Boundries of Forbidden Love

Recently I watched Onir's new film, "Sorry Bhai". It touches on a taboo theme and it made me uncomfortable in parts. This post is about this film, as well as, about our taboos.

 

Relationship Taboos 

Once I was chatting with an Italian friend. Somehow those discussions led to some talk about our first crushes. I suddenly remembered about the time in India when I had just started to go to university and how I had adored my cousin brother’s fiancee.

“I used to think that she was the most beautiful girl in the world and even now, after almost forty years, I still feel that she is very beautiful”, I had said.

Perhaps it was something in my voice or my expression. My friend had laughed and asked, “So you were in love with her! And did you ever get intimate with her or was it just loving her from a distance and fantasising about getting into bed with her?”

Suddenly I was very angry and offended at her question. I had not said anything to her, suddenly deciding that it was late and I had to go.

“How dare she insinuate that my adoration was not pure and that there was any element of lust in my feelings for Bhabhi”, I had thought after saying goodbye to my friend, “these Europeans they can’t have any pure relationships, they need to dirty everything, nothing is sacred for them.”

Taboos in Sorry Bahi by Onir

I remembered this episode when yesterday I saw “Sorry Bhai”, the new film by Onir.

There were some scenes in the film, especially the love making scene between Sharman Joshi and Chitrangada Singh in the changing room of a clothes shop, which really disturbed me and I was squirming on my chair, trying to not to look at the film during those scenes.

There are many shades of a devar-bhabhi relationship that can vary from playfulness, and naughty banter to respect due to a mother. All the Ramleelas seen as a child probably contributed to this idea of a "sacred" relationship, so the strongest image of a bhabhi for me is defined by Sita-Lakshman relationship as described in Tulsi’s Ramayan.

Apart from Ramayan, I think that a number of old Hindi films have also helped in defining these ideas of devar-bhabhi relationships in my mind. An archetypical film in that sense can be “Bhabhi ki Chudiyan”.

“Sorry Bhai” is not the first film to explore the taboo areas of attraction and sex between devars (brother in laws) and bhabhis (sister in laws). 

Some Other Bollywood Films That Touch on This Taboo

Two brothers or close friends falling in love with the same woman like in Sajaan, or younger brother falling in love with the ex-girl friend of his elder brother as in the recent Mehbooba, also touched on it. What kind of relationship exists between the brother who did not get the woman and his brother’s wife is usually left out from such films. In Mehbooba, the awkwardness is avoided by killing one of the brothers.

Other films that touched on this theme from another angle, have the younger brother marrying his widowed Bhabhi like in Silsale, where Amitabh is forced to marry Jaya, pregnant girlfriend of his elder brother Shashi Kapoor.

 

Another film that brought out this dilemma of a boy forced to marry marry a woman he has always looked as a surrogate mother in a more explicit way was Rajinder Singh Bedi’s "Ek Chadar Maili Si", where Rishi Kappor, asked to marry his widowed Bhabhi (Hema Malini) is horrified when elders of the village ask him. “You get married to your mothers”, he replies angrily.

It is true that in Sorry Bhai, the couple are shown as "not yet married" but they are supposed to be getting married in a week and the family has come especially from India for the marriage. Plus, it seems that the couple has been together for five years. So even if they are not married, in a family, the woman would be seen as a de-facto wife of the man she is going to marry.

 

In spite of this area of unease, I liked Sorry Bhai. I like films that provoke me, that make me think about forbidden areas of my own deepest thoughts. Often we tend to keep such forbidden areas buried deep down the conscious mind.

Actually there are also a number of Hindi films where brothers do lust after their Bhabhis and try to force themselves on them like the scene from Nagesh Kuknoor’s Dor, where the young brother tries to take advantage of recently widowed Ayasha Takia, but these are somehow more acceptable to us because in such films we tend to accept that men are beasts, they can’t control their sexual urges, while the women remain pure and resist such advances. 

Other Aspects of Sorry Bhai

It is Sharman Joshi who makes the character of Sidharth Mathur, a younger brother falling for his future sister in law and trying to resist it, believable. I like Joshi, he is not a conventional Bollywood hero but very likeable and good actor.

However, Sorry Bhai suffers from some weak characterizations in my opinion.

The elder brother, Harshwardhan’s character is the most superficially drawn and you never really understand his motivations and his way of thinking. Sanjay Suri, who plays this role, is not very convincing in the pub scene as drunk, but overall  is good in this role, especially in the last emotional scenes. Sanjay Suri must be a nice serious guy and this trait seems to come out in all his roles.

Chitrangada looks wonderfully ravishing but a bit wooden in her interpretation of Aaliya. You never really understand how did she end up in Mauritius, it is not a country known for its higher education. However she makes up for such details by looking wonderful.

Perhaps they were all retired and didn’t need to go back to work? After Harsh postpones his marriage, they all decide to stay on in Mauritius without any explanation. Or perhaps it was the period of summer holidays? The same can be said for the last part of the film where it seems that they are all still living in Mauritius or perhaps it was a Mauritius looking Mumbai?

And why doesn’t Sidharth call his brother’s fiancee Bhabhi when he first meets her, as you would expect normal Indian younger devars to do? It may be true that rich and the high class Indians are more westernized and they call each other by names rather than as Bhabhis or Bhaiyas but he does call his brother Bhai and never by his name, and he also seems a conventional boy willing to let his mother decide about his future wife!

So there are bits and pieces of the films that are not very logical but it is made up by wonderful looking Mauritius and great performances from the ever reliable Shabana Azmi and Boman Irani, and of course by Sharman Joshi. The music is good, especially Jalte Hain and Mere Khuda.

