Lip Stick Under my Burka: A potrayal of the female underbelly:

 

‘’Lipstick under my  Burka ‘’ a thought provoking movie by Alankrita Srivastawa was made controversial by the CBFC by a ban calling it ‘’lady oriented’’. To see this ‘’orientation’’, I lurked into a nearby movie hall today afternoon and watched it in full. Any right thinking person who sees the movie will be convinced that it is the same misogynist mind-set that the film tries to expose was in itself the cause of its ban. Thanks to the appellate board, which overruled the CBFC  , the film is now available for public viewing .

Coming to the movie , the protagonist are four women representing four age groups .

A teenaged Muslim girl who is in her traditional burka at home clandestinely turns herself up into a lipstick - jeans clad girl at college by stealing her western wardrobe from the nearby store. She aspires to become a rock star and in that effort she  dreams ,  drinks ,smokes and once even slept with her  boyfriend,  only to be caught by police for stealing. Finally her father bales her off from police station as well as from her aspiration , back into her burka clad life. 

The second protagonist is a young adult lady who dreams of making big in her life. She manipulates the relationship with her fiancé who was forced upon her. Her   passionate sex drives with a photographer friend turns sour when he dumps her  .

A midlife Muslim married woman with three kids skilled in door to door selling is the third character. Her Saudi returned male chauvinist husband resorts to continuous marital rapes forcing her to resort to multiple abortions. She too dreams of being employed and independent only to be raped back to the four walls of her house.

The forth protagonist is a 50 plus old woman who reads soft porn literature in religious tomes.  She explores her sexuality by buying and wearing a sexy swim suit and learns swimming from a stud guy with whom she engages in telephonic sex for her late night moaning. The men in her claustrophobic locality who revered her as a respectable and religious woman,   find the truth out and throw her into the street

The movie ends with all the Lip stick  ladies  smoking out their failure together in a room over a lost dream  . The lipstick gets exhausted by that time and so also my patience.

The movie tries to explore a wonderful theme of female sexuality, hidden under a patriarchal and misogynist social fabric and is a good attempt in caricaturing the larger issue of female desire. The teen aged girl’s fantasy of experimentation and the young girl’s rebellious sexual expression are aptly portrayed. The mental trauma from the painful, anti –orgasmic shudders of an abusive husband on a middle aged woman is vividly portrayed in the movie. Same is the case of the post-menopausal fantasy of the old lady .

While the theme hold good what is amiss is the scripting of a traditional climax where  the female succumbing to the male order, may be a ‘’Sanskriti theme’’  borrowed from Gauri Shinde’’s  ‘’English Vinglish’’ .  I expected all the protagonist to be like Mansi the character played by Rekha in Basu Bhatacharyas , 1997 block buster Aastha  or like Mahesh Manjrekar’s Astitva  where the character played by  Tabu challenges her  male chauvinist  husband 

Themes on female sexuality have been tested by  many movie makers but at a time when females of today have indeed become expressive and experimental why not the theme of  women taking the lip stick and saying  thumps down to men. 

Unless women are shown as a winner against the challenges they face from men and marriage, I will not give thumps up to this movie

Suicide of a soldier and the Army underbelly :

Roy Mathews was a gunner in the Nashik camp of the Indian army: A sting operation by a journalist which made him speak of abuses of the seniors of juniors in the Army went viral. A general anxiety of his court martial gripped him which probably led him to suicide. While the central agencies have rightly stepped up in enquiring the real cause of his death, the matter of concern is not of Roy Mathew committing suicide but  of the circumstance of subjugation in the armed forces .

The divide of officer and non - officer   in a master- slave anecdote was imbibed from the colonial culture of the white officer and the native soldier. While the officer lived salubriously the native did the menial jobs  .  Even though   the  white sahibs paved way for their brown counterparts, this culture continues . Have you seen civil and defence servants keeping orderlies who cooks for them, take their children to school, wash their cars and accompany their wives fo grocery ? . The Victorian class culture coupled with the caste mindset have resulted in this situation where there is no dignity given for the lower rungs of the hierarchy in the civil and defence administrative pyramids.

The most recent outbursts of the jawans in BSF or now in the Army are all sparks from an existential problem in the services.  The officer keeps an elite mindset which you could see in the army camps. The officer‘s family does not interact or looks down on a non-officer and his family. Just have a visit to the defence wives association. The officer’s wives adores key positions with the non - officer’s wife providing an helping hand. This hierarchical   attitude is well reflected in their behaviour as well in social life.

