From Chandni Chowk to China

I recently met Julia, a young Chinese girl, at a dinner party in Singapore. Julia told me that she had an Indian boyfriend and that she had recently visited Mumbai along with him. She had come back impressed with India’s colors, culture, and cuisine. That was not surprising. But then she told me something that struck me strongly: “We Chinese know so little about India. We are so close to each other as neighbors but we know so little about each other’s culture.”

Quite true, I thought. India and China may be trading partners, but culturally we know next to nothing about each other. I wondered if this gap could be bridged through cinema.

The Days of Awara and Caravan

I asked this question to Pallavi Aiyar, who has spent more than six years in China writing for the Hindu and the Indian Express. She was, at a time, the only Chinese-speaking Indian foreign correspondent based in China. Now based in Belgium, Aiyar has also served as advisor to the Confederation of Indian Industry on China-related issues.

In her book, Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China, Aiyar provides an account of her life in China. Before going there, she knew that Raj Kapoor’s films, especially Awara (1951), were well-known in many parts of the world, from Russia to Peru. But she didn’t know that the Chinese too loved that film and people of an older generation still remembered it. When I met her at a literary soiree in Singapore in July, she told me that even now some Chinese people knew “Abala Hoon” (“Awara Hoon,” the film’s title song) by heart.

“Film imports have always been controlled in China,” Aiyar explained. “In those days, Awara was perhaps considered socialist enough to be allowed a release in China.” The film was seen widely from the late 1950s till the late 1970s.

Another film that has stayed fresh in the memory of the Chinese people is the Jeetendra-Asha Parekh starrer, Caravan (1971). According to Aiyar, Caravan was shown in China only in the 1980s, after the end of the Cultural Revolution. People still have VHS copies of the film, she said.

But after Caravan, no Hindi film was released in China in the last century. After a gap of nearly three decades, Aamir Khan’s Lagaan became the first Indian movie to be released in China in 2002. At its release, Joe Zhang, an official from the Columbia Tri Star Film Distributors International said, “Continuing with its international success and now reaching here, Lagaan brings us a great chance to break the wrong idea that ‘good movies are the American ones.’”

Despite these films, the Chinese don’t know much about Indians. According to Aiyar, the Chinese think that India is a very crowded country (which it is) and all Indian women can sing and dance like Bollywood heroines (which they surely can’t)! She told me how she often gets requests from ordinary Chinese people to perform similar dances for them.

Hunger for India’s culture

Clearly, there is a hunger for Indian culture, including its song and dance, among the Chinese people. Perhaps they find Indian classical dance and music closer to their own cultural traditions like Chinese music and opera. Indian yoga is already a big hit in China.

I had a first-hand experience of this hunger for Indian cultural traditions when I used to help out at the India China Trade Centre (ICTC) around 2003-2004. Many musical troupes wanted to go to China and perform there but from the Chinese side, the demand would always be for those groups that could perform Indian classical singing and dancing.

If you turn the equation around, what kind of perception do Indians have of China and the Chinese? The most common perceptions are that China is a socialist country with an authoritarian regime, that China is the factory of the world and that it is way ahead of India in terms of infrastructure. Even the Indian Prime Minister talks about turning a city like Mumbai, not into London or New York or Tokyo, but into Shanghai. “Chinese cities have become sort of benchmarks for us now,” said Aiyar.

To a great extent, the assumptions that Indians have about China are correct, perhaps because of India’s free media and the culture of debate and discussion that prevails in most parts of India. But how much do Indians know about the Chinese people and their culture?

Aiyar sees a difference between how Indians and Westerners see China. For example, when a Westerner arrives in a city like Shanghai or Beijing, he is appalled by the unruly traffic on the road or the behavior of the Chinese drivers. When an Indian arrives, he is all praise for the Chinese drivers and their respect for traffic rules. Obviously, Indians see Chinese citizens as better behaved than Western visitors do. Aiyar herself finds much to admire in China, like the fact that low level workers in China, unlike their Indian counterparts, at least get to wear gloves while carrying out menial tasks such as carrying refuse or cleaning toilets. “That glove, a barrier between the dirt and the worker’s body, provides him with a modicum of dignity,” she says.

In terms of cinema, perhaps a section of Indians might be familiar with Chinese stars such as Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-Fat because of their action thrillers such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but beyond that, Indians know very little either of Chinese cinema or its other arts. Clearly, there is a great wall of cultural ignorance between the two countries.

When a film like Chandni Chowk to China (2009), Warner Brothers’ first Bollywood film, tried to cross over this great wall, it fell flat at the box office. So what is the way forward?

Slumdog Millionaire replaces Awara

Unfortunately, the current generation of Chinese youth is not interested in Indian films unlike the older generations. According to Aiyar, the young dig international cinema (particularly Hollywood and Korean films) and they approach Bollywood as exotica, as most in the West would do. The current generation of Chinese youth knows India more by Slumdog Millionaire than by Awara. In a situation like this, there clearly is a case for the Indian and Chinese governments to encourage each other’s films in their respective markets in a mood of cooperation and friendship.
Take the example of Singapore and China. In July 2010, the two countries signed nine agreements paving the way for industry collaborations ranging from financing, pre-production, production to distribution and marketing.

When a small country like Singapore can take steps in this direction, why can’t India?

And it’s not just the governments that ought to do something, although Indian ministers do have a duty to do more than just tweet or appear on TV. Trade bodies like the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the ICTC can also pitch in and bring the film companies together to co-produce or get TV channels to share some television content. For the two countries to come closer, the youth of both countries have to become aware of each other’s cultures. One way to do this is through the exchange of students and cultural groups between the two countries on a large scale, to facilitate more interaction.

China maybe the factory of the world but India has a vibrant cultural scene, and for once, at least, China can be a net importer rather than an exporter in this arena. Knowing about each other will help India and China in the long run. If familiarity breeds contempt, ignorance breeds suspicion. In the case of India and China, I think a healthy contempt is better than layers of dangerous suspicion and mistrust.

This article was published in September 2010 issue of Khabar, Atlanta.

Want to be a Bollywood script writer?

Everyone wants to write that ‘hit’ Hindi film. But do you have it in you? And what is required of you to make it in Bollywood as a scriptwriter?

To find out, I attended a workshop on scriptwriting for Bollywood on Saturday (6 June)—organized as part of the Indian Writers’ Festival. The workshop was conducted by Venita Coehlo and Loveleen Tandon (co-director of the Oscar winning film, Slumdog Millionaire). I have already written about Loveleen Tandon in one of my previous posts, so I will focus on Venita here.

Venita has been writing scripts for film and television for many years. She has worked with Cinevistaas and Sony Entertainment Television (VP, New Product development) in the past. Now she lives in Goa and writes scripts full time. She also paints and writes columns for newspapers.

I went to the workshop with a few questions in mind—and came out with more than I had expected. Are small films working for Bollywood? Do producers ask you to write scripts based on Hollywood DVDs? What remains of your script in the transition from the page to the screen, from what you wrote to what you saw on the big silver screen? And do you get paid on time? And how much?

My friend has written a script and wants to sell it for Rupees one crore. Is he daydreaming? Or it is very much possible in a “new” rich Bollywood?

As I said, I returned from the workshop with much more information and insight. I even learnt why there are item numbers in Hindi films. Of course, we discussed script structures, plot points, Syd Field’s narrative techniques, the concept of a hero’s journey and so on, but far more interesting were Venita’s personal experiences.

Venita’s story itself is so Bollywood-like.

The Influence of Sholay

“I grew up in Calcutta,” she said. “My house was above a cinema hall—Jyoti cinema. “Sholay” ran for five years in that theatre. Songs and dialogues of Sholay would vibrate through the walls and floors of the building and reach up to our house. I grew up with that movie.”

When the film stars of Sholay came to the theatre to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the film, Venita saw the whole street jampacked with people. “That’s when I realized the power of the medium of cinema,” she said. “I wanted to be a part of it.”



In Bollywood

Venita’s journey in Bollywood so far has not been smooth. Out of 17 scripts that she has written, only two got produced and saw theatrical release, including Sanjay Gupta’s Musafir. When she saw the other one in a theatre (she does not want to name the film) she was horrified to see that only one scene written by her was retained in the film. But the film’s credits had her name as the screenplay writer! “I wanted to go and hide somewhere,” she confessed.

