Who is a good communicator: a post script to the previous post

In my previous post, I wrote that the Malayalam actor Prithviraaj is a good communicator. I also said that he should shut up at times and let his work speak for him. I have since then revised my opinion. Prithviraaj is articulate and he speaks knowledgeably about a lot of things. But he is not a good communicator.

A good communicator is not simply someone who is articulate and knowledgeable. A good communicator should also know when not to speak, when in fact silence is golden.

That said, he is a lot better than a lot of others in Malayalam art/cinema world.

Urumi & Prithviraj

I am loving the Urumi songs. They have to grow on you. Good job Deepak Dev!

But what the hell is Prithviraaj wearing in the movie? His clothes *seem* out of place from the little I have seen of the movie from the promos.

The thing about movies is that the risk factor is so high. Actors and technicians work so hard to bring the movie to us. But there is absolutely no guarantee of success. Worse, the failure is so public and out there. So the passion has to be that high (vaanolam, if I were to use a Malayalam word) if you have to continue to make movies or you have to be extremely delusional(;-)).

I do not think Prithviraj is delusional. The guy is talented, good looking, is an excellent communicator and has all the potential to be Malayalam cinema's Aamir Khan (if only he would shut up a little bit at times, sometime you have to let your work speak for you).

who hugs/kisses whom - the non-romantic kind:-)

I should start by saying that this post is about people of the same sex hugging/kissing each other to show intimacy, affection, warmth and good cheer in a non-romantic manner.

I am not fond of hugging people I am not close to. As a kid, my parents would insist that I kiss the old and the elderly in my extended family. I hated going up to the old person in question( typically someone I did not know), smelling the combination of odours of their sweat, hair and medication and then kissing the tired skin of their cheeks. As I grew up, my parents stopped insisting upon this and boy, was I so glad. Recently, I was telling my mother this and she has no recollection, none at all, of any such insistence on her or my father's part (eey, enikku ormaye illa = I don't recollect at all)

In Kerala, I am yet to see people hugging their friends in the casual way it is done up north or in the West. When offered a hug by not-so-close friends, I have always accepted it as it would be rude to reject a person offering up their body to you to touch. But I have never felt comfortable.

It really came to me one day in Delhi. A friend and I were at her sister's house for tea. I was introduced to the sister's mother-in-law. When we were leaving the lady in question hugged my friend and then me after saying, "take care, beta, all the best". I am sure she meant well. I had just moved to Delhi and I was looking for a place to stay. I was staying for a short while with this friend until I found my own apartment and this had come up in the conversation. But the hug left me feeling invaded.

In Delhi I noticed colleagues (even the ones who hated each other!) hugging each other. I think there is a North-South divide or to be more specific, a Punjabi-Malayali divide in this.

How much of this opening up our bodies business is related to caste and how much of this is related to space/privacy? On the latter, I should say that we Keralites are not a particularly space/privacy conscious people. I think some of the answers may lie in caste. In her excellent book "Unknown Turf", while writing about caste in Punjab, Annie Zaidi points out that caste in Punjab has never been about purity-pollution. Remember that in Kerala we all practised untouchability until quite recently. The ritual purity business is not widely practised now, but it manifests itself in our refusal to open up our bodies to others, including to being hugged. This is only a tenative conclusion, btw.

Feeding the reading habit

I do a lot of stuff online. But if I can help it, I prefer to read the hard copy. So, I guess it will be quite a long while before I buy the Kindle or the Desi Wink! That fine magazine Caravan has its whole issue online and so does a host of other magazines I read, such as Open, Tehelka and Outlook. The last two are available in Kochi (two-three days after publication). But not Caravan and Open. I have stopped hoping to ever get Seminar or Biblio:-)

I do not like to subscribe magazines. I would rather buy them at the book stalls. Open used to be available at MG Road, but not anymore. Delhi Press (Caravan's publisher) had a stall at a book fair held recently and they were trying to sell the subcription scheme and I tried telling them to sell it at the bookshops.

That brings me to the topic of absence of good bookshops in Kochi. Paico is now in serious decline (I think this began after the death of the elder Pai, the founder), DC's non-fiction collection is really not up to the mark. When the Reliance Timeout opened at a local mall, many people I know were oohing aahing about its collection. But what a disappointment! It is more of an entertainment zone, with a toy shop, accessories shop and multi-media shop.

