Tarana-e-B___

When I started college in Bombay, I was a dreamy, self-willed girl who had spent a good part of her life moving between cloistered cantonments. I was simultaneously countrified and a sophisticate, in fact I had arrived from a small town in Gujarat. Like always I simply became friends with people who took an interest in me, changing schools had taught me that this was the easiest path for friendships that were fluid and lasted only till the next posting. A Tamil girl I met was my first friend in college till I was lured away by newer friends. I say lured because the hurt in the girl’s eyes was my first intimation that friendships at that age were heartfelt and because I felt helpless in so being tugged away. One of my new friends was a girl called B___ who was a very quiet and elegant girl. At this point my father had been allotted a large 1930s bungalow that was ramshackle and boasted servants quarters that were filled with people and strangely buffaloes. This was all borrowed glory – we even had bed tea - for my parents had very little money of their own; these years were in fact very straitened and fraught with the conflicts that a lack of money always engenders. B on the other hand came from old wealth and lived in a leafy corner of Malabar Hill in a three storey house. It wasn’t however very showy because her folk had been Gandhian so the whole set up spoke of hushed wealth. But I hardly noticed this constrast in our lives. B was rather reserved and selective so I am not sure why she decided I was a suitable friend, in fact I was one of very few friends. Her mother encouraged our friendship and I would often be at her place or she at mine. One of the things that perhaps drew us close was that we cultivated a stern kind of musical purity and listened only to Hindi songs of the 40s and 50s and little else. Within this we had strict hierarchies which meant the usual favourites like Kishore ended up least favoured. Like with many teenage girls this dreamlife of listening to records and discussing the songs, writing down the lyrics, thinking about the words ran parallel to our ordinary lives of study and family. I had another more insistent dreamlife which was curtained from my friends, including B, simply because they did not read the books I did. This life went its own way; the only people who might have seen hints of it were my mother and brother. B in fact may not even have appreciated this side of me because it was the opposite of her demure, understated persona.

My parents had purchased a record player in Bombay which was a bit of a luxury, previously all my knowledge of songs had come from the radio. Joining college had also meant that I got pocket money though I did little with it. B had a very good record collection which she was always supplementing and this meant that occasionally I would use this money to buy records. The songs would fill our vast drawing room through which filtered light streamed - there was something romantic about listening to music in that room. This room was also our best room and my mother had squirreled some money away for its plush blue Persian carpet on which we lay listening to the songs.  Along with the old songs, we also thought it fit to cultivate long tresses and wear traditional clothes, it made for a sweet composite picture though I say this myself. And I say it because I think this part of my life had an old fashioned sweetness, a chaste romantic feeling that did not always exist in the other parts.

Both B and I loved Talat Mahmood and our favourite record of that time was "In a Blue Mood". For a long time I knew the exact order of the songs on this record, the words were burnt into my head. Soon after we started looking for more obscure records of his, these records were often not available and we would put in a special order. The record would turn up weeks later, in the meantime we thought with pleasurable anticipation of the songs we would listen to and what we might like best. One of these records was Tarana and this record is the reason for my post. When it arrived – we had both ordered a copy – we could not get enough of it. Surprisingly none of these songs had ever turned up in Chaya Geet, in any case we were rarely interested in the visual bit of the songs. But here is a song from the film and it turns out it is in its own sweet way a lovely illustration of the play inherent in Indian romance. Song starts a minute into the video.

By then the ease with which I slipped into friendships was accompanied by an effort to maintain them, so I stayed in touch with B for a very long time till in the usual way we drifted apart and lost touch.  Still she is bound up with the more refined parts of my girlhood and I could have asked for no better companion.

PS: Another song from the same film here. The song feels vaguely voyeuristic, as if one someone had filmed a private moment. Which is not altogether surprising given the leads were as they say "involved".

My Green Romance

The Sorrow of Young Werther

Over at The Onion, someone coined the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG), defined as the kind who “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures”.  But even before Elizabethtown, MPDGs existed and have a long history as this Amazing Girl post shows.  MPDG’s are sometimes attainable (film representations of Pocohantas suggest this type) but something of the term conjures up the kind of whimsical, flighty girl with artistic pretensions who is quite unattainable and quite casually and deliciously shatters a sensitive boy’s heart.  Think Anna Karina in all those Godard movies for example. The apogee of the type is possibly (500) Days of Summer, a film that is a bittersweet ode to manic pixie dream girls everywhere and is aimed at a certain kind of male audience.  Less commonly, manic pixie dream girls sometimes pop up in women’s films too, as the ditzy kind of girl lent weight by a partner with more nous and gravitas, e.g. Confessions of a Shopaholic.   Bridget Jones was - well at least a MP - with significantly more poundage and a great deal more clumsiness. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is therefore an enduring type. As long as young, dreamy women with long hair and poetic affectations exist, so shall the MPDG.

