem with people of (any) faith who wish to practise their beliefs in this or any other way - so I was a mere curious spectator, as I think most of our group were. This our morning tour finished with a walk through the back streets, `reminiscent of those very narrow `gullies` of the Mombasa and Zanzibar old towns, where we had to take care to avoid stepping onto human and animal excrement and to contend with all manner of street vendors and shop sellers who by then had begun to ply their trades.

We also took another tour of the same parts in the evening, when the going was much tougher and the place was teeming with thousands of people and there was much more excitement, hustle and bustle around. We saw live cremation ceremonies taking place, with dead bodies being immersed in water as the first step to being put on the funeral pyre and burnt, several of them lined up, each awaiting its turn, all of this being conducted with a practised degree of professionalism and a commensurate lack of sentimentality (so it appeared to us from our boat off shore). We also saw the `aarti` ceremony being performed on the ghats - an impressive blend of dedication and automotive worship. Again, walking up back towards our transport through the crowds of people who thronged the narrow streets was an exciting exercise in itself, but we managed it somehow. And what about the much discussed polluted nature of the Ganges? We were advised that scientific surveys have proved that its water is bacteria free, with an 0.05% sulphur content, and indeed a sample scooped from the river by my wife revealed its purity!

So what of the Varanasi experience? That the place is steeped in religiosity and ritual is not in doubt; but that is not the same as a haven of spirituality, which to me represents something different. Others may of course see it differently. That said, I have no problem with those millions of Hindus who from a deep-seated sense of faith and belief feel impelled to make a pilgrimage to Varanasi - much as I respect people of other persuasions for whom, say, Mecca, Bethleheim, Jerusalem, Rome, Bodhigaya etc have an equal significance as sacred places which they too must visit at some time for personal purification, confirmation, blessing or salvation!

In the morning we had driven through the huge and magnificent campus of the famous Benares Hindu University. Our guide - an excellent man with complete mastery of his subject whose command of English and communication skill were truly impressive, had studied there, as had his wife who was a practising lawyer in the city - was able to give us a first-hand account of what the university had to offer, its antecedents and vast complex. In the afternoon, we did a tour of Sarnath, a few miles out of Varanasi. This is a Buddhist sanctuary, where Buddha gave his famous Deer Park sermon, reputed to be the beginning or the foundation of the religion, to five disciples around 530 BC. It has now become part of the tourist circuit for visitors from the Buddhist countries in South and South East Asia - and we saw many groups of them. Again, it is a beautiful site: we saw both the Chaukhaudi Stupa and the Dhamekh Stupa, and Asoka`s Pillar. Its peaceful and expansive environs provide an ideal spot for quiet reflection and family visits. Its extant historical structures of the towers and sculptures have remained in remarkable good condition, which gives them a sense of continuity and connection.

Next to Khajuraho and beyond!

RAMNIK SHAH
Surrey, England

INDIA BLOG ARCHIVES (7) - 24 Apr 2007


This was posted by me on a/o as Msg# 19568 on 24 April 2007 as `A Himalayan Odyssey - 3`:

And so on Day 7 of our trip, we drive into Sikkim, the home of `Kanchanjunga`. From Darjeeling to Gangtok, its capital, is just 140 kilometres, but of course as all over India, it took us a whole morning to cover the distance, because of narrow, winding roads, with hairpin bends, through however some of the most spectacular mountainous countryside anywhere. We crossed into Sikkim from W Bengal at Rangpo, just 12 km from Darjeeling. Although Sikkim is a fully fledged state of the Indian Union (having become so by a popular vote of the people in 1975, until when it was a protectorate dating back to the British raj) travel into it is restricted for foreigners who need a special permit. Our tour company had already obtained it for us months in advance, but even so our passports had to be presented to the officials at the post; this was done by our guide while we had coffee and wandered around in the pleasant surroundings of the post. Later I saw that our passports had been stamped both with an entry and an exit stamp, alongside our main Indian visa endorsements. And the rationale for this special procedure? Sikkim lies in the sensitive frontier region of India and China and part of it was captured by the Chinese during the 1962 Sino-Indian war. It was only fairly recently that the Chinese recognized India`s sovereignty over Sikkim and now that the Nathula pass has re-opened, it is expected that the travel restrictions will be eased as the security situation improves. Even so Indian bureaucracy scrupulously observes the rules. When 4-5 days later we were leaving Sikkim, at another point, Rhenock, we saw a lone German backpacker being turned away for lack of proper documentation, for which he then had to find a bus or lift to Rangpo!

