How does one engage with politics in a fruitful way, beyond the platitudes? Apart from voting for your local representative (which I must confess, somewhat shamefacedly, I haven’t ever done) what can ordinary citizens do to make politics less of a political word?

Our press and leaders wallow in the fact that India is the ‘World’s largest democracy’. The strength of the electorate that votes in election after election is bigger than the populations of most countries. But, voting is also a class thing, where urban middle class angst collides with the moffussil realities of the ‘other’ India that doesn’t make it to the 24/7 T.V screens; the India that doesn’t invade middle class sensibilities with its smells and sounds and the India of paan-chewing messiahs and hooded naxal ‘terrorists’.

A common complaint in middle class drawing rooms across India is that politics today has become such a messy affair. “Everyone is corrupt,” is the lament. True, politics is not the same as it was 20 or even 10 years ago; True, also, that each and every fibre of the political system seems to be dyed in the cesspool of venality; Even more true is the fact that going up against the ‘system’ seems like an impossible task.

The common perception here is that ‘we’ are the victims of a system gone so rotten that it is beyond redemption. But haven’t all of us contributed to it, don’t we all have a hand, and share the responsibility, for the way things are?

Take Jessica Lal. She has become an icon that fuels middle class rage. How dare they shoot a (pretty, young, westernized) woman in a (illegal) bar and manage to get away with it. After all, the killer(s) were nouveau riche spoilt young rich kids from political families. There were many eyewitnesses that evening when Jessica was shot, but when it came to the crunch none of them put their (middle class) money where their mouth was.

Of course, you could always argue that “it’s the system maan.” But the eyewitnesses at the ‘Tamarind Court’ were not people who might be called financially or otherwise insecure. They might have shown more spine, done something to engage with the ‘system’ that all of us love railing against in the air conditioned confines of our Tamarind Courts. When the people of planet page 3 fail, why expect poor Zaheera to defy the system.

The people who held candlelight demonstrations beside India Gate saw a reflection of themselves in the Jessica Lal affair. Yesterday it was Jessica, tomorrow it could be my turn. And yet, when thousands of women are raped across that ‘other’ India every day, the India that doesn’t make it to the T.V. screens, thousands paraded naked on dusty village streets for defying caste conventions, thousands shot dead for sullying family honour, our middle class doesn’t erupt in protest. These women are best relegated out of sight and out of mind.

If you thought you had seen the definitive Vietnam War movie without seeing Full Metal Jacket, then think again. Stanley Kubrick’s narrative about a bunch of American marines who make the transition from boot camp to battlefield is as compelling as it is unforgiving. The transition is an allegory for a transformation of soldiers from raw youth to hardened, dehumanized killing machines.

The movie is an exploration of a contradiction: How do you reconcile the urge to recognize the enemy as a human being with the necessity of treating a human being as an enemy? After all, American soldiers were in Vietnam, or so they were told, to help the ‘gooks’ to help themselves. Or in the words of private Eightball, “I don’t understand them (he means the Vietnamese). I mean…we are here to help them out and they don’t even seem to appreciate the fact?”

Boot camp is a particularly grueling place pit bulled by a hard task master of a sergeant. He says that he “does not discriminate between niggers, punks, kikes and other forms of low life. They are all equally worthless?” He gives his ‘ladies’ hell everyday, and some fail to make the cut. In one memorable scene early on, he lines up the marines and gives them names: Joker, Gomer, Eightball, Animal Mother. Henceforth they are to call each other by their boot camp nick-names, the first step in erasing their humanity and becoming programmable zombies.

The contradiction plays itself out through the agency of private joker. In Vietnam he wears a peace button and a helmet that says, ‘born to kill.’ Does he love his country? Yes, he does, or at least that’s what he tells his superior officer. He is the leader of his group in boot camp and wants to help out private Pyle, a slow learner, but also dislikes him because he is getting the group in trouble with his moronic ways. There are hints about his ambivalent feelings towards the enemy. But he has to suppress them to preserve his own sanity. The contradiction explodes spectacularly in the climax, where joker has to make a choice. The choice he makes does not resolve the contradiction, but puts him in an easy frame of mind.

