Contemporary India and the Woman Question

A number of happenings in India of late, as well as reading Rama Bijapurkar's best-selling, We Are Like That Only is making me wonder if entrenched attitudes towards the fair sex, and women's own mindsets in the new middle classes are taking an adequately progressive turn. Before I carry on, I must admit that by virtue of growing up in the nation when it was transitioning to a global, capitalist modernity (and hence being on the cusp of the pre and post-liberalisation generations), I am both personally and politically invested in the woman question. It continues to be contested territory in many a developing society, and globalisation brings social and economic aspiration with a grain of human development index-defying salt.

Hearing about and watching the first episode of Aamir Khan's Satyamev Jayate on the issue of female foeticide via the Facebook posts of India-based friends has not been quite the mass solidarity high, but it nonetheless vindicates my choice to be an independent woman in the diaspora. While incredibly fortunate to be born into a family that values girl children and their education, I occasionally bear witness to pangs of nostalgia from parents and grandparents about 'simpler' times when they didn't have to worry about their daughters' marriage prospects and subsequent familial roles. This has often translated into implicit pressure to find or arrange a spouse since my early 20s, in the hope that the constancy of their pleas (and my own imaginary body-clock) will eventually make me relent. A number of women living in India would probably make pragmatic rather than romantic choices in such matters, and Bijapurkar labels this phenomenon a kind of 'womanism'. I am not sure if it is my exposure to western feminism, or my eternal idealism, but such an apologetic assertion of women's rights seems less than desirable to me. What stings even more, as Khan pointed out in his research for the program, and as Mitu Khurana (a doctor who was harassed by her in-laws into aborting her twin daughters, but stood her ground) makes evident in her blog, is that a better than average educational and social standing seem to make matters worse.

A piece in The Guardian on the Aarushi murder case, and what it says about the warped values of the new Indian middle class, is worrying. It is not my intention to steal the aspirational thunder of this particular yet heterogenous group, but exposure to the world of consumption and opportunity (primarily via satellite television) comes at a huge moral cost in a nation with a) a large population that bolsters a competitive attitude towards material and social wealth; and b) a historically huge income gap that make take centuries to be bridged, even at the current rate of annual GDP growth. That these personal/political battles are played out through the popular media on the bodies of women is a key issue that needs institutional and grassroots consideration beyond ephemeral news cycles highlighting particular crimes only until the ratings are favourable. I think India's middle classes are in need of a more open dialogue on gender issues; this would be a real test of their respectability.

Uncertainty

Uncertainty isn't such a bad home
Beckoning to live
LIFE
Recognise this moment
This barely-there breath
And the syllable it brings forth.

Transition is better than an airport lounge
You get to have your own home
Your very own view
At least for a while.
You rent a space in yet another city
Which lets you be
And may just shape your heart

As for the aching shoulders and long lists
Those too are temporary
Easily ameliorated
By a bowl of steaming pho
And its lasting flavour in your veins
Its textural memory forever yours
To keep and to give away
In your next breathful sentence
That befriends Uncertainty.

The Bollywood Rom Com Goes Global, Truly Madly Deeply

I watched a Hindi film called London Paris New York (often referred to as 'LPNY') last night, and was pleasantly surprised with some of the more neo-liberal layers that the classical Bollywood romantic comedy has acquired in recent years. By this, I do not mean that the wooing dances have merely moved to shopping malls from the neighbourhood park, but that there is a certain degree of moral latitude displayed by the central characters. Nikhil (Ali Zafar) and Lalitha (Aditi Rao) have far more sexual agency, and personally-formulated professional ambitions than the characters in comparable films set in foreign locales, such as Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, to name a few.

The treatment of 'feminism' in the film, however superficial, is a welcome change from the girly girls of yesteryear who may be willing to defy parental control of their marital choices, but do not display any desire for participating in the workforce. At the same time, Aditi's push for equal rights and greater political participation need not kill feminine expression and romance. There is a telling scene in the film where, after spending a drunk (but chaste) night in a hotel room in Paris, Aditi has soiled her clothes and Nikhil offers her the choice of a feminine (pink) or a feminist (purple) dress. Although she chooses pink, I read this as a more complex decision than simply conceding to (and consenting with) the male gaze. As is typical of many contemporary street fashionistas, Aditi combines the silky pink dress with a tough black leather jacket and a short hair-do. She walks the city as though she owns it, speaks fluent French, and tells Nikhil (when he complains about Indian girls not paying enough attention to their countrymen once they are treated well by the 'goras') that perhaps Indian males have an inferiority complex. To my ears, conversations and scenes of this kind ring refreshingly true for contemporary Indians of a certain class living, studying and/or working overseas.

