I read in the papers yesterday that one of the purposes of art is to ‘make one see’. Without getting into a debate on ‘art for art’s sake’ and ‘a poem must not mean, but be’, let me add that I think one of the purposes of art (please note – ‘one of’) is to remind us of a reality we would rather ignore or forget about. It is this purpose that the film ‘Parzania’ succeeds in.
‘Parzania’ is not great cinema. Of course, there is some amazing acting – there could be no less given that Naseeruddin Shah essays the role of one of the main protagonists, but a few scenes are clichéd, almost amateurish. However, it is a very powerful movie, and undoubtedly a very brave one (Salaam to the maker Mr. Rahul Dholakia). It took two years for the censor board to clear ‘Parzania’, and after seeing the movie, am surprised (pleasantly so) that it was released in India at all. The film deserves a watch, both for some powerful performances and for the topic it deals with.
The movie tackles the Gujarat riots of 2002 - why they happened, how they were carried out, the complicity of the administrative system, the systematic ethnic cleansing of minority communities in some areas etc. It does this through the story of a Parsi family in Ahmedabad – their lives before the riots, the loss of their son during the riots and how they deal with that loss. And around this kernel are woven the threads of the larger story about the riots. (A few of which just seem to dangle needlessly in the wind, like the track about the American in search of Gandhi, I didn’t quite get it.)
The film-maker makes a lot of unequivocal judgements about the role of the police, government, right-wing Hindu parties etc. There is no fig-leaf for anyone to hide behind in the movie, no subtlety, no euphemisms either – the truth is stated quite plainly. Thankfully, some of the more gory acts of violence are mentioned, but not shown visually.
I think the movie is a must-watch. But don’t forget to take your handkerchief along, you will need it.
By,
Zenobia D. Driver
Monday, February 26, 2007
Terrorism
Terrorism
Reading a column by Irfan Hussain in Dawn about how he has become indifferent to terrorist violence reminded me of most Indians' reactions to terrorist murders around the world recently, in particular my own.
When the Punjab terrorism problem started in the early 1980s, culminating in Operation Bluestar and Indira Gandhi's assassination, people around me had already started getting used to random violence. I remember my mum talking of the news - "Let's watch the news and find out how many were killed and injured today," ("chalo news on karo, pata to chale kitne mare, kitne ghayal"). While funny at the time for the sheer macabre acceptance of the situation as it was then (and still is today), it is at the same time shocking and maddening when I see it in the context of how Americans have reacted to 9/11.
My family were in Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi when it was announced that Indira Gandhi was assassinated. Our neighbors were Sikhs, and they proudly displayed a bronze religious symbol outside their town home. Before we knew what was happening, a mob was entering the locality. Our neighbors were trembling in our house, in one of the inner bedrooms. We had wet blankets down the front of their house to cover the bronze symbol, which we were dousing with water every hour or so to keep the blankets from flying up in the wind. My super-geeky dad and uncle fished out the one hockey stick they had in the storage closet and took turns in the neighborhood patrol, in case there were overnight attacks.
Guess what, we accepted this is outside the norm, but not so much that anyone got fired, or anyone even got sued over. Yeah, the owner of the Volga store in Lajpat Nagar market had his house ransacked and burned, and was ruined, but he was okay. Yeah, there were stories of Sikhs at the railway station who were killed by putting tires around their necks and burning the tires. Yeah there were stories of Sikhs being paraded naked. Yeah the Shiv Sena threw acid bulbs into houses of non-Maharashtrians, and harassed Sikhs in Bombay. But we all kinda shrugged it off - very few of us knew anyone directly involved in the atrocities or upon whom a crime was committed. (You could argue that a crime was committed upon my neighbors, but we just didn't see it that way then.)
The net effect was that when I was in a US government lab and the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened, it was all a bit of "blah". However, the reaction from the people around me shocked me. My officemate was completely stressed out, but that became understandable when he told me that his dad worked in one of the World Trade Center buildings on the 89th floor (his dad escaped just in time). The lab director - who knew no one that was affected - was overcome with tears. People were genuinely concerned. People wanted war, revenge, retribution, something.
