A lazy spring sunday

Soon it will be two years since Atam came to Bologna. She has finally found the job she likes. They have also bought their first car, about a month ago. It is a pale yellow Ypsilon. And days pass so quickly. I was thinking all this yesterday morning. We should celebrate, I proposed. May be we can go to eat out in a place I have found, Marco said, they make unbelievably huge pizzas.

While taking out Brando for his morning walk I discovered that our social centre was holding a cyclist meet. They do it by turns. A group of cyclists, mostly men in their seventies, hosting the meeting organise groups of volunteers offering drinks, cakes and other refreshments. Other groups of cyclists from near and far converge, enjoy refreshments and then all go out the explore the surrounding areas. Yesterday it was our local cyclists who were playing hosts and people came from as far as 150 km, around 1800 persons in all. Making cakes and refreshments for all of them must have been a huge affair, but I didn't hear anyone complaining.

Each group of cyclists wearing their group colours and logos looked great. One fellow who came to rest near me, told me that he had a hip transplant last year and this was his first cycle trip after the surgery. I think that it is wonderful way to keep friends and spend time together.

Back from the walk I cooked some afghani chole and then made "panch phoren aloo". I discovered the receipe on a food blog. Panch phoren is a mix of five spices used commonly in Bengal. I love some of these food blogs, they are really good at explaining recipes. Both chole and aloo turned out to be quite good. Then it was time to relax and watch "U, Me aur Hum", the first film of Ajay Devgan as a director.

I think that Devgan can be great director of serious films. His handling of serious scenes is good and some of the scenes are like tear-gas, with a wonderful Kajol. I didn't like the first half and though I like the song "maine to maanga tha.." and Kajol in it, I think that it was placed very badly in the film. Their young son has just risked dying and Devgan has probably come back from hospital, to see Kajol dancing in that scene was kind of cruel.

The afternoon was our picnic time. We went to the park for a family walk. There the group of elderly persons had organised their food festival, so we couldn't stop ourselves from eating some nice greasy local piadina-bread with ham, salami, etc. The park is so lovely with all kind of flowers, so I took lot of pictures.

As we came back home, we are both tired and full. The idea of going out to eat Pizza was no longer apealing. May be another day, we consoled Marco. I am reading a book by Alexander McCall Smith about a scottish philosopher. Going back to sofa and reading the book was a perfect way to end the beautiful sunday.

Age and desirability

I was with a friend and we were talking about the most beautiful Italians. I told him about a blog post I had written some time ago about my favourite Italian sex symbols and that I had put Alba Parietti and Sabrina Ferrilli in my top list.

"What?" he said horrified, "but they are old!!!"

"OK, I also had Monica Bellucci in that list", I added.

"She is also too old for this kind of thing now. You have to look for some one younger!" He insisted.

"There are really hot east European babes", the bar man added helpfully, providing details about the contortions they can do in some porn videos.

"They are not women, they are just meat. And anyway they are not Italian and we exclude porn stars from this classification", my friend clarified.

So there I was trying all kinds of combinations on Google to find out the top young models that Italians love today. Unsurprisingly, there is no unanimity.

Actually quite a lot of them seem to root for Martina Colombari, born in 1975, she was Miss Italy in 1991 and is still considered as one of the best models here. In 2006, in a pool on the best Miss Italy of all times, she was number one.

She does look great but I don't think that she is that young, like my friend was insisting.

Many others think that Carla Bruni is the best Italian top model of all times. Born in 1967 and now married to the French president Sarkozy, even Ms. Bruni is also not very young.

Two other names were mentioned on some websites - Marta Cecchetto and Federica Ridolfi. Ms. Ridolfi was in some recent list of top 100 most desirable women of the world compiled by Askmendotcom. Yet, born in 1974, Ms. Ridolfi is 34.

Marta Cecchetto, the other person often mentioned was born in 1978.

Finally a group of Italian journalists asked to identify the woman they would like to see nude on a calendar, gave the maximum votes to Ilaria d'Amico, a TV presenter but their choice had not so much to do with age, as with the fact that Ms. Ilaria refuses to have top less or nude pictures.

So in the end does it matter what year persons are born? Anyway, I feel that desiring a person has much more to do with the perceived personality of the person than just measurements of breasts or hips, etc. My wife keeps on saying that she finds Sean Connery, who must be seventy now, sexy. So there is hope for all of us, over the hill, but still somehow sexy and desirable, to the people who matter most to us! And I will stick with my Ferrilli and Parietti, thankyou.

***

Vote for Zappatero

It is election time in Italy. If I only could, I would vote for Zappatero. The way his government has gone towards reforms is stuff for day-dreams in other countries where frustrated voters are sick of their governments that can't decide on anything. Like the law on people living together rather than getting married, including the same-sex couples that Zappatero could get through. In Italy they started with Dicos, then tried Pacos and in the end, gave up the idea because the centre parties that have strong catholic public image, felt that it would discriminate against regular heterosexual families.

The way last Prodi government had been functioning was so frustrating with its thin majority. Every member of the coalition with a handful of parliament seats threatened to quit if they didn't like something. Mastella with his 3-4 parliament seats and Dini with two seats, did it so often. Mastella finally brought the government down and it came out that he had received assurances from the opposition leader Berlusconi about getting a minister seat in the new government. It was disgusting and the public disapporval against Mastella is so strong that he has finally decided to "retire".

So you can understand my fondness for Zappatero. The only problem is that he is too handsome. I am a little distrustful of the handsome public leaders. Just think of what Blair did, turning into wagging tail of Bush. Or what Bill Levinsky Clinton did. Thus if Zappatero first was good, Zappatero bis may be too much. And then there is Nicholas Sarkozy, a post-modernist nightmare of a prime minister.

Anyway back to the Italian elections. Suddenly people seem distrustful of small parties and small leaders, each of whom gets a few seats and then tries to influence the government. At least I hope so, and that everyone would vote for a main party that can govern the country.

