Bridging the Gap

It used to be the case that there was a conflict, a ‘us v them’ relationship with our parents and us – they, the first generation who settled here in the 70s and 80s, and us, the second generation who were British-born and Asian who had to balance religion and culture with being in the West. I know of course that everyone’s experiences are different, and as a child of first-generation immigrant parents, I have certainly had my own experiences and conflicts with my parents. I do find it interesting that my elder sisters’ and brother’s experiences in the 90s slightly differs from mine – they were the earlier, ‘first’ generation who forged the way, while we followed behind. I also have a lot of friends who are in fact third-generation children, whose experiences are certainly very different although not without their own struggles.

These days it feels like the balance has shifted – our parents have mellowed out and are trying to be more understanding. I won’t say the days of emotional blackmail, culture clashing and Asian dramas (wedding traditions, anyone?) are over but this has definitely changed and evolved over the last decade or so. I think that a lot of the first-generation parents are beginning to understand that they cannot just force their children to follow a route that they think if right for them, especially as we are becoming more independent, more integrated and as we settle into our marriages, careers and parenthoods.

As these second-generations (and even some third-generations!) are beginning to or already have become parents themselves, I think a lot of them understand better the struggles that come with being a Muslim parent, especially when you have your own culture, British culture, religion and your own personal values to add to the mix. Ironically, I feel like there is beginning to be a gap between these parents and their children, who are definitely becoming part of the emerging middle-class Muslims, whose parents are determined to make the most of their education, lifestyle and social opportunities.

As someone who isn’t a parent yet, I was a little hesitant about adding my piece to this. But then I realised that my view, while it may not be the same as everyone’s, is still a voice to add to the conversation about the generation gap. I’ve been thinking about this for a while for several reasons – partly because a lot of friends and sisters of mine who are parents, have noted that bringing up their own children is a huge difference compared to their own upbringing, which has naturally brought to mind my own values and plans for bringing up children, as well as my own relationship with my parents.

I come across it every now and then – in my nieces and nephews, in my friend’s and sister’s children, and even when I meet young girls, younger bloggers and even younger people in my job who have a different mind-set to the ones we had as we had at their age. Those kids are fully immersed in society, with less identity conflicts about whether they’re from the West or the East, confident in their religion rather than being hindered by culture, with the knowledge that they have every right to education and a career. In contrast, it feels a little like my generation precariously fumbled our way through into jobs we weren’t sure of, studying as far as we could afford – I myself have always wanted to do a Masters and Doctorate, but couldn’t afford to after I finished university and went straight into work.

It brings me to mind a book I read when I was younger by one of my favourite authors – one of the things the young hero in the tale bemoans is the fact that all the adults he comes across constantly expect him to be grateful, that he is should know how lucky he is, but instead feels like the emotion is being forced on him. I think of this because sometimes when I speak to the younger generation in my family, or when I speak to younger girls who complain about the banes of their lives, I try to explain to them that they don’t realise how lucky they are, that it could be worse, and that we older generations did in fact have it worse. Unfortunately, most of them don’t seem very impressed when I tell them that and usually retort that actually, they have it worse because they have XYZ problems that we never did.

And you know what? They’re right, in a way. They do have problems that we never did – I’m constantly thankful that social media, makeup, designer brands and technology weren’t a big thing when I was a teenager the way it is now, the constant influence and distractions it would have had on my education, my social life and definitely my self-image, which means I would be a different person with Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram and Periscope at 13. There’s so many things that children these days, and young adults too, have to learn which we didn’t. My generation raves over Panda Pops, 5p ice-poles and 1p pick-n-mix sweets, Friends on Channel 4 on Friday nights, brown lipstick (with the dark brown lip liner outline) and family holidays ‘back home’. Meanwhile the newer generation have smartphones, iPads, Adventure Time, holidays in Dubai and Morrocco, global warning awareness, and River Island handbags and sushi for lunch. It’s easy to call them spoiled, and it is the case that they may have more opportunities, but they also have just as many challenges which are easier to ignore by us.

