play that beat Mr. Raja #1

A little promotional here...

my friends from Cartilage Consortium (Paris) have made an incredible work digging out some selected oddities from the Tamil Film Industry (1984 - 1991) and released a compilation called "Play That Beat Mr. Raja #1" by Illaiyaraaja, Shankar Ganesh, Hamsalekha.
Vinyl only "s'il vous plait!", limited copies, great artwork by Moolinex, listen via Cartilage Records' bandcamp page.

Listen:

buy via:
Honest Jons

Music From The Third Floor is dead. Long live MFT3F!

For the last four years PC has been posting around 200 Bollywood soundtrack rips along with 7 absolutely great volumes of personal favorites (get the last 7th volume one here) on the blog Music From The Third Floor. What an effort! And what a pleasure it has been to, that from time to time, visiting the blog and always find something new there.
Thank You for the music PC! Well done.

The last in line is Laxmikant Pyarelal's background score to 'Bobby'. Get it here!


Introduction by Raj Kapoor

Aar Paar

O.P. Nayyar - Aar Paar. Available thanks to Music From The Third Floor.


Geeta Dutt - Hoon Abhi Main Jawan

Here is a lovely clip from the movie with Shakila acting out "Babuji Dheere Chalna" (vocals here as well is from Geeta Dutt).

Uploaded by studpup

Mother Pious Lady: Making Sense of Everyday India

By Santosh Desai
Harpercollins

The great Indian middle class is that layer of society that no one bothered about until couple of decades ago. People in this layer did not fall into the category of "have nots," and hence did not attract any sympathy. At the same time they did not have the luxury of "haves," so it did not make any economic sense for the others to target them. They lived in their own world where they had enough for their basic needs, but nothing for their desires. Then came the famous economic reforms of early '90s, which changed the Indian middle class forever.

People in the upper echelons of Indian society probably always had everything, and for the people in the lower rung things have still not have changed much (except they probably have a mobile phone in the hand). But the middle class suddenly had more resources than they were used to. They could afford to buy houses at a much younger age, cars almost at the beginning of their work lives, and clothing without waiting for a wedding to happen in the family. Psychologically, for people who grew up in '70s and early '80s, the change was tremendous. While their growing up was in an era of scarcity, they landed in an era of abundance without really making a proportionate effort. They embraced the change, but also had to deal with their cultural roots that lie in another age. They also became the focus segment for many product and service offerings, which they were not used to, and had to learn to deal with this sudden attention.

In Mother Pious Lady, Santosh Desai makes sometimes nostalgic, random observations about the Indian middle class, about the things that we cherished while growing up that have either been lost or are on the verge of being lost, like postcards, a phone connection, or a black and white television set. He looks at the making of this class and their obsessive need for value often leading to the reuse of stuff for multiple purposes. He slowly looks at how we encountered change, and how the change has changed us. Desai talks about our identity evolving from being family-based to being profession-based, and from being local or regional to global. If you belong to Indian middle class, you will relate to everything the author talks about, like someone is narrating your very own dilemmas and situations. Desai covers personal life, family events, socioeconomic change, professional environment, and just about everything that touches our day-to-day lives.

Mother Pious Lady is a collection of small articles that Desai wrote for the Times of India. I have been an avid reader of his articles, and enjoy his simple insights that most people overlook. However, when it comes in a 380-page book, I expected a bit more depth. The articles become predictive, and as soon as you get thinking on a topic, its over. I would have expected more analysis of the observations he has gathered; while the topics have been categorized, they are too broad. At the very least there could have been a pre- or post-summarization of the topic categories and insights thereof.

One would probably enjoy this book more by not reading it cover-to-cover, but keeping it by your bedside table and randomly picking it up when you have a spare ten minutes.

Review by Anuradha Goyal

Eat Pray Love

Directed by Ryan Murphy
Columbia Pictures



Pretty Woman meets Ugly American in Eat Pray Love, a gender reversal romp in which the woman, for a change, instead of the womanizing man, gets to be the one with commitment issues. And while this female free spirit fling junkie cruise around the planet for high carb self-fulfillment is clearly likewise cruising in search of the chick flick demographic, the misguided message seems to be that hedonism is the new feminism.

