2011, Gracias

One more hour and 2012 will be here. I could not let 2011 go, without a farewell, that it truly deserves. It was a phenomenal year for the world. Of course, what is phenomenal would depend on which part of the globe you are, and what your media has been telling you. But for tonight, I am not even trying to be politically correct.

2011, was just extra ordinary, for me.

I wished. It happened. There has never been a year like this before. Life, was kind to me, till the last day of the year. With a finale that competes with my fantasies. If the advice, "beware of what you want, because it might just come true" has any relevance, 2011 was the year, it made the most sense. It all happened, as I  wanted. What comes out of it, is going to be the story of my life.

For one, I began my PhD dream. I moved to the US to study sociology . As I read Karl Marx’s communist manifesto for the class, I saw the Occupy struggle happening outside my window. I am now weaving new dreams, and long time ago, this was just a "maybe sometime in life" kind of a thing. When the year began, I hoped, but did not expect to get an admission which did not even require a thought. It all happened, like a flash of a lightning. 

Most importantly, it was also a year, I rediscovered love. Rediscovered family. If my twenties, were about illusory love at one end, it was also a period of rebellion. Rebellion meant that an iron wall had developed between me and my family. Now, that wall has disintegrated. Having said that, I think, the evolution was necessary. Although, I dont really tom tom about space - "space", "individuality" and "independence" is certainly a part of my life. If something has amazed me this year, it is the journey that my parents have travelled for me - not physically but mentally. This was the year I realized, "no matter what, I could return home." That is the biggest gift that 2011 gave me. Turning 30, seems to have had some role, in helping me recognize that too.

2012, you are welcome :)

Wish you all a wonderful year, with peace and love.

ഗോതമ്പ് ദോശ

പത്തു പതിനഞ്ചു വര്‍ഷങ്ങള്‍ മുമ്പ്
രാത്രി മണി ഒരു എട്ടു എട്ടര
നല്ല വിശപ്പുണ്ട്
അമ്മയോട് ഞാന്‍ ചോതിച്ചു
"ഇന്ന് രാത്രി എന്താണ് ഭക്ഷണം?"
"ഗോതമ്പ് ദോശ" അമ്മ പറഞ്ഞു
"ഗോതമ്പ് ദോശയോ!" ഞാന്‍ ശബ്ദം ഉയര്‍ത്തി
"എനിക്ക് ചപ്പാത്തി തന്നെ വേണം" ഞാന്‍ ശഠിച്ചു
"കൂടെ ചമ്മന്തിയും" എന്റെ ആവശ്യങ്ങള്‍ തീര്‍ന്നിട്ടില്ല
എന്തോ പിറ് പിറുത്തു കൊണ്ട് അമ്മ അടുക്കളയില്‍ കയറി
ചൂടുള്ള ചപ്പാത്തി രുചിയുള്ള ചമ്മന്തിയും
 മേശയില്‍ സ്ഥാനം ഉറപ്പിച്ചു
എന്റെ മുഖത്ത് പറഞ്ഞറിയിക്കാന്‍ പറ്റാത്ത സന്തോഷം
"അമ്മക്ക് എന്തെ ഇത്ര മടി."
വയറു നിറയെ കഴിച്ചതിനു ശേഷം
അന്ന് രാത്രി ഞാന്‍ നന്നായി ഉറങ്ങിയിട്ടുണ്ടാവും
 
ഇന്നലെ രാത്രിയാണ് ഉറക്കം നഷ്ടപെട്ടത്
ഒരു ചെറിയ പുറം വേദന
ഒരു കവിതയില്‍ പറയാന്‍ മാത്രം ഇല്ലാത്ത വേദന
ആദ്യം ഞാന്‍ ചിന്തിച്ചു
'periods' നു സമയം ആയോ ആവോ?
അല്പം പുറം വേദന ചിലപ്പോള്‍ വരാറുണ്ട്
ഇത് വെറും വേദന
ചെറിയ വേദന
ഒരു 'spray' അടിച്ചാല്‍ തീരുന്ന വേദന
രാത്രി മണി ഒരു എട്ടു എട്ടര.
നല്ല വിശപ്പുണ്ട്
"ഇന്ന് ഇനിയിപ്പോള്‍ ഗോതമ്പ് ദോശ കഴിക്കാം"
കഴിക്കുമ്പോഴാണ് ഓര്‍ത്തത്‌
എന്തെ എന്റെ അമ്മ പറഞ്ഞില്ല
"ഇന്ന് എനിക്ക് 'periods' ആണ്.
ഇന്ന് രാത്രി നമ്മള്‍ ഗോതമ്പ് ദോശ കഴിക്കും" എന്ന്?
രാത്രി ഉറങ്ങിയില്ല
കാരണം പുറം വേദന ആയിരുന്നില്ല

Why should I tell my story?

