Monday 9 December 2013

The Dynamics of the Sharif Muslim household

*to make up for CP

The short story ‘Ehsaan Mazil’ overtly traces the historical trajectory of a sharif Muslim family.  However a closer reading gives us insight into the gender dynamics in a sharif muslim household.

Firstly, marriage has supreme importance in the sharif existence, particularly for the female. This can be seen from the fact that the elder daughter, sister of Sheikh Irfan, who passed away was considered lucky; not because of her death but simply because she did not get married.

Secondly, the organization of power is such that he male by virtue of their superior position become the main agents for powerful differentiation. Whereas the females have a limited affiliation; they group up in one household, get married and then die. The only have power within their domestic sphere and are responsible for the upbringing and education of other females

Thirdly, the nature of rebellion that men and women engage in also varies. Men do it overtly, for example the son of Sheikh Sajad, Aijaz openly claimed to be an atheist. While females do in hiding; the controversial novel for instance was found hidden under the mattress of Hamidah Bibi. Perhaps this difference exists because they are allowed more freedom and there is stark variation in the consequences for inappropriate behavior. The difference in the intensity of the consequences becomes apparent when you notice that for the Aijaz, the punishment was withdrawal from studies after completion of his entrance exam but for the Hamidah it was marriage.



The faceless Hindu in Garam Hava

*to make up for my non-existent CP

For me three scenes in the movie Garam Hava stand out in which the director employs a very distinct cinematic approach. These include: the scene where Salim Mirza speaks to the banker about the status of his loan, when he approaches several landowners and inquires about renting the place and lastly when his son, Sikander is interviewing for a job but is rejected last minute when the vacancy is filled.  These scenes have a singular theme, in each of them the character directly talks into the camera but the visual appearance of the other person (Hindu) is not revealed. This depiction of the Indian Hindu as faceless I believe is intentional because it symbolizes an unknown threat to the security of the Indian Muslim in terms of job, property and livelihood.  

Saughandi in Naiza Khan's art work

*missed blog

Armour suit for Rani of Jhansi, 2008 Galvanised steel, feathers and leather 90 45 35 cm/ 35⅜ 17¾ 13¾in
Edition of 3 works

Feminized suits of armour appear as a current theme in Naiza Khan’s paintings. The following is a galvanized armour suit for Rani of Jhansi from the exhibition “The Skin She Wears”. This picture for me captures the essence of the character of Saughandi, the female prostitute in Hatak. This picture has several layers of complexity each adding a new meaning to piece which can be deciphered in relation to different contexts. I will interpret this image in relation to Saughandi. The stark juxtaposition of steel with feathers is telling. The use of steel as the material for the armour is noteworthy because it  at once symbolizes both strength and subjection; strength because of the material itself and subjection because of the confining nature of the garment. For Saughandi to be able to assume her role as a prostitute in the brothel the garment not only functions as a protective camouflage but also signals a shift in her role from a woman to a prostitute. Moreover, the pairing of soft feathers alongside steel captures her unbidden feminine desire to be loved as an equal and to be cared for by the men in her life.  At another level, if viewed in relation to a brothel, the portrait perhaps seems to suggest the ambiguous and problematic place of such conflicting desires in society.  

Sunday 8 December 2013

Blood, brothers

Thought I should share. This came in today's DAWN Images.
http://m.dawn.com/news/1061274/foreign-front-blood-brothers