Just as our parents needled us about being grateful for opportunities (studying further in school, having a job, buying a new pair of shoes), it seems like the younger generation sometimes get the same thing from us. While my parents drilled into us the importance of marriage, good jobs and keeping good relations with our relatives both in Britain and back home, the younger generations have their own issues too – balancing friends and social lives with building careers, education, social media issues, even spending on luxuries. That’s not to say we didn’t do the same thing, looking back, it feels like everything was less overwhelming and busy – to sound like an old fogey, things just seemed simpler back then.

I‘ve also noticed a big difference when we had to deal with, and when the younger generations have had to deal with and differentiate between following religion and culture. My siblings and I were lucky enough to have parents who didn’t force too much culture down our throats, or follow traditions which didn’t align with our religion. A lot of the silly things that come with culture I was pretty unaware of until I got older, because my father emphasised the importance of religion with us, and my mother never forced us to do anything we didn’t want to do because she always wanted her children to be happy. This meant that while we have the still had pressure on us to study until a certain age, marry ‘suitable’ people and follow certain social guidelines (eg. curfew and going out), we still didn’t have it as bad as a lot of others that we know.

I think because of this, the British-Asian parents of today have recognised the importance of having awareness and choices in their children’s lives – such as choosing a partner, jobs, and following religion without all the hindrances of culture. We know the right things to do to help our children and push them, and we also get to choose the good parts about culture – knowing our roots and traditions without letting these dictate our lives. The younger generation now are able to understand current affairs, be more involved with their society and communities, and look towards bigger things even if their parents couldn’t.

I don’t think there is a real right or wrong way to deal with the conflicts with our parents – as I have gotten older I have appreciated more the things my own parents have taught me, and really am grateful. I was fairly lucky because I was pretty sheltered as a child, so I didn’t have a lot of the problems that some of my friends had, although I will admit, I did resent feeling that I also missed out on things, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. I’m sure it’s pretty universal that parents always want for their children what they never had, our parents wanted success, happy marriages and financial stability for us where it was a struggle for them, and we want happy lives, careers and identities for our own children. I don’t mean to belittle the struggle our parents had – they came to Britain as youngsters themselves and struggled to maintain their culture, faith and way of living, and they constantly worried that their children would lose their roots. Meanwhile, although the later generations have less of guilt about being Westernised, there’s still that worry that they may be too influenced by things which their parents disagree with – whether it’s being a One Direction fan or being okay with belly button piercings.

I guess we can only do what we can, which is our very best. Most of the friends, sisters and brothers I know are excellent role models, and although they may find it difficult sometimes, they are able to encourage their children without pushing them, praise them and give them the knowledge and confidence to go out and do their best.
I only hope that I can do as well as that : )

Growing up in the ’90s: A British-Pakistani looks back

Signs that you grew up in the 90s to Asian/Desi parents, or, 12 cheap ways to save your household costs

I am often reminded of the various facets of myself which has roots in various places; I am a British-Pakistani Muslim woman, waist-deep in Western culture and society, the other half of me in Middle Eastern and Pakistani idioms. Like many of my peers. I have followed various influences through high school colleges and university, and found myself in the nine-to-five workplace. I’ve watched the popular American television series, the dry-wit British stand-up shows, the silly YouTube videos gone viral and the thought-provoking Islamic lectures and Ted Talks. Not to mention all the Lollywood and Bollywood films you can think of, which certainly added a spice to my cultural awareness.
I’ve spoken about my family briefly before, and certainly think that growing up in the 90s had its own charm, and also was its own nightmare. One of the reasons we can relate so much to the classic 90s tv series awesomeness that was Goodness Gracious Me was that they were able to capture so well everything that makes us British-Asians – being cheesy, sarcastic, admiring our roots while recognising how embarrassing we (and our parents!) are. This post was long overdue in the list of things which I’m sure many of you will recognise in your own family’s upbringing (although please note I’m not trying to write anything offensive, and if anything I should be the most offended that most of these things happened to me in my poor, defenceless childhood)

Not us, but there’s parts I can relate to.