Where I live is a red area of Bologna. Actually the whole city of Bologna has the reputation of being red, in the sense that it has been a stronghold of left parties, for a long time with communitists and later on with centre-left coalitions. Now it is the new left, democratic party of Veltroni, that is the flavour of the season. Last year in October they held the primaries to choose their boss and this was a first in Italy, since usually parties choose their own leaders and don't ask people to vote and elect their leaders. More than 3 million persons voted for Veltroni. Since it is a red area, strong hold of left parties, all election posters of northern league, christian democrats and right parties are missing from the billboards. Probably enthusiastic supporters go out in the night to take down all such posters.

Still some of the posters are really funny. Like this one from northern league, that is the nationalist party of the north of Italy, that does not want emigrants. There poster has a red Indian on it.

"They didn't have rules to control emigration and now they are forced to live in reserves, think about it" it says. But they were all European emigrants, I wanted to tell the northern league leader, Africans, Asian emigrants, they didn't kill civlizations and put people in reserve areas! But I don't think that he wants to listen. The poster is both funny and communicating and in the end, that is what matters.

Sex is another theme of elections that continues to surprise me. Not the puritanical Clinton-Levinsky kind of sex, it is more open and ribald. Like the northern league famous for its "Lega c'è l'ha duro", meaning, "League has it hard" and is just going screw you.

Ms. Santanché, prime ministerial candidate of extreme right, snubbed by Berlusconi, reacted by saying "He wants me to give it to him but I am not, he can dream and die for it." Mr. Berlusconi himself, famous for putting his foot in his mouth every so often, has been trying to keep a check on himself this time. Last time he had announced that for the elections, for one month he was going to give up sex, implying that nearing seventy, he was still having it regularly and thus not too old to be a prime minister.

But it is the pornostars who catch attention every time during elections. Ilona Staller & Moana Pozzi, both pornostars were parliament members for the radical parties almost a decade ago. Both had scandalised for refusing to give up their wayward ways even after entering the parliament by continuing their work in hardcore porn, saying that it was their job and they had every rtight to go on with it. At least Moana was intelligent and able to speak articulately! Now we have Ms. Milly D'Abbraccio, another porn star standing for the socialist party. Her poster in Rome created some more scandal.

"Basta con queste facce da c...", the poster uses a common Italian proverb, "facce da culo" that means "ass-faces" and so in a poster showing her well rounded ass, Ms. D'Abbraccio says, "enough of ass faced" parliamentarians, vote for a more beautiful face. Embarrassed, the socialist leaders vain about their 114 year old history were stuttering their explanations about the poster.

Veltroni and Prodi were in Bologna the other day. Veltroni has choosen the slogan of Barack Obama, "Si può fare", it can be done. Initially all surveys showed the predictions that Berlusconi was ahead by ten points. Now Veltroni is going around saying that he is the new thing in Italian politics, he is running alone, no arrangements with any party and he has been elected by the people and he is young, only 54. Berlusconi is dismissive.

Personally I liked the speech of Anna Finocchiaro, wearing the red cross-checked coat in this picture, along with Prodi and Veltroni. She is simple and effective and to have a woman prime minister won't be bad. But she is not in the race for the prime minister. Bersani, the other minister of Prodi government who was there for the meeting is admired for the series of liberalisation measures he was able to push through in spite of the protests by the different unions.

And this time PD, democratic party is proposing industrials and professionals as candidates, not just union leaders and mechanics. So what will happen in the elections? We are all waiting to discover.

PS: Maybe Mayawati can ask for a ban on Zappatero? It means "shoe-maker" or a mochi.

Remembering

It is still a little cold but the sunlight is blinding. Little after the Ethruscan museum we turn towards the mountains. The road crosses over the Rhine (Reno) and then starts climbing up. These are not real mountains, they are only around 400 to 700 meters high, but winter must have been real tough here. In Bologna, the trees are already full of flowers while here the first leaves are just struggling to burst out of wintery skeletons of the trees. The new grass has that lovely shining green colour that looks velvety. When we read the top of the crossing between San Martino and Casaglia (pronounced Cazalia), the endless hills look wonderful and far away we get glimpses of the highway with cars rushing over it.

It is so beautiful. The first ruins of the church and the houses in San Martino, look like the antique Ethruscan ruins. They all seem to be white-washed, all clean and blindingly white. There are no signs of bombs that were thrown here, of machine guns that had killed so many, fires that blazed. Did they scream? Those old men and women and children? Did they ask for pity from the young Nazi soldiers?

Pietro, our neighbour told me about the tragedy in Marzabotto. Around end of September in 1944, German soldiers killed a total of 771 persons in the villages here. Perhaps they were angry and frustrated, they were losing the war and partisans from Marzabotto were hiding in the hills and attacking them regularly. They took out their anger on children, women and elderly, who were left at home. Among the dead were 315 women and 189 children below 12 years.

In Casaglia, they killed the priest Don Ubaldo Marchioni in the church below. Other persons hiding in the church were marched to the cemetry near by. The door of the church was blown out by a bomb. It seems difficult to belive all of it happened in this calm and beautiful place. The grass is bursting with tiny margerita flowers and air is thick with smell of flowers.

The cemetry is around 250 meters from the church. It is a small and simple place, with a few broken down tomb stones and some old pictures fixed to the wall. A board outside the cemetry says:

Hitler said, "We have to be cruel, we have to do with our conscience in peace, we have to destroy technically and scientifically." A survivor of the killings says,"29-30 September and 1 October 1944 were the worst days, even if some killings continued even after these days. Early in the morning I could see 54 houses burning. There was a group of them applying fire to the houses. We had all gathered in the square in front of the church. We were told that nazi and fascist soldiers were coming but their fight was with partisans and elderly, women and children could stay in the church. They broke open the door, we were all forced to come out and they beat many of us, laughing all the time. The priest was killed near the altar. We were led to the cemetry. Inside they started to fire at us. We were trying to hide behind the wooden crosses and the tombs. They were firing low so as to kill the children also. They also threw in some bombs." A total of 195 persons including 50 children were killed in the cemetry.

Afterwards we went to the sacrario in Marzabotto, where the bodies of 771 persons are buried. Pietro used to come here. His sister, sister-in-law and father are buried here. The day they were killed Pietro's 14 year old sister wanted to come away with them but Pietro had stopped her. Sister-in-law was pregnant, almost in the ninth month and could need help, he had said, you stay here, you are only a child, the soldiers won't do any thing to you. "I got her killed, she coould have been saved", he would say.

