Abu Dhabi Nomads

Indian cinema struggles to reinvent itself

AP Photo

Suryatapa Bhattacharya

Indian cinema is in a moment of crisis, over its lack of definition, that is.

An image that was once dominated by Bollywood grew so large that segmentation was bound to happen. And other forms of Indian cinema — from regional to art — which have been minding their own business for just as long as Bollywood has been hogging the limelight, suddenly find themselves thrust into the spotlight.

From five-day film festivals in New York that showcased Parallel Cinema to Abu Dhabi’s Indian Film Festival which brought regional language films to Abu Dhabi shores, this season has seen no dearth of what else India or its diaspora can offer.

For example, New York watched Amal, a film about an auto-rickshaw driver in Delhi based on a short story co-written and directed by Richie Mehta, an Indo-Canadian, that was shot extensively in Delhi and partly funded by a grant from the Toronto International Film Festival. Mr Mehta, 30, employed Indian stalwarts like Naseeruddin Shah and Rupinder Nagra, who is ethnically Indian like Mr Mehta but from Toronto. Multicultural worlds were colliding on celluloid but it was still considered an entrant at the five-day festival.

Meanwhile, in Abu Dhabi, audiences were introduced to films made in the states of West Bengal and Kerala that were made entirely in India by directors such as Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury and Jayaraj.

This comes at a time when some of Bollywood’s biggest budget movies, made to cater to the holiday season, have not lived up to expectations, so the debate about what constitutes Indian cinema has grown louder. And perhaps justly so.

The niche market abroad has grown as first and second generation Indians find creative outlets and venues for their films. The filmmakers and its audience, who may have grown up on a staple of Bollywood films (including ones that have been catered to them exclusively and made in Bombay but shot in far flung locales with the opulence and grandeur associated with such films) are able to better identify themselves with the story lines of these newly crafted films, just as Indians from various states are able to laugh and passionately discuss what their regional films have to offer.

All this has happened right when Bollywood had started experimenting with fully animated features, sci-fi story lines and soundtracks that include rap.

Bollywood is not dead but it is formulaic and for savvy audiences who can now chose from a variety of films in cineplexes (whether in India or abroad), it has been faced with the challenge of how to keep its audiences hooked.

There are the obvious stars that people line up for. Names like Amitach Bachchan and Salman Khan who represent Bollywood. But even stars like Mr Bachchan are aware of the changing market and have started flirting with this cross-pollination. He recently acted in a movie called The Last Lear, which was directed by Rituparna Ghosh, a Bengali director, that was shot in India, but the dialogues were in English and the film premiered in Toronto.

This is the new face of Indian cinema, and Bollywood better smarten up.

In sickness and in health

Anna Seaman

Blink and you could miss the seasons here in the Emirates. At least that’s my opinion. Back in the UK I used to chart my year by the daffodils in spring, the sun (or more often rain) in the summer and the leaves falling from the trees in autumn. Here we go from warm to very warm to boiling hot and eventually back to relatively cool. People call us lucky to have “a perpetual summer” and of course, in many ways, we are.

However it seems that the slightest change in temperature sends the whole country to their sick beds. Over the last few weeks I have friends who have been struck down with chest infections, bronchitis, flu and this weekend I too was floored by a nasty cold coupled with tonsillitis.

Apparently this is normal at this time of year, now that winter is here. It seems ironic however that in the middle of the desert where it is still not cool enough for coats, people are catching cold left, right and centre. Whereas back in the UK, where it was snowing last week and now the thermometer is struggling to get above 10 degrees, there is no such epidemic.

My father, a GP, blames the air conditioning. True, without it we would all suffer horribly. Summer would be unbearable and even during the winter many of us need it to keep cool at night. But it facilitates the spread of germs. And not only that it keeps our bodies on a yo-yo temperature gauge. At one point during August it was 50 degrees outside and 15 inside. That’s a huge change to get used to. And, as soon as we did get used to it, the sun got lower in the sky and the heat dropped to 30.

