The Kashmir Story

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been reading about the film “The Kashmir Files”, its box-office success, its impact and the heated discussions it has generated. Perhaps, after a few weeks, it might become available on some streaming platform and then I will be able to watch it, though I am not sure that I will – from what I have read, it has some very graphic violence and I have no stomach for watching violence.

However, reading about “The Kashmir Files” has reminded me of another film about Kashmir and the Kashmiri Pandits – the film was “I Am” (2010), and it was directed by Onir. I think that it was a good film that merited greater attention. I had translated its subtitles into Italian, when it was shown at the River-to-River film festival in Florence.

The Kashmir Story in “I Am”

“I Am” was an anthology of four short films, loosely connected with each other. Among those four stories, the Kashmir short film was the second story of the film. It had beautiful performances by Juhi Chawla as Megha, a Kashmiri Pandit, and Manisha Koirala as Rubina, as her childhood Kashmiri Muslim friend.

This part of the film started with Megha’s journey to Srinagar to sell her house. Rubina comes to the airport to pick her up and is happy to see her old friend. Megha is by turns, angry and anguished, at the memories the return has brought back. She is unwilling to give in to romantic nostalgia about the city, and maintains some distance from her friend.

During the 24 hours of Megha’s stay in Srinagar, there are only a few scattered moments of nostalgia for her childhood home. A visit to the ruins of her uncle’s home who was killed by neighbours, brings back the memories of her terror of those days when they had abandoned their home and ran away to the refugee camp.

An encounter with a group of youth on the road, brings out that the story of the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits has been changed and retold by the locals. In this new retelling, they were the cowards and villains, who had run away from the valley.

At the same time, Megha’s dispersion of her father’s ashes in the river, brings out the attachment of older generations for Kashmir and their dreams about the day when they will return to their original homes.

Those 24 hours also show Rubina’s changed life in the Kashmir valley – she is lonely, living closed at home and is unmarried, while the guy she used to love has left India. Her brother, who had become a militant, has repented and come home, but is disabled and a shell of his former self. Police comes to their home frequently to check because they are a militant family. The city is divided by barbed wires and check-points, which gets deserted as the evening falls and people rush to their homes.

Megha’s righteous anger and resentment at the fate of Kashmiri Pandits, has one final moment of push back from Rubina. A brief exchange between the two friends, brings out the tragedy of changed lives of Kashmiri Muslims, especially those of the women and youth. The awareness that in the end there were no victors among the ordinary persons on the two sides plants a little seed of mutual understanding.
Impact of “I Am”

“I Am” was a film dealing with other difficult themes along with the Kashmir story. Perhaps that is why its Kashmiri section did not receive proper attention. It had a strong impact on me because in the process of doing its Italian subtitles, I had spent a lot of time with each of its scenes.

This part of the film gave precedence to the view-point a Kashmiri Pandit. It was shot in dark and drab colours. It showed a Srinagar of barbed wires, road-blocks and sad people, and not the romantic town of lake and gardens from 1980’s Bollywood.

The whole sequence of Megha visiting the ruins of her killed uncle’s house, had a very strong impact on me. Its background score was filled with the shouts of slogans by angry people asking all kaffirs to leave Kashmir or be killed. I could identify with her refusal of Rubina’s sympathy, when she responds, “Don’t worry, I am not going to cry”.

The film also shows the impact of the events on the other side, through Rubina’s family. They have also suffered and continue to suffer due to the militants on one hand and Indian army on the other. However, I felt that it was more difficult to empathise with them, because their pain was closely linked to issues related to militancy and its violence.

For example, there was a sequence when Megha is accompanied by Rubina’s mother to a neighbourhood shop for buying saffron. The elderly shop-owner remembers that he had accompanied Megha’s pregnant mother to the hospital when she was born. However, their discussion also brings out that it was that same person’s son who had killed Megha’s uncle and later, died as a militant. Megha comes back from the shop full of indignation – “You only had that shop to take me, whose son had killed my uncle?” she asks bitterly.

While I could see the dismay, regret and frustration on the faces of the local Kashmiris, I also had a feeling at the back of my mind that “it was their sons and families who did it”! I think that is the biggest difficulty when we look at victims of Islamic terror, that we are less willing to acknowledge the pain of its Muslim victims.

The Elephant in the Room

I remember talking to Onir in Florence about the Kashmir portion of the film, expressing my appreciation and saying that it was a great pity that this episode of our recent history had been allowed to be forgotten.

To write this post, I watched again the Kashmir portion of “I Am”. I think that there is an aspect of the Kashmir situation which had remained untouched in the film – the rise of more conservative Islam which was linked with militancy. Traditionally, the Kashmiri Islam has been moderate and open, and it had a history of a peaceful co-existence with Hinduism. Over the past couple of decades, the more conservative version of Islam has become more common, but its role and significance in the Kashmiri Pandits' exodus was never mentioned in the film.

Whose sufferings need acknowledgement?

As far as I understand about the events in Kashmir, the problems worsened with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 1979. To counter that the Americans started supplying money and arms to Mujahideen through Pakistan, which contributed to strengthening of the more conservative ideas of Islam in the region and reached Kashmir through Pakistani militants in the 1980s. Apart from the militants, it impacted different groups of persons, such as -Militants from Pakistan along with radicalised Kashmiri youth killed many Kashmiri Pandits and provoked their mass exodus in late 1980s and early 1990s.

Militants and hardliners from Pakistan along with their companions in Kashmir started killing moderate Kashmiri Muslims and those seen as sympathetic or collaborating with India, starting from early 1990s and continuing even now. Around 7000 Kashmiri “political opponents” have been killed, though some say that the Kashmiri victims have been many times more. They specifically target the intellectuals and they can abduct or rape their families.

Since the 1990s, Indian army has been fighting the Kashmiri separatists and militants and once again, a large number of victims have been reported, not only among the militants, but also among the civilians. The army rule has also affected general life.

Each of these groups have their own stories to share. I have read of Kashmiri Pandit families weeping at the shows of The Kashmir File - they are happy that finally their sufferings have been acknowledged through cinema. Onir’s film “I Am” did not show that violence directly, it focused on its aftermath.

I think that one of the good films about the impact of army in Kashmir was Shaurya (2008), which touched upon the human right abuses.

Stories about the situation in Kashmir involve different and complex issues. The views of the Islamic hardliners and militants may not be acceptable or understandable for most of us. However, I think that our cinema needs to explore these different areas and view-points so much more. For example, little is known about the violence against moderate Muslims in Kashmir and it would also benefit from a greater exploration in literature and cinema.

The Angry Indians

There are some persons on the Social Media, whom I call the "Angry Indians". They can be broadly divided into 2 main groups. One group is of persons who claim that they are trying to safeguard Indian culture and Hinduism. Often they have furious fights amongst themselves and some of them are full of hate. They often act in ways contrary to the beliefs they claim to defend.

The other group of that of persons who define themselves as progressives or liberals. They claim that they are trying to safeguard India's plurality and diversity. However, their main aim seems to be to counter BJP-Modi, and they are not really concerned about anything else. Like the first group, often they also act in ways contrary to the beliefs they claim to defend.

