Bangalore Theatre Over 30 Years: An Actor's POV

                                                      Original members of Gnatak

Circa 1980 I went straight from school plays to a theatre company called Gnatak. Luckily Gnatak was politically invested in the underdog (bullseye!) and believed in the actor’s process (bullseye plus yummy!!). Thus I was instantly immersed in a workshop with Ashok Mandana, a local actor who had just returned from The National School of Drama (NSD) and Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. He had directed a seminal production of Peter Shaffer’s Equus that drew both English and Kannada speaking audiences, a marked departure in a city that was divided geographically into the English speaking Cantonment and Kannada speaking City. Using Chekhov’s Three Sisters as a skills framework, Ashok’s focus was actor development. So much so that I, complete neophyte, hoping for a performance at the end of the workshop, was stunned to learn that the process was reward unto itself! Shortly after, Deepak Majumdar, a Fulbright Scholar who had trained with Jerzy Grotowski in Wroclaw, did an intense workshop around Waiting for Godot, which resonated with the organic, Artaudian theatre that Gnatak was seeking.

Around 1981 Vijay Padaki and Bangalore Little Theatre initiated an actor’s training workshop around Badal Sircar’s Baki Ithihas. This provoked new questions about Third Theatre - a contemporary urban Indian theatre that was independent of folk - and of our responses to sexuality, moral policing and censorship.

Pattabhi Rama Reddy & Little Jasmine's In the Hour of God, based on Sri Aurobindo's Savitri

Simultaneously B. Jayshree, granddaughter of Gubbi Veeranna, the doyen of the Company Nataka form, was training her Spandana actors in folk forms such as Gondaligara mela and Bhootheya aata. I participated in two such workshops, one on the Manipuri martial art Thang-ta and another on mask-making. B. V. Karanth’s Rangayana opened in 1989 and the effect was felt like a wild wind in Bangalore. I remember driving to Mysore to watch Devanur Mahadeva’s Kusuma Bale and being blown away by the revolutionary set – an entire village built with mud in the sunken amphitheatre - and the phenomenal physical performance skills of the repertory.

Little Jasmine's Shakuntala

Thus theatre in Bangalore began to feel the impact of two distinct influences, Indian-folk and Western late modern theatre. Concepts such as Alienation, Absurd Theatre and Poor Theatre were bandied about in those pre-globalization days. College campuses were a hotbed of politics and debate. By 1982 Karnataka was embroiled in the Capitation Fee scandal involving engineering and medical college seats. In response Dr. Isaac Samuel, wrote a satirical play called Lakhs in Black. Gnatak was invited to perform this at innumerable venues from colleges and trade unions to telecom offices. Deccan Herald initiated an annual theatre festival with the redoubtable Prof. T. G. Vaidyanathan as one of the judges. Litterateur and critic, he demanded answers of our theatrical form, questioning accent, identity and motive.

Then overnight, everything changed. In 1991 we were part of a consumer market - student unions were de-radicalized, campus festivals were co-opted by MNC sponsorship, and theatre, long the mainstay of the loony fringe, became acceptable - and worse, respectable! In 1993 I returned to India after training at the Los Angeles Theatre Center only to find Bangalore in the thrall of a new god – Information Technology. It seemed like theatre had succumbed to the hegemony of “The Fashion Show”. That’s all the sponsors seemed to dig. That, or else tedious comedies imported from Bombay that inevitably had names like Run for Your Wife. There were, however, some positive fallouts: increase in production values, validation of the actor’s fee and - the best thing as far as I am concerned – cross-pollination of the arts, as dancers, musicians and martial artists began joining actors in theatre-making.

Little Jasmine's The Wedding Party

In 2004 Ranga Shankara Theatre was born and announced one performance every night of the year sans Mondays. This spawned, around the theatre, a minor industry of actors, production crew, designers and writers. There was new writing for the stage and greater experimentation with language and form. The Trinity Guildhall drama exam, brought to Bangalore by Jagriti Theatre, was growing in popularity. Soon the city began to want theatre as a form of live entertainment. Actors sought new venues - ‘found’ spaces, bars, old homes, parks. Writers responded to the urgent issues of the city: call centres, arranged marriage, sex, identity.