I had this long conversation with a friend of mine. I adore him. But then, there are days, I wish I did not understand his language, or something.One of the sore points between us, is always the issue of gender. These days, I am a little too vocal about gender issues and he gets genuinely irritated by them. And of course, I also get irritated like crazy at some of his arguments. So once again, we came back to our old question. 


That women seem to be rather narrow in their outlook. That, all that they can talk about is gender and their own personal issues. That their knowledge was not broad enough. While he does not discount the fact that there are glaring issues for women, the criticism is that, women are blind to all other issues of the society. This, he says, is a grave mistake. Initially, I thought, that his arguments have some validity.

Have you seen this post? This post talked about how a large percentage of women have either personal blogs or blogs about motherhood while men have a wider range of topics that they wrote about. I also thought, that his observations may be right and the answer to his criticism was just more knowledge.

Just today, I realized that my answer should have been different. How did I forget why, we women started talking about personal issues in the first place and why we continue to do so? As a broad answer, the gender issues that we talk about are still relevant to us, and affect us daily. That is why we still talk about it. But that does not answer him very well. Of course, our issues are important but then so are other burning issues, too. Another broad answer is this - well, this is not a cause for me, but a life issue. I have not yet stopped struggling against patriarchy to simply live my life. It's not my neighbour's life. It's not my relative's life. It is my bloody daily life.

But then, those were broad answers - answers which would be considered as a rhetoric in themselves. Yet another emotional outburst.While, my eventual argument looks at the tremendous role of emotions, let me try and explain it, in a rather 'theoretical' way.

There are two ways of analyzing social change. While I was terribly irritated with the discussion, it just struck me, that our debate was actually not about men and women or gender and other issues. Our debate, was an old theoretical debate - that of 'structure' and 'agency'. While he was insistent that social change occurs because of structural changes, I was insisting on 'agency'. No marks for guessing that the answer definitely lies in between. 

The biggest example of this, is Kerala itself. This state has one of the most progressive legislation and structures which are favourable to women - access to education, access to health, 50% reservation in the local government and a brilliantly thought out decentralization program. Decentralization brings power closer to women. If a progressive structure alone could have empowered women, Kerala would not be a space, that still excludes women from the mainstream. I dont intend to give statistics regarding dowry, domestic violence or work force participation. You have google to know, that all is not well. 

So, what are women missing in Kerala? 

Something I had. Agency. 

This is a personal account. I had to refer to my life, to explain why women refer to their personal lives.I had to look back at my life, to see how talking about my life, to other women, had given me agency. I always consider my life as one which is before TISS and after TISS. I have said this, many times, before. My perspective on life underwent a huge change in those two years. Change in perspective is not this abstract notion. I broke my marriage engagement that I did not like - one that was arranged by my parents. It did not happen automatically. It happened within 4 months of TISS and because of 4 months of TISS. 

What is TISS, by the way?

TISS, is this friend of mine, RP who said, "Dont think about the marriage. Just get the admission. Noone will ask you to drop an admission to TISS". He said this to me, whenever I wondered whether I should just get married and avoid all the hassle. TISS was this friend of mine AD who hit me on my head and said, "Dont do this to yourself. Dont get married to someone you dont want to. Its your life. Dont give in." Dont be surprised. It was after one of her talks, that I finally had the courage to call my then fiance to tell him, I could not go through it till the end. TISS, was this friend of mine, who (on the day I left to meet my parents regarding the fiasco) wished me this - "F#$k them up and come back".I returned to TISS, after the drama, and told her. "yes. I did f&*k them." TISS is this friend of mine, PP (who had herself gone to a similar university) who told my father- "Uncle, she's been suffering for four months. Dont do this to her." Even today, my dad says, he truely 'understood' how I felt, after PP talked to him. 

Four friends. An alternative space. That was the source of my agency. That is why, I did not get married at 23. That is why, I got to do the job, that I wanted. 

