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 DIL
SE : Writing about Bollywood by Rachel Dwyer
In
moments of exasperation I wonder why I write about Indian
cinema. I've had to fight within the academy where it's
seen to be a trivial subject. I began by teaching a
BA course and now that I'm seeing my former PhD students
in Indian cinema taking up academic positions in the
UK and India I guess that's one battle won. However
within the academy the place of Indian cinema within
film studies is complicated, despite the high level
of interest, in that there is little in the way of teaching
materials and these have rarely engaged with the dominant
theoretical issues in cinema of feminism and psychoanalysis.
However, recent work on melodrama, the public sphere
and globalisation are making Indian cinema impossible
to ignore.
I have also had to struggle with coming to Hindi cinema
late, already in my twenties, although I was already
familiar with Ray and other Indian cinema. Although
I had studied Sanskrit and Gujarati, I learnt my Hindi
from the films and, even now that I am studying Urdu,
I know I will always struggle with dialects and slang.
I shall never be able to understand a south Indian language
and will know little of India's other cinemas. Yet for
me Indian cinema lies at the heart of my research and
my teaching.
Cinema is the best way I've found of engaging with Indian
culture at all levels from narrative to visual culture
to emotion. I enjoy it enormously and am interested
in the study of pleasure and emotional responses to
the cinema. I study the films as texts but have also
worked with people in the industry, have sifted through
the archives in Pune and London, and am interested in
the audiences and their involvement with cinema in the
UK as well as in India.
DVDs, VCDs and the Internet as well as the resources
of NFTAI, Pune have made it much easier to get materials
but engaging with the cinema in academic terms is still
difficult. The film industry is skilled in dealing with
the press but has little experience of academics and
what we want and what we can offer in return. Coolly
welcomed when I first interacted with the industry,
Yash Chopra said at the launch of my book on him, that
he gave me access as he felt sorry for me for coming
all the way from London to sit in his waiting room day
after day. I am well aware I make endless demands, ask
strange questions, offer unsolicited opinions and have
an uncanny ability to get in the way. Yet I have found
kindness and enthusiasm throughout the industry although
I have given little in return and I have continued to
voice my critical opinions.
Very slowly an academic community of researchers on
Indian cinema is crystallising. While there is still
very little published academic work, it is developing
at a great pace and younger scholars are conducting
exciting projects on silent cinema, action cinema, distribution
and so on. Non-academic writing varies enormously in
quality but much of it provides closer perspectives
and involvement than academic work and is a great source
of insight and raises key questions. Even where the
books are not successful in themselves, the sheer knowledge
of many of these writers and the eyewitness accounts
demand serious engagement. It is simply impossible to
write a book that can appeal to these various groups
of readers from the academic to the popular. It is time
to create dialogues and debates among the various writers
and critics and to engage seriously with one another's
work.
Writing and teaching Indian cinema remains a pleasure
and a privilege. I have made some of my deepest friendships
in recent years with people in the industry, the critics
and writers and fans. I have come to love the films,
the songs and the stars. There remains so much more
and I have only recently been viewing the treasures
of Prabhat Studios which are absolute gems. Among some
truly dreadful films, I am excited about watching a
new generation working within the idioms of 'Bollywood'
to create a world cinema of new masterpieces such as
Satya, Dil Chahta Hai and Lagaan.
Rachel Dwyer is the author of several books including
All You Want Is Money; All You Need Is Love: Sex and
Romance in Modern India and Yash Chopra: Fifty Years
in Indian Cinema
 So
You Want To Start A [clears throat] Blog from logging
on to blogging on By Peter Griffin
It's
been the buzz all year, this strange word that sounds,
as a Luddite I know said recently, like something stuck
in one's mucus membranes.
Never mind them technophobes. The facts are that "blog"
was the most looked-up word in an online dictionary
last year, that bloggers were Time's People of the Year,
that world media has started taking notice (and even
Indian media, wouldja believe?), that corporate bodies
began thinking of them as marketing tools, and that
everyone and their second cousins want to give you their
blog URL.
So what are blogs anyway? It's a hybrid word-short for
"web log"-and at its most basic, it is a website
with dated entries, usually in reverse chronological
order.