As we sat in sacrario to remember Pietro, my mind was wondering to remember all those persons I knew and who are dead. My friends, my maasi, my buas.

And, I was wondering about the killings in India, like the 1984 killings in Delhi, like 1992 killings in Bombay, like 2002 killings in Gujarat, like the on-going killings in Kashmir and in so many places. Most of the time in India, the killers from such massacres are never brought to jail, the persons killed are never acknowledged. At least Pietro had the satisfaction of history condemning those nazi soldiers, some of them were brought to trials. The memory of those dead is honoured and there bodies are buried in sacrario, this monument to those killed. In India, none of this happens. How do the families, the children, live with this knowledge, with this burden and pain?

In India, most of the times these bodies will be cremated. There is no place identified with the person who is no longer there. The person becomes invisible, and memories are only that, memories without places to bind them into. Does that has some thing to do with the way we remember our dead and we ask for justice for them?

Sex and Hypocrisy

Everything related to sex is a taboo in almost all societies. Even those societies which apparently seem broadminded and liberated. Thus the subject is often linked with hypocrisy. Especially for persons who act moralist and indignant about the loose morals, those who talk of family values, religions, etc.

Here are two news items from today's newspaper that illustrate this hypocrisy:

In Tehran (Iran), Mr. Reza Zarei, head of the police department for ensuring proper moral conduct in the national capital, was discovered in the company of 6 sex workers. Mr. Zerei had become famous for his harsh stand on what he called "immoral behaviour" and had got arrested hundreds of young persons with this accusation.

In New York (USA), Mr. Eliot Spitzer, the 48 year old Governor of the New York state has been forced to resign because he was using his office money on sex workers. His bill for the prostitutes amounted to 80 thousand US dollars.

In India, persons who moralise are a plenty. Just think of the one in Maharashtra government who had banned the women in dancing bars. When people are so vehement about moralising, I always feel that they have something to hide! So I hope experts of investigative journalism and sleuths should go after such persons to look in their cupboards if there are any hidden skeletons!

And to celebrate openness, have a look at the Italian version of the Naked News that started today. This internet and mobile phone based TV channel has news shows where the newsreaders (strictly women) slowly take off their clothes, while reading the news. Obviously the TV channel is available only for paying clients.

I guess learning or practicing Italian with this news channel could be great fun - it would help you in staying awake while studying and increasing your general knowldge. Only problem is too much anything is not so good and probably once you have seen it a few times, you will be plain bored.

***

The tragedy of being a sex symbol

I had gone to work on my bicycle. In the evening, when I finished, there was a slight drizzle and so I locked my bicycle and left it there and decided to take a bus. The bus starts nearby and thus when it reaches our bus stop, it is still relatively empty. I found an empty seat and parked myself there. On that seat somebody had left a folded newspaper.

Soon the bus reached the university area and young students filled the bus. I was going through the newspaper I had found my seat, when I suddenly heard a sharp intake of breath close to me. I looked at the newspaper and I understood the reason for the sudden silence around me. I think all the persons around me were looking at the full page ad on the newspaper.

It is an ad of the March issue of a men’s magazine called Max and the picture showed the cover of the magazine with a breath-taking nude young woman. The picture shows the face and the back of the woman clearly while her breast is seen in a silhouette. The girl is Eva Riccobono and is described as the new Italian top model, a new sex symbol.

As I got down from the bus, I took care to take that newspaper with me. Usually I prefer looking at more mature woman but in this picture, Ms. Riccobono does look wonderful.

While walking to home, I was thinking about the tragedy of Ms. Riccobono. When people proclaim you as a sex symbol, when you become famous for your beautiful body, I guess in your head a clock starts ticking like never before.

I think that all professions where your face, your body are the most important part of being you, the pressure must be terrible. The pressure to be thin, to be paranoid about every strand of hair out of place, every little pimple or wrinkle that appears, every bad angle that could show you less than perfect. How long it is going to last, you must be asking yourself.

And when people love you for your body, somehow it means that rest of you is not worth much. Initially you may love being the sex symbol, but soon you must be dreading it and hating it as much as you love it. Not that I was ever a sex symbol so that I can speak about the feelings of a sex symbol, but you only need to look around at all those beautiful people and how they all, sooner or later, try to show that they are not all body and beauty, that gives you an idea of how they feel.

So many of them become a recluse as their bodies start to age. Like Brigitte Bardot. There was a time, she was the epitome of sex symbols.

And then she hid, closed herself in baggy clothes, huge sunglasses and floppy hats, trying to become invisible. Finally she did find redemption in her love for animals and found the courage to come out and be herself. Look at her older pictures and you realise that she is still wonderfully beautiful, even if it is a different kind of beauty, more gentle and relaxed.

Some of them never find the courage to come out, like Greta Garbo, who lived her life behind closed doors and died in her solitude.

More closer to home we have our Rekha. Look at her pictures from twenty years ago and now, she still looks young and beautiful and yet in a way, a caricature of herself. Even as a grandmother in films like Krissh, she continues to be a young woman dressed as a granny.

Relax Rekha ji, we would still like you even if you let yourself go and relax a little bit. It is ok even if you are not perfect always, chill and enjoy. Yet, once you are prisoner of your image, I guess that it requires lot of courage to come out into open.

So don’t be jealous of these moments of glory of Eva Riccobono. She is sure to earn millions but she is also going to pay a heavy price for it. So best of luck Ms. Riccobono. Once the party is over, I hope you will have the courage to come out and be yourself.

***

Sex and the Gods

I had heard about the temples of Khujaraho and Konark, where eroticism is mixed with prayers, but I hadn't had an opportunity to visit them so far. So when Dr Mani proposed that we make an early morning trip to Konark temple, I was very happy.

The entrance and the first glimpse of the ruins of the sun temple built around 1250 AD under king Narsimha with a tinge of morning mist was breath-taking.

Pilgrims of all sizes and shapes, were every where reaching there in buses, perhaps stopping at Konark on their way to the more famous Jaggannath temple in Puri.

While the beautiful statues at the initial part of the Konark temple are innocous enough, the main temple building does not leave much doubts about its sexual component with huge erotic sculptures built high up from the ground, around what was the main entrance to the temple. Only if you look carefully you will see a number of smaller erotic sculptures around the big ones.