Onir is taking on all kinds of different subjects in his films. I had liked his "My Brother Nikhil", though at that time I had thought that it had taken the idea and style from a Hollywood film Jia, but had changed it by making it a man’s story in an intelligent way. I didn’t watch all of “Bas ek pal”, I had seen bits and pieces of it during my stay in Guyana where it had seemed to be a favourite of the cable-walla. But I had liked those bits and pieces.

And now Sorry Bhai - I think that this film could have been inspired by Love according to Dan, but that is not so important since he does take only inspirations of the basic idea, does intelligent work on it and makes the subject his own. Most important, he does not go whole hog in copying something and then claiming creative ownership over it.

In any case, as people say about Mahabharat that all stories are already told there and all play-writes must copy or get inspiration from some where. What matters is how one deals with those ideas and Onir seems to do it quite well. I am sorry that the film got sidelined due to the Mumbai terror attacks. It must have been hard on all those persons who had worked on the film.

***

Watching Bollywood in Italy

It is Olympics time and surprisingly, it is also the Bollywood time on the Italian TV.

 

Lazy, hot summer days of August. Olympics are on. I wish I could watch some badminton and table tennis matches at the Olympics but I don't think that I will get to, since both games are not a priority for Italian TV and so they are focusing on games that are more popular here and those where Italian teams are playing.

Last night, on the Italian national TV channel, they showed "Cheeni Kum" at prime time, dubbed into Italian. It was an absolute first for Bollywood here.

 

Earlier, another more "artistic" TV channel had shown films like "Kagaz ke phool" and "Pather Pachali", in late night slots. Some years ago, another private TV channel had shown "Lagaan", starting it around midnight and finishing it around five in the morning. So I don't know how many people had actually watched those films.

Thus "Cheeni Kum" was a pleasant surprise. The film, quite urbane and witty most of the time, without any naach-gaana, was quite European (except for the scene of loud crying at Qutub Minaar by Amitabh Bacchan and his melodramatic running between the pillar and his mother, near the end of the film), so probably they thought that this one Bollywood film could be shown to normal Italian audience. If it mean that the Italian TV is going to give more space to Bollywood in the future, remains to be seen. (BTW, Chinese films have been on prime time TV for many years now).

However there are lot of Bollywood fans here in Italy and there is a market for Indian DVDs that is not being tapped now. Actually it is partially being tapped by our "friendly neighbourhood pirated Asian DVD shops", usually run by guys from Pakistan and Bangladesh. Since they do not have Indian films with Italian subtitles, the Italians can't watch these DVDs and so I am sure that there is scope for doing much more.

Every month I get two-three enquires from Italians about how-where to buy Indian DVDs with Italian subtitles.

 

Since I have been writing articles on Bollywood cinema and doing film reviews in Italian (on the Italian part of my website), people often come to me to ask "expert" advice.

 

For "Taare Zameen Par" I have received a lot of enquiries, including persistent enquiries from an association of Dyslexic children, who want to use this film to create awareness about Dyslexia in Italy (if Aamir Khan is reading this please do something about it!).

 

It would be easy for me to take the film and do Italian subtitles and distribute a few copies, but that would be illegal and I personally don't want to get into that.

 

Last year, I did do Italian subtitles for small parts of different Indian films (Chameli, Umrao Jaan, Veer Zara, Bombay, etc.) for a women's festival but we didn't make any DVDs out of that experience.

 

*** 

Defining Human Sexualities

How should we define human sexuality? The West has identified specific categories - hetero-sexuals and the others or GLBTQA - and everyone is supposed to find their homes in one of these labels.

 

I believe that all societies and cultures have found their own ways to define and accommodate sexualities and we should be able to look at them crticially instead of using only one lens.

 

On Shunya’s Notes, there is an interesting post about Sudhir and Katherine Kakkar’s recent book "The Indians: Portrait of a people" (2007), focusing on issues related to homosexuality in India. In this post she critically looks at Kakkar's ideas and judges them from the viewpoint of LGBTQA understandings.

 

In this post I share my understandings on this subject. 

Homosexuality in India - Sudhir & Katherine Kakkar's Book 

I briefly met Kakkar earlier this year during a literary event organised by Grinzane Cavour Awards in north of Italy and I remember him as very likeable and soft spoken person. ‘The Indians’ sounds very interesting and I hope to have an opportunity to read it.

To come back to the blog post on Shunya’s Notes, it mentions various differences between the Western and Indian attitudes and practices towards homosexuality in this book, such as the following:

• Christian West, homosexual acts were persecuted as a sin against God (and less often, seen as a disease). Indians, on the other hand, denied the idea of homosexuality, while tolerating homosexual acts.
• Notion of a homosexual liaison as a proud and equal alternate to a heterosexual one doesn't exist outside a small set of urban Indians;
• (In India) Vast majority of even those who continue having sex with other men do not see themselves as homosexual

I agree that in India, persons deciding to live as overt gay or lesbian couples would have a difficult time, even if their public display of affection such as holding hands, putting arms around each others' necks, etc. would probably be seen as less problematic, since that is accepted behaviour for both men and women in Indian culture (but their kissing in public would be very problematic, but then even heterosexual kissing in public would also be equally problematic in India).

 

And I also agree that for young homosexual Indian men and women, there can be tremendous family pressure for a “normal” marriage, though things are changing. In my own family in India, I can see the evidence that things are changing and parents are more accepting. 

My Understandings of Human Sexuality

However, in my experience, there are infinite variations in the way people perceive, exercise and express their sexualities and I find a bit problematic this way of classifying persons in groups such as homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, transgender, etc. If we look at life stories of persons spanning different decades, the variety of sexual behaviours and desires that usually comes out, are difficult to put neatly into a few boxes.

To restrict sexuality to sexual intercourse is another problematic area for me. During a research that I did almost a decade ago , the definitions of sexuality that had come up during discussions in a group of Italians, also included terms like intimacy, affection, feelings, closeness, etc. If we consider sexuality in these broader terms, then in my opinion, ideas of homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality, etc. become even more problematic.

