India

Draupadi – Will My Spirit Live On?

mandy — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

On the heels of International Women’s Day, the Indo-American Arts Council in New York City hosted the North American premiere of a unique and thought-provoking Indian play called Draupadi – Will My Spirit Live On? Produced and conceptualized by Shivani Wazir Pasrich, and co-directed by Pasrich and Tina Johnson, Draupadi weaves a tale from the Hindu epic Mahabharata with an intense contemporary story of a woman battling her experience with sexual abuse. The play sheds light on the plight of many women suffering such abuse, connecting a mythological tale with a modern parallel, and delivers a mostly engaging experience.

The play extends the story of Draupadi (played by Pasrich), from her travails that were supposed to have triggered a great war, crossing centuries to meet Maaya (Charu Shankar) in modern day India. Draupadi is stuck between heaven and earth, pondering her fate and choices, and being guided by her confidant Lord Krishna. Maaya is a young housewife who is taken advantage of by her husband Arjun’s brother Kaurav, and is too afraid of societal taboos to fight for justice. Added into the mix is Krishna, who flits in and out of situations donning various avatars to help guide the two women in distress towards finding peace with their own respective scenarios.

One of the play’s greatest strengths is in its talented and accomplished cast. Pasrich as Draupadi exudes confidence and power in her quest for salvation and also helping Maaya out of her predicament. She does, however, remain angry throughout, thus affecting the depth of the character. Shankar plays Maaya with a dignified innocence and is quick to gain audience sympathy.

The most spirited performance comes from Dilip Shankar as Krishna, portraying a deity with an edge. He provides the comic relief in many tense scenes and dishes out ample doses of tough love that would come from any respected mentor, heavenly or human. Among the rest of the cast, Arjun Fauzdar as Maaya’s husband Arjun and Ashish Paliwal as Sukarna are both competent in their roles.

When asked about the genesis of the play, Pasrich explained, “It’s just essentially that, as women, we judge ourselves very harshly and we expect ourselves to perform so many different roles. And we do it happily with a smile. But at the end of the day we realize everybody’s going through the same kind of situation, our issues are similar, and there’s a great strength that you get out of that. So that was the reason to bring [Draupadi] into the current times because, if anyone’s had a difficult life, it’s Draupadi. So whoever today is having a tough time, it couldn’t be tougher than Draupadi’s life and if she moved on, so can everyone else.”

Draupadi – Will My Spirit Live On? is an important work of theatre for confronting through the arts an issue that plagues Indian society today. It is a show to be watched and lauded – such artistic confrontations of social plagues need only be encouraged.

Read the full review at The NRI

Written by: Pulkit Datta, April 19th 2011

Alimentary Tracts: Appetites, Aversions, and the Postcolonial

mandy — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Parama Roy

Duke University Press

The introduction to Alimentary Tracts begins with a Salman Rushdie quote about peppercorns and includes the phrase “symbolic anthropophagy.” Similarly to the first two sentences, the remainder of the book would continue to intrigue and baffle me.

Alimentary Tracts consists of four long chapters entitled “Disgust: Food, Filth, and Anglo-Indian Flesh in 1857”; “Abstinence: Manifestos on Meat and Masculinity”; “Dearth: Figures of Famine”; and “Appetite: Spices Redux,” and one short final chapter, “Remains: A Coda.” The style of writing is admittedly dense, like an over-rich chocolate cake. And at times the meaning seems to be lost in the thickness of the form.

More simply, overall, Roy questions what is eaten, and what or who is involved in the process of cooking, sharing, and ingesting. She provides an analytical investigation of the “gastropolitics and gastropoetics.” Alimentary Tracts essentially asks how aspects of food politics (such as famine) impact identity and history in the colonial and postcolonial periods. Roy argues that “who eats and with whom, who starves, and what is rejected as food are fundamental to colonial and postcolonial making – and unmaking.”

In discussing famine, Roy brings attention to questions of equity and access. In the first chapter Roy provides greater context to Gandhi’s famous protest of the salt tax in India. She also looks at the issue of pollution for high-class Hindu males in food as interlinked to concepts of sex. And, in subsequent chapters, she discusses Mahasweta Devi’s coverage of famine in her short stories and novels.

In chapter two, she discusses Gandhi’s experiments with truth, eating, and abstinence. Humans today have certainly come a long way in acceptance of organic, local, vegan cuisines when compared to when Gandhi first went to England. At that time, open defiance of Hindu traditions were seen as civilized; eating meat and drinking alcohol was just one aspect of the norm.

I found the chapter focusing on appetite to smoothly flow the best. Roy traces the evolution of the term curry, an invention of Anglo-Indians in India, rather than an appropriate description of the various styles of cooking and spices that go into Indian food. Incorporating analysis of cookbooks and Indian writers, she weaves together what seems initially to be a strange combination of concepts.

Its easy to imagine excerpts of this text in a reader on South Asian studies, food politics, literary criticism or cultural criticism; it is nothing close to a cookbook and isn’t meant for light reading. In her introduction, Roy states that the alimentary tracts of colonial and postcolonial India contain lessons for students of literary, feminist, cultural, and area studies. Though the text can be painfully difficult to wade through, that is because it contains much substance.

Written by: Lakshmi Eassey, April 1st 2011

Nrityagram: The Love of Dance

brittany — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Nan Melville

A Nan Melville Production

In the film Nrityagram: The Love of Dance, a short and simple story is told. A woman finds purpose in her was life when she learns how to dance and creates an institute to instruct others. It is the story of Protima Bedi and her Nrityagram Dance Ensemble. Protima Bedi was known in India as a socialite, until she saw a Narissi Dance and came to pursue it instead. A woman who was known as an emotionally vibrant and open person, pursues a dance form that is tells the story of feelings more than anything else. Bedi’s candidness found a new outlet.

Having found her own guru and learnt the dance, Bedi decided to create an institution to train the gurus of the future. In the Indian tradition, princes and prophets would go to gurus to learn their trades—archery or spirituality. The institute Bedi created, Nrityagram, is intended as an equivalent for dance. Women and girls can go there to focus on their craft, learn from the gurus, practicing everyday unconcerned with the world outside.

