Bumbling Conversations / On Loudspeakers

I write this as I feel gently irritated through my quiet and unproductive day, forced to overhear the loudspeakers shouting off crass bhajans on the corner of my street junction. This street junction is always made and remade with sets for political campaigning and speeches, festival celebration, public events, street theatre - all this while it doubles up for the everyday as a katta for old people, a reading station, eatery, bus stop, hawking, and so on. But that for another day. 

Speaking back to the loudspeakers, I had quite an insight towards the insanely loud music that our festival farewells are accompanied with. Yesterday was the immersion day for those who bring Ganpati for five days during the Ganesh Chathurthi festival in Mumbai. This ritualistic procession towards the immersion is often jubiliant while people ironically chant "Ganpati gela gaavaala, chein pade na aamhaala" literally translated as "The Ganpati goes back to his place, making its people restless." To this thought one questions what precisely holds the sentiment as people organize for orchestras that can play the most upbeat songs from films when seemingly they chant of sorrow. A unique mixture of celebration and catharsis, these processions are full of people dancing, drinking in the blindness of disco lights in the no-place of the street. To a large extent, Ganesha and the festival thereof is a proxy. Much like during its inception by Lokmanya Tilak to bypass authoritarian control over public conversation, the bringing of Ganesha and the festival is an opportunity to do many other things: businessmen network in bringing partners home under the pretext of darshan of the deity, political parties campaign through posters put up around respectively funded street corners, local mandals organise youth to collect money and put together a structure, women socialise and organise their own programmes - all in all, the event is the onset for the festive season in India.  

Still drowned into the numerous discordant sounds coming from the diverse directions from the window into my years - which I certainly cannot avoid - all sounds of some form of celebration, I present this short conversation with a stranger that helped me put all of the above in perspective. 

"Its bursting loudspeakers here. Midway time visarjan. Ugh. Can't tolerate!"

"I dont like but I can tolerate."

":)  You can like it too. [just that] Its decibels should not exceed the max human beings can hear"

"Yes. Wonder what people like about it and they pay for it"

"What have these songs got to do with visarjan? All disco."

"It's become a fest / disco / all nighter for those who cannot afford / or are allowed such things.  Such things that are everyday and accessible for many of us bout for some it is luxury or rarity both. Hence I tolerate. But noise pollution yes! That's a downer."

"Ok. That's a very good perspective. You mean to say it's cathartic release for the lower classes?"

"Celebration... also and it is quite an ultimate equaliser for this city. Brings all classes together"

"I am not sure it equalizes class"

"Sab ganpati laate hain...sab visarjan karte hain. A businessman and rikshawala both at Juhu Beach with their families...feeling the same thing"

"Very interesting. Sure. I buy that!"

On Glamour

a transcribed excerpt of conversation between Gautam Bhan and Paromita Vohra from Urban Lens Film Festival 2016. Access full conversation here.



Gautam Bhan: You know Paro[mita] one thing I wanted to ask you about is that - what, you said earlier in the point was to emphasize also the point about glamour, right, because I think it's really so important…because somewhere what we're also struggling with: see we from feminism we inherit these two traits of women and minority identity communities right which is the caution that shame, honor, tradition are born on the backs of women, right? and you have the narrative of partition and sexual violence and this constant notion that women are made repositories of moral culture, because of the power of patriarchy in our societies. But here is this other, and I think this is so part of your larger presence in the world with ‘agents of ishq’, with the column on love in the newspaper which is to say that you know, here is an identity associated with the community a minority religious community that in many places could have been a cause of anxiety. but it's actually a marker for pleasure, is a marker for desire. And it's not glamour in the way that women are just objects of male gaze but also ones that are self-fashioning their presence in the cities. So can you talk a little bit more about that notion of pleasure, desire, young people and agents of ishq…

Paromita Vohra: So I think glamour is the most… a very political kind of thing because glamour is a way of saying, “I'm here!” Right, it's like [saying], “You can't decide what I am, I'm going to decide what I am!” at some level. So I do think that - like I like certain kinds of people; people who will be playing in my films are always of a certain kind and I use the word “glamorous” at the shorthand, for what they are, because they all have a way of speaking, a turn of phrase, a way of presenting themselves - which I find very attractive, because they just do not fall into any binaries, right, not political binaries not binaries of gender or social identity or whatever; but they fashion that identity themselves. I don't think that those are the people who actually change the world in some way slowly… Because they give us a suggestion of how we can be; as easily as looking at somebody's clothes and saying - ‘hey, I like how she dresses, I am also going to do that.’ That kind of infecting the world through what you're doing, I think that's a very political thing, and that how politics actually seeds the world every day.