I think that part of the problem lies in what I call “western binaries” or “pseudo-scientific way” of thinking, that is based on the assumption that every thing can be defined and classified, and if something is one then it can’t be another at the same time.

I believe classifying and putting everything in to neat boxes is fine if it serves as an exercise for understanding the key issues, the barriers, the oppressions, the violations, and finding solutions to these through laws and practices that respect dignities and rights of people. In that sense, I can understand the usefulness and importance of categories like homosexual, heterosexual, etc. However, I have some difficulties when we start confusing the categories and boxes with people's real life and how they are suppose to behave in their every day lives.

I think that like everything else, even human sexuality is a spectrum that varies from exclusively gay or lesbian to exclusively heterosexual in terms of sexual intercourse, but also in terms of psychological affinities and affective relationships, at different times & ages in our lives. In between these two extremes there are infinite variations. And if people do not wish to be put into a box or under a category, I think that it is absolutely fine for them to choose to do so.

In the post on Shunya’s Notes, the author writes, “While the Indian response reduces open conflict, the flip side is a muffled suffering: countless men and women lead double lives, hiding from their true natures and denying themselves the most precious of intimacies and self-knowledge”. While I agree that there are many homosexual men and women in India who are forced into marriages that create needless suffering for them and for their spouses, I also find such views problematic in terms of denying that there can be persons whose sexuality encompasses both sexes and can be forced into a corner because someone believes that “they are not aware of their true natures”.

 

In my opinion, in the sexuality spectrum, a lot of persons are on one extreme (hetrosexual) and the remaining are spread out, till we reach the other extreme (homosexual) - this means, all the others between those two extremes, may not fit into any neat boxes. 

Indian Understandings of Sexuality

Thus, I also think that overcoming barriers and finding solutions does not mean that all persons who enjoy homosexual relationships are all supposed to "come out" and be either gay or lesbian in the way the two distinct gay and lesbian cultures have developed in the west.

This is also because, I feel that people from different cultures fighting oppression and exploitation, can find and negotiate emancipation and self-expression in different ways. The gay and lesbian cultures developed in the west are legitimate and can be empowering, but this does not mean that they are the only path to sexual emancipation. Here I would like to draw parallels from works of Indian feminism activists like Madhu Kishwar, who have looked at the way women in India have negotiated spaces for their own emancipation and empowerment, in ways that are different from the way western feminists look at this.

The Indian (or perhaps I should say eastern) way of inclusive thinking, that looks for harmony among apparent contradictions is a different approach to life compared to the binary yes/no approach. While looking at issues of human sexuality, I would be cautious in throwing away the specific cultural solutions towards homosexuality that have been found over a period of centuries in the Indian societies . I would rather prefer to look at them critically, without the using western eyeglasses, but analysing them on their own terms and merits.

Such a critical appraisal of Indian responses to the issue of sexual diversity in India can’t be done by outsiders, but requires persons who face these challenges in India.

 

Perhaps persons linked to GLBTQA (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender, Queer, Asexual) organisations in India would take up this challenge (or perhaps they already have done such analysis, but I am not aware about it and such views are not well known internationally?)

 

***** 

The Call of the Sea

Sea, beach, sand and the blinding sunlight can suddenly feel like a tomb, when death smiles at you and beckons you in its cosy embrace - I had this experience.

 

I had woken up at nine. I am on holidays in Bibione near the sea in north-east part of Italy, so there is nothing strange about waking up at nine. And it was a Saturday morning. But I have always insisted that I am incapable of sleeping till late and that I must go to bed at ten and wake up at five in the morning. This is my natural rhythm of life, I say.

Perhaps, over the past few years, my sleeping and waking hours depend upon my computer and internet? Early morning is the time for reading emails, writing blogs, reading on internet. And, here in Bibione I have no internet, so I don’t have any incentive to wake up earlier.

After a lazy coffee and cereals, I put on my swimming costume and a t-shirt, Nadia was wearing her two piece swim suit and off we went to the coast. It takes about ten minutes to reach the seaside and every day we follow the same routine - a walk towards the light house of Bibione and back to the beach for a swim, before coming back home for lunch and afternoon siesta.

Yesterday was no different. It is liberating to wear swim suits and walk in the city centre where other persons are more or less in the same state of undress. The sky was bright blue and there was not even a tiniest bit of cloud floating up there. But it was not hot, there was a nice cool breeze.

It was almost 10.30 when we had started from home and by the time we reached the light house it was almost mid day.

 

I asked Nadia to climb on some rocks in the beginning of the sea, so that I could take her pictures. While I was clicking her pictures, I remember thinking that those pictures were like love letters. Probably all marriages go through this process that starts from love, goes trough a process of friction, discussions, fights and mutual adjustments and then finally finds its groove, where you understand each other and in spite of all the differences, love each other’s company.

In front of the light house, we asked someone to take our picture. Every year, in front of the light house, we ask someone to take our picture. Looking at these pictures from the past 26 years, I can see how age has been changing us.

 

 

 
As we walked back, I remember that we looked at a family with a dog that was walking towards us and we talked about the absolutely cuddly dog. And it was almost as an afterthought, when I realised that the lady in the group was topless. How quickly you get used to the human bodies, and why do fundamentalists of different religions make such a hoo-ha about nude female bodies, I had thought.

Back at the beach, it was time to go for the swim. The water was slightly cold and absolutely transparent. Putting the head under the water, I felt that I was floating in the beautiful green coloured world. I could see Nadia swimming close by but there were not many other persons swimming at that time. Probably people were going back for lunch since it must have been around 1 PM.