Just like that everyone got sick. Again. I say again because the same thing happened in March and April. As the mercury levels skyrocketed and everyone braced themselves for the unbearable summer, our immune systems took a nose dive and once again the pharmacist’s tills were ringing. It’s amazing just how much everyone’s health suffers here. I think, as well as the AC it is also the lack of fresh air. Most of the time we go from air conditioned home to air conditioned car to air conditioned office and even when we do breathe the fresh air it is often full of pollution. I have been sick more times in one year here than I have ever been before. Still, alhamdulillah, I have made a full recovery every time and maybe this is just the process I have to go through before I get used to my new weather system.

Either way, I have some words of advice to anyone coming down with something. Do not come back to the office before you are better. The AC will make sure that everyone at work will get your germs and quickly.

The greatest apartment in the world

                                                                                                                              Photo by Wm. Srite

Ann Marie McQueen

Dubai is known for superlatives, so of course this isn't actually the greatest apartment in the world, but from where I am sitting, it comes pretty close. The terrace is large enough to host a dinner party for 12 - with extra room to mingle. The windows are floor to ceiling. The appliances, gorgeous, stainless steel appliances, and a built-in stove, were included. Two bathrooms, and laundry. The view? Well, I assure you the picture above is not an artist's rendering, as it appears. This is how it actually looks, at night. Across the way, you can see right into other, gorgeous apartments - so there is always something to look at. At the base, there is a Noodle House, a Caribou - for coffee and books - a patio, a pool and health club. From this little corner of Dubai, the gorgeous one-bedroom apartment my friend managed to snag, the UAE is not just a masterpiece in the making, but a masterpiece.

To say that I am jealous, seven months and counting in an apartment hotel that looks out through dirty windows onto a row of dumpsters, would be an understatement. But since she pays for it - quite dearly, but not so dearly as those of us crammed into Abu Dhabi's uninspired one and two-beds, not considering what she gets for her money - and she is lovely and deserves it, and I get to visit on my day off, I try to reign it in.

Remembering Baba Zayed

Sheikh Zayed and my grandfather, Jameel Al Ramahi

Tala al Ramahi

It is hard to believe that it has been four years since Sheikh Zayed passed away. But now that I recall how I received the news, it somehow makes sense. It was my junior year at Stanford University; I was working on an econometrics problem set in my dorm room, when I received an unexpected call from my mother. Her voice was shaky, and she couldn’t muster up the words. Moments later, when she noticed that I had become increasingly worried of her deafening silence- and, trust me, that unease is compounded when you are overseas alone - she spilled it out: Allah Yirhamo (May he rest in peace), she said in almost inaudible Arabic.

Recollecting our conversation now -even four years later - brings back that ugly knot in my stomach. My American roommate couldn’t understand how the passing-away of a president, especially whom I never met, would garner so much emotion and be the cause of such mourning among my family members (and tens of thousands of others back home).

It really wasn’t difficult to explain- we live in the UAE, a Middle Eastern country considered a tranquil oasis among turbulent neighboring storms. Our GDP per capita is one of the highest in the world, our population one of the most literate, and the plight of women here is at the forefront of our national agenda. The state of our civil society is civil, and the natural resource curse is not applicable to our oil-rich nation. For a country that is only 37 years old, the state of our young nation is nothing short of a miracle - and most of our dues are owed to our first president.

For my family, however, the reasons are even more personal. As Emiratis of Palestinian origin, Sheikh Zayed provided us with a new beginning; a chance to rebuild a future from the unsettled remains of a recent past. The Nakbah of 1948 forced thousands of Palestinians to seek new homes outside the borders of historic Palestine. Tens of thousands still live in refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan, forced to survive on a meagre monthly income of less than $100 a month. Others have had to travel far - to Europe and the United States - to start anew. My paternal grandfather, and subsequently my direct family, were presented with a new homeland closer than that.

