Does anyone know what a “Hindu” accent is? Some people on Craig’s list are looking for just such a person.

IMMEDIATELY Looking for a Hindu-speaking Female as News Presenter. Must be able to speak English but with a STRONG ACCENT.

How to apply: submit your profile at www.FancyFlix.com (it’s completely free of charge) and receive further instructions by email.

This job is supposed to be in New Jersey. If they are in Jersey, shouldn’t they know any better. This shouldn’t be as irritating to me as it is. The proverbial straw of complacent ignorance that is breaking this camel’s back. If I had more energy I would write crank applications. Would that be petty, or some sort of elaborate performance piece?

I guess these people aren’t that different from the Met. I went there yesterday with a friend visiting from India. We went to the South Asia section, which had works from Ancient India, with pre-historic art, Indus Valley artifacts and ancient Hindu and Buddhist sculptures. The text in that section informed us that Buddhism declined because of Muslim marauders from the 10th century onwards, this is just plain untrue, Buddhism had been co-opted a long time before that, and pretty much in decline by the time the raids from the West appeared on the scene. (Remember the Dasha Avatar comic book from Amar Chitra Katha, which called Buddha the ninth reincarnation of Vishnu?!) Then all the Mughal art was put in the “Islamic and Near Easter” section. I don’t know what sort of historiography the Met is looking at, but its definitely the 19th century, perhaps the cutting edge of Art History as far as South Asian art is concerned, lies in the 19th century, otherwise why this partition? What are these people waiting for to break their slumber, the kiss of a charming Emperor Ashok?

With the election just round the corner, my anxiety level has gone up a hundred fold. I just had to put up this little video I made for the good folks atTermite TV, for their “Terror” show. The show will broadcast soon, and they will be putting up part of the show on the web as well, so will link to it when it is up. Anyway you can see “Bollywood Terror” on my web-page. And it stars Sharmila Tagore and Vinod Khanna

Let me know how it goes, since I am new to this. Also, the low bandwidth version may be suitable for those who understand Hindi.

Rediff has an interview with Khushwant Singh, now in his 90s. For those unfamiliar with him, Khushwant Singh is a veteran journalist and writer, a fixture on the Indian scene for close to 50 years. Sometimes aggravating, sometimes insightful, and always fun to read. In this interview he talks about Indira Gandhi, the person and the legacy:

People would say the Cabinet has only one man (Indira Gandhi) and that the rest are all hijras (eunuchs), but the fact is she reduced them to that level.

“In Whose Name?” a short by Nandini Sikand, for which I was the editor is screening at IAAC festival. It explores the hijacking of “Indian Culture” by the right wing, something very disturbing to those of us who grew up loving the very things that took on a very sinister meaning down the road. Sometimes I wonder if I hadn’t learnt classical music and dance, this co-optation would have been as disturbing as it is. Would I have felt differently, if I had been like the other modern misses in school, who wouldn’t be caught speaking in Hindi, let alone engage in anything identified as too “vernacular” “behenji” or “desi.”

This film has had a peculiar history of people trying to make sure it doesn’t get seen. Mighty odd to expend all that energy on a short film, so please go and see what is annoying them so much.

In Whose Name? (2004, 11 mins.) is a filmic essay which explores the co-opting of icons by political agendas. This experimental short is told through personal narrative, Bollywood films, comic book art and home movies.

IAAC Fourth Annual Indian Diaspora Film Festival on Nov 7 at 3 p.m (Short Program 4). Anthology Film Archives at 32 Second Avenue (at 2nd street

For schedule information
For tickets

Jehane Noujaim’s Control Room is coming out on DVD. Indiewire has re-run an interview with her. Its interesting, how everyone has to clarify that they have no strong beliefs, in order to have their work taken seriously:

iW: Would you say you were objective in this film?

Noujaim: Well, “objectivity is a bit of mirage,” as one of my characters says.

I was biased towards the characters I was following: Mintier, Deema, Rushing, Sameer, Hassan.

iW: But didn’t you bring your own political bias to the mix?

Noujaim: I don’t know enough or feel qualified to make political judgments. I didn’t have any strong beliefs going into this. I was just very curious about who was giving the information to the world.

Noujaim deals with the “belief, politics, whose side are you on?” issue quite well in the interview.

I have been neglecting my blog lately, mostly because of long work schedules and also because of having to go away to Paris for the Paris Underground Film Festival, where two of my films were screening. Well, Paris was fun, they seemed to actually enjoy my films, instead of shifting in their chairs with dismayed incomprehension. Other than the screenings the rest of the visit was spent in eating, drinking and conversation and envying their marvelous public transportation system.

We spent most of our days walking around the streets and visiting spots like Balzac’s failed printing establishment and a cafe with a post revolutionary guillotine. The only major museum visit was to Napolean’s tomb, which is a bombastic site, with friezes glorifying him as the destroyer of chaos, the giver of laws, and the centralizer of administration, looking like quite the Caesar. Our other major quest was to find the exhibit of the dog he had on St. Helena, stuffed for posterity, and Napolean’s death mask. I shot lots of footage of all this death pageantry, don’t know what I will do with it yet.