The Partition was much like a horror film: when Sir Cyril Radcliff hacked India and Pakistan into existence, blood hung in a mist over the countryside. And life was elsewhere.
“I was least affected by the Partition,” recalls film-maker MS Sathyu. “I was a student in Mysore in South India, living far away from the bloodshed that followed. Only years later, while living in Mumbai, after I met people who were forced to leave their homes, did I become aware that it was nothing short of a holocaust.”
That consciousness inspired Sathyu’s directorial debut, Garam Hawa (Scorching Winds), widely regarded as among the best films on the Partition. Based on an unpublished short story by Ismat Chughtai, and adapted for the screen by late poet Kaifi Azmi and scriptwriter Shama Zaidi, it was the first Hindi film to be made on the subject, nearly three decades after the division.
“A lot of film-makers and film financiers came from Punjab and the Sindh, and they had experienced the trauma firsthand. They just did not want to remind themselves of what they had suffered,” says Sathyu.
Now, over four decades after it was released in 1973, a digitally enhanced version is set to make a comeback in theatres across India. Although the Partition as a topic is now largely confined to school textbooks, Sathyu, 83, believes it continues to “hold historical and emotional value, especially for audiences born after India’s independence.”
Set in Agra in the months following the formation of India and Pakistan, Garam Hawa tells the story of a shoe manufacturer Salim Mirza and his family. Despite prejudice and economic pressure, Mirza chooses to stay on in India, even though close friends and relatives shift to Pakistan. It’s a decision that gradually tears his family apart. His daughter Amina’s childhood sweetheart migrates to Pakistan.
Mirza’s business suffers because lenders are hesitant to advance money to Muslim traders who may leave without repaying debts. The family loses its ancestral home. Amina commits suicide after another suitor too goes away to Pakistan. A heartbroken Mirza, left behind with his wife and son, is filled with doubt and contemplates migration.
Mirza’s optimist son Sikander, however, refuses to leave his homeland, preferring to soldier on. The film ends on a heart-wrenching note of hope, as Mirza follows his son into a morcha, with narrator Kaifi Azmi’s words ringing deep in the background, “Jo door se toofan ka karte hain nazaara, unke liye toofan vahaan bhi hai, yahan bhi. Dhaare mein jo mil jaaoge, ban jaaoge dhara, Ye vaqt ka elaan vahan bhi hai, yahan bhi.” (Who sees the storm coming from afar knows that what is there will soon be here ...
Who mingles with the streams knows this is the cry of the time, both there and here …)
In Sikander’s persona, the scriptwriters represented the voice of the young Indian Muslim. “What the film is trying to show is how people become victims of events they cannot control,” says Farooque Shakh, who was 23 when he played the part of Sikander. “The main character is completely apolitical. He is a decent, upright man trying to live a regular life, but that does not stop circumstances from pulling him down.”
Few films have had the enduring impact of Garam Hawa, which focuses not on the bloodshed, but the violence the Muslim community experienced from within. The sense of alienation and despair felt by a people desperate to hold on to a disappearing world is communicated through real-life experiences which the scriptwriters added to the original story. The scene where Mirza’s old mother hides in the kitchen and refuses to leave their ancestral home is based on an incident from the life of Shaukat Azmi, who plays Salim Mirza’s wife.
Garam Hawa is a standout film not only for daring to take up a sensitive period in Indian history. It was also the first Hindi film to look at the Muslim community in a nuanced manner. Prior to this were the so-called ‘classic’ Muslim socials of the ’50s and ’60s; popular, but their elaborate shayari and courtly sets had little connect with the lives led by ordinary Indian Muslims. The myopic portrayals continued into the ’70s and ’80s, where stock characters like the tawaif with the heart of gold, and the hero’s best friend were almost always Muslims.
“Invariably in Indian cinema, minority communities are depicted as caricatures and typeset. They are used as comic relief. This is not just for Muslims, but even for Christians, Parsis or Marwaris. They are shown as underworld dons or bootleggers and the portrayals are often crude,” says Sathyu.
“It’s not just about minorities,” adds veteran scriptwriter Javed Akhtar. “In recent years Hindi cinema has shied away from any social issue. We have created a new middle class which just wants to party. With the affluence that came in the ’90s, the urban middle class in India has become inward-looking and insular. They are not interested in seeing things that are not their problem, so middle-class or working-class issues have gone out of the frame.”
So will Garam Hawa touch a chord with this contemporary audience, the post-Partition generation, many of whom have little connection with or interest in events long past?
“When there is a film with human emotions, it will always have a resonance,” believes Shaikh. These problems exist throughout the world. So stories of this kind are pertinent wherever and whenever they are shown.”
The themes Garam Hawa touches on — alienation, exclusion, feeling isolated in one’s own home — have perhaps never been more relevant in India than today, where Muslims have complained of facing discrimination when it comes to renting or buying houses.
And it’s not just Muslims who are targeted. Housing segregation is now an open practice with advertisements freely proclaiming properties open for purchase only to Brahmins, non-Muslims or vegetarians. The practice, while legal, has contributed to a growing ghettoisation and alienation.
“Growing up I never faced any discrimination, even though my father was a Pathan and my mother a Hindu,” says Mumbai-based Anusha Khan. Khan, who is married to a Hindu, says things are different today. “My daughter keeps my last name as her middle name and she is questioned about it all the time by her friends. When I was growing up, my father wrote ‘Humanist’ in the religion column in school forms, and it was accepted. I do that as well, but I am always asked what that means and why. I feel the world was a more accepting place then. There are many more walls today.”
“Today we are vocal about our intolerance,” adds her husband, film director Victor Acharya. “Bigotry existed earlier too, but it was voiced behind closed doors. We cannot deny that it is intimidating to live in India today and be part of a faith that is globally perceived as not being safe. I am not sure things have changed much since Garam Hawa.”
“I have a Muslim colleague who goes to the mosque every Friday and observes roza; much like some Hindus fasting every Tuesday. But he is perceived differently. Today Garam Hawa would probably be about people like him. They are as well-entrenched as anyone else but come up against a few barriers,” says Acharya.
Adds Akhtar, “The film is still relevant and I don’t say this happily, because the whole problem should have been a part of history by now.”
Religion and geography gang up to ensure history still hits the headlines. But perhaps one day, thanks to films like Garam Hawa, we will let bygones be bygones.