1. Cover everything with plastic – the carpet, the sofa, the remote control, half of the furniture in the house (it took us a couple of years to convince my parents to take the sheeting off our new dining table set) and even our mobile phone screens – remember that? We were one of millions of forward-thinking families to ‘protect’ and cover the hallways with plastic runners (all of which are pretty much identical in every house). Years later, when we finally convinced our parents to remove the plastic, the carpet underneath looked as brand new as the day we bought it, and the ones that were exposed looked like something had died and decayed on it. But the thing is, it was a normal thing to do in the nineties, because every other house down the road did exactly the same thing. Another thing our mums did? Cover the cooker over top with foil so that any food that spilled would get caught in the foil, which you could just pick up and throw away. My mum stopped doing that about 10 years ago when she got fed up of the foil getting caught on fire, and also because  I think she didn’t see the point in covering (wasting!) in foil when you’d still have to clean the cooker because some piece of food wriggled underneath. Something my mum still does is line all of the cupboards and drawers with old wallpaper or sheets, but that’s probably good practise (and not so funny either,  I suppose). My mum even used to lovely sew pretty sofa covers (which we could have tried to pass off as boho and eclectic throws, but it blatantly wasn’t), with frills and all, to cover the sofas. I’m not sure what we were trying to do, whether we wanted to preserve the sofas and carpets for the next ten years, especially as we don’t have any of the same furniture of carpet now. The first thing we did when we bought a new television a couple of years back was, yep, rip off the plastic before my mum even opened her mouth to stop us.

Remember those beautiful studs? Mmmm smell that plasticky freshness

2. Buying new things was a big event in our house, and even bigger was  then showing them to family and friends so that they would go out and buy the same thing if they liked it. I remember my aunt coming to our house and seeing our red and cream patterned sofas, then buying the same ones for her own house (which were there for years). It is with great relief that I can say none of the original furniture from my childhood remains in the house (except possibly my parent’s my dad’s old bookshelf which has gotten away with being in the hallway, and which no one moves because it’s a good place to surreptitiously put unwanted plastic bags and extra creams that mysteriously appear). Similarly, we’d all be involved in a trip to go buy something like a vacuum for the house, my dad would expertly examine it for flaws (and then never be the one to use it), while we all sat bored and begging to go to the toys aisle.
We weren’t a well-off family and didn’t often have new things – one thing we all remember is hand-me-downs from older siblings (I didn’t have it as bad because I was the youngest, but one of my sisters remembers having hand-me-downs from my brother which was less pretty!) My parents were very thrifty and careful with what they had, and it’s a trait we’ve all manage to inherit – it also meant having an array of junk in our house because things were on sale/free/being given away. These days internet shopping is a great revelation in my house (and not just because I buy a lot of junk, my dad is the worst) – it’s a big jumble sale out there and it’s easy to go crazy. Except for my mum, who still buys everything in cash and almost always finds a bargain in any store.

3. Who says you can’t fit eight people in a five-person car? You’re just not squeezing people inside hard enough. Coming from a family where I was the youngest of five, I spent most of my childhood squashed/half-couched in the feet area of the back seats (back then I was the skinniest and the smallest, which meant I got the least space). Oddly enough, although we should have spent half our journeys terrified of the police stopping us over for overcrowding a vehicle, we never worried about it, and it never happened to us. Booster seats for toddlers and seat-belts? Pah. Our car wasn’t that glamorous either, we had an ugly white Nissan when I was a child , which then got upgraded to an ugly red Nissan a few years later – although both of which still weren’t as embarrassing as the yellow three-wheeler down the road.

4. Reading books are full of nonsense and put silly ideas in your head. My sisters and I are all avid readers, and have been since we learned our alphabet as little toddlers. I remember holding my sister’s (sometimes my Dad’s) hand and being led to the local library which was minutes up the road as a child, and being in awe at the sheer number of books lining the shelves, getting greedy over how many we could take home. My parents, on the other hand, hated it. They hated the fact that we’d go glazed-eyed and deaf once we got stuck in a book (they had to shout at us up the stairs a good few times to get our attention), the fact that we wouldn’t stop reading for hours, or the fact that our books took up piles of space next to our beds. I remember being engrossed in books which I refused to put down even when eating, ignoring the television to put a book next to my play and accidentally drip a bit of food into the pages, which would drive my parents nuts. Even now our rooms (in all of our respective houses!) still fill up with books and crowd the bookshelves (which our parents keep threatening to dump in a landfill every so often, but we know they’re just empty threats).

