This isn't just about Cricket

Note the CBC: it’s cricketers, not cricket-eers. And Suhanna Meharchand should know better.

I’ve said before that people in North America don’t understand what cricket means to the Subcontinent. Today’s attack in Lahore on the Sri Lankan cricket team will bring home to the Indian subcontinent the seriousness and immediacy of the turmoil in Pakistan as little else would have. Cricket isn’t just a sport – even a national sport – in a place like India. It’s a national religion, the only one that brings together followers of various other religions who otherwise see themselves as altogether different from each other. I’d say that it’s pretty similarly looked on in Pakistan and Sri Lanka too but there I admit to hypothesizing from the Indian context. Perhaps this latest attack was a reaction to the political upheavals in Punjab province or merely planned to coincide with popular feelings about the Pakistani Supreme Court’s ruling about Nawaz Sharif and his brother (former Prime Minister has been banned from holding elected office again and his brother has been removed as Governor of Punjab). Whatever the political backstory to this, the headline is the attack itself.

I was in India when the Australians and the British cricket boards cancelled their tours of Pakistan; and almost universally, they were seen as somehow being neglectful of the “spirit of cricket” because no one believed that a sport of such standing could ever be targeted. I was in London when the British team fled India in the aftermath of the terrorism in Bombay in November 2008, they were accused of being “not quite cricket” since they had clearly not been targeted. Indeed, when they returned to play out the rest of the matches in India, it was seen as something of a dramatic declaration of faith that love of cricket in the Subcontinent would overcome all other disputes. Pundit after pundit went on the TV to announce that Pakistani or Pakistani-trained “terrorists” have never attacked a match or foreign or domestic cricketers and that they never would because that would mean losing any popular support the hoped to achieve by attacking more ambiguous figures. Bombs might be flung at embassies and mosques and Parliaments but cricket stadia were sacred to all. But in the aftermath of today’s bloody attacks on the Sri Lankan cricket team, if that sentiment is taken at face value, the end goal of the attackers ain’t popularity so much as spreading terror and fear.

And by targeting an international cricket team – indeed, the only team that had dared to come to Pakistan to play cricket in the last couple of years – they succeeded in further destabilizing Pakistan’s image in the eyes of its neighbours. By attacking cricket, the terrorists have signalled that nothing is off-limits; that there are no more sacred symbols left in Pakistan.

The British media understand how serious this is and what it means to the millions who live in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. On a day when their own Prime Minister Gordon Brown was meeting with President Obama for the first time – and no doubt hoping to generate some positive headlines back home – headlines about this attack trump even his visit. There’s big-name politicians talking global politics and then there’s world news being made.

A Novella and a Novel

So here’s the novella: it’s called All Along, This was What was Supposed to Happen. Here’s an extract that ought to intrigue you enough to least give it a whirl:

“Which is how she found herself sitting alone in her apartment at 10:15 at night looking at penises. Actual penises! And these were under the "m4w" heading, not even the more complicated headings that she had to pause to decipher, like "t4mw." No, in the "men for women" section, you could click on a headline as innocuous-sounding as "Looking for Fun" and find yourself gazing at a disembodied, erect male member. Were there women out there who'd be tempted by this explicit greeting? Presumably so. The world we live in, Patrice thought wonderingly, half-appalled at the seediness and half-impressed at the gumption of the individuals who'd so brazenly go after what they wanted. Patrice's own forays into online dating, which had been of the decidedly more PG-rated variety, had mostly served to remind her of the pleasures of her own company: In the last eight years, she'd been told by three separate men—two were white, and one was black—that she reminded them of Condoleezza Rice, an observation to which she'd been tempted to respond, at least to the white men, by saying they reminded her of George W. Bush.”

Interesting, pithy, and with the lightest touch of sentimentality – which no one can deny Obama’s election calls for.