In terms of form, there is not much substance to the film. I imagine that it would be useful in an instructional setting; a dance teacher doing a unit on Narissi dance may show this film before proceeding to instruct her students on the basic steps. In twenty-five introductory minutes, one learns about Bedi, the creation of Nrityagram, and Narissi in the broadest of strokes. The short snippets of dance intrigue but do not inform as none last more than a minute or two and are mostly spoken over. It is therefore hard to relate to this film or to relate this film to feminism.

That being said, first Protima Bedi is portrayed as a woman before her time; second, women’s learning of dance is explicitly compared to men seeking their gurus. In that way, this is a feminist work as it portrays women as distinct yet equal in their methods. Each seeks his or her own guru.

Written by: Elisheva Zakheim, March 24th 2011

The Last Pretence

payal — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

By Sarayu Srivatsa

Harper Collins

In the South Indian town of Machilipatnam, Mallika gives birth to twins, Tara and Siva. Emotionally and psychologically damaged when her daughter dies during childbirth, Mallika finds herself unable to love Siva who is a constant reminder of Tara’s death. Pretending that Siva is Tara, both Mallika and Siva embark on a downward spiral of self-destruction that ends in tragedy. Sarayu Srivatsa’s The Last Pretence tells Mallika and Siva’s stories, their learning and unlearning of love and loss, and attempts to question, through stories of childhood, marriage, and motherhood, how identities and experiences of gender are shaped.

Its book jacket advertises The Last Pretence as a "novel that takes nothing for granted", and that "grapples with notions of love, gender and sexuality", a description that probably attracted readers who were intrigued by the idea that modern Indian-English writing was taking on gender stereotypes, particularly in the specific context of South India, where this theme has been relatively under-explored in contemporary Indian fiction. Alas, The Last Pretence falls far short of being revolutionary, both in craft and in plot.

Unimpressed by the writing, I asked myself if the author’s intentions had any merit. The principal character upon whom Srivatsa’s gender-play is enacted is Siva, who struggles with his gender identity because of his mother’s desperate inability to cope with her daughter’s death. But in what sense are we supposed to find Mallika’s behavior towards Siva troubling? Clearly, some combination of her delusion that her son is her daughter, but also that she sees her son as a girl, and that she treats him as such. Mallika’s ‘disturbing’ behavior includes dressing Siva up in girls' clothes; piercing his ears, and breast-feeding him for longer than necessary, which we are led to believe confuses his self-identity and his notions of what it would mean to be a girl (to be loved by his mother). Ultimately this leads him away from home, fuels his exploration of his own sexuality through his quick and sometimes brutal sexual encounters, and finally leads to his inability to negotiate his personal peace in Srivatsa’s fictionalized world.

In dabbling with issues of gender and sexuality Srivatsa appears like a young child with a stick—gently prodding some fascinating multi-legged creature under a rock. Curious, not intentionally cruel, but ultimately uncomprehending, she speaks as an outsider to the experiences of her characters, making them less believable and more allegorical in order to make broader didactic (but again, superficial) points about gender, culture and the nature of patriarchy.

Perhaps Srivatsa’s biggest failing is the superficiality with which she writes; for example, the historical context of Machilipatnam, a town "where the British first landed to trade in dyes" on the Coromandel coast of southern India – is more or less absent from the book, with limited interweaving of even its fictionalized history through the cursory mythology of George Gibbs and his incestuous relationship with his sister. It also includes a peek into the eunuch sub-culture in India (the stock shining symbols of gender subversion) where half-yawning, half horrified, the reader is dragged into a short (but seemingly necessary) scene of castration involving a sharp knife, hot oil and a grinding stone, cheaply highlighting the cruel repercussions of gender deviance in a straight world.

Marred by poor characterization, predictability, and unproductive diversions (inexplicable inter-religious riots seem to randomly pepper this slim novel) from an otherwise heavy-handed plot driven by unnecessary brutality and an unconvincing lack of detail, I found the long-listing of The Last Pretence for the Man Asian Literary prize undeserving. Lacking in originality and failing to deliver but the most prosaic of prose, The Last Pretence most damningly shrivels before a feminist gaze where it is slowly sucked into the quicksand of the hetero-normative aphorism that any deviations to established gender norms will be ruthlessly punished by society, and ultimately (spoiler alert!) cannot survive.

Written by: Kaavya Asoka, February 4th 2011

No One Killed Jessica

mandy — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Rajkumar Gupta

UTV Motion Pictures

In 1999 model/waitress Jessica Lall refused to serve drinks to a rowdy man in a crowded bar, who then shot her point blank in a fit of rage. That man turned out to be the son of an influential politician, but with 300 witnesses it seemed like a straightforward case. However, in an unfortunate example of the rot in the judicial system and rampant corruption, all the witnesses were either threatened or paid off, and the evidence was tampered with, leading to the release of the killer. No One Killed Jessica by Rajkumar Gupta follows the initial courtroom campaign relentlessly pursued by Jessica’s sister, Sabrina (Vidya Balan), and then the news media battle for the reopening of the case led by fictionalized reporter Meera (Rani Mukherji).

No One Killed Jessica remains obsessively loyal to the central plot of the real events; the film is about the murder case and nothing else. There are no romantic tracks snuck into the narrative, no diversions, and no subplots. Every scene is in some way connected to the main story, and this loyalty becomes the film’s greatest strength. For just over two hours, Gupta sucks you into the minute details of the case and, even if you know how it all turns out, the film makes you feel disgust for the guilty parties and root for justice. The bigger message here is the immense power of a democratic movement leading to a change in the system. As Meera questions at one point, “What would happen if power is truly given to the ordinary man?”

The structure of the film is intriguing. The two protagonists hardly have any screen time together and there is a reason for it. The first half of the film is focused more on Sabrina and her fight to ensure a solid case against the accused, Manu Sharma. Meera’s life runs parallel to provide a wider news context of the time (i.e., Kargil war, Indian Airlines flight hijacking), but she doesn’t really have a role to play in the Jessica case at that stage. The first half also moves at a somewhat slow pace, fitting in well with the simpleton personality of Sabrina’s character. The second half then sprints into more sensational and glamorized action where Meera comes to the forefront and takes on the cause. Sabrina’s role then diminishes until the latter parts, and the very moving climax.

Mukherji’s portrayal of Meera is by far the more interesting character, whereas Balan’s Sabrina becomes so understated that she comes off as dull. The most memorable performance, however, is by newcomer Myra Karn who plays Jessica. She is simply a revelation. She injects such charm and vivaciousness into Jessica that you instantly fall for her.