I call these 2 groups, the Hindu Cultural Warriors and the Progressive Cultural warriors. They are also co-dependent on each other, creating spaces for their fights and constantly, feeding-off each-other. Here are some recent examples of issues around which they fight.

India Versus South Asia

Recently the American vice-president Kamala Harris greeted the "South Asians" on the Holi festival and the Hindu Warriors erupted in protests. Don't you know that Holi is a festival only of Hindus of India, they asked. They don't like to be grouped together with India's neighbours, especially with Pakistan. On the other hand, Prograssive Warriors love using the term South Asia, I think mostly because Western progressives like it and even more, because they know that the other group hates it.

I need to confess that I am partial to Kamala Harris, since she has my mother's name, but my defense of the term "South Asian" has nothing to do with her name. I feel that the term "South Asian" acknowledges the common cultural identity of what was once known as Indian subcontinent. It is an identity which is shaped mostly by Indian culture, by its tradition of creating and accepting, even encouraging, blurred boundaries between the religions and its basic idea of "all the different paths lead to the same God".

All countries of South Asia have some Hindu, Sikh, Jain and Buddhists - in India and Nepal as majorities and in other countries as minorities. So wishing "Happy Holi" to all the people of these countries, did not seem like a bad thing to me and I can't understand why the Hindu Warriors don't like the term South Asians.

I can understand if conservative persons of other religions in "South Asia" resent Harris' greetings, because that is happening in some parts of the world. For example, there are many persons in Europe who get offended if you wish them for festivals which do not belong to their religions (for example, some Muslims get offended by the widespread Christian symbols in public spaces around Christmas and Easter times. So they are coming out with ideas like hiding Christmas trees in private spaces and saying "Season's greetings" instead of "Happy Christmas").

However, in India, festivals of all the religions are holidays for everyone and I have grown up in an environment where we wished everyone for all the festivals. For example, we always said "Happy Eid" or "Happy Gurupurab" and not "Happy Eid to Muslims" and "Happy Gurupurab for the Sikhs". So, if Harris is treating all South Asians as "people who celebrate Holi", why should the Hindu Warriors get offended? They should be jumping with joy!

Indian Festivals

Another issue which often leaves me confused is when Hindu Warriors get offended if someone dares to say anything about an Indian festival. I can understand the irritation about the extreme positions of some Progressives, who may be motivated by virtue-signalling - for example, their calls for "water saving" at Holi or for not making bonfires on Lohri and Holi. I can also understand the irritation because Progressives seem to focus only on Hindu festivals. However, I don't see the need to feel offended if someone says that Deewali can be hazardous for environmental pollution or the Durga and Ganesh statues pollute our rivers and lakes - I think that we need to look at these seriously and search for solutions.

Compared to other religions, Hinduism is not bound by any one book or any one tradition, so it is easier for us to question our old cultural practices and start new ones. For example, over past decade, I have seen different variations about the way we celebrate Rakhi, the festival in which sisters tie a rakhi on their brothers' wrists. Now, for promoting greater inclusion, some of our family celebrates it by sisters tying rakhis on the wrists of both, their brothers and their wives; and, at Karvachauth, both husbands and wives together keep fast. If we can change our rituals and practices according to the changing times, it is good for us as a community, and is certainly better than to remain with outdated practices and ideas.

Therefore, if the fire-crackers of Deewali cause horrendous increases in pollution and problems for people with breathing difficulties, especially in the big cities, and there are calls to limit their use, why should that be seen as an attack on Hinduism? IMO, it does not matter that traffic or industry or crop-burning are more polluting. On Deewali evenings, even 30-40 years ago, when traffic and other kinds of pollution were much less than today, the doctors' clinics used to be full of people with asthma attacks and breathing difficulties. I can vouch for it because I practiced medicine in Delhi in the 1980s and saw it every year. So why can't we use this opportunity to find alternative joyful and fun ways to celebrate Deewali? BTW, even Europe has campaigns around Christmas and New Year to limit the use of fire-crackers.

If chemical-based colours used in Holi can cause skin allergies or dermatitis, they also end up in our sewage waters and rivers. Our rivers and lakes are usually in terrible shape at festival-times. Use of chemical colours painted on the Durga and Ganesh statues, are bad for our environment in the same way. The answer for Hindu Warriors should not be to shout about these as "attacks on Hinduism" but to think of how to promote a wider use of plant-based natural colours. If we can promote our local artisans and organic colours' and dyes' industries by doing that, it will be even better. It can become an economic opportunity and also in line with our scriptures, which ask for the respect of nature.

BTW, the fun of Holi and the joy of covering people's faces and clothes with colours is increasingly finding emulators in Europe. Vicenza, the provincial town near which I live, has been organising "Holi celebrations" during summers, where it is an opportunity for people to drink, dance and play with colours.

Hinduism - Hinduttva

Many of the Hindu Warriors are promoting a version of Hinduttva which seems to be inspired by the ultra-conservatives of Christianity and Islam. Progressive Warriors are their partners in this, they also agree that Hinduttva means only that and nothing else. In fact for Progressives, the word Hinduttva belongs only to BJP, so they are fighting against it (they also think that the colour saffron belongs only to BJP and it should not be used).

I personally think that the word "Hinduttva" or the "essence of Hinduism" can not be reduced to only one meaning. Hinduism has developed along thousands of streams of ideas and practices across different parts of India, which have a lot in common and at the same time, an incredible amount of variations. Thus, if our ideas about Hinduism are infinite, the meanings of Hinduttva should also be infinite. So, why do we accept to let the idea of Hinduttva be hijacked by these 2 groups?

IMO, a wide public debate on the meaning of Hinduttva would be beneficial to India. It might help us to understand which cultural values are shared by the majority of Hindus and by majority of Indians. Though I don't think that we shall ever reach a consensus, this discussion would be useful. Probably, this commonly shared idea of Hinduttva would be closer to the results of the PEW survey in 2021 on the Religions of India. This survey report had shown that in spite of different religions, most Indians hold similar common beliefs. The "common shared cultural values of India" should be valued and safeguarded. Such an understanding of Hinduttva will be forged by the encounters of different religions of India and it will acknowledge the blurred boundaries between the religions, as one of its key characteristics.

The more conservatives among the Hindu Warriors do not accept anything except their ideas about traditions of Hinduism. At the same time, the ideas of blurred religious boundaries and common traditions shared across religious diversities are increasingly non-acceptable also to Progressives. They often talk about India's past and how it gave a home to persecuted minorities of the world, to cry about the lost Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb and the lost traditions of accepting religious diversities in ancient India. However, for today's world they do not want to look at the norms and processes governing the acceptance of other religions in India's past. Instead, they would like to follow the ideas of secularism developed in the west, which are based on separation of religious identities. In India, the Progressive Warriors seem most concerned about how to safeguard the more conservative ideas of minority religions. I personally feel that the ideas of identity-politics developed in the west are problematic for a harmonious multi-cultural living in India because they destroy the blurred religious boundaries which has been a fundamental characteristics of Indian cultural world. For the same reason, Progressives defend maintaining separate specific laws for minority religions and fight the idea of common civil code.