That I liked Curtis Sittenfield’s novella can’t be a surprise to many of you. But no one can be more surprised than I am about how much I liked Sittenfield’s American Wife. Who’d ‘ave thunk that a “work of fiction loosely inspired by the life of an American first lady” – Laura Bush – would appeal to me? But as much as I loathed everything the Bush era epitomized, I was carried away by the 550 page saga of Alice Blackwell’s quiet reflections on life. I suppose the test of literature is that it gets one to show sympathy – perhaps even empathy – for someone incredibly different to oneself; in that respect, American Wife does all that can be asked of it.

The book can – and probably should be – read as a response to this kind of perception of Laura Bush. Alice boils down her complicated response to being called out in such terms: “All I did is marry him. You are the ones who gave him power.” But this response in itself does not explain the charm of the book. That comes from the book’s ability to follow the often contradictory and (for me, at least) the often enraging rationalizations that Alice offers for her own actions (or lack thereof) with regard to her husband.

Alice’s all encompassing conceit is that it is possible to be in love with and to remain married to a man to whom she is superior in knowledge, temperament, discipline, and understanding... and I find it fascinating that this is signaled by her reading constantly because we will all recognize that anyone who reads as voraciously, as intellectually, as she does cannot possibly be an idiot Republican right-wing nutter. Alice disagrees with much of Charlie's (Dubya's) world-view but other than occasionally broaching these issues with him, never signals such disagreement and then wonders why she is being held accountable for his actions and thoughts. The answer – because she offers up none of her own and in deed, if not in thought, mirrors his – brings up the essential question of being: is it possible to think certain things, to feel a certain way, and while not expressing these thoughts or feelings in any way, still be? In other words, is silent disagreement, expressionless independent thought, resistance on the inside, ever possible?

I am a creature of the world; to me, the answer is no – there is no mere being, there is only being in the world. One is – or should be – accountable for the perception one creates or does not object to being created for one. In the end, for Alice Blackwell, wife of the Republican President of the United States, to claim that she is unjustly held accountable for his actions, is nothing more than delusional. In one of the purest moments of resolute opposition to her own reasoning that Alice encounters, a old woman doctor who had once performed an abortion for her calls her out on her indifference and the consequences this has: Gladys Wycombe accuses Alice of “having the power to change history but not caring.” I would too. But Sittenfield’s novel is phenomenal for how it captures Alice’s delusion about this lack of responsibility, for how it reveals the incremental pressures on a political wife as an explanation but never makes it a convincing excuse for Alice’s actions and inactions. A delicate line for any writer to walk and Sittenfield does it well.

American Wife isn’t all delusion and politics, though. It is funny and poignant about the mundane as it lays bare the anatomy of a marriage; it reminds us once again that only those inside a relationship – any relationship, not just a marriage to a POTUS – really know what its interior fabric is made of – from the outside, we can speculate but cannot know its warp and weft.

Like the novella, a good read.

