Interpreting Gandhi's Teachings in a Modern India

Yesterday was the 137^th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. According to the Times of India, places like Rajghat were more crowded than on any on any October 2^nd in the recent past. They attribute the increase in attendance, and indeed the enormous enthusiasm for celebrating Gandhi Jayanti, to a recent blockbuster Bollywood comedy called “Lagey Raho Munnabhai”. In Gujarat, I believe Congress leaders paid tribute to the Mahatma by screening the movie for free! After reading this, I found it rather interesting to contemplate on a modern Indian’s relationship to this important leader.

The relationship of modern India to Gandhiji is rather complex. On the one hand, his beliefs and ideals continue to be an important part of every Indian child’s upbringing. His face on Indian currency, his many statues around Indian cities and his photo in most government offices combine to ensure that everyone (almost) knows who he is. Furthermore, his presence in textbooks, patriotic songs and almost any discussion about the freedom movement, combine to give every Indian an awareness of his existence and his importance to the creation of India itself. At a deeper level however, some of Gandhi’s core beliefs--- strong faith in the power of economic self-sufficiency of India as a nation, a determination to alleviate poverty, the belief in the importance of brotherhood amongst diverse communities, and the condemnation of the system of untouchability and caste discrimination---have been challenged by the modern political and economic forces.

Consider for example, Gandhi’s ideal of self-sufficiency. Gandhiji believed in sarvodaya, full employment and the use of a communities own resources as an engine of economic development. He advocated the development of rural economies with the development of agriculture and village industries. He advised Indians to boycott foreign goods, foreign companies, and foreign capital. Clearly, these ideals have been seriously challenged by the forces of modern day politics and economics. Though Gandhi’s policies were never put into actual practice, the idea of “self-reliance” dominated Indian politics and economics for four decades after Independence. Around 1991, India broke with this past and has promoted trade with the rest of the world, embraced foreign investment (at least more than ever before), and taken great steps to integrate into the world economy. The Indian middle class appears to be rather jubilant about these changes, have embraced the capitalism as an engine of economic growth. In this new economic era, Gandhi’s values are not entirely forgotten, but I think there is a huge number of Indians who don’t believe in the policies of the past and feel that the changes to economic policy should have been made far earlier.

Gandhi’s ideals on poverty alleviation died even earlier than his belief in self-reliance. After Independence, both Gandhi and Nehru agreed that the eradication of inequality in India was an important goal. While Gandhi highlighted the role of each individual Indian in attaining this goal (by condemning the caste system, and encouraging Indians to play a role in the process of uplifting poorer Indians), Nehru believed in that the government should address these issues. Ultimately, Nehru’s methods prevailed. In the years that followed, the Indian government became the agent through which the ideals of social justice, fairness and equality were to be attained. The state controlled most resources, restricted private sector activities, and established massive anti-poverty programs. Unfortunately, both Gandhi and Nehru did not envision that as the government became bigger and more powerful, each individual Indian would pull away from his/her responsibilities. Corruption became rampant, attitudes towards poverty hardened (“Why doesn’t the government do something about these people in the slums?” was a common line at dinner parties in the 1970s and 1980s.) This loss of a sense of social responsibility in India after independence was one of the most tragic losses in modern day India. It doesn’t help that at its core, Hinduism generally does not cultivate a sense of social responsibility in its believers. Unlike a Christian or a Muslim, a Hindu’s quest for salvation is deeply individualistic and does not depend on his treatment of people worse of than he/she. The loss of the Gandhian ideology of taking personal responsibility for improving the lot of those who are worse off, compounded with the creation of a corrupt and inefficient state bureaucracy had horrible consequences for India: a staggering number of poor people and an elite that is unconcerned with these realities.