Insulting Religions

Some of the Hindu Warriors are always looking for people insulting Hinduism, to fight with them. If you use a Sanskrit verse from a Veda in a rock-song or if you print the picture of a Hindu God on a bag or god-forbid, a pair of shoes or underwear, they are waiting to rise up and start a campaign to destroy you. The Progressive Warriors are willing to overlook all insults to Hinduism but are very careful in making sure that you do not insult the minority religions.

I think that the idea of "insulting God" is stupid because it does not fit in with the basic ideas of Hinduism, which include the belief that God is within each of us. "Aham Brahm asmi", "Aham Shivam asmi", "So Hum" - all mean "I am" or that "God is inside me". In Shrimad Bhagvad Geeta, Krishna shows his Virat Roopa to Arjuna to explain that he is there in every particle of this universe. These fundamental ideas should guide Hindus to the respect of nature and respect of every human being.

So, how can anyone justify killings in the name of Gods or religion if one believes in this teaching? If one believes that God is inside every being, how can anyone justify discrimination towards any person because of his caste or his religion? And, once you accept that God is there in every particle of the universe, how can anyone offend God?

Recently, I had read about people being killed in Punjab for "offending" the Sikh sacred book Guru Granth Sahib. I wondered if they had forgotten the story of Guru Nanak's travel to Mecca? The story says that some men complained that Guru Nanak was sleeping with his feet pointing towards Mecca and thus offending God. So, Guru Nanak told them, shift my feet towards another direction where there is no God. The story says that in which ever direction they shifted Guru Nanak's feet, Mecca appeared on that side. Therefore, the idea of Sikhs who get offended because someone disrespects their holy book and kill those persons, seems incomprehensible to me.

It is a pity that such messages of "offending God" are also spoken by people wearing saffron, who talk of beheadings and killings. Their saffron clothes should signify spirituality and learning. Yet, they can refuse the temple drinking water to a thirsty boy, because he belongs to another religion and say that they are defending Hinduism. How can they defend Hinduism if they do not believe in the ideas contained in the Veda and Upanishads?

IMO, Progressives have facilitated this rise in the Hindu chauvinism by closing their eyes to similar ideas and practices of conservatives of minority religions by suggesting that only the majority bigotry matters. Every time, there is violence or aggression involving persons of different religions, it seems that the Progressive speak out only if victims are from the minority religions.

In The End

The Hindu cultural warriors are convinced that if they don't save Hinduism then it is in great danger. The progressive cultural warriors believe that the problems lies only with the Hindu chauvinists and they are blameless. The thinking of both the groups is a problem.

Fortunately, in spite of everything, life goes on. I have great faith in common Indians, as shown by the findings of the PEW survey. I think that in spite of all the mutual hate expressed by the two groups, common Indians will find the right balance and a way to go forward.

Day before yesterday was 23rd March, the birthday of Doctor Saheb (Dr Ram Manohar Lohia), the iconic socialist leader, whose ideas had so much impact on me as a child. Today it is 25 March, the day on which papa had died 47 years ago at the age of 47. He was an associate of Doctor Saheb. If he was alive today, he would have been 94. Even after so many years, I miss him. I think that I would have loved to talk about the subject of this post to him and to Doctor Saheb - though I am not sure if they would have agreed with me!

Four Books from 2021

It has been some time since I wanted to write about a few books, and now I had four of them to talk about. The four books I wanted to talk about are - "Away with the Penguins" by Hazel Prior, "Bonnie Jack" by Ian Hamilton, "City of Vengeance" by D. V. Bishop and "The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict" by Trenton Lee Stewart. They are very different books, they belong to different genre but they also had something in common - I finished all of them without leaving them aside for days and without skipping any parts! Unfortunately, as the years pass, I tend to get bored with books very easily and I either leave them halfway or skip parts of them. It happens even with the books of authors whom I used to love till recently.

I wonder if it could be due to an over-consumption of books? I have been reading every day since I was 6-7 years old - without reading, my day seems incomplete. I read mainly in English, Hindi and Italian but at times I have read in French and Portuguese as well. There was a time when I read everything and used to think that if they had printed something on the toilet paper, probably I would have read that too. But lately, I get tired of most books very easily and they need to have something special to keep me going.

Warning - Spoiler alert - If you want to read any of these 4 books, be aware that this post may have some minor spoilers. If you hate the spoilers, perhaps you will be better off reading these books and then come here to check why I liked them!

Away with the Penguins by Hazel Prior

The best way to classify this book will be to call it a "feel-good" book. It is an optimistic book in which everything ends well, including an old lady who end up in a scientific laboratory in the North Pole.
It is the story of Veronica McCreedy, a rich old lady, who is disappointed by the meeting with her long-lost weed-smoking and loser-looking grandson, and who then decides to leave her inheritance for the welfare of penguins. However, before making the final decision about her testament, she wants to be sure that penguin research is useful, so she decides to verify it personally by visiting the arctic laboratory involved in doing penguin research.

It is a simple book with some twists. It made me smile and even laugh occasionally, and most important, it kept me engaged. I liked the characters of the old lady as well as that of her grandson.

In some way this book reminded me of the Italian film "Quo Vado?" with the actor Checco Zalone, which I had seen a couple of years ago. I like Checco Zalone and his films. So if you like reading "Away with the Penguins", you might follow it up with watching "Quo Vado?" of Checco Zalone, which does not have penguins and is about the Italian obsession with a permanent job contract in some state office - it was partly located in a scientific laboratory in the Arctic.

Bonnie Jack by Ian Hamilton

Ian Hamilton is a Canadian mystery writer. However "Bonnie Jack" is not a mystery book, instead it is inspired by the real story of his father. It is about a boy called Jack in Dublin Ireland, who is taken one day to a cinema hall by his mother and sister and while he watches the film, his mother and sister go to the toilet and never come back. The abandoned boy is adopted by an American couple and leaves Ireland. Many decades later, when he is a rich man and father of grown-up children, he decides to go back to Ireland to look for his sister and his mother.

Back in Ireland, Jack meets his sister and finds out that their mother is dead. He also finds out that when he was abandoned, his mother was pregnant and later, she had twins. She had run away from an alcoholic and violent husband. He also meets his father, who is still alcoholic and violent.

In the book, he does not like the person his elder sister has grown up to be - she is bitter, lonely and poor. Instead, he becomes good friends with his twin siblings and decides to ignore and not have any contact with that sister. I did not like it that he decides to ignore his sister, who was as much a victim as he was, though in a different way. She also had to live with the guilt of having abandoned her boy brother.

It has been a few months that I had read this book and every time I think of it, I feel a little angry at him, for not trying to build a relationship with that sister or at least be kind to her. So while I liked this book, it is here in this list because it is struck in my throat like a fish-bone. Every time I think about it, I feel bad about Jack's sister. Since it is based on a real story, I can't seem to let it go.