GB: ...and it’s so distinct from glamour as the possession of brand or consumption

PV: Yeah, so the thing is that post Rekha or maybe Madhuri Dixit, glamour has gotten converted into something that is easily consumable. But it actually is not because what glamour means is ‘I know that I am a story, but only I know what that story is. I'm not going to tell you.’ Right? So that control over your own narrative [is different from the one] which people like Rekha and others, who have mystique… Mystique is just really about saying, ‘I'm controlling the narrative.’ Whether you're really controlling it or not is the whole other discussion, but communicating that in all kinds of nonverbal ways is what I think [it’s about] and that's why I think you find it in certain kinds of spaces - like bar dancers, like movie stars of course, and I find it very intriguing how the figure of the Catholic woman actually just by being almost like a lace edging in a film had transmitted all that glamour right? Because all the women the you’re seeing in this film they are just like they are the backup dancers. They are not the people who in the front of the film but they are what actually gave films their glamour in an earlier time. And that glamour has gotten kind of subsumed under a mainstream identity, and we struggle right now to find a new place for that glamour.

On Loneliness, Belonging and Home

a whatsapp conversation

Me: Have your feeling towards India deepened or loosened over the last 15 years? I am generally asking, to myself, why does it happen? This push and pull...is it the question of identity, or identification?

He: I don't know, but I think some of it has loosened and some of it has deepened. I can't put my finger on it. I think I will forever be in this "I don't belong here" mode both in India and the US

Me: Yes, the question of belonging. Or the question of finding home...

He: For an immigrant, it's a different experience

Me: Yes. But I am speaking of home in a more conceptual, philosophical way. Orientations of this question may be from different places

He: Well, home is a fluid concept. Depending on what phase of life you are in.

Me: Elaborate?

He: Right now my home is wherever my wife and kids are, because I am living with them every day and making memories. Once the kids grow up, maybe "home" will be a different feeling. Growing up, home was where my parents/siblings were. I think home depends on the people who you are most closely connected to in a given phase of life.

Me: Is home always in relation to an 'other'?

He: I think so. We are social beings. If there were no people, would you ever feel lonely? Loneliness comes because you feel excluded from "people" around you

Me: Ah I never thought of it that way. Do you think animals feel lonely?

He: Loneliness can never occur without people. I don't think animals are lonely.

Me: You mean the concept of loneliness exist in human species only. It's a human concept?

He: I think so. Words are human concepts. So, if you use a word to describe anything it is a human concept. Maybe animals have a language. And they do also feel lonely. But it may not be similar to human loneliness. We tend to project our concepts/emotions to other beings. Because we are limited in our expression

Me: But words are placeholders for meaning...and meaning exists in all species no?

He: I don't know. If I were bacteria, is my meaning to just multiply? Meaning/purpose are all human concepts.

Me: And why not?

He: Evolution doesn't care about it

Me: True.

He: Evolution only cares about propagating the species

He: The world is only as complicated as we think it is. It's a projection of our mind/brain. We create our own "hallucination" of the world. The way we think it is

Me: True. That's what philosophical inquiry is all about

He: I'm becoming a believer of the thought that it's all about what stories we tell ourselves. Meditation really helps me observe my thoughts. And I am realizing that there is no "meaning/purpose/reason" of life other than to live it :) There is no deep mystery that needs to be solved. There is not much value in over analyzing. But that is me speaking today, ask me in 5 years and may be I'll give you a completely different answer😀

Me: 🙂

He: I haven't changed my behavior, nor have my thoughts changed, but meditation really helps with observing how your mind works :) The concept of "awareness", I feel is quite powerful. There is no mysticism in any of this…Just awareness...And it's very hard to be "aware", being in the moment, because your mind is thinking a billion things. Not that thinking is bad. But you need moments of clear awareness, however brief to cut through all of that thinking

Me: Hmm. It sounds difficult in the way you put it. Also elusive...

He: Hmm...you won't know until you try :)

Me: Hehehe. Yes. I know!

He: An analogy I liked is - imagine you are looking at the water, trying to find something deep within, whereas all you have to do is to change your plane of focus so that you can see your own reflection. Once that shift in perception happens, it seems very obvious. But until then, you will keep looking at the wrong plane of focus. It really is at the surface of your mind, not something deep within

Anyways enough of all this :)