Slumdog: The Review

So I must have had a dozen conversations this month that began with "So what did you think of Slumdog Millionaire" and continued thus: "Oh, I haven't seen it...." Well, thanks to a DVD-proferring pal, I've seen it, talked about it with a couple of peeps and now have a review. If you've not seen it and intend to, you might want to skip this post, alright?
Mmmm... how do I say that the movie didn't blow me away without saying exactly that? As flicks go, it was fine, and better than many I've seen but it boggles me mind that it's getting these rave reviews and is raking in the awards. Really? BAFTA? Oscars? Is this the best that the film establishment can produce? You know what, I'm going to take that back... this is probably as good as any schmaltzy "Oscar-contendah" film is likely to be.
I gather that los Indios are offended by the title and the representation of the slums of Bombay but I'm not bothered by those things -- it's a catchy title and the slums of Bombay have been legendary for centuries (if you don't believe me, get yourself a Flora Annie Steele to read...) but does the representation of the slums and slum-life have to be quite so predictable and melodramatic at the same time? I mean, after Salaam Bombay!? Witness: police brutality, corruption, the oft-told tale of the beggar-kids being "run" by a minor mobster, who also brutally disfigures them so as to make them more sympathetic and let's not forget the whore with the heart of gold. Actually, I suppose she's a separate topic altogether, but again such a predictable one. And then there's the question of Bollywood -- as genre -- to consider. And here's where I think Boyle fell down on the job badly.
We tend to think of Bollywood as a supremely melodramatic genre and it is certainly that but that very melodrama means that the kinds of binary conflicts between good and bad that Slumdog Millionaire posits form the most common plots in Bollywood flicks. Amitabh, referenced slyly (in one of the few clever moments in Slumdog) made his reputation in the "angry young man" movies of the early 1970s in movies that pitted the corrupt and brutal against the poor but good. Slums and the mobs who run slums feature frequently and equally melodramatically in dozens of Bollywood flicks every year. Oh, and most of them have beautiful but dumb and wronged heroines, too, including many who have to be rescued from brothels and bordellos. The brother who goes bad? One of the commonest tropes of Bollywood, dating at least as far back as Mother India (1957). Not to mention Ganga Jamuna and Deewar.
Given the wealth of this history, and given that Slumdog is the coincidence-driven melodrama that it is, Boyle could have done something really interesting by cleverly alluding to the tradition that he is drawing on; instead, we have this film that doesn't seem at all plausible by the standards of realism (someone tell me where the brothers learn English, please?) and also doesn't do anything to acknowledge the genre that it draws on and belongs within.
So my somewhat dismal conclusion is that the film is designed to attract a liberal white middle-class audience, and that it succeeds at that. I've no problems with that -- Hollywood is famous for its not-quite-radical "liberalism," right? But let's be honest: that's pretty much the only reason it's getting the hype it's getting. And because Boyle, a liberal white middle class dude, make it. If Slumdog Millionaire was a Bollywood production, which it ought to have been, given its plot and genre, it wouldn't have generated any kind of buzz outside India.
Two last points -- I didn't actually dislike the film -- yes, I disliked bits of it but I thought it a slightly above average movie. I particularly liked how the film was shot: the aerial shots of the slum are stunning and do suggest the aesthetic appeal of distancing; the nod to the call-centre industry was interesting and could have been developed more; and Boyle proves something that I've always suspected (that Indians and the British share a scatalogical humour).
And finally, that there is much more interesting cinema coming out to India, certainly, "parallel cinema" within India and recent diasporic films offer some really fascinating takes on life in India (and in the diaspora). Increasingly, too, there are also Bollywood flicks that offer up food for thought and not just escape. With that said, here's my own totally idiosyncratic list of India-related movies to watch in no particular order:

1. Life... in a Metro
   
2. Monsoon Wedding
3. Roti, Kapada aur Makaan (I misidentified this in the post on Dhaal)
4. Rock On!!! (I reviewed this when I was in India...)
5. Hyderabd Blues
   
6. Haare Rama, Haare Krishna (someday I'm going to write on this one...)
7. Lagaan (yes, it's long. and about cricket. deal with it.)
8. Bhopal Express
9. Bazaar (Naseeruddin Shah in early days... in a film about the real horrors of prostitution.)
   
10. Mughal-E-Azaam
11. Saawariya (reviewed that too...)
12. Rang De Basaanti (India's official entry for the Oscars in 2006, I think.)
13. Phir Milenge (melodrama about an AIDS victim)
14. Bombay (from the 80s.)
15. Kal Ho Naa Ho
16. Pardesi
    

On Dhal: Taste, Memory and Place

A couple of friends and I were in Little India -- now known as Gerrard India Bazaar, apparently -- for dinner last night and also stopped in at an Indian grocery store. And all three of us decided to make my version of dhal today.... since I've now promised that recipe to half a dozen of you, I thought I'd just post it here. We bought bags of that little yellow dhal that is traditionally used in South India to make savoury pongal so that's what we're using but really, you could use pretty much any kind of dhal (and in a pinch, even a can of lentils) to make this. So, the core recipe for Archana's lazy-day dhal follows and then there are some variations and comments. Every woman -- and quite a few men too! -- will have their own version so this isn't authoritative in any way:

