More About Myself...

          Since I'm new to blogging, I feel it's only fair to introduce myself. I am something of a complex character in terms of culture and language; for my entire life, I've lived in America, and been raised by a monolingual family, but since my high school days, I've been learning how to speak Urdu/Hindi along with other South Asian languages (some Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati), and, for the past two years, Panjabi. However, since this exposure to these languages and cultures, I don't even consider myself American since I have a great cultural gap that emerged between me and other Americans. In learning Urdu/Hindi, which feels more like my mother tongue in some ways more than does English, my manner of thinking has altered, along with cultural practices that I've adopted, and in this way I consider myself "swadesi." But at the same time, I know that I'm not desi in the way that I'm white, a "pardesi" who has taught himself how to speak Urdu/Hindi. Thus I came to the name for myself: Swadesi Pardesi.  But maybe this isn't the best name. I feel as though I am an appropriate manifestation of the old proverb: Dhobi ka kutta na ghar ka na ghat ka (The washerman's dog belongs neither in the house nor on the riverbank).  Maybe you could also call me Dhobi ka Kutta.

Non-Resident Indian

Memories of home displace your present

Situation of life. Hardly any time is lent for you

To adjust to the absence of food from

Your mother’s hands.

Aalu gobi replaced with salads,

Daal and roti replaced with cheap, plastic pizza.

Your flat sings with the smuggled joy of Kishore Kumar

While outside rock ‘n roll screeches its presence, unwilling

To be ignored. Your mind fumbles with new-found English, syllables

Awkwardly clanging on your tongue, unlike the umbilical familiarity

Of Hindi. America was different to you as a bachcha.

But you are here now, brown, desi man from Delhi,

With childhood still slightly here, and only one question

Remains written over your thoughts:

Kya karna?

What to do?

Though there are more smiles and frowns here

(Not like home at all, you think), the

Clattering traffic reminds you of Chandni Chowk.

All your needs met in a roadside dhaba,

And an after-meal paan from a paanwallah,

The rattlings of thick traffic mixing with

The mélange of mutters of Panjabi and Hindi.

But now the only sounds you here are the

The results of your mistake in this foreign land:

Green light.

The heckle at your hesitance from behind:

“Bastard Dothead, just GO!”

Your moment of nostalgia is wadded, shredded

By a raised middle finger and snarling eyes.

You cannot say anything; the languages

Rattle in your mind:

English- a lazy guitar strum

Hindi- a throbbing tabla thrum

And you wonder when you will go back.

Memories of America displace your present

Situation of life. Hardly any time is lent for you

To adjust to the absence of food from

That old Greek restaurant.

Salads replaced with aalu gobi,

Five-dollar pizza replaced with daal and roti.

Your parents’ flat sings with Radio Ceylon,

While outside filmi pop music booms its presence, unwilling

To be ignored. Your mind fumbles with old-found Hindi, syllables

Awkwardly slipping on your tongue, unlike the acquired familiarity

Of English. India was different to you as a bachcha.

But now you are here, brown, desi man from Chicago

With childhood still slightly here, and as you feast on forgotten foods,

Only one question remains written over your thoughts:

What to do?

Kya karna?

When Will America Wake Up To Hindi Films?



Amitabh Bachchan--The Big B



        

Shah Rukh Khan

                On some evenings the upstairs room in my family's house is aglow with light from old Hindi films on the VCR, generally old Technicolor pictures produced during the 1970s. In the room adjacent is an entire dresser drawer devoted to old films I cadged from a local desi grocery store, lining the insides like prized trophies. Deewaar, Silsila, Sharaabi. I generally watch these films over and over, since I've now got an extensive library of Hindi films from two years of college. But I can't help but feel alienated when my family and American culture hardly know anything about Bollywood and really don't care to know.  And  I feel a sense of loss that they don't have a clue who Amitabh Bachchan is, let alone some of the other giants of the Hindi film industry.