Amitava Kumar's interview with Arundhati Roy

I am mostly with Roy on the causes she espouses. I worry that while she can stop talking about these issues when she chooses, that is not the case for the people whose very life these issues are. These are the people who are tortured, killed in encounters and have false cases planted against them. Don't get me wrong, if Roy did not speak up for them (yes, "for them" and not "with them" since we do not hear their voices ever), there would be no spotlight on them. And, I prefer A Roy to P Chidambaran who seems to know everything.

Anyways....

I was reading Amitava Kumar's interview with her. Roy had said something very insightful about discovering your creative abilities and nourishing it until it becomes yours. Here it is:

"Behind the speed and confidence of a beautiful line in a line drawing there’s years of—usually—discipline, obsession, practice that builds on a foundation of natural talent or inclination of course. It’s like sport. A sentence can be like that. Language is like that. It takes a while to become yours, to listen to you, to obey you, and for you to obey it. I have a clear memory of language swimming towards me. Of my willing it out of the water. Of it being blurred, inaccessible, inchoate… and then of it emerging. Sharply outlined, custom-made."

I think even with professional skills (let me restrict myself to what I am familiar with) such as legal drafting, arguing in court, counseling clients, at first it seems insurmountable and formidable. But slowly, "it swims towards you".

~~~

thought provoking tagline

I was at a music shop today and came across the vcd of the Malayalam movie "sakudumbam shyamala. I loved the tagline for the movie which was on the cover of the vcd, " ee lokathu njanum, ente bharthavum, ente monum pinne oru swarnakkadayum mathram mathi" (there need be just me, my husband, my son and a gold jewellery shop in this world). It really captures a lot about middle/upper class Malayali thinking these days.

more songs

sundaran neeyum sundari njanum love Kamala Hasan's voice - powerful. I wonder who the female play back is?

I had posted earlier about Vasthavam movie which Prithviraaj in the lead. I love the song Nadha Nee varumbol and can listen to it non-stop:-) The picturisation is sensuous.

Totally unconnected to the song, but I noticed the old Kerala style jewelery worn by the actress around the middle of video (with the waterfall background). That big vattam earpiece, my late aunt (father's sister) had one exactly like that. That earpiece and the Shantiniketan bag which was in fashion eons ago among Malayali women of a certain class is one thing I always remember about my late aunt.

My father had only one sister and this aunt loved me and my siblings unconditionally, no strings attached. I don't think people love other people's kids like that anymore. I wish I could be proved wrong. Also, I have never seen a brother and sister who liked each other so much. He was the only one she would listen to (yeah... she did not even listen to her husband sometimes, if you are wondering:-))

I am sure my aunt would not have approved of the picturisation of the song. She was a devout woman who had few doubts about her moral universe!

Ente Malayalam

I love this video....yes lot of noteworthy people are missing (where is KJ Yesudas/Chithra for instance?).. but nevertheless always makes me proud!

music is on my mind

This post is for documenting these lovely Mal. songs so I do not go on a wild goose search for them when I nnnneeddd to listen to them:-)))

oru chempaneer poo (wish sound quality was better)

vathil pazhuthilooden

oru pushpam

what is bliss

coffee... books to read... a comfortable chair...is bliss

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what is faith?

"Faith is what you need when your belief is tested. Faith is trust. Faith is what you turn to in the middle of the night when doubt creeps in. Faith is what you hold onto." the amazingly articulate "Tea" author of Tea and cookies blog.

discomfiture on identity politics, intersectionality, caste and my friend Nick

After writing the previous post on Joby John and caste, I felt quite uncomfortable. What bothered me was my reference to "their" candidate. The "they" being the Dalit/OBC blogosphere. My reference to "their" meant that I had willy-nilly accepted the framework of identity politics, in such politics individuals think solely in terms of their community identities.

I also participated in an interaction over at fishpond which lasted a couple of days. When a commentator sarcastically referred to me as the "enlightened one" (!!), all because I did not toe the 'party line' that the 5 lakhs votes represented caste mobilisation, I decided to call it quits.

After reflecting for a few days, I was reminded of Kimberle Crenshaw's pathbreaking work on intersectionality, how different factors like race, class and gender intersect to create inter-locking forms of discrimination but law and the legal process is used to thinking in linear terms about discrimination (a good example is the question - when a African-American woman is discriminated against, is she discriminated because of gender or because of race, ignoring that it could be because of both).

