Love in Tokyo

No, this isn’t the preview of an Akshay – Katrina re-make of the 1966 box-office hit. Same era though, just that the woman happens to be in love with Japanese art.


(The following was published in Mumbai Mirror online on 15 January 2009)

http://www.mumbaimirror.com/article/11/200901152009011512431464781a72957/Love-in-Tokyo


As the modern-day race for acquisition rages on, human creativity seems to be at work in the background. It often receives little notice and is unfortunately sparse, yet it grows with mysterious persistence. Case in point: Manorama Khapde, the 70 year old artist cum craftswoman from Thane whose repertoire includes a wide range of fine arts and crafts both Indian and Japanese. Having studied at several institutes including the University of Tokyo and with a series of professional engagements at Camlin, Khadi Gram Udyog and over 30 schools in Bombay behind her, Manorama’s rich and colourful life exemplifies the leap from the ordinary to the extraordinary.

Humble Beginnings

Her journey began in 1954, when she decided to join Sir J.J. School of Arts much to her parents’ discomfort. “Those days doing a B.A. or a B.Sc. was far more respectable than pursuing fine arts. My parents eventually gave in but on the condition that I do not tell outsiders what I was doing!” she mentions.

After her course she joined the All India Handicraft Board at Worli where she learnt crafts like doll making, cane work and leather artisanship. Only men were allowed to enroll for the leather artisanship course since women were not expected to be able to withstand the stench which accompanies leather processing. That was hardly enough to deter her though and soon she found herself contemplating a student visit to Japan upon seeing an exhibition of Japanese dolls and other Japanese art at the Jehangir Art Gallery.

Tokyo Time!

“As a middle-class home-maker the idea of going alone to a foreign country to study its art forms was hard for people to digest”, she says matter-of-factly. And while finance was a major consideration her husband and brother showed their full support and she soon found herself in Tokyo armed with curiosity and a return ticket to India!



“I did not know then that the hardest phase in my life was about to start”, she says. Living in one of the most expensive cities in the world, getting adjusted to a foreign culture and overcoming the language barrier were difficult challenges but unforeseeable gateways opened themselves for her and she was able to secure affordable accommodation thanks to the consideration shown by a Japanese gentleman from the Indo-Japanese association. Life in the university was another matter though as she initially found herself alienated by her Japanese class-mates. “But then one day we were asked to introduce ourselves by creating something unique. I drew a Kimono design on an umbrella and from that day every body was friends with me!” she reveals triumphantly.



Over a span of 11 years she went to Tokyo seven times, each time for a period of six months. During this period she learnt Japanese crafts like Chu-ma-mi (Drawings made from silk cloth), O-shi-e (Drawings made from Kimono cloth on a card-board base) and traditional Japanese doll-making where depending upon the level of detail a doll can take up to three months to finish. Eventually she was awarded a tuition waiver and was even able to take care of her living expenses by teaching the Japanese what she had learnt in India!

Rare Reflections

For Manorama the experience in Japan was refreshing on account of the wide-spread respect and admiration that she witnessed towards native art as opposed to what she was used to in India. “The Japanese are very proud of their culture. Out there, indigenous handicrafts are most expensively priced and yet people are happy to buy them.” For her it was a pleasant change from the situation in India where local craftsmanship is surrounded in a general air of devaluation.

“It feels scary now to think of those times when any thing could have gone wrong. But it was perhaps my good fortune that every thing went fine”, she adds nostalgically.

Any regrets then? “My own institute for learning arts and crafts would have been nice, but somehow that never happened.” And as to her future plans, the reply is non-committal – “No plans!” she says, hands raised evasively.

Sound of Music

Sa-Ma-Ni happens to be the last name of this Keyboard player from Sion who loves his young students as much as he loves his music.

(The following was published in Mumbai Mirror Online on 30 December 2008)

http://www.mumbaimirror.com/article/11/2008123020081230115750641ae3a8962/Sound-of-Music?pageno=1


Following one’s heart is the stuff of movies, the cynic will say. When it comes to choosing a profession, most of us adhere to tried and tested pathways paying banal dues in exchange for comforting security. The few of us who take the leap of faith live a life full of experiences reserved only for them.

Meet Vipul Samani, a 34 year old Keyboard player based in Sion who has been making his living as a professional Keyboard teacher for the past 12 years. Having started small as a home tutor he now heads his Gurukul Music Academy which has eight teachers and around 170 students. While most of his students are school-children a few are as old as 65.

Vipul would fiddle with a mini-keyboard as a child and one day at the age of 12, after seeing a professional player at a party he decided to take up the instrument seriously. “My first teacher was based in Malad. I hadn’t even heard of the place back then!”, he exclaims. Several teachers and 22 years later the inspiration that got him going as a child shows no signs of leaving him as he treats you to an exquisite rendition of Beethoven’s Fur Elise.