                Bollywood has made a name for itself through globalization in the past half-century, especially in other Third World countries. Instead of remaining in India for the primary Indian audiences, Bollywood films have been exported to other countries, including Afghanistan, Pakistan (pirated in because it's illegal), Malaysia, and even Western countries such as Russia and Germany. Though it's more common nowadays to see copies of SRK (Shah Rukh Khan) films like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and DDLJ (Dilwale Dulhania Le Jaayenge) in far-flung markets (including America), even before the economic boom of the nineties there were exports of  common Hindi films. Among these films were some of the early blockbusters, generally Raj Kapoor productions. According to Dev Anand in his autobiography Romancing with Life, the Raj Kapoor film Awara was very popular in the former Soviet Union, so much so that there was a Russian soundtrack released to the film. When at a party in Moscow, Anand was asked if he was 'from the land of Awara.' This was even before the market growth for India in the early nineties, when Bollywood production houses started making films for the foreign markets where a lot of N.R.I.s had settled.  In Malaysia, pop music has been influenced heavily by the tunes from Hindi films; I found a duet between the Malaysian singers M. Sharif and Zaleha Hamid, Setia Menuggu, that was the same tune as the Lata and Mukesh duet Main Chali Main. For further proof, there was another song by Salih Yaacob with Malaysian words put to A.R. Rahman's Chhoti Si Aasha, the famous song from Roja. And according to Pankaj Mishra in his book Temptations of the West, the Middle East is also aflame with Bollywood films. Not to mention Suketu Mehta's testimony in National Geographic that while living in Queens, New York, immigrants from countries other than India ( Uzbeks, Greeks, and Pakistanis are specifically mentioned) would turn the Hindi movie show  "Vision of Asia" and sing along to the Hindi film songs being shown. It seems that the whole world is slightly impacted, in one way or another, by the globalization of Hindi films.

                But not, obviously, America. Living here all of my life, I have never heard any white Americans reference Hindi films, or give them any time of day in conversations.  Whenever I try to mention Dilip Kumar or Rajesh Khanna, or even Amitabh Bachchan, I receive strange looks and the annoyed and disinterested response of "Who?” I am talking about something completely foreign.  I was raised in a white family, watching Hollywood movies, and I never heard any talk of famous Bollywood actors. The only people talked about were big modern actors, such as Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman, Arnold Schwartzeneggar, along with the names of other actors. And for the older times, Humphery Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Wayne, Steve McQueen, and other legends.  I was then surprised, watching Hindi films and reading books and online articles about Bollywood, that Amitabh Bachchan is recognized and revered worldwide (especially after his close shave with death in 1983 when doing stuntwork for Coolie) and that Shah Rukh Khan is a bigger star than Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt combined. How could it be, I wondered, that I had never heard of these celluloid stars?

                I think that an aspect of American ignorance to Bollywood can be found in American attachment to Hollywood, which a recognized brand worldwide of American pride and creativity. It is a major industry in America, something that most Americans revere, and it even has  a sense of identity that Americans cling to; it's a major social shaper of mentality here,  something that preserves (or re-interprets) the American pereceptions of themselves and the world that surrounds them. It also seems that America, being the world's superpower, a dominant trading power in the world, has an expectation that it be recognized, a self-absorbtion with itself despite the tapestry of diversity in the world. Rightly so that it is a superpower, this does not mean that America ought to push this dominance into a kind of hubris (as it already has). With the expectation of recognition, America does not recognize much of the world's offers, promoting itself above the others, much like a group of clique-oriented American teenagers. Another reason for Bollywood's lack of influence in America might be that Bollywod doesn't promote the values that American films portray (pragmatism, lack of conventional morality, etc.), along with their formats. America also does not seem to have a very high opinion of India either. Though it's more common to see exports of things Indian  (or slightly adapted things Indian) in America, a lot of people still view it as a poverty-ridden, filthy country that isn't good for much except for computer coolies who take care of their inconveniences. Indian (and other South Asian) immigrants to the U.S. aren't treated with much respect in many ways either, whether it be by ethnic persecution ( such as the Dotbuster groups in New Jersey in the early nineties who beat and/or murdered "dotheads") or by prejudices in the workplace. If they aren't seen as being very valuable, or even very desirable, by the American public, then the logic dictates that parts of their culture not be held high or dabbled in much, leaving Bollywood ( and the South Indian film industry) mostly in the dust. And, as a last note, few Americans have any knowledge of Hindi (excluding yours truly), and thus the barrier becomes even higher. 

                It looks like Hindi films have about as much likelihood of reaching American audiences as cricket does of replacing American baseball. It may just be Bollywood’s last frontier.