A third ideal that has been significantly challenged in recent times is belief in the unity despite the differences of caste or religion. For reasons that are probably too complicated to go into here, the past 20 years has been marked by the rise of regional electoral parties in India. While India is still secular, religion and religious conservatism and in some cases even fundamentalism has become central to politics. Caste identities have also strengthened. The issue of “reservations” has been a crucial issue in almost every election. While the reservations system definitely attempts to improve the lot of individuals of lower castes, it highlights caste divisions among young people in society and creates frictions. This is not to say that Indians are not united, and do not have things in common with each other. In some respects, Indians are uniting like never before. The take-off of Indian economic growth, the explosion of consumer culture, the unification of aspirations through national advertising campaigns, Bollywood and television that is today cutting through people’s divisions and developing a kind of “Indian” identity even while regional politics and caste politics create mayhem in many places at election time. It is strange to me that today’s unification is taking place through economics rather than through values, cultural beliefs and a belief in secularism. To see the Gandhian ideal of unification be replaced by economic forces (most of which Gandhi disapproved of) is rather startling!

Whether Indians realize it or not, I think most of us cherish Gandhiji’s memory and respect his ideals enormously, but don’t know exactly how to implement them in the modern economic, cultural and political environment we live in. This new Munna Bhai movie may have been phenomenally successful because it provided simple answers to deeply troubling questions. It ignored everything about Gandhi’s teachings that is unattainable in the modern day (like self-reliance) and focused on those teachings that are still attainable….Speaking the truth, being non-violent, being “nice” to people less fortunate than yourself, judging a person by how they interact with a person poorer than themselves, etc. Personally, I think it is rather sad that it takes a Bollywood movie to make this rather simple point, specially considering that Gandhi was a man who believed that the means is as important as the end! I just hope that it sets all of us thinking and more aware of what we believed in 60 years ago and what we believe in today….

On Turning 30

I turned 30 last week. In the midst of the many friends who came to Washington DC to hang out with me that day, I came to an interesting realization. I basically realized that as a 30 year old woman, newly married, and with a new career ahead of me that will keep me very busy for the next two years, I will never be a young parent. I vividly remember my father and my mother’s 30th birthdays! I was 9 years old when my mom celebrated her 30th! It hit me pretty hard that my children---if I have any---will never have that sort of memory. I will be rather old on their 30^th birthday!

My story fits into general pattern. Age at marriage is up in the US and Europe. In India, there is a huge rural-urban divide. In rural areas, the age at marriage for women is still well below 20 (though that’s still much higher than it used to be). In urban areas, it is slightly higher. Among the wealthy and the more educated segments of society however, it is higher still, at about 25 or 26. I have friends in India who have married in their late 20s and even early 30s.

As an economist, I would say that this makes sense. As women become more educated, the “opportunity costs” of getting married and having kids are really high. In other words, the costs of foregone earnings and foregone independence are so high that women find it best to delay marriage and childbearing for later on in life. But this explanation has an obvious problem. The opportunity costs are lower early in a career rather than later. For example, for women who go to graduate school, it makes sense to have kids in grad school, when you have no income, rather than when you have the “dream job”! This is specially true for women who have supportive families and husbands, who can presumably help them with the responsibilities of raising a child.

As I think back on why I didn’t get married younger and have kids earlier, a rather long list of excuses comes to mind. In college it was too early to think of marriage. I hadn’t “found myself” yet. After college, I went to graduate school at Yale. It is hard to meet people when you are working as hard as I was. And when you are stressed out, you meet the wrong people. My relationships between college and the time that I met my husband were terrible and it is a blessing that they never led to marriage! I met my husband in my fifth year of my PhD. Two years into knowing him, I had to pack my bags and move to Chicago for a post-doc. We spent another two years in a long-distance relationship. We got married as soon as we could: earlier this year. I haven’t even been able to think of children in all these years.

My list of explanations seems unique to me, but most of my friends have similar stories. They were working really hard or studying really hard, they were in the “wrong relationships” for a long time, they had to move from city or country to another for work and the relationship could not last, and so on…… At the heart of all these stories is not only a similarity about "high opportunity cost", but also a more subtle pattern: We have taken a long time to grow up. For nearly a decade after college, most of us are still growing and leaning, trying to build character, build credentials, find the “perfect” job, the “perfect” man, etc. In this age of internships, study abroad, volunteering for a year, then grad school, law school, business school or medical school, we somehow wait a long time to take on real responsibilities. We stay financially dependent on our parents well into our late 20s and postpone real life. A certain “arrogance of youth” sets in when we convince ourselves that there will be plenty of time for marriage, family, etc later on in life.

