A great interview with Shabana Azmi

Ever heard of the Indian New Wave?

The Indian New Wave or "Parallel Cinema" was largely a movement to produce high-quality Indian films, rich in plot and texture, to counter the incessant saccharine feel-good and formulaic Bollywood productions.

A sitar of this movement was the distinguished Shabana Azmi. I remember Ms. Azmi from Masoom, a movie that left quite an impression on me as a child. The songs were great, as were the child characters. And D.K. Malhotra played by Nasiruddun Shah was memorable.

Recently interviewed by BBC's Mike Willaims, Azmi shoots from the hip. Very conscious of her femininity, she speaks of growing up in a famous family, marrying a famous Urdu poet, her multiple identities - resisting any neat categorization. Always displaying a characterstic confidence, she breaks down tough questions re: women's rights, marginal voices, her involvement with politics, and Islam.

Click here for the interview.

Of Ishqs and Salaams (okay maybe not)

Okay. So I really don't watch Bollywood. Unless they are the esoteric types. Like Maqbool or Omkara. But sometimes, just sometimes, I give in to the cheese. The masala, the drama and the funda. As I did last weekend when I went with a herd of brownness to watch Nikhil Advani's Salaam-e-Ishq.

Granted, my brain stopped working for about two-hundred minutes, have to admit I found it worth my time. Not for the complexity of characters or density of plot, but for various feel-good and amusing moments.

Salaam-e-Ishq boasts a star-studded cast. A cast to end all casts. Six couples. 6 failing relationships. Twelve beautiful people. One big fat Indian wedding.

First, there was the journalistic couple of John Abraham (who needs to keep his shirt on, and not run all the time like David Hasselhoff, remember him?) and Vidya Balan (of Parineeta fame) who have a picture-perfect marriage. Until Vidya injures herself in a train-crash and suffers from partial amnesia. Leaving a gaping, John-sized hole in her memory. Try as she might, she can't remember John.

Our hot yet sentimental hero cries incessantly in anguish, but he is convinced that Vidya and he can create memories anew. Of course, forgetful Vidya is won over by the end. Too many emotional crescendos in this relationship. Gratituously. Too many times, I felt, the combination of John's (scruffy) baby face in anguish, Vidya's captivating performance, and the score (otherwise, fabulous) were all trying too hard to force tears from me.

Then there was the Anil Kapoor-Juhi Chawla duo. Reminded me too much of the blinging couples in the Gulshan-Banani-Baridhara tri-state area, (esp. ones in which there is an element of ever-so-slight debauchery). This is a story of attractive people leading very boring lives. Anil goes to work, watches the clock of his life tick away and is in perpetual mid-life crisis mode.

Juhi is an amazing mother, wife and sister. But Anil wants more. He wants not completeness, but excitement and adventure. Which arrive in the form of Anjana, a 20-something dance instructor who throws herself at Anil repeatedly until he decides to find his escape in her.

Of course, Anil is soon caught Anjana-handed. Juhi tries to leave Anil. Anil chases her and finds her on a plane. After a tussle with flight-attendants (surprising they didn't shoot goatied Anil down in a post-9/11 world) Juhi forgives Anil and takes him back!

Man, Juhi, adultery is haraam! Why must we all get swept away by the fast normalizing, sweeping sexual individualism that is our society?

The most glamorous relationship by far was Salman Khan (who also needs to keep his shirt on)and Priyanka Chopra's. Priyanka Chopra is a small-town girl who starts as a dancer in shady hotels and wants to be the next Bollywood diva. She is manipulative, machiavellian, ambitious, and will do everything possible to get there.

Until she meets an equally manipulative, machiavellian, and ambitious Salman Khan, who tracks her down, blackmails her (in the process woos her, warning: this only works in bollywood) and change her mind about her acting career. My heart broke to see lovely Priyanka on a bended knee asking muscle-man (head?) Salman's hand in marriage. Salman eventually agrees.

Also have to say Vikram Phadnis did a mighty job of dressing up this couple (except for Salman's bizarre blazers, too Ahmadinejad for me).

The fourth and last substantial relationship was between Govinda and Shanon Something (the fact that I don't remember her last name has nothing to do with her being white). Shanon Something has come all the way to India to find her Indian boyfriend who left her for a Hindustani wife.

Shanon is naive. She underestimates the hangover of South Asian traditions. Govinda encourages her naivete. Fight for what's yours, Govinda says. He himself, is an affable, chubby, love-lorn cabby, who without understanding a word of English, manages to communicate much with Shanon. He drives her across India to search for the Indian boyfriend. Shanon finally meets him, gets spurned once again, as the guy declared, "I want an NDN woman, not a blond bimbo!" Poor Shanon runts to Govinda's pudgy arms.