 
I was floating in the water, when I heard Nadia call me. “Don’t go near the boulders, they are sharp and cut you”, she called. I had drifted close to the boulders. I dived in and swam away from the boulders. As I came up for air, I saw that I had not moved away but rather I had become a little closer to the boulders. I tried to feel the ground with my feet but it was too deep and I couldn’t touch the ground. I could feel the strong current pushing me towards the boulders, so I tried again, making big powerful strokes to move away. Again, as I raised up my head from water, I saw that I had made little headway. Suddenly I panicked. I could feel the sea as something living, surrounding me from all sides and pulling me inside.

Nadia was swimming towards me and I told her to stay away and not to come closer in that strong current. “Go towards the boulders, let the current take you, go the other side of the boulders”, she cried, sensing my panic. I followed her advice, going towards the boulders and slowly got up on a boulder just underneath the water surface. The surface of the boulder was full of sharp cutting edges but I did manage to go over it. Nadia on the other hand, had gone beyond the tip of the boulders and passed to the other side. “This means it can be done and the current is not that bad”, I thought and slowly the panic passed.

After five minutes, when I had got back my breath, I moved gingerly over the boulders underneath the water surface and then dived in, swimming away from them without any problems.

Perhaps I had not been in mortal danger and it was all panic and if I had shouted, life guard would have heard me or other persons swimming not so far would have heard me and would have saved me. But for me, that sensation of being pulled inside the sea, feeling the sea as a living being surrounding me and laughing at me and tempting me to go and loose myself in its wonderful green world, were very real and if Nadia had not been there, perhaps that panic could have ended differently.

Defeating fundamentalism in India

The new issue of Outlook magazine from India has a wonderful essay by the historian and writer Ramachandra Guha about the chances of India to become a superpower.

 

Guha argues that there are a number of factors which will not allow India to become a superpower, including the threat from the violence of extreme left Maoist groups known as Naxalites, the threat of religious fundamentalism especially from Hindu conservatives, lack of a principled party from centre especially in congress party, the large and increasing gap among the rich and the poor. He also argues that perhaps India need not aim for becoming a superpower but try to be a country that makes sure that all of its citizens can live with dignity. 

Guha is a wonderful writer, very easy to read, and logical. He also adds that special point of view of historians that is usually missing from such debates - these debates are usually dominated by economists and financial experts. I also liked that Guha has quoted his teacher Dharma Kumar in his essay. However, there is a part of the essay that provoked some reflections from me. Here is that part:

There is, indeed, a reassertion of religious orthodoxy in all faiths in modern India—among Muslims and Christians as well as Sikhs and Hindus (and even, as it happens, among Jains). It is the illiberal tendencies in all these religions that, at the present juncture, are in the ascendant. The mullahs who abuse Sania Mirza or Taslima Nasreen, and the Sikh hardliners who terrorise the Dera Sacha Sauda, are also wholly opposed to the spirit of the Indian Constitution. But simply by virtue of numbers—Hindus are, after all, more than 80 per cent of India’s population—and their much wider political influence, Hindu bigotry is indisputably the most dangerous of them all.

I feel that religious fundamentalism is one crucial area in which we see a marked deterioration in India over the past couple of decades. Increasingly all religions take rigid stand against any debate and their more conservative members, they increasingly make shrill threats and often attack property and persons to beat them into fearful obedience. 

 

With Globalisation, perhaps it is inevitable that the narrow conservatism of monotheistic religions that insist on only their view of world as dictated by their prophet in their sacred book being the correct way, also infects the Indian way of thinking, that has over millenniums evolved into acceptance of contradictions and different world views, religious views and social norms. Thus today conservative persons from different religions in India are increasingly trying to browbeat everyone into their view of sacred and just.

Attracting bigger numbers of followers is equally important for the power of the religious leaders, while in today's world, new technologies and social changes can make religious affinities weaker and decrease that power. Promoting conservative views to attract specific groups of followers can thus be a deliberate strategy by religious leaders and political parties.

 

Should We Single Out Hindutva and Remain Silent About the Rest? 

However, perhaps we also need to reflect more on the reasons behind the increasing support to Hindutva, about which Guha laments. During my journeys in India, I have been surprised more than once to find persons I knew as reasonable and open minded persons, are increasingly pessimistic about a dialogue with Muslims and expressing at least some support or understanding about Hindu conservatives. They may not condone the violence of Bajrang Dal or Vishwa Hindu Parishad but they perceive that State has given in to the obscurantists from Islam and other religions and that rights of Hindus are being eroded or are being treated unjustly.

There are saner educated, thinking persons who feel that there is a large part of Indian academics, activists, writers, who have double standards, "They are very vocal in denouncing the evils of Hindu bigotry but are silent about bigots from other religions".

Perhaps it is correct that by sheer numbers Hindu bigotry is indeed more dangerous but the strategy of condemning only Hindu fundamentalists, may not be the best way to go about it!

 

I personally feel that fundamentalists and bigots of all religions are same, they have same narrow and fearful way of thinking, fighting against all changes perceived as attacks on traditions, and it does not matter that they are Hindu, Muslims or Christians or Sikhs, or whatever. But every time the State gives into or plays silent spectator, not raising a single finger to stop the attacks on legality and human rights enshrined in the Indian constitution, it creates a vicious circle, where some more persons from that religion get converted to the cause of fundamentalism, as they see that fundamentalism pays. At the same time, persons from other religions feel offended and some of them move towards their own fundamentalisms, while moderate voices of all sides become more fearful and silent.

Every time the State allows a Taslima to be made a prisoner and exiled while her attackers roam free and make death threats in TV and State Assembly, every time the State allows goons to ransack libraries and destroy manuscripts, or threaten a person like M. F. Hussein, India becomes weaker, fundamentalists become more confident and reasonable persons are forced to withdraw in their shells.

Conclusions 

Let me conclude by saying that it is dangerous to single out only the Hindu fundamentalists, and not fight the bigots of all the different religions. Liberals, if they speak out only against Hindus, will help in spreading their message that see, they only criticise our religion, they are happy with Muslim/Christian/Sikh bigots.

