Rather unusually for me, disinterest has resulted in the lack of a clothes post in a while. Internally I have been grappling with the oh so important problem of transitioning my wardrobe to something more mature but it hardly feels pressing or interesting so I have done little apart from a burst of auditing this month. Selvedge, a textile magazine I subscribe to, however still offers many pleasures (some day I hope to do an article for them on the itinerant sari sellers of India – surely a dying breed – some day….) and I have been savouring the latest issue in bits and pieces. One of the pieces in the magazine was on the new movement towards modesty in clothing, perhaps in reaction to a decade of body con dresses, lycra and the like. Embodying this modesty is Le Vestiaire De Jeanne, a fashion line started by its designer for her younger sister. Germaine Greer once wrote that the French were one of few people who knew how to dress their young appropriately. And this line does steer clear of frills, pink and Disney pop-tart fashion. It’s a bit like a marriage between convent girl attire and Japanese minimalism and it mostly works though it could do with introducing some colour.
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I finally got around to watching a few Satyajit Ray movies I had picked up in India but after all that anticipation, they were slightly disappointing. Disappointing when compared to other Ray films i.e., they are head and shoulders above the fare I have been reviewing. Devi - in which an old man sees the Goddess in his young daughter-in-law- is about the suffocating, hallucinatory nature of superstition. Though beautifully shot and performed, it was ultimately a bit of a let down because it is a tad didactic – especially in the conversations between the young husband and his professor, representing of course the forces of reason. Without in any way endorsing superstition, there is also a hint of the smug, bourgeois sensibility endemic to such films.
Shatranj Ke Khiladi was one of Ray’s few Hindi film outings and is based on a Premchand story set in the dying days of Awadh as a princely state. It’s effete elites are part of the high culture of Lucknow and are devoted to poetry (the Nawab, played by Amjad Khan) or to chess (the players of the title). Meanwhile the British, robust and vulgar, have taken steps towards annexation – an event that would lead to the Mutiny and eventually the removal of the Company Bahadur. There are a lot of things to like in this movie and it works perfectly well when the focus is on the chess players, Mirza and Mir (Sanjeev Kumar and Saeed Jaffrey). Unfortunately there is a heavy handed voiceover explaining the events of the time (by Mr Bachchan), long dialogues on the underlying politics both in the Nawab’s court and in the British camp and though all this is meant as a compare and contrast with Mir and Mirza's chess game, it feels both lifeless and superfluous. Here and there it works, e.g. Wajid Ali Shah’s dance, the Prime Minister's (Victor Banerjee) recognition that nothing can save Awadh but for the most part it doesn’t. There is a comparison of text and film here, whatever Premchand’s intentions were it appears to have been modified for 1970s audiences and not for the better. The movie looks at 1856 through the telescope of later events but would have been much better had it let the audience connect the dots. It is hard to believe that Awadh’s rulers or the British were being little other than politically expedient and myopic, as people usually are when events are unfurling in real time. And perhaps Ray doesn’t entirely get Premchand, his Sadgati from memory also had mixed reviews.
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| No Stiff Upper Lips or Trousers for Awadhi Toffs |
Back to frivolity and let’s end with clothes. Apparently the fashions of 1856 dictated wide pantaloons, a long tunic and gossamer thin shawls for men and women. Unfortunately, given India is still giddy with being in the body con era, I don’t think we will be seeing an immediate revival :-)
You can see more of the clothes - and an excellent song n dance - here. Shortly after the Prime Minister informs the Nawab that he has little choice but to sign the new treaty and quit town.
And on the pain of quitting, a Wajid Ali Shah thumri here. As he says to his distraught Prime Minister on the verge of losing Oudh, "only poetry and music can bring tears to a man's eyes."