(Some of you might get disturbed at the strong language used to describe my family. I am not proud of it. I shall explain it in a little while. But anger, was a strong emotion at that particular point of my life. My agency in some ways, had its root in this anger. I realized that my anger should have been against patriarchy and not against my family members. Simply put, it should have been f&%k you, patriarchy)

This is also not to portray my family as villains. Far from it. They were as much victims of patriarchy as I was. As I continue to be. Of course, those days, I did think of them as villains and I lost my family for some years in my life. Today, I have the wisdom to recognize the 'structure' of patriarchy and the ways it seeps into our lives. 

So, was there no structural influence in enabling this "social change" in my little life? Was there no play of an alternate structure that helped me fight the structure of patriarchy? Of course, there was. It was education that got me to Bombay. It was savings from an IT job, that got me the admission and the initial fees. It was the fact that fees in TISS was not too high, that I was not worried about taking the admission. And Of course, my parents were based out of a rather structurally "progressive" state any ways, and most importantly, they were not villains. 

Yes. All that helped. But, if I had all that, without the alternate space that these four friends of mine gave me, would my life have changed? After all, it was in a conventional space of an IT job, that I agreed to the engagement in the first place. For the structuralists, RP,AD, SL and PP represent the alternative space, which helped in enabling my agency.

This is the space that women in Kerala do not have. No matter whatever structural changes the progressive state brings in, if you don't facilitate agency, social change will not happen. Agency needs an alternative space. A space, where 'emotion' is not looked down upon.

When you next make the argument against liberated women talking so much about their lives - recognize that, whatever liberation we, the so called 'liberated' have, is because we talked about it. Changing my life did not happen through a rational, structural policy change. It happened through emotional discourse between friends. I do acknowledge, that a progressive structure did support me. The emotions that women exhibit in their blogs, conversations and relationships is the alternate space women have created for themselves. Those are not 'mere' emotions. That, my friend, IS agency. 

One argument that I expect to this 'personal account' is that, it is "my" story and that, it cannot be generalized. I would have accepted it before the advent of personal blogs. The fact, that my personal account is not atypical is demonstrated by the very personal blogs that we began criticizing in the beginning of this post. Why do so many women have so much personal accounts, in the first place? Why do all those women who talk about their personal lives, seem to be liberated? The reason is this - They do not talk about their lives, because they are liberated. They are liberated, because they talk about their lives. (The use of liberated is used in a popular sense.) The reason why women read other women's personal blogs is not for 'emotional porn' but because they want to experience that alternate space. By the way,the 'structural' alternate space.

Thus, the request to structuralists, is this. Thanks for the systemic changes. But do this for your women.
Encourage them to talk. Emotionally. It will change their lives.

The Santosh Pandit Phenomenon - The Psyche of the Male Malayalee Audience

I never thought, I would write a post on Santosh Pandit. I thought, I  should not give him any more airtime than what is already being done. I could not resist posting this one, though.In an egroup, when a discussion on Santosh came up, one of the members posted this mail to the group.  Whenever I see these youtube videos and the comments on 'walls' that shared them, I knew I was uncomfortable. Both with his cinema and with the negativity that the sharers showed, but I never could articulate it. When I read this email, it felt like such a brilliant analysis of what was actually going on.
So, what you see here, was not intended to be a note, nor a post. It was an email. Therefore there are some references to some earlier mails but this 'mail' is a brilliant post by itself. Vinod, Thanks for letting me share this.

The following post was written by Vinod Narayanan.

As A and B mentioned, the film looks like the pits.
But perhaps that is the point.

Perhaps what this film or its maker is really saying that a section of the Malayali audience will make even something like Krishnanum Radheyum successful. That he understands the young and exclusively male audience perhaps even better than they do.Remember Pandit's line about him making a film that his audience deserves.

Now comes the dicey part of artistic merit.
 As I have not seen the film, I cannot comment on that aspect.
 However, based on the audience reactions so far, perhaps some observations can be drawn sight unseen.
 I was hoping that at some point there would also be some kind of a discussion about the "other" factor in the Santhosh Pandit phenomenon - the audience which made Krishnanum Radheyum a success.

This is an exclusively male audience, a young male audience at that. And really, this has been the films main audience. I haven't seen a single lady in all of those clips of boisterous youngsters celebrating the film. Perhaps such a predominantly male atmosphere and the aggressive language that accompanies it, is not an environment that female audiences feel comfortable in.