The film has all the traditional Kubrickesque elements: scenes that close with dramatic endings, slow dissolves that linger in the mind long after, music that is alternatively haunting and cheerful, brilliant frame compositions and a surreal feel. The combination of dialogue, music and visuals packs a taut left hook. Watching the film I couldn’t but help thinking about contemporary events in the Middle East. A case of history repeating itself? Just replace ‘gooks’ with ‘sand niggers’ and ‘North Vietnamese Army’ with ‘Al-Qaida’ and this could be a movie about the Iraq misadventure.

There comes a time in every writer’s career when they are plagued by the question, “what do I write about now?” Such was the dilemma Vikram Seth found himself in after the publication of his novel The Suitable Boy, the longest single volume novel ever published. The fear of never being able to write again haunted Vikram. His mother, Leila Seth, asked him to interview his great-uncle Shanti Seth, which he did. Those comprehensive interviews have resulted in Vikram Seth’s latest novel, ‘Two Lives.’

The two lives in question are Uncle Shanti and his German-Jewish wife Henny. This incident was narrated by the author himself at the Penguin India book launch of ‘Two Lives’ in Chennai on October 13. The event, the first of a five-city promotional tour, was held at the Taj Coromandel and was well attended by the usual mix of dancers, socialites and other assorted culture vultures.

The author read extracts from his book for an hour. The book covers a period of time from the 1930s to the 1970s. Shanti Uncle migrated to Germany in the 1930s and lived with Henny’s family till he was forced to relocate to England due to World War 2. Henny joined Shanti in England after she fled Germany in 1939. Their friendship blossomed into love and they got married.

Vikram Seth went to live with his uncle and aunt when he attended boarding school at Tonbridge. He could thus observe them up close and the result is an extraordinary story about two ordinary people. The book covers a wide sweep from Nazi Germany, Britain, Auschwitz and the holocaust, Israel, post-war Germany and 1970s Britain.

The author talked about how he found aunt Henny’s letters in which she had poured out her grief over the loss of her mother and sister who perished in the gas chambers. When questioned about whether ‘Two Lives’ was his most personal work he replied that although all his books had some element of the personal, reading through aunt Henny’s letters was an emotionally draining experience. According to Seth the best stories are the ones that happen around us, just waiting to be told. And because the two people he wrote about were not famous he was not constrained by the regular rules that apply to memoirs and biographical accounts. Maybe that’s what makes ‘Two Lives’ so special.

Some strands of anti-globalisation, especially cultural globalisation, like to think of American popular culture as a rampaging juggernaut greedily gobbling up local cultures in its quest for worldwide hegemony. This reading makes out American pop culture to be monolithic. And especially in these times of militant protests against the ‘McDonaldisation’ of the world – think of the anti-WTO protests in Seattle in 1999 or French farmer Jose Bove’s vandalism of American food outlets – a greater understanding of the monster called American culture is needed.

John Leland’s book ‘Hip: The History’ is a must read for supporters and opponents of American pop culture. The book traces the evolution of American culture right from the arrival of the first white settlers and African slaves in the early 17th century to the late 20th century. Leland’s central argument is that it was the fertile and dynamic socio-political set-up of the new world that enabled the culture of the African slaves to interact with the culture of the white slave owners to produce a unique culture, neither fully African or European. This is the beginning of American popular culture. Leland even gives a name to this cultural mongrel: Hip.

The author calls the minstrel shows and the blues music of the 19th century the ‘two roots of hip,’ and says that all other forms of pop culture were improvisations of these. The ‘Blackface Minstrel Shows’ were a parody of black culture in crude, stereotypical ways. These shows were enacted by whites dressed as blacks and were a way of letting whites participate in a world they at once abhorred and found fascinating. It also set the stage for a recurring theme in the history of American culture, that of blacks inventing a form of expression outside the mainstream, which would be appropriated by whites and then gained popular appeal as something that was ‘cool’ or ‘hip’. The Blues began as a form of expression by Black-Americans in response to the hardships they faced. At this stage it was scorned as the ‘devils music.’ When whites got interested in the blues, it began its upward movement towards mainstream respectability. Think of Elvis Presley shaking his pelvis to ‘Jailhouse Rock’ in front of thousands of screaming fans or Eminem, one of the most popular rappers. The phrase, ‘the white man who stole the blues’ sums it up.

But can the vastly diverse forms of American pop culture be reduced to being described by a single three-letter word called hip? The author defines hip as something that is invented by a small group of people as a form of counter culture that, as more and more people adopt it, gets diluted as it radiates outwards. By the time it has achieved mass appeal, the original group has invented a new form of expression. This is broadly the story of pop culture in America. I don’t think that the term hip captures all the contours of American pop culture.

In the nineteenth century writers like Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville and Henry David Thoreau sought to break with conformism. Their writing celebrated the individual spirit and rejected materialism. Thoreau in fact rejected society and lived in the woods for two years, which forms the content of his book ‘Walden Pond’. The inheritors of this intellectual legacy in the twentieth century were the ‘beats’. They also rejected white collar and suburban family life, the two strands of American consumer culture. Jack Kerouac, one of the more famous beatniks, laid out the philosophy in his book ‘On The Road.’

The basic premise of the book is that the core of American pop culture is a result of the intermixing of black and white cultures and each would be incomplete without the other. But in some passages of the book it seems as if the author glosses over black contributions and emphasizes the role of the white. At times the author sounds a little condescending towards Afro-Americans. And what would the writing style of a book whose subject is hip be? You guessed it, hip. The language is hyperbolic at places. Maybe it’s just an American style of writing. But some of the idioms and phrases would be unfamiliar to Indians.

On the whole this book is highly entertaining, especially to readers who have spent countless hours listening to the blues or jazz or any other form of American pop culture. And for people unfamiliar with these, the book offers a glimpse into the forces that shaped American pop culture and gave Americans a sense of identity.

Q. Can you tell me something about your batch at FTII?
A. I was in the 1963-66 batch. Kumar Shahni was my batch mate, John Abraham was junior while Adoor Gopalakrishnan was a year senior to me. We lived in a very different era. The 1960s was a decade of great ferment and unrest. The environment at FTII was very loosely structured, perhaps it was something to do with the times. At the institute we all believed that we could make films expressing our individual vision. John worked with me on my first film Uski Roti.

Q. What was the narrative style of your first few films?
A. One of my major influences was the French film maker Robert Bresson. Bresson’s films reflected a particular strand of Christian belief called Jansenism which manifests itself in the way leading characters are acted upon and simply surrender themselves to their fate. I believe that cinema is not so much visual as it is temporal. But most film makers concentrate on the spatio-visual aspect. This has led to certain problems. What time reflects is more contemporary than the arrangement of a set of visuals. I do not want to focus on this visual aspect in my films, but want to make the temporal aspect primary.

Q. Did you use music in your films?
A. Film expresses itself through images and sound and to that extent I don’t believe that music is that important to the narrative. I have made a few movies that incorporate Indian classical music. I am inspired by the form of Indian classical music and have used this form in my films. Hindustani music is spontaneous and has highs and lows and climaxes. I like to elaborate on the narrative, just like music.

Q. Did you want to convey a certain message to your audience?
A. No. I made films because I wanted to make films. I didn’t do it with the intention of giving the audience a message. The act of making a film is a social act.

Q. You were part of the new-wave movement of films in India. What were the concerns of the movement and how far did the message penetrate the audience?
A. The new wave movement was a parallel movement to the mainstream cinema in India. We wanted to find a form that corresponded to contemporary reality. Usually, the mainstream films used a medieval idiom. So obviously there was a discrepancy. We tried to create something new.

Q. Were you disappointed that your films didn’t achieve mass appeal?
A. No, not at all. I was well aware that my films would have a limited audience. We were up against a distribution system that manufactured an audience by feeding them the same mainstream formulae. Though my films didn’t get released commercially, there were a number of film screenings.

Q. But there was a lot of debate about your films in the media.
A. Yes, at that time there were a lot of write-ups in the media about them. Journalists felt that it was important to let readers know about the parallel film movement, even though most people wouldn’t get to see my films commercially. Times are very different now. There is absolutely no debate or discussion about what kind of a world we are living in, no attempt to understand it. I was in America at the start of the Iraq war and I couldn’t find a single T.V. or radio station that spoke out in clear unambiguous terms against the war. The entire media toed the line of the American administration.

Q. Why did you stop making films?
A. For the last five years I’ve been teaching music, especially the dhrupad style, and exploring its form. I am thinking of getting back to film making now.

Q. You have also made documentaries. What difference do you see between your films and documentaries?
A. The dividing line between my films and documentaries is thin. Some of my films, like Siddheshwari, are like poetic documentaries. Another documentary, Arrival, is about labour migrating to cities.

Q. What do you have to say about Paheli?
A. The very meaning of a Paheli is that it can be solved whereas a Duvidha can’t be. In my film, the woman couldn’t choose between the material and the spiritual husband. So in that sense, for me the problem still continues. In Paheli, the woman makes a choice. I guess that’s why the film makers called it Paheli.