From there on, they're what you want them to be: guides
to sites and online stories; diaries; confessionals;
showcases; conversations; soap boxes, pulpits; dashing
white chargers to gallop to crusades on; whatever rocks
your boat.
Conveniently ignoring, for the purpose of this column,
the now rapidly expanding tribe of blogs that focus
on visual content, I'll risk another sweeping generalisation.
A blog is essentially about words. And your readership-indeed,
whether you get read at all, aside from you, yourself,
and your alter ego-depends on a combination of your
subject matter and how good you are at stringing words
together.
So, given that, should writers-serious writers, professional
writers-blog?
I'd give you a guarded "yes." For several
reasons.
If you take your blog seriously, it's daily writing
calisthenics. There's only one way to become a better
writer, and that's by writing. And feeling the obligation
to blog means that you park your butt in front of a
computer and write. And since someone might be reading
you, so you better write good, you know?
Blogs are also a good way to try out new ideas, workshop
your writing, and to get feedback.
Feedback is not guaranteed, of course, but there are
ways to get yourself noticed and commented on. That,
however, is a subject that could take up an entire column's
worth of space. Besides, it's pretty easy to go looking
for how-tos. The Lord Google knows that the web is crawling
with blogging gurus.
Being creatures of the web, blogs, by definition, are
not limited to geographic boundaries. The world is very
much your oyster. Not just with readership. Advances
in blogging applications make it easy to collaborate
across the miles, or to band together with like-minded
writers from around the world, to put together a whole
greater than the sum of its parts. (Personally, I have
found this a very effective method, and I've mid-wifed
collaborations that have met with moderate to phenomenal
success. Though not strictly an example of a writers'
collaboration, the tsunamihelp set of blogs only became
a world-wide clearing house for information on the disaster
because they were a group of dedicated people acting
in concert.)
Then, of course, there's the recognition bit, very important
for the up-and-coming writer trying to make a mark.
As with feedback, just being good is no guarantee that
you will get noticed. But again, there are ways to break
through, though you'd better be consistently good to
keep your audience.
Oh yes, blogs can actually make you some money. Not
a fortune, I hasten to add, but an ad programme can
bring in a few bucks. Provided your content is compelling
enough to bring in the readers.
Other business models have been floated. Like using
your blog as an advertisement for your other writing.
Or actually selling your other writing online, through
downloadable documents, for example.
And of course, there's the Holy Grail. The book contract.
Publishers are always on the lookout for the next phenom,
and many popular bloggers have parlayed their online
success into fat publishing contracts.
There is, however, another side to all these arguments.
Blogs can take up an awful lot of your time and energy.
It can certainly get in the way if you need to do a
lot of Real Writing. The writing that pays the bills.
That editors and publishers will write cheques for.
William Gibson, one of the few Big Name authors who
runs a blog (at least one of the few who does it under
his own name) has an opinion you might want to consider.
Just before his blog went into a long hiatus, he posted
this entry.
"...the thing I've most enjoyed about [blogging]
is how it never fails to underline the fact that if
I'm doing this I'm definitely not writing a novel-that
is, if I'm still blogging, I'm definitely still on vacation.
I've always known, somehow, that it would get in the
way of writing fiction, and that I wouldn't want to
be trying to do both at once. The image that comes most
readily to mind is that of a kettle failing to boil
because the lid's been left off."
So, should you blog? I'd say give it a try. After a
while, you'll figure out if you're getting-or are on
the way to getting-pleasure, fame or money out of it.
If not, hawk deeply, and eject it from your system.
Peter Griffin blogs at zigzackly.blogspot.com,
and has founded, runs or contributes to several collaborations,
which you can find links to from his blog. He founded
the collaborative South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami
blog tsunamihelp.blogspot.com, which created blogging
history and gave him 15 seconds of fame in January '05.
 'Immigration
gave me the passion to write...' by Chitra Banerjee
Divakaruni
I'M A writer. A teacher of creative writing at the University
of Houston. A social activist. And the mother of two
sons, Abhay (10) and Anand (13). I also teach 'India
in the Writer's Eye,' a fiction course focusing on how
you depict a culture differently, depending on who you
are. I try to interweave these complementary roles.