City of Vengeance by D. V. Bishop

It is a historical fiction book set in the renaissance-period Florence. The book is about the 3 men of the Medici family - Alessandro, Lorenzino and Cosimo. The history books say that Alessandro was killed on the day of epiphany, 6 January 1537. When I used to live in Bologna, I had been to Florence numerous times and loved visiting that city. In those days, I had heard the story about Alessandro while visiting the Medici buildings. However, Bishop's book brings to life the Florence of that period through two murder mysteries about a Jewish money-lender and a transvestite young man, who are killed in two separate incidents.

Thus, the book focuses on what it meant to be Jewish and to be gay in medieval Florence. The two murders are connected to the conspiracy for the killing of Alessandro de Medici, but the focus of the story is the investigation by Captain Cesare Aldo, who is charged with finding the killer of the Jew moneylender, while he tries to hide that he is gay and in love with a Jewish doctor.

It was a very interesting read - I finished the second half of this book in one long sitting, staying awake till late night. Knowing the places described in the book and having heard the story of murder of Alessandro de Medici, made it a wonderful history lesson, while enjoying it as a murder mystery.

Looking at Florence and the reign of Alessandro de Medici, under the benevolent hand of the Pope and fears of popular uprising of those who want the republic on one hand, and seeing the city through the eyes of the poor and marginalised including the prostitutes and gays, gives an understanding of the political machinations of that period which is impossible in the dry tomes of history. I am not sure if it is very accurate, but it is certainly interesting.

I wish there was a Hindi writer who could write about the Indian history in the way Bishop has written "City of Vengeance". There were 2 historical books in Hindi, which I had read this year - "Akbar" by Shazi Zaman (translated from English) and "Maurya Samrat" by Rajendra Mohan Bhatnagar, but TBH, I didn't find them very engaging.

The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict by Trenton Lee Stewart

This is a fantasy book for young people. I don't like fantasy books and I don't read books for teenagers, so actually I was not even supposed to open it, much less read it. However, I liked its title very much and started reading it without checking for more information about it. It has a crisp and clean writing style, which caught me straightaway. It is supposed to be the prequel of a series of books, which already have 3-4 books in it. Mr. Nicholas Benedict is shown as an old man in those books while in this book, it shows him as a young boy and is about how he became the venerable Nicholas Benedict of the later books.

I liked the lesson which this book gave against bullying and also about using intellect to fight the bullies. After finishing it, I was tempted to read the other books of this series, but I am not sure if I would do it.

If you have a teenager and you need to buy a gift for him/her, I strongly recommend this book. Try to buy it some days in advance and read it before giving it away. It is a real pleasure.

To Conclude

This year, I had also liked reading a couple of thriller and adventure books, though I can't seem to remember their names or their authors. That happens to me often with thriller and action books - I read them happily, but a few days later, I forget them.

This year, I had heard a lot of praise for the book "Fresh Water for Flowers" by the French author Valerie Perrin. It was an ok kind of book but I was bored by parts of it and I had skipped them. I had also read about the Icelandic writer Ragnar Jonasson, but I have found his books to be too slow moving for my taste in mystery books. I have to thank our local library in Schio, which gives me an opportunity to read so many new writers and their books.

At the end of 2021, I am looking for suggestions about Hindi writers, that I can try reading in 2022. As I wrote above, I would love to find good historical fiction books in Hindi, like the books written by Rangey Raghav, Chatursen or even Narendra Kohli, in the post-independence period in India. So if there are any Hindi writers with good books on historical-fiction, do share information about them  in the comments below.

I am keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that this Covid-19 epidemic will not stop me from visiting India in 2022 and buying some Hindi books! While I am happy to order English and Italian books online (if I can't find them in our local library), but somehow I don't like to order Hindi books online - for buying them I like visiting the bookshops!

I like the idea of writing about the books which I liked, as a way of remembering that experience. During my life, I must have read hundreds, if not at least a couple of thousands of them and yet if you ask me, I may be able to tell you only about 30-40 of them. I like this idea of trying to remember the books I had read decades ago and see what I can come up with - may be I will write a post about it as well.

*****

#bookreviews #booksilikedin2021 #trentonleestewart #dvbishop #ianhamilton #hazelprior 

Favourites from 5th Paper-Made Art Biennial

"Papermade" is the biennial art exhibition focusing on paper-art held in Schio (VI) in the Veneto region of Italy. The 5th Papermade is going on now and can be visited on weekends and holidays till the end of February 2022. I love the idea of paper-art and I think that this years' exhibition has managed to bring together some great art works and is probably the best Papermade Art Exhibition so far! The exhibition is being held at Palazzo Fogazzaro in the city centre of Schio.

Different Italian cities hold art biennales, the most famous being the Venice biennale. Other art biennales are held in Florence, Milan, Rome and Salerno. Compared to those bigger cities, the biennale of Schio is smaller with about 80-100 art works but it is also unique in this region as it focuses only on paper art. Some other well known Paper-Art Biennales include the ones in Lucca (Italy), Shanghai (China) and Nantou (Taiwan).

I had started this post thinking that I will choose my favourite 10 art-works but there were just too many that I did not wish to leave out of this post. So in the end, I have chosen 20 (but I could have easily added another 10). Therefore, it is a long post with a lot of pictures. If you are one of the artists in the exhibition and you wish to get some pictures of your artwork, do let me know and I will be happy to send them to you.

Let me start with the work which is shown above. It combines drawing with collage, is titled "Girls eat the air with silver spoon" and is by an American artist of Cuban origins called Lisyanet Rodriguez. She wants her art to be "beautiful and disturbing simultaneously" and uses old dresses to cover "creatures that have several deformities, mutations, and hybrid bodies". Looking at Lisyanet's work in this exhibition, I thought that it beautifully captures the pressure on people, especially on women, to have thin bodies. Perhaps the title of the work also refers to other food-fads, ranging from keto and paleo-diets to vegans and no-glutens - I am not sure. This work was used on the banner of the Biennale.

I want to start my favourite artworks list with Anita Gratzer from Austria, who has an installation with 8 sculptures of paper-clothes in the central hall of Palazzo Fogazzaro. It is a very striking installation, using the papers of old texts to represent people and events. The image below shows the close-up of the sculpture called "Mantis Shogakai" and has a worship dress made from an old text about Kabuki and the inventory records of a sake factory in Onishi on the Japanese Washi-Paper. It represents the art and calligraphy gatherings of artists which were called Shagokai. She made this work when she was in Mantta in Finland. Thus, the title of the art-work bring together the spirit of Mantta and a 19th century Japanese tradition in this sculpture. Anita defines them as "wearables" which "function as mobile shelters of the fragile memory."

Sculptures by Carlo Pasini & Thomas Ashley

Papermade-5 has a few works of Thomas Ashley. In one exhibit his work on Linocut print forms the background to a very striking wounded tiger in cardboard and mixed materials by Carlo Pasini, which occupies a place of pride in the entrance hall of the exhibition. Pasini's tiger lies with its tummy up, in a vulnerable position, over an intricate linocut by Ashley. The tiger has pieces of glass embedded in its body as if it had tried to jump over a wall lined with broken glass, and thus had got hurt. It also has numerous needles sticking out of its body, as if someone wanted to use it as a kind of voodoo doll. The tiger sculpture is titled "Scoprimi tutta" (Discover or uncover me completely) but I prefer to call it The Wounded Tiger. For me it symbolised the climate and the nature crisis.

