Playing dead in a cemetery

I was a little taken aback when Virginia had asked me if I wanted to be part of her special art installation in the antique Certosa cemetery of Bologna (Italy).

I was only needed to play dead in a special picture and then to share my ideas about "what do you think happens when we die?".

I love Certosa (the initial "C" is pronounced like the "ch" in church) cemetery. It has been a burying place for the dead for more than two thousand years. First it was an Etruscan cemetery, and then a Roman cemetery, and then over the past fifteen hundred years, as Bologna changed from a settlement and assumed the form of a city, Certosa has slowly grown bigger.

In the medieval period (1300-1500 DC), people started making there monumental graves with sculptures. Therefore, many areas of Certosa are like an open air museum, with hundreds of statues. The most common theme in this museum, as you can guess, is bereavement, with statues evoking feelings of loss, sadness and crying. However, there are many statues on the tombs of big and famous persons, that are more about power, wealth and vanity.

Surrounded by verdant hills, some parts of the cemetery have lovely views. Over the last two decades, cremation rather than putting the dead persons in graves, has also become more common. They even have an open grassland, where those who do not wish for a grave or an urn, can scatter the ashes.

In today's culture, where emphasis is on enjoying life, normally people do not want to talk or think about death. It was not always like this. For example think of the huge tombs built by Egyptian kings for their own burial, because they were worried about their afterlife, and wanted to make sure that they could continue to live as kings after their death.

Most of us have difficulties in talking about death and bereavement. Amitav Ghosh in a beautiful article about the death of his friend Agha Shahid had written in 2001:

Although Shahid and I had talked a great deal over the last many
weeks, I had never before heard him touch on the subject of death. I did
not know how to respond: his voice was completely at odds with the content
of what he had just said, light to the point of jocularity. I mumbled
something innocuous: “No Shahid—of course not. You’ll be fine.” He
cut me short. In a tone of voice that was at once quizzical and direct, he
said: “When it happens I hope you’ll write something about me.”
I was shocked into silence and a long moment passed before I could
bring myself to say the things that people say on such occasions: “Shahid
you’ll be fine; you have to be strong …”

Shahid ignored my reassurances. He began to laugh and it was then
that I realized that he was dead serious. I understood that he was
entrusting me with a quite specific charge: he wanted me to remember
him not through the spoken recitatives of memory and friendship, but
through the written word. Shahid knew all too well that for those writers
for whom things become real only in the process of writing, there is an
inbuilt resistance to dealing with loss and bereavement. He knew that my
instincts would have led me to search for reasons to avoid writing about
his death: I would have told myself that I was not a poet; that our friendship
was of recent date; that there were many others who knew him much
better and would be writing from greater understanding and knowledge.
All this Shahid had guessed and he had decided to shut off those routes
while there was still time.

“You must write about me.”

We have an old dog and often I am worried that one day he will be gone. Also, when you cross fifty, I think that consciously or unconsciously, you begin to ask yourself, how many years you still have to live. So I think about death off and on for some time now.

I had visited Certosa many times and had already expressed my thoughts to my wife that when I die, I would like to be cremated and I would like my ashes to be scattered in the Certosa open grassland area. Therefore when Virginia asked me to be part of her art installation on death, I didn't think twice and immediately agreed. However, some of my friends were not so sure if it was a good idea.

"Won't it be inauspicious to have your picture there while living? It is only dead persons' pictures that are put there?", they worried.

I looked at it differently. "How many of us get a chance to see our pictures as dead? How many of us get to see our pictures displayed in a cemetery? No one. So if I have this opportunity, I don't want to miss it."

Virginia had a special technique for taking pictures, so that it looked as if the person was coming out of darkness. She took pictures both with persons' eyes open and with eyes closed. "I won't take off my glasses", was my only condition. I know that dead don't need eye glasses, but what fun is to play dead, when no one recognises your picture because you are without your glasses?

I also spoke to Virginia about my views about death, influenced mainly by Hinduism, though not in the sense of paradise or hell:

I like the way death is described in Kenopanishad and Kathopanishad. I think that everything in the universe is pervaded by the same consciousness, and when we die, our individual consciousness goes back to all pervading consciousness, like a river goes in to the ocean. That all mountains, plants, animals and humans are inter-connected through this consciousness.

I think that everything in this physical universe is made of molecules, atoms and sub-atomic particles and these particles are exactly the same in every thing. Thus, all persons, animals, birds, plants, rocks are made of same building blocks, but our level of consciousness energy is different.

I like the understanding coming from quantum physics that at sub-atomic level, a particle can be in many places at the same time and that between the particles there are huge spaces, so much that relatively, the distances between the constantly dancing sub-atomic particles inside each atom that compose us, are like the distances between the planets. Therefore, each particle of our bodies, is like a solar system. I think that this describes the concept of Maya that Upanishads talk about.

Virginia recorded my views in Hindi also.

The art installation was set up an underground hall from 14th century. Along the 700 hundred year old tombs, there were our images on the walls. We were 12 persons representing 12 different religions and cultures. We all spoke our views about death in our languages. People could also read our views.