In Joby John's case, was it a case of intersectionality - his caste and class operating together, among other factors like his geniality? But since class is more palatable to the general public, it blinds observers like me, causing us to think in linear terms? I should emphasis however that nothing in the original post at fishpond or the comments was about intersectionality. Unfortunately, it degenerated into "how can you (an outsider) claim to speak about marginalised 'lower" castes? ( is this not a form of identity politics?)

I am conflicted about this.

Edited to add the section in brackets

[The middle class 'upper' caste Malayali is famously very uncomfortable about caste. The non-Hindu Malayalis are indifferent to caste as long as it does not affect them and when it gets into their territory, they are as prejudiced as the 'upper' caste Hindus are. There is no white guilt here, if anything, 'upper' caste and middle class non-Hindus try to heap guilt on the subaltern castes for supposedly sullying the utopia of merit that Kerala would have been but for affirmative action aka reservation. In such a context, the packaging of a poor 'lower' caste person as someone emptied of his caste identity and depicted only as poor becomes important in a reality show like Idea Star Singer. The middle class Malayali heart would sympathise with a poor singer but not with a subaltern singer who is proud of subaltern identity and does not mind wearing it on his/her sleeve. This was what I was trying to say over at Fishpond.]

I also really wish my friend Nick (not his real name) about whom I blogged before was here. He was very astute about stuff like this. Nick once told me something very interesting. It went along these lines, "You can say that larger society has accepted us (as in African-Americans) when it is no longer looking for exceptional African Americans, when it is ok for us some of us to fail and it is not taken as emblematic of anything."

[Lastly, it is also worth noting the consumerism involved. SMS is "smart MONEY service" for the channel]

Idea Star Singer and Joby John's "caste"

Over at fishpond, Ajithkumar hails Joby John's victory in Kerala's most popular music reality show IDEA STAR SINGER as a victory for caste mobilization. Now Joby John is a Christian and seems like a devout one at that. From his background, it appears that he/his ancestors may have converted to Christianity. [Since all Christians in Kerala are converts or have ancestors who are converts, this point is irrelevant. I noticed that this post has received a few visitors, so to make clear what I have edited, I have chosen to 'strike through' rather than erase the statement.]

The BJP has always claimed that the Adibasis, Dalits and the OBCs are Hindu. In fact, in Gujarat in 2002, a section of Adibasis were involved in the massacre of Muslims. So I find it very interesting that OBC/Dalit activists are appropriating the victory of Joby John as a victory of one of "theirs". A smart inversion, I would say. We need this kind of politics in Kerala to deal with the imminent decline of communism and the BJP occupying the space left by the communists.

But if we take this argument further, we come across certain disjunctions. Take the case of Najeem Ershad, the winner of the 2007 edition. Najeem belongs to a lower middle class Muslim family. Like Joby he is also trained in Carnatic music. But in the run-up to the 2007 finals and in its aftermath, the Dalit/OBC blogosphere rallied around Sannidanandan (and deservedly so, just take the instance of 'upper' caste MLA Ganeshkumar's utterly condescending comments on Sannidanandan becoming arrogant, a comment that speaks more about Ganeshkumar's caste affiliation - that 'lower' castes have become arrogant is an extremely common so-called criticism against them). The blogosphere did not seem to have noticed that Najeem's victory was phenomenal in many ways. This was prolly because their attention was focused on the presence of Sannidanandan who was a 'lower' caste candidate. I think that Joby John got the support of the Dalit/OBC blogosphere this time because in the finals or the semi-finals they did not have "their" candidate.

Also, I am not sure I agree that Joby John's victory is one of caste mobilisation via the sms route. Joby's story - how his mother worked as a domestic help to support his training in music struck a chord in many people. That sense of sympathy, rather than caste mobilisation is what prolly won the first prize for him.

(I have been getting a few visitors to this post, so I want you to know that after writing this post, I thought a great deal about my use of "their" candidate and intersectionality, so I have added my reflections in a subsequent post, which you can see here)

standardisation aka cosmopolitan according to some

Around five years back Kwame Antony Appiah wrote an op-ed article in the NYT extolling the virtues of cosmopolitanism. I was so uncomfortable with that article. He seemed to think that there was a free, unencumbered mutual exchange of cultures, ideas etc. But surely it is not so? The rest adapts to the West and the West calls that cosmopolitan.

It just came back to me when I saw the pic of this Japanese woman interviewed over at Dilliwala. She was dressed in a T shirt and jeans. Pretty standard stuff. That got me thinking of 'traditional' clothing and how it is being replaced fast everywhere. Of course, these things are complicated and there is a gender dimension to it. I have noticed that women especially in a place like India take to Western clothing less easily than men ( a nod to Partha Chatterjee's famous "nationalist resolution of the women's question article) Then we should also problematise the term "Western" clothing. Where in Europe did what is now standard now emerge? How did it spread? Why did it spread?