 

It will weaken India's Ganga-Jamuni culture and it will increase religious bigotry. In my opinion, we must speak out against all the different kinds of bigots.  

National GLBT Pride 2008 in Bologna

I am back from a long and tiring journey in Mongolia. I still need to sort out hundreds of pictures that I took during this trip and to write a blog-post about it.

 

Back in Bologna, I was right in time for the annual national Gay-Lesbian_Bisexual_Transsexual (GLBT) pride march that was held here today.

 

It was a huge rally and people had come from all over Italy with floats blaring music and showing dances or other body assets, as is usual in LGBTQ events.

 

It was lot of fun and I marched with the parade in the last part, starting from Salara where the Arci-gay and Arci-lesbica of Bologna have their office, up to Piazza 8 Agosto, where the parade concluded. I had asked Nadia to come with me, it is a question of human rights I had told her, but she thought that it was too hot and probably it was going to be too noisy, so finally I went alone.

 

Nadia was right, it was very noisy with loud music and lot of young persons drinking and dancing. There were gay couples and there were lesbian couples. Some even had their children with them. There were also transsexuals and transgender persons. There were sex-workers with red parasols. And there were lot of hetero couples and even persons in wheel-chairs as well.

 

In Piazza 8 Agosto there were speeches by presidents of different LGBTQ organisations. I liked the speech by the President of MIT (Association of Transsexuals and Transgender persons). "Even among the different alternate sexuality identities, we are forgotten and discriminated", she said. I also liked her reference to the often forgotten "human right to orgasm".

 

There were other human rights organisations as well. For example, those talking of immigrants and gypsy (Rom) children. There were some South Asian looking men but I don't know if they were there to express their right to sexuality or only for curiosity. I didn't see any south Asian looking women in the march.

 

 

 

***

Dr Binayak Sen

I am deeply anguished that even after more than a year, a person like Dr Bianayak Sen continues to languish in a jail. Is is unbelievable that a person like him, who has spent his life working with the most marginalised rural groups in Chattisgarh through community health programmes has been labelled a "naxalite courier" and put into jail.

It was in May 2007 that Dr Mira Shiva had told me about it and I thought it was a mistake and that soon, courts will realise that this is only some kind of frame-up or cooked-up charges by persons irritated by Dr Binayak Sen's insistence on truth and human rights for every one including for persons killed in "encounters" and jailed as Naxalites.

 

I am aware that Naxalites say that they are fighting for the poor and oppressed, but in my experience, they are brutally violent and equally oppressive towards all those who do not believe in their ideology.

I personally do not believe in or even accept the Naxalite ideology and I completely reject their violence, yet I thought that what Binayak was doing is the only option for a doctor and should be conduct of all persons who live by their conscience - you have to ask for respect of law and respect of human rights for everyone.

Yet, in spite of knowing that this is a blatant lie, the state continues to insist that Binayak was not really a doctor, he was a Naxalite courier and treats him like a criminal. I hope that the highest authorities in India will take immediate action and free Binayak and ensure that he is given justice.

There is an article about Dr Binayak Sen in recent issue of Outlook. I hope all newspapers and journals will write about him and what he symbolises. If a person like him can be framed, jailed and denied justice, I shudder to think of what happens to common persons in India. The poor and marginalised tribals in India, what hope can they have for justice in India?

After the sunset: Roberto & Sonali story

Note September 2025: This post was originally written in May 2008. Since then I have kept on making changes in it, especially in terms of adding things. Over the years I have continued to collect a lot more information about Sonali-Rossellini story. I have also been in contact with Raja Dasgupta, Sonali's elder son, as well as with some of other persons from their families and friends.

 

I feel that all the books written on this theme are mostly about Roberto Rossellini while Sonali appears as a minor element in them, while her husband Harisadhan is completely missing. I am working on a book that looks at from the point of view of Sonali and her family, aiming to finalise it by 2026. For example, now I am aware that to be a child growing up in the Rossellini household was traumatic and most children of Roberto with his different women, including Sonali's children, had difficult lives.

 

For my book, I am looking for information about Sonali's life in Rome during 1990s and early 2000s - if you knew Sonali or her children and are willing to talk to me, do contact me. If you have any additional information about this story that you can share, send me an email at: sunil.deepak(at)gmail.com (substitute (at) with @ in the email) or contact me through Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, through the links in the column on the right.

 

Thanks for your collaboration.   

 

***

Introduction

 

I had heard in the past about the famous Italian film director Roberto Rossellini and his Indian wife, Sonali. But I hadn’t really thought about it in any way. It had all happened when I was a baby and I hadn’t even realised that at that time there was a big scandal about their affair.

 

Roberto Rossellini had become famous for his films in the 1940s. He would have been mostly forgotten by general public, had it not been for his affair with the Hollywood star Ingrid Bergman in early 1950s, which had made him an international celebrity. His affair with Bergman had created a big scandal because she was married and the mother of a small baby. Rossellini had gone to stay in their home as a guest and in the end run off with the woman.

 

Rossellini's affair with Sonali was similar - she was married and had small children, and her film-director husband, Harisadhan, hero-worshipped him as an idol. 

I rediscovered their story a few days ago when I read an article about the new book of Dileep Padgaonkar (Under her spell: Roberto Rossellini in India, Viking, 2008) at the Jabberwock blog, and read about the Roberto-Sonali love story. Jabberwock had written: “It was a relationship that caused an uproar in the Indian press at the time, Baburao Patel’s invective being only the most florid example of the many reports that appeared in newspapers and magazines. Eventually, Rossellini had to leave the country under duress... Perhaps Under her Spell is just a little too dry and restrained though, given that at the centre of this story is a tempestuous affair that complicated the lives of many people. We don't really learn that much about the Roberto-Sonali relationship, what drew them to each other and how the bond gradually deepened, and Padgaonkar is also reticent about their later years together.” 