Imprisoned on long flights awhile back and quite completely brain dead, I sampled some of the recent romantic films on offer.  And my extremely random yet completely true survey of recent romantic films indicates that for the moment the MPDG is lying very low indeed, at least in films aimed at women. Instead the recent movies are full of perfectionist careerists with lonely, sad sack lives. The ring, the wedding, the perfect man are secret desires sublimated under an air of confidence and a career in good shape, though keeping true to the type mind numbing and detailed wedding plans are covertly drawn up.  All these women wear sharp designer power suits, impossibly high heels and have everything terrifyingly and worryingly in order. It is possible the type exists though I have never met one, maybe they have arrived as an antidote to the Bridget Jones era.  It is another kind of enduring stereotype after all, the prim miss literally letting down her hair.  But the type has mutated (or is the word transmogrified) into a harridan for our times so that Ms. Super Efficient is often humourless and uptight and must face all the loneliness and angst traditionally ascribed to the successful man before finding true love.  These women in fact are like a rash all over the guy movies too. In a movie like Knocked Up their appearance can be put down to residual misogyny or more charitably as a catalyst for the maturation of the protagonist but their appearance in women’s films is a bit puzzling, if not a mild exercise in self-flagellation. But women apparently want this if the success of these films is to be believed.

The Farmer Wants a Wife

So who is cast opposite these women? It turns out that this century’s idea of the hot, desirable man one can jump into bed and matrimony with is Green Earth Man. If he is not actually growing tender plants in moist fertile mud and generally communing with nature, he is at least doing something related that requires him to be gruff, vaguely hirsute, attractively dishevelled and having some kind of organic matter up his fingernails. He is often younger and quite possibly earning much less than Ms. Super Efficient.  In The Back-up Plan he is running a cheese farm (truly!), in Leap Year he owns a picturesque, rustic pub and at one point does some gardening, in Valentine’s Day one of the leads is a florist and in Something New he is landscaping in picturesque, autumnal surroundings.  The new Australian film, Summer Coda, appears to have an orange farmer. Once in  awhile - and this is the most regrettable part of the films - he also dishes out Petruchio-esque humiliation. By the end of these films the heroine, if still in her Louboutins and Prada (for we also live in an age of unbridled consumerism), has managed to sufficiently unwind and find true love in the arms of Green Earth Man.  In fact these men seem to be popping up with alarming regularity outside of the typical romantic film. In the super lush art-house flick, I Am Love, Green Earth Man manages to tick an astonishing number of boxes. He is much younger, has a veggie patch, cooks and runs his own restaurant - though here I note that he is cast opposite Tilda Swinton who looks less like a harridan and more like an extraterrestrial beamed down onto the streets of Italy (and I also note that I adore ze Swinton). In the lesbian arthouse drama, The Kids are all Right, he is more a disruptive romantic  - and a organic restaurateur.

The appearance of the type is not altogether surprising.  Everything “eco” is suddenly fashionable.  Broodingly soulful young men are as likely to fall prey to the romanticism inherent in Green Earth Man as to Manic Pixie Dream Girls. In fact in real life MPDGs are all over the internet writing for a female audience where they blog their fashions, their essential whimsicality, their prettiness, their artiness and are often accessorised by a cute Green Earth Man who puts in an appearance once in awhile on the blog.  So why are they cast opposite shrill harridans with kind hearts in the movies? Is it because these films are aimed at older women who jumped onto the career merry-go-round and the wealth of the last decade and are now wanting to step off a little, if at least by way of a chilled out partner?  And as part of the new zeitgeist, are the men also younger and more relaxed and happier to leave the controls in the hands of a woman? Not long back Mills & Boon celebrated its anniversary with a film, Consuming Passion: 100 Years of Mills and Boon.  In the film Emilia Fox’s character matches up the type of M&B hero with the social milieu of the time. For example, in a Post WWI world of few men,  the heroes were much younger. The 60s counterrevolution resulted in romances set in foreign locales with swarthy Sheiks and Counts. So are the new films aimed at a particular generation of women tired of their own pool of suitors (many of these films also have a negative male lead who is an insensitive corporate sort) and is the modern career woman still secretly marking time before settling down to marriage with Green Earth Man? Films aimed at an older generation for e.g. are different, as a whole slew of Meryl Streep films like Mamma Mia, Julie &Julia and Its Complicated show the post 50 woman looking for romance is an earth mother who can bake a great cake.  Whatever be the case, Bitchface Harridan with a tender heart is not in the least bit interesting and I for one will not be mourning her hopefully imminent passing.