Hindi cinema has traditionally had a very overbearing approach to advocating social change. With No One Killed Jessica, Gupta walks a fine line between making a hard-hitting realistic film and a commercial political thriller. As a result, he tends to slip on a few occasions. However, considering that every detail of the case is already so well known, Gupta delivers his retelling in such an engaging manner that you get pulled into the chaos of the moment. No One Killed Jessica is a brave film that picks a battle and fights it until the end. It’s not just a promising start to the films of 2011, but with all the corruption scandals plaguing India these days, the timing seems even more appropriate.

Read the full review at The NRI

Written by: Pulkit Datta, February 1st 2011

Finding Delhi: Loss and Renewal in the Megacity

mandy — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Bharati Chaturvedi

Penguin India

New Delhi is a city that has undergone many incarnations in its lifespan. Just a century after the British built the city to be the capital of the crown jewel that was India, Delhi is racing towards becoming a world-class city. Published on the eve of the city’s hosting the October 2010 Commonwealth Games, which was supposed to serve as Delhi’s coming out party in the twenty-first century, the collection of essays in Finding Delhi explores what happens to the lives of its twenty million inhabitants as the city is re-engineered and re-imagined for the new millennium.

What happens to people who are driven out from the urban city centers, the places where they ply their trade, to live on the outskirts of town? What happens when public spaces are increasingly replaced with private malls and coffee shops, spaces that are no longer free to everyone? Who has the right to public spaces? Is it just the middle and upper classes, or do all inhabitants of a city possess this right?

Environmentalist and Delhi-based writer Bharati Chaturvedi attempts to answer such questions. The co-founder of Chintan, an NGO that works to increase environmental justice and reduce ecological footprints, Chaturvedi makes Finding Delhi unique by not assembling the usual cast of urban planners and educated intellectuals to discuss the city’s metamorphosis; she brings us the voices of fourteen full- and part-time residents, ranging from environmental activists to “urban-sector” workers, street vendors and other entrepreneurs who have contributed to Delhi’s vibrant formal and informal economy for centuries and risk being erased from the glittering new city streets and urban edifices that are being planned for New Delhi. Each chapter reflects the unique voice and opinion of these diverse individuals.

In her introduction Chaturvedi discusses how in the not-so-distant past it became fashionable to characterize what she terms “work on the greens” as being detached from the reality of the poor, but, as she aptly points out, the greening of the environment is also of importance to the working poor: “Lamenting the loss of tree cover in Delhi, an itinerant vendor remarked during a meandering conversation, ‘I miss all the trees now. I used to enjoy looking at the leaves and my mind used to become fresh even in the heat of summer.’” Chaturvedi notes that the idea of a green city came up over and over again in numerous conversations she had with residents who are considered the working poor of Delhi.

In the chapter “Remaindered Things and Remaindered Lives,” contributor Vinay Gidwani asks the reader to consider what happens to their discarded gym shoes and introduces us to Mundka, a township on the edge of West Delhi that Gidwani dubs a “site of reincarnation not just for Delhi’s detritus, but the entire world.” Gidwani describes a recycling industry that operates in an almost subterranean fashion, including the 150,000 to 200,000 ragpickers who make a living sorting and selling recyclables that are found in Delhi’s garbage. He points out that Delhi produces 7,500 tons of garbage daily. A large amount of this is recycled by the ragpickers, who are very poor and work in hazardous conditions.

Because Delhi’s focus is on the formal-sector economy, city officials view these workers as unskilled and not contributing to the retail economy, but Gidwani contends that the informal sector workers provide an array of services that enable formal sector workers to continue their privileged lifestyle—from vegetable vendors to cycle cart pullers who deliver appliances, or grocers who deliver bulk orders to households. He contends that Delhi today is inhabited by two “eco-classes.” He notes, “On the one side, a way of life that churns out growing quantities of waste; on the other, lives that live off this commodity detritus.” Gidwani asks the reader to consider what a different city Delhi would look like if the ruling elite actually learned to recognize and value the important contributions that these marginalized people and places make to their daily lives.

In “Women Reimagining the City,” Kalpana Viswanath discusses the harassment and violence that women encounter on a daily basis in the city; she writes that “being a woman in Delhi is often an intimidating, frightening, worrisome and, at the least, uncomfortable experience.” She points out that although Western cities were historically viewed as male spaces (hence the term streetwalker to describe women who walked the streets alone at night), developing urban areas also provided female friendly spaces in the form of department stores, tea rooms, and promenades. Viswanath notes that class plays a significant role in a woman’s experience in Delhi.

Delhi does not fare well when it comes to gender equity indicators; only seven percent of the Delhi police force are women, and according to recent crime data, Delhi accounts for thirty percent of reported rapes in India’s largest cities. Taking public transportation in the city exposes women to potential harassment and abuse, and Viswanath indicates that no women are immune to gender-based violence by highlighting the highly publicized murders of young women of privilege. She closes by writing, “The big challenge will be to transform people’s attitudes towards women as citizens with equal rights.”

I found Finding Delhi to be one of the most thought provoking books I’ve read in a long time. Some books have a profound effect on how one thinks about their world and this is one of those books. The topics and issues discussed are not unique to Delhi; cities across the globe are increasingly having to balance the need for economic and industrial growth without losing the sense of humanity and culture that gives a city its soul. It is a delicate balancing act and one that can benefit from each person playing an active role in re-imagining their cities and interconnected destinies.

Written by: Gita Tewari, January 15th 2011

Threads of Hope

farhana — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Directed by Amanda Ibrahim

Ferasha Films

I have to admit to watching this film with much trepidation. Too many films and documentaries are dedicated to analyzing the poor state of women’s lives in the developing world, but few dedicate their focus to researching and explicating the systemic inequalities rooted in patriarchy, that exist to reinforce women’s conditions. However, while watching I was determined to keep an open mind and value the work and perspective of a young woman of color, endeavoring to make a difference in the world by documenting women’s lives in Kolkata, India.

This is a short piece by American student Amanda Ibrahim, who with a scholarship, traveled to India for two weeks to document the effects of the ConneXions vocational training on the women who worked in the training center. ConneXions, Ibrahim narrates, focuses on creating job opportunities for women by training and employing them in fair trade textile production. One of the stated aims is to make women self-dependent while providing them with an opportunity to help their family with money.

