Look what I found in my GMail this morning!
The Dance of the Kama Sutra
Get this sensual dance fitness video two months before it’s available anywhere else. [Borders]
I hate wincing before I’ve had my morning kappi. When I went to get my normal small-drip-with-egregious-space-for-cream, I sighed and said, “make it a large”. I need all the energy I can get to deal with potential exotification.
Here’s what I discovered about the sensual fitness video which will be released on July 31:
Follow-up to the fun, top-selling Bollywood Dance Workout; Offers a unique workout with sacred sensual moves for your body and soul
Acacia announces the July 31, 2007 DVD release of Dance of the Kama Sutra with Hemalayaa, offering an exciting new program using meditation and playful movements from Indian dance to help women cultivate their sensuality.
The Kama Sutra, an ancient Indian text, promotes the cultivation of sensuality as a sacred duty. The need to cultivate and reconnect with our sensual selves—the goddess at the core of every woman—remains as strong as ever, but the din and rush of modern life make the opportunities all too rare. Through playful movements and heart-centered meditation, yogini and Indian Dance expert Hemalayaa takes you on a journey of discovery. Find the freedom and fullness of expression that come from embracing yourself and your body, just as you are. Join Hemalayaa, creator of The Bollywood Dance Workout, in a dance of love and laughter that instills confidence, joy, and poise. Gesture by gesture, swish by swish, we remember that we are—and have always been—divine dancers. [link]
Swish by swish, even!
The “ick” was at a roiling boil within and I cynically wondered who was behind this project…and yes, it’s true, I did not think it was someone brown. Just who was Hemalayaa?
Hemalayaa teaches yoga and Indian dance in Los Angeles and offers frequent workshops and retreats around the world. The daughter of Indian parents, Hema’s yoga training began at home at an early age, and she went on to study yoga, philosophy, and meditation as well as asana. Hema’s in-depth study and practice of classical Indian dance informs how she teaches yoga. A life devoted to yoga and dance animates Hemalayaa’s playful spirit. Many of her retreats and workshops culminate in a night of dance. Hema loves turning her students on to the vibrant styles of Indian dance, from the classical to the latest moves from Bollywood, bhangra, and Indian MTV. [link]
Oh, snap. She is desi. And I’m uber-fond of people named Hema, too. I felt vaguely ashamed, because I was aware of how I had immediately cut her a bit of slack which I clearly wouldn’t have extended to someone unbrown. I am teh suck. The flawed, biased suck. At least I know it, right?
What now? My exoti-dar was still going off, though it had been significantly muted. Should I be happy that homeslice was doing her thang? Or was it okay to cringe, at the title and over the audience this was intended for, if the demographic I was imagining was accurate? What’s your take?
To backtrack to Monsoon Wedding for just a moment, I think the point of the child abuse subplot isn’t so much to showcase, explain or teach the audience about sexual abuse of minors, but rather to show that such corrosive events can occur in a close-knit, middle class family, and to give an example of how one particular family might deal with such an event. I think the success of the movie is precisely because it doesn’t try to preach at you, nor is it a public service announcement masquerading as a movie.
I also think the movie did a great job at capturing the constant level of chaos that surrounds an Indian wedding, and how awesome is Dubey in that movie?
rahul@149:
vikram chandra is good peeps. i met him at a reading at politics and prose in DC, and was very charmed by his down-to-earth nature. not to stereotype (this is really awful of me), but i does love that quality in bombay people. because they’ve lived in a city full of overachievers, most bombayites/mumbaikars (whatever the PC term is these days) do not think they are the center of the freakin’ universe. despite my intense love of delhi (which I find echoed in William Dalrymple’s beautiful prose), even somesmall fry dilliwalla such as a under-secretary in a random ultra-corrupt department of the government thinks of hirself as the suryadevta who sustains the biosphere. them and their annoying red-light-topped ambassadors.
That’s what I always loved about Bombay too. Bombayites (it will never be Mumbai to me) don’t waste their time bullshtting, but are no-nonsense and get to the point of whatever interaction there is. Unlike some southern cities *cough, cough Madras where there is a lot of unproductive bickering and judgment in a variety of contexts. Well, now I’m sure we’ll get the anti-essentializing/anti-Mumbai/pro-Madras/pro-Delhi crowd screaming.
