As the process of constitution drafting chugs along in Nepal, one fundamental question hasn't been debated enough. The form-of-government issue seem to have been forgotten amid the rancor of federalism. I argue in this piece published in Setopati.net that the parties, leaders and the people must realize the faults of the parliamentary system as it is practiced in Nepal and give the presidential system an honest chance.
In June 2014, I was invited to speak to Nepali students aspiring to study in the US. The event was hosted by United States Education Foundation (USEF - Nepal) in Kathmandu. I had a great time. Thanks for the organizers, especially my friend Sulav Bhatta.
At the recent
Association of Nepal and Himalayan Studies (ANHS) conference at Yale
University, I had a good fortune of meeting someone by great serendipity. After
I gave my presentation, I received helpful comments from Carole McGranahan of University of Colorado, Boulder. Later, we began talking as we walked to the
lunch hall and she introduced me to a gentleman. He had served as a Peace
Corps volunteer in Nepal in the 1970s. Whenever I hear that someone was in the Peace
Corps or somebody mentions Peace Corps in any conversation, I have a story that
I have been telling for many, many years.
When I was
growing up in Kathmandu, maybe when I was about 10 or 12 years old, my mom by
chance brought home a copy of a publication made by the United States Embassy
in Kathmandu. The magazine was printed on glossy paper, unlike most others
published in Nepal, and it included a number of interesting articles written or
translated in Nepali as well as many color photographs. I remember reading the
magazine cover-to-cover and learning a little bit about American political
system and whatever the news was at the time.
One particular
article specially stuck my imagination and it has been imprinted in my memory
ever since. It was a story written by an American man who had come to Nepal
with the Peace Corps and settled in the home of an old Nepali woman somewhere
in a remote village. He called her his Aama,
which means mother in Nepali. The article described how, after he was done with
the Peace Corps, the man brought his Nepali Aama for a visit to America. I
remember being fascinated by the experiences of a woman from another generation
and a far-away country of Nepal as she faced the modern sights, sounds and
interactions in the United States of America. Especially, interesting and
memorable was the fact that the old lady found spiritual and religious messages
and motifs in many of the day-to-day American experiences. While most of the
details of the story had been forgotten, I remembered vividly the fact that the
old lady believed that the water fountains that she saw somewhere in America
must be imbued with godly powers and she prayed at the water fountains. Thus,
the powerful memory of reading that memorable story in my childhood has been my
stock narrative whenever a topic of conversation touches on the Peace Corps.
And so it
was when Carol introduced me to Broughton Coburn; I related them my story. I also wondered if either of them knew of that story. That magazine had been
lost long time ago and I never learned what happened afterwards with either the
writer or the charming Nepali Aamai.
Mr. Coburn listened intently and corrected my last detail. He said they were
not water-fountains in DC or New York, but it at the geysers of the Yellowstone
Park. He also explained how Aama began praying at the natural wonder of the
geysers. Even then, it took me a few additional minutes to realize that it was Broughton
Colburn, the gentleman standing right in front of me, who was the author of
that article and the man we who had brought his Nepali Aama for a visit to
America in the 1990s. I finally realized the fact, which helped solve the
unresolved mystery from my childhood and it felt like I was meeting an idol, a
little like meeting the Beatles! I was lucky in the next two days to have some
moments when I could talk again with Brot, as I later learned he was called, about his experiences in Nepal and the books on Nepali Aama he had written. I loved hearing his perfect Nepali accent!
Since the
conference I've had a chance to visit Brot’s website to learn more about his
work. I learned that he published two books about Nepali Aama, her visit to
America and the meaning that experience provided him in his life. I learned
that since then Brot has been working to bring Aama’s message of peace and
spirituality in more than a 100 presentations in various universities andinstitutions around America. Along his interests on Nepal, he has also written
best-selling books on Everest and the Himalaya. I watched the following video of a presentation
that Brot had given, which formed the only surviving piece of a possible PBS
documentary that never came to fruition.
What a
mesmerizing picture that we get from Nepali Aama’s images and expressions in
this short, seven-minute clip. As Brot explains even at the age of eighty-four,
Aama was eager for her pilgrimage to this land beyond the oceans, a world away from
her little village in Nepal. She opened
her arms to all sorts of experiences and seems to have thoroughly enjoyed
America. It is heartening to see her at a Las Vegas explaining how the conventionally
garish arts and the sculptures at Caesars Palace must be part of some temple or
a religious movement. The same honesty of her views is seen in her experiences
of kissing the dolphin. Later, we see her explaining that the dolphin could not
have been real. For a person from a landlocked nation mere imagination of such
a creature as as trained fish is impossible and thus she resorts to a very
probable explanation of a mechanical being used to amuse visitors. I
appreciated Brot and Didi’s resourcefulness in using a booster seat to allow
Aama the thrill of a proper American road trip, so she could better enjoy the
views from the windows of their station wagon. The picture of her on the
backseat of a Harley is priceless!
And finally
there was the image from my childhood, till imprinted on my mind: Aama watching the
Yellowstone geysers along with a group of American tourists. As she begins
joining her hands in prayer, along with her, the viewer participates in the
notion of natural spirituality that so animates Nepali religious culture. Aama
is praying at the wonders of nature just like I remember praying at a shapeless
boulder near my ancestral home in Panchthar.
I became
sad to hear Brot inform us that Aama died two and a half years later after
returning from her pilgrimage to America. But the manner of her death and the
words of rememberance and prayer that she spelled out as she lay dying, in
front of the Himalayan vista in her house in Syangja, gives us some manner of
solace. Just like Brot’s luck in finding a Nepali mother in her, Aama was lucky
to have had a son as resourceful and dedicated as Broughton Coburn.
I am
looking forward to reading Brot’s two books on his and his Nepali Aama’s mutual
journey.Yet, even in the last few days,
since meeting Brot so serendipitously in New Haven, I have begun to understand and
appreciate the universal humanity embodied by Aama, as well as her American son,
in their mutual love as well as their appreciation of each other’s countries and peoples.
Recently, I had an exciting sensory experience. I discovered that I was able to hear songs from memory. It does not sound like much but it was exciting for me. I was in an airplane, bored and unable to sleep, and I tried passing time by remembering and silently humming my favorite songs. Due to the presence of strangers, I wasn't audibly making any sound and I concentrated my full attention to my ears while keeping my eyes closed. In a short while the songs I was humming in my brain started gaining audible qualities in my ears. At first it was as if whatever song I was thinking of and internally singing the words to, began to play in my ears but in my own voice without any music. But quite suddenly I began to hear the actual recording of the song, it happened to be an old Bollywood song, in the original voice of Lata Mangeskar accompanied by all the music in my ears. It felt no different than listening to the song from a headphone. I stopped consciously controlling the words of the song but it kept on playing in its own rhythm and its own original version that I am so much familiar with. Once that song was over, I consciously chose another familiar strong and in a few moments without much effort that one also began playing as if from a radio or a headphone. I was able to spend a good hour in the state of auditory bliss hearing songs that I loved and enjoyed.
There was one major, maybe understandable, limitation – I could only hear those songs that I was quite familiar with, that I knew or had known the lyrics to, and that I had listened to in the past repeatedly. New or unfamiliar songs did not bring on the affect. Yet, I was quite astonished to realize that many songs that I hadn't listened to in a number of years, for which I had little conscious memory of lyrics, I got them to play quite nicely. So songs for which I wouldn't know the lyrics, if I consciously tried to sing out loud, I was able hear from unconscious memory.
Reading Lawrence Rosenblum's book on the extraordinary powers of our senses, See What I’m Saying, I immediately thought of that personal experience. The book presents empirical examples and recent research on the extent and quality of human perception and sensory powers. Relating stories of many special people who have been able to use the non-dominant senses to compensate for their loss of their primary senses, Rosenblum presents evidence of our exceptional sensory capabilities and our brains ability to use various senses to help us in our awareness, perception and function.
Set in rural France during WWII, this small film is heartbreakingly beautiful. This story involves the friendship between an orphaned five-year-old Parisian girl and a country farmer's ten-year-old son, whose family takes her in after her parents are killed on the road out of town. Those early scenes of the war and destruction are really well done, the sense of terror and fear as the city-dwellers run for their lives in droves. Once we are introduced to the little girl, she mesmerizes.
The friendship between the girl and the boy is well presented. He treats her like a princess and feels that since he found her in the fields, he is her keeper. The rural French farm life is meticulously is presented. It is a surprise how poor the farmers are, involved in nothing but petty neighborhood rivalry, superstitions, and living the life of extreme poverty.
At the heart of the film is a symbolism: the girl and the boy start to collect crosses in their own private cemetery. The idea first is to build a cemetery for her dead parents but then it expands to adding any dead being, insects, birds and critters. By the climax of the movie, the boy dedicated to satisfying the girl's childish wishes, robs the town's actual cemetery of actual crosses. That then reveals their private game to others and ends it as well. As their game expanded and evolved and multiplied, I could not shake the feeling that the symbolism of the children making their own methods of dealing with the death and destruction of war was a bit forced. Yet, if you suspend your disbelief and allow the children to be the enigmatic beings that they are, this a fine film which portrays how it is just these little games which sustain us all.
Bright Lights, Big City stars Michael J Fox who works as a fact-checker for a New York magazine in the mold of the New Yorker. Actually, that is neither his main vocation nor his calling, which are all night druggy parties and fiction-writing respectively. So what is this movie about? It turns out that our hero is suffering from the grief of his dead mother and his recent divorce and self medicating with drugs and hedonism. In the end, he decides to change and buys a bread and decides to sustain himself with more than instant gratification.
I remember reading the bits of the novel on which this movie is based. In my recollection not a bad book. But the movie is mediocre. One word: boring.
A just-released Bollywood movie for a change! Surely not the stuff of Ebert's greatest films list! Yet, for someone who watched his share of Bollywood Hindi movies growing up, only to start despising and ignoring most of the lot once acquiring some cinematic sense, ZNMD (as it's sure to be called) was a mildly pleasant surprise. Having not seen a complete Bollywood movie at a theater or on small-screen in many years, I was prepared for the same old-same old. And I found that, yes, it is the same old in spirit but quite improved in technique, style and presentation.
With a pretty standard, Bollywood coming-of-age story of three buddies on a journey to find themselves, plot (how many variations of this same plot has Bollywood made in the last decade? Dil Chata Hai?3 Idiots? there must be tons of others), ZNMD is hardly original or convincing. The characters are types who play their assigned roles. The emotional depth is more like a plateau, mostly forced and insincere. Even Imran's back-story of an absent father seems to have been imagined for exactly the purpose: to make the story "deep." It works only to the extent that the director has learned not to try the old Bollywood trick of dragging the emotional chord too hard. Imran learns to let go as he is supposed to, very easily, very quickly. Nice. The other two idiots learn their life lessons also very easily, very quickly as they are supposed to. But the "theme," or "story," or "the what" is not what this movie is about. It is all about the "style" or the "how."
And on that score this movie shows the increasing technical and stylistic improvements of some current movies over standard Bollywood fare. The movie is nicely shot, the point being to show the beauty of Spain and the locales of the movie. The characters love Spain; the audience is supposed to love the vistas. The camera lingers on and on and on when it finds a lovely geographical or natural landscape. Yet, for the most part the editing is decisive and effortless except for occasional hiccups, like when the song "Senorita" begins, which comes out of nowhere. The director has taken care to present the sense of detail, the wardrobe, the sets, the lighting etc. Every little detail has been taken care of. There is no problem with the production values.
The way the technical and presentation money seems to have been spent, budget doesn't seem to be an object; just shows how rich Bollywood has become compared to even 10 years before. Therefore, more than ever, Bollywood movies such as this, are in the business of selling dreams. They want the audience in the theaters around India and the South Asian diaspora, to experience Spain as the characters do. The first ambition of the movie is the blind the audience with vicarious pleasure of the beauty, adventure and fun that is Spain and its cultural and adventure offerings. In that regard, the audience gets its money's worth.
Now hopefully, in the coming years and decades some slice of Bollywood will grow up and learn its own coming-of-age lessons, just like its characters do, and start to invest its money in writing talent to make films which explore deeper themes and present characters who are not just types, whose fates are consequential and molded by their own choices and personal change is not easy or quick but messy and incomplete. Just like Imran, Kabir or Arjun, Bollywood might let go of their easy tropes and dare to grow up.
It has been a few days of missing posts but that doesn't mean that I haven't been keeping up with my 30 days of cinema plan. I have watched four more films in the last three days and the best of them has been The 400 Blows. Directed by Francois Truffaut, this "new-wave" mainstay is beautiful visually, touching emotionally and yet very unsentimental.
The 400 Blows refers to the trials (literally, "hell raising") of a young adolescent boy, Antoine, living in Paris in the '50s with his mother and step-father, who view him as a problem child. In school he is similarly hounded. In trying to cope with such difficulties the boy rebels and is sent to live in a juvenile corrections center from where he manages to escape. That is the story. So what is it about? It is about the how the neglect of parents and teachers, the adults, of the needs and talents of a boy forces him to find his own path in life. Of course, he becomes an outcast but that is just his way of dealing with the neglectful reality.
The style of the film is the unsentimental capturing of Antoine's progressive transgressions and punishments. The director focuses on the comedic aspects of schooldays and the impressions of the adolescents regarding their teachers and parents. The boys are resourceful and know how to keep themselves amused and happy even in the face of abuse. The details of their childish rebellion and rule-breaking are shown in all the romantic, nostalgic glory they deserve. The parents are appropriately aloof and caught up in their own affairs, literally so in the case of the mother. While they might try to help the child, their commitment is lacking and insufficient.
Of course, the child has to find a way to survive on a day to day basis. Yet, as a viewer you expect or hope that the early lapses are just growing pains, that Antoine and his parents will find a way to fix the kid, that he will manage to get through. That hope doesn't materializes as his supposed sins or crimes become more heavy, so that he becomes the problem and also the property of the vastly more impersonal state. Neglect from the parents, abuse from the teachers, lead finally to the active punishment by the state. What is a boy, a child to do in such circumstances? How does this particular boy react to such reality? As a viewer, you sympathize with the child, obviously and hope he gets by okay. The ending seems to suggests that he might just be the lucky one who does get by, somehow.
Clocking in at about four hours, this is long. I had to watch this classic American epic in two sittings. In the middle, around the intermission, I thought the film was overly long, especially since the story seemed to lose direction and the plot lurched on the whims of the protagonist, Scarlett O'Hara. But by the fourth hour, the characters and the ambience seemed so familiar that I felt like I had been living in their world, of the American Civil War and Reconstruction, for some time. This film by its sheer breadth and largeness of scope takes you there. A story about the life of a Southern plantation family and its members before, during and after the Civil war, Gone with the Wind, was the first American epic. So much has been written about this film, articles, reviews, analyses, and books, that no review is attempted here. For someone watching for the first time seventy years after the production and release, all that can be recounted is the viewing experience and the obvious, early impressions. One first notices the vividness and contrast of the early color print, which is highlighted by the studio settings and the screen painted backgrounds. In many scenes there are shadows dancing on the wall. There are silhouettes in front of the colorful backgrounds. So the film, for today's audience, harkens back to the old filmmaking where the stage was the studio and not the location. In some ways this makes the feel of the film more majestic. The dialogue and conversation is also strange to today's audience. The actors deliver their lines as if they are soliloquies, at times as if they are facing a theatre audience. The manner of conversation itself takes some getting used to but slowly gets easier to follow and like.
The plot is convoluted and digressive but is held together by the two lead characters, Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler. The Civil War and Reconstruction are the main sources of external conflict but it is Scarlett whose actions move the story forward. And what active woman she turns out to be! She lives here life without much doubt, she takes initiative and makes life changing decisions on a split-second. Her first two marriages are both quick decisions, not based on love but for profit, emotional and financial. But Scarlett seems to meet her match with Captain Butler, who is the one character in the film who has the most fun in every situation. His profound declaration is nothing but perfect: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!" That motto sums up his worldview quite well. And it is Scarlett's relationship with Captain Butler that carries the film.
Based on a historically tragic episode of racism and injustice in the name of "progress" perpetrated by the white settlers on the Australian aboriginal population, Rabbit-Proof Fence is a heart-warming tale of a long journey to freedom undertaken by a young half-aboriginal girl.
It is 1931 and a stern Mr. Neville is in charge of handling "half-caste" aboriginal children, which involves separating (stealing/ kidnapping?) these kids from their families in the bush and taking them to a faraway camp community. "The native must be helped in spite of himself," he says utterly convinced of his mission. The law that was passed to "help" the natives is based on simple eugenics, as Mr. Neville explains to a group of white housewives: it only takes three generations to white blood to turn a half-case entirely white. No wonder the aborigines willfully mis-pronounce his name as "Mr. Devil."
Once collected at the camp the kids, these "natives" and "savages," are taught the rites of "civilization"-- basically, the English language to speak, utensils to eat, Jesus and Mary to pray -- all the while showing complete subservience to the nuns, who begin their harsh training by literally scrubbing the native out of the children's flesh. Those who dare to run away to try and return to their loving families are quickly apprehended by experienced trackers, brought back and mercilessly punished.
We get to witness and experience this historical reality through the eyes of a fourteen year old half-caste girl, Molly, who is snatched along with her baby sister and cousin to be sent to the camp. Her sheer determination and her skills on the bush come in handy when she runs away along with her baby sister and cousin to embark on the more than 1200 miles journey back home to the comfort of their mother and family. One can't help but root for her success in making it back through the treacherous landscape along the rabbit proof fence, predatory informants along the way and the crafty tracker on her trail. The fact that in this one rare instance the girls are able to evade the evil forces and complete the journey makes her a true hero.
Of course, one understands how many others must have suffered same cruel fates but neither possess Molly's determination nor blessed with the twists of happy accidents. For those wronged and unlucky thousands - the "stolen generations" - a life of eternal servitude as domestics or worse, as sex slaves, awaited after the camp.