The sidewalls of the temple has smaller statues at eye level, organised in three panels. Most of the lower panels and middle panels do not have erotic sculptures and have more innocous gods, mythical animals and other figures. Erotic sculptures are mainly in the third level of panels. Dr Mani says that this was done in a way so that children coming to the temple will mainly see non erotic sculptures.

The sculptures are very explicit, depicting graphically the different ways of sexual enjoyment. There is oral sex including "69", there are old looking men and women, there are younger looking men and women, mostly couples but sometimes three figures (one man and two women) are also there together looking for orgasm. Thus almost whatever is described in Kamasutra, is expressed here visually in statues. The statues are very life like with expressions of joy and pleasure. At the same time, I think that the artists were asked to make sure that the sexual nature of the statues must be made very explicit and that can explain the unrealistically large penis in most of the statues, that are likely to give a sense of inadequacy to most of the faithful coming to the temple.

Konark is not just erotic art but is an incredibly beautiful structure. I really liked the three sun god statues, like this one below sitting on a horse.

The whole temple is made like a chariot with twelve wheels, symbolising the twelve months of the year, pulled by seven horses, representing perhaps the seven days of the week (? I am not sure if ancient Indian calendar had weeks). The wheels, the statues, the carvings, everything is exquisite.

Thinking about the sense of shame usually associated with anything to do with sex, I was wondering about the impact of these erotic statues on the common pilgrims and school students. However, my impression was that barring a few men, who did look towards these panels from a distance, most of the pilgrims kept their heads down and took only fleeting glimpses of the erotic sculptures.

Why did those thirteenth century persons make these erotic sculptures in their temples? Was it a period in history when human beings in India had been able to shed off the prude taboos about sex to take a more direct look at life, sex and pleasures? Indian poetry in shringar ras can indeed be very explicit. People worshipping Shiv and Parvati in the form of Shivlings, were they initially more reverential towards the sexual act? Was it something linked to the tantrik marg to realization of God? I don't know the answers to these questions.

While visiting Konark, I had wondered if the statues had also depicted gay or lesbian sex, in terms of understanding the public perception towards these aspects of sexuality in the thirteenth century. Though there was no time to look and analyse each statue (and to be honest, looking at erotic sculptures, after an initial sense of novelty, is a bit monotonous and boring), my conclusion had been that Konark statues are about heterosexual love.

***

Amira Hass, Arundhati Roy & M. J. Akbar

Yesterday M. J. Akbar was in Rome for the release of his new book in Italian "Fratelli di Sangue", or the Blood Brothers. This is how he started his speech:

India is the world’s latest quotation mark. Nepal has become a question mark, Sri Lanka an oversized exclamation mark; and Bangladesh is imprisoned between brackets, the space for leeway decreasing by the day. Pakistan is teetering towards a full stop. China has turned into yesterday’s paragraph: still impressive, but with the contradictions becoming evident through cracks separating sentences.

What a wonderful feeling to be an Indian at that moment in history when the world begins to applaud as India comes within reach of that long-promised tryst with destiny, and shifts imperceptibly towards the centre of the stage.

And last night, I was reading the article by Amira Hass on Arundhati Roy in the Italian magazine, Internazionale. And, I was thinking about the differences in their view points, between the India described by M. J. Akbar and that described by Arundhati Roy. They do not seem to be same countries.

Amira is an Isreali journalist, one who lives in Palestine and talks about the Palestinian human rights. I can imagine that she must be seeing and reporting on things and situations that can't be described as happy and optimistic. Yet, even she seems a little afraid of the sense of darkness and doom in Arundhati Roy's words. Or, may be, it is me, reading between the lines and imagining things that are not there. But it is true, reading Ms. Roy is not easy, especially when we are used to the shining and glowing descriptions of India as exemplified by the words of M. J. Akbar above. Reading Arundhati or listening to her speak, I often feel that she is a very negative person, looking only on negative side of things yet, I also understand that the unpleasant things she says do have grains of truth in them that we often refuse to acknowledge because they are so unpleasant.

Both Arundhati and Amira were in Ferrara (Italy) for a conference in early October. I had already written about Arundhati's speech in that occasion. She had mentioned about the evening spent with Amira and how much she had enjoyed it. Amira's article is about the discussions from that evening. Here are a few examples from Amira's speech (my translation from Italian):

"The cruelty, in some way, is hidden by discourses on Gandhi, about the country where everyone medidates and does yoga. Oh yes, everything is going well, we play cricket, we elect Miss world and Miss Booker prize, we even have dissent, what a beautiful happy family. Instead no. The country is passing through dark and cruel times and you know what I tell you? That if we close our eyes, they will become darker and even more cruel. India does not have scruples of killings." she comments. And makes her list, even if partial: "A million persons, the dalits, the untouchables, still work in direct contact with excretions and what is tragic is that they are willing to fight for their right to work with human excretions, because they don't know what other work they can do. Everyday dalits are lynched but no accusess the persons responsible for this. In all of India killings of Muslims continue. In the last years 137 thousand farmers have committed suicide. Only in Kashmir, 60 to 80 thousand persons ahve been killed ... In the middle of the country, Arundhati Roy continued, there is a proper civil war going on: "Now they have discovered those damned mines of Bauxite in the states of Orissa and Chhattisgarh, that is used
for making Aluminium and the multinationals are doing everything to exploit it. You have to see what they are doing, bringing down whole forests, removing hills, deviating rivers, devastating the earth and forcibly evicting the inhabitants..."

Is Arundhati exagerating or is Akbar talking about illusions? Probably the truth lies some where in between or a little on both sides. While we have many Akbars, persons who see India as progressing and developing, there are not many Arundhatis talking about what is happening to those who can't be heard. Even when there are persons like Arundhati, I guess that it is not so pleasant to listen to them. Like for me. I would rather listen to Akbar any day.

Even Arundhati does not have any illusions about the persons for whom she raises her voice. "If at the end of so many battles, we shall win, the persons whom we are defending, you will see, those same persons will the ones to hang us first on a tree. I am talking about Maoists and islamists of Kashmir: at times we take sides of persons, who do not have place for us in their imaginations."

