.
Sundays are so welcome for the working woman especially if
you have that Saturday off to do or let’s say do away with all the household
chores. I really look forward to my Sundays because it is the only day when you
can fill your ghada (pot)…not with
sins(in the common parlance) but with magical moments of selfless
contemplation.
I am sure a lot of us know that feeling.
So in one of these moments, I happened to pick the MINT
LOUNGE (Saturday copy) and go through articles. I always read Aakaar Patel and
Natasha Badhwar’s columns. This time I was reading the one by Shoba Narayan.
It’s called The good life.
The article talks about Matunga and the Tamilain who dwells
there, specifically the Palakkad Tamil. The article reflects on how the patch
of land that connects certain communities and the human association with
proximity to ones identity. Truly the piece is well written and implemented.
(For more read http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/zKv7XNp51knGxIfJwZp1XM/The-psychology-of-a-Matunga-Tamilian.html)
After reading the article a lot of questions were buzzing in
my mind. I call myself the modern Nomad. Roots from J&K, links in Punjab,
born in Gujarat, studied in Delhi, Pune, Bombay (still not Mumbai then),
Chennai and married to Bengal (Bengal mind it not A Bengali……married to the
Land of Tagore &Ray, Bengal) .
Where is that patch of land which I can call mine?
I struggled for years with this question through childhood,
youth and now midlife crisis!!
I had though devised my formula and that formula is as
simple as it is : CINEMA .
For me it began as early as 7 years of my arrival on the
green planet with cinema like Elippathayam
(The Rat Trap) by
Adoor Gopalakrishnan or maybe Devi by Satyajit Ray.
Today, there
are many Indians who live abroad who probably go through the same crisis that I
did when they struggle with their transnational identities. There is now a
clinical term to define the cinema that addresses and connects them to their
roots : it is called Diaspora Cinema.
The
second half of the twentieth century, referred to by some demographers as
"the century of migration," is distinguished by the magnitude,
direction, and composition of international migration. Diasporic cinema refers to the film
making of any dispersed community that lives away from its country of origin.
National identity in India and Bollywood dream machine has
been of interest to the academicians mind for years.
A lot of cinema today is also clearly oriented towards this
need/desire of the NRI community which drives them to watch cinema and inspires
directors back in the homeland to set the Box office rolling. One wonders how the new segment looking for
that Patch of land and the producer thinking of the x crore club incredibly are
able to satiate each others need.
My thought will need a sequel…so you keep reading….I will
come back in a couple of days with more info on the same lines…
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