The inevitable next step was pedagogy. In 2009 Ranga Shankara, India Foundation for the Arts and Goethe Institut organized the 1st Symposium on Theatre Pedagogy for Children in Bangalore - just to listen to the experiences of theatre practitioners and affirm, “What we are all doing has value, has meaning.”

Much has changed over the last 30 years and much will continue to change, as theatre is innately responsive and evolutionary. As Peter Brook says - “the work that I do today is the result of all the work that I’ve done through trial and error, in changing times.”

Gnatak's Gracias Devaraj & Madan Chouthoy in Athol Fugard's Island

Sex and Sexability in Hindi Cinema

“Every where and in every thing. In the sky, in the rivers, in the plants and trees and even in a particle of dust. An enigma. In many things at a time and is many things at a time. Visible as well as invisible. Is here and is there. Above and below. With form and also without form. Speaks and speaks not. The self and also the not’ self.”

- Hindu description of God

The oddest thing happened. I began this essay with certain notions about the treatment of sex in Hindi cinema as compared to European cinema. (I should have stopped short right here for the former is a language and the latter is a continent, but the mind scuttled on.) European cinema was far more edgy, honest, and realistic. Hindi cinema relied on fountains, doves and song & dance in lieu of Eros. Sex and sensuality in Hindi cinema, I wondered. Is there even such a thing? For when I thought about great sex scenes the first to come to mind were not scenes from Hindi films, but rather Juliet Binoche and Daniel Day Lewis in Unbearable Lightness of Being. John Malkowich in Bertolucci’s The Sheltering Skies. And so on.

Then began the research. Pillows were plumped, tea was brewed (oh the travails of work) and stacks of films were watched. Everything from Basu Bhattacharya to Vikram Bhatt, Fellini to Bruno Dumont. Some were lust-inducing, some vaguely erotic. But strangely, I soon tired of the bonking in European films and began to long for something else – call it romance or the possibility of more. But by the time I had reached Pakeezah (my viewing was not chronological); nothing seemed more erotic than Meena’s Kumari’s bejeweled foot. And I wasn’t, apparently, alone in feeling this way! One friend told me that he thought the scene where the three protagonist’s race through the Louvre in Bertolucci’s The Dreamers was far more erotic than all the graphic sex it contained.

How then does one write about as explosive a combination as sex and cinema? Some would say that cinema is sex, in a manner of speaking. Seductive and reductive. And that film is ultimately a visual medium and sex and sensuality are mediated by the way a film is conceived. And films are conceived by writers and directors, performed by actors and the dots are joined by editors. All human beings, yes? With unique and often divergent ideas about depictions of sex.

To begin with, one can’t take Bombay out of the Hindi film industry. So much in the news for the recent terrorist attacks, Bombay is our beloved dreamscape, our multiple city, our notion of modern India. Syncretic traditions, a polyglot culture, reckless, romantic and yet holding together one way or the other. The film industry is a microcosm of Bombay and into this, many years ago, was born a girl called Mahjabeen Bano who was later re-named Meena Kumari and fell desperately in love with one Kamal Amrohi. But more on this later…

Back to the huge difference between a sex scene in say, Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now and Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay. Both are films of the 70’s, so how do you explain the gap? Perhaps the answer lies in the two great treatises that impact our cultural and critical traditions. While the Western performance tradition has been influenced by Aristotle’s Poetics, we in India are guided by Bharatha’s Natya Shastra. Interestingly, the essence of Poetics has to do with the content and the Idea. Unity of Action, Time and Space are emphasized, thus paving the way for a practical, logical approach to performance. On the other hand, the Natya Shastra’s theory of Rasa and Bhava is all about emotion. If the performer displays Sringara rasa, the bhava of Rati must be evoked in the audience. So there is a strong focus on the intention of performance built into our aesthetic decisions. Performance can’t ever stand alone; it always seeks to evoke a feeling in the viewer.

The other influence is Polytheism. Bombay revels in its public celebrations of religious events. From Id-ul-Fitr on Mohammed Ali Road to Navroze in the Dadar Parsi Colony, to Ganesh Chathurthi and Christmas all over, the city has seen it all. And Polytheism in turn, breeds a glorious circuitousness. Neither this, nor that… and yet, everything - goes the Indian axiom. They could well be talking about sex! Ask an Indian why they are late to work and no doubt you’ll hear about their father-in-law’s gout, thus explaining the oblique approach to sex in cinema. My argument is that this round about approach has a grace to it and further, lends itself to hope. And what can be grander than Hope, sweet challenger and opponent of nihilism?