Overdose of writers

It was wonderful to meet all the writers from India, to interact with them, to learn about them as persons and a little bit about their creative way of working, the differences among them, their individuality and their conflicts, their fears, their pet phrases. Yet, in the end, the feeling was like after a too big lunch with too many dishes.

Now I need to be quiet and calm for some time to digest all that I heard and saw. I spoke to almost all of them individually (except for Shashi Tharoor and Vikas Swarup). I had long chat with Bhagwan Dass Morwal right on the first day. With Uday Prakash, there was lot of interaction and somehow, I found myself contradicting him often, perhaps to provoke him! Gayathri Murthy was familiar right from the first moment, while Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal, initially thought that I won't like him but later, I changed my mind. Some morning conversations with Tarun Tejpal, Lavanya Shankaran, Anita Nair and Altaf Tyrewalla. I specially liked Altaf. It was also nice to sit with Sudhir Kakkar during a lunch.

One of the most interesting discussions we had was during a lunch break with an Iraqi journalist living in Italy, a Singaporean journalist of Indian origin married in Italy (a coincidence that she knew my sister in Delhi), Nirpal Singh, writer of Indian origin living in UK. The discussion about our mixed identities, our roots, our families, our feelings and the absurdities of our worlds, was both moving and challenging.

Apart from Indian writers, it was a wonderful opportunity to meet some of the well known writers from all over the world. I have loved reading books of Luis Sepulveda and Tahar Ben Jaloun and meeting them, listening to them was wonderful. Some others like Rosetta Loy, Peter Schneider, Bjorn Larsson, Alain Elkann, Gianni Riotta, Lorenzo Mondo, Francesca Sanvitale, I knew less well but after knowing them, I am going to read them too.

Only Federico Rampini, I missed. I was looking forward to listen to him and to get him sign a copy of his book for me but when he spoke, I was busy giving an interview. Afterwards, when I went out to look for him, he was busy in an interview.

Listening to Prof. Sanpietro and his wonderful wife, Myra as well as Prof. Alessandro Monti was equally rewarding. Interviews, speeches, long lunches, longer dinners, an evening at Rigoletto and meeting so many persons, you can understand my sense of indigestion.

I have recorded many of my discussions with the Indian writers, so perhjaps one day I will be finish transcribing all of them for you and also put them up for podcasting. In the mean time, you can take a look at some of the pictures I took during these days.

Meeting Indian Writers

About a month ago I was contacted by Grinzane Cavour foundation, an organisation based in northern Italian city of Turin that is also involved in promoting translation of literature from other languages into Italian and literary awards. They told me that for their next award ceremony they are planning a two day seminar on Indian literature and writers, and asked for my advice.

My suggestion was that keep a space for persons writing in Indian languages as well, whose works are almost unknown in Europe. Finally this suggestion was accepted and they have kept a small space on writings in Indian languages in which they have invited Uday Prakash, Bahgwan Dass Morwal and Gayathri Murthy. I am also invited to speak in this session.

The remaining authors from India or of Indian origin, are all those who write in English and these include Shashi Tharoor, M.J. Akbar, Tarun Tejpal, Sudhir Kakkar, Anita Nair, Lavanya Shanker, Altaf Tyrewala, Vikas Swarup & Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal.

Some of these authors, I have not read yet. Some others, I tried but did not like their way of writing. However, among the two new writers, I really liked Lavanya Shanker and Altaf Tyrewala.

This meeting is starting tomorrow. I am very curious to know these well known writers and listen to them. I also hope that I can get some interviews, record their speeches, etc. and then report on this blog.

Violence of Language

I had seen the Colombian writer, Efraim Medina Reyes in Ferrara, a couple of months ago. He had been in a round table with Arundhati Roy, Gofredo Fofi, Elif Shafaq and Laila Lalami. He might have been a good writer but he did not seem to be a very good speaker to me at that time. Or perhaps when he had spoken I was tired and distracted, I don’t know.

I had written about that meeting in this blog in October 2007.

What ever the reason, after the meeting from that particular session he was the only writer about whom I was unable to remember anything significant from his speech and that had made me feel a little guilty.

Yesterday I saw an article by him in an Italian magazine, Internazionale. “Il sesso forte”, the stronger sex. The article was apparently about the violence against women. I started reading it and just the first few lines made me sit up. Perhaps I had understood wrongly, I had thought and reread those lines. No, he had actually written what I had thought he had written. The article started thus:

Men kill each other for a variety of reasons. Most of all in their hunger for power and money. Yet, behind every war and aspiration for peace, there is always a soft and hairy cunt.

It was this last part of the phrase that had shaken me awake. Internazionale is an intellectual kind of magazine and though in Italian language people do tend to use equivalent words of fuck, prick and cunt much more liberally than in many other languages, this magazine is considered to be a little on the serious side for that. Thus if they have to use words like that they would use equivalents of making sex, penis and vagina, rather than their more popular counterparts.

I felt that the particular phrase in Medina’s article’s had been put in that particular way to shock the reader. As I read further, it was clear that the whole article was written to shock. It does not mince words and uses the words cunt, supercunt, gang bangs and rapes abundantly.

What is there to get shocked, you might well ask. Don’t we all use these words in other contexts? It was this undercurrent of violence that I felt in Medina’s words that disturbed me since apparently he is talking against violence in the world, about violence that especially targets women. Yet even while speaking against violence, he is expresses himself in very violent terms, I felt. For example, look at this part of his article (my translation from Italian):

We men can not imagine how terrible it can be for a woman to be forced to have sex. There are still some who think that when a woman refuses to share her cunt with them, actually she is just trying to provoke them. It must be clear that when a woman says no, it means no and you must forget it. I know it is not easy and it must have happened to everyone. But before letting yourself be obsessed by the cunt that has been negated to you, it is better to think of all others that are waiting for you with a smile.

So I had the feeling that he is writing something but his words are conveying exactly the opposite.

And then I was thinking about something else. In literature, in books and magazines, in our daily language, we are all becoming more open in the use of the swear words. In Italy we tend to use these words in way that they become ordinary words, they lose their taboo power. Parents use them in front of children and children use them in front of parents.