It was a wonderful sensorial experience. And, there was enormous diversity in our views about death. Virginia says that this multi-media art work was very inspiring for her. Now she is planning to involve even more persons and one day come out with a book about it.

Are you comfortable talking about death? What do you think happens when we die? Do you believe in reincarnation? Would you accept to be part of an exhibition, where you are shown as dead?

***

Revenge

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 22; the twenty-second edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.

***

Which books or stories or films related to revenge have left a strong impression on me?

It is not that there are no real-life examples of revenge these days. The bomb attacks a few days ago in Mumbai and then yesterday in Oslo, are a gruesome reminder of way revenge is enacted for real or perceived injustices, hurts or insults by the terrorists. This way of revenge targets general populations.

However, I don't want to talk about those kinds of real-life things. I would rather focus on imaginary revenges, that is, revenges dreamed up by their writers as part of their stories in literature and in cinema.

Revenge is a common enough theme in cinema and literature, where it is planned for avenging some wrong-doing or injustices, especially killing or rape of siblings or parents. Think of films like Yadon ki Baarat or Sholay or Don, and you will understand what I mean.

So I decided to think of books, stories and films related to revenge, that have left a strong impression on me.

The dentist and the handsome guy: There was a Hindi story I had read around 40 years ago, that still remains vivid in my mind. It was published in a magazine called Sarika, that was probably shut down in early nineteen nineties.

The story was about a handsome guy who goes to a dentist. He had been chewing paan (betel) and had not rinsed his mouth properly. So the dentist, who is not very good looking and also a haughty-looking woman, tells him curtly that he is ill mannered and to go and rinse the mouth.

The man, used to women falling at him, feels very hurt by the curt manner of the dentist and decides to take his revenge. He follows the dentist and keeps on bumping in to her, first saying sorry, and then slowly praising her and flirting with her. Slowly over a period of time, the dentist falls in love with him. At the end, when dentist wants to kiss him, he tells her that she is ugly and unattractive to him, pushes her away and leaves.

I still remember my shock when I had read this story. I do not remember who had written it or the names of the two characters, but I think that it was an example of really cruel revenge, for something very petty.

Favourite films on the theme of revenge: I can think of an old Hindi film, that had the element of revenge, that I had liked very much. It was called Bandini (Prisoner, 1960) and was directed by Bimal Roy. The film was about a gentle and kind woman named Kalyani (a wonderful performance by Nutan), who comes to the city to look for her would-be husband and discovers that he has married someone else. She starts to work as a servant in that house, where the woman married to her would-be husband is a rich and ill tempered lady. One day Kalyani gets the news that her father is dead. When Kalyani is still numb with shock, the rich lady shouts abuses at her. Suddenly unhinged with anger, Kalyani takes out rat poison and mixes it in the coffee of the rich lady, killing her.

That film showed that sometimes circumstances can be such that even the gentle and kind person can become a killer.

However, there is another more recent film about revenge that I had enjoyed very much. It was called "Khosla ka Ghosla" (The nest of Khosla, 2006, director Dibakar Banerjee). It was the story of the middle class Khosla family living in Delhi that puts all its savings to buy a piece of land where they want to build their dream house. However a cunning builder occupies their land, and wants lots of money to vacate their land. The young son of Khosla, planning to immigrate to USA, asks his friends in a drama company to help him and hatches out a perfect plan to trap the cunning builder.

In our real lives, the corrupt and the crooked, hardly ever get punished. Rather, they seem to get awards and keep on accumulating wealth. Thus, a film like "Khosla ka Ghosla" that has a perfect plan for teaching a good lesson to the corrupt, is mentally satisfying. At least in our imaginations, we can get our revenge, not by fights and might, but just by the intelligence.

And you, do you have a favourite revenge story or film?

***

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Colours of life and death

I had met Makbul Fida Hussein many times as a child in the nineteen sixties.

Where today there is Palika Bazar in Connaught Place in Delhi, in those days there were the state emporiums. Not the nice buildings they have today on Baba Kharag Singh Marg, but at that time, emporiums were more like shacks, like most of the shops on Janpath in those days. In the centre of that space was Coffee House, the mythical place where writers, painters and other creative persons met for their teas, coffees, cigarettes and endless debates.

It was there, in that coffee house, where a few times I accompanied my father, that I saw Hussein, among other persons, mostly Hindi journalists, poets and writers. Only now, looking back, I can notice something strange about those persons - we never called them uncle, aunty, mama, chacha, etc., as was usual in those days, but all those persons were referred to by their names.

I vaguely knew that he was a well known painter and that he had made a film (Through the eyes of a painter, 1966). I also knew that he had been a painter of signboards and film billboards, before becoming famous as an artist. That was the time when big billboards, handpainted, lined the roads and cinema halls. (On left, Hussein saheb in 1967 during the meeting in Delhi after the death of Dr Ram Manoher Lohia).

My strongest memory of Hussein saheb is from 1966, from an evening in Lalit Kala Academy in Mandi House (Delhi). I think that we had been in Sahahitya Kala Academy, accross the road and then, we had walked with him to Lalit Kala Academy, where there was an exhibition of his paintings. It was during that walk that I had really taken note of his walking barefeet and thinking that it could not have been easy to walk like that on the hot summer roads.

