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My life in
About a month ago, on a usual Wednesday afternoon, I was sitting at my desk at work when Prasad, our office manager, scurried through the office exclaiming, “Rajkumar has died! Pack up your things, we have to go home.” Before I had a chance to ask him what he meant, Prasad had already left to tell others. I figured Rajkumar was one of our employees, or perhaps a famous politician or public figure. I tracked Prasad down a minute later.
“Who exactly died?”
“Rajkumar.”
“And who is that?”
“He was a film star.”
I am convinced that I’ve run
out of the chemical that causes surprise. This is one of the unfortunate
consequences of living in
It turned out that Rajkumar wasn’t your typical movie star. He was an ethnic icon, the biggest celebrity in the modern history of the state of Karnataka. He starred in something like 200 films, every single one of which was in his native tongue of Kannada. The day he died, thousands of fans collected around Rajkumar’s house to see the body. That afternoon I watched on national television images of hordes of hysterical fans weeping beside his bed and touching his lifeless face.
Nobody in my office cried any
tears over Rajkumar. It was not out of reverence, or even respect (he
contributed nothing, I’ve been told, to politics or social causes). We closed the office out of
fear, just like every other private and public enterprise across the city of
The honor showed to Rajkumar was laughably over the top, though almost none of it was genuine. Wednesday and Thursday were declared state holidays, and the only shops which were allowed to stay open that day were pharmacies. I woke up late on Thursday morning, expecting it to be like a Sunday. Unfortunately, nothing in the city functioned. I fixed some breakfast and sat in front of the TV, still in my pajamas, only to flip through 100 channels of news and Rajkumar movies. Everything else was snow. Determined not to waste my day I ventured outside (I don’t live anywhere close to where the rioting had taken place). Unfortunately, buses weren’t running and the auto rickshaw drivers with the courage to work were gouging customers. I ended up walking one-and-a-half hours (mostly out of principle) to visit a friend several kilometers away, through the heart of a city which is usually treacherously busy, but now felt like a giant ghost town. Along the way, nearly every shop window bore the photocopied 8-by-11 image of Rajkumar, some of which had been shattered anyway.
I didn’t get near any danger
during these two days, and the event hardly sprang up in any international
news. But I was really fascinated by the whole spectacle. Maybe more so, I was
amazed how easily people tolerated the incredible inconvenience, not to mention
the massive loss of business, that thugs were able to force upon a city of
millions. The local shop
owner undoubtedly sighed at the needlessly lost revenue and the cost to repair
his windows. But much worse is the case of the vegetable vender who makes a few
dollars a day and sleeps on the street, forced to give up two days of work
while his tomatoes rotted in the sun. In the context of a country as
poor as
After reflecting a bit with friends who know the city a lot better than I do, the whole ordeal made a bit more sense. Rajkumar was a hero to Kannada-speakers, the natives of a city which has exploded in wealth and opportunity for everyone except its original inhabitants. They have watched over the years as millions of well-educated Indians from other states, as well as foreigners like me, have rushed to the city to reap its rewards. In the process, their language and culture have become increasingly irrelevant and unimportant. And now, I must admit, Kannada-speakers are strangers in their own hometown, a place that has been physically and demographically transformed, leaving them, in the dust (literally).
That steam of frustration and humiliation finally escaped when Rajkumar died. Forget logic and reason. This was an emotional excuse to reclaim a portion of lost pride, even if it had to be done with burned out buses and broken windows.
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A couple months ago I moved into a place where I could watch TV. That means I don’t read as much and I sit on my butt for more of the day. But watching TV is pretty educational someone for a foreigner like me. You can learn a lot about a place from its TV programming (or at least that’s what I keep telling myself, as I lay on the couch brushing cookie crumbs off my t-shirt).
Most channels are in South Indian languages or Hindi. I don’t watch much of that stuff anymore; I just don’t have the energy and curiosity. (I’ve watched three Hindi movies here, each time with a friend to explain to me what was going on, though I haven’t seen one in a while.) Regardless, there’s some interesting stuff on these channels. First of all, like I’ve said before, it’s sometimes hard to differentiate a drama from a comedy. The dramatic shows and movies are so melodramatic and so cliché, I can’t figure out sometimes if their serious shows or parodies of serious shows. Anyway, there’s also a series of Hindi-adapted shows riding the success of original American shows. There’s a Hindi Fear Factor, a Hindi Sportscenter, an Indian Idol, and a whole channel with American movies dubbed into Hindi.
There’s also tons of programming in English. They have HBO here, though it has commercials and a lot of bad B-movies. There are a few channels that show American TV shows (Friends is on all the time, and they love it here). And occasionally I get to watch the NBA playoffs, though it’s always at an odd hour, and the broadcast usually starts 20-30 minutes late because a replay of some 1970s cricket match has run over time.
It’s amazing what they can get away with on TV here. First of all, there are tons of commercials for skin-whitening products, which is so strange for someone who comes from a country where everyone wants a tan, and where equating fairness with beauty is politically incorrect. It seems like every five minutes I see an advertisement for L’Oreal White Perfect, which features a beautiful but ghostly-white Chinese lady and cool graphics showing the magic of something called “melanin blocker”. Garnier also plays an ad for one of its skin-whitening creams, which begins by announcing something like, “There are two risks from sun exposure: skin darkening and early aging.” Apparently melanoma was number three.
There’s also a shocking Coca-Cola commercial featuring Aamir Khan, a famous movie actor. He walks into a restaurant with his eyelids taped back and a camera hanging from his neck, like he’s a Japanese tourist. Then the restaurant staff tries to overcharge him for his Coca-Cola, and he reacts angrily in Hindi. “The Japanese is speaking Hindi!” some waiter exclaims. Then Aamir Khan explains that he’s not Japanese, he was just bird watching and a swarm of bees stung his face, causing it to swell up. Keep in mind… this is Coca-Cola! Somebody get Al Sharpton on the phone.
It might sound hard to believe, but the use of sex in advertising here is out of control. I can’t quite remember how bad it is on American TV, though obviously it’s bad. You don’t see any naked women on Indian TV, and only recently have they started showing kissing in Hindi movies. But make no mistake, there is some outlandish stuff on TV here, even though there’s more clothing involved. First of all, the range of products that use sex in their commercials is, I think, a lot wider here. One great example is Kwality Wall’s, which somehow manages to market ice cream as an aphrodisiac. I don’t even think you can make that link on American TV.
It’s more than just modern Indian pop culture, though, that’s filled with sexual images. The traditional culture, as conservative as it is, is filled with them too. There’s the Kama Sutra, the ancient religious book that extols the value of sensual pleasure. There are the famous temples in Kajarahu, with graphic depictions of sex covering the outside of the structures. There are the Shiva lingas, the blatantly phallic structures that are the focus of a lot of Hindu holy places. There are the images of the female gods themselves, depicted with such voluptuous naked bodies that they could put any Playboy centerfold to shame. These are all religious things, I realize. But religion and traditional Indian society are so enmeshed, I figure it can’t be a coincidence that even the old Hindi movies seem so seductive.
And yet, that steaminess never
seems to cross the threshold of propriety. Traditional Indian values may permit innuendo and
imagery, but it’s otherwise extremely conservative. Things like divorce,
extra-marital sex, or homosexuality aren’t just unacceptable, they are
virtually taboo. Romantic relationships between a man and a woman who aren’t
married are generally unacceptable, although that is beginning to change. You
hardly ever see a man and woman holding hands in public, for instance (though
you see grown men holding hands everywhere you turn). And there’s an uneasiness
discussing sex in general, even within the context of marriage. In a Hindi
movie I saw during my first month in
This strange mix can exist thanks to traditional ideas of morality that serve as an iron wall between fantasy and reality. Most people here will admit that beneath the conservative surface, there’s an occasional ugly reality of promiscuity, adultery, and even incest. The normal and not-so-normal sexual appetites of people do in fact get satisfied, although with some difficulty and in secret. But as time goes on, maybe thanks to Western influence, people are becoming more liberal about sex and romantic partnership. Go to one of the glitzy shopping malls here, where people have money and almost no young woman wears a saree, and you’ll see plenty of young college couples holding hands.
That iron is coming down might fast, especially for the
upwardly mobile, urban crowd. A few weeks ago I was at the Garuda mall
with friends, hanging out for a half-hour before a movie. There was a dance
competition downstairs hosted by one of the local radio stations, and dozens of
people, including me, watched as kids from the crowd came on a little makeshift
stage and showed their dance moves. The contest finished up quickly and the
award was given out (to this little boy who brought the house down). After
that, the station capped off the whole event with a dance by a girl named Manzi, a professional
dancer who was probably in her late teens or early 20s. She danced to a hip-hop
remix of an old Lata Mangeshkar song, and her dance style was a mix of
classical Indian and MTV. There was nothing seductive about Manzi’s appearance;
she was fully covered in a black dance uniform, and she wasn’t anything
spectacular to look at to begin with. But the way she danced, and the fact that
she had such unbelievable control over her body, made it one of the sexiest
things I have ever seen. The
dance was absolutely impressive. It was also lewd and tasteless, by
Indian, American, or any standard, featuring a lot of butt-shaking, pelvic
thrusting, etc. I was captivated but shocked, not just by the scene itself, but
that I was actually watching it in
A couple days later I went to the same mall to get a cup of tea at the food court before taking the bus home after work. At the top of the first escalator on my way up to the top floor, I noticed a girl right in front of me whom I instantly recognized as Manzi. “Manzi!” I shouted as I threw up my hands. “I saw you dance here the other day, and wow, it was incredible!” As I said this, I expected Manzi to react with the same outlandish confidence that she showed on the dance floor just two days earlier. Instead, she shyly shook my hand and nervously mumbled something under her breath. I waited for something, anything, from Manzi in response. But she just stared at me, visibly startled, and obviously taken aback by the surprise of a strange man loudly approaching her in public. After a few seconds of silence I broke the awkwardness (I was pretty embarrassed myself) with a “Nice meeting you”, and I was off.