Though the camerawork was good, the footage was quite limited. Only a few people and places in Kolkata were included in the film. Much of the filming was done at the center with the management team and the women participants. When the women were depicted, they were always carrying out particular gendered roles, including cooking, cleaning, dancing and sewing. When they were interviewed, they seemed shy, awkward and as though either reading from a cue card or being prompted by the person next to the camera. Two women, Shibani and Krishna were interviewed more extensively, and both assert that through their work at ConneXions their lives have been transformed; they can now afford to put food on the table and pay for their children’s schooling. At one point, Shibani proudly states that everything she makes goes to her family and children. At this point, one could probably ascertain the reasons for women being the recipients of this program.

Though I appreciate the altruistic aspirations of the ConneXions project, this film, and the limitations I expect Ibrahim experienced, the main contentions I have with this film all relate to its limited analysis.

My lesser contention is the overarching theme of Christian ministering that ran throughout the film. The film opens with the words of a Christian prayer, and you later learn that the ConneXions vocational training center was founded by a Swedish couple, who had come to Kolkata as Christian missionaries through the non profit organization Servants to Asia’s Urban Poor. The homepage of Servants states that these Christian communities participate with the poor to bring hope and justice through Jesus Christ. All of the managers state their Christian position, and one in particular states that she teaches the women the gospel. What you don’t know by watching this film is whether the women are coerced into listening to the gospel or converting religions in order to access the training program. I am always weary of Christian missions particularly considering its mostly violent history with Canadian, South American, and Australian indigenous communities. That an immediate alliance and little analysis is done on the role of Christian ministering in the slums of India indicates the religious bias and socio-political naivety of the director.

My greatest contention with this film is its focus on female empowerment through Christian vocational training. I don’t dispute that the women are becoming empowered by receiving trained in textile production, and having then the potential to seek employment in the tailoring industry. However, the explicit goal of achieving empowerment through becoming self-dependent does not stand up against the stated end-result of these women spending everything they earn on their family. Self-sufficiency does not always equate empowerment. This is encapsulated in the comment of one of the young girls interviewed who shares innocently that she will have to leave the center in the very near future because she has to get married and will soon be just a housewife. This project perceives these women as simply reproducers and passive recipients of services. It offers a band aid solution to women’s disproportionate poverty by training them in a skill that would lead them to meeting their most basic needs, without addressing systemic gender inequity and the social, economic and political relations between men and women that perpetuate women’s oppression in India.

Ibrahim ends her film by depicting a group of smiling women, stating that the women who work at the center are blessed with deep friendships, which might be true, but which functions to generalize and romanticize the experiences of these women without providing evidence to support this statement, masking their relations with each other and with the center's management.

An interesting short film by a young female filmmaker, admirably attempting to foreground women’s lived experiences in the developing world. I only hope that her future directorial endeavors offer more mature and critical analysis.

Written by: Toni Francis, January 12th 2011

Curfewed Night: One Kashmiri Journalist's Frontline Account of Life, Love, and War in His Homeland

mandy — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Basharat Peer

Scribner

Basharat Peer sits calmly on the stage at The Hay Festival Kerala, giving his full attention to a question from a man standing beside me. Peer resembles a slimmed-down, younger James Gandolfini, but it’s impossible to imagine his passionate-but-measured speech exploding in a flurry of curses and pronouncements à la Tony Soprano—the kind of spraying invective, in fact, that he is being subjected to right now. As the questioner continues his diatribe on “the lies we are getting out of Srinagar,” and ultimately has the microphone forcibly taken away from him, Peer keeps his gaze on the man and, with hardly a flicker of anger, frustration, or sadness, diplomatically invites the man to fact-check his book and moves on to the next raised hand. He’s seen worse. After all, he grew up in Kashmir.

Peer was speaking about his book Curfewed Night, an account of his experiences growing up in Kashmir and then returning as a Delhi-educated reporter. His book was not written for Kashmiris; it came into being after Peer noticed that the bookshops of Delhi and New York (his current home) contained books about such troubled nations as Palestine, Sudan, and Bosnia, and while they all felt familiar to him, stories from Kashmir were absent from the shelves. Curfewed Night is Peer’s attempt to represent what he has seen and understood about Kashmir for a foreign audience, making it a book for Kashmiris only by proxy; indeed, to Kashmiris it is mundane, of interest only to see if they know any of the stories first-hand.

Nevertheless, Peer’s account of the everyday makes for compelling, sobering reading. In the beginning, he is a reckless teenager dreaming of Kalashnikovs and cross-border exploits. Aazadi (freedom, used as a byword for independence) is the first word on his and everybody’s lips. These were the times of greatest agitation and violence in Kashmir, shortly after hundreds of pro-independence protesters were gunned down by Indian soldiers in January 1990. After a weighty talk with Grandfather, who tells him, “You don’t live long in a war,” Peer’s family soon ships him off to study in Delhi, where his mind is broadened by university study at the same time as he deals with discrimination from Kashmiri-wary landlords.

After his parents miraculously survive a landmine explosion, he feels the pull of home grow stronger and decides to return; there, he finds that former militants—the people he wanted so desperately to join—are now nearly destitute and bear the physical and psychological scars of torture. “[The soldiers] cannot even imagine what torture is like,” repeats one man who spent time in Papa-2, Kashmir’s most infamous torture camp. No civilian has been left untainted by violence and loss. It isn’t all sadness and dark—intimate details, such as village in-jokes and the raucous Bollywood songs that have infiltrated traditional Kashmiri Muslim weddings, pepper the narrative—but these lighter moments serve to set the scars and violence deep into a very real, human face.

Through it all, Peer’s presence in the narrative is a constant. It is, after all, his story, though it is hard to consider it as such because he is particularly humble narrator. His evolution as the book unfolds is fascinating, beginning as he does as a gung-ho youth and progressing steadily to deep hurt and even powerlessness, demoralised by the weight of knowing so many troubling stories. He offers no solution; Curfewed Night isn’t a pro-aazadi polemic, or the report and recommendations of a government inquiry. It is Peer’s attempt to present the facts of what he has seen, heard and experienced, including but not limited to his own emotional response, and leaves all the room possible for the reader to form their own opinion.