That day, I was acutely aware of wearing my school uniform pants. We were passing though a bad time financially at that time. Our family had recently shifted to a new rented house, leaving the joint family house of my maternal grandfather, and the house rent must have aggravated our family's already stretched finances. I had only two half-pants in those days, and as I had grown taller, they had become woefully smaller and tighter. That was the reason, I had been forced to wear my school uniform pants that evening and I was thinking that everyone must have noticed it and understood that I didn't have another good pair of pants.

In Lalit Kala Academy, I had looked at the paintings of Hussein saheb, that frankly I didn't appreciate so much. I think that most paintings of that exhibition were about jagged black and dark brown lines criss-crossing the canvas, and they had reminded me of barbed wires. Suddenly I was aware of a bit of excitment around us. It was Dr Zakir Hussein, at that time vice-president of India, who had come to see the exhibition. There were just 2-3 persons around him and there were no security issues in those days, so no one had made us go away or stand in a corner.

Dr Zakir Hussein stopped near me and kneeled down to my level with a smile on his face, and asked me if I could make any sense out of those paintings? I don't remember what I had answered him, but I think that I must have been smug and superior, that obviously I could appreciate abstract art.

Decades later, when I had read about Hussein saheb's paintings being sold for hundreds of thousands of rupees, I had remembered some paper in coffee house of Connaught Place, where he had drawn something for me, and regretted that I had thrown away because I had not liked it.

Among his paintings, I remember most the images of horses. I also remember the time after "the emergency" when he had started to draw the Durga images in the praise of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, and the feelings of betrayal it had provoked. Wasn't he supposed to be supporter of Lohia? (Below part of a painting by Hussein in the meeting hall of World Health Organisation building in Delhi)

***
A news item by Dipanker De Sarkar in Hindustan Times about his funeral, defines him as a "devout Muslim". These words disturb me a little bit, though I keep on telling myself that they should not.

Today the words "devout Muslim" bring out the image of a conservative person, someone who follows Holy Kuran to the letter. It seems like a reaction to the Hindutva guys who hounded Hussein saheb in the last decade, saying that he had deliberately wanted to insult the Hindu godess by painting her nude and asking why he never painted the Prophet Mohammed like that.

I didn't agree with the Hindutva Brigade's accusations for many reasons - gods and godesses don't need human beings to safeguard them, they are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves; India and Hinduism has long tradition of people who search for God in their own specific ways - those who stand on one leg, those who go around nude, those who smoke ganja, those who do worship of human skulls in a crematorium, those who look for God through sexual union, and art is also a form of worship; Upanishads also talk of God being there in every thing of this world, there is no place where the God is not there, even in the canvas on which Hussein had painted his vision; and so on.

Seen through the eyes of dominant conservative Muslim discourse as it is understood today, painting Hindu idols, could not have been compatible with being a "devout Muslim". I can't imagine the Hussein I remembered from my childhood, defining himself as "devout Muslim".

On the other hand, each of us should have the freedom to define ourselves as we wish. If in his eyes, he followed the spirit of his Book and for him that was enough to call himself a "devout Muslim", then why should this be a problem for others and for me?

Or perhaps Hussein saheb did change with age? As death came closer, did he feel that he had made mistakes and decided to ask for forgiveness, and become a different person? We can all change with time and as we grow older, many of us, want to go back to security of religious teachings that we had decided to abandon during our growing up years. Was it that?

Or, could it be that the surviving members of his family wanted to give a message to others by saying that Hussein saheb was a "devout Muslim", so these words are about them and not about what Hussein saheb really thought. Mostly deaths and the images that are created for the dead are more about needs of followers and surviving family members and not so much about the wishes and ideas of the person himself or herself.

I think of all these things, feeling a little confused.

Was it like Kamala Das becoming Ayesha and deciding to hide herself behind a Burka or like men and women who decide to close themselves in isolated cloisters or silence of monkhood. They are all bruised and fragile souls, who need some kind of security.

Was it like that for Hussein saheb in his last days?

***
How would I like to remember Hussein saheb? I think that I would like to remember him through different images of Meenaxi, the film he had made in 2004.

Like the scene of the song "Nur tera nur..", where sufi dancers whirl around, while others do Kalarippayattu.

Like the never-ending colours of the holi song.

Like the doors and windows standing isolated in the desert.

Like the colourful round matakas (vases) that roll down sandy slopes, looking for a place to rest.

***

I am

A lazy morning after busy days that started early in the morning and finished late at night. Sitting in the hotel room in Goiania. I need to take shower and start getting ready for lunch at my friend Deo's home. Lucas, her grandson will come to pick me up in about an hour.

I am thinking of the small girl in Vila Esperança yesterday, who had asked Renata, "If he was born in India, why does he live in Italy?", clearly puzzled by the idea of leaving the place she has grown up in and loved so much, to go and live some where else.

Yesterday I also had a long talk with Pio, who had left his Armani suits and well paid job in Milan to come and live in Goias Velho, to start Vila Esperança, together with Max. That was 22 years ago. I am sure that lot of persons ask him, why did you leave Italy to come and live in Brazil? I didn't ask him that, but the idea that he could understand my feelings of mixed identities, made it easier to talk to him.