Julia Roberts is Liz Gilbert, a professional writer and depressed spouse who splits from her marriage on an impulse one day, leaving her husband (Billy Crudup) in a state of shock, because she's revolted by his desire to be a dad. Liz's aversion to dirty diapers, when observed at the home of her publisher, a brand new mom (Viola Davis), sends the faithless female into the arms of a younger guy stage actor (James Franco).

But following this second anxiety attack in the love department having to do with the way said boy toy neatly folds her clean undies in the laundromat, Liz is outta there too, and off on a one-year flight from reality to wherever, as long as it's exotic and boasting assorted metaphorical pleasure palaces. Though how she manages to finance the hefty price tag on such getaways these days remains a mystery, back in the real world the Elizabeth Gilbert bestseller on which this whimsical outing is based, was actually more on the premeditated side, funded by a generous advance received to write the memoir.

Eat Pray Love, with its pampered princess on constant display, is so utterly self-indulgent and in extreme disconnect with its surroundings that the movie ends up much less about exploring new worlds than getting stuck in the protagonist's old petulant, overblown ego. As this modern day Goldilocks samples, and finds lacking, assorted tempting hunks for no discernible reason at all, that Liz eventually settles on a Brazilian Australian in Bali over the alternatives back home because there's presumably more in common, makes no sense at all. Especially because the only bond the lovebirds seem to share in contrast to the other potential mates is sex, sex, sex.

The scenery is fine to look at, but seeing Julia Roberts thoughtlessly rummaging through the male population is another matter. Liz does learn a few things along the way about leading the liberated life, including mastering the art of guilt-free eating and embracing your inner fatty—not exactly a small feat in that sexist fashion police culture back home—while being defiantly anti-motherhood and proud.

But the tendency of Nip/Tuck director Ryan Murphy to depict the locals of color in foreign lands as caricatured buffoonish backdrop while invisibilizing the impoverished millions of India so they don't rain on Liz's parade, neutralizes any high-minded notions on the narrative menu—in addition to her bragging rights around landing reasonable hotel rates because of terrorism in the vicinity. Not to mention the self-centered, shallow screenplay of Jennifer Salt, a disappointing followup to dad Waldo Salt's idealism and persecution as a blacklisted writer during the McCarthy period.

Eat Pray Love: Me, Myself, and I, and a side order of serious jet lag.

Review by Prairie Miller

Cross-posted at News Blaze

Son Preference: Sex Selection, Gender and Culture in South Asia

By Natvej K.Pureval
Berg Publishers

Son Preference is one of the most compelling insights into the issue of sex selection I have read. Written through a scholarly yet personal lens, the author takes reader through the narrative and complexities of culture and gender in South Asia. She brings together key debates on the subject by assessing and critically engaging with existing literature in the field and providing new insights through primary empirical research.

Natvej K.Pureval’s work covers a broad range of social science discussions and draws upon textual and ethnographic material from India. With her work, Pureval invites more studies into the field of sex selection that would raise more questions about the normative backdrop of son preference issue. While son preference is not a new phenomenon, and has existed historically in many parts of Asia, it has recently become an issue of not only local but also global dimensions. The phenomenon exemplifies the gendered outcomes of social power relations as they intersect with culture, technologies, and economics.

While the literature on son preference and sex selection has been primarily concerned with understanding it as a practice, resistance and opposition to it have been more or less analytically ignored. Pureval, thus, examines policy and official anti-female foeticide activism and anti-sex selection movement that has emerged across national boundaries and involves not only feminist activists but also people from health sector and wider society. She also draws on young women thoughts and articulations, which make significant contributions to the understanding of recent and ongoing trends. Pureval demonstrates that women’s voices and attitudes towards son preference are by no means unitary and static, but rather shifting and changing.

Son Preference will be of interest to students, academics, and anyone interested in this contentious issue surrounding gender inequity and sex selection. It provides a valuable addition to the existing literature on this highly sensitive topic, and proposes new directions for ethnographic research and analysis.