Paper Saloon by Alicia Olaya Rodriguez

The art-work by the Spanish artist is a big installation composed of different pieces of furniture, lamp, bracelets and the bust of a woman covered with curly hair, all made from folded paper. This installation is spread over 2 rooms in the exhibition. It is striking because it represents a huge amount of work and an inventive use of paper for the expression of beauty. It seems to show the riches of a noble family and the use of the paper seems to represent the transient nature of fame and wealth.

Lost Keys of Claudio Onorato

Italian artist Claudio Onorato, based in Milan, also has a few very complex works in the exhibition. The image below shows part of an art work called "I have lost the keys to my house". It is made from black-paper with pencil design and a humungous amount of detailed paper-cutting. I think that it is an example of taking paper-cutting as an extreme art-form. The impact is very striking and fascinating. Claudio expresses his resistance to inequalities and cruelties in the world through creating works in which empty spaces, air and light are as important as the paper.

Wallflowers by Linda Rademan

Linda Rademan is an artist from South Africa. Her art work in Papermade-5 is very special - it is made on a large number of tea-bags, which have been sewn together to form the surface on which she has used dry-point and embroidery to show old images of girls. The image below has a close-up of a part of this work. She is based in Johannesburg and she likes to explore Afrikaner female identity through her works.

I must confess that I have some prejudices against the "Afrikaner identity", which date back to the apartheid regime period. However, the apartheid finished almost 30 years ago and today Afrikaners are as much a part of South African identity as anyone else.

Thinking about this subject made me reflect about so many other factors which influence our perceptions about art and artists, which do not have much to do with the artistic worth of the individuals. I remember similar considerations while choosing the awards for documentary films when I was part of a jury for a film festival in Italy some years ago. We make a great show of objectivity and fair-play but it is not easy to avoid our prejudices. I can imagine that it may not be easy for Rademan to be known as an artist focusing on the Afrikaner female identity.

Protection Suit by Alexio Berto

Italian artist Alexio Berto's sculpture of a man wrapped in a white partially transparent tissue protection suit filled with recycled papers is one of the most explicit references to the on-going Covid-19 pandemic in this exhibition. Most of us must have seen figures dressed in those clothes in the hospitals or at least on the TV screens.

Technique by Giorgio Tentolini

The installation by the Italian artist Giorgio Tentolini has paper-cuttings of huge digital prints of faces. The long stripes of papers in multiple layers move up and down and the faces can be seen only from a distance. I thought that this work expressed the enormity of cosmos and the huge distances between the particles in the atomic world - the closer we go, the lesser we can see and the patterns become clear only from the right distance. The faces disappearing in the stripes also reminded of faces hidden behind veils and how veils can splinter us in pieces, hiding us, protecting us but also killing us in a way, or at least stopping us from living fully by interfering in our interactions with others. I am not sure how Giorgio Tentolini would feel about my interpretations about the significance of this work.

The Happiness I Can't Say by Maikel Domingues

This giant art installation by the American artist of Cuban origins, Maikel Dominguez, occupied a large part of the central hall of Palazzo Fogazzaro. It included a white crystal/resin bunny statue (it did not look like made from paper) placed at the end of a long beautiful carpet, as well as pink tiles with paper figures of more bunnies riding deer on one of the walls. The central bunny sculpture made of numerous white flowers, reminded me of some of the works of the Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei. At the same time, Maikel's the choice of the bunny-figures riding on the deer on the wall-tiles, also reminded me of the Tele-Tubbies, a children's TV programme.

I felt that there were some deeper hidden meanings in this art-work though I am not sure of them. Each tile was designed individually and beautifully, once again reminding me of Ai Wei Wei's works. The bunnies were like astronauts, hiding faces of people, and some of them looked sick or dead. Were these people in protection suits? Were all these references linked to Covid-19 pandemic?

Atlas of Fear by Krisimaria Toronen

Finnish artist Krisimaria Toronen had a site specific installation in the toilet of Palazzo Fogazzaro. The art-work included strips of paper and hand-written chains of words growing like a creeper along the walls of the different rooms. The words could have been the DNA of the Corona virus. The most obvious meaning of the installation was the fear of the pandemic, highlighted by locating it in a toilet, which is often seen as the origin of diseases. Normally, modern toilets are all gleaming and clean tiles and seeing them covered with the ants like words was disturbing.

The Adults by Silvia Mei

Silvia is an Italian artist and her work in the exhibition had a brightly coloured painting of people with disturbing faces. I guess she was showing the masks which we carry in the world for hiding our real feelings. The painting was very striking, and while I could appreciate it, I don't think that I would like it in my bedroom.

Psuedobombax Grandiflorum by Margherita Leoni

Italian artist Margherita Leoni had a water-colour painting in this exhibition. Though very simple, I liked the hyper-realism of the flowers and leaves in it. She is known for her beautiful botanical water-colours and she also runs training courses on this theme. If she was based in Schio, I would have loved to join Leoni's water-colours learning classes.

The Night Before The Arrival Of The Barbarians by Kristina Pirkovic

Serbian artist Kristina Pirkovic had a big painting covering one wall of the exhibition rooms. Divided into panels, it probably represented rooms or houses with the parallel lives of people living inside them. Though, the title of the painting was "before the arrival of the barbarians", the people it showed were not particularly happy - actually most of them looked anguished, some seemed to be sick while others had their heads cut-off. There were some animals scattered between them and a sad-looking church with a graveyard in one of the panels. If this was their condition before the barbarians had arrived, what happened after their arrival? A massacre? It was again a very striking and disturbing art work, which I could appreciate but would not like to have it in my bedroom.

Mare Nostrum by Gianfranco Gentile

Gianfranco Gentile is known for his artworks infused with social consciousness. He often uses waste materials like card-board boxes used for packaging, in his art. For Papermade-5, he has a site-specific installation covering one of the pillars in the entrance of Palazzo Fogazzaro. The pillar was covered with cardboard and had collages of fishes, waves, boats and immigrants, trying to cross "Mare Nostrum" (our sea), clearly referring to the immigrant boats from Africa which try to reach Italy and Europe. Unfortunately, the image below does not give a good idea of this work.

Oversight by Art Werger

This artwork by the American artist Art Werger had etching with aquatint prints. It showed an image as if seen through a drone with black eagles flying above the houses. It had hyper-realism with a 3D like effect, which was very nice. Werger is a professor of Printmaking at the University of Ohio and has received a lot of awards for his works.

I wondered if Art is his real name? If yes, his parents must have been artist or at least art lovers, who had wanted their child to become an artist. That makes me thinks of Nietzsche's famous poem about children being the arrows that God launches through us, and I wonder if Art had not wished to be an artist and instead, wanted to be an accountant or an astronomer, how would he have felt about his name?