French-Libanese writer Amin Maalouf had written in "On Identity":

..someone comes and pats me on the shoulder and says "Of course, of course - but what do you really feel, deep down inside?"

For a long time I found this oft-repeated question amusing, but it no longer makes me smile. It seems to reflect a view of humanity which, though it is widespread, is also in my opinion dangerous. It presupposes that "deep down inside" everyone there is just one affiliation that really matters, a kind of "fundamental truth" about each individual, an "essence" determined once and for all at birth, never to change thereafter. As if the rest, all the rest - a person's whole journey through time as a free agent; the beliefs he acquires in the course of that journey; his own individual tastes, sensibilities and affinities; in short his life itself - counted for nothing. And when, as happens so often nowadays, our contemporaries are exhorted to "assert their identity", they are meant to seek within themselves that same alleged fundamental allegiance, which is often religious, national, racial or ethnic, and having located it they are supposed to flaunt it proudly in the face of others.

Anyone who claims a more complex identity is marginalised. But a young man born in France of Algerian parents clearly carries within him two different allegiances or "belongings", and he ought to be allowed to use both. For the sake of argument I refer to two "belongings", but in fact such a youth's personality is made up of many more ingredients. Within him, French, European and other western influences mingle with Arab, Berber, African, Muslim and other sources, whether with regard to language, beliefs, family relationships or to tastes in cooking and the arts. This represents an enriching and fertile experience if the young man in question feels free to live it fully - if he is encouraged to accept it in all its diversity. But it can be traumatic if whenever he claims to be French other people look on him as a traitor or renegade, and if every time he emphasises his ties with Algeria and its history, culture and religion he meets with incomprehension, mistrust or even outright hostility.

Amin Maalouf's words resonate with me. I was born in India and Hindi is my mother tongue. It is the language of all those books in papa's book shelf, that I had started reading as a kid. Nanak Singh, Kishen Chander, Rangey Raghav, Mohan Rakesh, Nirmal Varma .. It is the only language in which I can really appreciate poetry. It is the language of my childhood friends.

English is the language of my logic and reasoning. It is the language of discovering writers from different parts of the world. It is the language of my work. It is also the language that I am most comfortable in writing.

And I dream in Italian, the language in which I talk to my wife and son. Italian is the language I read most now. It is the language that I like using for talking to small babies and dogs and birds and trees.

But Brazilian Portuguese is also my language, as are bits and pieces of French and Chinese. They are all parts of me. Languages, people, friends, journeys, memories, experiences, all are part of me. That is what "I am", if I can borrow the title from Onir's film. My complex identity, that is not always so easy to explain.

How to become a fighter?

I was in Bidar district in north Karnataka (India), to evaluate the disability programme of ORBIT an organisation working for different groups of marginalized persons and watershed management. I went around the villages to meet the self-help groups of disabled persons.

Faint echoes of the anti-corruption campaign launched by Anna Hazare reached us, while I had my personal encounter with the small level corruption that permeates the life in India. It was difficult to find someone completely blameless in the corruption cycle. Is corruption justified if you are so poor that you can't have a life of dignity?

The Indian law asks for 3 percent of Panchayat budget to be reserved for persons with disabilities and persons with certified disabilities have right to receive pension, based on the degree of disablement.

"Persons in the Panchayat want bribe for giving any funds from the 3% reserved budget", "to get disability certificate you have to pay bribes", "to get disability pension they ask for bribes", were the frequent refrains. But persons asking for bribes were not just petty officials who rule the village lives. They were also village rehabilitation workers, persons who also had disability and who knew the challenges faced by other disabled persons in those villages.

And the poor disabled persons in the villages, if they could, were some times happy to manipulate and tell lies, so they could get additional benefits. How do you eliminate this corruption that does not spare anyone?

"But you are not few, if you all unite and ask for your rights, can't you fight this corruption?", I asked to one group headed by a small woman with sandalwood marks on her forehead, whose son was disabled.

"Alone we can't do any thing. We are weak and we need your help", she said and other persons in her group nodded in agreement.

Yet there were persons like Hashmat Bi, an elderly woman heading a group in another village. A childless first wife who also had disabilities due to leprosy, she had an infectious laugh. "I always fight, till they give up", she said simply, a natural leader. The bus drivers didn't want her and other disabled persons in their buses, but she fought till they gave in. Panchayat and district officers, in the end everyone gave in to her determined fights. In their group, everyone gets pension and she has used the Panchayat funds for starting different schemes in their village.

How can you make people become fighters for their rights like Hashmat Bi?

***

Film director Onir - Florence Interviews (3)

Note: In December 2010, during the River to River film festival in Florence (Italy) I did brief interviews with Aparna Sen, Rahul Bose and Onir. All the three interviews were very satisfying because each of them gave me an opportunity to meet and get to know some lesser known aspects of people I have liked and admired. However, I am really pleased with this Onir interview because it talks of some issues that resonate emotionally with me. I have also contributed to his new film "I am" by helping with the Italian subtitles.