Therefore the first thing to be cast aside will be comparisons between Hindi films and Cinematheque favourites. It’s as chalk to cheese. We could not have made a Last Tango in Paris in 1972, just a decade and a half after Independence. Nicholas Roeg was British and heir to the Kitchen Sink theatre tradition. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, who played what has been called one of the greatest sex scenes in cinema, were the products of the Western 60’s and an all together different, realist sensibility. It is therefore not meaningful to compare the genres.

Let’s begin instead with a 1972 release in Bombay. This was the year that Meena Kumari died after a long battle with heartache and alcoholism and her love, Kamal Amrohi, finally released Pakeezah. It was incidentally the year that Bertolucci made Last Tango in Paris. When I think of Pakeezah two cinematic details are indelible. The first is the image of Raaj Kumar being seduced on a train by the sight of Meena Kumari’s foot. He walks into her compartment by error. She shifts in her sleep and her lihaaf moves, revealing a single foot wearing a heavy anklet. He looks down at it and eventually places a love letter between her toes. “Don’t place this lovely foot on the ground” it says “for it will be sullied.” Why her foot? Why would Kamal Amrohi select this unlikely body part to construct a scene that has to do with sexual attraction? Furtherest from her heart and yet, think about it, so…ticklish! Go no further than Freud’s Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex to learn that in fact the foot is a “primitive sexual symbol”. You do the math!

The second detail is in the lyrics of Inhin Logon Ne, written by Majrooh Sultanpuri.

In our first meeting with the adult Sahibjaan, she is dancing in the kothi. In the background are other verandahs, hallways and courtyards and we see other courtesans dancing as well, thus establishing the large and public nature of these performances. And Sahibjaan sings “Inhin logon ne le lina dupatta mera”. It is a scene about professed or felt shame, the disturbing of modesty. Inherent in the song is also a playful, or again, perhaps a professed reluctance. These people, not I, have removed my veil. Thus they have shamed me. My actions are involuntary.

“Hamrii na maano bajajva se pucho, hamrii na maano saiyya.

Jisne ashrafi gaz dina dupatta mera.”

If you don’t believe me, ask the merchant who sold me this cloth.

Or ask him who dyed it pink.

Or he who ripped it away in the bazaar.

Thus a series of men have contributed to Sahibjaan’s metaphoric unveiling. Knowingly or unwittingly there are two things at play in the construction of this scene. They are:

1. References to codified tradition – in order to keep things under control

2. Folk style sexual innuendo – in order to loosen them up

It is made clear to the audience through cultural codes such as the usage of a classical mukthai early in the song that the actions on screen have been given the green light by the authority of tradition. Having absorbed this subliminal information, the audience feels free to enjoy the folk aspect which follows, namely the sexual innuendo of the lyrics.

Control vs. the lack thereof. I let go, I hold back. I want to, I don’t. This is an oft used device in depictions of sex. Thus tradition, poetry and innuendo come together to create a scene suffused with playfulness that still foregrounds its sexual intention.

Oftentimes, while sex is the subject of the film, it need not necessarily be a sexy film. Basu Bhattacharya’s Aastha comes to mind. In a departure from allusion and innuendo, the film-maker uses a realistic approach. The film is about a wife and a mother (Rekha) who decides to prostitute herself to earn money to buy little luxuries for her family. The first time she sleeps with a client, the scene is quite graphic. We see how he touches her in close up and then her face as she is brought to orgasm by him. Here again feet play a part in a purportedly sexy but in actuality comic toe-sucking sequence. She then repeats all of this while making love to her husband and he enjoys it. He asks her where she learned to do this and she says she watched a film. (An irony that is worth noting!) The only actor in the film to appear comfortable with the sex is Rekha. The others appeared to want me, the viewer, to feel that sex is illicit, dirty and furtive. And this wasn’t just the case with the illicit, furtive bought sex; even the marital sex had that quality. I don’t enjoy Rekha’s cutesy acting style, but she is unfailingly authentic during the sex scenes. She just looks sensual, and happy to be so. Something that even Om Puri, who plays the husband, couldn’t manage. Just can’t seem to escape the combined impact of belief, custom and upbringing. Add patriarchy to this cocktail and it’s probably best to stick with poetry and allusion.