On his website, Art Werger has explained the ideas behind his work: "My recent work continues to explore themes of time/space and the nature of representation as shared experience. Through the media of etching and mezzotint, these pieces attempt to place the viewer into an active relationship with the subject through various forms of narrative engagement. My subjects are drawn in a realistic manner but are often observed from an unusual angle. I present imagery from an aerial vantage point, or overlapping other layers of reality, taking on the role of the omniscient narrator in a work of fiction."

ZidArta by Suzana Fantanariu

Romania is a special country for this edition of Papermade-5 and it has artworks of different Romanian artists. Among them, I liked the works of Suzana Fantanariu. The one I have chosen to show here is a collage work. I loved its rough textures. I also liked the works of Ana Golici, another Romanian artist in this exhibition.

Fragility of Life by Agniezska Cieslinska

The Polish artist Agniezska Cielinska also uses etching with aquatint for print-making. There are 3 of her works in the exhibition. I have chosen the one with a red background and an intricately designed face made of two cups which fit into each other. Artist and graphic designer Cielinska is a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.

Infinite Paths by Johny Hycinte Ngbwa

Johny Ngbwa is an Italian artist of Cameroun origins. His big linocut work full of intricate black and white lines occupies one whole wall of a room in the exhibition. Looking at it from close gave me a sense of vertigo. The lines seemed to create sand dunes of a desert spreading like snakes over a black lake. It was a beautiful work, something I could look at for a long time and continue to find inspiration for Zen meditations. Young looking Johny, also known as Johny Stecchino (from a film-title of Roberto Begnini), is considered to be an emerging talent in incisions-art.

ST/110 by Sandro Battaglia

Italian artist Sandro Battaglia has a set of artistic B/W photographs of the common moka, used for making coffee in the old fashioned way in Italy, against a blue background. By focusing on the different parts of a moka (moca) and looking at them from different angles, Battaglia has created a kind of geometric poem with the composition of the photographs. I found it lyrical and beautiful. Battaglia has collaborated with a number of well-known Italian film-directors including Sergio Leone and Pasolini, and is a big name in photo-journalism.

My Dream by Sopap Petcharaporn

Sopap Petcharaporn from Thailand has a big woodcut print in Papermade-5. It is very intricately designed piece of art. Its subject reminded me of the lock-down photographs and videos from last year (2020) when the absence of humans on the roads and parks had brought out some wild animals in the cities and urban areas. It shows a deer and some birds in an apartment overrun with plants and creepers, while in the open space you can see sky-scrappers. Petcharaporn specialises in creating intricate woodcut work.

Boundaries by Damiano Azzizia

Let me conclude this post with one of my favourite artworks from Papermade-5 - a simple and unassuming work, which had absolutely marvellous texture. It was called Confini (Boundaries) and was by a young Italian artist called Damiano Azzizia. It had the painting of a room, probably on card-board used for packages. I loved the kind of leathery look he had achieved, with an amazing texture. It looked really simple, almost minimalist, and I really liked it.

Conclusions

I had started this post with the idea of selecting 10 artworks, in the end I have chosen 20 and there were still so many others that I had liked, which are not there in this list. For this post, I have chosen images which show close-ups and details of the art-works. Many of the works in this exhibition are actually immense, so these pictures can only give you an idea and you need to fully experience them by visiting the exhibition.

The last image of this post is of an artwork by the Romanian artist Ana Golici. I hope that these images will inspire you to visit the Papermade-5 exhibition.

Epochal Mutations - Contemporary Art Exhibition

Finally the Covid-19 lockdowns are easing and cultural events are being organised. Recently, our city organised a contemporary art exhibition called "Epochal Mutations" (MutAzioni Epocali). When I read the name of the exhibition, I thought that it would be totally influenced by the Covid-19 lockdown and would have a lot of works expressing anguish and fear. So I was not so sure if I wanted to look at it. Fortunately, I changed my mind and visited it - it had a lot of works which I liked. It also introduced me to the works of many new local artists and a few outside artists.

"Mutation" Art Exhibitions have been held in Schio since 2017, but its focus changes every year. For example, in 2019, it was "MutAzioni Spaziali" (Space Mutations). Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, it was not held in 2020.

This year the exhibition was held at Palazzo Fogazzaro, a historical building in the city centre from 1810. In the courtyard there was a work of our Schio sculptor Mario Converio, who works with iron and metals. He is famous for his voluptuous female forms and I had written a post about him. His work for this exhibition is a globe with a storm of birds rising up from it. After this exhibition, this sculpture will be placed in the Schio railway station and will become a public art installation.

In this post I am presenting some of the artists from MotAzioni Epocali exhibition whose works I liked - they are not in any particular order.

During the exhibition, I met one of the artists - her name is Maria Grazia Martina - I will start with her. Her background is in history of art and she teaches in a school. She creates art with mixed materials. I asked her if her background in the history of art influences her as an artist? She said that it was more of a hindrance because she tends to compare of her works with those of well-known artists that she had studied and this makes her feel very self-critical. I could empathise with her feelings because self-criticism is a big challenge for a lot of artists and it is great that in spite of it, she can express her creativity. You can see her with some of her works in the image below.

The next image again shows the details of one of the works of Maria Grazia Martina, which I liked because of the vibrant colours of the fibres which express for me the confusion, interconnections and vitality of life.

The artist Claudio Brunello from Bassano had two works in the exhibition, one on the women of Afghanistan and another on languages and technology - I liked both of them. In the second work, he had used a lot of 3-D printed miniature human figures to express ideas about native languages while computer motherboards expressed use of the increasing use of English coupled with technology - I thought that that it was ironic that he expressed traditions part of this work through 3D printed figures. You can see details from this work in the image below.

Marco Zanrosso's installation "Ecological Equilibrium" had six semi-transparent circles, one in front of the other, moving up and down, creating ever-changing dynamic forms was very beautiful even if the ideas it expressed were too abstract. A large part of its beauty came from the constant movement of the circles and their translucent materials - both these aspects are difficult to appreciate in the image below.

There were many digital works in the exhibition. I understand that artistic expression can not be limited by the materials used by the artists and thus digital art is one such legitimate expression of creativity. However, I feel that having the skills of computer graphics is a different kind of artistic skill and needs to have its own separate art-world, it can't be mixed with art created by persons, using their hands in the the old- fashioned way. Like the works of Claudio Brunello above, I can also see that setting the boundaries between digital and non-digital would anyway be a difficult exercise. Among the artists presenting digital prints, I liked the work of Valeria Cassol, which was titled "When you look up and see the Universe", shown in the image below.

I also liked the digital prints of Slovenian artist Bogdan Soban - with their delicate colours and complex abstract forms, they invited you to look at them and get lost in their details. In fact, I spent a long time looking at his work presented in the image below.

Simone Ricciardello from Vicenza had 2 installations about climate change. One was called "Alone no one will be saved", which was more explicit about its theme. It had an old table fan which started moving when someone came or passed in front of it and then automatically stopped. Another of his installation, "The time of non-return" had a baby angel setup against green tiles and it expressed the time running out to save the planet.