If the northern part of W Bengal, where Darjeeling and the tea growing districts are situated, is different from the plains of India, then Sikkim is truly Himalayan, in its splendour, its people, its geophysical features - fauna and flora - and its higher living standards and state of development. Because of the strategic importance of the region, the central government of India has been pretty generous in allocating federal funds and services to win over the hearts and minds of the people (a pity they didn`t do it in Kashmir!), and all the evidence suggests that this has been done successfully. Sikkim is being connected to the national highway network, though the difficult terrain makes road-building difficult. But Sikkim is almost underpopulated - relative to its size - while a plentiful rainfall and a fertile soil ensure that it is rich in agriculture, forestation etc. The people are definitely well off here. The landscape is strewn with Swiss-like chalets, bungalows, houses, meadows, streams, hamlets, farm yards and an unending and undulating series of hills and valleys. There is greenery everywhere, and no stray cows!

Driving through these parts, the most uplifiting experience is that of seeing scores of school children (girls in smart western skirts, blouses and cardigans and boys similarly attired in shorts or trousers, jackets and ties) going to or from school or waiting for transport along the main road - as we saw other generally well turned out local people do, much as they would in the English or European countryside. True, in Darjeeling and around, as in most Indian hill stations where there are boarding schools, the sight of smartly turned out boys and girls is common; what we were seeing here were ordinary (ie. state) school children. They were well behaved, curious and friend, and above all respectful. Older siblings held the hands of younger ones, but there were some very young ones, aged maybe around 4 or 5, who were going about in groups unescorted, but completely safe in a clearly protective environment for them. All these children reflected a complete range of ethnic groupings of the population: the Bhutia, the Lepcha and the Nepali - delicate, light-skinned with Mongolian features and their compatriots from `the plains`, ranging from fair to darker brown complexions - and seemed to be oblivious of these differences and completely at ease with each other - and in this respect they mirrored the adult society around them, for during the whole of our trip everywhere, what we saw was complete harmony, with not a hint of communal / ethnic tension of any sort.

Sikkim then is a land of beauty and plenty, of monasteries and meadows (of flowers, cacti and other vegetation in a rich variety of colours), of waterfalls and white water rafting and hot springs, and above all, of panoramic views all over. We stayed mostly in the southern parts, but further up in the north, there are trekking and wildlife opportunities. The people, though generally slim and small in stature, were clearly used to outdoor and physical styles of living, and so tended to be quite agile and sturdy. Sikkim however is very small in size and that perhaps explains its uniqueness in these respects - it is barely some 68 miles from the north to the south and 40 miles from east to the west.

Gangtok is really like a small provincial capital, with a population of only about 50,000. It is a hill town (same elevation as Nairobi, 5500 feet above sea level) where, believe it or not, there are proper pedestrian payements running all alongside divider railings, and so people are used to not walking all over the place, with point duty police who dutifully enforce the rules for motorized traffic. In fact, the main shopping street, the Mahatma Gandhi Marg, is cleared of vehicular traffic and pedestrianised from 5 to 9 pm. Our hotel, the Nor-Khill (`the house of jewels`), overlooks a sizeable stadium and was built as a royal guest house, with the usual amenities, where visiting heads of state, ambassadors and the Dalai Lama have stayed and on whose grounds there is, inevitably, a `Kanchan Garden` where the King of Bhutan used to sit to paint views of the eponymous mountain! One of the highlights of our stay in Gangtok were a visit to the famous Rumtek Monastery, the seat of the head of the Kagyupa order of Tibetan Buddhism. It is situated high up on a cliff and foreigners have to register to enter its grounds - for outdated security reasons - though again for us this was taken care of by our guide. It is of course a live-in institution and we saw young monks in red robes at prayer and out and about.

We also visited the Sikkim Flower Show a permanent exhibition of rare and exotic varieties of orchids, set under cover in tranquil surroundings. More even than in Darjeeling, here it was wet and somewhat cool, and we were caught up in a downpour of rain as we went about the town. As in Darjeeling, so here, the Himalayas, the Kanchanjunga range in particular, remained a distant presence throughout. Our next stop in Sikkim was Pelling, from where we were to have a closer and clearer view of the peaks.