Back on stage, the interviewer wants Peer to make a stand one way or another. Surely the youth of Kashmir are being left behind by the rest of India, who wear denim jeans and tweet from their mobile phones, she says. He smiles, says that “jeans and mobile phones are overrated,” and holds resolutely to a lack of conviction in any one solution or dialogue. Still, even if there isn’t yet a solution, there is hope, he says. Peer isn’t interested in grand pronouncements or easy answers. His contribution to the Kashmir question is a book as straightforward as it is powerful, and provides hope that those who read it will thereafter think not of rebellious uprising and anti-India sentiment when they hear the word Kashmir, but of the millions whose lives have been forever altered by bloodshed and conflict.

Cross-posted from The NRI

Written by: Haszard Morris, January 3rd 2011

Written on the Body of The Erasable Woman

mandy — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interview with Shaunga Tagore

When did you start writing poetry?

At a very young age—probably when I started writing with chalk on my bathroom door or adding my own two cents to my parents’ biology textbooks they tell me I always furiously flipped through. I experienced a lot of racism, (hetero)sexism, and different kinds of regulation at a young age too, and I think what that did was make me really quiet and closed up in a lot of ways. But expressing myself creatively was something I did to become myself again—whether that be through writing, acting, music, or just telling stories about how I imagined my life to be, instead of the scary, oppressive ways I often experienced it.

Who has influenced your writing?

First and foremost, my family: my parents and sister created an environment for me where creativity was valued and encouraged. Now still, there are so many ways I am creatively inspired by the lives and perspectives of my friends and family, even in ordinary moments. I’m also lucky to be a part of Asian Arts Freedom School, a creative arts and radical Asian history and politics group, where the conversations and stories continually influence and push my own writing.

As for famous people, some who come to mind are Arundhati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Shyam Selvadurai, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Smarasinha, Himani Bannerji, and Andrea Smith.

The Erasable Woman is your Master's thesis project; why did you choose to write it in poetry?

I was sick of writing like an academic. (Laughs.) My topic was exploring colonial violence against racialized queer women, as well as how broad systems of oppression or histories can manifest intimately on women’s bodies, and in personal relationships. I find that poetry can express this intimacy in ways academic writing cannot. A lot of people in academia would not consider poetry a legitimate way to express theory or politics, but poetry is theory, it is knowledge, and it is political. I was really lucky to have a supervising committee who understood and supported this kind of project (Enakshi Dua and Priscila Uppal).

Why the title The Erasable Woman?

The Erasable Woman is a title of one of my poems, and I feel it fits the entire collection. A major theme that runs through my manuscript is erasure…being forgotten, lost, ignored, invisible, expendable, and disposable. At the same time, it asserts a physical, spiritual, sexual, emotional, and undeniable presence in the midst of being and feeling erased. That’s one of the ways I tried to express the complexity of what it means to experience oppression and survive/resist it at the same time.

Erasure is such a key and powerful way that violence is allowed to continue. [It] speaks to the ways in which racism and other oppressions in feminist movements is ignored, and the well-being of women of colour is not considered. Also, the value of challenging sexism, homophobia, and transphobia in a lot of anti-racist or queer initiatives is often marginalized and not given enough importance. So many things in this world are structured through erasure: mainstream education denies the violence of colonial conquest on this land by largely painting it as a benign, peaceful process; national media doesn’t pay enough attention to the ways in which violence impacts marginalized bodies or communities; survivors in/of abusive relationships are silenced and shut down when they try and fight/talk back; queer or unconventional love/desire is constantly trivialized and demonized; expressing or feeling certain kinds of emotions is minimized. I wanted to explore these topics in my own way.

How do your identities influence your work?

I can’t separate myself from my social position, or my mashup of identities, and I can’t separate myself from my writing, so it all becomes intertwined. In this particular work, it was important for me to center the voice of a queer woman of colour, because it’s not a perspective that’s often given attention—in literature, feminism, anti-racism, or queer politics.

How did you came to the decision to use images in your collection?

I always start with a feeling or idea I need to express (sometimes desperately), and I follow my intuition, as well as work with my skill set, to give shape and form to that feeling or idea the best and most honest way I can figure out how. For example, at one point I wanted to create something that expressed how the bodies of women of colour are judged and marked by oppression just by living in the world. So, one of the pieces that appears in my collection (called "bodysnatchers") contains a series of photos with oppressive words actually written on the body. It just made the most sense.

The Erasable Woman is currently not available to the public. Can you tell us what your plans are for this wonderful collection of poetry?

The Erasable Woman is still a work in progress that I am currently fine-tuning, and I hope to get it published in the near future. I’m really excited about how it’s shaping up and have been doing readings at various events. I now have a website, which is new and still under construction, where people can read some of my work and check out other things I’m up to.

Read the full interview at Black Coffee Poet

Written by: Janet Romero-Leiva, December 29th 2010

A Man’s A Man

mandy — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Phoenix Theatre Ensemble

If playwright Bertolt Brecht were alive today, he’d likely blanch at the contemporary tendency to seek common ground with those whose ideologies are diametrically opposed to one’s own. His dozens of plays speak truth to power in daring, direct language and, while farce and sarcasm are employed, his repeated denunciations of colonialism, war, and militarism are boldly presented. A Man’s a Man (sometimes called Man Equals Man) was first staged in Dusseldorf and Darmstadt, Germany in 1926. Eighty-four years later, The Phoenix Theatre Ensemble’s beautifully-presented staged reading of the play is so relevant that the audience quickly forgets the age of the work.

Themes include the folly of armed conflict; the ways gender stereotypes are used to manipulate men and women into serving the Empire; and the ways youth are unscrupulously lured into patriotic service. Identity—whether we develop into thinking adults or order-following automatons—also comes into focus. The end result is riveting—full of wit, sass, and pointed jabs at the never-ending quest for land and resources that ensnares so many political regimes.

The action of A Man’s a Man follows a motley band of soldiers who belong to The Royal Imperial Army. In Kilkoa, India to guard—or perhaps loot—the Pagoda of the Yellow Monks, the play zeroes in on the Eighth Regiment, AKA The Scum—and what happens when one of their members, Jeraiah Jip, suddenly becomes unable to continue in Her Majesty’s armed forces. Since a Unit requires four men, the remaining three expect big trouble when Sergeant Fairchild, AKA Bloody Five [played by Grant Neale], arrives on the scene. Known for his fiery temper—Bloody earned his nickname after killing five Hindu prisoners—his underlings know that their superior will be apoplectic when, or if, he learns that Jip is gone.