Interview
Sunil: Let us start with your new film "I am". The film was supposed to have five stories but in the end it has only four stories, what happened?

Onir: Initially I was thinking of five stories. However, when I made the second film, I realized that it was going to be difficult because I wanted the entire film to be less than two hours. For the five stories, the time needed would have much more so I decided to limit it to four stories.

Sunil: How did you decide which story to not to use in the film?

Onir: The story I discarded, I was not too happy with the way it was shaping up. I felt that that story needed more space, it needed a full length film just for itself, to do justice to it.

Sunil: Among the four stories of "I am" - Afia, Megha, Abhimanyu and Omar, do you have a favourite?

Onir: I can't say! All the four are stories that I wanted to make into films. When it was difficult to get separate finance for each of them, I decided to make them together. Each part of the film has its own distinct character, mood and style, so each of them is special to me for a different reason.

Sunil: You were born in Bhutan, so that means you are a world citizen. From a family that is originally from Bangladesh, then born in Bhutan and now settled in India. Increasingly, we all have mixed roots and identities.

I have been to some Nepali refugee camps where they had persons who were thrown out of Bhutan, so I am aware of some of the issues involved in this. You have been a migrant. What does that mean to you?

Onir: My leaving Bhutan was linked to the Nepali exodus. My father was principle of a school where they had Nepali children. There ten Nepali students were arrested and next day they were found hanging. So my father resigned and moved to Kolkatta.

Though I was born and brought up in Bhutan, they decided that people who are not of Bhutanese origin, will be second class citizens in that country, so we had to decide what to do. I didn't want to be a second class Bhutanese citizen, I preferred to be Indian citizen. However, when I talk of home, in my mind, my home is the place in Bhutan where I was born and where I grew up.

Due to this reason the story of Megha in "I am" is very special to me, because it is about homelessness. When I came to Kolkatta, though I was a Bengali, I was an outsider. Then I went to Berlin, and there of course, I was even more of an outsider. Then I came and settled in Maharashtra, where language and other things make me a little outsider.

I agree with you that where ever you live becomes a home, and at the same time, you are always an outsider.

I have some very very good friends in Berlin from the days when I was a student there. So there I feel absolutely at home with them, and with them I don't feel that I am an outsider. But at the same time there are things - like the time when there was this bomb blast in London. I was travelling in Berlin in the S-Bahn and suddenly I realized that I was the only brown person on the train and everyone was looking at me. So it was a kind of strange feeling that I had.

But I also have such feelings in Bombay when ever there were those Maharasthrian things .. I travel a lot by local trains and I feel that if you don't know the local language, then the place is not as friendly. Where ever we are, at the time of conflicts you realize that you are an outsider.

Sunil: Did you ever go back to Bhutan?

Onir: That experience is what has influenced Megha's story in "I am". In the story she is back home after twenty years. I had gone back to Bhutan after about thirteen years. Emotionally it was a very exhausting period, to go to the same old house and find other persons staying there. At the same time, there are so many things from your memories that are still the same there. But after that one experience, I didn't want to go back there, because emotionally it was very painful.

Sunil: Salman Rushdie in one of his books had written about "imaginary homelands" that we emigrants carry in our hearts, but these homelands are only spaces in fantasies, because when you do go back, you realize that it is not the same place anymore.

When I go back to places of my childhood, the differences between the reality and my memories always strikes me. Like to go back and find that the "big square" of my memories is actually a narrow little space. Did that happen when you went back to Bhutan?

Onir: I realized that all my friends were gone and the few there were .. in Bhutan, people get married very early, so there were these old friends with three kids and I realized that our worlds had grown apart a lot.

When I went to our old house, I immediately spotted this tree, I loved gardening and I had planed that tree, to see it was very emotional, though it was a small thing. Then inside the house, where we had our fireplace, the hole above it for the smoke was still there, though they had shifted the fire place .. so there were so many small things that brought back old memories.

Sunil: Your decision to get in to films came at a time when the TV and media revolution had not yet taken place. So how did your family react to it?

Onir: My parents were keen that I become a doctor. They wanted one son to become a doctor and the other son to become an engineer. After school, I came to study in Kolkatta and my father got me admission in the science college. He was thinking that after the science college I will try to go to the medical college. After he went back, after one week I applied for a literature course in another college. I shifted there and only after my name was cut off from the science college, I told my father.

So first there was shock in the family that I was doing literature and arts. Then I started doing very well in literature so my father was happy, he started saying that I will become a professor. Then one week before the finals of my post-graduate course, I quit and came to Berlin to study cinema and that was another shock to them. They were worried that we had no connection in Bombay or in the film fraternity, and Bombay is a very family driven industry, so were worried.

When I managed to my first film, it took me ten years to do it in Bombay .. I knew that this was my goal. I also knew that it will take time, and I was patient. I never thought, oh my god, it is taking me so long, etc. I knew that I was going to do it. When they finally saw my film ... and even now, they know that I have zero savings, I don't have a house, I don't have a car, what ever I earn goes back into film making because that is what makes me happy .. but now I find that they are happy about my work and they share my happiness when my films get made. I know that they are worried, but they are also proud of me.

Sunil: Did their other son become an engineer?