Review by Olivera Simic

Braking News: 1 Bus, 2 Girls, 15 Thousand Kilometers, 715 Million Votes

By Sunetra Choudhury
Hatchette India



Sunetra Choudhury’s Braking News takes the reader on a trip across India to find the elusive Indian voter in both cities and villages. As an anchor and TV news reporter, Choudhury was asked to cover the elections for NDTV on a bus. The election bus planned to travel fifty kilometers each day for sixty days covering 3,000 kilometers. Two teams aboard the bus were scheduled to produce a half-hour show every weekday prior to the May 2009 elections. Though the bus did not travel as planned, the stories and people that come to the surface are worth the adventure. The bus drove to places on and off the map. For locations neglected for years by politicians, just the fact that NDTV decided to bring a bright red bus to their constituency was a powerful symbol.

While the story is entertaining and the writing is clear, Braking News is less about the places and people Choudhury meets on the way, and more about her own journey. As a result, it is easy to become annoyed with the author and her desire for modern comforts, such as a clean toilet. Nonetheless, some chapters are more descriptive than others and reveal the heart of contrasts amidst the Indian subcontinent. The women of Gujjarland insist that Choudhury cut wheat before agreeing to do an interview. At one point Choudhury stops a man on a motorcycle who she believes to be a dacoit (thief) to ask him about the gun he is carrying, and in another segment she interviews people in the village of Shivgarh who have cell phones and DVD players despite having no electricity.

Choudhury touches occasionally on gender and the vast differences that exist for women between the cities and villages of India. For example, in the state of Haryana, she interviews young women who do not vote until they are married. But near the end she speaks to a woman who is living a privileged, single lifestyle. As a woman, Choudhury is allowed into private kitchen spaces where she meets village women on a level that would not be accessible to male reporters. And instead of seeing them all as exploited, she begins to see that they too have power and agency, albeit in a different manner than she experiences.

Choudhury concludes Braking News by arguing that if journalists truly want to report on what is occurring around them, they must go out and see the world. They must be willing to risk being dirty, hot, and tired, which on some level (despite the posh hotels) is exactly what the NDTV election bus did.

Review by Lakshmi Saracino

Peepli Live

Directed by Anusha Rizvi

UTV Motion Pictures

The women of Peepli… well, there are no women in Peepli. Yes, there are daughters and mothers and wives, and to them Natha is purportedly “son and brother.” Natha is in dire straits; he has taken a loan from the bank and now cannot repay it. In an attempt to keep their lands from being auctioned off, Natha and his brother, Budhia, go to the local strongman cum political candidate for advice.

The politician recommends that one of the brothers commit suicide, for while the government does not provide debt relief or agricultural subsidies for farmers, it will give a sizable payout to the family of a farmer who has committed suicide. And therein lays their salvation. The family will have money and what have the two brothers done with their lives anyway? Let one sacrifice himself for the greater good.

Natha is a simpleton and his somewhat more savvy brother convinces him that since Budhia is the one who has a family, Natha must be the one to commit suicide—only he can save them all. Obligingly, Natha agrees. Later on that evening, after the brothers have drunk themselves into a stupor, a visiting reporter hears their story. The following morning’s headline foretells the death of farmer Natha and a media circus (as well as a political one) descends onto Peepli. The various parties and partisans push and pull, and attempt to decide whether or not Natha should live.

The three female characters in the film are all shrews. From Natha’s wife, who badgers and assaults the brothers, to his mother who complains and swears, to the reporter who appears to be unconscionably chasing leads, there is not a single positive female figure in the film. Inflation herself is a witch, wreaking havoc and ruining the farmers’ lives, leading them to their early graves.

Review by Elisheva Zakheim

Rajneeti

Directed by Prakash Jha
UTV Motion Pictures



The wait for a high-octane, all-engrossing drama just became longer. But that doesn't mean we don't have a decent watch in hand with Raajneeti. The setup is certainly complex and intriguing, and there are a couple of sly and conniving twists, no doubt. Yet depth is still missing, almost as if introducing the characters and their connections was an end in itself, and not merely the beginning nor the means to get there.