1 cup of dhal
salt
1 tomato, chopped (nice but not absolutely necessary)

1 tbsp oil (corn or canola or peanut oil -- don't use anything highly flavoured like olive)
2 chillies (dried red ones or fresh green ones; substitute 1/2 tsp chillie flakes if you have neither)
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
3-4 cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed
small handful of curry leaves (fresh is wonderful; but it's not easily available in small batches so I tend to buy a large bag, use it fresh for a week and then strip the remaining leaves off the stalks and stick them in the freezer -- and they're fine in this)
small handful of coriander leaves
1/2 tsp of dhania-jeera powder (if you want to make this yourself, toast 2 tbsps of coriander seeds, cumin seeds and peppercorns and grind them in a coffee mill: smells great as it toasts)
juice from 1/2 a lime (or a lemon or 1 tbsp concentrate from a bottle)
1 tsp butter

optional stuff

1 small onion, chopped or sliced
1 cup chopped vegetables (carrots, taters, sweet potatoes, kholrabi, long white radishes, little round eggplants or the long green ones; some people use okra or green beans but I'm not a fan)
OR
1 cup of chopped spinach (a small package of the frozen chopped spinach will also do just fine)

Wash the dhal thoroughly -- it's often coloured artificially and you should wash it in running hot water until the water runs clear. If I'm making dhal, I'll probably make rice too so I tend to do them both at the same time: run hot water into one, swish it around and let it sit till I've done the other, then go back to it. An old-wives tale says that if you can't wash dhal and rice without loosing a lot of grains down the drain, you'll have to look for a rich man to marry!
Anyway, start cooking the dhal in 3 cups of hot water. Add some salt -- but go easy on this: it's easier to add more at the end than to take it out! If you're going to add root vegetables like carrots or potatoes, get the dhal boiling and then chop and toss them in. My dhal today has a mix of carrots and potatoes.
You might need to add more hot water to the dhal as it cooks -- check on it every 5 to 10 mins; it should take about 20 mins. I like my dhal all mushed together and the veggies in it should be melting -- you won't see any of the sharp edges they started off with in my version! If you're using tomatoes, toss them in once the dhal has started to loose shape. I had half a leftover roma so in that went. That's the best thing about dhal -- you can pretty much make it what you want. It's a bit like tomato sauce in Italian cooking: there's a basic recipe and everyone modifies it according to taste or need.
I'd stick the rice on when you toss the tomatoes, if indeed you are using them.
When the dhal and the rice are both done, heat the oil in a small frying pan. As soon as the oil is really hot, add the chilles, mustard seeds, cumin and garlic. If the oil is truly hot, the seeds will go "pop" and splutter all over; that's when you add the onion, if using. Stir for a minute or so: as soon as the onion and garlic start to brown at the edges, add the curry leaves and the dhania-jeera powder. The smell is incredible. Stir through, add the coriander leaves and turn off the burner. My grandmother would sometimes do this -- especially when she wasn't using onions -- in a steel ladle but I think we're all safer sticking with our smallest frying pans!
Add the seasoning mix to to the hot dhal, stir in the butter and lime juice. If you're using chopped or frozen spinach, stir it in -- it will wilt or melt into the dhal in a few minutes.

If you can't be bothered with a pot and a pan, you can cook it all in one pot: start by heating the oil and following the above till you get to the dhania-jeera powder. At this point, add the uncooked dhal and the 3 cups of water plus or minus the veggies and let it all cook till done. Add the butter and the lime juice and some extra coriander (the earlier addition won't be green any longer.) If you're using that can of lentils, add that instead of the dry dhal. Stir in 1 cup of hot water and pulse through it with a hand blender.