Anyway, the first thing I found on coming back was this hilarious political sex ad video, via Tom Tomorrow. Late night sex ads were the only thing I liked about American TV when first came to the States. Their harsh lighting and iconic qualities were very similar to the religious photo novellas the nuns made us read when I was attending a convent school in India, so it must have been sheer nostalgia on my part. The use of cheap video effects gave those ads an abstract quality that was distancing and made an interesting juxtaposition with the cloying intimacy of the voices. Anyhow the Lie Girls have used those techniques to very good effect.

My friend Shebana Coelho has produced a radio documentary on Enid Blyton, which will be broadcast on Oct. 30:

BBC RADIO 4 DOCUMENTARY  “BLYTON IN BOMBAY”
SET FOR BROADCAST ON SAT, OCTOBER 30, 2004 AT 3:30 PM (UK TIME)

British children’s writer Enid Blyton has been a staple of Indian childhoods for generations. In the BBC 4 radio documentary BLYTON IN BOMBAY, Shebana Coelho sets out for the city of her own childhood, Bombay, to investigate the effects of a steady and persistent diet of Blyton on generations of Bombay-ites.  The half hour program features readers of all ages confessing their first time with Blyton, their favourite characters, their attempts at recreating her world, their reactions to India references in Blyton and their opinions on Blyton’s legacy.  As Coelho crisscrosses Bombay uncovering the ways that Blyton continues to linger in the streets and minds of its residents, it becomes clear that to talk about Enid Blyton’s books in India is, in fact, a way to talk about so many other things – political, social and personal  -  all washed down with mythical “lashings” of ginger beer.

BLYTON IN BOMBAY is scheduled for broadcast on  BBC Radio 4 (92-95 Fm and 198LM in the UK) on  Saturday, October 30 at 3:30 pm (UK time).  Listeners in India and other countries can hear the program via digital radio (at 8 pm, India time) or via the web: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/.  (the program will be streamed live and remain on the website for about a week)  
Please visit the BBC Radio 4 site for further listening details.

A lot of us learnt the joy of reading through her books. And also learnt to idolize a bucolic English childhood, and to see ourselves through these idealized English characters. So there is an entire generation, who in the back of their head crave buttered scones, a really rather bland and uninteresting dish. Blyton seems to be popular worldwide, though people like Madonna are exempt from the Blyton Effect.

Here is a biography of Enid Blyton. It has a lot to say about the Mystery and the Famous Five series, but nothing about the Three Golliwog stories. The Golliwog figure has an interesting history, and Blyton’s depiction is one in a long line of such figures:

The claim that Golliwogs are racist is supported by literary depictions by writers such as Enid Blyton. Unlike Florence Upton’s, Blyton’s Golliwogs were often rude, mischievous, elfin villains. In Blyton’s book, Here Comes Noddy Again, a Golliwog asks the hero for help, then steals his car. Blyton, one of the most prolific European writers, included the Golliwogs in many stories, but she only wrote three books primarily about Golliwogs: The Three Golliwogs (1944), The Proud Golliwog (1951), and The Golliwog Grumbled (1953). Her depictions of Golliwogs are, by contemporary standards, racially insensitive. An excerpt from The Three Golliwogs is illustrative:

Once the three bold golliwogs, Golly, Woggie, and Nigger, decided to go for a walk to Bumble-Bee Common. Golly wasn’t quite ready so Woggie and Nigger said they would start off without him, and Golly would catch them up as soon as he could. So off went Woogie and Nigger, arm-in-arm, singing merrily their favourite song — which, as you may guess, was Ten Little Nigger Boys.

The last time I went to India, I brought back some of my Enid Blyton collection, among them was this particular book. My friend Sam came to visit, and looked at the book and said, “You grew up on this? no wonder Indians are kind of crazy.”

The Guardian reports that a spoof documentary is in the works, it uses special effects and Marilyn Monroe impersonators to recreate Marilyn Monroe’s life after her drug overdose in 1962.

Aishwarya Rai has been frozen for posterity in the Madame Tussauds museum. The article from Times of India spends a lot of time describing the sari the waxwork wears:

…. we worked on the embroidery and borrowed the colour from the peacock (green, red, blue and earthy mix), which is very Indian. The design is called the carpet design and the pattern, pre-pleated.”

“Initially,” says Shahab, “the Tussauds’ people were apprehensive of the sari as there would be a certain posture that the statue would take. That’s why the sari is designed in a way that can be taken off easily for cleaning. There’s a skirt pattern, with a sari pleated on it. Fifty artists worked on it for 3 shifts in 9 days!”

If you visit you might be tempted to go to the Brad Pitt exhibit, which has a strokable chest and squeezable bottom!