“We Gujratis are very backward when it comes to music”, he says lamentingly. “If the child learns to play a few notes, we feel he knows all of music.” Being the only person in his entire family tree who has a connection with music, it wasn’t exactly the case of a rite of passage for him but rather one of having broken the mould. “Fortunately my father was very supportive. He never asked me whether I could make a career in music but only whether I wanted to do music! He is my first Guru.”

But it’s not just about playing music for Vipul, it’s teaching music to children that really drives him. “At Gurukul, we only teach one-on-one”, he declares proudly. Each student has to go through a little test in which Vipul makes sure that the child has a natural feel for tempo and key. If the child is found to be not so musically inclined, he politely says no to the parents. “Children fascinate me with their imagination”, says Vipul whose five year old son has recently started learning the drums. “Although I am their teacher here, each day I end up learning something from them.”

Vipul has been learning Indian Classical from Pandit Anupam Rai for the past three years and when asked on how he would like to shape his career as a performer, he humbly says, “I have no major aspirations as a stage artist. I just love teaching my children.

No Substance

Today morning while riding my bike on Bombay's busy suburban roads I saw a huge advertisement board featuring a young Saree-clad woman. The Saree was draped seductively on her thin body inviting the viewer to appreciate her two-dimensional midriff. Long, smooth, flowing hair, slender limbs and face, a fully round navel and fair skin were some of her other striking physical features. The fact that she was on the board reflects that a majority of people find such a woman physically attractive. Most men will find her worth a second look and many a women will envy her flat stomach they are working hard to achieve or maintain. Some of the aforementioned features perhaps necessitate a separate inquiry and at present we shall look at the connection between thinness and the relatively modern definition of physical beauty in a woman. The question under consideration then is how have nutrition-deprived delicate dollies come to symbolise physical beauty in a woman today? Why has fat, even natural fat important to the body for biological reasons become repulsive? The dislike towards obesity is understandable as obesity is both unnatural and unhealthy. But why does that dislike extend to natural fat? And why is a state of nutritional deficiency worshipped? Biologically women tend to have more per cent body fat than men. Just how they are faced with a social expectation which contradicts their biological reality extracts an interesting inquiry.

Too much fat and too little fat seem to be at the two extremes of a continuum which has most of us with some body fat in between. Why are women at one end of the spectrum written off and the ones at the other end adored? If the answer lies in a purely acquired concept of beauty rather than one which is intrinsic in nature then it will be perfectly natural to assume the possibility of a cultural setting in which obese people are looked at as the ambassadors of beauty and erotic beahviour. In such a cultural setting a thing such as fashion models doing different things to increase their daily calorie intake and modify their life style to accumulate great amounts of body fat will follow as naturally as the starvation diets of today.

We begin by looking at how society values women and at what is considered virtuous in a woman. For this purpose it is important to distinguish between two classes of women -- Those who are married and those who are not. Unmarried women are valued most for their physical beauty. Married women on the other hand are valued most significantly for their industry in house-hold affairs. This explains why fat and other factors which characterize beauty in a woman before marriage tend to lose importance in the face of efficient domestic administration on her part after marriage. The fact that it is a lot easier to be a fat wife than it is to be a fat college-girl should suffice to illustrate the above point. Thus we see that physical beauty is one of the two main attributes that have long since given virtue to women and this attribute has nothing to do with any other quality or capacity that will enable a woman to contribute in a profession that doesn't require beauty. In other words the value attached to physical beauty in a woman is exaggerated. However, this exaggeration has been achieved at the expense of a proportionate under-valuation of other virtues. This leads us to the word "substance" which may be thought of as that which propels an individual to achieve excellence in a domain of his/her choice. It follows that while women today are allowed to have substance and if it is evident it may be acknowledged, it is far from important. It is still perfectly acceptable for a young woman to not have substance as long as she is physically desirable. This is also evidenced by the presence of a significant number of men who are happy to play stalwart roles for their beautiful girl-friends and wives.

Given the amount of suppression womankind has experienced one may say that lack of substance in a woman is somewhat likeable and to both men and women alike.One suspects that this fondness for a lack of substance has translated directly into a fondness for women of smaller size and lower amounts of body fat. In other words the social size of the female gender has emerged in its current physical size. If lack of substance in a woman is desirable, so is lack of matter or natural fat on her body. Conversely, signs of substance in women must arouse detest and so must any natural fat on their bodies.

Foot binding in China, corsets in America and Europe are examples from the past where the emphasis was on the reduction in size of the feet and waists of women. The large magnitude of such practices leads one to conclude that measures to reduce the physical size of women derive impetus from the deeper motivation of undermining their true status as fellow human-beings comprising an integral component of human society.