The installations of the Schio artist Elisa Pedron expressed ideas of reincarnation, mutation and evolving through the mythical fire-bird Phoenix and a cosmic egg. You can see her cosmic egg in the banner of this post above while the image below shows the metal circles and the phoenix.

I especially loved the works of Luca Vallortigara, who had used abstract figures in wood to express its different natural colours and textures, which had the power to draw me into introspection and wondering about the meanings of life and nature.

I also liked the multi-material works of Paolo Guglielmo Giorio like the one in the image below that was supposed to express the virus of Covid-19 together with the sea-life suffocated by petrol-spill from a big ship. I think that this was the only work in the whole exhibition which directly mentioned the Covid-19 pandemic. I liked the way the fish-net and the red virus came together against the grey background and the rotting skull (in the image below).

The work of Schio artist Elena Ester Accardo, "After the floods" was supposed to express a recurrent dream which has had. With delicate gold and greens, it had a very pleasing impact, the kind of art you can look at when you are feeling low and feel uplifted by it! While it had an immediate pleasing impact, it also had a complex mix of symbols, which kept me gazing at it and trying to discern their meanings.

The installation of the Schio artist Rosa Paola Astrid represented the countdown clock on the climate change which was put up in Rome in June this year on the World Environment Day. It had paintings of the earth seen from space in changing colours, again giving an expression to the time running out.

The next image shows one of the works of Martina Dalla Stella - it was called "No fear" and it expressed migrations, changing technology, role of police and big corporations and the courage of ordinary people to face them and to fight for rights.

I want to close with the work I liked most in this exhibition - I absolutely loved the mosaic like works of Eva Trentin from Marano Vicentino, with each piece of the mosaic expressing nature, places and moments of life. I felt that I could look at them for hours, find new points of reflection and at the same time, feel an emotional connection with them. Below I have an image from her work "289", made of 289 pieces of mosaic.

Conclusions

As you can see, there were many interesting works in this exhibition. The most common theme chosen by the artists was about the climate change. My favourite works in this exhibition were by Eva Trentin and Elena Ester Accardo. Regarding the installations, I liked most the works of Marco Zanrosso and Claudio Brunello.

As I came out of the exhibition, I saw the sculptor Mario Converio at the gate. He had come to take measurements of his work in the courtyard as it has to be strengthened for its placement in the railway station. We went to a nearby bar to have a beer and to talk about his art and about life.

May be one day I will also write about that conversation with Mario Converio. In the mean time, I hope that you have liked this virtual walk-through at the MutAzioni Epocali exhibition. Even if Schio is a tiny little town, I think that in terms of culture, it is full of wonderful opportunities.

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Venice the City of Water

Chiara Carminati is an Italian poet, translator and author of children's books. On 21st March, it was the World Poetry Day. To celebrate it, our city Schio promoted "Poetry gifts" by sharing poems through some WhatsApp groups. I am part of a local reading group called Lettori in Circolo (Readers in a Circle), which took part in this initiative. Thus, I received some poems, which included one of Carminati's poems called, "A Venezia" (In Venice).

This brief post is about Carminati's poem. I share my translation of this poem and a few thoughts about the feelings it evoked in me. This year (2021) is 1600th anniversary of the foundation of Venice in 421 CE. Thus, this post is dedicated to this beautiful floating town which I love to visit and which is not very far from Schio.

"A Venezia" - A Poem by Chiara Carminati

Nella città d’acqua, in lontananza
paiono pennelli sottili
le punte dei campanili.
Così ciotole di un pittore
rovesciate con eleganza
sono le cupole delle chiese
nella città d’acqua, in lontananza.

Meaning of the Poem:

It is a short and sweet poem. I am not a poet and not a proper translator, however I wanted to share it:

"In the city of water, in the distance
looking like thin brushes
the tips of the bell-towers.
As the painter's bowls
overturned elegantly
are the domes of churches
in the city of water, in the distance."

Feelings Evoked by This Poem

Venice is usually full of tourists. There are times when the crowds are so thick that it is difficult to find a quiet place where you can soak in the quiet atmosphere of this magical town. To experience the quiet and the almost surreal beauty of Venice you need to visit it in autumn or winter. I liked this poem because it captures that special feeling of Venice on a quiet foggy morning.

Venice is full of artists and painters - people who sit on the banks of canals with their sketch books and easels, intent on drawing and painting, while others, holding stacks of paintings look for tourists to sell them. This poem alludes to all of them by looking at the floating city as the working instruments of a water-colour painter - its bell-towers as brushes and its church-domes reflected in the waters as overturned bowls of colours.

Conclusions

I love reading in Italian but I usually avoid reading Italian poems - I have difficulties in appreciating them most of the time, probably because reading and feeling the emotions of poems requires a different kind of relationship with the language. For the same reason, I have difficulties in appreciating English poems. I can appreciate them intellectually but I don't have the emotional connection with them - for that, I need my poems to be in Hindi or Urdu. However, occasionally I come across poems like this one by Chiara Carminati which connects with something deeper inside me and creates magic. (I think that I like this poem so much, also because I love water-colour paintings). 

If you understand Italian and want to read more poems which were shared during our "Poetry Gifts" initiative, you can find them at the Leggere a Schio blog managed by our local library.

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River to River - Festival 2020

River to River (RtoR) film festival was started by Selvaggia Velo in Florence (Italy) in 2001. It was the first festival entirely dedicated to Indian films held outside India. For many years, while living in Bologna, which is not far from Florence, I regularly visited this festival. Some years ago, we shifted to Schio, about 350 km to the north of Florence, so participating in this festival became difficult for me. However, the December 2020 edition of RtoR was held online due to the on-going Covid-19 pandemic. This gave me an opportunity watch some of the festival films. (Below a still from "Berlin to Bombay", one of the films in the festival)

My main interest was in watching documentary and short films in the festival. Thus, I watched only one full-length feature film - Kadakh. This post is to share a few impressions about some of the films which I liked in this festival.

Kadakh

Kadakh was the opening film of the festival, directed by Rajat Kapoor. It is a black comedy centred around a dead body in an upper-middle class drawing room in Mumbai, which is full of guests for a Diwali party.

Sunil (Ranvir Shorey) is the owner of the house while the dead guy is Raghav, husband of his office colleague Chhaya, with whom he is having an affair. Raghav has discovered their affair and comes to talk to Sunil. He is trying to be mature about it, but continues to get too angry to control himself and during one such loss-of-control moments, shoots himself. Soon Sunil's wife (Manasi Multani) comes back home and finds her husband with Raghav's corpse in their drawing room. He confesses his affair but there is no time to deal with the marital infidelity as they know that soon their guests for the Diwali party are going to arrive. So the husband and wife hide the dead body in a box, cover it with tapestry and get ready to welcome the guests.

The guests include Chayya, the wife of the dead man. You can imagine the comic-horror kind of mixed tension which drives this film. The last part of the movie is its most cynical and damning part, with the whole gang of friends (except Chaya, who has left) helping Sunil in getting rid of the dead body. When the film was ending, I almost expected it to show the whole lot going to the chautha (funeral) ceremony of the poor guy and express condolences to the widow.