Even in some Indian books, magazines and films, it is the same thing. The written and depicted realities tend to reflect the real world in use of these words.

In a way I understand this need. Our bodies and sexuality in general has been too long hidden behind taboos, embarrassments and silences and it is good that those walls can be broken down and we can speak about these parts of our lives more openly. Yet I have a feeling, Medina’s use of the language is not the answer, that makes our body parts mere objects. Sex is not just a mechanics of penetrations and movements. Or does such language actually help us in breaking those barriers?

Coy Subhash Ghai

I was reading an article some where about the different remakes being planned in Bollywood, including a remake of Karz, with an original title called Karzzzz with our very own nasal popstar Himesh Reshmaiyya and that it was first proposed to Subhash Ghai, who refused saying that it will not be correct to remake a film like Karz!

And I was thinking, wasn't Karz "inspired" by "The Reincarnation of Peter Proud"?

A frosty magical morning

There is something magical about waking up and looking at the twinkling lights of a christmas tree. This year our tree has ice white and blue lights that are beautiful.

I looked out of the window and saw that all trees were covered with white frost.

Frost or no frost, if you have a dog you need to go out in the morning so that he can err... shit and piss. I know, the two words, don't rhyme well with christmas trees and magical ice white and blue lights, but then even on magical mornings, you can't forget the realities of life, can you?

So out we were, I and Brando, shivering together and walking amidst grass that looked like it had been altered with photoshop. In the part of the park where elderly persons have their handkerchief patches of "kitchen gardens", surviving lettuce, cabbages had been turned into ice-statues by some demon.

Someone had covered their tiny plants with plastic bottles to save them from the frost, they stood up like Milo's Venuses, their arms chopped off by the same demon.

In the end, it was indeed a magical morning.

Is Bhatinda the new Jhumaritalaiya?

Finally I saw JBJ, Jhoom Baraber Jhoom.

The reviews were so bad and I am not a real fan of any of its stars, so I was not very motivated to watch the film. However the music was wonderful and I kept on listening to the songs. Even after many more newer movies had come and gone, the music of JBJ continues to pulsate in my head even now.

Plus the negative reviews are actually a plus point, the more negative the reviews, the less expectations I have when I do watch some of those film. This is true up to a point. There are certain films with unbelievable storylines, that good or bad reviews, that I don’t want to watch any way. But for films like JBJ, I think that bad reviews are good since almost always I end up feeling that the film was not so terrible after all.

That is how I started watching it, ready to doze off while watching it. Yes, I hate to admit it but it seems to happen quite frequently recently, that I doze off while watching some films and my wife swears that I snore louder than the background music of some of these films. So I was there, feeling a little complacent and superior, about the depths the Bollywood film industry has fallen to, sprawled on the sofa in the living room.

Guess what, I never dozed off and on the whole I liked the film. I thought it was a little whacky but it was good fun. I loved Lara Dutta too, the first part of the film, like in the song "Ticket to Bollywood".

I even liked Amitabh Bhacchan, he looks kind of cute and he seems to be enjoying himself.

But I can understand the point of all the critics and aam junta, who didn’t like this film. It is a real nightmare, especially for those defending Bhartiya sanskriti and NRI dreams. The film bulldozes almost all the sacred cows dear to babies fed on mamma Yashraj films’ milk of Raichand families, Rahuls, Veer-Zaaras. Yes, I know I am mixing my Chopras, Johars and Barjatyas, but I am sure you get point I want to make.

Jhoom Barabar Jhoom is a subsversive film

The film has been packaged as usual YR Films’ dream merchants’ usual masala fare, but actually it is quite subversive and not very subtle about it.

Most of all, it does not respect Indian sensibilities. Probably it rankled the nuts of our Pakistani brothers as well. One of my femminist friends was telling me that there is nothing like an "attack on our culture" to bring Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis together. While taking care of their errant wives/daughters/sisters, they forget all their other differences. And, this film is an "attack on our culture", no doubts about it. Let me explain myself better.

AB’s baby (Abhishekh Bachchan) as Rikki Thakural, originally from Bhatinda and transplated in Queen’s Engliand, could be a bhaiyya living under madam Mayawati ji, even if occasionally his accent does get English. He is a crook, bumming off magazines and other things from honest shopkeepers (remember Amrish Puri, the stern father of DDLJ?). He could be Bunty who has run away from Allahabad and landed in UK. No sophistication, no house with the staircase fit for horse-riding, no chandeliers, no private helicopter, no loving mother waiting with aarti ki thali. The character must have been like ice cold showers to all those Bhatindawallas planning to sell off their lands to migrate to the land of milk and honey. I mean, how can you emigrate to the land of the plenty and continue to be a crook and bhaiyya? What kind of dreams are these?

And, BTW, is Bhatinda the new Jhumaritalaiya? Lot of the heroes and heroines these days are from Bhatinda. Remember JBM and the sikhni, Geet? I bet, it is a ploy to raise up the property prices in Bhatinda, but let me not digress.

Zinta baby’s Alvira Khan (Preity Zinta) is a Pakistani babe who must be the nightmare of all Indian and Pakistani parents, who are losing the desperate fights to keep their children uncorrupted by the decadent values of western culture (if you can call them values and culture!). All those NRIs don’t need to go to cinema to see those nightmares, they live them every day, so why should they watch a movie that revels in glorifying that nightmare? A good Muslim girl does not wear short minis and does not talk with strangers at the Railway station. Not even one burkha scene in the film! Terrible for our Asian culture!

And, the story of love between a Muslim girl and a Hindu boy, it is a serious business. It can be done like in Veer Zaara, but what kind of values are you promoting if you never raise the religion issue in the whole film? Are we trying to say that for love, religion is not important? Terrible, no sharm haya is left in today’s world!

Lara Dutta looks good enough to eat in the first half of the film, but in the second half, her character as the tart Laila is terrible. I mean, we can be understanding about these "fallen" women with loose morals but they must show a bit of remorse for their situation, and they must be willing to cover their heads and coyly ask for maafi, while chanting Hanuman chalisa. However, Laila does not feel any remorse, she uses dirty words, behaves like a slut and then takes a honest mummy-loving dear lad like Satvinder (Bobby Deol) and turns him in to one of those modern kinds who go out with their girl friends without worrying about Bharitiya Sanskriti or their moms.