At around this time 14 years ago, I was part of this kind of an primarily young male audience which rushed into and packed theatres in Kerala to see a film that another artist wrote. Now this artist was also intelligent enough to figure out what exactly his primarily young male audience craved.
This artist wrote out a screenplay which formed the template of many later films that he and others repeatedly cranked out to varying degrees of success.

The artist was Ranjith and that film was Aaraam Thamburam.


As he recently revealed in his eulogy for Mohan Raghavan, he was short of money, and he was approached by his friend Shaji Kailas not so much as to write a film, but to make a "package" around Mohanlal which had echoes of the character that he had written for Devasuram.
Now comes the interesting part.

The film that Ranjith envisioned, one which he believed would run even more successfully in Kerala in 1997 than Devasuram did four years before it, was one about a Nambudiri re-establishing his feudal rights
over a land. Ranjith excised the strong female character that Revathi played in Devasuram, that films nagging doubts about Neelakandan's true lineage - whether his madambi rights were truly his birthright or not, his
relationships with strong women including his mother.

In the place of the strong women he put in a paavam Warasyar, and a "modern" woman who comes to him from the North pining for his love. Note also the difference between how the story views the almost same character Chitra plays in the two films to see how women are viewed in Devasuram (sympathetically) and Aaaraam Thamburan (object of contempt).  In place of doubts regarding Nair feudalism (already very weak doubts in Devasuram, but doubts nonetheless), Aaaraam Thamburan opts for full throated support of the Chaturvarna system with the Namboodiri as it's natural head.

Ranjith understood that these excisions and enhancements would ensure the films success. He was, in that sense, removing and adding in factors to guarantee commercial success.
How much insight must Ranjith have had into the young male Malayali psyche to have figured out that a primarily young male audience would accept such a storyline and all it's implications about caste, gender, religion and not only would they accept it, they would make it successful?

How deep must his insight have been about his audience to have understood that gender relationships and strong women were not only unnecessary, but could also threaten the success of a film?
How much insight must he have had into the sheer self-loathing that the youth of my generation carried within themselves that even after learning about the horrible effects that caste had on Kerala's history, they would make such a film a grand success?

In that sense, Santhosh Pandit is yet another exploiter of this self loathing that the new generation of young males in Kerala seem to carry within themselves.
 Someone who understands that if he makes films which look cheap and amateurish and makes the dialogues as ridiculous as those found in the average Malayalam "superstar blockbuster" that these young male audiences adore, said audience would jeer him to success.
Someone who understands that this audience would pay good money to curse at a screen for three hours.
Someone who understands that the audience knows going in that the film is crap, but goes in anyway for the "privilege" of cursing away to their hearts content in exchange for a sum of money.
 If Aaraam Thampuran exploited one part of the young male Malayali psyche to become successful, one which hankered for an imagined glorious feudal past, for unrestrained machismo and bravado in art, Krishnanum Radheyum seems to exploit another part of this psyche.
 There have been other films that good-naturedly poke fun at the Malayalam cinema and it's stars (anyone remember Aparanmaar Nagaratthill?) or were absurdist from the get go (anyone remember My Dear Karadi?). I have seen both these films in a theatre on the first day (what can I say, I was young), but saw none of the sound and fury that seemed to accompany Krishnanum Radheyum.
Which leads me to believe that it is Pandit's single minded cynicism regarding his audience which seems to permeate the film's marketing, that makes his film a success and that it was the good-naturedness of the humor of the other two movies that made them fail.
It is here that matters of artistic merit become difficult to determine.
Could it be that for all it's technical flaws, Krishnanum Radheyum holds up yet one more mirror at the young male audience that it exploits?
 If that is so, is it not art of a sort?
The commercial success of Krishnanum Radheyum should at least tell you as much about it's audience as it does about Santhosh Pandit.

I would not have said this and would have accepted that the audiences thronging to this film are in effect delivering a populist slap to the Malayalam film industry as many have said, but for the fact that I see this same audience thronging at the gates on the first day of Pokkiri Raja or Christian Bros. or Karyasthan.

Maybe there is some of that critiquing going on in the audience support of this film, and maybe these audiences truly are tired of such pap. But I'll believe it when I see films like Pokkiri Raja and Christian Bros. stop becoming grand successes.

At the moment the only thing I see about Santhosh Pandit which may alarm successful Malayalam film makers of recent "blockbusters", is that someone more cynical than them has entered the arena.