The hatred for fat and large physical size shows variation in terms of a number of factors. These include differences in culture, differences in socio-economic status, and selective hatred of body-fat based on the region of the body involved.

As an example of cultural relativism one will see that both men and women in South Indian Cinema are significantly larger than their counter-parts in Bollywood and Hollywood. The markedly different perception of physical beauty in this region may have resulted from the tying together of affluence with high body mass.

In case of socio-economic status the emphasis on physical beauty in a woman is more amongst the higher classes where it prevails to a greater degree even in the later stages of marriage. This can be explained by the greater amounts of monetary resources in possession of the family which makes the wife's contribution to domestic chores unnecessary. Consequently there is greater pressure on her to remain beautiful against the run of time. In this context one may be reminded of aristocratic house-holds in 19th century Europe typically featuring plump maids and slender corset-wearing wives.

Most interesting though is the hatred of fat in one region of the body and an equally powerful attraction towards it in another. A big bosom is as desirable as a small abdomen and slender limbs. This is absurd because the human body grows as a whole and not in parts. Any significant change in the size of one body part will accompany a similar change across the whole body. Such contradictory preferences are clearly the product of man-made social forces rather than the dictates of nature and numerous methods and techniques, both semi-natural like spot-reduction and artificial such as silicon transplants have been devised and discarded in order to keep up with them. The fact that the obsession around such practices remains long after they have been scientifically falsified is indicative of the huge magnitude of motivating social forces involved.

Paradoxically flesh offers more delight both culinary and copulatory than bones. But bones seem to outweigh flesh when it comes to certain socially acquired psychological tastes.

Quotations

Some quotations -- Both mine and by others. Personal quotations are the ones without attribute. This post is dynamic in nature. I enrich it whenever I come across something interesting.

• "Give me a gun and a day's exemption from law and I can get the Indian psychiatrist to come up with an excellent diagnosis of some organic pathology in his own brain."

• "By the time the new human-being is 15 or so, we are left with a being like ourselves, a half-crazed creature more or less adjusted to a mad world. This is normality." -- R.D. Laing (1967)

• "In human society at all its levels, persons confirm one another in a practical way, to some extent or other, in their personal qualities and capacitites, and a society may be termed human in the measure to which its members confirm one another." -- Martin Buber (1957, referring to the importance in the confirmation of personal authenticity of human beings.)

• "We will eventually have to develop a theory of what makes all people march before we can say very much about why some people march to a different drummer." -- Bannister (1971, in reference to schizophrenia and other psychopathologies.)
  

Hero

Hero is a Chinese film with English sub-titles. For starters, it's not just another kung-fu flick and while kung-fu (sword-play in this film) is seen throughout the makers have tried to show more than just the nuances of kung-fu. In fact we are to understand little about some tiger-style from some Wanchu mountain and more about relationships, ideals, human nature and political problems. The story is set in Ancient China, some time before the great wall was built when modern-day China was a bunch of six warring tribes as opposed to the unified dynasty it later became. Qin apparently was the strongest of the tribes and its most notable rivalry was with Zhao. The emperor of Qin wishes to unite the tribes and has not been able to avoid blood-shed in attempting so. Consequently he has made numerous enemies and has survived several assassination attempts made on him by formidable warriors.

Hero would be unimaginable without the numerous beautiful duels but I came out of it feeling a little cheated with the character development which I found inadequate. Master nameless (Hero) is an orphan who lost his family to the Qin as a consequence of which he feels intensely driven to assassinate their emperor. Broken Sword and Flying Snow make a lovely couple who had once decided to kill the emperor but did not do so as Broken Sword decided to pull out at the last moment. The conflict in their interests has taken taken its toll on their relationship but the tenderness of their love can still be seen. Broken Sword is said to have transformed from a care-free lad to a man deeply in love and is seen to have an incredible understanding of the true nature of things. He derives his sword-play from calligraphy and sees no difference between the two. A sword of the highest skill, he no longer takes life with it. Nothing is told about his family or early-life experiences and his once care-free disposition might have resulted from growing up with similar buddies. Flying Snow is the daughter of a Zhao general who was killed in a battle against the Qin. This explains her anger towards the Qin and her generally angry dispostion. She cares for Broken Sword deeply but feels betrayed by him in his decision to abandon the assassination. Lovers fight often and often seriously so. Broken Sword and Flying Snow are no different. Instead of a verbal duel they fight with their swords. Alas the difficulty in intimacy is shown albeit in a way that might seem extreme. Moon plays a minor role as a student of Broken Sword. She has much to learn from him, of sword-play and of life. The emperor on the other hand is a wise man who is not wise enough to please all.

The inter-play between these characters is fascinating to watch but some more light on their origins will surely help understand better why they are what they are.

The entire film is shown in the form of a dialogue between the emperor and Master Nameless who happens to be the latest and the most determined threat to his life so far. The dialogue evolves with gripping enigma and through it are shown the other characters.