My mother was a schoolteacher. So was my grandfather's
father. In fact, when I finished my PhD at the University
of California, Berkeley, I started teaching literature.
I fell into writing much later.
I come from a sheltered, traditional Bengali household
in Kolkata, where I never thought about my Indian identity.
Immigration was really an eye-opener. It gave me the
passion to write.
I recall my mother saying, 'The day you start at Presidency
College, only saris for you.' All my friends are wearing
bell-bottoms! At 19, the minute I reached Wright State
University at Dayton, Ohio, for my MA course, I got
into blue jeans and a T-shirt.
On my second day in Dayton, I was walking on the streets
with a relative, when a group of kids called out, "Nigger!"
It was such a shock. For many years, I never even told
anyone about it. A short story in Arranged Marriage
(1990) deals with that experience. I hope my books create
a sense of the complexity of immigrant culture, for
all readers.
Gradually, I became aware of the ambiguous experience
of being a woman of colour living in the US. I now wear
Indian clothes for all my formal US activities. I'm
saying: 'You will accept me on these terms. I am good
at what I do, no matter what I wear.'
My community and my culture are central to my writing.
I'm very much a South Asian American writer, whose Indian
roots are important. I want to create a dual dimension
between the mythic and contemporary reality of India.
I think all art is a search for the self. Kafka once
said: "A book should be an axe to shatter the frozen
sea inside us." If literature works well, we experience
what our scriptures tell us: 'We are all one.'
For the past 15-20 years, I've been influenced by Indian
spirituality. In my recent novel Queen of Dreams (launched
here in March 2005), both the main women characters
are going through a subtle process of spiritual questioning.
What is the meaning of life? How do I relate to the
rest of humanity? How do I find strength within myself?
How do I counter hate in the world? And the reality
of 9/11 affects Rakhi's dream of America.
In 1991, I co-founded Maitri (a helpline for immigrant
women victims of domestic abuse). Their courage, grace
and hope move me deeply. It's very inspiring to see
what they achieve with a little help.
For a year, I wrote a column about the immigrant experience
in the US for India Today. About inter-generational
gaps, parenting roles, the problems of elderly parents
as visitors. In The Unknown Errors of Our Lives, (2001)
a story deals with arranged marriages. Our young people
benefit from the resources that America offers, as from
strong family support. With rising US divorce rates,
many are returning to marriage as a considered action
within the family.
In the post-65 generation, most Indian Americans were
professionals. From different communities, socio-economically
they were a homogenous group, a model community. But
after the 1984 Family Reunification Act, there's a layer
of small motel, gas station and 7/11 owners, factory
workers and taxi drivers. This has caused a real schism
within our community.
Instead of wishing these new immigrants were invisible,
why can't we make the American dream more real for them
through integration? Such as providing scholarships
before these less privileged youth join gangs? I think
one of my future works is going to be about this.
I'm excited that my first novel, The Mistress of Spices
(1997) is being made into a film by Gurinder Chadha.
She's a strong feminist director, totally in tune with
the immigrant experience. I've no problems with Aishwarya
Rai playing Tilo. I thought she did a good job in Chokher
Bali.
(My husband) Murthy and the boys are getting cameo roles
when Gurinder shoots in California on the March 19-20
weekend. (Laughing) Since I'm in India for two weeks,
my cameo will be the cover of India Currents, on which
I appeared a while ago! They've promised to put it in.
If you look at the history of literature, it's mostly
men telling the stories of men. It's important for women
to tell the stories of women. If only men would read
more woman-centric novels, it would deepen their human
experience.
Some men have been offended because I deal with women's
issues. 'You make Indian men look bad,' they complain.
Often, women are equal participants in perpetuating
certain situations. In Sister of My Heart, (1999), the
mother-in-law is very keen on having a grandson, not
a granddaughter, as the first child of the family.
My books are about the problems Indian Americans face
as a race in the US. Men who have experienced prejudice
appreciate that. And those who've been activists react
positively. Right on, they say. - As told to Aditi
De
Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni lives in America. She
has written several novels including The Mistress of
Spices, Sister of My Heart and The Unknown Errors of
Our Lives
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