While in private sector dignity of labour and classlessness have started creating an egalitarian work culture with juniors even naming their seniors by names and expresses their views and dissent. This freedom is not available in the services were satisfying the egos of the seniors is their prime responsibility.

In the context of the various social media upsurges made by some desperate juniors on the conduct of their seniors it need to be understood that there exists a problem. Roy Mathews death will reminds us about that for long time to come.

At a time when we are xenophobically nationalist and glorifies the Army bravery during each death of a soldier why isn’t the death of Roy Mathews being looked upon as an underbelly of an Institution which needs not accolades but a revamp in organizational culture … Jai Hind: 

Sanyasi

Rio Olympics 2016 : Retreating Monsoons and our seasonally affected disorders-- (SAD)

At a time when the monsoon clouds recede from the Indian landmass the Olympic season  at  Rio is coming to an end. While monsoons bring with it, the positives of good harvest and prosperity so also it gives us a taste of floods and disasters. This  thirty-first Olympics bought in glories from stalwarts like Michel Philips , Usain bolt, Mo Farah , and Simone Biles with the US tallying high as expected in the medal tally . It also  bought disappointments and  despair among individuals and nations alike.

Well as the clouds of this sporting event  recedes we as a sub-continental nation-- with more than a billion people with most of them young – return back with just  two medals. Let us  console that the grace of the nation , at least marginally,  was saved by few  outstanding ladies.  While Sindhu and Sakshi came up with medals , Dipa with Lalitha Babur bought in hope . The glory of a  traditionally patriarchal society with gender biases  was thus upheld by these females. Sakshi ‘s win in the male-dominated sport of Wrestling  on the background of her coming from the infamous land of female infanticide conveys thus the right message:  

As like the monsoon,  our contingent saw many disasters too. Hockey which was our traditional grace saver did not move ahead beyond  the quarter-final . Similarly,  individual star performers from tennis and shooting went  down the line of expectation.  Poor Narsinh Yadav turns up into a doped tragedy and the list goes on

When  the game closes we come home with a bronze and a silver and a whole nation rejoices in line with  its culture – content on  whatever you get, I recall a   Pakistani tweet   ..''they get one and they rejoice as like 'getting 100

The game also has had its socio-political tamashas.  One of India’s top pulp fiction author who stinks with elitism got trolled for a remark on non-performance of athletes proving  that  whatever she speaks and writes is just indigested gas:  The Delhi walla Sports Minister invites the wrath and embarrassment for the   rude and unruly behaviour of members of his entourage. An unduly large crowd of babus and cronies from the Indian Olympic association and sports ministry had an opportunity to behave as in the Delhi railway station at the Olympic village. We also heard  a relative of IOA head  going on a Rio retreat in the garb of being a sport doctor.

  

As like during the monsoon this Olympics also    convinces us about our seasonally affected disorders which come because our sports machinery is infested  by nepotism and in efficiency . While Gopichand has proved how an individual's  training and mentoring can yield result the sports ministry has shown how a billion nation of mostly aspiring youngsters can be held ineffective through the web of ineffective bureaucracy  :

As we wait for the next Olympics in Tokyo as like we wait for our monsoons , let us be cross- fingered whether it is  going to be  thumbs down or a  thumps up:

Triumph of the right wing : Brexit and Roti

Friends,

The British referendum and India’s NSG endeavours filled the limelight in the mainstream media last week. Britain’s ‘’exit’’ vote and India’s ‘’no entry’’ vote has a larger connotation in the context of national aspirations. From the empire where the Sun never sets, today it a matter of Roti kapada aur makhan for Britain, that they decided to be independent of the diktat and burden of the EU to move,  in  a new direction based on their aspiration. Today they are more concerned about  building up their economy without taking the burden of immigrates . In that context, British vote signifies a right-wing nationalist aspiration.

On the other side, notwithstanding the leg pulling from China, India has made a valiant diplomatic effort in getting an entry into the elite Nuclear Supplier Group. Even though the attempt failed,   this effort leaves behind shadows of diplomatic manoeuvres made by a nation to find a  place among the comity of elite nations:

The former case of BrExit is a turning point in the history of Europe because the significance of a  larger European identity has dwindled. A United States of Europe is still a utopia and what matters is the identity based on  economic interests. If the EU, in particularly Germany and France, did not strive to dictate terms through EU bureaucracy,  probably this would not have happened, However what matters as a lesson to India is on accepting the diversity of its socio-economic landscape and take consensus-based decisions , particularly in the case of GST, rather than resorting to arbitrary actions:

If as a nation we are asking for a due share of global recognition, that is because of the opportunity that we provide as a growing market  .The hullaballoo that we heard in NSG emanates from a sensing of this opportunity by western nations contradicting  to the envy  of our neighbours. Both ways India emerges a winner.