I’m pretty sure Roald Dahl must have based Matilda on a Pakistani family. Minus the witchcraft and car-swindling parents.

5. PG films didn’t apply to us. As long as there wasn’t any inappropriate scenes about K-I-S-S-I-N-G, we became pretty desensitized to violent films, because our parents didn’t see them as unsuitable. Mind you, the kissing thing became pretty old, we could be watching a scene from an innocent, joyful Christmas family movie, and as soon as any kissy scenes came on, the channel got changed, and we’d lose control over the remote.* Gory killing scenes in Predator were okay though, cos that was just men running around with knives. There’s been many a film that we didn’t see the ending of because of this problem.

Predator – just a film about getting exercise and fresh air in the jungle. With guns.

6. Yes, our parents were those ones who said if you didn’t get A grades, you might as well not have bothered. Admittedly, we were lucky enough to be that family which were high achievers at school and who made our cousins’ lives (unintentionally) miserable because their parents were always smacking them on the head asking them why they couldn’t get our grades. Also funnily enough, when I got my GCSE grade, the majority of which were A grades, my dad pointed out that I only got a B in Maths, which was a bit of a let-down – yet a day later a few of my uncles congratulated me saying my dad had praised my grades. My dad wanted one of us to be a mathematician (because it was his favourite subject) and my mum would have preferred it if one of us did something respectable like become a doctor or lawyer. Seeing as no one in the family has yet to reach these lofty statuses yet, I’m still waiting for them to transfer their attentions on the grandkids.

7. Clothes and fashion in the 90s wasn’t as glamorous as they are for us today, and we didn’t have it all thought out. My sister and I are 18 months apart, which meant that as kids, we got dressed exactly the same. We looked nothing the same as kids (and even less so as adults), but this didn’t stop my mum from dressing us up exactly the same, and for relatives to ask if we were twins. Another cost-saving fashion method we had was to buy a roll of fabric and for all the girls in the family to have the same outfit stitches (which we’d have to wear at the same time) – hence our aversion as adults to wear anything pink, frilly, netted or similar to anything any other sister is wearing. And my brother wasn’t spared either, we have many photographs of him growing up displaying his stylish shell-suits with his curtain hair styles.

Can you see that look of scepticism in my face? My sisters (behind) had the same frilly dresses as me in yellow, which were our mum put on us for special occasions.

8. Bollywood films were a staple when we were going up, as much as Power Rangers, Blue Peter and the Indiana Jones films were. Every week, my mum would send one of us to the corner video shop to pick up the latest pirated Bollywood video tape and watch huddled together in the living room (they were a lot more family friendly than they are now, no kissing scenes here). My dad hated us watching Bollywood films, so we would watch it whenever he went out with (blatant, over-acted) ‘stealth’, – whenever we’d hear the sound of his key in the door and him stepping into the house, we would be scrambling around to switch the VCR off and pretend to be staring at the news/carpet/empty bowl when he came in.

Die Hard had nuthin’ on this guy.

9. Weddings in the 90s were a world away from the grand affair they are now. Weddings in the 90s were purely about eating food, wearing puffy dresses and tinsel, and lots of cramped seating. And don’t get me started on the cringe-worthy wedding videos and their ‘special’ effects (one of my uncle’s wedding videos features the cameraman’s hand holding up a piece of glass to make a kaleidoscopic effect in the lens. It worked, too). Compared to the bridezillas of today who take a microscopic look at wedding dresses, cakes, flowers, seating arrangements and a hundred other things, wedding back in the day involved booking a hall and food, turning up, watching at least one fight and leaving as soon as you ate. The poor bride was usually miserable and spent the whole time with her head down, and the groom was usually an obscure figure on the stage. The best thing I remember about those days was running around with the other kids and picking up loose change on the floor (and feeling really rich!)

10. Family portraits were another disaster in our household, and not just because of the fashion faux pas – I don’t think we have a single family picture which has everyone with a straight face (one of us were usually sniggering or hiding behind someone else). My sisters remember my mum telling them not to smile too much (and keep their teeth inside their mouths) because it didn’t look respectable in pictures – which is a far cry from the fake smiles and poses we all have today (I’m pretty sure we could submit a lot of ours to this website). A lot of our pictures from an early age look quite serious and sombre, usually because we were sitting on sofas in the front room which we weren’t usually meant to go in, which is ironic because I don’t think any of us were particularly miserable children. These days we’re all about arty-farty pictures and looking our best in pictures (okay that’s probably just me, but still), and the grandkids in my family have grown up with camera phones in front of their faces.

Me and my sister’s hijabi selfie

11. Food in our house was another affair which hasn’t changed. I watched Russell Peters at one of his stand-up shows once, and he correctly talked about how our mums only ever cooked whatever our dads wanted, no matter whether we wanted it or not. This was the same in our house – I can remember countless number of times that my mum made my dad’s favourite food (usually lentils) while we all moaned about wanting chicken and chips. We also didn’t eat out or have much junk food as kids (which is probably a good thing in hindsight) – I think I was about 13 when I had my first McDonald fish burger. Whenever we wanted junk food, my mum would make us home-made fish and chips (peeled and chopped potatoes, of course!) on Sundays, or otherwise make us home-made kebabs to put in burger buns. Over time we discovered halal chicken burger shops, and I remember making weekly trips with one of my sisters after saving up all of our 5ps and 10ps to buy burgers from the local shops (with all of our change in our hands, who needs purses?)

12. Storing and hoarding is a trait that probably all Asian (and other ethnicities) family have – we can’t bear to throw anything away. We have a cellar full of junk from our childhood which we are constantly trying to clear and then end up filling up again. Granted, we’re a lot more neater at storing our junk than those weird shows you see on tv (and we uses to think that the number of books we had were bad, until we drove past a house once which had newspapers and books lining the hallway in stacks until it reached the front door). Part of the problem is we hate to chuck something that we’d paid for, especially because we think we’ll need it again (we won’t). My dad even built a shed (which we’ve named the cow-shed) to ‘store’ our extra tools and things, and which is our latest dumping ground (plus it’s a haven for spiders so everyone’s too scared to go in there).

Another habit we all have is storing and stockpiling enough food and toilet paper to fuel a small country, even though my mother goes shopping every week to buy more of these. We always say that if there’s ever a siege, at least we won’t starve or need toilet paper.

All in all, there were plenty of embarassing moments (this is just the tip of the ice-berg, really!) but there were also lots of perks. Things were simpler then, video games were easier to play (have you tried to play one now? jeez.), cartoon shows were better, we weren’t obssessed with mobiles and the internet, and being an Asian nerd wasn’t always a bad thing if it meant you got A grades at school instead of beats (I rememeber a boy in my class on results day who didn’t go home for two days because he was too scared to tell his parents his grade, when he finally came home they told him they’d been waiting for him to come and show his results).

I’m sure there’s a part two of this coming soon, but in the mean-time, I’m off to browse 90s films to make fun out of (starting with this one, one of the funniest re-caps I’ve read!)

*Ownership of the remote control is a serious thing in our house (I have no idea if this is a thing in other people’s house, although I suspect it is) ‘Having’ the remote is taken pretty seriously, and whoever has it is a lucky devil because they can hold on it and control what everyone else watches. The only exception to this is my dad who has the power to take the remote and change it to Geo channel or BBC news at any and all times, no matter how much we might complain.

China The Middle Kingdom: A Golden History

I went to a Chinese exhibition a while ago, which focused on the China and it’s Dynasties (otherwise known as Zhōngguó or The Middle Kingdom), with varying clothes, artefacts and antiques from different eras. I loved the beauty of this period, the delicate, detailed art and the elegance in all of the artifacts, from the clothes to the engraved furniture, and even in the detailed warm masks and the beautifully quirky tea-pots!