I think Suketu says it too somewhere in Maximum City: For Bombay people, it is all about dhandha. Very true.
I think I’ve seen ads for Hemalayaa (WTF wit dat name?) teaching in Santa Barbara sometimes too (lots of rich folks here like to get their ethnic-yogic-masalafied-orientalist workout on). It’s embarrassing.
Sure enough, my memory doesn’t deceive.
Actually, even though I have a soft spot for Madras, I have to agree with you, Rahul. Things just get done in Bombay, and in a fairly efficient way at that. In Madras, you can almost never rely on people to be thorougly professional with you. There’s always too much other stuff going on.
Let’s be clear, though. I’m the one Bombay is having cocktails with. Don’t you folks force me to take drastic action, by looking at Bombay funny or something like that.
To follow up on Tambram’s comment #84, here are two wonderful essays that will have the Tams rolling in the aisles: An Algorithmic Approach to Modern Tamil Verse, and Latest Algorithm from Poet Vairamuthu. hema, don’t worry, your innocence will not be corrupted by these.
With apologies to those who don’t speak Tamil…this is just classic:
Deviyin viyarvai mazhai oru Niagara Thevai illai enakku endrum Viagra Taj Mahal iruppadho oru Agra Thaamarai poo ival ennaangara
With the Tam infestation here, maybe we should start karuppumutiny.com!
hema, thanks for reminding me why i have stopped listening to tamil music. what is up with english words mixed in all the time? i feel like all this started at just about the time a.r. rahman started composing – am i wrong?
vairamuthu is kind of an ass. i had the ‘pleasure’ of meeting him last year. his speech was awful, and pissed off more than a few women in the audience. then he told me that my (literary) tamil name compelled me to write tamil poetry – wtf?
what is up with english words mixed in all the time?
You mean like “Telephone mani pol sirippaval ivalaa”? I can see the value of the occassional English world. “Tholaipesi mani pol sirippaval ivalaa” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Maybe it’s just a reflection of how the general public talks now. I don’t know if anyone else has had this experience, but it’s impossible to go into even a semi-trendy store in Madras and not have the store staff try to impress you with their English…even when you keep talking to them in Tamil. I felt like some total rube talking in Tamil all the time!
Well, you are from the midwest, after all.
i had that exact song in mind. but it’s not as if they could have chosen different, altogether tamil words in that context to express that sentimentality. whereas, in a movie like chennai-28, english words would fit the more youthful, current-day environment.
re english in madras – i don’t even try speaking in tamil in certain stores, since people only give you respect if you speak in english. in those cases, i’m happy to play the NRI card and act demanding (plus, it’s amazing how much satisfaction it can give you to act completely out of character).
sorry, it should read :
but it’s not as if they could not have chosen different…
Well, you are from the midwest, after all.
Dammit, Rahul. Just as I was beginning to warm to you…
Two birds with one stone!
Rahul, I’m with you – I grew up in Bombay, thank you very much, and yes, while the term “aamchi mumbai” was current and it was always “mumbai” in Marathi, I refuse to adopt the Shiv Sena effers’ conception of what the city should be. That’s why I liked Suketu Mehta’s book so much (that and the fact that I thought his discussion of Thackeray was spot on).
As for whether Bend it like Beckham and Monsoon Wedding were realistic or traded in stereotypes – Monsoon Wedding was extremely realistic to me, like a home video, and the child abuse bit was realistic too. BilB also rang true, slightly tarted up to be crowd-pleasing, of course, but the characters were very recognisable from my extended family. Though it’s hard to really judge which films are “realistic” representations of Indian society and culture and which are not, given that we all have such different experiences of the culture based on where we grew up, social class, etc etc.
“With the Tam infestation here, maybe we should start karuppumutiny.com!”
what about the wheatish people, saar?