Love is a warm feeling that makes people feel elevated. By the same token, love can also make people experience the darker side of human emotions like jealousy, anger, pain and trauma. The potential for love to go from good to sour is very real in every relationship. La Femme d’a Cote is a film about two lovers who experience this two-sided nature of love throughout their relation.

Bernard (Gerard Depardieu) lives with his wife and five year old son in a quiet little village. He is a loving husband and a caring father. The happy family life is shattered by the arrival of their new neighbours. Outwardly, everything is ok. The two sets of neighbours do the things expected of them, like invite each other over. But we learn that Bernard and Mathilde are in fact former lovers who separated due to misunderstandings. The passionate feelings they had for each other haven’t quite disappeared, though that they are married to other people. In fact, the proximity serves to reignite passions.

Throughout the film, their relationship displays a constructive and a destructive side. It is as if the ex-lovers, now reunited, are not able to decide whether to love fully or remain bitter about the past. Bernard is particularly affected by Mathilde’s re-entry into his life and shows it outwardly. Mathilde, is also equally affected, but her ardour is tempered by a conflicting feeling of wanting to move on.

The dynamics of the relationship are too much for Mathilde and she suffers a nervous breakdown. In hospital she experiences extreme mood swings and depression. Bernard meanwhile has managed to contain his emotions, barely.

Is the relationship doomed to be trapped in this conflicting mode? The only way out of it seems to be a violent catharsis. Mathilde returns home one night and makes love to Bernard. She then shoots him and then pulls the trigger on herself. At last the lovers are where they would have wanted to be; neither with anybody else, nor with each other.

But is this the only way it could have ended? I don’t believe so. In choosing a violent end for the lovers, the director (Francois Truffaut) seems to be suggesting that such conflicting emotions cannot exist without clashing and will self destruct. I don’t quite agree with this reading.

It was a chilly evening and I was waiting for the bus. When it finally arrived at the bus stop I boarded it. Inside, it was not so crowded that I couldn’t get any breathing space…but crowded enough that when I walked to the rear I brushed against elbows and stepped on some toes. People were cursing me under their breath. One guy was singing a song. He was standing facing the window and holding onto the overhead bar. His body was swaying to his own tune. I stood silently beside him. He finished his song and looked around for applause…there was none. Everyone around him was absorbed in their own thoughts. He caught my eye and saw that I was looking at him with interest…time for another song. ‘Pa, pa, pa, ni, dha, pa’…he sang. He was singing loudly and he was enjoying what he was doing. A few people around us gave a weary look, as though disturbed from some serious contemplation by a madman, shrugged, muttered to their neighbours about ‘public drunkenness’ and went back to staring out the window. ‘Mr Drunk’ didn’t notice. He had already moved on to his next song, an old MGR song that must have been quite a hit in its time. I didn’t understand the words, but did it matter? He rolled his eyes with each note, jerked his head this side and that as if indicating each rasa and gave me a big smile. “Saar, ne ennake marakave mudiyadu,�? (you will never forget me) he told me. I nodded and gave him an encouraging smile. That was what he needed. He launched into his next song. Maybe this was a Shivaji Ganeshan number. He was a single man, all-in-one movie orchestra. In between stanzas he would do the percussion and then the flutes and the veena. The low lighting of the bus lent a surreal-comic tinge to his face. A few people were now looking at us. What did they make of the spectacle? A drunk disturbing the ‘public peace’ and an apparently sober youg man egging him on! I was fascinated with my new found friend. The bond that had formed was only visible to the two of us. He evidently didn’t give two hoots about maintaining the decorum at public places. He was happy doing what he was doing, giving expression to his joy, paying obeisance to his screen idols, maybe living out his childhood fantasy of being a singer. And us sane people were pitying this ‘insane’ man? I looked around me. I saw the sad faces of my fellow travelers. Maybe the one sitting in front of me had financial problems, the one behind me had marital problems and the one on my left couldn’t get an erection. We put the ‘sane’ and the ‘insane’ into air tight categories. And woe betide any man who accidently gets locked up in the jail marked ‘insane’. He is instanly judged by the world of the sane. But that night on the bus I couldn’t figure out who was really sane – the half-dead zombies all around me – and who insane – the merry man dancing to his own tune?