The biggest challenge for me and all those women out there who marry late is whether after a spending a decade completely focused on ourselves, our accomplishments, our careers and our needs, we even have the qualities we need to set up a home and be good wives, mothers and care-takers more generally? For most of us, certain dreams---like that of being a young parent---may be kind of over, but there are others (like having a happy home, a happy marriage and so on) that can still be attained. Making those dreams work out will take qualities like patience, tolerance and the ability to make sacrifices that we never really learned when we were in school, volunteering, studying abroad, traveling abroad, and making interesting friends and working hard on the careers that we thought would define our lives. I hope we can either learn new skills quickly! If we can pull it off, we will be amazingly high-achieving women who also have happy homes, and that is an enormous accomplishment that would make us and our parents proud. Not sharing our 30^th birthdays with our future children would likely be a sacrifice that is worth it. If we can't pull this off, I am unsure of where we would have ended up. I for one will wonder whether I messed up somewhere and whether my parents, who never had any of the opportunities I had, are better off than I am.

Why is Bollywood SO important to Indian people?

Yesterday, the Times of India reported that a Thane resident stabbed and shot his wife after watching the movie Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. He took his wife to see the movie, hoping that she would be persuaded to do what Preity Zinta did: walk off and let him marry his girlfriend! When she refused, he wanted to kill her. Fortunately, she survived and told this bizarre story. In other parts of India, posters of the movie have been torn down and some activists in Madhya Pradesh are demanding that the movie be banned! Despite the fact that the movie has broken all records for an opening weekend and the cash registers are still blazing, the stars and the producers are having to defend themselves from offended viewers and critical reviewers. As we were chatting last night, my husband reminded me that this scenario is all too familiar. The sets of the movie Water were burned down. Back in the early 1990s, the song “Choli Ke Peeche” was controversial enough that people wanted it banned. And there have been countless instances where the depiction of anything other than the mythical, idealistic, and patriarchal families have been met with tremendous resistance.

People claim to be offended because they can’t watch such movies with their families. Yet some of the movies that they DO watch with their families are often totally inappropriate! There are certain unwritten (and totally illogical, if I may say so) rules for what is considered “okay”. Pelvic thrusts by scantily clad women are okay in Bollywood if they are in a “dream” sequence. When the dream sequence is over, a woman must be sari-clad and traditional to be portrayed as “good”. Divorces are okay as long as one person is the “villain” and can either be reformed, or dies. Similarly, rifts between families are okay, as long as at the end of the day, they can get back together and sing some songs and shed tears of joy. So basically, Indians are okay with modern situations and modern problems being depicted in a hindi movie, but only as long as the resolution is purely in line with family values!

Whether it the undisputed success of something like Hum Aapke Hain Kaun or the disputed success of Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, one important question arises: Why do Indians take Bollywood movies so seriously? For a culture that is thousands of years old, that has survived colonialism, and absorbed influences from all over the world without sacrificing its identity, why are we so scared that some random movie or the other will ruin our culture, ruin our children’s values and ultimately ruin our identity? We often criticize the West for being a more shallow culture than ours. Yet, it looks like we are often not strong enough to handle even a mere piece of fiction that challenges our values.

To see this more clearly, consider the difference between the reaction to KANK and the Hollywood movie “Closer” (which is very similar). A huge chunk of the American population is Christian and rather conservative. Marriage is the basic foundation of life for most of these people and they are probably as conservative as their counterparts in India who want KANK banned. Yet, they would watch Closer without throwing a fit about their society, their values, and the effect on their children. Most conservative Americans would watch it, and if they didn’t like it, just say they didn’t like it, tell their friends they didn’t like it, and then move on with life without thinking about it again. Why do we Indians react in a way that is so much more extreme? Why do we feel personally threatened and offended by the fictitious story of four people in New York City?????? My husband and I tried to figure out some answers yesterday and came up with a few. For starters, I think Americans don’t take their kids to movies that are not appropriate for kids, and so they don't need to worry about "corrupting the youth". In India, we tend to think it is okay to bring ALL kids to ALL movies. Go to any Indian movie and there will be dozens of kids regardless of whether the movie is Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, Main Hoon Na, or KANK. It is really not fair to take kids to inappropriate movies and then say the movie was bad because it wasn't for kids.