So this week’s lesson is that exiting a group or not being admitted to a group is NOT essentially a failure but a harbinger of success. Both are triumph of the rightwing 

Sanyasi

Swahum Swahum. New Paradigms of Spiritualism. The AOL story:

Dear devotees

I am a spiritual seeker. In my search for spiritual fulfilment, I have come across many people and institutions and one among them was the Art of Living foundation. In fact I have done both the ''basic'' and the ''advanced"' courses of AOL and  regularly practice the Sudarshan kriya, the controlled breathing technique which is proved to be a panacea to  a plethora of psycho somatic illnesses . 

Guruji as we call  Sri Sri Ravishankar   is an enlighten soul with an enchanting personality who has attracted  best of the talent in spreading his  principles of universal love. I have come across graduates from the best Engineering and Business schools working passionately for him with rigour and enthusiasm. Observing the energy and dedication of each karyakarta  of AOL, I used to feel , that if this level of motivation is embalmed to our private , public government sectors, India can cross the threshold of basic socio economic development in just few years. Yes AOL is a great organization and its contribution to global society is commendable. However the recent cultural festival held on the plains of Yamuna which attracted a fine of Ra 5 Crore  for AOL from the Green tribunal and resultant outcry from the so called liberal left intellectuals needs thinking;

Spiritual Gurus of the yesteryears went to the Himalayas or other secluded places and attained enlightenment but they were not known to the outside world. However it was the efforts of few yogis of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that have resulted in ensuring the flow of Indian- Hindu knowledge system of Yogic practises to the developed world. First to mention among them was  Swami Vivekananda himself whose speech in the parliament of religion opened up the ‘’Hindu view of life’’ ( as Dr S Radhakrishnan named it )  to the western world . Swami Vivekananda was followed by Shri Paramahamsa yogananda and later by Swami Chinmayanda in propagation of this knowledge of Vedanta into the modern times . Chinmaya  mission and the Vivekananda mission,  are providing  yeomen service to society,   be it in social sector or in education . Having said that what makes AOL, which is also involved in a similar exercise being looked with scepticism? Can it be just levelled as cynicism of an atheist liberal left media?

The fundamental basis of spiritual teaching in India in a social context was egalitarian in nature and endowed with simplicity. That is why Swamy Vivekananda’s principles were  labelled as Vedantic Socialism where the monks travelled bare foot and built up trust and rapport with the subaltern but not with the affluent. A globalized growing India with its  burgeoning middle class lives in a web of expectations and runs into  a baggage of disappointments, uncertainty and stress. Spiritual solutions or KRIYAs are handy capsules and are nothing but controlled breathing techniques derived from the practices of Gurus of the yesteryears  and codified in various texts. Yog Vashistam by Sage Vashista and Patangili’s Yogasootran  are two main texts which gives a scientific and logical reasoning on Yogic practices .

 

Modern spiritual gurus have ''corporatized'' this knowledge  into a model of service delivery riding on the evolving demand supply gap of spirituality, thereby taking it away from the personal realms of individual prayer rooms. ''Corporatization'' results in corporate characters and behaviourism creating a jet set, lap top dashing culture of spiritual power point presentations:

I don’t believe this as a retrograde development as it is only the adaptation to a newer technologically driven social reality. The successful case in point is Swami Ramdev Baba whose’’ Patanjali products ’’ have  made the popular FMCG brands run for their money. Patanjali has since evolved as a success story of innovative thinking popularising the Indian Yogic practices as well as traditional medicinal knowledge.

Coming back to AOL, if it is involved in a Guru based branding exercise and spreading peace in the process what is wrong. The Salesians  , Jocobites or the Jamat Ulema –e -hind had always their brand of socio- spiritual  engineering , so what makes the difference?

The difference comes when there is state patronage and when the revenue and expenditure of such spiritual extravaganzas are not available  in the  public domain making it as Rajdeep Sardesai says ‘’Crony Spiritualism’’ . 

Till that time we can always say Swaham Swaham. No problem:

Sanyasi: