After months of watching current Bollywood and Tollywood movies, I have gone backwards, thanks to an Indian film class, to films of the 1950s. Most of the films focus on the challenges and possibilities inherent in the newly independent country. Socialist propaganda is woven throughout the dialogue and many of the films, though they may deal with complex and still controversial topics like adultery and paternalism, usually end with an "I love India' slogan or song.
For me, the films are comfortable to watch. The women walk with the assurance of Katherine Hepburn (some even wear the high-waisted pants) and the dialogue is clever and noted with sexual innuendo. So far, I have watched 2 hit movies from the '50s, each with almost identical casts, and both times my attention was drawn away from the main character to the side and background of the film, the domain of the supporting role. In fact, the same actress was in both films, first playing the best friend of a woman unjustly accused of infidelity and then as a prostitute dancing in a gutter bar. In both movies her main role is as a dancer and singer (though a playback singer actually sings all the roles, so she just moves her mouth in time). Her dancing is kathak-style and often overly emphasizes the Eastern aspects of Indian dance, the punjabi pants, dark eyeliner and snakelike-head and body movements.
It is in Awara, the second film we watched in class, that she plays a prostitute, who dances and nearly-charms the hero with her dance and song. This time she is dressed like Mary Margaret from 'Bye Bye Birdie', a tight crop-top and slit skirt, but her attitude is sexual and dangerous and much more interesting than the white-sareed heroine. She is the center of the movie for only 3 minutes and 25 seconds.
I looked up the movie to make sure it really was the same actress and found her listed only as "Cuckoo". Perplexed, I continued to search, but everything I found related to her was just as enigmatic. In the 40s and 50s she was apparently very well known and loved, always acting in the supporting role, often as the seductress. Her performances and songs were so popular that directors would put her in a movie for only one song, as with Awara, and the song would completely eclipse the movie. She followed in a line of kathak dancers and trained her usurper, an actress named Helen.
And that's all I found. One scant online biography reads:
Cuckoo died a slow lingering death, penniless and unattended.
It seems ridiculous that a star of over 40 Hindi films can be so unnoticed historically. Of course, the film world is at once alluring and damning for young women, especially during the 40s and 50s. 'Daughters' and 'mothers' weren't allowed to get near a filmset, lest their morals and modesty fled down a dark alley. So, maybe, her name wasn't given for fear of what it would reflect on her family? And the allure is more the less we know, but it seems strange that now when Bollywood had moved well past the back-room dances scenes, that someone would release her name, that someone would seek her name.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Paying in Kind
To be honest, sometimes I forget I'm in India. No, I don't forget that it is December and 28 degrees C or that I can now buy papaya year round... the rub is in the small things, as they say.
Generally when I go out on the street I first form a battle plan. No brilliant battleship-sinking maneuvers usually just A --> B then rickshaw to C where I might be able to find that, but I can definitely find it at D and just in case I should buy a paper since Mr. X will probably not be at E until an hour past ____. Without some sort of map, I get lost and turned and before I know it I am yelling at young boys that staring is rude and I come home defeated, drinking badam and frantically drafting a more clever plan for the following day.
So, a few days back, my plan was this. 1. Return the juicer I randomly bought on the sage advice from a friend that 'what was I going to do with a 40 lb juicer in five months". 2. buy pens and pencils and, if fortune smiled on me, some 4 by 6 notecards 3. get a newspaper ... after this the list grew vague. From experience I know that getting beyond 3 in a single day is not possible and so I resolved to keep 4 open in case I needed a tall glass of badam.
First I bought the paper, out of order, but it went smoothly. Then I went to return the juicer. The juicer that had never been opened. The juicer that had only been purchased 7 days back. The juicer that was identical to the one sitting in the window of the fancy kitchenware store...
The manager was sitting at a desk and spoke to me with a effervescent smiled, "Sorry madam, no returns. But you can exchange it for something else." His smile was so large that I took it as a joke, so I returned with, 'No, sir I don't need anything in the store, just my money back." The exchange continued for a little while as he swept his arms indicating the saber-toothed knives and Narcissus-inticing pots and pans. "You see, sir," I said, "I don't live here permanently and I stupidly thought a juicer was a good idea. It was a mistake and I am trying to remedy it." With that I opened myself up to the attack that still has teeth enough to work on me. "Madam, this is not like where you may be from. In India, you cannot return things. Never. Nowhere." And I wanted to explain that this was not a snobby view of a girl from a Western world, but a logical and and judicious and profitable for all economic policy. I started to explain, but he kept smiling. So, I did what I have seen my Indian friends do when something makes no sense: I sat and I looked down as if I was pulling the intelligence and understanding inside me up to the surface. "Well, what to do..."