Much has been said, mostly disparagingly, about the great Indian habit of cutting to a gushing fountain as bodies approach each other on screen. Sure, it’s cloying and annoying. One wonders, why the hell we can’t we get past it and learn to snog with lusty abandon. Yet, after many hours of film viewing, I’m beginning to think it’s a fatal flaw that eventually works in our favour. How so, you may well ask? OK, look at a movie like Red where Aftab Shivdasani applies himself to Celina Jaitley’s mouth like a limpet. Why doesn’t it work? Is it the fault of the shoddy script or is it something deeper and more misogynistic? Jism is touted as being a landmark in the depiction of man-woman relations in Hindi cinema. It was better than Red, but not by far. The film was so much to do with the look – photogenic Pondicherry and the allure of white and turquoise costumes. But beyond that I was unaware of any real chemistry between the actors, not even in the imitation 9 ½ weeks scene, and eventually it became a film about proving that a sexual woman is perforce a murderous schemer. Given this scenario, that is of patriarchy and latent misogyny, elaborate song and dance routines are much more respectful and in some cases, more erotic.

For eventually what is it that is sexy or sensual in a film? Is it the fact of sex taking place or is it the possibility, the potential and the probability of sex? Is it coquettishness or freedom? Urmila Matondkar’s dancing in the opening credits of Rangeela is one of the sexiest scenes in Hindi cinema. Her utter abandonment and that fact that she is reveling in the dancing make it so. She harks back to women like Zeenat Aman and Parveen Babi who were happy to be sexy sans coy glances and disclaimers. They were a hard act to follow. They radiated the spirit of the times (70’s Bombay, Cellars, Osho) with their long hair and unabashed bodies. Watching Zeenat Aman dance in the 1980’s Qurbani was some kind of wonderful. Similarly, I used to wonder why my mind retained the memory of Helen’s dancing to Mehbooba while unable to recall Basanthi dancing on glass. The one was sexy and the other was …well, some sort of martyr/hero sexy-baazi that I don’t get. Give me possibility and freedom any day.

Talking about landmark films, Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara is one such. Besides being a stunning adaptation of Othello, it has terrific sex scenes. The scene where Kareena Kapoor (Dolly) has learned how to sing an English song, Stevie Wonder’s I just called to say I love you – from Viveik Oberoi (Kesu Firangi) and in turn sings it to Ajay Devgan (Omi) is gorgeous. Kareena Kapoor performance in that one scene marks one of the best seductions I have seen thus far. The awkwardness of her singing, Omi’s jealousy, their subsequent playful love-making that ends with her pinning him down on a haystack with a gun and asking, while sitting atop him, “Now tell me why I am a witch?” The song “O saathi re din dube na” is the cherry on top of an already lovely scene.

And when Omi and Dolly finally make love, it is believable and remarkably sensual. When I watched Omkara, I felt herein lies the future. We’ve found our own Natya Shastra-driven way to the realistic Indian sex scene. The woman is into it, the man isn’t behaving like a perv, it’s visually indigenous – who can forget Dolly’s hands on Omi’s back with his sacred thread visible – and we the audience are drawn in and not made to feel bereft.

Regarding nudity, it should be a non-issue. There is something lovely about watching a body on screen. Further, a nude body doesn’t always have to be a body engaged in a sexual transaction with another. Bathing, dancing, swimming, cooking…all perfectly viable naked. The boys jumping into a woodland pond in Ismail-Merchant’s Room with a View is an example of that faun-like playfulness that nudity can evoke. It’s all in the director’s head. He/she can make a cringe-worthy scene that has exploitation written all over it…or not. It’s all directly proportionate to the directors understanding of, and experience with sex, and substantially, how they look at a woman. Ditto for the actors performance of a sensual scene. It’s pretty black and white. Do they in their most honest self, think that sex is sly, devious and that women like sexual violence? Or not. As Tanya Krzywinska in Sex & the Cinema compellingly writes “Cinematic sex is intricately interwoven into a matrix of industrial, economic, social and cultural factors.”

Interestingly the male body has become much the focus in recent times. Hrithik Roshan and John Abraham were the harbingers of this trend. At least the female gaze has caught up with the male gaze. The way that John Abraham has been shot in Dostana can set hetero and homo pulse throbbing. However conventional and stereotypical, it is a nod towards change. For what it’s worth, that’s a step forward. At least the onus of eyecandy-hood is off the women.

In the final analysis, it’s not that Hindi films can’t handle sex scenes; it’s just that we have developed a native, non-western cinematic language with which to articulate sex and sexual arousal. Eros becomes even more finely tuned if one stretches the feeling. The intellectual power of this method is that it acknowledges the beauty of anticipation. Much like an aalap requires the musician to pulls on a single string allowing one to listen to all the possible microtones before arriving. Viraha or yearning in Indian aesthetics is considered more worthy than the actual capturing of or arriving at.

When the stakes are high, and the stakes are indeed high in this, our Post-terror world, one wants emotions that are capable of seeing one through. Through pain, loneliness, life, even. Take my heart somewhere, we plead. Don’t ravage it and leave it hanging. The sadness of most sex scenes is in the empty feeling they leave you with. The Guardian critic, Peter Bradshaw, on reviewing The Dreamers says it was “like drinking red wine on an empty stomach.” How ever seductive at the moment it is clearly going to leave you feeling nauseous.

That’s it then. It’s lovely to be writing an essay on sex in Hindi cinema when western critics are ruing the death of cinematic sex thanks to easily downloadable porn that has taken it into the private domain. So while we still have it, and haven’t entirely succumbed to numbing homogeneity, let’s enjoy the crazy, romantic masthi of sex in Hindi Cinema and join in saying “Viva la Bombay!”

One River, One Crab (Old article published in The Indian Express circa 2008)

I have been feeling for a while that scripted English language theatre, as against devised theatre, is going through a crisis of form, content and method. But two plays I saw during the Royal Court Theatre Writer’s Bloc Festival, offer hope. One was Turel (River) by Swar Thounaojam and the other, Crab by Ram Ganesh Kamatham. The former sinuous, slithered along the earth, mysterious and apparently placid. The latter was sky bound, with harsh bursts of firecracker dialogue that sounded the way we speak in Indian cities.

Turel is set on a riverbank outside Imphal. A child has died and is being buried. Two characters, the old Brahmin, Eigya and the drunken Luwangcha, are living their separate, yet interconnected lives on the river bank. Eigya comes by every day to put fresh flowers on his grandchild’s grave and Luwangcha teases him, keeps him company.

There are subtle mentions of insurgency and the Meirapeibi – “young men with guns, women with torches” - and one is acutely aware that this is Manipur. The language spells impermanence. The shifting riverbank sand, Luwangcha’s missing wife, the anticipation of violence.

Then that thing happens. Luwangcha is attacked by a commando who, interestingly, speaks in Hindi. All other dialogue is in English with a little Meiteilon. So the choice of Hindi as the language of the commando comes as a scathing indictment of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which allows the Outsider to penetrate a culture and a people with brutality. As he prods him with his gun, he discovers Luwangcha’s secret and something changes unalterably.

English language theatre in India has often shied away from political content. So watching a play about Manipur that is so exacting is a new experience. The playwright has rooted the play in a deeply personal space – the relationship between Eigya and Luwangcha. But following the discovery of Luwangcha’s secret, the play explodes into the political domain and then unravels further, till personal and political are inseparable.

About Crab, it has nothing to do with the sand critter. This Crab is an abbreviation of carabiner, the rock climber’s tool. Turel and Crab are both written by young writers grappling with the sounds and vibrations of societies that are adrift. The central metaphor of each play is one of longing. The birth pangs of the river. The solitude of a rock face. Both have that quality of viraha, so beloved of Indian aesthetics.

Crab has four characters, but one who matters. Zamiel. The existential heir of Meursault in his remorseless commitment to the truth and Gregor Samsa in his love that is willing to go the length. In 2007, when measures of success are employability, disposable income and other corporate-speak, the “alone-ness” of Zamiel is stark and darkly romantic. In contrast you have the hapless Rocky. Would that he were called Stone. He’s never gonna get the girl. Try as he might to get the job, learn to climb, scramble, achieve… It’s downhill for Rocky. Yet the characters are sufficiently grayscale (Zamiel’s relentlessness could well be a pain in the neck and Rocky’s stupidity is often endearing) to make the audience see oneself in Rocky while aspiring to be Zamiel.

There were things that I would change about both scripts but playwrights are works in progress and deserving of time. The purpose of this article is to say, something’s going on here, man! In the hands of these diverse, angry-joyous-introspective-self absorbed-globally aware Indian kids from Manipur to Banglore – English language theatre is looking up. And the Royal Court Theatre is looking India-ways.

- Kirtana Kumar

Kirtana Kumar is a Bangalore based theatre artist and documentary film-maker.

Food in Cinema (Old articles published in Cine Blitz)

My mother’s family is from Mangalore. My mother’s sisters talk about food ALL the time. What I cooked for lunch, the price of bangda, the best way to cook meen pulli munchi, what I will cook for dinner. So if I love foodie-films, how can I be blamed? I grew up, much like Tita from “Like Water for Chocolate”, nurtured by the sounds, sights and smells of many kitchens. My grandmother’s soups fragrant with ginger and chopped coriander, the smell of jeera being roasted for the rasam, crushed garlic and mustard seed crackling in hot oil, cinnamon, clove and cardamom infusing my very dreams. Yes, that’s right - I am totally controlled by the women in my family. And how do they do it? Duh, through their culinary skills of course.

So something in me leaps at the idea of celluloid food.

Food as the ultimate aggressor – that’s what this article is about. Think about it, Mickey Rourke popping a Habanero chilli into the blindfolded Kim Basinger’s mouth in “9 ½ Weeks”. Or Hannibal Lecter gourmandizing on his victim’s liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti. Or the father cooking a spectacular and guilt inducing Sunday lunch for his daughters in Ang Lee’s “Eat Drink Man Woman” … you get the drift?!

Truly delectable foodie films actually influence what you want to eat. It’s been documented. When we were kids reading Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series, we absolutely craved scones and potted shrimp. Same thing, different medium. So if you are feeling gluttonous, here’s a celluloid menu to die for:

1.“Like Water for Chocolate” (Mexican) - Cream fritters, Mole, Quail, Tequila

2. “Babette’s Feast” (French) Turtle soup, Blinis Demidoff, Quail, Clos de Vougeot 1845

“Like Water for Chocolate” is based on the novel by Laura Esquivel and was directed by her ex-husband Alfonso Arau. “Babette’s Feast” is based on a story by Isak Denison (author of Out of Africa) and was directed by Gabriel Axel. In both films, one character uses food to control another or to stir things up. Tita keeps her brother-in-law Pedro well and truly seduced with her cooking. Her emotions infuse her food with all the beauty of magic realism. When she is sad because Pedro is marrying her sister Rosaura, her tears fall into the wedding cake batter making wedding guest weep profusely when they eat the cake.

In both LWFC as well as Babette’s Feast, a parent prevents her or his progeny from marrying, thus causing passion to take on other forms. In the former, Tita’s ardour enter her food. In the latter, Babette with her decadent French style that involves wine, live produce, fresh fruit and herbs shakes the foundations of the puritanical spinster sisters, Martina and Phillipa.

Quails figure largely in both films as a symbol of hedonism. Tita makes a marmalade of rose petals from the flowers that Pedro has given her. She then smothers her roasted quails in this most amorous of marmalades which in turn makes everyone who eats this want to run out and make love! When Babette’s provisions arrive by boat, we have a hint of what is to come when she gleefully collects her cage of live quails. It is hilarious watching a bunch of people, who have been previously subjected to a diet of cruel-gruel and broth, now faced with such epicurean wonders! And when one of them pithily declares, albeit while gorging on quail, “Like the Wedding at Cana, the food is of no importance” you know you are watching a very subversive little film.

There are enough overt associations of food with evil. Women cooking, on celluloid, look like the archetypical witch in Hell’s Kitchen. What with the pots, vapours, bubbling stock and sweaty foreheads. It’s all a bit orgiastic. Tita’s mother, Mama Ellena, asks her if she put an emetic in the cake that has made the guest so sick with longing. Martina and Phillipa speak in hushed whispers about “exposure to dangerous, even evil powers.”