Onir: Actually he went into research. He did do computer engineering, but he liked physics. He went to do physics at Presidency college and I know that my parents are very proud of him. He has recently won the highest award that a scientist can get in India. I don't remember the name of the award, but it was given by the Prime Minister of India, about one month ago. He is very well known in his field of work.

My parents never really pushed us .. and now they are happy about both of us.

Sunil: You said that they were happy when they saw your first film, but that film (My Brother Nikhil - MBN) had a theme that may not have been very easy for your parents?

Onir: I was also worried about their reaction .. regarding the sexuality issue. My mother called me from Kolkatta. I was in Bombay and she had just seen the movie and was in tears. And she said, "..but couldn't you get a better looking man opposite Sanjay?" (laughs) And my father said, "I was never so nasty as a father" (laughs) and I had to explain that film's father was not you. Their reaction was very interesting.

About my dad, I was very moved because I had gone to New York for a screening of MBN and at the same time there was the first GLBT film festival in Kolkatta and my father went there. He went up on the stage and said, "I am very happy that you are giving him an award but I would rather you all paid a ticket and went to see the film in cinema theatre and not to see it free here."

Sunil: Actually when I had seen MBN, though it was a daring theme in Indian cinema, I had also thought that to show he is gay with a very strict authoritarian father was a kind of stereotyping. Another thing that had struck me was in terms of film's structure, I had thought that it very similar to an American film called "Jia" with Angelina Jolie.

Onir: It is interesting that you are pointing this out because people have compared MBN with Philadelphia. They were on the similar theme, but in terms of films structure, MBN was inspired from "Jia". I had been thinking, how do I make this film when I don't have much budget, how to tell this story. From "Jia", I got the idea of docu-fiction, though the idea that people are talking about a person, whom they had loved and who is dead ...

Sunil: I had felt that "Jia", though similar in structure, differed from MBN in an important aspect. In the sense that in "Jia", each person talking about the character played by Angelina Jolie presents a very different person, it was as if she showed a different aspect of her personality to different people, while in MBN, the vision of Nikhil by the different people was really similar...

Onir: Yes, we didn't take any story idea from other films, we just took the idea of docu-fiction and other persons talking about Nikhil, mainly his sister talking about him ...

Sunil: You have also been a song-designer for "Daman". What does that mean, to be a song-designer?

Onir: I had first done some song editing for Kalpana (Lajmi) and it was my first film work. When she started "Daman", she asked me to be the editor and it was my first film as an editor. For me it was an important step to get into films. I had liked her "Rudaali" and "Ek pal". As an editor I wanted to be on the sets and see what was happening, even if most editors don't do that. I knew that I wanted to be a director, so I wanted to see and learn as much as possible. So when she asked me, "Do you want to come" I said, "Of course and I will give whatever help I can give".

She knew that I had a sense of the music, so she asked me, "Do you want to direct the songs" as she didn't have money for a choreographer. I immediately said yes.

Before that I had already produced two music albums with Pritam. I had brought Pritam in film industry. Even there, he was composing the songs while I was a kind of song designer. There are different elements in the songs, and a song designer influences how those elements shape up, there were a lot of discussions and I was also involved in those. Decisions like what kind of singers, how many singers, what kind of instrumentation, what kind of song, etc. So I was part of the song design.

In "Daman" I was involved not only in the process of music recording, I also went on the sets and started shooting the songs. This experience with Kalpana was great because she had a small unit. Most of the assistants there were working on the film as a job, but they didn't have the passion. I was waking up early, I used to go to the sets take care of the art, check the costumes, etc. I didn't want more money but I wanted to learn as much as possible from all the different departments. So that when the time came for me to my film, I will be less dependent upon others.

Sunil: There was an interview of another person from south, who has worked with you on "I am" ..

Onir: Sandip

Sunil: In this interview, he had said that you are very well organized and you plan every thing in advance. Do you think that you are a "perfectionist" kind of person who wants to control every thing?

Onir: It is more about planning .. I have always been the producer of my films. And I have always made my films with extremely tight budgets. "I am" was shot in 24 days and MBN was shot in 28 days. For me planning and preparation means that I am not sitting on the sets wondering what to do next, what shot to take, etc. All that has already been planned and on the sets, I do a lot of home work. On the sets, I spend more time with my actors to prepare them for the scene.

Money and time are important resources, it is extremely important to respect what you have and to get the best out of it. For this self-discipline, I thank my Berlin days. Discipline is something I learned there.

Sunil: You also did some work for Ram Gopal Varma?

Onir: I did editing of some promos for his film "Bhoot". It was a nightmare working for him but any way ..

Sunil: I think that it is appropriate that working on a theme like Bhoot (ghosts), you have nightmares .. but my question is about other film makers and how they have influenced you?

Onir: I don't have an icon or an idol. I love the works of lot of different people who are good film makers, ... but the person who really inspired me to get into films was an experience when I was very young. It was because of the images from that film that stayed with me, very strong imagery that made me dream and want to become a part of films. That was Shyam Benegal and the film was Junoon. I was really young at that time and I didn't understand so much, but the visual impact was so strong that it made me desire to become part of the films ..