According to Venita, Bollywood still follows the 1970s rates and laws for scriptwriters. Once you sell your script for a promised amount (you get payment in parts and full payment is hardly ever made), you part with all rights to your script. Even if the film is shelved, your script does not belong to you anymore. Payments range from Rupees 3 lacs (near S$12K) to Rs10 lacs, and you will be lucky to see any money after getting the signing amount.

“To work in Bollywood, you must supplement your income by other means,” she said, “unless you become a writer who has written hit movies.” She means Jaideep Sahni.

Writing for television is more strenuous but money is good in TV, she said. One month of income from TV can equal 2 years worth of toiling in Bollywood (as a writer).

Copying is rampant in Bollywood and ideas are stolen shamelessly. One has to learn to live with it. If you fight the powerful filmmakers, she said, you can kiss your future goodbye.

Things are changing

But despair not, she adds. Things are changing in Bollywood. A new breed of writers has taken charge of the writers’ association. New rates for scripts are being fixed and optioning of scripts (like Hollywood) will be legalized.

She acknowledged that the quality of scripts in Bombay is poor. There are no training institutes for scriptwriters. She did not seem to be impressed with Subhash Ghai’s Whistling Woods school. She mentioned how even workshops like this one (the one I attended) were not common in Bombay.

Anurag Kashyap and Anjum Rajabali held a workshop in Bombay sometime back but the results were far from desirable. Kamal Hasan also held a workshop in the South recently. We need more training opportunities to groom new writing talent, she said.

Here are some guidelines if you want to break into Bollywood as a scriptwriter:

1. Go with a bound script. Every filmmaker/actor these days wants a bound script—though no one reads it.
2. Be a raconteur: You have to narrate your script in front of stars and so you better be a raconteur
3. Get a star: The best way to get your script produced is to find a star and get him interested in the project
4. If a star likes your script and is ready to back you by starring in it, everything will fall into place—and you might even get to direct the film, no matter what you background is (It's ok even if you were selling chickpeas on a cart!)

Got it? Still want to try your luck in Bollywood as a scriptwriter?

PS: After reading this post, novelist Samit Basu commented that it always does not work like this. He shared his views via Twitter: "It really doesn't work like that. It's actually easier to sell a script to a producer than even meet a star. I know Venita and really admire her. But this advice only works for people who are already IN the Bombay entertainment industry."

A few moments with Loveleen Tandon

Post-inauguration at the Indian Writers’ Festival on Friday evening, everybody wanted to have a few moments with Loveleen Tandon (the ‘lovely’ Lovleen Tandon, as the evening’s host put it).

People went — "The co-director of Slumdog Millionaire (SM) is 'so hot'"!

“She looks more beautiful than her picture!”

“She looks better than Freida Pinto!”

“Why didn’t you act as the heroine of Slumdog Millionaire?” someone said protesting.

“Why don’t you take yourself as the heroine in your next film, the one you are directing?” someone ventured with a suggestion.

“So that it bombs even before it is made,” said Loveleen jokingly.

When she smiles, she radiates a genuine warmth.

Lovleen was courteous throughout, making small talk with people, answering their questions on Slumdog, posing for their pictures. She was a picture of humility and confidence.

In a brief chit chat, she explained why Anil Kapoor was cast as the host of the KBC show in the film. She said that director Danny Boyle wanted someone for the part who had actually hosted the show. Shah Rukh Khan would not do it because he would look for the main part—not suitable at all. Amitabh is over 60—they wanted someone who could feel threatened by Dev’s character, and anyone above 60 would not feel that way. So Anil Kapoor.

Though Dev Patel was not cast by her, she also explained Dev’s ‘jarring’ accent in an otherwise believable ‘masala’ film. She was all praise for the Brit boy—sees in him great talent. He tape-recorded accents of various crew members (including Loveleen's) and each one turned out to be different. So there was no single Indian accent! “I advised Dev to be natural, without being fake,” she said. And that worked for the film. Only the Indian audiences could tell about the accent, otherwise it went down without much problem with the foreign viewers.

The money came from UK, so the film was primarily for UK (by extension, Western) audiences. I remembered reading an editorial in the UK film magazine, Sight & Sound, which described how the success of SM could save the Channel 4 (its funding was about to be cut down--revenue squeeze due to the downturn).

Casting for Slumdog Millionaire

Loveleen was casting for Mira Nair’s Shantaram (headlined by Johnny Depp) and the project was stalled due to some reason. Earlier, she had done casting for Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding and The Namesake. Then she got the job of casting for SM.

She went to numerous schools in various parts of the country looking for kids to play the roles of slum children. The middle class school kids could not act the parts of slum kids without looking and acting fake, she said—because they had never seen that kind of life. Finally, Loveleen suggested Danny that they should cast actual slum kids. She got hold of some and made a scratch tape for Danny. Danny and the producers liked the stuff and gave her the go ahead.

Language became another issue—the slum kids followed Hindi and Loveleen had established a great rapport with the kids. When Danny tried to direct them, said Loveleen, it didn’t work. So, Loveleen was asked to step in as a co-director. “It was a big stroke of luck,” she said.

Loveleen also revealed that in the original script, Jamal's (Dev's) interrogation was to be done by a police commissioner. She said that in India a police commissioner would not have the time to interrogate a quiz show freak. Danny and others finally saw her point and that's how Irfan Khan came in as the interrogating police officer (inspector).

These days she is working on the script of a film. She will direct the film when it is ready to be shot.

First Indian Writers' Festival 2009 in Singapore‏

This was in the making for sometime! India Se magazine has announced the First Indian Writers' Festival 2009 in Singapore‏.

The date for the one day festival is June 6, 2009.

According to India Se, Loveleen Tandon (Slumdog Millionaire) and Venita Coehlo (she has written for Karan Johar) will conduct a screenplay writing workshop. Sudeep Charkravarti of Tin Fish fame will conduct a fiction writing workshop.

The gala dinner is with Shobha De, Loveleen Tandon, Anita Jain and Poonam Surie at the Tanglin Club.

The combined package for workshops and gala dinner is S$160.

For details, email roopali@indiase.com.sg/indiase@singnet.com.sg or call (65) 6377 2838.

More details here: http://www.indiaseonline.com

Rubina@Slumdog Millionaire for sale/Tehelka hacked

I completely share the angst and anger of director Shekhar Kapur on the sting operation on Rubina, that little girl from the Bombay slums who acted in the award-winning Slumdog Millionaire.

"I was aghast though at the sting operation done by that British Tabloid, which instead of being condemned world wide is being heralded as a great piece of journalism !" says Kapur on his blog.

What has happened to our sense of morality? Newspapers should direct their resources and investigative skills at unearthing corruption in government and military and not on poor folks. India's Tehelka has shown it time and again, hasn't it?

Shekhar goes on:

Not a single thought was given to the trauma that the little girl would go through with world wide publicity that her own father was trying to sell her. And what was the tabloid trying to do ? Trying to push a father to name a price for his daughter's adoption ? To go to a poor man in a slum who has spent his life not knowing where the next meal is going to come from, and then dangle a few hundred thousand pounds in front of him to entice and entangle him into a negotiation for the adoption of his daughter ? By enticing him to say those words that would make headlines all over the world ? How dare they judge and manipulate other people and their moral predicaments from their comfortable colonial point of view. I would rather have them arrested for obscene suggestions and offers than the father for coming to the negotiating table.

More

On a separate note, looks like investigative newspaper website Tehelka has been hacked! Does anyone have any clue?

Book of the year for the Wall Street bunglers, and you

Whether you are a winner or a loser, Ashish Jaiswal’s True Dummy should be on your reading desk

True Dummy
A Fable of Existence
By Ashish Jaiswal
Publisher - Rupa & Co.
Paperback - 247 pages

When I started reading Ashish Jaiswal’s debut novel, True Dummy, I was hoping to read something familiar—and I mean it not as a compliment but a complaint that I hold against most Indian writers. The first few pages seemed to read like a pastoral with its bucolic charm or a tale from a small town. Is it another Slumdog Millionaire set in the mountains, I wondered. Village life, mountains, valley of flowers, rivers, small boys, Ammas, shopkeepers, minstrels—was Ashish treading on the Ruskin Bond territory?

Turned out it was no Ruskin Bond, no Slumdog Millionaire, but more Paulo Coehlo, and more Luck by Chance, perhaps even deeper than them.