Well, if they are truly veatish and not just in the imagination of a matrimonial ad, they can try applying for their card after a few years of using Dark And Disgusting cream.
i’ve made a billion queries regarding one aspect of Monsoon Wedding and haven’t yet gotten a sufficient answer- would you really find a home in Delhi where the husband and wife sleep in two separate, twin beds today? and taking into account the normal vagaries of that household as opposed to the family politics one expects under an erstwhile Uncle General. my own sample of delhi family members share one bed, both a notch above and below the depicted socioeconomic status in the movie. as do my uncles and aunties all over northern india, who have a diverse understanding of ‘traditional values’.
again, two beds in contemporary delhi in that household? SP, thoughts? other delhites?
No von Mises – I was troubled by the exact same thing too! I’ve never seen separate beds in my sample of Delhi aunties and uncles, only discreet separate bedrooms for the estranged couples. The only possibilities I can think of are that a) they weren’t sleeping together any more (but then sleeping in sep rooms would be more likely) or b) one of them kicks a lot and the other can’t share a bed with them. If the latter, then desis are definitely more likely than Amrikis to pick separate beds or to be unembarrassed about sleeping separately, there is very little expectation or pretence of Regular Hot Sex or privacy among old married couples…
Thanks for linking to the humor from Ramesh Mahadevan…sorry to hijack the blog,here’s his take on ”Ten Most Boring Things Desis Do In This Country” http://www.image-in-asian.com/ramesh_m/boring.html http://www.image-in-asian.com/ramesh_m/
Ten Most Boring Things Desis Do In This Country
by Ramesh Mahadevan
Here is a list of ten things that desis do in this country, which are interesting to the persons doing it, but maha boring to all the others around them.
Take part in Spelling Bee contests How many times have we seen it ? A pipsqueak (sp ?) of an American born kid of Desi ancestry, usually called Venu Iyer or Anita Potlaneni or something equally bombastic (sp ?), complete with thick glasses and futuristic nerd looks, spelling its way to a fat college scholarship. The Newsweek or Time then publishes a photo and adds that “english is not the language they speak at home”. Personally, I would rather use spellcheck.
Compulsive tendency to log in and read email and bboards frequently. This activity is too boring to even describe.
Give vote of thanks in India Association meetings This most boring activity takes place between the Cultural Evening and the Holi dinner. It serves no purpose other than to find out who the President of India Association is. This is the high point of his or her career and he thanks everybody and makes at least seven PJs. He uses the phrase ‘Last but not the least’ at least five times. He also makes about six announcements, including one about coughing up membership money for the next year. He also asks the audience to be quiet about three times.
Talk about their Ph. D projects Usually this guy talks about how busy he is and how his project sponsors are coming the next week. If we pay some attention to him as a matter of courtesy we are treated to a byte by byte account of his computer code, completely debugged and documented for our benefit. He also believes he is running the show and his advisor is completely dependent on him. Watch out for the lumpen elements, who bore you to death with their projects, yet tell you that they would rather be doing something else.
Come here from India to visit their nephews I am reminded of Ashish Ghosh’s uncle who insisted on discovering America on a two week visit to this country. Once in a restaurant he was staring pointedly at the left breast of the waitress. It was unsettling. Before we could do anything about it, he even pointed his finger to her left breast. Every one of us, including the waitress, was horrified.
Uncle: (still pointing to the name tag on her left breast) “What your name means ?” Waitress: “What ?” Uncle: (insistently) “What your name means ?” Waitress: “You want to know what my name means ? I don’t know what Cheryl means. Its just a name.”
There are still other such stories. About the time he went to Seven Eleven and rushed straight into the cash counter and grabbed a pack of cigarette, instead of asking the cashier for it. The cashier would have shot him down, but for that sad, apologetic look in Ashish’s eyes. And another time, he went to Sears and started taking his banian off in the aisle itself to try on a new T shirt or something, because he didn’t know about the fitting rooms.
Go to India for a visit This guy can be an absolute pain, starting a couple of months before his India trip. “Only forty three days more” he would insist on telling you. He would also tell you the complete list of gifts he was planning to buy for his various relatives. As an appetizer, he would also tell you what all he had to finish in the ‘lab’ before he leaves. “I can’t wait to eat all the good grub and the mangoes” he would drag on. “I have fifty two uncles and two hundred and twelve first cousins and ten of them are getting married this summer and I will have to go to all their weddings. Pappu actually is my Mama’s son, but we went to high school together. Actually he is a year older than I am. But I joined school one year earlier. You know how this is in India. My dad gave a false birth date and blah blah blah”
Trying to be interesting in a white man’s party. This is essentially done by fresh off the boat engineering/computer types who are trying to be cool. This involves constantly sipping alcohol and trying to make extended conversations with women, while trying to ignore other desis. If this desi dude meets another guy, lets say from Sweden, he would then tell him, “I like Sweden a lot. Land of the erotica.” or something equally absurd. He would also pretend to understand all the jokes that are made, including some about himself. He would harangue extensively about India’s foreign policy to people who would not want to get any more intellectual than talk about Michelle Pfeiffer.
