The Library Bazar, Mussoorie. Probably from 1917. 10 cm x 15 cm, Chromolithograph (Courtesy Priya Paul Collection and Tasveer Ghar)

I’ve always wondered how it got its reputation. And a few months ago I got the chance to find out. I was asked by Tasveer Ghar, a digital network of popular culture, to write an essay based on materials donated by collector Priya Paul. The collection itself is an embarrassment of riches, but my heart skipped a beat when I saw picture postcards from Mussoorie and Dehradun. Yellow with age, almost a hundred years old, with images of places I have known since I first learned that places have names.

The results of my exploration are up at the Tasveer Ghar site.

The best thing that could happen to these poor little kids–Rubina and the little boy–would be for them to be adopted out of their terrible family situations…..

There are other people whose hearts bleed even more:

…..If I had the money, I would buy her in a heartbeat. I watched the movie Saturday and my goal in life is to now travel the world and adopt one child from all of the poorest countries. Too bad I can’t have them all.

A documentary critic proclaims:

As horrific and shocking as it is, (the) news……should — most unfortunately — come as no overwhelming surprise.

Presumably because the poor sell their kids into sexual slavery all the time (Note: sexual slavery is immediately assumed) She goes on to suggest we watch ‘Born Into Brothels’ and ‘Highway Courtesan’ to get the Indian perspective.

Piecing the story together, it seems that the tabloid entrapped the family by posing as an Arab couple (being Arab increases the pathology, get it?), and offered to adopt Rubina and pay $300,000 to the family. This exchange took place via a translator since Rubina’s father doesn’t actually speak English. Rubina’s parents are divorced and the relationship between her parents is far from cordial. The mother wants custody of her daughter, the papers say after the film came out, but it could be an ongoing conflict, we don’t know.

There are a couple of interesting things in this story, firstly everyone is outraged at the father for considering adoption. This is hardly unusual, poor people have often given up their kids up to foster care for a time (the example of filmmaker Stan Brakhage comes to mind, he was in an orphanage for a while), and in India, its not unusual for kids to grow up in places other than their parents house – I lived with my aunt for a while, and my brother grew up at my grandparents place. The ideal of the soccer mom based nuclear family is quite recent. Yes, I get it, the proposed exchange of money is what really bothers people and everyone is sickened by the avariciousness of the family. Now if most people look into their family histories, they’re sure to find that uncle who took everything the other siblings should have inherited a fair share of. Yes, its terrible that people are greedy and criminal, but its hardly the province of the poor. So I wish people would take their outrage to where it belongs – a grossly unjust world where some countries are far richer than they deserve to be, and some people have the luxury of taking the moral high ground without every having to interact with the poor.

Finally, I am just outraged that a tabloid would go in and entrap this family to look as bad as possible, and even more outraged that they would do it to a poor, ill-educated family that does not have the means to fight back. But somehow the newspaper reports have glossed over that fact. I am even more sickened by all the well-meaning bleeding hearts who want to take away poor children away from their families. But we’ve seen that before – in Australia with mixed race and Aboriginal children, in Canada with Native American children, in India with the children of so called Thugs (actually they were forcibly sterilized as well) and Criminal Tribes.

Niam:
This is not Arabic. I think its Urdu. It looks as if an Urdu poster version for an Arab film though, but I can’t be sure as I don’t have any idea what the words mean.

Shashwati:
Oh, I can understand Urdu, just can’t read the script. So if you can give me the transliteration I can probably get it. It looks like movie posters from 15 years ago in India, when they still hand painted them.

Niam:
Ok, the main title reads like “Injmen” or “anjaman.” The name above it is naghmati shanikar and the words below it look like
vak ardornkayn film

Shashwati:
Ohhhh, its probably Anjuman, which means meeting, association, getting together. The names seem like Tamil names, but the words below I can’t figure it out-probably the film company’s acronym. I found a reference to a Pakistani film from 1970 that looks like a good match.

Niam:
Thats it! The actor names are the same. Waheed Murad, Rani, Deeba, etc. lol. Thats so funny. And enlightening

We are all feeling absurdly pleased at this bit of detective work. I am curious about the film and want to get hold of a copy to watch. Pakistani soap operas were hugely popular in India in the 80′s and avidly exchanged in the black market. The film looks like it would contain the same pleasures.

Its interesting to compare the two, since both the narratives involve First World and Third World characters, but the stakes are  much higher in ‘Harvest’ and there palpable sense of  power imbalances between the characters, which is missing in the artificial intelligence story. I guess its problem is that it just doesn’t seem to have that much to say. And no, it doesn’t have to be only about the Third World being exploited for its wombs or back office workers, it could be a Bollywood tech story like Transmission (which I enjoyed a great deal). Outsourcing is ripe for a ripping sci-fi story, so I am sure one will come along pretty soon, if it hasn’t already. Meanwhile, I continue to enjoy Escape Pod and its fine fare which makes my iPod, oh so worth having.

The rules, to be released on Tuesday for public comment, would generally allow people using hand-held equipment, including tripods, to shoot for any length of time on sidewalks and in parks as long as they leave sufficient room for pedestrians.

This change of heart resulted from the lawsuit brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Rakesh Sharma in 2005:

The film office originally agreed to write the rules as part of a settlement in April of a lawsuit brought on behalf of Rakesh Sharma, a documentary filmmaker who was detained by the police in 2005 after using a hand-held video camera in Midtown. Told that he was required to have a permit to film on city property, Mr. Sharma later pursued a permit and discovered that there were no written guidelines on how they were granted, according to the lawsuit.

Hurray for the NYCLU, and the City.

An online exhibition and essay of poster art and popular film about Indian Muslims by filmmaker Yousuf Saeed.

BRAKE DANCING
Volunteer traffic police integrate traffic direction gestures into a dance while performing in the “traffic dance” segment of the first national competition for applied police skills at Taiwan Police College in Taipei yesterday. (Photo by GEORGE TSORNG)

I don’t even know where to begin trying to parse this one.

Bollywood Satirized, is a critical commentary on the societal expectations that I experienced as a woman growing up in India.

More images by the very versatile Annu Matthew on her website.