A second and more important reason for the difference between the Indian and American reaction to movies like KANK or Closer is that, I think we Indians use Bollywood to help us construct rosy images of perfect families so that we can escape the realities of our own families. National data shows us that 10% of all Indian marriages end in divorce or separation. We don’t need data to know that prostitution is rampant in India. And so is the practice of extra-marital affairs. All of us who have lived there know that a LOT goes on beneath the surface of every family. We all know that Indian marriages and Indian families are full of all the same “normal” issues that people all over the world face. There are also additional problems that come from living in tighter-knit families and inter-generationally extended families. The difference between Indians and Americans isn’t that Indians don’t have family problems, but rather they prefer to cover up their problems and hide them from broader societal views. When divorces occur in America, they often say "hey, it didn't work out". When divorces occur in India, they are rarely discussed and when they are discussed, the person talking about it depicts themselves as a total victim, and the other person as literally a monster of some sort. We have a clannish mentality and tell whatever story we have to for the sake of the reputation of the clan! Indians have loved movies like Hum Aapke Hain Kaun because it somehow validate our denial of real problems, and makes us feel that maybe if we cover things up enough, our family will look like the family in the movie. Indians abroad like Kajol in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge or Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham because again, she helps them believe that their daughters will be similar to Kajol in those movies. They want to believe that they are like the families in these movies---living abroad, but oh so connected to their roots and raising kids like Kajol! Maybe the American’s are less in denial about the difficulties in human relationships, and don’t need Hollywood to give them rosy pictures of perfection so that they can pretend like they are living perfect lives in perfect families?

My husband pointed out that in the US, teenagers take movies to heart, and emulate the characters much as we do in India throughout our lives. In the US though, people grow out of it by the time they are in college! I hope that we Indians can grow out of our tendency to use Bollywood to either educate our children, or validate our own dreams or cover up our own problems. Movies are ultimately works of fiction. If we can identify with a movie or a character, thats great. If we can't, or if things don't work out for us the way they do in a movie, it doesn't mean that we should resort to crazy actions like hurting a spouse, burning posters, burning a movie's set or demanding a ban. I thought this is obvious to all of us, but apparently not?

Indian Classical Music

The tradition of classical Indian music is one of the oldest unbroken musical traditions in the world. Though there is evidence of the tradition in the Indust Valley Civilization of 5000 B.C., the written origins of Indian classical music can be found from the oldest of scriptures, the Vedas, written more than three thousand years ago. Samaveda, one of the four Vedas, which continues to be sung in India today, describes a very strict scale of svaras (notes), and rhythm for the chanting of the vedas. Gradually, as Vedic chants gave way to more leisurely notes, svaras as we know them today were developed. These are Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, and Ni or rather, "Shadj, Rishabh, Gandhar, Madhyam, Pancham, Dhwavait, and Nishad".

Since the Vedic times, indigenous musical styles and schools evolved and developed in different regions of the country by blending purely ritualistic music and folk music. Today the term "Indian Classical Music" refers to two related, but distinct, traditions rooted in antiquity, both very much alive in India today. The North Indian style is called the "Hindustani" tradition, while the South Indian tradition is called the "Carnatic" tradition. The fundamentals of the two
traditions are similar. They differ in nomenclature and styles of performance. The semantic divide between the two styles began around 1200 AD. Upon the arrival of the Muslims in Northern India, the differences between these two traditions became more pronounced.

Both Hindustani classical music and Carnatic music are organized into Ragas (also called raag). A raag is both a description and a prescription. It describes a set of rules for how to build a
melody from the notes Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, and Ni. It prescribes the set of notes that are to be used for ascending the scale (aahroh) and descending (aavroh) the scale, and notes should be emphasized and deemphasized. The result is a framework that can be used to compose or improvise melodies. Tradition ascribes certain rags to particular times of the day or even seasons. It is said that appropriate performance may bring harmony, while playing at different times may bring disharmony. The power of a raag is so tremendous that it can alter moods and even alter states of nature. Legend has it that Tansen--one of the greatest musicians to have ever lived in India--was able to create rain by singing a monsoon raag!