In the end, I returned the juicer. No one was harmed. And the man still had a smile on his face when I left, though this time it seemed strangely genuine. ***
Feeling slightly invigorated from having completed task 2, I went straight for number 3. Pencils and pens are located on the third floor of a shopping megamall near my apartment. Now, sometimes in India I run into similar patterns from Russia. Magemalls are one, and I think simply a bi-product of quick and volcanic commercialization. Another is the creative way both countries have implemented of moving their citizens around. Buses and subways are not enough, Russia prefers small densely- packed used minivans, while India as adapted the auto-rickshaw into a sort of metropolitan school bus. So, as the man at the counter was ringing up my school supplies, I noticed that the coin trays were filled not with rupees and paisa but chocolate candies. Hundreds of golden-wrapped 'Chocolate Eclair' candies. I thought of fighting or frantically rooting through my purse for the exact correct change. In Russia, I had fought and even attempted to pay for things in chocolate candies or mints, and I will admit that I felt a certain satisfaction at having mastered a new game. But this time, I decided not to fight, and happy that my battle plan hadn't been thoroughly washed out, walked home, my wallet puffed with Chocolate Eclairs.
*** I have since looked up "return policies in India" and the internet is strangely silent on the issue. The only thing I could find was a Dell page that ok'ed returns, even on the subcontinent.
Generally when I go out on the street I first form a battle plan. No brilliant battleship-sinking maneuvers usually just A --> B then rickshaw to C where I might be able to find that, but I can definitely find it at D and just in case I should buy a paper since Mr. X will probably not be at E until an hour past ____. Without some sort of map, I get lost and turned and before I know it I am yelling at young boys that staring is rude and I come home defeated, drinking badam and frantically drafting a more clever plan for the following day.
So, a few days back, my plan was this. 1. Return the juicer I randomly bought on the sage advice from a friend that 'what was I going to do with a 40 lb juicer in five months". 2. buy pens and pencils and, if fortune smiled on me, some 4 by 6 notecards 3. get a newspaper ... after this the list grew vague. From experience I know that getting beyond 3 in a single day is not possible and so I resolved to keep 4 open in case I needed a tall glass of badam.
First I bought the paper, out of order, but it went smoothly. Then I went to return the juicer. The juicer that had never been opened. The juicer that had only been purchased 7 days back. The juicer that was identical to the one sitting in the window of the fancy kitchenware store...
The manager was sitting at a desk and spoke to me with a effervescent smiled, "Sorry madam, no returns. But you can exchange it for something else." His smile was so large that I took it as a joke, so I returned with, 'No, sir I don't need anything in the store, just my money back." The exchange continued for a little while as he swept his arms indicating the saber-toothed knives and Narcissus-inticing pots and pans. "You see, sir," I said, "I don't live here permanently and I stupidly thought a juicer was a good idea. It was a mistake and I am trying to remedy it." With that I opened myself up to the attack that still has teeth enough to work on me. "Madam, this is not like where you may be from. In India, you cannot return things. Never. Nowhere." And I wanted to explain that this was not a snobby view of a girl from a Western world, but a logical and and judicious and profitable for all economic policy. I started to explain, but he kept smiling. So, I did what I have seen my Indian friends do when something makes no sense: I sat and I looked down as if I was pulling the intelligence and understanding inside me up to the surface. "Well, what to do..."
In the end, I returned the juicer. No one was harmed. And the man still had a smile on his face when I left, though this time it seemed strangely genuine. ***
Feeling slightly invigorated from having completed task 2, I went straight for number 3. Pencils and pens are located on the third floor of a shopping megamall near my apartment. Now, sometimes in India I run into similar patterns from Russia. Magemalls are one, and I think simply a bi-product of quick and volcanic commercialization. Another is the creative way both countries have implemented of moving their citizens around. Buses and subways are not enough, Russia prefers small densely- packed used minivans, while India as adapted the auto-rickshaw into a sort of metropolitan school bus. So, as the man at the counter was ringing up my school supplies, I noticed that the coin trays were filled not with rupees and paisa but chocolate candies. Hundreds of golden-wrapped 'Chocolate Eclair' candies. I thought of fighting or frantically rooting through my purse for the exact correct change. In Russia, I had fought and even attempted to pay for things in chocolate candies or mints, and I will admit that I felt a certain satisfaction at having mastered a new game. But this time, I decided not to fight, and happy that my battle plan hadn't been thoroughly washed out, walked home, my wallet puffed with Chocolate Eclairs.
*** I have since looked up "return policies in India" and the internet is strangely silent on the issue. The only thing I could find was a Dell page that ok'ed returns, even on the subcontinent.
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