Of course all this means that the poor boy meets rich girl (or vice versa) story may be gone for good, at least for urban and semi-urban dwellers. While Nikhil is the son of a wealthy film producer, Aditi proudly declares herself a member of the educated Indian middle class. This difference is of enough interest, and again taps into recent changes in India's demographics as well as greater association of its middle-income groups with the overall narrative of the nation's growth. The lower classes, it appears, will have to make do without malls and multiplexes, let alone envisaging romantic sojourns in London, Paris or New York.

The Asian Century and all that Jazz

I've had an overdose of this term since the beginning of 2012 (mostly in a good way). From my academic grant applications, to my formal and informal conversations with friends and colleagues, and even my leisurely viewings of Q&A on the ABC - it has been a hell of an inter-disciplinary discourse on the importance of Asia, and the decline of Europe. So far, so good.

On some occasions, the discussion wanders into perilous non-economic territory, and you begin to hear a degree of soft grumbling about the drop in the study of Asian languages in Australian schools. I distinctly recall a research scholar on a panel discussion show suggesting that we need to try and find a way of making Indonesian as cool as Japanese. Amen to that!

So it appears that we might begin to do something about Asian literacy. Perhaps a combination of institutional and grassroots endeavours is ideal. The higher education sector could lead the way, as indicated by a recent story in 'The Australian'. But the other side of the problem, as pointed out by  Jason Li in a remarkably cross-cultural keynote address, is being comfortable with Asia (and Asians) in Australia. In that respect, I believe, we have more pressing yet more easily addressable concerns. The framework of the multicultural talk-and-action in this country needs to shift from tolerance, co-existence and the occasional curry or yum-cha to much more engagement with each other's morphing communities (as opposed to stereotypes of frozen cultures).

Let me clarify my position on ethnic ghettoes by saying that all groups, white and non-white, seem prone to this phenomenon. In other words, there is no point getting into a blame game and, for instance, holding this or that international student group culpable. I have seen local initiatives work splendidly in forging inter-cultural links, and perhaps they need to stand up as models and show us the way. The Asian Century may sound like the grandest of narratives, but it needs to take off with the daily stuff.

Ageing Creatively

Unlike previous years on this blog when my musings on bygone months happened towards December, the last couple of years have been a bit of an anomaly. While I stopped blogging altogether after my PhD completion, and due to the pressures of sessional teaching in 2010, I resolved to rejuvenate this creative outlet (albeit for largely academic reasons) in 2011. In the first couple of weeks of 2012, I took it upon myself to read old blog posts and realised with some degree of surprise that it was not merely the content of my writing that had changed, but also the style and presentation. The new coloured background cannot compensate for the fact that, by and large, the creativity of my posts has been on a downward slide.

Perhaps this is reflection on my life too - more 'settled' now, at least intrinsically, and with less time and inclination to be an intellectual wanderer. However, this also feels like a bit of a loss, as though I cannot be silly and dramatic, and write freely in the third person about personal-political 'stuff' like dating across cultures any longer.

While the last year has been a gift in more ways than I can fully comprehend right now (both professionally and personally), I think I should make a bit more of an effort to use this blog as a creative outlet as much as an experimental intellectual space. Using pictures (as I did in previous years) is one way to accomplish this, but only when it feels natural. I also do wish I could write poetry again, however un-publishable, but perhaps that will also have to emerge in its own time. It could even be a new discourse for critiquing global media!

Ethnic Diversity on Australian Television

When I wrote my piece on memory, migration and MasterChef for Issue Seven of Kill Your Darlings, I mentioned that Poh Ling-Yeow (Adelaide-based visual artist and cook of Malaysian-Chinese origin) had become a role model of sorts. Not only was she the runners-up in the first series of Channel Ten’s MasterChef, but subsequent series have continue to feature “ethnic” contestants. Still, I feel none of the later participants complicated the non-White representation discourse on mainstream, commercial television in the same giggling yet dead-serious manner as Poh.