Given that the characters are based on Mahabharat, it would take real skill to make them uninteresting. In fact, if you focus only on that angle, you'll see even more curious amalgamations. It's best to leave these aside and just watch the film for what it is. Despite so much potential for complexity, the lack of details along with the creativity-challenged treatment of the situations can give you the heebie-jeebies. Some of the scenes, like the one in which a sundry woman gets pregnant, clearly didn't belong here. Nor do the on-the-face references to the mythological epic. It also would have helped to keep the Corleones, Gandhis, and Thackerays at bay. As glaring as they are, they only serve as distractions.

With the various connections and cross-connections, the film deserved a lot more in terms of flow from one sub-plot to another. Instead we get a "my turn-my turn" shout out by the characters whenever they were made missing-in-action for a bit. Prithvi's (Arjun Rampal) sudden eccentricity was almost meant to say that Arjun's otherwise wooden facial muscles can be chiseled into another form. Yet the usually plastic face of Katrina Kaif wasn't in this film, at least not in some parts, though all of you are going to see is a surreal vision of the diva in a sari.

This almost three-hour affair doesn't slacken, but doesn't keep you waiting for the next move either. Because somehow there's a foregone conclusion, given the epic characters the film is based on.

Review by Meetu

Excerpted from Wogma

The Japanese Wife

By Aparna Sen
Saregama Films



Here’s what I can muster for Aparna Sen’s film The Japanese Wife: I still don’t quite get it.

The Japanese Wife is not as simple as Madame Butterfly, but I think a similar analysis applies. This film was odd. The story is about this awkward (poor!) Bengali school teacher who is lifelong pen pals with an equally socially obtuse (relatively poor) Japanese woman. Neither of them speak English as a first language, yet they communicate, fall in love, get married, and live their lives (separately) through letters. There was no miscegenation happening.

Now what is the term for sub-empires orientalizing other sub-empires?

Every time Miyage, the Japanese Wife character, spoke there would be this ever so delicate music wafting in (gongs!) and all of a sudden, as if it were the elusive groundhog itself, would come her voice. Her tiiiiiny, high-pitched, broken-English voice. I have nightmares about this voice. Exotic yes, feminine definitely, little Miyage. Flutter flutter. "Miyage" to my knowledge, is a Japanese surname, not a first name. Miss!

A lot of The Japanese Wife was by the book. Like Snehamoy (the husband) being seen as a “race”-traitor/Japan-lover, so the plot line included the exotic Asian woman captivating Snehamoy enough for him to shun Indian women, specifically Sandhya (Raima Sen’s character), the beautiful young widow who (due to unfortunate circumstances) moves in with Snehamoy and his aunt. It’s best shown in a scene that takes on nationalistic proportions, where Snehamoy represents Japan in a village kite battle against the ultra-Indian kite team manned by the local teenage boys of Snehamoy's village.

So I figure, like the timing of M. Butterfly, Incredible !ndia, too, is going through major cultural-economic shifts. I mean look at the March Nuclear Agreement; thanks to the Obama Administration, India’s ascendancy as a "sub-empire" is firmly in place. Clearly Incredible !ndia’s capitalist growth and emerging status as world economic power (8.2% growth according to Asian Development Bank in 2010) is a discursive force in itself.

New India should exercise its growing machismo and brand its own Orientalism. But that’s not it! Bengali men are not exactly the epitome of machismo. Neither does India share in the post-WWII relations between the U.S. and Japan. India is expanding and the wave it’s expanding on is producing, circulating, and reinventing cultural practices and relations. So, it’s not as simple as saying that this example of fetishizing Japanese women is some sort of inherited or weird mimesis of nation-buildings past.

In a sense (and I feel like I’m sidestepping history, power, labour, etc.), the idea of the gaze is flexible. And employed by Indians. Just watch The The Japanese Wife. Or Chandni Chowk to China. Or the host of new Indian films featuring ethnically Asian characters.

Now the celibacy of Miyage and Snehamoy remains. Maybe Sen really is a genius and made it easy for us to see the symbolism in Snehamoy’s celibacy as a way of describing a postcolonial nation-in-process. Clearly India is not Empire-proper. Indian men are still symbolically emasculated, same as U.S. hegemony still exists. Or I mean, shoot, it really is all about miscegenation. And Indians are not ready for transnational-transracial love like this. You’ve got to preserve some Brahmin in there.