Hang around in Indian Stores and try to rent desi videotapes This activity is done by a lot of men and women. They would wander through aisle after aisle of moong daal, gripe water and sale items. “Have you got any fresh toor daal” she would ask. “Last time we bought it, it was bad”. She would mentally divide the price to get the ‘per pound’ value and compare it to the prices in the other Desi store or the India Abroad prices. In the meantime, the male is hanging around the video section and asks the owner “Have you got any latest good movies ?” And then he would turn to whoever is willing to listen to him and say “Woh kaun hai ? Amitabh Kakkar or is it Amitabh Khanna, nahin nahin Amitabh Bachchan – that fellow acts okay. I saw his latest picture Zanjeer last week. It was good. You must see his movies.” At which point, the storeowner would push a mushy trash videotape, a South Indian movie dubbed in Hindi, with heroines bigger than some Sumo wrestlers and the desi guy takes it without any resistance.
Have surprise parties for their girlfriends/boyfriends/spouse This is the most boring kind of party you can be invited to – essentially because you are asked not to tell the person to be surprised and you really don’t want to clutter up your brain with such trivial secrets. At the appointed time, you yell ‘surprise’ along with the other guests, with simulated enthusiasm in your voice. Lets face it, you are there primarily for the food. Then the ‘surpriser’ tells the ‘surprisee’ a long story about how elaborately he had planned the whole thing, how it almost got botched and how even though he has been doing it year after year on the same day, it is still very much a surprise and ……
Start singing in a desi gathering for no reason. This is the lowest level a desi party can stoop to. Typically nobody knows how it all starts. But before you are ready for it, a wineglass shattering voice is rudely bursting into a song. The singer can be a male or a female. But whatever the sex may be, he or she usually closes its eyes and looks really funny. They also firmly believe that they have a gifted voice. “My throat is not okay today” they would shyly say at the end of the song. Just when you breathe a sigh of relief, they had already started on the next song, this time, even tapping their feet or shaking their whole body. At the end of the song, the embarrassed audience has no choice but to clap and encourage. “You have a good voice” someone in the crowd would lie to the singer “You must have sung in college”. The singer becomes an icon of modesty while simultaneously getting flattered, before letting his blackboard-scratching voice boom into another song. If the singer is not the host, throw water on the person and extinguish the songs. You can always apologize later. Anthakshari and dumb charades are much better.
Copyright Ramesh Mahadevan
Same chick doing a ‘Bollywood’ dance workout (video preview)…she really needs to work on her flabby abs if she wants to make ‘fitness videos’
http://www.acaciacatalog.com/product.asp?pn=50603&bhcd2=1182514066
SP,
whew! FINALLY someone noticed the oddity of the beds. apparently, it’s a minority position–
it just dawned me that the separate beds are not supposed to mirror our samples of contemporary delhi uncles and aunties but the beds are supposed to be some obtuse metaphor for desi marriages- separate beds, same rooms and life is still bubbly. if so, it’s a reach i think because i didn’t get the feeling that there was underlying tension in their marriage that was unrelated to the stress of the wedding prep.
Yeah, I suppose it’s meant as a metaphor not so much for the fact that they have a tense marriage but that theirs is a very pragmatic marriage, more about familiarity and support than romance.
I met Mira Nair once a couple of years ago, and didn’t think to ask her. Damn.
and yet by bed-sharing, we become intimately familiar with cover stealers, long toe nails, pointy shoulder bones…”gesture by gesture, swish by swish, we remember that we are and have always been divine dancers.”
nah, not really ok. it just matters far less. most of t hese products are targeed to rich whyte guys who want to buy spirituality etc. they tend ot be targeted to whytes rather than blacks cause they are a bigger market. hence matter more.