There are no orchestras in Indian Classical music. Concerts usually consist of small ensembles of musicians; a principle singer or instrumentalist accompanied by Tabla (drums) and Tanpura (drone instrument) players. The artist improvises within the structure of the raag, starting with a slow introduction and progressing to dynamic and energetic improvisation that develops the mood of the raag.

An interesting issue that people often ask me about is why Indian classical music is not ``taught'' at more Western universities. I am no expert in Indian classical music, but I can think of a few answers to this question.

(1) First, between the time of the Vedas and say 1940 AD, Indian classical music was never written down. Over three thousand years, an orally communicated tradition that has embibed the moods of many eras. It has in it the ``spirit'' of cultural, political, social and natural events that even history may not have recorded. It is difficult to teach this type of music in a university. It is difficult to write down so much, and many believe that the process of writing it down may strip it of the religious, cultural and spiritual dimensions that are so central to this tradition. Even at Indian universities, the system of instruction is largely oral. The written component is deemphasized, and simply used to integrate this system of music into a system of modern/western learning. It is hard to bring the oral tradition to an American or British university.

(2) Indian music is essentially ``solo'' music. In a country where conformity was a celebrated concept for much of society, I find it interesting that music was all about improvisation! If you attend a music concert today, you will find that most of the performance is improvised on the spot, making each performance melodically unique. The musicians will almost certainly never have practiced together, and it is unusual for any musician other than the soloist to plan the performance. The importance of individuality and improvisation make it difficult to
teach this kind of music in a university where learning takes place in a classroom with desks and chairs and blackboards.

(3) Indian classical music is ultimately not about music at all. Understanding a raag has always been perceived as ultimately a spiritual pursuit. It was always intended to allow a student to
trascend the world and enter a spiritual realm from which there was no return. To any Indian Classical Musician, this dimension of the music is essential to its pursuit. To create a curriculum, a standardized system of grading, and to formalize this music is to take away from this ultimate goal.

Despite these problems, it seems that it is possible to teach Classical Indian music at a school or a university. We were taught music in school when I was growing up in India and it became an important part of my life. Most major universities in India have music programs and there are more students of Indian music today than perhaps ever before. To be a singer in India today, even a singer of ''pop" music, an individual generally needs to have solid classical music training.

I would hope that in the future, Universities around the world can embrace the study of Indian music. I also hope that unlike in the past three thousand years---where the study of music has been the privilege of the scholars and the elite of Indian society---more Indian people from many different segments of society will learn this music. It would not only bring people closer to Indian history, culture, and identity, but provide them with an opportunity to learn how to use the power of a raag to balance one's mind and spirit. There are very few fields of study that can lead us towards that goal.

New forms of multiculturalism in England

In light of everything thats on the news these days, there is a growing discussion about why young Muslim men in England, who are often second or third generation immigrants, are turning to extreme versions of Islam. Today's Guardian raised the question of whether it is British multiculturalism that is to blame. As an Indian born in England myself, I've been trying to figure out whether British multiculturalism is really at fault here. Some thoughts are below....

Some background for my perspective. My family migrated to Britain in the 1960s. My mother and her sisters grew up in a suburb of London. They were one of very very few Indians in their school, and there were relatively few people of color in the neighbourhood. To be part of a larger community, they had to assimilate to British society. They had to speak English, they had to make English friends and they had to work for English bosses. They had to integrate in every way possible.

Today much has changed. The area they grew up in is predominantly an Indian area, and I suspect that the school has a majority of brown-skinned students. Most of the residents migrated in the 1970s and 1980s. All over London, there are many instances of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshis neighbourhoods. These are rather segregated places. If you go to Tower Hill for example (near the Tower of London), you can walk several miles and not have to speak in English or interact with anyone other than a Bangladeshi. As a result of the sheer number of people in these neighbourhoods, these immigrant populations can afford to cultivate rather narrow identities. Children who grow up here can have Bengali, Punjabi, Gujrati or Arabic as their mother-tongue. People who live here can choose to associate with people who are exactly like them. For example, in some of the Indian neighbourhoods, there are so many Indians that Gujratis can choose to associate primarily with Gujratis. Punjabis can choose to associate only with Punjabis. As a result, regional and often even caste identities are very strong. This often stands in stark contrast to the countries where the immigrants come from. In India for example, the pressures of modern-day urban living force people to be "Indian" first and Punjabi, Gujrati, Marathi, Tamilian, etc. second. Even caste or religious identities for that matter, tend to be subsumed into a greater "Indian" identity. In London however, my impression is that that people coming from parts of London where they are the dominant group are Punjabi first and anything else (British, I think) second.