Shrugs.

Review by Nafisa Ferdous

Becoming Indian: The Unfinished Revolution of Culture and Identity

By Pavan K. Varma
Penguin Books

Pavan K. Varma’s most recent book, Becoming Indian, argues that cultural freedom has eluded formerly colonized nations, specifically India. He sees a need for a cultural revolution in India. Although it reads at times like an extended opinion piece, Varma makes convincing arguments highlighting the importance of reclaiming language, architecture, and art in a way that empowers indigenous knowledge rather than oppressing it. He examines concepts and examples related to language, architecture, and art with regard to modern Indian history, contemporary events, and personal experiences.

Varma believes that the real strength of empires lay in the colonization of minds, and he views modern history as one that has resulted in cultural and ideological consequences. He explores how English has become a tool for upward mobility and questions the cost, as the loss of one’s own language is seen as a gain in India. He uses the example of young people performing Shakespeare in English with no knowledge of theatre in their own languages to illustrate this pervasive ignorance. He also compares the success of writing in English to the sure failure of writing in Indian mother tongues to illustrate a flaw in today’s Indian value systems. Convincingly, he critiques the concept of providing important information, such as health and traffic signs on the highways, in English.

Although India has been independent since 1947, Varma argues that colonialism persists in the realms of language, politics, and self-image. Varma believes that globalization is leading to the desire for a homogeneous identity. To counteract this, he believes it is important to know one’s cultural roots in order to move forward into the future.

From a feminist perspective, it is interesting to note the ways in which the British have historically seen Indians as effeminate, and thus treated them with less respect. The power dynamics within post-colonial societies are especially tricky as colonization has already permeated people’s minds. According to Varma’s arguments, what may be necessary is not only a contemporary Indian cultural revolution but also one that involves all sectors of society, from the lowest to the highest castes and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Review by Lakshmi Saracino

Everyday Nationalism: Women of the Hindu Right in India

By Kalyani Devaki Menon
University of Pennsylvania Press

Everyday Nationalism, a publication in "The Ethnography of Political Violence" series, offers readers a provocative and sometimes disturbing look at Hindu nationalist organizations and the role of Indian women in representing the nationalist movement. Kalyani Devaki Menon conducted her principal fieldwork in and around Delhi from January 1999 to January 2000, acting as a participant observer; interviewing women activists; visiting schools and training camps associated with the movement; and taking part in women's education classes, meetings, rallies, and protest marches. She reports that “gender and sexuality were pivotal to the narratives of self and 'other' produced by the women” she worked with, and that women played a crucial role in building the broad-based support for the movement that brought the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) into power from 1998 to 2004.

The nationalist movement in India remains powerful, drawing thousands of women and men to accept a sociopolitical vision that is “xenophobic, exclusionary, and tremendously violent,” a view of India that sees Muslims and Christians as invaders, defilers both of Hindu women and the sacred soil itself, the body of the goddess Bharat Mata (Mother India). Hindu nationalists assert the need for “violent reclamations of Hindu masculinity” and for vengeance on outsiders who have violated the honor of Hindu women. Menon asserts, "This gendered construction of history, that perpetuates the logic of revenge, is widely promulgated to young female recruits, and remains central to mobilizing support for the politics and actions of the movement today." She makes clear to readers that she disagrees with this policy, yet she does not comment directly on the horrible irony of a politic that encourages Hindu youth to rape Muslim women and Christian nuns as payback for the sexual assaults said to have been enacted on Hindu women now and in the past.

The image of women as vulnerable victims is somewhat offset within the movement's various organizations by efforts to strengthen and toughen girls and women. Camp sessions include military drill, endurance training, yoga, and rough physical games. Women are taught to overcome their fears and to defend themselves. One woman activist said, “Girls today want to be free. We ask them, do you want to be free or strong?” Hindu nationalists criticize the desire to be free like Western or feminist women, claiming Indian women should be strong in order to serve the Hindu state, but still subservient to their husbands and male leaders. In Hindu societies, women are traditionally seen as “mothers, wives, and caretakers of their families.” Nationalists consider the whole Hindu nation to be an extended family, and in this context, women find reasons for civic activism: they become, in a sense, mothers of the nation.