I won’t say much more, as the pictures below can do most of the talking – but I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed this exhibition, China has always been a country which I’ve been fascinated with and it’s always nice to see things that I’ve read in books come to life in the museums!

Fruity Kookiness

I went to a mehndi ceremony for a close friend a few days ago, and thought these were fabulous – fruit trays with carved fruit which were cleverly and intricately made into pretty flowers, animals and heart shapes. I did think the flowers made of peppers were a bit different, I’ve seen a lot of fruit carved into flowers, swans and cute designs before, but I really liked these because of how different they looked – the swan in a watermelon cage is a fab idea!

And what’s great about it is that it’s all home-made – the different fruit trays were all made by women who brought them to the ceremony. Now that’s something to try my hand at, apple-penguins, anyone? Maybe not

Fairy Tales & Long Tails: Why Disney films could have been written by Asians

Disney films – the origins of every Star Plus drama. Or perhaps, it’s really vice versa, maybe Hans Christian Anderson travelled to India one day (or had access to some Indian cable) and saw a young beautiful girl being victimised by her family. Add a few pretty dresses, fairy godmothers and a ball – and she’s getting married to a man she met the night before. No hanky panky there!

Okay, okay, I know that the fairy tales came first, but here’s a look at how Disney films are similar to the clichéd Bollywood films and serial dramas (or should it be sari-al dramas?), and how the Disney-fied versions may have been peppered with desi culture.

1. Sleeping Beauty
Starting off with an arranged marriage which is fixed at birth (okay, Asian parents don’t do that anymore, but think of older generations pairing up their kids with cousins etc). As for the ‘evil witch’ who makes trouble – just think of the jealous ‘aunt’ who causes a drama and a kicks up a massive fuss when not invited to family occasion – is this not almost every Asian wedding you’ve ever been to? Not to mention the three god-fairies who are meant to be looking after the Princess but end up telling her to dress, eat and clean the house – replace this with interfering aunts or mother-in-laws, and you have a Bollywood family drama. Not to mention, only in a serial drama would the happy ending be a wedding with a blinged out ballgown (i.e. dress that goes blue-pink-blue-pink).

2. Beauty and the Beast
Let me start off, first, with the fact that in Beauty and the Beast, reading is seen as bad. Forget the fact that my parents used to hate my sisters and I reading books (a separate post in itself!) – EVERYONE who has seen a Bollywood film in the 90s will know that a heroine can never be beautiful while she wears glasses because it makes her ugly and geeky, which comes from reading too many books and not being a good marriage prospect. That is, until she takes the glasses off and transforms into a immaculately made-up supermodel with perfect hair.
(Props to Beauty and the Beast, though, for giving Belle a whole library to accept her inner nerd.)
Add to this the fact that Belle’s only purpose (and worth) in life is to be a potential wife to the village bachelor, since he’s such a catch, and you’ve got your average Bollywood movie in which any girl, no matter how much of a rebel, career woman or lost-cause she is, becomes a cosy home-maker once she’s snagged herself a man who’s willing to wife her up.

Another Bollywoodification in this film – when Belle goes to live with the Beast, she’s seen as endangered, or even a subject of scandal…until everyone finds out he’s a prince with a castle, in which case all is forgiven and she can marry him because of his giant 42-inch plasma tv and his Beemer in the drive…er, I mean gold-gilded chariot wheels.

3. Jungle Book
Mowgli. ‘Nuff said.
(Not to mention the fact that most of us had the same bowl-haircut as Mowgli when we were kids.)

4. Cinderella
If Indian serial dramas could be epitomised in one Disney film it would be this one – the pretty, luxurious dresses (in the dramas everyone is dressed up to the nines as if they are about to attend their own wedding, but instead just sit around at home lurking around in corridors and stuff); the rivalry between sisters/in-laws/aunts/mothers/grannies; the race to get married, and of course, the comic ‘ugly’ sisters (i.e. fat aunties) trying to squeeze themselves into flouncy dresses.