As Emiratis, we were given the same opportunities as the locals: access to free primary, secondary and tertiary education, preference to the most competitive jobs in the market, and a plot of land to own. Our blessings today provided us with much to thank for, when other families who shared our tragic past still struggle to survive.

I remember when my grandfather was healthy. He told us that he longed to be buried in his homeland- in Jerusalem, next to his mother. If he couldn’t be reconciled with his original home during his time alive, at least then, he would do so after his death, he philosophised. Five months after Sheikh Zayed’s tragic death, my grandfather was in Singapore, battling his own last days with lung cancer. His dying wish of being buried in Jerusalem next to his mother and motherland suddenly changed.
“Make sure I am buried in Abu Dhabi,” he told us from his hospital bed in April. I didn’t understand his change of heart at the time. But now I know. And understand. His first home may have provided him with fond memories and a nostalgic longing for the pleasant Jerusalem breeze. But it was really the UAE that provided him with everything else - the present, and the stable, fruitful future for himself and his family.

This is my story about our first President. But I am certain there are thousands of others who vouch with their own chapters of a beautiful resonant legacy. No wonder we called him “Baba Zayed” (Father Zayed).

What goes around comes around

Haneen Dajani

Acting as the class clown, I always used to imitate my Arabic teacher Miss Molouk to draw laughter amongst my classmates. I would bend my upper lip inwards and place my hands on my stomach, raise my shoulders, loosen my eyeglasses on the tip of my nose and squint my eyes like an old lady , while repeating phrases she used to say when yelling at us in class. Everybody watched, listened and laughed and I enjoyed being the centre of attention. Little did I know what this "imitation for fun" will lead to, and how it would backfire in my face.

After a month or two of constantly copying Miss Molouk (who was not amused by the practice at all), my friends noticed that subconsciously I was doing funny shapes with my mouth while laughing, my upper lip would bend inwards every time I smiled or laughed. Then, one day my mom asked me if I had stomach pain because I was constantly placing my hands on my stomach whenever I stood or walked. People made fun of the way my eyeglasses were always on the tip of my nose. Everybody noticed: I was becoming Miss Molouk!

Reality came crashing down when photos of me illustrated how much I resemble Miss Molouk. I then remembered the Arabic proverb which implies that whoever pinpoints flaws of others is eventually struck by the same flaws, or in other words, what goes around comes around.

So the next day I went to school and told my friends: "I am never going to imitate Miss Molouk again", hoping the resemblance will stop. Sounds of disappointment filled the air, "just one last time", they all requested. But I was determined to stick to my decision.

When I entered university, I seemed to forget about my vow, and started imitating Miss Molouk again to my college friends. They also watched, listened and laughed. While in university, I appeared on camera, acting in a number of student films, a sitcom, presenting news and conducting interviews. When watching these productions, I was shocked to see that not only did I look like Miss Molouk but I also sounded like her. So again, the wheel of life turned and I was struck by the same flaws I made fun of.

Sometimes, it is difficult to resist making fun of others, but as Allah says in the Holy Quran: O ye who believe! let not some men among you laugh at others: it may be that the (latter) are better than the (former): nor let some women laugh at others: it may be that the (latter) are better than the (former): nor defame nor be sarcastic to each other, nor call each other by (offensive) nicknames: Ill-seeming is a name connoting wickedness, (to be used of one) after he has believed: And those who do not desist are (Indeed) doing wrong. (11) Surat Al-Hujrat, verse no. 11)

Not only did Allah forbid Muslims from ridiculing others, but also related it to eating that person's flesh, which highlights what a tremendous sin it is to backbite others.