Friday 6 December 2013

Contradictory ideas

The amount of doublethink going on by in Bol is disconcerting and this aspect of the movie wasn't talked about much in class. The characters' ability to hold contradictory ideas is probably a reflection of the contradictory nature of the people of the society the film attempts to mirror. Aba jan threatens to kill his daughter(for the millionth time) if she dares to marry her shiite neighbor yet has no qualms about marrying a prostitute who admits to being a non-believer for the sake of money. Aba jan also refuses to go teach the children at a prostitute's house because he believes it is a house not fit to step in but when he falls upon hard times, he feels no guilt in prostituting himself for money.

The fact that the person holding these contradictory ideas is Aba jan, a religious male, tells us a lot about the filmmakers' views about the role of Islam in our society and how it has been used to manipulate the general populace this way and that without the people being able to think critically about what it is they're being told to follow.

Wednesday 4 December 2013

Out of the different art forms we saw in class the one that stood out for me was the work by Huma Mulji. Her work is simple, in that it only employs two dolls, but by placing it in different settings it becomes telling of much more. By involving by standers in the final photographs her work denotes the place that the show of affection has in our society, where publicly it is both something that is uncomfortable and a source of wonder. What makes it all the more interesting is the use of play things, dolls which are innocent as they are used for child play. By undressing them and setting them up in sexual positions she upsets these connotations making the viewer all the more uncomfortable.
After class I took a look at some of the other photos she has taken and found this image, titled Full Mood Mein, particularly captivating.
Here is a combination of the gaze in which such activity finds it self caught in, and further surrounded by the religious pressures as denoted by the word "Allah" written inside the rickshaw. 

Nitpicking

*missed blog post

Mahira Khan's and Atif Aslam's characters in Shoaib Mansoor's Bol croon "Hona tha pyaar, hua meray yaar." For me the sentiment is unsettling not just because of the corny romantic allusions but also because the song implies that the love the two characters share was predestined, aligning it with the phrase that Hakim Sahib uses perpetually "khuda ki marzi". For me this is problematic because the little agency that Mahira's character shows is in her defiance of her religious restriction by falling in love with Mustafa, but the song implies that even this was not a choice for her and rather in line with her beliefs because it was a product of divine will.