Most Indian women marry, and many Hindu women nationalists are married, but many activists in the movement are either female renouncers; religious sadhvis, who give up worldly attachments but remain political; or pracharikas, unmarried celibate female volunteers who devote all their energies to the movement. A number of other women activists are widows or separated from their husbands. In a sense, the political organizations to which they belong become their families. Women find a favorite role model in a historical figure, Queen Jijabai, mother of the Hindu king Shivaji in the seventeenth century. Male historians concentrate on Shivaji himself, but the women nationalists portray Jijabai as an “enlightened mother” who played a key role in the nation's destiny by inculcating Hindu values in her son.

Menon's witness is compelling because she acts as intermediary between the people she studies and her readers, who need to understand what's going on in the crucial Indian subcontinent. Just as she translates Hindi texts into English, she explains many customs and beliefs that may be unfamiliar to non-Hindus. I found her presentation enormously helpful and would recommend Everyday Nationalism to anyone interested in religious movements, rightist politics, or both.

Review by Kittye Delle Robbins-Herring

Bina Das: A Memoir

Translated by Dhira Dhar
Zubaan

“History is always in the making, and our struggle for a truly free country will not be over easily,” says Bina Das towards the conclusion of her memoir, brilliantly translated by Dhira Dhar, who was close to this firebrand revolutionary of Bengal. In its pages, Bina Das: A Memoir holds history in flashback. The glorious and gradual unfolding of an Indian nationalist who is counted amongst the heroes of the history of the country’s struggle for independence (like Pritilata Waddedar, Surya Sen, Shivaram Hari Rajguru, and innumerable others) in the few pages of her memoir is nothing short of poignant.

The curtain rises on the eve of August 15, 1947, the day of India’s independence. A nation standing at the crossroads of destiny may have caused countless minds like Das’s to be filled with a sense of despair and doubt, coupled with the misery of Partition, yet she asserts that this freedom was finally the real one and “flashed like lightning through our thrilled souls.” She reminisces her life at the backdrop of this day when she expected her country to march ahead in full glory. And thereafter, the entire story of her life unfurls before the reader in dramatic flashbacks, moments of captured memory framed in the ensuing pages.

Das narrates her family background, her life as a student, and the wondrous transition phase of her life when she graduated from a non-violent freedom fighter into that of an armed revolutionary. She talks of her participation in the last lap of the freedom movement, her subsequent nine-year imprisonment, her release on the eve of independence, and her return to politics from a long prison life. Each of these events has been described in poetic subtlety.

Like children of her generation, her education began at home under the careful guidance of her parents. Often Das’s father, the erudite Brahmo scholar Beni Madhab Das, who played a pivotal role in shaping the thoughts of the young Subhas Chandra Bose, would sit with Bina and her siblings and read plays like Bhishma, Shahjahan and others by D.L. Roy. This, Das claims, was her first introduction to the heroic and tragic in drama, bound to have left indelible imprints in her mind.

Das belonged to a family and a generation that was making the platform for the freedom movement. Her mother, Sarala Devi, was exceptionally enthusiastic about all kinds of social work. Sister Kalyani (Kalyani Bhattacharjee) was also a leading social activist and revolutionary. Das acknowledges that the most precious thing she received from her father was the wealth of freedom he gave her. Understandably this was instrumental in building the consciousness necessary for the struggle for freedom in her later years.

A ceaseless, tireless worker, Das concludes that her only prayer shall be to remain active in the cause of suffering humanity and not lose herself in the “idle morass of inactivity.” This perhaps aptly sums up towering figures like Das and those of her bygone generation.

Memoirs are almost always untranslatable, and Dhar has done a grand job of translating this one with impeccable skill. It is a must read, especially for those who wish to recapitulate the lives and times of revolutionaries like Bina Das.

Review by Jhuma Sen

Obama's Slumdogs ?