Sonali-Rossellini Affair 

Reading the review of Padgaonkar's book, stimulated my curiosity so I looked around on internet for more information about this story. It had all happened in 1957. Roberto Rossellini had come to India in December 1956.

At that time, Roberto was 51 and Sonali was 29 years old. She was married to Harisadhan Dasgupta, a respected documentary film director, 33 years old at that time, who was a close friend and associate of Satyajit Roy. She had two children when this happened, her younger son Arjun was only a few months old.

The reports said that Sonali had arrived late one night at Taj Mahal hotel with her younger son in her arms.

 

Pandit Nehru, India’s prime minister at that time, who had invited Roberto to India for making a film, had helped the three of them to leave India for Rome, where they had got married and Roberto had legally adopted Sonali’s younger son. In India, Harisadhan Dasgupta had reacted by registering a police FIR for his missing wife. Later Roberto & Sonali had a daughter, Raffaella. Roberto died 20 years later, in 1977. 

Questions in My Mind 

The more information I found, the more intrigued I was. Sonali, Roberto, Harisadhan and their children, had all been part of deep emotional cyclone but I was most curious about Sonali. She had two sons, but she could take only one son with her. That must have been terrible for her as a mother. It must have been equally terrible for the son who was left with his father. Kind of Sophie’s choice, except that this was no fiction.

How did Harisadhan feel about his wife not just leaving him for another man, older man at that, taking their son with her? How did they settle it, since Sonali couldn’t have married Roberto without a proper divorce from Harisadan? And how could Roberto legally adopt Sonali’s younger son, without her ex-husband’s consent? So this means that after their escape from India, Sonali and Roberto must have been in contact with Harisadhan in some way.

I remember my first journey to Italy in late nineteen seventies. There were very few foreigners living in Italy, there were no Asian shops, no Bengali communities, few who spoke English. How did Sonali fit in there? 

Usually when lovers meet, they stand against the setting sun and it is supposed to end with “and they lived happy and content ever after...”, yet that is where marriages begin. So after the sunset, once the flash bulbs stopped, once the level of ho-ha lowered, how did Sonali feel? How did the young boy feel, once he grew up and realised he had a father and elder brother in India?

 

I could not find the answers to these questions on internet. Padgaonkar's book did not talk about these. So I decided to dig in deeper. 

Searching for Additional Information  

All these questions were going around in my head as I searched for answers. I could piece together many things because I could search in English and Italian, as well as some minor sources in Spanish and French that gave crucial information. This search was exclusively through internet.

 

I didn’t find much about the emotional part of this story and perhaps it is better that way since I can imagine that even after all these years, many of these memories must be still very painful for all those who are still alive. Roberto died in 1977. Harisadhan Dasgupta died in 1996 or around that. Sonali's son, Arjun/Gil died in 2008 and Sonali died in 2014. However, their other children are around and probably they carry the scars of this event.

Rossellini's Film-Work in India

In 1956, Ingrid Bergman had restarted work in Hollywood with films like Anastasia, for which she received an Oscar and probably her relationship with Roberto was in crisis.

According to Palmira, Roberto’s gardener’s wife, Ingrid was supposed to go to India, to join Roberto in 1957. Instead, she decided to do a film with Lars Schmidt, who later became her third husband, while Roberto came back from India with Sonali.

Roberto was in India for almost 11 months, refusing to look at famous monuments and rather preferring to take a non-exotic view of India, by looking at lives of common persons.

 

The Indian stay of Roberto led to two works, a documentary film “India – Matri Bhumi” (1959) and a TV mini-series “India vista da Rossellini” (India seen by Rossellini, 1959) broadcasted in Italy and France. The mini-series "India seen by Rossellini" broadcast in 10 episodes was produced jointly by India, Italy and France.

The episodes of the TV series were titled: India without myths, Bombay Gateway to India, Architecture & costumes of Bombay, Varsova, Towards the south, Lagoons of Malabar, Kerala, Hirakud dam on river Mahadi, Pandit Nehru & Animals in India.

“India – Matri Bhumi” was a film in 4 parts. The first part took a lyrical look at the daily life of a mahout (elephant handler). Part two was about an East Bengal refugee who is working on a dam and after the work is finished, he is relocated to another construction site. Part three was about an elderly person contemplating nature in a jungle and finally, part four is about a monkey owner dying from heat and the monkey looking for another owner. 

Sonali's Life in Italy 

Palmira, Roberto’s gardener’s wife said: “Sonali was more solitary compared to Ingrid. However friendship between Ingrid and Roberto remained. Even after their divorce, Ingrid came with her third husband Lars to the Rossellini villa. At that time, Roberto’s financial situation was not good and the villa had been indebted to the bank which had given credit to Roberto. Ingrid even asked Lars to buy that villa to help Roberto.”

 

Sonali was an aspiring actress when she had got married to Harisadhan Dasgupta. She had studied at Shantiniketan university and Bimal Roy was her mama (mother's brother). 

Conclusion

It was a love story between Rossellini and Sonali, with a happy ending, or so it would seem.

 

Yet, that happy ending was inextricably linked with pain and suffering for many of the protagonists. It would make for a wonderful novel, one of those melodramatic tomes that we feel are so unbelievable.

*****

Raiders of the lost Poppies

My friend Mariangela lives in Rimini.

 

A couple of weeks ago she was travelling to Asti and was going to pass thorugh Bologna. "Are there poppy flowers in Bologna?", she asked me in an email.

 

I read her email while I was in a conference in Genova. Shit, this year I had forgotten all about poppy flowers, I thought to myself! It is our old ritual. When she comes to see me in Bologna we go to look at them.