So will Green Earth Man himself persist in our cinemas ? As a protagonist there is something to be said for him for he is a lot better than the creepy benefactor of a movie like Pretty Woman but I won't hold out for his longevity.  Also given the rumoured allure of MPDGs it is likely he will next mutate into whatever it is that the MPDG wants and her sisters will merely follow.

As a postscript, I note that the tart literary girl rarely ever appears in romantic films. The only one I can recall is Fiona in Four Weddings and a Funeral (who was properly tart and not cutely tart) and she unfortunately was left holding a torch for a supposedly unattainable Mr. Grant.  But their absence in the chick flick is fortunate.  For if my assiduous study of subtitled movies on SBS is any indication, the tart  literary girl is having a very good time indeed and can often be found in these films right in the midst of a supremely decadent ménage à trois.

Flower. Memory. Song.

Pictures of flowers are not art unless they are done by Georgia O’Keefe and perceived as sexual metaphor (though the artist herself was slightly cross with these interpretations). Instead their images are everywhere as short hand representations of trite emotions, as easy photography. The Victorians made a brave stab at creating an entire language based on flowers and quaint and courtly as this is, theirs is an age of such florid sentimentality that it has fallen by the wayside. To admit to liking flowers is perhaps now on par with expressing a love of teddy bears and red hearts. But I like them and particularly their careless blooming in spring. Just today for e.g. I saw the sloping end of a railway station ablaze with the gold and red of flowering weeds and it made me happy in an irrational, unpredictable way. So I can’t help photographing them. As I did on a walk awhile back. I particularly loved the way the azaleas looked like snow deposited in front of the house and the last of the rain on the ipomoea. 

Azalea Snow

Pink bauhinia

Ipomoea

Magnolia

But I like the sturdiness and colours of grasses too and if I had to choose I would perhaps live in a house full of grasses inflected with a few flowers. 

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In better times the middle of October would have meant wishes for my uncles whose birthdays lay barely a day apart. The first time one faces any kind of loss, its intensity burns away so much that you are shaken, purified, every detail and date burnt in your memory. Then it happens once too often and you grow resigned, a little tired. You understand that even these emotions are impermanent and everything will be obliterated by time. It becomes easy to present yourself to the world as if unmarked. But somewhere deep inside it still remains incomprehensible and a small kernel of grief ebbs and swells with the days. I feel sorrow for my uncles, for the sudden cruel way in which things ended. Some days I miss them and search for the gaps in their lives, look for clues in old pictures for the young men they were.  And I want then to conjure them up once more and wish them a happy birthday. 

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I have been listening to more English folk, e.g. Barnacled Warship, this week. Like most of Johnny Flynn’s songs it has the strange quality of seeming archaic and modern.  I like his songs well enough but I am strangely taken up by the lyrics, the language in them. It’s been a very long time since I wrote poetry but reading the lyrics jogged some dormant part of my brain.  I haven’t got to the poem stage but a few phrases that could form the basis for a poem flash through my mind once in awhile.  Perhaps a fuller immersion in poetry is needed!

Cronulla Saturday

Though the Shire can be a thing of loveliness, fringed as it is by the Royal National Park, I rarely go there. And it is even rarer that I go to Cronulla, I had been there just once one summer when the place was an endless expanse of (mostly white) young limbs on the beach. From the beach, Kurnell was visible lending a certain chill to the landscape. The beach mall was no different from that of any Australian seaside town, if a little charmless. It all spoke of the stifling boredom of the worlds described in coming of age novels like Puberty Blues or a movie like La Spagnola. I have rarely felt as out of place as on that day. I was in no particular hurry to return.

