Angry young woman that I am, the mention of Slumdog Millionaire gets my goat on most days. I think it’s a decent, engaging film, and have sat through it more than once. But the moment somebody feels that they know anything about Bollywood, Indian Cinema or India because they like the film, I get a little livid. Slums are a big part of Indian reality/ realty. Poverty exists. But so do many other things. By all means, make films, documentaries and the rest about slums, but a little something else isn’t bad?

Channel 4 and other channels annoy me a bit on this matter. Either they cover the absolute wealth of rich Indians who have 5000 guests for their weddings, or the blinding poverty of slums/ rural India. Yes, it’s a country of contrasts, and extremes makes for better television, but some people have found interesting ways of talking about India without launching into eye watering tales of grim childhoods.

Indian Winter on Channel 4 has this note

Channel 4 brings together the very best film, drama, features and factual programming in early 2010 in a season that celebrates India, exploring its rich culture, culinary traditions and the human stories that shape one of the world’s most diverse and captivating countries.

Of the six programmes, four are somehow or the other based on slums. And the one film is Om Shanti Om. Ugh.

So there’s some odd-ball TV channel called Zing TV. And they’ve been shamelessly lifting stuff off High Heel Confidential.

Aaargh! Go mail them and call them names.

A very recent example would be an Indian website called Savita Bhabhi where a middle aged Indian housewife is seduced by everyone from the door-to-door salesman to her young neighbours. This works at two levels — the attempt to control a woman’s body in order to subjugate her, thereby allowing the man to subjugate her. By “domesticating” her body, the man and woman are then falling into the established “norms” of society — a notion that the media helps preserve. The woman is yet again portrayed as subservient while the man exercises complete control.

Savita Bhabhi breaks certain norms – not because it’s cartoon porn, but because if you actually bother to read the stuff, the woman seems more likely to be the one who seduces, or controls the situation. It’s not a man sleeping with various women, after seducing them – but a woman who is otherwise hailed as the very epitome of virtue (however pointless and disgusting that is) who chooses to break barriers around her. Nor does she always use sex as currency – she willingly wants her adventures.

If you look at the traditional manner in which virtue-laden archetypes are portrayed, especially in the film industry – their sexual experiences with other men inevitably are about submitting to sexual aggression. But in Savita Bhabhi the idea of “honor” or “guilt” rarely enters the context. And that’s exactly what the whole moral outrage was about. Had the comic been about Savita without the context of “Bhabhi” – the outrage wouldn’t have been as livid. Had she worn a halter top with jeans, instead of a sari, it would have been far less of an issue.

Yes, if you must dissect the underlying gender trade-offs in Savita Bhabhi they could actually turn out to be far more sinister. The idea has its problems. But choosing to fit everything in one theory doesn’t work. At all.

If you must mention Savita Bhabhi, I think the reactions of the moral-brigade to the website and its contents are far more worthy of gender morality analysis than the website itself. And then to understand, in that context, where various streams of media chose to place themselves. It doesn’t help anyone’s cause to treat media as a monolith.

…Indians will be upset about a westerner having a better understanding of their country than they do….
…The bitter truth is, Slumdog Millionaire could only have been made by westerners…
I have no doubt that Slumdog Millionaire will encourage many more honest films to be produced in India. But they should be ashamed that it took a white man to show India how to do it…

Err. Of course white men know India better than any Indian does. I thought years of the British Raj had established that. No?

But what made me cringe, laugh and then react rather violently (thumping my floor) was that the anchors on NDTV had the audacity to say that the likes of Ram Gopal Verma were capitalizing on the tragedy by seeking creative stimulus out of it. Right. I know I’ve already done a post on Barkha Dutt‘s coverage of the attacks in Mumbai, but really there’s more to it. If you hop over to the wikipedia page on her this is what greets you –

Which I think sums up my opinion of her. And her attitude. I have to admit, I used to be a fan. Perhaps some of it was blind adoration because – here was a woman who seemed to be comfortable going into unchartered territories. Over years though, her attitude towards certain issues really bothered me. But people are entitled to different opinions, and journalists can’t be objective anyway. Better to declare your bias.

But it’s the attitude that bothers me. This need to hog airtime. This insensitivity. This constant need for the camera to look at her. The need to adopt a high pitch when describing something. This constant insult to my intelligence. Her arrogance. The other day, after the Taj operation was declared over, you could see her on television, pushing firemen about, preventing them from doing their work, dragging them by their arms and forcing them to answer questions. Sure, other journalists did it too. But I think when the Managing Editor of a popular news channel does it – it legitimizes a certain kind of behaviour.

Journalists cannot sit back and be mute spectators. Nor can they afford to be gentle. They need to be aggressive. The job demands it. More importantly, the need for high TRPs – which leads to being able to demand more money for advert slots, means that they are competing against each other. But if you are a professional, you are required to introspect on your own methods, rather than just serve the commercial interests of your employer.

When private news channels started in India, I really did celebrate. It was a far fry from Doordarshan’s drone about which foundation stone was being petted by which Minister. And I still am grateful for these channels. But my mistake was in assuming that competition forces people to be the best they can. Instead, it seems to force organisations to become more and more similar, and outdo each other within that ring of similarity.

To be fair not everyone is the same. Take someone like Miloni Bhatt for instance. I found her attitude far better than Barkha Dutt’s. She was calm, composed and didn’t obstruct anyone. Importantly, unlike Barkha Dutt, she didn’t randomly ask people to shut up on air.

Everytime during the coverage, somebody came on screen and said – “We are the first/ only channel to get access to this pool of blood/ this victim/ this view of a building burning/ this piece of blood soaked cloth” – A part of me just wanted to slap them.

I’d rather have a newbie reporter doing things badly, than have BD attempting to create panic, because it suits her style of reporting. It’s like she wants you to not get out, and shake in shock. And for some reason she keeps talking of IC 814 – because she wants to prove that the Congress is not “weak” but doing what the BJP did nine years ago.

She annoys me. And now she is asking us if “this is our 9/11″. And she’s sort of shoving people off the street with one hand, with a certain bossiness. Ugh.

- Aarushi’s murder is a case of Indian society going the sameway as those in the west.
- We are slowly becoming a morally bankrupt society, we are forgetting our values.
- These kind of incidents will keep on rising as parents leave their children to maids for care
- Aarushi’s case is an effect of the growing trend of adapting the western attitude in our metros.
- The world has changed, but I could never imagine it has worsened to this extent.
- I hope it’s now how the Indian society shapes up in the days to come.
- This is a true picture of urban metros, but not a picture of whole India.

If the death of a child didn’t make me so sad, these messages may have baffled me even more. For some reason or the other, there’s this grand assumption that childhood in India is perfect. That it is full of doting affection from relatives. That children in India, especially those in financially comfortable homes are always happy. That only Indian parents care for their kids. That malls, brands and television have corrupted parents. When in fact, children have always been vulnerable in this country. Except that the ones in lower economic classes don’t get all that much attention.

But an upper middle class kid being killed hits home. And people scurry around looking for answers. Hoping to blame anything they think is an “outside” influence. Make statements about how the world is getting worse. Or how only urban centres are violent. (And rural areas in India are pastures of peace and dignity.) Apparently people are shocked that an Indian parent could do this. As I type this, a panel member on NDTV is insisting that working parents must put their children in hostels.

In sum, a fourteen year old kid is dead.