It is my belief that when you combine the narrow identity of a rather segregated group with issues like unemployment, poverty (in some cases), lack of adequate economic opportunity, and parental pressures to achieve financial well-being, a lot of confusion and depression can result. To a young man growing up in a rather segregated neighbourhood, who doesn't perceive himself as having the economic opportunities to climb in British society, Islam can bring a lot of support, and a lot of comfort. The Muslim community can provide an important safety-net. A huge number of non-English-speaking clerics have migrated to London to meet the growing demand for religious education and instruction. Madrasas have grown in number, and opportunities to embrace strong forms of Islam now abound.

Unfortunately, the story doesn't end at that. A vicious cycle of some sort starts to kick in: the children growing up in the segregated neighbourhoods are not well-assimilated into broader British society and face fewer economic opportunities than their British counterparts. A young man reacts by embracing his narrow identity, and finding solace and support from his religious group. This reinforces difficult stereotypes and makes it harder for him to be assimilated. Anger grows. Frustration grows. The cycle intensifies. I believe this is what has happened in many neighbourhoods of London. Almost all the individuals who were arrested in connection with planning attacks were raised in neighbourhoods like these (including my mother's old neighbourhood)...

So I would say that it is not simply British multiculturalism that it is at fault. It is also the broader set of circumstances, attitudes, freedoms and opportunities that surround that multiculturalism, that make a big difference to the story. I believe that the creation of economic opportunities in immigrant neighbourhoods, and the provision of opportunities to develop a shared primary identity (through the educational system, for example) may go a long way in breaking the vicious cycle that the youth often find themselves in.....

Indian Independence Day

Tomorrow is August 15th, India's Independence Day. I remember Independence Day well from when I lived in India. In school, we hoisted the flag, sang patriotic songs, listened to serious speeches about our responsibilities towards our country and marched past the Indian flag. We also ate some awesome laddoos! Now I live in Washington DC, where there are a few serious events celebrating this day (flag hoisting at the Indian embassy, for example) and a few not-so-serious events, like Bollywood Night at a local club!

Whether you live in India, or the US, or anywhere for that matter, it seems to me that it is an interesting moment to think about the future of our country and how we belong to it. Most Indians feel a connection to India, even if they are a second, third, fourth (or beyond) generation immigrant. For some of those people, there is also the desire to be a part of India's future, or maybe to put it differently, to DO something for India.

But what does it mean to "do" something for India? In the old days, when the Gandhian and Nehruvian ideals were alive, "doing" something for your country meant something very specific. If you believed in Gandhi's ideals, you lead a simple life, supported local industry, tried to be good to the downtrodden of society, and supported the ideals of social justice through action. If you believed in Nehru's ideals, you strived to become a professional of some sort, worked for the Indian government, and shape its future by creating a safety-net that could work for everyone in society by controlling the greed of the rich and supporting the poor. We kept to ourselves and stayed away from the rest of the world. Doing good involved being Indian, buying Indian, and keeping India away from the corrupting ideals of the west. The road to "doing good" for one's country was laid out clean and clear. Indians who left India to live overseas were largely perceived as having rejected these goals and chosen a life of selfishness over the broader goals of improving their country.

In 2006, things are different. The Gandhian and Nehruvian ideals have proved either infeasible in the long-term or simply insufficient for progress of the sort that India truly needed to thrive in the modern world. We have embraced capitalism, and aspire to be a global player in not only the global economy, but also global policy and global culture. The sectors of the country that we are the proudest for are sectors that the government has been shut out of. We take great pride in the achievements of Indian's abroad. We seek recognition in the international arena.