Cultures change all the time. The Sari tying style that we are all famliar with is actually not that old and emerged in the nineteenth century. But it became popular and spread across India replacing other styles like the Tambrahm Madisar for instance. I am not arguing for "museumising" cultures by fiat, either by the state or some other agent. But I do feel very sad to see the homogenization that Appaih wrongly claims is cosmopolitanism.

neela thamara

This is a bit late in the day... but I loved this movie. I really heart MT Vasudevan Nair, on whose story the movie is based. MT's stories always leave you with this unsatisfied feeling, but then you realise that life is like that - never quite perfect, no?

I thought Archana Kavi and Reema Kallingal did a wonderful job. But the star of the movie is the story. The older Kunji malu comes back to Haridas' house to take care of his mother and seems to genuinely care for the old lady. But she seems to hold something against him, refusing Haridas's widow's offer to hand over Haridas' last letter which was addressed to her. I sensed a lot of hurt in that. Still nursing the wounds of that heart break? The story unfolds in the background of a myth about a neelathamara aka blue lotus which blooms where the prayers addressed to the deity of a local temple are answered.

Kerala hummed and sang along with Anuraga Vilochananayi for a good six months after the movie was released. Lovely song and surprise of surprises is that the female playback singer cannot even speak Malayalam. Also lovely is the title song Neelathamare

Lal Jose, the director of the movie has a blog with several thoughtful entries. Here is hoping he posts more regularly.

sharing a great link

i can read

Nadha nee varumbol......

One lazy Saturday afternoon I was just channel surfing when I came across the Malayalam movie Vasthavam. It is the story of a person caught in the whirlwind of bureaucracy and politics. An interesting movie that raises so many questions. The protagonist (played well by that hottie Prithviraj) is a naive young man from North Kerala who comes to Trivandrum to work as a clerk at the state secretariat . At the prodding of a mentor (played excellently by that wonderful actor, Jagathy Sreekumar) he learns to take bribes and climb the hierarchy, eventually becoming Personal Assistant (PA) to a Minister. He becomes quite the wheeler-dealer. There is one scene where blames his new corrupt self on the influence of his mentor. This raises questions about human agency. How much of our actions are really ours?

The protagonist's relationship with the three women in his life also raises questions. Love, lust and sympathy are the three emotions at play here. The protagonist was in love with his childhood sweetheart, but was forced due to indigence to marry another woman. He does not take his wife with him to Trivandrum. While at the Secretariat, he has an intimate relationship with the niece of the PWD Minister so that he can become his PA. He dumps her after becoming PA. Meanwhile, his wife stays in his village in North Kerala taking care of his old father and in one scene, he is moved by sympathy and offers to take her to Trivandrum. Ok... I will stop revealing the whole plot here.

The movie did not do well at the box office. I remember Prithviraj saying he had really expected this movie to be a hit.

I think the best thing about the movie is the romantic song "nadha nee varumbol, ee yamam thalirilamayi....."

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Mangalore Plane Crash: Avoidable tragedy??

On Saturday (May 22, 2010) morning came the news of the crash at Mangalore aiport, when a flight from Dubai overshot the runway while landing. 160+ innocent lives were lost. A TOI report states that, "The runway at Mangalore airport is situated on a hillock, which in aviation parlance is known as a table top runway. Basically, the runway strip is built on flat land, but the area situated at either end of the runway, and its sides slope downwards. In such cases pilots have to be extra careful during landing and take-off, as any error in judgment can lead to a major disaster."

It appears that this tragedy was avoidable according to a letter by two environmental activists who had opposed the expansion of the airport(Many thanks to blogger and writer Dilip D'Souza who has put up the letter on his blog). They claim that the expansion of the 2nd runway was done in violation of applicable norms. According to these activists,

"For instance, if an aircraft has initiated take off, and a technical flaw requires emergency stop, the standard prescribes the minimum area that should be kept free to enable such a stop. In the instant case, the runway distance itself is about 2400 metres, and even if the area left is most cautiously utilised, what is left is only about 300 metres on each end of the runway. By the prescribed standard, this is far below the required distance needed for an emergency stop way. Therefore, the chances of an aircraft that has achieved the decision speed forcing an emergency stop are critically minimised, and the inevitable consequence could be that the plane would come crashing down the hillsides from a height of 80-100 metres on either side of the proposed runway."


The last sentence in the second quotation above seems like a chilling prediction.

[This blog entry has been edited after having been initially put up on Sunday 23, May 2010]