Honestly speaking, the narrative might not grab you from the start—I had to struggle a bit (which happens with most novels I try to read) and keep the faith. Paragraph after paragraph failed to make me suspend my disbelief (you might have a different experience—every reader brings his own experiences to a text) but there came moments when I recognized the wisdom of the writer, the genuine observations of an extraordinary mind, the imagination of an adroit narrator.

As I kept on reading beyond the first few chapters, I was defeated in all my expectations—soon I was on a heroic journey along with the protagonist of the novel who starts out to seek fame and fortune in this world like most underdogs. He fails by all standards, even his own. And then he succeeds, not realizing what he was doing—until we are shown an unfinished piece of the puzzle.

Like a skillful magician, Ashish creates a mirror of the world (a mayanagri, if you will) in the novel where our basic human motivations and failings are reflected in a stripped down version—as if in a TV show, a la Chocolate Factory, where we all come seeking fame or riches, to be the next American Idol or the next superstar or the next whatever. And we fail: “I wanted to be the most famous and found myself amidst faces that nobody cared to notice. Nervous faces, cowardly faces, depressed faces…faces that said at the first look that they were born to lose.” Sounds familiar? There you go.

Ashish’s novel is so different in many senses. Though he lives in Oxford, UK, pursuing a DPhil from the University of Oxford, his work has been brought out by an Indian publisher. The novel’s title itself is so uncommon (I am talking in terms of the usual stuff that we see coming out of the Indian writing in English stable): the title is intriguing and yet has a refreshing allure about it, not reminding you of the Red Bulls, The Boat in the Mangrove and The Bride of Sitapur (all made up titles) type of commonplace titles.

Ashish’s novel may not be a great literary work (perhaps he did not even attempt to achieve any literary greatness in his work) with its many cardboard characters, uncomplicated and trick-less language and a straight narrative structure, it has great potential to be turned into a video game, with the Rings and its crooked tail and its three gates—MoneyGate, PowerGate and FameGate. Or it could be the next Slumgdog Millionaire meets The Lawrence of Arabia. Are the UTVs and the Warner Brothers listening?

Ashish’s tale might be Indian in tone and setting, but in terms of its ethos and message, this is a universal book (even the characters’ names such as Geoga and Verona are translation friendly). And so insightful, you might want to re-evaluate your approach to life after you have read it. If you are successful in life, you might see your success differently after reading True Dummy. If are a failure, you might feel otherwise about yourself. You may be inspired to do what the protagonist does in the novel.

If you like to read a book full of pearls of wisdom or quotable quotes, I bet this is the book for you. There are some dialogues or observations that you may want to note down in your diary. How about this one: “A fallback plan is for people who walk backwards, hence they all end up where they start.” A good quote for a film poster, with the Rings and all that, nahi? Or how about this one: “If a person has to tell what he does, then probably he does not do anything worth telling.” You find it cheesy? New age humbug? (Humm, are you a snooty high-brow lit reader?). Never mind. Salim-Javed would have liked it.

On a serious note, I strongly recommend this book to all those guys at the Wall Street and the big banks who have created a huge mess in our world, to the Bernie Madoffs and the B. Ramalinga Rajus of the world—it could be a good read in prison. At the same time, I think this book should be read by our ambitious youth, from Chandni Chowk to China to Connecticut, who ought to know what is truly valuable in life.

A moment for India's powerless

Even amid the darkness that surrounds us, the news that Slumdog Millionaire has won the Golden Globe for Best Picture and its director Danny Boyle the directing award for the film has cheered me up.

Slumdog is a fascinating film--the story is not new for Hindi film viewers but the way the movie has been shot and directed (the narrative structure itself) is what makes it different from other films. I saw the film side by side with Mira Nair's similar-themed Salaam Bombay, and the effect was stunning (though I admit that Boyle's take is more uplifting and perhaps Bollywoodesque). It takes a lot of courage to make a film on an unglamorous subject--the story of two Muslim boys from Bombay's slums, who are orphaned in a communal riot--and how one of them grows up to become a millionaire through a TV show--at the cost of the sacrifice of his namazi but criminal and trigger happy elder brother. Boyle had the guts and the wit to make a movie like Slumdog Millionaire. Bollywood's filmmakers should take a lesson from this win.