Technically the movie is well made with little touches of brilliance. Especially well treated is the vastness of the Australian continent, the barren landscape, where the girls must travel. Those sweeping vistas of woods and hills and praire and desert filmed from above look as isolated, dangerous and unending as Molly must have encountered them in her darkest hours. She must overcome not just the personal wrongs of white settler history but the impersonal vastness of the Australian geography.
The film begins with a montage of mundane vistas of a day in New York City. There are cars on the road, people on the street and people are going about their business - a regular day. Then we witness a bank robbery, very realistic and quite very regular, very ordinary, at first. However, the straight forward robbery turns into a hostage drama and that's when we get the extraordinary - the whole city seems to come to a standstill, the entire NYPD and the FBI seem to converge at the scene, the TV networks and reporters are breathless as ever, a big crowd surrounds the crime scene, chanting and jeering, as if taking part in this diversion to pass their boring day.
It is Al Pacino as Sonny, the leader of the two bank robbers, who commands one's attention. Watching this film for the first time now, more than 35 years later and with Pacino mythos firmly in head, it is quite a thrill to see his young self throw himself fully into the role. Sonny shows craziness in his eyes at one moment and kindness the next. He is a showman, inciting the crowd against the police, needling them. He is the mastermind of the crime, with his prior experience having worked in a bank but though steadfast, still a novice in planning the robbery and then the hostage negotiations. His partner-in-crime Sal thinks Wyoming is a good country for escape. While Sonny is not that naive, his plan of escaping to Algeria seems quite uninformed.
It is Sonny's personal relationships and his backstory that leads up to the fateful attempted robbery that gives the emotional thrust of the story. His wife is a constant nag who doesn't let him say a word. His parents, especially his mother, need his monetary support and give haranguing in return. As he says, he has all these "pressures" of money and emotion because of which he is "dying in here."
Yet, the main motivation for Sonny's pressures is not only unique but quite surprising: that this gun-totting, foul mouthed, Vietnam vet is a gay man who is compelled to rob the bank to help his male "wife" get a sex-change operation. Sidney Lumet, the director, introduces this strange element of Sonny's life so matter-of-factly and so precisely that there is no artificiality in the story. Some cops laugh, the crowd starts to jeer their previous hero and a gay crowd chants Sonny's name, but the story moves on because for the film as in real that this is just one new strange discovery on this already quite strange day.
I wondered if this film hadn't been based on a true story, what would people make of Sonny's homosexual motivations. But as is said, truth is stranger than fiction. In this fictionalized true story ("30% true," as Wikipedia reports) all the parts fit, the progression is natural and believable and so very engrossing.
In one word, Manhattan is: beautiful! Yes, this a romantic comedy with Woody Allen and his trademark neurosis and rat-a-tat dialogue and multiple relationships and divorces and psychoanalysis and existentialism. But while all these hallmarks of Woody's trademark style are the parts, the sum of all that is nothing but beautiful. For those of us, who only know Woody Allen as a type, having not lived when he was first blazing the trail, it is easy to forget what a visionary creative artist he was. At least, we appreciate his wide ranging gifts by focusing on the beauty of Manhattan.
This film is about a middle-aged man, Issak, in New York City and his love life and relationships in the mid-1970s. He is a television writer and has been through two divorces and is currently dating a 17-year-old high school student. His best friend, Yale, is having an extra-marital affair with a quirky, intellectual and strange but attractive woman, played by Diane Keaton. The plot involves Issak's budding relationship with this woman after Yale suggests that he start dating her. To do that, he has to end his already-doomed relationship with the high-schooler. That pretty much sets up the story. But there is so much more within the plot.
First, there is the choice of black and white film which gorgeously covers Manhattan, the city is hues of black and light. Then there is the background score: jaunty, exciting and entirely fitting for each scene. The daily lives of Issak and his friends are highlighted by Gerschwin's melodies. Next, I loved the framing of the scenes, for example early in the movie we see Issak's nicer apartment where he climbs down a spiral stairs, and walks to a sofa in the far corner where he cuddles with his young lover under the lights. At the end of the scene, they walk back through the darkness to the spiral stairs, up and out of the room. So beautiful, the play of light and dark! The montages are awesome: Issak with his son; and the most beautiful and surreal sequence when Woody Allen and Diane Keaton visit the darkness within the planetarium, by the rings of saturn ("intergalactic love," Issak says later). Finally, the dialogues are fun and as quirky as you expect from Woody Allen.
Overall, Manhattan is a perfect distillation of Woody's esthetic and beauty in screen.