There was the wall of propriety, I imagined, separating two of Manzi’s personalities from even contacting each other. One ego was the dancing seductress, the other a reserved young woman who demurred at a benign handshake with an unknown man. That wall may be being worn away, but there’s still enough to produce this strange combination.
What happens if, or when, that wall comes down? Well, the wheels might really come off, let’s put it that way. The culture of Indian sensuality is thousands of years old, developed when religious and moral structures were strong enough to hold everything together. The Kama Sutra isn’t a book filled with dirty pictures, it’s a discussion of the spiritual intersection of earthly pleasure with duty, spirituality, and good deeds. Take those structures away, and thousands of years’ worth of pent-up energy suddenly has free expression, further fueled by Western TV, movies, and advertising. And at that point, even Manzi’s best efforts might seem tame by comparison.
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There is one really bizarre and totally inexplicable sub-conversation here. It has to do with these people called hejiras, who are said to be hermaphrodites. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw a hejira for the first time. They usually appear to be butch-looking men in drag, but the drag is Indian clothes, which looks especially strange. They walk around town asking for money, and people give them a few rupees without hesitation. They are very aggressive, too. A few weeks ago I saw a group of them, and one of them totally sexually harassed me, including reaching into the car I was sitting in and trying to grab me. It was kind of funny, but generally disturbing. Sexual harassment is never acceptable, but let’s just say I’d prefer to be sexually harassed by a woman who doesn’t have testicles.
There’s an ancient myth about the hejira community that my roommate once explained to me. I can’t really remember the details, but it was some story about a woman being reborn as a half-man-half-woman in order to kill her archenemy. The hejiras are the descendents of that person (don’t ask me how he/she managed to reproduce). Nowadays, when a child is born with female and male parts, it’s taken to the hejiras, where it can have some semblance of a socially-acceptable life. Those types of people, it seems, are pariahs in mainstream Indian society but somehow acceptable and not at all controversial as a hejira.
Now, I don’t have any photographs of these people, mostly because I am essentially terrified of them, and refuse to give them any money. But just trust me on this one: there is no way these people are hermaphrodites. I’m no doctor, but I knew a guy with Kleinfelter’s syndrome who worked at our high school cafeteria, and he was really tall, had a high voice, and feminine features. When I see a woman with no hips, a big square jaw, and stubbly face, and shoulders that could military press a Hyundai… I’m sorry, but that’s a man. I have not seen a single hejira that could even possibly have been anything besides an XY-chromosome-having male. Amazingly, I can not get any of my Indian friends to admit this. Maybe they are scared that the hejiras will put a curse on them if they reveal their secret.
On a more serious note, though, the whole arrangement makes some sense. In almost all segments of Indian society, it is basically impossible to be openly gay. It is, however, perfectly acceptable to join a giant nation-wide community of drag queens who are widely believed to be neither male nor female. So my theory is that gay men who don’t want to suppress their homosexuality pose as hejiras instead of facing a life of exclusion and embarrassment. I genuinely feel bad for these people, actually. Though the alternative may be worse than the life they’ve chosen.
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Though I have already ruined my once G-rated online journal with this current entry, here’s just one more story…
Last week, I was walking through my neighborhood after work on my way to the gym. It was raining pretty hard, and the power had gone out, leaving me to walk through a long patch of barely-lit, muddy road. Halfway to the gym, a guy pulls up next to me on his motorcycle.
GUY ON BIKE: Do you know where the Wipro park is?
ME: Yeah, go up to this main road, take a right, then take your first left. It’s right there on the left.
GUY ON BIKE: Thanks. Are you going that direction?
ME: Yes, but it’s OK. I’ll walk.
GUY ON BIKE: You don’t want a ride?
ME: No, thank you. I’ll walk. No problem.
GUY ON BIKE: Do you want a full
body massage? I give full body massage.
ME: (No hesitation). No, thank you.
I told you, man, the surprise chemical is gone. All gone.
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