 

There used to be this old field near our house that would get full of red poppy flowers in April-May. I had been there with Mariangela. They mowed that field down two years ago and since then I hadn't ever seen large expanses of poppy flowers.

 

So I needed to go around and search for some poppy flowers before she came to see me.

 

Poppy or the Pappaverum Somniferum is supposed to be that plant that can be used to make opium. For getting opium you you need the milk of the ripe dry fruit. That is the reason, why you need a special permission to grow poppy plants in Italy. Some people say that to get opium you need another variety of poppy and not these common flowers that we have, that is why no one bothers with these. Perhaps you also need the hotter sun of equator. I am not sure about that but you can usually see the bright red poppy flowers along railway tracks and highways, where it grows as a weed, in our part of Italy.

The black poppy seeds are used commonly as decoration on bread and give off a lovely aroma. I am not sure if those can be recovered from these flowers, I usually buy them in Asian shops.

 

I am going to look for poppy flowers one of these days, I told myself. Finally, today was my the day of operation poppy-flowers.

I decided to go out beyond Ca' Bianca for my morning walk with our dog, Brando, to the part where there are some farm-houses.

 

He is getting old, our Brando, and likes to go over his usual walking routes and usually if I try to pull him in some new directions, he usually does his Angad ji show, pointing his feet and refusing to move. However, today I was in no mood to give in to him and kept on pulling him till he gave in.

 

And today no I-pod, no music to distract me, I decided. Nature demands proper attention or so, I thought. And so off we were. 

Different Kinds of Seeds

Just out of the house, and I got distracted by the Maple seeds. There were so many of them hanging from the tree almost like plastic butterflies. So I started looking around clicked the pictures of different looking seeds. Here are some examples. The maple seeds had wings like butterflies flying with acute angles.

 

In the next picture is what they call "albero falso di Giuda" or the 'false Jude's' tree, with dried beans like seeds. In autumn, these trees without any green leaves and only these dark brown seeds look slightly sinister, and make me think of Dracula myths. I also don't know why they call them false Jude and if there is a real Jude's tree as well?

 

I like the seeds of Lime trees with the strange wing that is pierced by the flowers. I have read of the subtle perfume of Lime but to me the flowers seem scentless.

Then I saw the Elm tree with round penny like wings holding a small seed in the middle, in the next picture. Though on the tree the seeds are bunched together like piles of pennies and it is not easy to make out the form of individual seed.

 

 

And Finally these rounded beans like seeds that look like jhumkas, rounded-bean like seeds that look like women's ear-rings. I don't know the name of this tree.

 

Roses

Then it was the turn of the roses. There were so many of them in the garden that we passed. Some of the housewives, going about their daily business of dusting and beating the carpets with sticks, looked at me with a suspicion as I tried to get a good angle to click their roses, but they were quickly mollified by the sight of Brando, who can look nice, cuddly and angelic when he is not busy barking at any rival dogs. There are already too many pictures on this post, so I am sparing you my roses-pics today.

Finally the Red Poppy-Flowers

Finally, I did find the poppy flowers finally just a little outside, on the road that goes along the wheat fields. There were not too many of them but enough for taking some pictures.

 

 

Disgusted dog

It was a lovely morning and our morning walk lasted almost one and half hour. Unfortunately Brando didn't appreciate it and seemed a bit annoyed at loosing his rhythm as I forced him to hold still while I clicked pictures of plants and flowers from different angles.

 

The return back to home after the poppy flowers was quick as Brando almost ran, understanding that I had completed my mission, pulling me along! If you think that he is too sweet or cute or small to pull people, you don't know him yet! (In the image below he is with my son)

*** 

 

 

Talking to Altaf Tyrewala

It was January 2008. We were in the north Italian city of Turin for a literature festival organised by an Italian literary foundation, Grinzane. There was a special session in this festival about India and thus many Indian authors were invited. I was there as an Indian blogger and had helped in deciding whom to invite. 

 

I had asked Altaf Tyrewala for an interview and finally we got around doing it during a bus journey as we were going out for some lunch. As we sat down in the bus and I was fumbling with my recorder, Altaf said that he hadn’t liked being presented as a “Muslim writer from India”. I agreed with him completely, I would hate to be called a “Hindu writer from India”. I had had some discussions with the organisers and I knew they did it to refute any charges of ignoring the writers from Indian minorities, but I guess that doesn’t make it any easier!

He said, "When outside they call me in this way it saddens me. It is not enough that in a nation a minority has to be made self-conscious, even outside the country they are ... they didn’t mention the religious background of any other writer." 

 

Lavanya Shankaran, who was sitting behind us didn’t realise that it was an interview and I was recording it and so she also joined in the conversation. I was very happy since the discussion was very stimulating and I was imagining that my recorder is recording her voice as well. Unfortunately that was not the case, I can only hear some of her words. I vaguely remember what she said but that is not enough to re-construct her part of dialogue and I regret that immensely.

Here are some excerpts from the transcript of that discussion-recording. The symbols are AT for Altaf Tyrewala and SD for me, Sunil Deepak. 

SD: Tell me about the kind of things you like to read? 

AT: I like reading something that has been stripped to the bare essentials. I am almost incapable of enduring descriptions, etc. Anything that assumes that I don’t know ... I read the internet, I try to remain clued in to the world. What I like to read is something that I can not access as an information. 

SD: You don’t see that as a contradiction, wanting to be a writer and yet wishing to express yourself in as few words as possible? 

AT: (laughs) Yes, absolutely. I think that it is extremely damaging to my career. I won’t be able to churn out books every year. But this is something that I have to deal with as a writer, it is my challenge. This conflicting instinct in me, to speak and not to speak, these are two powerful impulses in me. To keep quiet because whatever has to be said, has already been said, and the other side, even while wishing to keep quiet, to find things to say. 