Et voila! Ladle over rice and eat with mango pickle. Leftovers are great spooned over rice mixed with yoghurt. But I'm no purist when it comes to food: today, my lunch was rice and this dhal with a little bit of leftover fish in black bean sauce from a chinese resto down the street. When I was a kid, I'd eat rice and yellow dhal with mango pickle and BBQ flavoured potato chips! I remember my dad bribing me to finish the rice and dhal on my plate with a large wodge of mango pickle: I'd eat up the rice with the spicy pickled stuffs adhering to the chunk of sour green mango and then spend the afternoon sucking on it for its sour-saltiness. Beyond those memories, I'm told that as a toddler, I was fed on a mush of rice, plain boiled dhal, salt and ghee, as many children are. These days, it's winter comfort food of the first order! And my friends have been known to get a bowlful as soup.... but who knows if the dhal that I've come to make is anything like the stuff my mother or grandmother made. Food like this is all about trying to recapture memories and to visit times and places that are past.

Dhal is probably the most Indian of Indian foods and the one of the easiest things to make, if you've a few ingredients on hand and some time. A potful of dhal can be stretched out with water and some extra seasonings to feed a dozen people; it's eaten with rice and rotis across the country and it probably tastes different in every household. It can be fancied up with shredded coconut, tamarind, jaggery, ground up peanuts, herbs like dill and is even made into a casserole of sorts with leftover rotis or chapattis. My mother makes a mean and lean rasam, which is mostly tangy tomatoes and just a handful of the lentils with most of the same flavourings I use. My dad has spent decades railing against that for being "empty" -- no proteins or carbs but for my brother and me, that's probably the epitome of home-cooking; and no matter what, mine just doesn't taste like my mother's. The meanest resto in India, whether it caters to travelers and tourists or rickshaw drivers will have a version of dhal-chawal or dhal-roti on offer: I have a lasting memory of a little guest house (in Varanasi, I think) that proudly advertised "Dal Flied" on its menu. Dhal is also the metaphor for food across India -- the universally understood version of "our daily bread" in India is "dhal-roti ka bath hai" (it's a matter of dhal and roti understood as the basics of food. Another fave is "dhal, kapada aur makhan" (food, clothes and shelter); I have a vague memory of either a bollywood film or a song with that title. It's a powerful metaphor that reaches across so many years and so many experiences to so many people.

The Proof of the Pudding

is in the eating, or so I'm told. It's another one of those old English proverbs that just make me want to laugh but it does capture my own hopes and trepidations over the election of Obama. I'm a political junkie: I freely admit to watching the inauguration today and being moved by the great masses of people who've come out to mark this day in American history. And as moving as I found it, I doubt that anyone who is not American can understand the depth of feeling this particular election and inauguration has engendered for Americans. I think of it as a singular event and a most welcome one because whatever else it may mean, it means the end of the Bushes and the era of fear, terror and sheer stupidity. Today is encapsulated for me by a number of signs that various TV cameras panned in on: "Dream Come True"; "Cowboys against War"; "Free Palestine"; "Black + White = United at Last"; and "The World is Watching".
Even with only a rudimentary understanding of race in America, I'm as astonished by this election as are those who have lived under the yoke of the peculiarly American binary of black and white. The week I spent in Philadelphia a couple of years ago is seared into my memory. The divide between black and white, and where they live, how they travel, what they eat... all of these seemed to me to be almost caricatured in their exaggeratedness. But it's not a caricature at all: the racialization of poverty in the US is something that underlies so many other racialized distinctions between Americans. If you are poor and black (or Latino), you are likely to live in a dump, in a dangerous neighbourhood, take public transit and eat badly. Read Mike Marqusee's article on race in America here. That on top of the historical injustices may go some way to explaining the mood of the country on this day.
I hope some at least of the hopes that Obama is now carrying come to pass. For me, it's all about how he will change America's arrogant behaviour toward the outside world. He said all the right things today but we will simply have to wait and see. Perhaps most immediately, we who are not American are watching to see what he will do about Guantanamo and the Israel-Palestine crisis. I thought I saw the slightest of winces when Bono (who hasn't met a lost cause he won't take up) worked in a very deliberate reference to the "Palestinian dream" during his performance. But that could just have been indigestion from all the adulation in the air. We shall have to wait and see if Obama is anything more than symbolism.
That said, the symbolism is potent indeed. To watch a black man walk into the presidential house built by slave labour, watched by a million people standing in what was once Washington's Slave Market, referencing Lincoln in his speeches (and surely aware that Lincoln, who Americans like to think of as the Great Emancipator gave two inaugural addresses, one defending slavery that now is not brought up in polite company, and another where he broke with it)... well, this is the kind of symbolism that keeps cultural critics like me employed on cold January evenings.