After the moderate weather of the week, today was blustery and overcast. Though I prefer the dramatic atmospherics of cold, windswept beaches, overcast suits me fine. I have never taken to the intense Australian sun though elsewhere I cannot get enough of the sun. This morning on a whim I therefore decided to go there, Cronulla is distant but still reachable and I felt like being near water. It turned out to be a pleasant day. There are vestiges of the past in the suburb; the station still has a milk bar, the fish and chips shops haven’t entirely moved out. But something of the inner city has diffused to the suburb; there is Berkelouw, organic coffee shops, buskers and a bookshop that I remembered from my last visit. Of course this exists alongside the suburban nature of Cronulla, at the beach there was bad music and even a few dismal beachside sermons. And plenty of kids decked out in Billabong and Roxy, the ubiquitous surf labels in these parts. As always, in spite of the weather, there were people in the water. The scraggly vegetation of the beach was in bloom, even if the weather has been inconsistent Sydney’s flora speak of spring. The sea was tinged grey but becalmed. Perhaps it was the day, but the characteristic lugubrious silence of Australian towns lay over the suburb even though there were plenty of people around on a Saturday morning. But the silence was friendly, not lonely as it sometimes can be.

On the way back I bought a few jonquils (or perhaps daffodils). Then on the train a lot of old people headed elsewhere, all friendly smiles. Back home, the jonquils go quite nicely with a vintage vase I bought. Now the melancholic darkening late afternoon, the jonquils, the slowly approaching end of another day are as tranquil and simple as the morning stroll.

Long Weekend

The Labour day holiday has meant a long weekend and the onset of Daylight Savings, a firm sign that we are now in spring. Even though Sydney's weather hasn't been complying and today has seen cold, wind and rain.

The niece turned 3 recently and of course remains the apple of my eye. She had a small party today and was quite busy with her friends so we didn't get to play our silly games which consist of fake swimming, yelling in rooms to hear echoes and the like, very little can keep children amused. I find myself a little surprised to be entering these games but soon she will be a schoolgirl and rarely home so we all in fact make the most of her pre-school time. Though hearing the words "let's do it again" for the 25th time can strike a faint chill even in the fondest aunt's heart. As part of her gifts she got the sketch below which is by my cousin from a photograph taken when she was 1. The other picture is of a tee I dyed with tea (!) and then embellished with a few lace and bead bits I had. My niece is likely no hippie chick but right now she wears all that is given to her so I think the tee passes muster!

Last week my train reading consisted of The Believer. It had a fascinating account of the Radium Girls case, a landmark case for industrial health and workers compensation. The carelessness with which radioactive material was handled (the girls used it as nail polish), the precautions for scientists which didn't extend to workers, the selling of Undark or iridescent paint as safe, a legal case in which the workers were sought to be discredited by the company, all feel uncomfortably familiar. In spite of the outcome of the case and changes to the way occupational health is viewed, you are left with the feeling that it can recur again. The magazine also had an interesting interview with Robin Nagle, anthropologist with New York city's Department of Sanitation. Her take, every single thing you see is future trash, is a sobering reminder of how ephemeral everything in our life is. And yet Nagle also points out that the successive layers of trash on which cities are built also provide clues to what we were and how we lived. Nagle in fact wants a Museum of Sanitation and has had trouble getting it up though creating trash is a universal human activity.

Last week I also finally finished seeing a 6 part serialisation of Mansfield Park made in the 80s. Given the vast number of recent slicker Austen productions, it is a little hard to see past the stage like settings, the ordinary acting, the limited budget. And yet once you get past that, its leisurely literalness seemed far truer to the book than any recent adaptation. Mansfield Park isn't a very popular book and I often felt it was because it was boring, in fact it has more troubling overtones than the rest of Austen's work and had Austen not chosen an overtly moral tone is perhaps more interesting than the other books she wrote.

And on the subject of trash, its been a while since I bought anything new apart from office wear. This is because my local charity shop has an immense amount of vintage stuff at throwaway prices. The dress I recently bought is pictured below, its kind of Mad Men meets Madras plaid, I am planning to wear it for one of the Christmas parties that will be soon upon us.

And lastly a happy song for the weekend. I have been listening to this particular song from Noah and the Whale way too much recently (does this confirm my liking for twee folk/pop?!). Its cheery and young but also slightly wistful, and none of this is lessened by the fact that the guy and the girl broke up before reaching the 5 year mark.