I do not like the genre of dark comedy, but the film is well made and well-acted. All the actors are good. I especially liked Manasi Multani, who plays Sunil's wife Malti and Palomi Ghosh, who plays Chhaya. I also thought the guy playing Raghav (Chandrachoor Rai) was good in his brief role.

The Newly Weds, short film (5 min.) by Prataya Saha

You can watch this short film on YouTube. The film has a young man (Mahesh Gowda) and his wife (Suvin Valson) and it looks at the way they relate to each other, mediated by technology. When together, they hardly talk to each other and their eyes are constantly on their mobile phones and laptop screens. At night, a laptop stays in the bed between them. However, they expresses their love in the messages they write to each other, in which they open their hearts.

The tiny film presents the role of tech in a young couple's life as a kind of caricature. I felt that it could have been more relatable as a depiction of a long-married couple who does not have much left to say to each other. It felt a bit unrealistic for a young newly married couple, because it seemed to ignore their need for physical touch and sex. Their messages express a yearning, which is inexplicably missing from their real lives.

Berlin to Bombay, documentary film, 51 min. by Marco Hulser

For me, Berlin to Bombay was the most enjoyable film of the festival. It is the story of an Indian origin boy Abu Chaka Khan, raised in Berlin (Germany) and his fascination for the world of Bollywood. Abu works in a restaurant but his dream is to go and act in Bollywood. He does not want to work in German films where he can only play Indian or Pakistani roles - he prefers the idea of Bollywood heroes with their songs and dances.

He makes and sends his videos for auditions to India but when they do not get him any offers, he goes to Mumbai. The film shows him trying to negotiate his way through the barriers surrounding its film world, full of people who are waiting for bakras like him, selling them dreams and taking their money. Abu pays but finds himself playing an extra in a film. After his dreams crash against the hard realities of the Bollywood, Abu comes back to Berlin and to his restaurant.

Though film's storyline is an old theme, Abu has an expressive face and he comes across very well with his ingenuity, hope and dreams.

While the film ended, I was thinking of today's YouTube and TikTok stars. Now, people with dreams of making it in Bollywood, have some alternative pathways to become famous, even if that fame does not last very long. I think that I would like to watch a similar documentary exploring the worlds of the YouTube-TikTok stars.

The GesheMa is Born, Documentary, 56 min., by Malati Rao

Geshe Ma is the title of a learned Buddhist nun who has reached the highest level of religious knowledge. Rao's documentary is a glimpse into the hidden world of Buddhist nuns. I liked it because it showed a world which was unfamiliar to me.

Though ancient Buddhism spoke of nuns, modern Buddhism did not have nuns. It was Dalai Lama who had established the first nuns' order some 40 years ago. He had also proposed allowing the nuns to study religious books. This idea was discussed in the international council of Buddhist leaders from different countries, but some countries were against the changes. Finally in 2012, it was accepted that the nuns could study to become the learned teachers (Geshe).

The film follows a group of nuns in a monastery in Nepal who became the first group of women admitted to the Buddhist theological studies. The film focuses on the story of Namdol Phuntsok, who had earned the top marks in these studies and received the title of Geshe Ma in 2016.

The film moves forward and backward in time, with some interviews and unobtrusive observation of the lives of the Buddhist nuns. They talk about the setting up of the first nunnery. It looks at their celibate lives, their shaving of heads and their determined animation during theological discussions, where a raised leg-movement and clapping of hands in stereotypical gestures, looked like a dance to me.

GesheMa Namdol talks about her childhood and her family's opposition to her idea of becoming a nun, her desire for studying the Buddhist religious texts and how they must argue and debate their ideas and defend them against questions. The film concludes with the group of the nuns holding the coveted yellow head-dresses in their hands, which are a visible sign of their learning, walking in the room full of monks. They all don those yellow head-dresses, signifying a new beginning of the role of the women leadership in Buddhism.

Buddha of the Chadar, 28 Min. by Jean Whitaker

This film can also be watched on internet. It is about a father and son from Ladakh making a long winter journey on the frozen Zanskar River - a route known as the Chadar. They carry a heavy gold-plated statue of Buddha, which they plan to offer to a Buddhist monastery located at the top of the hill near their village.

The film brings out the solitude and difficulties of the long journey on the frozen river surrounded by beautiful snow-covered mountains. It also shows the on-going construction of a new road by the Indian Border Road Organisation, so that in future, the Zanskar valley will also be connected through a road and it should be possible to complete that same journey in a vehicle.

The film has beautiful photography and makes you reflect on the human urge to choose a tough journey as a part of a spiritual quest.

Silence in the Wind, 13 min. by Gautam Baruah and Ballav Prajnyan

This short film is about a father remembering his son, his desire to see him married and his initial rejection when he discovers that his son is gay. His initial reaction is of rejection. Then he remembers the day when his young son had risked drowning in the river and his desperation. The memory of that desperation helps him to say to his son that he does not understand but he will accept.

It is a beautiful film.

The Ashram Children, 67 min., by Jonathan Ofek

India is seen as the land of spirituality. It has many famous gurus with their ashrams, and followers coming from all over the world to seek their guidance. This film shows a hidden aspect of this spiritual quest - the feelings of the expat children about those Gurus.

The director of this film, Jonathan is from Israel and he feels scarred by his childhood experiences in an ashram in India. He feels that it was a cult which had gripped his parents. His parents, especially his mother, do not take his complaints very seriously - for her, it was not a cult and she was only going to the ashram for some months every year.

She tells him that he could have told her that he did not want to go and she would not have forced him. However, Jonathan feels that saying no was not easy for him, because he had grown up inside that experience from early childhood. The whole issue of obedience to the Guru in the ashram was experienced by him as something absolute, he had learned to not question anything and was afraid to express himself.

During the film, Jonathan goes to look for other expatriate children that he had met and known in the ashram during his childhood. Most of them agree with him that their childhood experiences of the ashram were negative for them. Most of them, now grown-ups, try to hide this part of their past lives and do not talk about it. One of these guys also talks about the hypocrisy of the Guru, who taught the lessons of detachment and spirituality to his followers, but also loved wearing gold, luxury watches, and using costly perfumes.

This film forced me to see how the spirituality-and-guru industry of India can be perceived by young children who are pulled in to this experience by their parents. I had never thought about it before in these terms. For me, many of the ashrams and their jet setting Gurus, who run their spirituality businesses like money-making exercises, are persons who profit from human frailties. At the same time, I believe that some of the non-commercial persons can be great spiritual teachers.

Conclusions

There were some other short and documentary films from the festival which I had watched but they were similar in terms of themes and treatment to others that I had seen earlier, so I am not writing about those.

In the past RtoR festival had been an opportunity for me to meet and talk to persons from the world of Indian films - persons like Onir, Rahul Bose, Aparna Sen and even Amitabh Bachchan. That was no longer possible with an online festival. I hope that in future, after the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, River to River festival will continue to offer the possibility of online participation.