RAMNIK SHAH
Surrey, England

INDIA BLOG ARCHIVES (6) - 21 Apr 2007



This was posted by me on a/o as Msg# 19538 on 21 April 2007 as `A Himalayan Odyssey - 2`:

The very name Darjeeling has always had a romantic feel about it, maybe one unconsciously thinks of `darling`! However, for me the magic of the place resonated back to my teenage years, when I first read about it, possibly in geography lessons and in Indian literature. So it was in many ways a dream come true after 50 years or more to finally get there, but to do that we had to first take an hour`s internal flight from Kolkata to Bagdogra in north west Bengal.

Two of our group of 11 and the Tour Manager could not get on to the flight because of a cock-up over the booking but the two redoubtable single English women were determined not to miss the rest of the pre-planned programme and so the three of them made an arduous journey by road overnight from Kolkata to meet us for breakfast at our hotel the next morning!

At Bagdogra then we were met by our local guide with a coach (+driver and assistant) which was to be our means of transport for the rest of the trip in W Bengal and Sikkim. The guide, Kiran Rai, an Indian of Gorkha descent (they no longer use the term `Nepalese` to describe the majority people of this region who are of course originally from Nepal; to call them `Nepalese` would confuse nationality with ethnicity and as Indians have now become proudly conscious of a national identity as Indians) turned out to be a smart, articulate, informed, educated, likeable and competent young man of just 31 with a very good command of English. He remained most professional and presentable throughout. From Bagdogra to Darjeeling is only about 95 kilometres, but the narrow, uphill, winding road over varying gradients makes it a slow journey - something that applied all through the rest of the trip. After about half an hour on the road, the landscape began to change as we left the `plains` and to ascend the highlands, and so began a whole long series of spectacular scenery - lush vegetation, distant hills, rich tea plantations, magnificent valleys, streams and an overwhelming feel of nature at its gentlest, most fertile and yielding. In the distant background lay the Himalayas - and from this point on they were a constant presence.

We stayed at the Mayfair Hill Resort Hotel, opposite the Governor`s House on the Mall. The hotel used to be the summer palace of the Maharaja of Nazargung and needless to say we had splendid views of the surrounding countryside all round. We spent 3 nights there. The next day`s highlight was a 45 minute ride on the famous `Toy Train` to Ghoom, the world`s third highest station on the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, which is one of only three railways on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. Am sending a picture of us with the train in the background to Dinesh for posting on the LIst if that is possible.

We also visited Ghoom Gompa, a Buddhist monastery (the first of many during the trip). The following day, we did the early morning excursion to Tiger Hill - which meant getting up early enough to leave the hotel at 5.30 am! Tiger Hill is about 11 kilometres from Darjeeling, but again with all other tourist groups making the epic journey, the road (like all roads, narrow, winding, uphill etc) was already alive with a string of 4x4 vehicles and with many groups of domestic Indian visitors doing the hike on foot, trying to get up to the summit of the Hill (some 2600 metres high) where there is a high observation tower (for the likes of us, privileged ones, who were served hot drinks, while most of the locals gathered around at ground level in the open) to await the promised magnificent views Kanchanjunga and the other peaks of the Eastern Himalayas at sunrise - and we were not disappointed! (We were lucky, for other tourists had spent 3 days when cloud and rain had prevented this). So that was our first sight of my wife`s `namesake` (which film incidentally we had seen only two days before leaving London) and she was of course thrilled, as that had been her lifelong ambition too. The atmosphere around the place was electric, with throngs of people mingling with each other and feeling kind of spiritually upbeat for having made the effort in the chilly mist of the early morning. After a much enjoyable warming breakfast back at the hotel, we continued with a second day of our sightseeing of Darjeeling, visiting the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute and the Everest Museum, and later visited a tea estate, which meant descending some 2000 metres down to the bottom of the valley, where among other things we saw the picking of the `first flush` tea leaves - the first in the season.

The general feel of the town of Darjeeling was of course that of a typical Indian hill station, and we walked up and down its narrow, charming streets and shopped and absorbed the atmosphere like all other tourists. On the third morning, we had once again to be on the move, this time across the (internal) state border into Sikkim and that too meant an early start.

RAMNIK SHAH
Surrey, England