The 5th and 6th couples are Ayesha Takia-Akshay Khanna and Sohail-Isha. Both provide much comic relief. Akshay gets cold feet before marrying his girlfriend Ayesha. Calls off the marriage, stresses for a while, until he comes to his senses (like all good guys eventually do), and gets Ayesha back. Methinks lovely Ayesha Takia needs to stop playing the victimized girl whom her guy takes for granted. Breaks my heart.

Finally, Sohail and Isha are a North Indian (Punjabi?) couple. Sohail is a ravenous man who fails to consumate his marriage with Isha as one awkward interruption after another conspires and keeps Swaag Raat at bay. Not much else here. The first 4 carry the movie.

Last but not the least, the theme song is fun. Check it out.

A Soapbox for All: British Muslims and the Fight for Young Muslims' Minds (Part I: Muslims in a Secular World)

As spotlight intensifies on Barak Obama and his possible Muslim past/Madrassa education, Bush announces a "surge" in Iraq, 20, 000 strong, Hamas celebrates a year in government, and the British Education Ministry declares a plan to school children in "British Citizenship." Meanwhile the international posterwoman for CNN, Christiane Amanpour, comes up with a riveting documentary on Islam in Britain, curiously entiteld, "The War Within."

Arguably the world's most famous female journalist, inveterately chic, Amanpour is interested in uncovering not just the radicalization among many of Britain's Muslims, but also the wedge between "Extremist" and "Moderate" Muslims (why the flipside of "Extremist" is not "Mainstream" but "Moderate" I'll never understand).






Amanpour reports feeling after 7/7, "shocked beyond words that young British Muslims, born and bred here (London), would go to that extreme."

Among reasons for extremism that Amanpour unearths, are the Iraq war, Anglo-American foreign policy, and American foreign forays which are increasingly seen by British Muslim youth as wars against Muslims and Islam. She also touches upon racism and/or Islamophobia, but not nearly as thoroughly as I would have liked. This is a topic for a lengthier discussion that Jajabor will revisit (stay tuned for Islam in a Secular World part II) . For now, one has to merely remind herself of the BBC TV documentary "The Secret Policeman" aired in October 2003 and the odious racist bile spewed by unsuspecting cops videotaped by an undercover journalist.

Of course, there is also the recent furor over lovely Shilpa Shetty being bullied on screen on Britain's favorite TV reality show "Big Brother." Jade Goody tells recommends to an already beleagured Shilpa, "you need a day in the slums...[where] people look up to you." Another participant points out, "she [Shilpa] can't even speak English properly" and wonders if "people in India eat with their hands." Empire hasn't struck back quite yet has it.

Another shortcoming of Amanpour's documentary is the absence of any discussion of the British Left. Afterall, a variety of British Muslim discouses borrow from and interact with Leftists discourses on international affairs, foreign policy, as well as public affairs such as social welfare. Leading public figures such as George Galloway and Tariq Ali are hero-worshipped by both communities (they overlap too!).

Although Amanpour interviews one Muslim woman of small comedy-club fame, who made a clear case for her distance from her extremist brethren, British Muslim women's voices were surprisngly lost in the documentary. Almost as if Amapour was operating within the discursive paradigm and boundaries as laid out by the extremist mullahs she derides.

While admittedly, a confident modern British Muslim woman who could have furthered the case for more likable British Islams, are unlikely to roam the streets of Bricklane, Southhall or Edgeware road, one just has to walk into the Queen Mary cafetaria or the charmingly decadent SOAS Bar to get a representative Muslim woman voice.

Despite all despites, Amanpour does a decent job. Kudos where kudos are due. She punctuates a wonderfully crafted narrative on the radicalization of British Muslim youth with extended dialog with the "Moderates." She interviews Hanif Qadir who runs a large youth center in London, the said female comedian, an musician who is interested crossing cultures, and a good imam who declares, "If you are evil, you can justify it with anything – Bible, Qur'an or Shakespeare."

Finally, the documentary is laudable for capturing certain priceless moments. There are great scenes of angry Muslim youth demonstrating outside a Catholic Church and locked in diatribe with irate Christian youth, in the wake of the Pope's now-infamous remarks.

Towards the end, there is another entertaining debate between a young "Moderate" Muslim man having a go at the more "Extremist"Uncles. All well and good, but in this scene and in a few others, I questioned the air of false credence to a notion that civilizational debates may at the end be timelessly generational.

A young "Moderate" Muslim man declares, to much applause from a British audience, "This [extemist Islam], ladies and gentlemen, is not an ideology, but a mental illness."