Sunil: Junoon was good .. I remember its premier at Chanakya in Delhi, where Shyam Benegal had come with Shabana Azmi and Deepti Naval... I read some where that you have some three old scripts and you are working on one of them with NFDC?

Onir: It was my first script and now I am reviewing it .. NFDC has been a partner in developing that script and I am planning to make it after "I am".

Sunil: Are there other old film scripts that are waiting to be made into films or are they part of a development process?

Onir: They are not ready for developed into films .. they keep on getting modified. I always keep on writing. I can't sit idle. When I am waiting for something, I will start writing. I write new scripts, I develop ideas, may be some of them will some day become films, may be not ..

Sunil: I wish you would make a musical. I like the music of your films. I loved the music in MBN.

Onir: MBN was at Milan GLBT film festival and it won the audience choice award. I remember the next day, a group of Italian men came to me and started singing "Le chalo ..", it really touched me.

Sunil: OK Onir, thanks for this interview. I really enjoyed talking to you.

Rahul Bose - Florence Interviews (2)

Rahul Bose, 43 years old, is known for his subtle and understated roles in many films such as Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, The Japanese Wife, Shourya, etc. He had directed "Everybody says I am fine" and is supposed to direct, "Moth smoke" (based on a book by Mohsin Ahmed). He has also played in the Indian national Rugby team for many years.

I had the opportunity to meet and interview Bose during the River to River film festival in Florence (Italy) in December 2010. In the festival there was four of his films - Split wide open, Every body says I'm fine, The Japanese wife and I am. I had spoken to him before "I am" was shown in the festival.

Here is a transcript of my talk with him, that focused mainly on his work with voluntary organisations and only briefly touched some issues related to his films.
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Sunil: I am curious about your role in Onir's "I Am". I know the screen play of "I am" because I did the Italian subtitles of of that film. It has four stories - Afie, Megha, Abhimanyu and Omar. In which of these four stories you play a role?

Rahul: I am in "Omar" but I am not Omar, I have the other guy's role.

Sunil: Can you say something about this role?

Rahul: This part deals with homosexuality, related to the judgement on the abolition of section 377, which decriminalized homosexuality in India. My part of the film looks at that. It looks at life before the judgement and after the judgement. It is about the discrimination and terror inflicted on homosexuals.

Sunil: This is not your first time with Onir, you were also there in "Bas ek pal"?

Rahul: No, this is my first time with Onir.

Sunil: I read your article in Tehalka magazine a few months ago, about raising funds through an auction. Then I also read about some work that you did in leading a group of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Bombay.

Rahul: That was the "group of groups". We had formed it after the tragedy of 26/11 so that we could get together and speak with one voice to the Government. There were a lot of groups that were speaking at that time, but we were all speaking with different voices. So our attempt was to get everyone together. We had worked very hard and in the end we had 52 groups under one umbrella. But like all things, the work needed to keep something like this going on, is so tremendous that after about 6 months, it fell apart.

Sunil: What kind of things this group was trying to achieve?

Rahul: So many issues linked to 26/11, like asking for police reforms ..

Sunil: In the sense of the outcry that happened after 26/11?

Rahul: Yes, but we wanted to give it a more secular and tempered response, by looking ahead and not reacting in a knee-jerk manner by blaming people and other nations unnecessarily. So it's aim was to try to speak in one voice and to speak in a temperate reasonable voice as citizens of a city that wants to say things to the Government ..

Sunil: But the kind of things that are allowed to happen in Bombay, they are so negative, and where Government does not step in, it does not do anything to stop those groups .. so what can you expect from that kind of Government?

Rahul: Whatever the Governments do or don't do in Maharashtra, it is important that they are made aware that there is an active citizenry that is watching, controlling and is going to speak about it. Just doing that is important. I am not saying that it made a big difference, but our idea was to tell them that we are here, we are listening and watching, and that we are angry. We want good governance.

We don't need 26/11 to ask for better governance. The city has had a very patchy record of good governance. Politically it is a hot bed.

Sunil: Tell me about your foundation.

Rahul: My foundation is called "The Foundation". I was raising money for this foundation through India's first sports' auction. We had 25 pieces from 25 Indian world champions, and we raised money for the foundation.

Sunil: What does the Foundation do?

Rahul: It has two initiatives - REACH and HEAL.

REACH is about restoring equality though education for advancement of children. We have given scholarships to 6 children in Andaman and Nicobar islands, to study at the Rishi Valley school outside Bangalore. The idea is to empower children, who otherwise would never leave their communities. They are getting education at a world class institution, so that they can one day get into mainstream of India's economic life and hopefully they will also take their learnings to their communities, or they can go anywhere in the world. But we never see anyone from Andaman Nicobar in any jobs in mainland India. So it is my wish that these children will become a bridge between people.

But there are different ways to do it and there are different questions. One way could be to build world class schools in Andaman and Nicobar, but then that won't really bring those children out of Andaman to go to the rest of India and become part of mainstream economic life.

Now we are looking at supporting children from another part of the country that is also disfranchised, we want to send children from there to world class schools. The schools have to be chosen carefully and the entire thing takes almost a year to be organised.

