Duh

7 jan 9 pm

Have been meaning to write this post for over a month now, been too lazy, but a recent conversation with a friend has made me to get down to it.

I have always been worried, but more so now that I am a potential film-maker, about my inadequate knowledge of society and the times I live in.

This sounds terrible, but really for better or worse, it’s all to do with my mother’s personality and her discovery of spirituality and a Guru when I was five.

My mother is really quite lovely. She is the most non-malicious, tolerant person I know. She truly believes that all persons are equal. Even to say that this is her belief is incorrect, it’s reality for her, something you don’t even think twice about or question, something that is part of her and always has been, not an ideal she realized and then nurtured. So, I grew up in an environment in which I was completely discouraged from thinking badly of others, spreading gossip, being snide etc. I even lived in an ashram from the ages of six to ten.

Now, the first impact of this sort of a childhood is that there was never any reference to caste, state, religion, status etc. when talking of people. Words like Gujju, Punju, Southie, Marwari, Madrasi, Baniya, Bawa, Sindhi, Nep, Bong were never a part of my growing-up vocabulary. Asking someone his/her ‘caste’, meaning surname, and then being able to place which community they belong to, was not something that I or my family ever did. As I grew up, I would actually get embarrassed when people made digs or jokes about where a person hailed from, it seemed mean and wrong to me. I know now that a person is not necessarily being malicious when he or she asks someone about their caste, it just helps to place that person. But I am still mostly unable to generalise, and draw conclusions from this information. I am unable to understand stereotypes, something that comes to others naturally.

The other thing that had an impact, which I fear will be life-long, was that her spiritual journey demanded her to be cut off from the world. So, we had no newspapers, magazines, television, no media of any sort in the house. Till today, I hardly read the paper because I am just not accustomed to doing so. I know I should and need to, but it is just not a priority in my daily routine. I therefore, do not know things that other people simply know without making an effort to find out.

For example, I was eighteen before I discovered that an ‘over’ in cricket means six balls. Recently playing ’20 Questions’ with a friend I logically deduced that the person he was thinking of was an Australian cricketer, but I did not know any names of Australian cricketers - it turned out to be Dennis Lilee, and he was incredulous that I did not this apparently very famous sportsperson. In school I would feel left out when my classmates discussed a particular soap, or how a particular newsreader looked. I would sometimes fake knowledge. For instance, whenever people would talk of the good old days of Doordarshan and radio, I would talk of the ‘Mugli Gutti 555’ ad and its byline ‘Aha meethi meethi’ and I would smile wistfully and laugh and they would laugh with me, but the truth is I have never heard this ad, it’s something I once heard someone say and then parroted! Or I might say how we used to wait for Wednesdays to see ‘Chitrahaar’, though I only saw it about twice in my entire life because I happened to be at a friend’s place when it was on. Again, I don’t much enjoy watching tv even today, and hardly spend any time doing so, and even when I do it’s stuff like Animal Planet, travel shows, Discovery, cookery shows (though I can’t cook at all I find these strangely relaxing) never sports and hardly ever news.

Of course I have come a long way since sixteen, I now laugh at and even crack politically incorrect jokes with no guilt whatsoever. I understand the loud, ostentatious, party-hard Punjabi stereotype and the pseudo-intellectual, Tagore-spouting Bangla one (the others I’m still unclear of!). I even buy an ‘Outlook’ once in two months - lol!

There are obviously pluses to this sort of upbringing, which I do not deny. I am absolutely not motivated by money or material possession and I am extremely, extremely grateful for this. I have no prejudices towards people whatsoever.

But, German expressionism evolved due to the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles, Eisenstein developed intellectual montage in response to the Russian revolution, Wong Kar-Wai’s idiom stems from a post-modern Hong Kong. I do not dare compare myself with them, but am scared that my stories will be shallow and devoid of socio-politico-economic context.