"O ye who believe! avoid suspicion as much (as possible): for suspicion in some cases is a sin: and spy not on each other, nor speak ill of each other behind their backs. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? Nay, ye would abhor it...but fear Allah: for Allah Oft-Returning, Most Merciful. (12)((Surat Al-Hujrat, verso no. 12)

If you wait for cabs long enough, you'll start to know the drivers

Ann Marie McQueen

When I first arrived in Abu Dhabi, it seemed as though there were nine million cabs with as many drivers. They all melted into each other; I couldn't tell them apart. Seven months later, as I steadfastly refuse to purchase a vehicle or drive on roads where drivers think it is perfectly acceptable to reach speeds of 106km/h (should they find an open stretch), stalk and try to force off the road someone who has made them angry by, say, changing lanes, or have an endless love affair with horns, it's understandable that I am going to come across some of the same characters.

There is the fellow who won't pick me up, as my destination does not seem to gel with where he would like to go. 'Oh THAT guy', I think now and, for fun, just to see if he will have changed, poke my head in when he pulls over. Sure enough, he does not want to go where I want to go. Even though I would be paying him to go there. Where is he going, exactly?

A long time ago I took a cab and marvelled as the driver combed his beard for much of the 10-minute journey. Well, the other day I got into a cab and thought 'wow, that really looks like the man who combed his beard that time' only to notice he was clutching a shiny yellow plastic comb. As soon as he didn't need to keep his hands on the wheel, guess what he did? Comb away. Same well-groomed man. Then there is the nice driver who stops to give me a lift to work even though he has just picked up his son Hamdan from school. I sit in the back, with Hamdan's Crazy Car knapsack, and Hamdan sits in the front, acting up the entire time, while his dad pretends to be mad that he's taken off his seat belt, or is kicking the glove-box, or fiddling with the sun visor. But really, you can just tell he's happy he's got Hamdan in the car.

Familiar people - in a place that sometimes feels more foreign the longer I am here - are more comforting than I can say.

Where you belong

Suryatapa Bhattacharya

There were others who achieved the impossible before Aravind Adiga but he merely cemented it with his win.

Mr Adiga was awarded the Man Booker Prize 2008, for his debut novel, The White Tiger. It wasn’t the fact that it was his debut novel, or that he was one the youngest winners of one of the world’s most prestigious prizes, or for the fact that he is Indian that this is noteworthy.

But what is more interesting is who he is and what he represents: Since Salman Rushdie got an entire subcontinent of writers noticed with his magic realism and ability to win multiple Bookers, others have followed suit, including Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai.

While the exalted crowd mentioned above have won for their fantastic prose and equally rich imagination, Mr Adiga moves away and dives right in. He is able to look at India’s social ills with a disaffected eye and pen an irreverent portrait of the economic gap between the haves and have nots and put a sizeable dent in those who cannot stop shouting about India’s growing prosperity.

Poverty still exits, and its ugliness manifests the lives of those live it. He does not pity his characters, instead creating the sort of robust, shrewd protagonist that few authors dare create for being criticised about their lack of empathy for the poor.

The White Tiger is about a man who will use any means necessary to fulfill his dream of escaping an impoverished village life for success in the big city. The means that he uses to do so involve the stuff that the middle class’s worst nightmares are made of: murder of a man who he is a driver of, building anti-religious sentiment against his neighbour and other such social and ethical mischief that regularly fills the crime sections of Indian newspapers.

One of the ways that the author is able to achieve such adventures in his literature is because of his discerning eye. Mr Adiga is a product of neither here nor there. He is the face of a growing generation of Indians who study abroad (Mr Adiga studied at Columbia University and Oxford), and live abroad (in his case, Australia) before returning to work in India (Mr Adiga worked as a correspondent for Time Magazine and lived in Delhi.) And he proves that to best observe one’s surroundings, one can travel the world and return  because it is no longer the case that where you belong is a place on a map as much as an idea that exists in your head. And from there he has written this stunning first novel.

Mr Adiga currently resides in Mumbai.

Long live the weekend

Anna Seaman

Will someone please tell me what happened to the sanctity of the weekend? How have we become a career-focused, work-centric community where there is no consideration for the rejuvenation needed to stay on form?