In this new era, what is it that we could be doing, or should be doing if we want to be a part of India's future? I am not sure that there is a simple answer to this question any more. Those who devote their life to public service in India are indeed brave to do so, and their role in India's future is an obvious one. There are others who seek fame, money or power, and once they have it, bring attention to or fund important programs in India and also bring kudos to their country on the international stage. Their role is an important one given that we aspire to be a global power some day. There are others who work for little money, and no power or fame, in difficult conditions in Indian villages and small-towns to make small things happen for people: get their kids immunized, the schools working, the clinics cleaned, the women employed and empowered and in general, stay focussed on the lives of people who have very little. We always cry that there aren't enough people like this, and secretly feel guilty that we aren't one of these people (at least I do)......If we can't be one of them, can we still do something for our country?????

My only thought on this is that we should try to be the very very best person we can be---in whatever it is that we do every day--- and while being the very very best person we can be, we should remember where we came from. We should remember the people who sacrificed their lives for our freedom, and never forget that someday and somehow, we owe it to ourselves to give something back to them. Whether we give back by being rich and then contributing funds to bring opportunities to others (like so many NRIs these days), by being known for an accomplishment and then putting the spotlight on issues we care about (like Amir Khan, Arundhati Roy or Amartya Sen), by educating the world about our country and its heritage (like so many writers, musicians, dancers, actors, etc.), or by volunteering our time towards causes that we believe in.... being good at whatever it is we do, and never forgetting our roots will take us and our country far. Great countries have been built by great people. We all need to be the best architects we can, and we can do that no matter where we live in the world today.

Thanks for reading!

Thoughts on Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna

Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna

My husband, my cousin and I watched Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna last night. Given that we tried to watch it on friday night, stood in line 2 hours only to be turned away to a "House Full" sign, and then yesterday it took us again an hours to get in even though we had online tickets, I am compelled to share some thoughts with the world....

Given Karan Johar's past successes, it was a sure thing that at least 50 million people would have watched KANK. KJ could have played it safe, given his fans exactly what they wanted (a lot of sap, and a bright and happy ending) and not taken any major risks. Yet, he has chosen to be a little different. He has focussed on what happens AFTER the happy ending of a normal bollywood movie. This movie pushes the boundaries of hindi cinema a few ways in particular:

(1) In most hindi movies, divorces occur under rather extreme circumstances. In this movie divorce occurs because of "normal" issues that most people do face in marriages. So rather than depicting a bad marriage as the fault of one person (thats the usual formula in a hindi movie), he shows that a combination of weaknesses and circumstances---that are not all that bad when they are considered individually---are to blame. Indian cinema is maturing a little, it seems.

(2) The usual "NRI candy" is missing. What I mean by this is that given that the Indian audience abroad is conservative, and adores the depictions of Indian traditions in an overseas setting (because it largely makes them feel like they are still connected to their culture), and specially laps up stuff on the "longing to return to India" it is interesting that Karan Johar chose not to get into any of this. Specially considering that this is what has made him so successful in the first place! New York is merely a backdrop for this movie. The characters were not depicted as homesick, traditional or non-traditional. They were real people--not merely indians abroad who are trying to be connected to the motherland. It would have been easy for KJ to give the NRIs the candy they crave, but he chose not to and I think thats interesting.

(3) On a related note, for the overseas audience, Hindi movies are a major tool for educating their children about INdian culture. Hence the success of Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Kal Ho Na Ho, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, etc. To supply this audience with a movie that they probably should NOT take their kids to, and which they can not really use to feel culturally connected to India, is I think a great risk. A lot of people will probably be offended by this movie. I think its great that Karan Johar is willing to go down that road.

(4) Shah Rukh Khan was brave to play the role of a kind of underdog in this movie. He doesn't dance, he doesn't really do any of the sparkling and glamourous Shah Rukh Khan "stuff" in this movie. He limps, he is unhappy, he is not the one who brings glamour to the movie. This is an interesting shift. One that made me a little sad, but it was good to see him mature as an actor and not take candied roles.

All in all, I admire KJ for pushing the boundaries of what Indian people expect of movies. Last, but not least, the movie was visuall pretty. Rani's eye-makeup was awesome, and Amitabh, Abhishek, Preity, were all great! Of course, it is FAR too long, but I didn't mind. I loved the visuals enough that I didn't mind the length, the close-ups, the tears, etc.