In short order, Unit members devise a plan in which happy-go-lucky Galy Gay (Josh Tyson), “a man who can’t say no,” is hoodwinked into pretending to be the no-longer-present Mr. Jip. “One man is as good as another,” the soldiers quip, thrilled to have concocted so simple a solution to their conundrum. Gay is first promised cigars and beer for agreeing to go along with the deception; later, as they step up their brainwashing, the audience watches Gay morph into the perfect soldier—compliant, docile, and obedient.

The ten short scenes of A Man’s a Man, framed by a Prologue and Epilogue, move quickly, and include a bevy of rousing—and pitch-perfect, often hilarious—song-and-dance numbers. The nine characters, plus a keyboardist, are on stage at all times. They read with tremendous force, unapologetically delivering Brecht’s none-too-subtle critique of imperialist expansion. Elise Stone is particularly good as Widow Begbick, whose wily charms are used to raise questions about what it means for men to be men. Her sexy persona is used to profound effect and showcases the inane impact of both personal and political rapacity—whether in 1920s India or today’s Iraq and Afghanistan.

The seven-year-old Phoenix Theatre Ensemble is to be commended for reviving a play that other actors had relegated to history’s attic. The Company asks that patrons pay $25 per ticket, but their policy is to allow audience members to pay whatever they wish for each show.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, November 26th 2010

Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars

barbara — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Sonia Faleiro

Penguin India

Beautiful Thing is an eponymous title. It is journalist Sonia Faleiro's first book, about the dancers and not-so-secret prostitutes of the “dance bars” of suburban Bombay (Mumbai). These now-illegal establishments offered the tripartite pleasures of alcohol, enticing women, and Bollywood music. Their dancers were “bootiful” young girls, sometimes in their initial teenage years, and well aware that their “booty”—pun unintended—is what defines them, and keeps them fed and clothed.

But this free-market beauty of Faleiro's informants and the women in their lives—mothers, daughters, sisters, wives of their lovers, their hijra (male-to-female intersex, transsexual, or transgender) friends—is what dehumanises them into things. Beautiful things. Things that entertain, things to watch, things to make money with, things to rape, things to give as gifts, things to show off, things to have sex with, things that produce meals, things to punch when the world tightens the screws.

And their eternal tragedy is that their beauty fades, usually by the grand old age of thirty, but their essential thingness, their perceived worthlessness as anything other than beautiful and sexually available women, remains.

And yet Faleiro's informants are neither cowering nor desolate, nor are they subaltern heroines, stiff-upper-lipping the world. Her guide to “the secret world of Bombay's dance bars,” Leela, came to Bombay at fourteen to escape her abusive father's pimping. More infuriating than him selling her virginity to local policemen for a gang-rape at the station, she said, was his refusal to give her the money she earned. Bombay was much better. She could get money just for dancing, relative freedom to choose “kustomers,” and pretty things from men who admired her. Even weekends at expensive resorts. Although the bar owner took the greater share of the money men threw at her, she made enough to live in luxury. If she was forced to "go" with a patron, he was usually a mafia boss, and there was both privilege and profit in sleeping with them.

The histories of the other dancers are all riffs on the same general theme. They come from poor families with too many mouths to feed and little money to do it with. They were prostituted from puberty, and the injustice of being the broke and abused breadwinner nagged them till they decided to start working for themselves in the big city. In their first months several were tricked or forced into brothels, in conditions harsher than home, but most escaped—Leela by jumping out of a window—and found their way to a dance bar. For all the politically-motivated moral outrage directed at these ostensible destroyers of the social fabric and disgraces unto womankind, the bar dancers of Bombay were amongst the tiny minority of poor, illiterate, victims of abuse who managed to win a measure of independence and happiness without institutional intervention, and no social capital apart from their “bootiful” faces.

In fact, if one manages to look past the scene-stealing women, Beautiful Thing is a chronicle of total institutional failure. From “family” and “community,” to the state legislature for banning their “immoral” profession (in open defiance of their Constitutional right to live and work without prejudice), to law-keepers who extort, rape and get free blowjobs from this suddenly-unemployed or illegally-employed demography, these women have been let down by every institutional holy cow. The only place that lends them space—at a price—is the underground nexus of police, politicians and the mafia that “really” runs Bombay. And even then it is a faceless, substitutable existence amongst a steady influx of fresher, younger girls.

Yet, despite the horror, anger, frustration, pity and even guilty relief (there, but for the grace of god...) that one might feel about the dancers, their defining moment comes, fittingly, at the end. Leela, having lost family, job, home, savings, and friends, is about to be smuggled into Dubai without a passport, ripe for every kind of abuse and exploitation imaginable. To reassure a nervous Faleiro, she points to her own smiling face and asks, “Do you see fear?”

And Faleiro has to admit she doesn't.

Written by: Priyanka Nandy, November 26th 2010

Pune Highway (11/11/2010)

mandy — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Directed by Rahul Da Cunha

Watermans Theatre

London, England

During my childhood, visits to India were largely spent travelling. A lot of this involved time on the infamous GT Road, a dry scaly snake taking us wherever we wanted to go. Aside from the beauty of fields either side, there was always the fear of danger lurking nearby. Visiting these roads was always interesting—but you knew they had the potential to harbour deadly forces. Whenever something happened, people would react wildly. The road was both a blessing and a curse, progressive in its promise, but with a lot to hide.

Whenever an incident on happened we looked on in wonder, not really knowing protocol. Minor scuffles in traffic would result in typical rambunctious arguments which proved entertaining for some—but larger incidents were a different matter. A cyclist thrown off his bike, for example, would result in a series of complexities not only for the culprit but also for spectators. Typically, they’d refrain from contacting the authorities, afraid of opening a can of worms.

One macabre incident, featured in the Times of India, inspired Rahul Da Cunha to create the play Pune Highway. Described as a "dark comedy thriller and a brutal exposition of friendship," Pune Highway is currently showing at Watermans Theatre in West London for a limited time. Rage Productions launched the play in Bombay to much critical acclaim.

