Coldplay’s Hymn For The Weekend Video
By Pramod Ramachandran
People laughed when The Party was screened. The brilliant Peter Sellars played the role of an Indian man. Today? We have Russell Peters whose pan-American humour is loved by the yuppie, young Indian masses. Peters is not Indian. He is American. He may be brown but skin colour, as we know, does not determine one’s nationality. Or identity. Tanned Sellars was a real star who knew how to act. Parodying Indian accents for Western audiences is a hot ticket to the comedy heavens these days, and Russell Peters in India is news; but he is not ‘Hollywood’ in the true sense. Hollywood is Julia Roberts, George Clooney, America Ferrera and many more who have visited India. It does not have to be a social cause for which they come as India is more than begging bowls and bags of notes existing simultaneously. Causes are impelled by feelings of the heart.
Jessica Sutta of The Pussycat Dolls went to Rishikesh a long time ago to help the poor. Goldie Hawn to see Sai Baba before that, and even before Steven Seagal’s encounter with Tibetan Buddhism he met Sai Baba. Chiranjeevi would have been happy sitting next to him and surveying the crowds! These have been essentially ‘spiritual’ journeys of hunting for a playground to look within. Paris Hilton called India ‘spiritual’ – immediately evoking responses from writers that she was stereotyping a country that is not spiritual. “We are as spiritual or non-spiritual as any other country” they said. True. In which country would you find cars with stickers of Jesus, Shiva, the Pakistani flag, etc. pasted together on rear-view windows? In which country would you find the majority religion believing that all religions are legitimate paths to the divine even though there are differences and similarities? None.
We are spiritual and secular at the same time. Julia Roberts, of course, was quite pathetic in Eat Pray Love and the actress who played her guru was not as bad as Mike Myer in The Love Guru, which even Deepak Chopra, could not digest. Hollywood gets it wrong on occasion; the impulse of its cinema is not directly proportionate to its visual vocabulary. Its intentions are right; it faults when it has lousy scriptwriters, directors and actors not trying hard enough to do a good job. Tarsem Singh (director of Immortals) has films which could pull any Hollywood director to India. It did subtly way back in time when Mira Nair was the first Indian director to make it abroad (rebirths and past births take place in present lifetimes). We had The Darjeeling Limited by Wes Anderson. When Darshan: The Embrace was screened at Cannes, it was spirituality in a materialistic heaven.
The binary of East and West and the spiritual and material allow a sense of diversity and tradition that have been going on from ancient times, no matter how old-fashioned it seems on first sight. It is clearly evident that definitions of countries are imagined. Imaginations are good because they result in adventure!
George Clooney and Madonna saw Delhi. Angelina Jolie too. Zero Dark Thirty was shot here. Recently, Point Blank’s recollections of Mumbai and Un Plus Une’s Desi-Frenchy sweet nothings and the upcoming The Jungle Book. They are not the same, mind you. Peruse their trailers. You shall see that America Ferrera on a goodwill visit to India is not the same as Jennifer Lopez and Nicole Sherzinger performing for a wedding in Rajasthan or Liz Hurley’s cricket and marriage escapades. It seems that writers of a certain disposition do not want to look at the varied ways of Hollywood and its fabulous connections to India. For example, Miriam Margoyles in BBC’s 2016 documentary The Real Marigold Hotel shows, through her thoughts, words and deeds, that her love for India is not bound by the cultural values that India possess in its paradoxes. She could be the first actress to take Ayurveda global in a mature way after Jessica Simpson in The Price Of Beauty, which was a Jessica Simpson affair and not an Indian one.
The feature with Judi Dench, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, was a magician’s making without the magic. Rajasthan’s scenery is now replaced by the Margoyles-starrer. It is to be at everyplace at the same time that she, along with the others, chooses to maintain herself, her personality and naughtiness in a country that is not hers. The double-binds of India and Margoyles are seen: Margoyles does not have to convey her undying love for India all the time. As educated Indians know Brit humour well, we see her in India as Miriam Margoyles. Not Margoyles in India. There are signifiers and signifieds that intersect and form triangles of multi-layered meanings. India is not a singular, monolithic land of wondrous miracles but that and the rest! India becomes the last and best country to die in. Isn’t it true that ending a sentence with a preposition is not the best way to end it?
There is a tendency in all of us to be attracted towards the national. This love for the way the West thinks of us, coupled with our own insecurities of who we are and what we are, is channeled when we think we know it all. To see India as just one singular unshakeable thing is absolutely okay provided we allow for the many on it. And the Right has been doing that – except with self-realised gurus; we have a long way to go on that score! With Coldplay’s Hymn For The Weekend doing the rounds and people who have nothing better to do with their time announcing to the world how not Indian it is, the silliness is obvious indeed.
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