Many times I have heard the phrase that people in the Emirates live to work rather than work to live but honestly I have never really felt that. Compared to my life in London people here seemed more relaxed especially regarding time keeping and office hours. However now I am coming to the conclusion that life is fast ordering itself with work at the top and family and friends taking second place.

It is all very well putting in extra hours now and again as a commitment to the company that pays your wages but when working weekends becomes the norm rather than the exception I feel it is a great shame. At the end of the day, a job is a means to an end, family, friends and leisure time are the things that feed our souls.

I was talking recently to a friend who tells me that most of her friends work six day weeks in corporate companies in the city. I know from speaking to bachelors in service jobs that most of them work as many hours as possible in order to send money home to their wives and children. And now as we move towards a 24/7 society, the pleasure of a two-day weekend seems to be disappearing. What happened to good old fashioned family time?

Ok so many people, like me, are single in the city with no family in the UAE and friends who are mostly work associates. Work and pleasure becomes mixed, they might argue. When you are at work you are also socialising they say. But for me, that is a claustrophobic place to be.

This weekend I travelled to Fujairah with some friends. We went scuba diving, played mini-golf and enjoyed the mountain scenery. It was amazing. Although we were only away for two days it felt much longer and the short break was enough to keep me enthusiastic all week. It is what weekends are for. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Didn’t someone say that once? I’m sure it was for a reason.

Being a journalist I understand more than anyone that the world doesn’t stop for weekends and I have spent plenty of my sacred two days hard at work chasing or reporting on stories. But that only makes me appreciate them more when I get them.

I hope that as more and more of us prioritise work and strive for more in life we don’t forget that sometimes the simple things are what keep us going.

Long live the weekend.

Two films on the neglected and rejected

A scene from the Russian film The Mermaid. Courtesy of MEIFF.

Rym Ghazal

I watched two films on Saturday at the Middle East Film Festival: One a modern Russian take on an old beloved Danish fairy-tale, the other a blunt look at a glum reality of human relations of the deformed and abandoned.

Both the Russian Mermaid (Rusalka) and the Iranian Two-legged Horse (Asbe Du-Pa), in a way, are stories of people rejected by society, neglected and misunderstood. But each left a different impression and emotion in its viewers.

The Mermaid (2007), directed by Anna Melikyan, was a charming movie, full of colour which contrasted with the bleakness of certain parts of Moscow, and life in general.

“When you have nowhere else to go, you go to Moscow,” said Alisa, the main character of the movie. She touches you with her quiet, sad eyes and her innocent smile. We follow her through her childhood, teenage years and short adult life, and the various humorous but tragic moments she experiences.

From her dreams to be a ballerina, to her conflicts with her busty oversexed mother, to her private discussions with her grandmother, and her unrequited love of a man whom she rescued, to her magic powers that move inanimate objects —but fail to move anyone’s heart except the audience.

Throughout the movie, there are lovely dream sequences, where Alisa waits for her father, the sailor, to come back —even though she was brutally told by her mother that he never ever knew she existed.

There were great scenes that exposed the reality of Moscow, with its overly commercialized life, the hovering loneliness of most inhabitants, even the successful, and the ultimate demise of those who don’t keep up with the merciless and superficial city life.

In one scene, Alisa takes a goldfish that was stuck swimming in a wine glass-sized bowl and puts it in a tub to make the goldfish feel more comfortable. Likable even in her strangeness, she dyes her hair green to catch the eye of her love interest. Throughout all of this, the audience feels her unhappiness and I felt frustrated with the unhappy ending.

Even if you don’t believe in magic, you believe in Alisa and begrudgingly accept the shortcomings of those around her who never notice her.

As for Two-legged Horse, it is set in an Afghan village, and it starts off well and intensely, as it made me and almost everyone in the audience cry and shake our heads in disgust over what we were seeing.

A mentally handicapped boy is hired, for “one dollar a day”, to be the “horse” of a wealthy boy who lost his legs when his mother stepped on a land-mine. The mother died, leaving behind an angry, legless boy, and a daughter also with a walking problem.