On first seeing Pune Highway last night, I found it a raw and absorbing delight. With a sombre set and atmospheric lighting, the play revolves around three friends who have just witnessed the death of a fourth. As we open to a dank hotel room beside Pune Highway, three Bombay men are in turmoil, uncertain as to what their next actions are going to be.

It’s five in the morning, but no one is sleeping. The night before they were all subject to terrible events: a corpse lay on the road before them, but on closer inspection, they realised that it was not a corpse at all. Bags of rice had been laid out, designed to fool them. On realisation that they’ve been had, one of the party was attacked whilst the others fled.

While watching this play, I was quickly taken back to my own experiences of quiet Indian hotels. We’d usually rock up in a roadside three-star perched on the corner of a main highway hoping for the best. Usually it’s not the hotels themselves, but the occupants that make them such eerie places. I’m often reminded of Industrial expansion in America and Hitchcock’s Psycho. Our three characters are constantly on edge; they’re middle class men from Bombay: one with a former coke habit, another is having an extra-marital affair, and the third is wrestling with his conscience and a stammer. As they bicker and reminisce amongst themselves, things begin to get a little twisted as certain truths are revealed.

Rajit Kapur (Pramod), Ashwin Mushran (Vishnu), and Bugs Bhargava Krishna (Nicholas) have an excellent believable chemistry between them. You’d think they easily shared a childhood or a long personal history. Their suspicious waiter for the evening (Shankar Sachdev) makes regular appearances on the scene and speaks a type of street slang synonymous with his film roles. Unfortunately, the Hindi interludes are lost on some members of the London cosmopolitan audience.

Yamini Namjoshi, who plays Mona, relieves some of the tension with her spirited performance. Added to her character is a certain mystery that makes you realise all the characters in this play are truly multidimensional. As such, the play proves itself a strong candidate of the Problem Play genre. Neither too comedic nor melodramatic, it moves successfully through a gripping plot.

Overall, Pune Highway is a well woven mystery with little to fault it. The play’s ultimate success is that it leaves you wondering about the incident that inspired it: how many horrors have we actually seen on the major roads that network India? And what does our growing apathy and fear tell us about how we’re growing as a nation?

Pune Highway runs for a limited time in London before moving to New York and Washington, D.C. in June 2011.

Cross-posted at The NRI

Written by: Sandeep Sandhu, November 24th 2010

Mirch

mandy — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Vinay Shukla

Reliance Big Pictures

Director Vinay Shukla returns to the big screen after five years with his latest film Mirch. Starring Arunoday Singh, Konkona Sen Sharma, Raima Sen, Shahana Goswami, Sushant Singh, and a whole host of supporting actors, this film is witty, cleverly told, and has delightful performances. It addresses the issue of women’s emancipation from restrictive roles in traditional storytelling, and ends up walking a very thin line between making a profound statement about empowerment and being potentially offensive for painting empowered women as cunning. That decision is ultimately left to the viewer, and I walked out unsure about how to interpret it. Ultimately, Shukla delivers a film that is creatively narrated, makes you laugh, leaves you thinking, and provokes a discussion.

The basic story is of a struggling director/writer (Arunoday Singh) trying hard to impress a producer (Sushant Singh) to back his idea. Under pressure, the director narrates four short stories to him, each female-centric and evolving over time and in its feminist message. Konkona and Raima each feature in two of the stories he narrates, alternating from one to the other. They are supported by a very capable ensemble of actors such as Boman Irani, Ila Arun, Saurabh Shukla and Prem Chopra. One of the best things about the short stories is that each one transports the viewer completely to a new ambience and setting, and for a while you forget that you’re in a story within a story, until you’re pulled back out of it. Credit for this goes to the fluid writing and production design, which enables a seamless jump from swanky producer’s office to medieval village to Rajasthani palace to high-end art gallery to sleazy hotel room. If you’re curious about all those locations, watch the film to see what I mean.

Commenting on the evolution of the film, Shukla said, “The film is highly self-reflective, it mirrors the process I went through to get this film made. It was a huge struggle so the story is a commentary on that as well.” Shukla’s most well known film to date has been the 1999 release Godmother, starring Shabana Azmi, which won him awards and critical acclaim. It is good to see him return with another powerful script and a great line-up of talent. The film’s actual portrayal of women’s emancipation is up for interpretation, but at least here’s a film that inspires debate and shows you a good time while doing it.

Cross-posted at The NRI

Written by: Pulkit Datta, November 17th 2010

Aarekti Premer Galpo (Just Another Love Story)

mandy — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Directed by Kaushik Ganguly

Cinemawalla

Rituparno Ghosh completely reinvents himself from director to actor and delivers a gripping performance in this very lyrical film by Kaushik Ganguly. Just Another Love Story (original Bengali title: Aarekti Premer Galpo) is about a filmmaker Abhiroop Sen (played by Ghosh) who makes a documentary about Chapal Bhaduri, the legendary jatra (Bengali folk theatre) actor who spent his entire career playing female roles on stage, primarily as Goddess Shitala. Thus begins a journey where director and subject learn from one another—on the one hand is Bhaduri (playing himself), who was closeted for fear of social ostracism but openly accepted as a cross-dressing actor, and on the other is the modern urban filmmaker who is open about his sexuality, but still negotiating his gender identity.

The most striking thing about Just Another Love Story is that it doesn’t make a big exhibition about its very brave subject. It’s not a look-how-path-breaking-this-film-is kind of treatment. Instead, the transgender protagonist is introduced into the story with as much casualness as any other character. Ghosh lends to his character, and the story, such a complexity that you can’t help but empathize with his struggle. The film maintains a mature and sensitive treatment throughout, never resorting to unnecessary gestures to prove its point.

The parallel story arc of Chapal Bhaduri is sensitively told and enlightening. Bhaduri plays himself with vulnerability and Ghosh playing Bhaduri in the reenactment of his younger life does a great job of switching back and forth between his character as the documentary filmmaker and a portrayal of Bhaduri. In this way the film becomes multi-layered with each element building on the other. Sen’s relationship with his bisexual cameraman Basu (Indraneil Sengupta) is also handled with maturity and complexity, especially since the latter’s wife is aware (and oddly accepting) of their relationship.