SD: Writing is a creative expression and there are different ways of expressing creativity. Did you have to choose from different things you wanted to do or was writing the only thing that you wanted to do? 

AT: I have always wondered what it would be like to be a painter or a musician, but writing is something that goes beyond creative expression. It has become a way of life. It is not like an outburst of creative energy. I think that it is almost like it moulds your way of living. I am not a writer just when I am writing, I am a writer 24 hours a day. That is how I have found myself becoming. 

SD: You have written one book that has been published but may be you have written lot of other books that have not been published or that are still in your head. How do you decide what you are going to write and how long that process takes to actually come to do it? 

AT: (laughs) The first novel came out organically. I had this impulse to write, a deep desire and need to write. I was trying to understand how the conventional form of a novel would do justice to the kind of society and I kind of reality I grew up in and I realised that it wouldn’t and I had to innovate a new form. Terrifying though it was to write in a way that I had never read anything before, create a kind of structure that I had never seen before. What was your question? How long does it take... there is no telling, it can take months. Like the second novel is taking me more than 2 years to actually kick off. With the first novel I found a groove and once you find a groove ... I used to get a story done every two weeks and that was immensely satisfying. But I think that this incubation period is important, you have to wait to not to get carried away by a wrong thing o a notion that turns out to be false later on. I am just being patient and waiting ... when it comes you know it from the tips of your fingers, it is absolutely ... 

SD: When we were getting in the bus, you said something about your wife. Did she know you as a writer or as a person before you became ...? 

AT: I was a poor graduate student in America when we met. We were studying together. She thinks that I completely misrepresented myself (laughs) because I turned out to be a writer. But because she has seen me before I was a writer, she is an immensely grounding presence in my life. It would have been so easy to float up in this writerly universe ..but she keeps on reminding me that don’t forget ... 

Lavanya Shanker: That is very wise thing you are saying... sensible, to keep your feet on the ground ..it is important that the spouse is not a writer otherwise ... writers are whackoos (laughs)... very difficult to have another writer in the house... 

AT: Or even an artist you know, it would be ... 

SD: What does it mean “deciding to become a writer”? Perhaps it would be different for a woman, but for a young person to say “I have decided to be a writer”, how would the society react? I think that in Italy people let you live your life, perhaps your parents would say something but they can’t interfere with your decisions. But in India? 

AT: I guess I was smart.. I had enough foresight to know that if I wanted to be a writer I had better do it fast. I couldn’t do it when I was 30 or 35, when real life has completely taken over. I was twenty two when I decided that I wanted to be a writer and I left my job and started writing full time. At that age, I got certain degree of indulgence from my parents. It was like even if I screw up, let’s say by 25-26 I can go back to work. They were willing to allow me this kind of window of opportunity. If this book hadn’t done fairly well, I probably would have been still working, gotten back to a 9 to 5 job. Plus, I took a loan to write, I approached a bank for a loan. 

SD (laughs) And how was that? What was their reaction in the bank? 

AT: I didn’t tell them that it was for writing. I said that I was starting an e-learning business with internet and I need the money. I used that to write for 3-4 years, used it as my pocket money. I knew it was a matter of time. You have to know deep down what you want and you have to go after it. 

(Note: The discussions after this point had more interventions of Lavanya Shankaran but from here onwards quality of recording is not good, so I have excluded this part from the transcription. 

AT: What I meant was that I can never have single moment of oblivion, of unconsciousness or not being analytical or not processing or not forcing myself to certain amount of insight on everything that I go through.. what comes first is the mad impulse to create and it is a mad energy that starts getting channelled and focused on the thin line of what it means to be a more mature writer.

When I started writing, I realised that my initial stories were mainly about myself and my experience of the world. Only when I wrote story upon story, I realised that I was just a small aspect of this larger universe out there.

And then it was up to me to place myself, to position myself in different circumstances in my head, fictionally, and to ask what if I was that or what if I was there and lend myself to different situations fictionally to understand what it would be like ... it was an exercise in some degree of compassion, to really feel what it is to be someone else. Not just think of what it would be to be someone else but to actually feel it.

*** 

SD: At this point our bus reached the venue and so the interview was interrupted! I am really sorry that the part about Lavanya are missing from this interview.   

A Lazy Sunday and the Cyclists

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 these meetings, organise groups of volunteers who offer drinks, cakes and other refreshments to everyone.

 

Other groups of cyclists from near and far converge, enjoy refreshments and then all go out the explore the surrounding areas on their bicycles. 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 was wearing their group-colours and logos, and they 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. They were mostly men and I think that it is wonderful way to keep friends and spend time together, because otherwise we men have big difficulties in keeping social relationships.

 

Even though sports allow men to have social relationships, I think that our relationships with our friends are different from those of women, in the sense we rarely if ever, talk about our fears, pains and emotions. I believe that we men need courses on how to share what matters most to us, instead of worrying about showing off that everything is fine and we are not vulnerable in any way.

 

 

*** 

Back from the walk I cooked some afghani chhole (chick-peas) and then made "panch phoren aloo" (potatoes). I had discovered the recipe 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 chhole 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 of this film and though I liked 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 a kind of unreal and cruel.

This 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 appealing. 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

Note: If you don't like to read about men, especially older men like me, talking about women-girls as sex symbols, this post is not for you - please do not read it.

***

 

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 in which, 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.

 

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

 

I should also add that the women, whom my friend called "too old", are at least 10-15 years younger to us.  

Anyway, this discussion created the idea of finding out who are the young women today who dominate the fantasies of men in Italy? And compared to my favourites Alba Parietti and Sabrina Ferrilli, how do they fare in my perception?

 

So there I was trying all kinds of combinations on Google to find out the top young models that Italians love today. Unsurprisingly, I found that 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, however 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. 

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 (and we desire most what we can't have).

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, thank you.

***