Since this is a safe brown space for my inner finger-wagging aunty to come out – it’s “A LOT” (two separate words” and NOT “alot.” Thank you for your kind attention.
Sepia Mutiny, you ought to write a post about the indian couple who allowed their son to do, or rather, participate in an operation (a C-section). It’s all over the news today.
Yes, everyone loves being told what they “ought” to do.
It’s all over the news tab, too. If the bloggers have time, they’ll get to it.
I think the Lilette Dubey and Naseeruddin Shah couple in the movie might endorse Outkast (as in Hey Ya)
We get together Ohh, we get together But seperate’s always better when there’s feelings Involved
Besides some couples (although this is certainly very uncommon in Delhi as far as I know; bedrooms are small-ish since space is at such a premium), just sleep (I’m going for the literal meaning here) better in separate beds. Also, I think there is the “what will people say” pressure here for couples to sleep in one bed, regardless of the sleep quality and frequency of sex considerations. What goes in your average Delhi family is pretty well-known among the neighbors, because the domestic help will freely broadcast details of your private life to their other employers (such as the nosey aunty in B-6). If a couple is sleeping in separate beds, then something must be black in the proverbial dal. Is someone having an affair? Is the husband impotent? Are they together only for the kids?
The same song also has a tongue-in-cheek description of arranged marriage, as y’all might recall: Uh, thank god for mom and dad For sticking two together ‘Cause we don’t know how
Portmanteau, I always got the sense at home that married couples were assumed to have stopped having sex after a certain age, and it was actually a bit embarrassing or shameful to show you had sexual desire at, say, age fifty. Particularly with small spaces and extended family dropping in and out, desi couples are much less concerned with their privacy. So I don’t know if separate beds would send neighbourhood tongues wagging as you suggest.
There were reports in the press a few months ago about the growing popularity of separate bedrooms for couples in the West too. And everyone seemed to sleep in separate bedrooms in victorian novels (“I shan’t be leaving my door open tonight, dear.”)
The separate beds in Monsoon Wedding seemed curious to me because their relationship still seemed sexually charged – there was a scene where Pimmi went over to Lalit’s bed and started kissing him; he rebuffed her, but one got the sense that he did so because he was tired and frazzled, not because their sexual relationship was dead. Maybe the separate beds were supposed to heighten the impact of their cuddling after Ria’s revelation – if so, it was clumsily done, because it didn’t really fit with how they were otherwise portrayed.
SP: I think you’re totally right about this:
But sleeping in the same bed is accepted as the norm now; If older couples sleep together, most people don’t think they’re getting it on 24/7. Rather, it is assumed that this happens out of affection and habit. If they do not sleep in one bed, then that must be because something’s up. Or they’re weird (e.g. devoted followers of some new guru). (Basically, “If couple sleeps in one bed, then no marital problems” and its contrapositive is what I’m trying to establish). Yes, I am a geek.
I’m with Runa — MW is not about child abuse/incest, it’s about family. That said, it’s also about the secrets we carry and how we negotiate our relationships. I’m clearly not objective on this; I love it, and as portmanteau says, I think it captures Delhi and Punjabis perfectly. One of my favorite parts of the DVD are all the little “making of” interviews at the end where the different actors weigh in on different aspects of the film.
I’m confounded by the bed convo. I’ve seen separate beds, but really only among the older (pre-Partition) generation. Apparently we are all weird?
PG, sorry, I made a huge typo. I meant to write, “I like Water more than Fire.” My mother said she felt very similar to what you’ve described in realizing that the ascetic life is not always a lifestyle of choice for widows.
Rahul, are you saying I’m like the BBC?
hema (#161), I’m not sure how it is down south, but I feel like there’s more and more English up north, too. I know that’s in large part because of the whole colonial presence deal, but last time I was in Punjab I felt totally illiterate. I would stare at signs trying to sound things out phonetically only to realize that there were English words written in Gurmukhi everywhere, and much moreso than my previous visit. Everything is all “water piyo” or “didi, optical illusion dekho” and whatnot.
ok, to add more qualifiers to my previous claim, i should say that i am talking about the the elite and middle classes (amorphously/generously construed) and couples who are roughly under 60 now. And, we are all weird, in our way. That is a generalization I like 🙂
English is India’s national language. For all intents, it is the defacto language of business and education. What’s wrong with Indians mixing English into the vernacular?