Speaking about the taboo around trans identities in India, the director Ganguly said, “Trans identities, or the third sex, have been around since the mythological times, so this isn’t a new issue at all. We think it’s new because we’re still recovering from the colonial mindset.” Ganguly’s film is an ode to the traditions of jatra, a powerful yet subtle statement on the intrinsic presence of trans identities in Indian society, and another glowing feather in the cap of the talented Ghosh, who makes a stellar acting debut.

Cross-posted at The NRI

Written by: Pulkit Datta, November 8th 2010

Monica Droga: Indie Musician, Bollywood Star, Feminist

mandy — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interview with Monica Dogra

Gone are the times when people would migrate only to the West to find better lives. Now we witness a reversal of sorts, with NRIs going back to India to seek the same opportunities that their parents or grandparents had left India to find. Monica Dogra is one such NRI who is rocking the independent music scene in the homeland. She’s one half of what is arguably the most successful indie music band in India, Shaa’ir n Func, and is also making her film debut as one of the leads in Aamir Khan's upcoming Dhobi Ghat, directed by Kiran Rao. Here’s her exclusive interview:

Tell me a bit about your background. American born confused desi?

American born desi, definitely not confused. I was born and brought up in Maryland, just outside of Baltimore. My parents had migrated to the U.S. from India. I was always a super active performer from a really young age.

How did you get into music in the first place?

My mom is a singer as well so I grew up around Hindustani classical music, going to classical concerts when I was young. And then my parents split up when I was twelve and I was raised by my dad. He was the opposite, like, be a doctor, go to business school, etc. But I still had such a deep-rooted love for music that I couldn’t deny it.

How do you balance being American with being Indian?

I think kids today are much more aware of other cultures because of examples in the media. But we were reminded of being different every single step of the way. People would ask, “Where are you from? What’s your ethnicity? Why don’t you have a red dot on your head?” Those are things that we grew up with, even though you’d have an American accent and you were born and raised in the U.S. We would reply with, “Do you mean where are my parents from? Or where I was born?” What box should I check today? I am American, but I am also through and through Indian.

What sparked the move to India?

I just decided to go to Bombay for five days to check it out and I ended up falling in love with the city, the culture, with the monetary freedom I had there. My savings could take me so far. In those five days I was free writing for hours every day. Stuff was just pouring out of me in real time. So I went back. I just had a feeling that I needed to be there.

How did you meet Randolph and how was Shaa’ir n Func born?

In those first five days, Randolph came to a party. It was a room of twenty people with no smoking, no drinking allowed. There was a saxophonist, a bansuri player, I’m a singer and a poet. There was a girl doing interpretive dance. It was so tripped out. It felt like a scene from a movie. So Randolph walked in, he had a guitar, and he started playing. I liked his vibe a lot. Our music is a combination of influences. We do heavy doses of rock, electronic music, spoken word and funk. We call it conscious dance music.

When I went back to Bombay I bumped into him and I asked him to play with me. I wrote the record, he and I recorded it, we got a distribution deal, we were getting paid to do shows, and it all kicked off. Sometimes when you do the right thing, life is like “good job, I’ll give you this.” And that just kept happening, not without a lot of sweat and hard work though.

Most of your fans are young women, which is a surprising demographic to be so supportive of alternative music in India.

I pride myself on having such a big female following. I’m a feminist and seeing these beautiful women loving our kind of music is empowering, especially in a country where it’s not easy being a woman. Every day, before I walk out of my house in Bombay, think about how I’m going to get reacted to on the streets, “Oh I need to cover this, I need to cover my legs.” My friend got her butt grabbed in the middle of the street. Those are things that are not okay. There’s still a need for feminism. I’m going talk about how there are only ten female directors in Indian cinema because it’s true. We still need to work on that. It bothers me how feminism is a dirty word. I see myself as an empowered, intelligent, sexual female. I find intelligence to be sexy. I put that into my music and everything that I do.

Do you think there’s a divide between the mainstream film-centric world in Mumbai and the indie scene?

The indie scene is so anti-Bollywood, but I’m not like that. In order to change the system you have to change it from within. Most bands are English-speaking and completely anti-traditional anything. I’ve never seen things that way. I grew up watching Bollywood movies and for me that was my only reference point for India. Another reason for this divide is the dependence on connections. “Who’s your mom? Who’s your dad? Why should I pay attention to you?” That kind of vibe is off-putting. But things are changing, more rapidly now than ever before.

That brings us to your film debut. Tell us about Dhobi Ghat and working with Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao.

It came out of nowhere. Kiran saw me in a magazine and wanted me to audition. I was touring at the time in London. When I got an email from her production house I was like “Thanks, but that’s okay.” They emailed me a couple of times. So out of curiosity, I auditioned. For my second screen test they said, “You have to come tomorrow but we just wanted to give you a heads up that you have to do your screen test with Aamir Khan!” Deep breath. Freaking out. I prepared as much as I could. I walked in, he introduced himself and then said, “Let’s begin” without giving me the chance to be struck by his star presence. The reading went well. I got the role the very next day.

What was it like working with the Kiran and Aamir duo?

Kiran is such an amazing woman. She’s so talented, so beautiful and truly unique. There’s no one like her in the industry. Aamir Khan is such a normal guy with such normal desires. I admire him because he uses his star power and does something with it. He is the only one who is really doing it and doing it well. The film has turned out beautiful and I can’t wait for it to be released.

What do you see in your future? And the future of indie music in India?

There’s a powerhouse of talent in India, a huge range. It’s my firm belief that if people are given the platform to get their talents out there, the arts scene would seriously just explode in ways that we’ve never imagined. Shaa’ir n Func is three albums old and our audience is constantly growing. We’ve done shows all over India and hopefully we’ll make more music and reach out to more people. Actually, the real goal is to write a song that I wouldn’t mind playing twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I want to write that song.

As a NRI who’s returned to the homeland, do you see India as your land of opportunity?

It’s odd that both my mom and dad struggled to provide me with the opportunity to grow up in the U.S. and have access to everything, and then I would have to go back to India to emancipate myself, to feel comfortable with who I am. India has become my land of opportunity because I made it that. I created my opportunities. I was willing to give up a lot of things to achieve my dreams. India, for me, has a kind of freedom that the U.S. lacks. I love that chaos, I needed that chaos. And it has helped me thrive.

Cross-posted from The NRI

Written by: Pulkit Datta, November 6th 2010