2009!

I know it's a bit late to be celebrating the arrival of 2009 but it's mostly because I've been too busy celebrating this year in person to do any blogebration about it. 2008 hasn't been one of my best years so I'm really hoping for better things from 2009. In the meantime, here are a few updates: after that wonderful month in London, I'm back in Toronto -- which is snowy, cold, slushy and slippery (I've already landed on my butt once). So delightful to look at after a fresh snowfall but so unpleasant if you actually have to wade through it. Given that I was in India at this time last year, it's hard not to go down the "I'd rather be..." road. I'd love to be in India right now but I think I'd be just as happy to be somewhere else: Egypt really appeals (though perhpas it's not the best place to go to right now). But the plan is to stick around here and do some writing and reading. I went to a huge rally for the people of Palestine yesterday -- ah, to be at a demo in 20 below weather makes me feel truly at home in Toronto again!

Naomi Klein has an article in the Guardian calling for a boycott of Israel: and it makes for an interesting read whether you agree with it or not. For the record, I do agree with her -- this has gone on long enough. And I don't buy the propaganda about it being retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks -- there are other and better ways of dealing with Hamas than through launching a war against the civilian population of Gaza. The morality of defending Israeli citizens against rocket attacks palls against the grim visions of the hundreds of Palestinian civilians being killed in cold-blood by Israeli forces. Also, I don't understand how or why the Israeli government thinks it can displace the elected Hamas government in Gaza by targeting it militarily: surely this is the kind of thing that strengthens rather than weakens it as a political force??? By all means launch a battle "for the hearts and minds" of the people of Gaza and explain to them why you think Hamas is a terrorist organization that should not be elected but to attack them is this is just to make them look persecuted and align them with the people of Gaza (who must, at the very least, be feeling persecuted). To my mind, this war is the definition of insanity and I can only see one reason for it: the Israelis decided that for all of Obama's hand on heart support of Zionism, they would be better off acting now when they still had "Israel can do no wrong" man in the White House. Bluergh.

In other news, not as important to the world at large but still critical, my friends at York (CUPE 3903) are still on strike and it's not pretty: as of Friday, the University has asked the Ministry of Labour to hold a supervised vote. What that means is that the Administration has decided to bypass the elected bargaining committee and take their proposal to a vote of the entire membership: under Ontario law, employers can do this once in a round of bargaining and it's usually a sign of an unusually poisonous relationship between the sides. It means that the employer thinks that the barg team isn't where the membership is -- historically, employers usually lose such forced votes (Ottawa transit workers just went through this and roundly rejected the offer). But I guess we'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, check out a few of these videos from CUPE 3903 on Youtube. There's at least 8 of them and some of them are quite funny. And then there is some really unfunny stuff out there on the same topic too -- this is one that is not just offensive but racist.

On that happy note, I'm going to leave y'all. Will be back in the next few days with posts about travel-writing, though. If I can't actually be somewhere warm, I can still read about it and then write about it!