It pisses me off to see people get surprised when Indians use English. Would you be surprised if an American, or an Aussie speaks in English? English is as much an Indian language, as it is an American language. We have multiple languages, so we mix them up. What’s surprising about that?
I’ve been “complimented with “Your English is very good, you know, for an Indian” Oh yeah? “Thank you. Your English isn’t bad for an American, either!”
If you came to BBC for a discussion on social dynamics in Bombay or 1950s India or globalization, you’d be more than a little annoyed if what you got was Scooby-Doo on 24 hour loop. I was just saying that what we need is people who understand theory, and how to articulate an argument.
Pagla, ak et. al., you should read that Vikram Chandra essay. It’s all about demolishing the myth of the superiority of regional writing over Indo-Anglian writers. I know that’s not exactly the point ak and hema were making, but it is related. And the essay is a delightful read!
We have multiple languages, so we mix them up. What’s surprising about that?
That wasn’t really my point. I don’t have a problem with people mixing English into their day-to-day speech. It’s like I’m some sort of Tamil expert either, so I almost certainly use English words mixed in with my Tamil. But when I’m in Madras, I do feel a bit nostalgic about Tamil, and I try to speak that language as much as possible.
So it makes me a bit sad when other people don’t engage with me, when I speak to them in Tamil.
Dear SMers, Please don’t take away exotification. It is one of the few things that increases my chances of getting laid in the USofA. Some chick on a kamasutra high might consider me, from the mysterious east, at least for a one-time lay.
Sincerely, Puny brown FOB virgin.
Ooh yes, that Vikram Chandra Cult of Authenticity essay is fantastic. Even if (or because?) he’s picking some personal fights.
Speaking of personal fights, remember the story he had in Love and Longing in Bombay that basically was about the Maureen Wadia/Parmeshwar Godrej rivalry? Teehee.
I took the BBC comment as a compliment (definitely better than being likened to CSPAN), although you more than hold your own on analysis, in between the AdultSwim comments 🙂
Not hating on English, I just think the increasing prevalence is funny.
Oh, certainly because! I love how he starts with this low blow: “Ah,” I said. “Professor. JNU. Of course.”, and then lays the crushing smackdown, not by himself, but through the words of the unassailable Borges: I understand why many people accept it: such a declaration of our solitude, our perdition, and our primitive character has, like existentialism, the charms of poignancy. Many people may accept this opinion because, having done so, they will feel themselves to be alone, disconsolate and, in some way, interesting.
Oh, poor mean, depressed, pathetic Meenakshi Mukherjee must be so bitter about languishing in India.
Between that and the (massively airbrushed) Guru, it seems like it is Wadia dirty linen airing time right now!
To clarify: “Oh, poor mean, depressed, pathetic Meenakshi Mukherjee must be so bitter about languishing in India.” is my paraphrasing of one thrust of his essay. Vikram Chandra is too smooth to actually say something like that 🙂
Thanks, Camille.
Well, I hope we don’t start a Club for Study of Poverty, Alienation and Nationalism, then.
Rahul, I thought this was NAMBLA
F’reals, man. Aren’t Bollywood flicks constantly making Sikhs look like provincial nincompoops? Much more than Bend it Like Bekham, methinks.
I like anything by Hanif Kureishi. Check out The Buddha of Suburbia. It kind of tackles the Orientalism and desi opportunism head-on.
Can I recommend “EAST is EAST” –
It’s movie that has the mix of tragedy and comedy…I laughed out loud so many times in that movie. And it reflected to me, how in real life, the way so many of us cope in dysfunctional families is to find some humor in it all.
(Without reading a single comment, I must ask …) Why on EARTH should the extent of her Indian’ness, or the fact she was born here affect any preconceived judgemental notions about her attempt to make a buck off exoticism?
Oh, and I see absolutely nothing wrong with this video/concept – if people buy it, she’ll succeed, if not – oh well.
Non-news, but then again, what do I know 🙂