Another great food film is Ang Lee’s “Eat Drink Man Woman”. The scenes of cooking are a work of love. Cutting shallots, throwing ingredients into a hot wok, chopsticks flying about, the greens and yellows of Bok Choy. How lovely that the cook in this case is a man. Although he is a bit of a Mangy mum, with his incessant need to cook and feed his daughters. Why, he could be related to me!

I’ve been wondering if there are any Hindi films where food plays a central character. Did “Pakeezah” feature a scene where Meena Kumari dips her fingers into a bowl of almond covered phirnee? Did Jai and Veeru ever cook a meal over a fire? Some rotis and a chicken smothered in ginger, garlic, curd and turmeric, perhaps? Green chilli and raw onion on the side. Do write and tell me of food scenes you remember.

I certainly fancy watching a film with Shahrukh Khan stirring up an urbane Coq au Vin. Button mushrooms…..a tad of thyme…a quartered chicken and some fine Merlot. Or maybe Ajay Devgan cooking a Yakhni biriyani. Or Viveik Oberoi doing some Red Beans and Rice while singing Pastime Paradise. Or Saif Ali Khan making crepes with strawberries…Or Abhishek flipping a masala dosai….. Oh the mind boggles!

- Kirtana Kumar in Cine Blitz

Heritage:Lost Spaces (Old published articles)

Heritage spaces? In Bangalore? Dear Reader, look around you. The tree massacres, the illegal incursion on Lalbagh, the daily demolition of old bungalows, Central Jail now euphemistically called Freedom Park. Is our heritage worth getting into a lather about? Please, won’t you be the judge?


Driving to BIAL on Friday, I see a shorn and shaven hillside rising up in front of me, evidence of a mining lobby that is apparently unmoved by monoliths or outlays of the Western Ghats and a political mass that fosters such crassness. Yet, the roadscape is slick, reminiscent of an anonymous foreign country. Somewhere along the road, on the right, one sees fragments from the time of Tippu Sultan, a dry-stacked stone wall and mantappa. But in the scheme of things – the political, spatial and social development of Bangalore - they are dwarfed, less important that the grandeur of the road and airport.


Perhaps one should begin with a litany of the losses.

Many years ago Bangalore lost Dr.Miranda’s house on St.Mark’s Road. The Vaz family’s Terra Vera, near by, is practically gone. We lost Victoria Hotel to a mall. We have lost several dearly beloved homes in Basavangudi, including the majestic Sheesh Mahal near Vani Vilas Circle. Onward from Lalbagh West Gate stood Sheesh Mahal, with its ornate mortar work windows on the right. On the left stood a house with wooden trellises and a sign for Afghan Snow. We’ve lost them all. Why, we’ve even lost Vani Vilas Circle or National College Circle as it used to be called. A piece of Bangalore history, we lost it to a flyover. We’ve lost the promenade on MG Road, as also Lakeview and Jamal’s. We’ve lost that old stalwart, Cash Pharmacy. Most recently, we have lost India Coffee House. Dewar’s Bar looks like its days are numbered.

And then work backwards to configure an equation between all that heritage signifies and all that the loss of heritage unleashes.

Heritage has been defined as the tangible and intangible expressions of a society’s culture that have been passed on from generation to generation and as representative of the “cultural capital and inspirational power of people and communities”. Taken in isolation the word “heritage” is itself often factious because it seems to imply ease and the insouciance of wealth. That it is best left to countries with money to make the argument for heritage conservation since we have enough urban issues on our plate what with public transport, sanitation and garbage disposal. Lazy intellects would even posit heritage against development, as if the two were mutually exclusive. Yet, heritage has everything to do with the way we see ourselves, each other and how we articulate ourselves. More importantly, heritage, especially in the form of public spaces and flora, is beyond individual or state; it serves the larger human community.