Very soon, the father figure exits the film, leaving these two boys, the horse and his master, to their daily routine marred by abuse and poverty.

The master beats the two legged horse named Mirvais, who lives in one of the abandoned pipes in the streets, and the level of abuse reaches a point that is too much, which sort of killed the movie for many viewers. There is something such as overdoing or overdramatising a theme.

Over and over again, the allegory between the two legged horse and an actual horse was emphasized. We know! We get it. It got extreme when Mirvais ended up wearing a horse’s saddle, eating hay with the other animals, and even wearing a skinned horse’s head. And lets not forget how the other children sadistically nailed in horseshoes into his feet. Why did he take all of this abuse? It’s never explained.

The more subtle moments in the film are more heart-wrenching, especially when Mirvais turns around and tearfully reminds his master how he cleans him, carries him and even takes him to the bathroom. In return, Mirvais is beaten, unfed and abused to the very end.

Right before the movie started, the Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf told the audience at the Abu Dhabi Mall theater that: “I want to show what people turn a blind eye to.”

It was a beautiful idea, and one people truly should not turn a blind eye to, but she overdid it and exaggerated, killing whatever sympathy or empathy she might have triggered in viewers.

If I had to give the two movies stars, I would give The Mermaid a four or five out of five, for its beautiful execution and fresh take on an old story, while Two-Legged Horse would get a one or two stars for being a unique idea but poorly executed. I have seen far more touching Iranian movies, and this one by far, is one of my least favorite ones. Watch the 1999 film Colour of Paradise by Majid Majidi and you will see what I mean.

Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf poses for photographers on Sept. 19, 2008, after the screening of her film Two-legged Horse during the 56th San Sebastian International Film Festival. AFP

When sitting in front is a mistake

Ann Marie McQueen

I really should have known better

I have always wondered about people who sit in the front seat of taxis, with the driver. I once had a boyfriend from the east coast of Canada, where it seems everyone is friendly, and he would always hop in the front seat. I used to wonder if maybe he really didn't want to sit in the back with me. And I always saw it as being just a little too close for comfort.

Then I got here, and noticed tons of British people do it. I even saw one of our editors once, riding in a taxi, him in the front seat, his wife in the back. So maybe it's a British thing. Except when I once visited jolly olde, I only rode around in those massive, famous black taxis, and no one sits in the front of those.

All that to say, where I come from, when you take a cab, you sit in the back. The only time you sit in the front is when all the back seats are taken. I think the drivers prefer this, judging from the bulletproof plexiglass that divides the two sections.

I have been persuaded to sit in the front seat of a cab in Abu Dhabi twice now, and I won't ever do it again. The first time, I worked really, really late and was waiting for a taxi in vain. A man who was coming home for the night, done work, said he would give me a ride. He told me I was never going to get another cab at that hour, at that location. He persuaded me to sit in the front seat, and since he was being so friendly, I thought, why not? Well, I will tell you why not. Because it was 2 am, and he obviously figured his kind gesture gave him the right to hassle me all the way home. Or more likely, he made his kind gesture so as to be able to better hassle me all the way home. "Be my girlfriend," he said. "Just for tonight."

I ended up getting quite stern, threatening to call the police, and telling him to stop talking and drive. Never again, I thought.

Then this week, another very late night at work. I had waited quite awhile for a cab, so when one pulled over, I was again, very grateful. When I went to get in the back seat, the driver motioned that door was broken. My intuition tingled — it was, after all, one of the brand spanking new silver cabs — but I was so intent on getting home I ignored it. Then, all the way, like a cat in heat, the driver moaned and groaned about being single. "Be my girlfriend," he said. "Tonight only."

“Do these guys talk to each other?” I thought. Sigh: cue stern tone, threats to call police, admonishments to stop talking and drive. And, of course, a resolution that this would not happen again: you aren't going to see me making the same mistake three times.