Hero to me is a film about people seeking a balance between inner drives and external realities. Of brave people trying to make peace between what they experience within and what they experience outside.

A truly unique human experience.

SCG Fiasco: A Letter to Anil Kumble

Dear Reader,

My name is Aseem Prakash. What follows is a letter I intend to send to Anil Kumble, captain of India, written after having witnessed the proceedings at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) for the India – Australia Test match that was played between January 2 and January 6, 2008. If you watched the match or happen to know of it and are feeling displeased you are likely to find reflection in what I have written. I earnestly request you to forward this mail to as many people as you possibly can.

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Dear Anil,

In view of the recent proceedings at the SCG, I an ardent lover of Cricket urge the Indian team to return home. While this would be a gesture in protest of the horrendous umpiring displayed throughout the Test match it must also be looked upon as a measure to prevent further loss of national pride and the ensuing national hurt. What happened at the SCG was an insult to the honourable Cricket played by you and your men whose pain was felt far beyond the Indian team’s dressing room in every nook and corner of India. Any decision you might take as captain of the Indian national team will have repercussions that will go well beyond the domain of Cricket and sport.

The inexplicabilities which took place on the SCG and which you already know can be briefly summarized as follows.

At a score of around 190 Australia were six wickets down when Andrew Symonds who was on 30 survived what could have been in international cricketing history the loudest ever nick not given out. He was lucky again on two separate occasions when he should have been given out stumped. Having gone on to make over 150 he ended up making a decisive contribution to Australia's first innings score. Ricky Ponting nicked and survived an instantaneous and cohesive appeal for caught behind while Rahul Dravid was given out following a similar caught behind appeal when he hadn't nicked the ball and had his bat clearly tucked behind his pad. Dravid's sent-off was critical since he had looked solid and also because of Yuvraj Singh's poor run so far in this series. Saurav Ganguly who had been stroking confidently was sent-off following an edge towards the second slip. Mark Benson after consultation with Ponting raised his finger thus forcing Ganguly to leave after he had initially stood his ground. While there is debate on whether the catch was legitimate it is unacceptable that the decision was made based on a consultation with the home team captain as opposed to with the square leg umpire and/or the third umpire. In addition such a consultation was nonsensical given that previously the Australian captain, vice-captain and other members of the Australian side had appealed vociferously in instances of the batsman being clearly not out. Mahendra Singh Dhoni survived a strong caught behind appeal after the decision was referred to the third umpire. It would have made sense for the same to have been done in the cases of Ponting and Dravid. Were the umpires learning during the course of the match?

The role of ICC is to work in the best interests of Cricket. No more. And there can be no Cricket without Cricket players and Cricket lovers. No amount of enquiry, reprehension and retribution can change the fact that appalling umpiring in conjunction with dishonorable and desperate Cricket played by the Australian team has shut the Indian team out of this series. I don’t know how this can be seen to be in the best interest of Cricket or its lovers. If according to Mr. Ponting, sledging is an outcome of the cultural difference between the two countries then how far does one need to stretch his imagination to wonder if the goons in any society could be considered artists? The Indian team has gone to Australia to compete against the Australian team, the one which is not aided by three umpires. Therefore I see no reason why you and the ten finest cricketers of India whom you lead should risk putting the honour and feelings, their own as well as of their countrymen in further jeopardy by continuing to play in this series unless --

(1) Mr Bucknor, Mark Benson and BNJ Oxenford apologise publicly for their blunders and are replaced.

(2) The test match is deemed null and void in the record book.

(3) The Harbhajan Singh controversy is resolved in a manner which can be considered just.

Should you and the team walk out of this tour you will not become the first captain to have done so. Arjuna Ranatunga has staged a team walk-off against Australia.

On a personal note and I do not think I would be alone here, I have decided to not watch the rest of this series should it continue. My decision is not influenced by the 2-0 scoreline and I might have liked to watch till the end of the last test even with a 3-0 scoreline provided the Australian wins could be seen as fair.

What happened at the SCG during the last five days is much worse for Cricket than it is for Indian Cricket.

Thank you,

Aseem Prakash

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If you read the letter above and share the sentiment it contains I would like to invite you to join this protest. I believe that a joint and organized display of protest against the umpiring and support for the captain by Cricket lovers in India could seriously alter the development of events in the Indian camp. You may join by joining the SCG Protest community that can be found on Facebook, Orkut, Hi5 and Fropper. If you are not on any of these social networking portals you could either join any one of them or send me your full name and e-mail address so that I am able to include your support.

I declare that my role in this protest is of initiation and not leadership and will be glad if that comforts you.

Thank you,

Aseem Prakash

P.S. You may direct any queries to me at aseem.prak@gmail.com