The other initiative is HEAL - help eradicate abuse through learning. It is about sexual abuse of children. 53% of all Indian children have some kind of sexual abuse.

Sunil: What kind of data you looked up on this issue? It sounds huge, like almost every second person in India is sexually abused?

Rahul: It is a police data, and it is absolutely shocking. Like most other countries, these are hidden statistics.

Sunil: How long you have been involved in the NGO work? How did it start?

Rahul: I have been involved in it since 2002, after the Gujarat riots. At that time, I began to work with a gender based NGO in Mumbai called Aksharma that worked together with Muslim girls and some Hindu girls, mainly dalits. The idea was to educate them with values of secularism and to empower them slowly, slowly expand their social orthodoxies so that they could attain some kind of status in their communities.

Sunil: This kind of involvement in different issues, has it changed the way you look at those issues, between 8 years ago when you started and today?

Rahul: Yes, completely. I went into it with good intentions but with little knowledge. As you start to understand how social orthodoxies work, you start to respect the need to change things very slowly without antagonising the other side. For example, you don't want to antagonise the men in a girl's family. She has to go back and live with them, so it has to be done in a way that creates consensus, slowly. There can't be gender equality without men.

One learns, especially in India, that there are complex problems within the problems. It could be income, it can be health. You suddenly realize that the woman can't go out of the house because she is not well, she does not get right kind of food. India is a deeply humbling place, you think that you know things, but you don't. You start appreciating that to bring about any change, you need a long long time and it is never permanent, you always have to go back and look.

Sunil: The children you are supporting in Andman and Nicobar, they come from indigenous families?

Rahul: No, only one of them is half tribal. Out of 550,000 persons in Andmans and Nicobar, only about 35,000 are tribal and so there are about 8,000 tribal children. Rest of the persons came there in different waves of migration. All the children that we support come from modest socio-economic backgrounds.

Sunil: I am asking so many questions about your NGO work, because I work in a NGO too, an organisation that deals with persons affected with leprosy and disabled persons. I just came back from Guwahati, two days ago.

Rahul: I became familiar with Andamans after the tsunami. I made 23 trips there over a period of two and a half years, to organise relief and rehabilitation. I was representing a network of organisations called the Solidarity Initiative. We managed to do a few concrete things on the ground and it was satisfying.

Sunil: So many issues you are talking about and specifically in terms of secularism, how did you get there? What made you think about these issues in these terms?

Rahul: I think that part of it is do with the way I grew up. My family, the city, the milieu .. Bombay, where I grew up .. my friends - like I never asked why Nasir was Muslim, Vinay was a U.P. Brahmin, Cyrus was a Parsi. They were and remain my childhood friends. At that time, in our upscale economic circle, religion didn't play an important role. But it changed in 1992, when there was popular religious resurgence from all sides ..

Sunil: After the Babri Masjid thing?

Rahul: Not just that, it happened on all sides. Today we also have Christian fundamentalism, we have Hindu terror. You can see that today terror is polarised along religious lines.

Sunil: Let us leave this line of discussion, and to conclude, let me go back to the films. Your image has been that of an understated kind of actor, so I was a little surprised when I had seen "Split wide open", it was pleasant kind of surprise that you can play loud characters also.

Rahul: Thanks.

Sunil: Among all the roles that you have played, have there been characters that you didn't like becoming? Characters that made you feel uneasy?

Rahul: It was my role in Thakshak.

Sunil: The villain's role?

Rahul: It took me to some ugly places in my heart and I was afraid to be that ruthless psychopath, a complex person. It was very different, mentally very different from me as a person. Even the character in "Everybody says I'm fine" was very challenging.

Sunil: What was your role in "Everybody says I'm fine", I had seen it long time ago and I don't remember it.

Rahul: I was the actor who has no work, a flamboyant character who wears all kinds of weird clothes. And, all his lies about how successful he is. (Smiling) In real life, I am not very successful, but I don't lie about it.

Sunil: But you are successful, especially in your own particular kind of cinema.

Rahul: Yes, I am happy.

Sunil: You also had some mainstream films. But were they not commercially successful?

Rahul: Hardly any of my films have been commercially successful! Perhaps Shourya, Chameli, Pyar ke side effects and Jhankar Beats had some commercial success. Two of my Bengali films, Antaheen and Anuranan had success in Calcutta, they ran for 100 days.

Sunil: And you are recognised as a good actor ..

Rahul: So I am happy ..

Sunil: OK, thanks Rahul for this chat. I greatly enjoyed it.

Note
I think that I was too much taken up by his work with NGOs that I forgot to ask all other things. Yet, I am happy that I spoke to him about NGO work and other social issues. He came across as a sensible and articulate person.

If I had more time, I would liked to talk more about their scholarship for poor children from marginalised groups such as from Andaman and Nicobar islands. I would liked to share ideas and experiences of organisations that I have visited in many countries that are concerned about making sure that children from marginalised groups are not made to feel ashamed about their original cultures and that strive to keep strong links between the children and their original communities.

I also wanted to know more about his parents, his schools, the things that influenced and molded him as a person, but there was no time for it.

If you have not read his Tehlaka article, I suggest that you read it. He writes really well.

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