Off the Beaten Track

It recently dawned on me that my living room bookshelf houses nearly everything ever written by Salman Rushdie, Alain de Botton, bell hooks and Gail Jones. What an assorted collection of nationalities (British-Indian/Pakistani, Swiss, African-American, and Australian, respectively), genres (magic realism, new-age philosophy, cultural theory, and poetic fiction), and personalities (I won't try and pin that down). Does this say anything about me? Other than I like reading postcolonial fiction, feminist tomes, philosophical essays and lyrical prose? Perhaps it is also a marker of the different stages of growth I have been through in the last decade or so. The story it is telling is one that I have written and imbibed, but one that is also accessible to those who visit my place. It is likely that each one of these visitors picks up a different version of the bookshelf story, yet it is a rare insight into my inner world for someone new in my life. For that reason alone, I am loathe to remove or add a volume for the sake of conjuring up a certain impression.

What does your bookshelf say about you?

Mine, along with my eclectic collection of necklaces (yes, jewellery on a "serious" blog) from around the world is likely to be a legacy for my kids in case I happen to have them or adopt them. That is one hell of an inheritance off the beaten track. 

India - assertively and repressively itself

I've just come back from an attempted visit to my sister's college in Bangalore which I shall not name here. Despite being fully clothed, I was stopped by the guard because of my three-quarter pants (the girls have to wear full-length bottoms with a long shirt, and the boys professional attire as part of the institutional dress code). As I disappointedly turned away, I marvelled at the young ones' displays of confident sensuality, even sexuality in their ostensibly conservative clothes.

This seems to parallel India's unique strain of traditional modernity that I am seeing unfold on my current trip more than ever before. The medium I have chosen to investigate this phenomenon, namely, television, is both reflective of, and an aggressive participant in the building of an urban middle class that simultaneously worships at the altars of consumerist aspiration and primordial identification. Needless to say, Anna Hazare's much-publicised anti-corruption campaign has captured this class precisely because it appeals to both of the above sentiments. Even though the news networks suggest this is a homogeneous group of people, confessional yet strangely puritanical about the systemic corruption in their lives, a closer look at the streets, malls and airports tells a more nuanced story. Yes, I think there is more agency behind that struggling facade than we are willing to admit. 

Twice the Burden (of Representation)

I am trying to make scholarly sense of the coverage of the Indian student attacks (and the "hysterical" reaction to the same in the Indian media) in Australia's Fairfax publications. As I write, the "riots" unfolding in several cities in the UK are increasingly being touted as symptomatic of deep class and racial divides. While playing a blame-game is simplistic in both cases, there appears to be little doubt that ethnic minorities in the west, especially those without access to higher education and leafy suburbs, are also deprived of realistic media representations.

Kobena Mercer has written extensively on the "burden of representation", especially in relation to Black art. Can any individual creative practitioner or media worker do justice to this obligation to represent his/her ethnic community in a credible light? More importantly, should this burden be imposed in the first place?

Simon Cottle refers to Mercer's work in his analysis of British television, and takes it a step further by suggesting that there might be double the burden of representation for producers from ethnic minorities. Not only is there an implicit pressure from their own community to render it in a positive light, but also great resistance from white commissioning editors if they wish to create a text without a single Black character.

In my own writing, I find myself criticising the sense of alarm created by the Indian media even as I attribute its "sensational" reporting to the logic of a competitive media market and a resurgent urban middle class. At the same time, I can't help but detect orientalist undertones in some editorials and opinion pieces in the Australian media even as I put it down to a lack of cultural astuteness rather than outright racism. Perhaps this double-sided burden of representation, however loaded it may feel in the present, is the beginning of a paradigm for cross-cultural communication in a world with multiple centres and peripheries. 

Wearing Ethnicity, Performing Gender

One of my favourite feminist design blogs is shutting shop. Not only will I miss their sartorial inspiration, but also their very useful attempts to theorise fashion and identity performance for women (and men) who are academically inclined and also between worlds. Here's one of my favourite posts, which I shall certainly keep in mind for my upcoming work/family trip to India:
Academichic: Insider/Outsider