The film was not given an “adults only” certificate and I am sure that it must have been an insidious but gravely deleterious effect on the morals of our corruptible youngsters. Rightfully it was refused by our intelligent public of NRIs and hopefull NRIs in India.

I hope YR films (and their brothers and sisters in Johar films, Bartajatya films, etc.) have learnt their lesson and are preparing the next episode of Raichand-Rahul saga with half-naked cold-proof heroine dressed in a Bhartiya sari dancing in the Swiss mountains, waiting to cover her head demurely with her sari and touch senior Raichand ji’s feet as his respectful bahu, while celebrating karva chauth. I bet that will be a huge hit.

I the mean time, I am still smiling after finishing towatch JBJ, but then I was already morally corrupted, so that is no big news that I like all these faltu films!

***

Films of Ferzan Ozpetek

Today I saw the new film of Ferzan Ozpetek. "Saturno contro". Means That "the saturn is in opposition". Like in the horoscopes. For a long time afterwards I was thinking about his films. I think that he is among the best Italian film directors today though I am not sure if his name or his films are known to English speakers? (In this picture Ferzan Ozpetek).

Ferzan was born in Istambul and came to Italy as a young student in late nineteen seventies. For fifteen years he worked as assistant to different directors including the wonderful Massimo Troisi. In 1997 he directed his first film, "Hammam, Bagno turco" (Hammam - the Turkish baths).

"Saturno Contro" that I saw today is his sixth film. I haven't seen all of them, I missed one of them, Harem Suaré that had come out in 1999.

Alternate sexuality is a common thread running through his films and sometimes, I have heard people dismiss him as the director of "gay films", but I feel that this would be reductive way to look at his work.

Alternate sexualities including gays, bisexuals, lesbians, transexuals, all find a place in his film world and are portrayed as real people, not as caricatures. Often he mixes the theme of alternate sexuality with other themes related to the marginalised persons such as the elderly and the urban poor.

Another common theme of his film is that of persons, especially women, who live lives cut off from their emotions and then something happens, that stimulates a radical transformation in the way they see the world and themselves.

Finally another common theme that I have noticed in his films is that of emotions linked to death, separation, loss and grief, and how we cope with these emotions, how they change us.

"Saturno Contro" starts with a group of friends. Most of them have crossed forty. David (Pierfrancesco Favino) is a writer who is gay, and his companion is Lorenzo (Luca Argentero). Their friends are Antonio (Stefano Accorsi), his wife Angelica (Margherita Buy), and Antonio's mistress Laura (Isabella Ferrari), a Turkish translator Neval (Serra Yilmaz) and her policeman husband Roberto (Filippo Timi), David's ex-boyfriend Sergio (Ennio Fantastichini), an astrolger and drug addict Roberta (Ambra Angiolini) and Paolo (Michelangelo Tommaso) a medical student and an aspiring writer, who wants to come close to David.

These friends meet regularly. Antonio and David are childhood friends but now it is Angelica who is closer to David and Lorenzo. Lorenzo discovers Antonio with his girl friend and does not what to do to protect Angelica, Antonio's wife, from this news. During a dinner at David's home, Antonio finds an excuse to go out to meet his girl friend. Then suddenly Lorenzo, who was not feeling too well loses consciousness, rushed to the hospital, he goes into coma. Suddenly their lives change and death enters the story.

Rest of the film is about Lorenzo's coma and then death in the hospital and how David and other friends react to it.

The film is an exploration of grief, when you suddenly lose the person you love and it seems that suddenly the world does not have any meaning. All the friends feel the grief of losing a friend but in their own way they all understand that the pain of David is strongest and yet do not know how to deal with it. It is a very moving film, slow and lingering over the details, of coming to terms with loss.

Le Fate Ignoranti (The ignorant angels) was another film of Ozpetek that came out in 2001 and became a popular and critical success. It was the story of an apparently happy and successful couple, Antonia and Massimo. Massimo suddenly dies in an accident and Antonia (Margherita Buy), a doctor is grief-stricken and shocked. Her whole life seems empty and meaningless.

One day among Massimo's office things Antonia finds a painting, behind it somebody has written, "From your angel". Suspicious that her husband had an affair, she tries to find out the person who had given that painting to Massimo. That is how she discovers that her husband had a relationship with a man, Michele (Stefano Accorsi) for the last seven years.

Initially shocked and repulsed she can't belive that her husband was betraying her to a man, but then she wants to understand and enters the world of Michele, a world where a group of gays, transexuals and lesbians live together as a community.

Michele says, "Don't be angry with me, you will be always his wife. Outside this house I could never be anything for Massimo. I loved him for seven years and yet I can't go and cry on his grave".

Antonia wants to understand that part of Massimo that she never even knew that existed. She feels attracted towards Michele but he is gay and not interested in her as a woman. Slowly Antonia understands that Michele is not the answer to her grief. Learning to cope with her grief, Antonia goes back to her own world.

In 2003, Ozpetek made La Finestra di Fronte (The window in front) about a woman Giovanna (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) with two children, living an unhappy life. Giovanna is attracted to a young man Lorenzo (Raoul Bova), who lives accross the street near her house. One day she finds an elderly man who has lost his memory. Giovanna and Lorenzo try to discover about the past and family of the man, discovering that he was put in a concentration camp by Nazis because he was gay and his grief for his companion, whom he could not save from death.

In 2005, Ozpetek made his most spiritual film, Cuore Sacro (Sacred heart). It was the story of Irene (Borbora Bobulova), a successful and ruthless entrepreneur, who seems unperturned by the suicide of her old friends because she has taken over their old company. Then while planning to take over an old family home, she discoveres the secret of her mother, who was apparently mentally ill and prisoner in that house. Her encounter with a thief young girl and the young girl's death bring her in contact with the reality of urban poor and her own guilt. Filled with remorse she gives up everything and in a gesture of penitence removes all her clothes in a metrostation.

If you have not seen any of Farzan's films, I hope that this brief discription of his works will make you curious to see his films. I like his gentle way of story telling and his film worlds very much.