Having said this, I understand that heritage is a tough nut to crack. Short of clinging to tradition in a Luddite sense, in a country as diverse as ours, it is crazy to try and chalk out criteria for urban heritage conservancy that is based on age, the subjectivity of aesthetics or monetary value alone. For heritage to be relevant to a city I suspect a more citizen driven, ad hoc and ear-to-the ground approach is called for. For most of us, heritage is a bundle of things that make a city special and that mark the denizens of that city with a uniqueness that fortifies them from within and enables them to live splendidly. It is the value we place on the anachronistic and funky, as also on the historic and traditional. Thus an avenue of Rain trees (Samanae Saman) is as precious as Cash Pharmacy. And the two make sense, because we have the wit and candour to love an old bookshop or an ice-cream parlour. It is the way the glass and chrome of the new multi storied buildings is balanced by the harmony of old bungalows with gardens and jackfruit trees. And so on.


The spaces mentioned earlier were deleted from Bangalore in order to accommodate (no! not low income housing) but new temples to wealth and consumerism. Not to say they didn’t have previous utility, it’s just that in their new avatar, wealth for the individual is magnified exponentially. But rather than lay the blame on the individual, I think we should question our society that is so obsequious and upwardly mobile in its intentions that it constantly shoots itself in the foot in the name of progress. As a people we haven’t cared enough to protect our heritage, have we? We don’t have an urban commission worth mentioning. Certainly not one that has the vision to develop our city in a manner that is gracious or fine. One that has factored in quality of life for everyone. Even Shanghai, the city that Bangalore aspires to be when it grows up, has protected its Soviet neo-classical, communist era architecture alongside its traditional Shikumen residences. Further, this not an argument about tradition versus modernity. The two can co-exist with ease as in Paris, where the French have had the cultural confidence to place the fantastically industrial Centre Georges Pompidou alongside the 16 century Hotel de Ville.

The productivist mantra of the ‘90’s was that people couldn’t “afford” to hold onto their old properties because of the real estate boom in the city. Implying that an old home has no business standing upright since the land value could generate so much more. So much more what, one might well ask. And have we balanced the equation? i.e. does the elimination of heritage spaces on the one hand make us a kinder, more loving, more joyous people on the other? Clearly not, if the daily news is anything to go by. So perhaps it is time to pay heed to the emotional well being of a city. In keening for lost spaces this author is in fact not mourning lime and mortar, but familiar markers, milestones and witnesses. The stuff that solace is made of. Our souls yearn for that intangible cultural heritage, that long continuum of a city’s ancient and contemporary history. We want to be a part of its warp and weft. When my parent’s sold their home, my then four year old daughter cried “You can’t do this, all my memories are here.” So yes, the value of heritage is beyond aesthetics; it also lies in the domain of memory which one could extrapolate to include family, friends, experience and love.

After all Premier Bookshop on Church Street was not about monkey tops or Italian tiles. Yet it represented a common Bangalore heritage of intellectual enquiry, of relationships, of timelessness. In the post-globalization pursuit of homogeneity, Premier Bookshop was the gentle rebel. A small store, a learned bookseller, Proust rubbing shoulders with Ramanujam. By just being there and doing its thing, Premier Bookshop enriched and gladdened Bangalore. Travelers to the city, via Lonely Planet or the grapevine, knew Premier Bookshop the way they knew Koshy’s, MTR or Avenue Road. It was unique and irreplaceable. Maybe the key to heritage lies in that irreplaceable quality. When the value of a space lies in its being and not in its return on investment.


Finally, perhaps we should question our fundamental assumption that any decision taken to further personal wealth is necessarily a good one. I challenge this rationale. And challenge the idea of the inevitability of greed and the indisputability of gain. Surely that is not our raison d’etre on this earth. Let us instead re-investigate the twin notions of cultural capital and the inspirational power of people and communities. We need to shore up our cultural resources as well for us to feel in anyway complete. Therefore the long term impact of prioritizing one public space over another (road over relic, gated community over family home) and eradicating anything that will connect us to memory, while appearing to be practical and pro-development, may hurt us in very subtle ways. Maybe the disappearance of physical manifestations of grace will mark the end of civility for Bangalore.

So do we feel that the loss of heritage is worth getting into a lather about? Antoine de Saint Exupery, the author of The Little Prince, once wrote “A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.”


I seek that inner distance and feel sure, dear Reader, that you do too.

- Kirtana Kumar in the Sunday Herald 2009