But my reaction to it ranged from "Aren't these guys making a big deal of it," to "Wow, these guys really do care, the India I knew didn't care at all when people got killed," to "Pshaw! This is nothing, we lose more people in Kashmir every month, probably!"
Somewhere along the line, the part of my mind that thinks about my thoughts told me that I had become an indifferent monster, and I think that's true.
By,
Speck42[at]gmail[dot]com
Reading a column by Irfan Hussain in Dawn about how he has become indifferent to terrorist violence reminded me of most Indians' reactions to terrorist murders around the world recently, in particular my own.
When the Punjab terrorism problem started in the early 1980s, culminating in Operation Bluestar and Indira Gandhi's assassination, people around me had already started getting used to random violence. I remember my mum talking of the news - "Let's watch the news and find out how many were killed and injured today," ("chalo news on karo, pata to chale kitne mare, kitne ghayal"). While funny at the time for the sheer macabre acceptance of the situation as it was then (and still is today), it is at the same time shocking and maddening when I see it in the context of how Americans have reacted to 9/11.
My family were in Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi when it was announced that Indira Gandhi was assassinated. Our neighbors were Sikhs, and they proudly displayed a bronze religious symbol outside their town home. Before we knew what was happening, a mob was entering the locality. Our neighbors were trembling in our house, in one of the inner bedrooms. We had wet blankets down the front of their house to cover the bronze symbol, which we were dousing with water every hour or so to keep the blankets from flying up in the wind. My super-geeky dad and uncle fished out the one hockey stick they had in the storage closet and took turns in the neighborhood patrol, in case there were overnight attacks.
Guess what, we accepted this is outside the norm, but not so much that anyone got fired, or anyone even got sued over. Yeah, the owner of the Volga store in Lajpat Nagar market had his house ransacked and burned, and was ruined, but he was okay. Yeah, there were stories of Sikhs at the railway station who were killed by putting tires around their necks and burning the tires. Yeah there were stories of Sikhs being paraded naked. Yeah the Shiv Sena threw acid bulbs into houses of non-Maharashtrians, and harassed Sikhs in Bombay. But we all kinda shrugged it off - very few of us knew anyone directly involved in the atrocities or upon whom a crime was committed. (You could argue that a crime was committed upon my neighbors, but we just didn't see it that way then.)
The net effect was that when I was in a US government lab and the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened, it was all a bit of "blah". However, the reaction from the people around me shocked me. My officemate was completely stressed out, but that became understandable when he told me that his dad worked in one of the World Trade Center buildings on the 89th floor (his dad escaped just in time). The lab director - who knew no one that was affected - was overcome with tears. People were genuinely concerned. People wanted war, revenge, retribution, something.
But my reaction to it ranged from "Aren't these guys making a big deal of it," to "Wow, these guys really do care, the India I knew didn't care at all when people got killed," to "Pshaw! This is nothing, we lose more people in Kashmir every month, probably!"
Somewhere along the line, the part of my mind that thinks about my thoughts told me that I had become an indifferent monster, and I think that's true.
By,
Speck42[at]gmail[dot]com
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Morning Rain
(This post was written on the morning it rained in Bombay)
This morning I realised why every paisa of rent I pay for my house is well worth it. I woke up to find the sky overcast, and a lovely smell of rain in the air. Then I walked up to the window and looked out; on one side I saw a garden surrounded by a fence sprinkled with white flowers, pristine white after being washed clean by the rain; on the other side I could see the vast expanse of the sea, capped by a greyish-blue cloudy sky. Here and there the unending blue sheet of the sea was broken by a spray of vigorous white as a wave hit a rock. What a lovely way to begin a new day, a new week.
Am so looking forward to the monsoon now !
By,
Zenobia D. Driver
This morning I realised why every paisa of rent I pay for my house is well worth it. I woke up to find the sky overcast, and a lovely smell of rain in the air. Then I walked up to the window and looked out; on one side I saw a garden surrounded by a fence sprinkled with white flowers, pristine white after being washed clean by the rain; on the other side I could see the vast expanse of the sea, capped by a greyish-blue cloudy sky. Here and there the unending blue sheet of the sea was broken by a spray of vigorous white as a wave hit a rock. What a lovely way to begin a new day, a new week.
Am so looking forward to the monsoon now !
By,
Zenobia D. Driver
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