***

Dams, development and the poor: Medha Patkar

Medha Patkar, the famous activist from India fighting for the rights of poor and voiceless persons, was in Bologna at a meeting organised by CGIL, the Italian workers union.

I agree with most of what she says regarding SEZs, the corruption that pervades most of our system in India, the lack of care about what happens to the poor and marginalised persons for most of well to do India, that is as self-centred like most well-to-do persons in the world. I also agree that the present dominating idea of development is result of a particular view point of developed world that has its roots in colonial past, industrialization and in a belief that nature is for man’s exploitation and thus for most persons the more things you have the better it would be. But I am not sure if poor, just because they are poor, would be happy with another idea of development, for example, the ideas of self-contained mutually dependent small communities with limited material needs envisioned by Gandhi and some other thinkers. Perhaps it is the globalisation or may be a sign of changing times, but I feel that all, rich and poor, often share the kind of dreams that are based on material wealth. Perhaps I am wrong!

Here are some points from Medha's speech in Bologna.

***

I come from the National Alliance of the People’s Movements in India and also from the struggles in the river valley of Narmada. These years and decades long struggles are still on and have been facing newer challenges because the whole paradigm to which the state and the corporates are committed to, is certainly bringing an onslaught on the population including the indigenous people, farmers, the working class people, artisans, the fish workers and almost 95 or more percent of the working classes.

But it is not only the case of a dam in one single river valley, apply it to various development projects. We realise it that people are bound to assert their right to the local resources which are taken away in the name of development. So sections of the civil society and of course the state, come out with certain symbols of development which fits in their paradigm like large dams or large factories. We question it, from the point of view of how the process of taking away the resources (works), and diverting of these resources from one kind of economy to another kind of economy. We raise this question.

We are also questioning the centralised-based development paradigm and planning process. When centres are in the capitals of the nation states, the communities, the rural as well as the urban communities questioned, “Who decides what is development”? And through what democratic or undemocratic procedures and processes do they impose these plans upon us? It was also bringing out the ultimate ways of managing the resources, beginning with their small units that are the communities, which are also the ecological units. So that there will be no displacement and eviction of people from their cultural, environmental milieu and also from there own kinds of life-styles and economies.

It was one story when this was within the boundaries of one nation state. With the whole paradigm of globalisation, corporatisation and privatisation, it has attained unprecedented scale and unprecedented force, including the use of physical force that the state maintained but also the various factories of the corporate powers which have infested the state itself. The nexus between the state and the corporate power, it wants every piece of land and they are eating our resources in the name of industrialisation, in the name of progress and development. It is not just the rivers, but also ground waters, reservoirs that are handed over to the companies such as Coca Cola, the mineral water bottling plants. The people living on the land with the water resources are waging battles, if not wars. In the name of industrialisation, in the present paradigm, the land is opened to all industries including like your Fiat company from Italy itself.

This has taken a new turn by the states announcing the policies and laws of Special Economic Zones (SEZs). These are officially known as “foreign territories” within Indian territory. These SEZs are large chunks of lands which are acquired partly by the state and partly purchased by the companies, who can purchase not just small farms but whole districts, areas as big as the regions (in Italy) including hills and valleys, because they have already earned so much profit. These zones are the ones which give all concessions and not less than 21 laws for the corporates. They are cutting on the labour legislations which were earned through decade long struggles by the labourers and workers.

I belong since birth to the family of a labour union leader, who was freedom fighter as well and hence I know how hard earned are those labour legislation and yet with the rush of a pen, the legislations are declared “not applicable” to the corporates, that are allowed to operate not just with free trade but also with free operations. With special judges, with no local self-government, even those elected and recognised are not allowed to function in these zones, like the Panchayats. So with these kinds of zones coming up the corporates are not just confident, but are arrogant and aggressive in taking away the lands and every thing attached to the lands.

West Bengal is a left front ruled state for the last more than 30 years. We have always been allies of the left front parties. At the world social forum, at various for a where we raised our voice jointly against the neoliberal paradigm. If you want to have a look at the resolution passed by the parties, various partners and allies in the left front in India – Communist party of India Marxist, Communist Party of India CPI, the Revolutionary Socialist party, the Forward Block, if you look at these four parties, you will find that they unequivocally question the neoliberal paradigm. They question the World Bank, IMF, WTO, they support Cuba and Venezuela and the changes in the Latin American countries such as Brazil and they vow for the people’s rights and the non corporated state.

And yet in West Bengal problems are there, coming up in place to place. In Singur there was a forced acquisition of about thousand acres of land, 997 acres, for a project that was known as Tata’s small car project.

The industries minister of West Bengal told us, when we held the public hearing on the invitation that came from the people, myself along with Mahashweta devi, the well known literary person in India, others like former justice Sengupta and also the radical left wing intellectuals, we all held a public hearing and heard the people. The people had an unanimous voice in opposition to the project. People said that whatever needs to be done, has to be done. The corporates and before the corporates, the faith has to come to us, we are the communities, we have the power and democratic constitutional right and they should say what it is that they are wanting to have, why that project, what is that project going to bring to the nation and to themselves, how are they going to get a share, whether they are going to get it or not? But the Government absolutely said no, that they are not ready to disclose the information. So we as the members of the panel placed our demands to the industries minister and had dialogue with the chief minister also. We were shocked to get the answer such as, “Oh in the neoliberal economy, after all what can we do? We have to bargain with the companies, if at all. We have to accept the land which they choose, we can not choose the land to be given to the industries. If we don’t allow them to get the land which they want they would go away to some other state. Even for the rehabilitation, we have no policy as yet here. We will in the process try to talk to Tata so that we can have some package evolved..”. We were shocked to hear this from the left front leader.

As the struggle began, it has already faced some repression, some of the opposition political parties were involved, so the Government started saying that this is all political. When we came in as people’s movement, they could not say that because we are not for the typical political or electoral politics. We are in the people’s politics. But we don’t consider the parties as untouchables, but we feel that movements are political in themselves. When we as the farmers, fish workers, the displaced people, some of the unorganised sector workers, unions, some of the organised sector worker union, we all said raised the voice of support to people of Singur, they started directing the repression to us.
*****

You can read the full text of Medha's speech if you wish, on kalpana.it