Not only does Cinderella end up marrying a man she met once before her marriage (arranged marriages have less dancing involved, but still), but she manages to do so in a beautiful dress which conveniently cost nothing because of a ‘fairy godmother’ (if only, eh?) – and us Asian girls will all know about having to be home from the ball in time for curfew.

5. Snow White
Replace Snow White’s evil stepmother with a mother in law, and you have almost every Asian woman’s dynamic relationship with her MIL (particularly the ones on tv). Not to mention trying to kill her with food – jealous much?

Oh, and those heigh-ho-singing dwarves? Just promoting the ethics of hard work, just like a good A-grade Asian (Not to mention how those dwarves are just symbolism for hairy, Asian men, i.e. potential haasbands. ) Just like Cindy-poo and Sleeping Beauty, Snow White marries a man she saw once, then falls in love with him AFTER shaadi like a good girl.

6. Dumbo
It may be about an elephant, but the ear jokes are all Asian.

7. Mulan
Okay, a different type of Asian, but still emphasises boys are more important than girls. What do they know, hey?

8. Aladdin
They didn’t even try to hide anything in this one – big-nosed Asians, arranged marriages (to rich princes – isn’t every Desi mother’s son a Prince after all?) and brown people wishing for things they can’t afford – and expecting them for free (i.e. cutting corners).
And Jasmine herself has got the classic long black hair in a (albeit poof-y) good-girl plait, brown eyes with extravagant eyeliner (just look outside on the streets of East London to see proof of a dodgy combination of young girls and too much eyeliner) and as if it’s not racist enough, she has a pet tiger.

*All memes have been made by myself, but feel free to re-use them, just as I ‘borrowed’ the Disney images from the internetz.*

Boating with a Bengal Tiger

LIFE OF PI (PG)
Directed by Ang Lee

Acclaimed director Ang Lee picked well with his latest venture of adapting Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, depicting cinematic deliciousness with beautiful landscapes, lively animal scenes and a central character who manages to bring a sea-faring adventure to life. Following the unnamed writer who meets a remarkable Indian man to hear about his life story, we meet ‘Pi’, full name Piscine Molitor Patel, named after a French swimming pool, brought up in the French-Indian colony of Pondicherry, who lives in a zoo. And it’s not long before he is sailing on a Japanese ship which is bound for Canada, to begin a new life with his parents and his brother Ravi. And thus begins what seems to be a richly-coloured tale, although it doesn’t just begin there. Painting a portrait of zoo life and schoolboy childhood in India, Pi (and the narrator) creating an engaging voice, pulling us along in his memories of being teased at school, living with zoo animals, and even meeting girls, giving an almost ‘boy’s own’ adventure tone which we can easily fall into.

And this is, after all, a tale to “make you believe in God”, so it’s fitting that we also learn about Pi’s religious beliefs, and how he is brought up as a Hindu but stumbles upon Christianity and it’s “mind-boggling” concepts of love and sacrifice. Soon, “Islam followed right behind”, with Pi embracing all three religions and accepting their philosophies equally. It is here we see a compassionate young boy, looking to understand the idea of love and God, and the overlying message that all are equal. (Not that it stops his brother teasing him by asking whether “Swami Jesus will be visiting Mecca this year”, or whether “will it be to Rome for your coronation as the next Pope Pi-us?”).

And there are the animals themselves, twittering, growling, moo-ing and neighing in and out of the film, as the director amalgamates Pi’s childhood in the zoo with his journey on the Pacific Ocean. From the very beginning of the film we are asked: “Do animals have a soul?”. Pi’s father insists that it is our own emotions and perceptions which are reflected back at us when looking into their eyes, but Pi’s spiritual nature is reluctant to accept this view. At the peak of the film, events takes a tragic turn when the ship begins to sink, and in true epic style, Pi is left along with some zoo animals, his own knowledge and a whole lot of water. Thus, the story of the survival of a young boy becomes more than just about getting his meal and being rescued; he has to contend with sharing a life-boat with a deadly tiger, keep his sanity, and learn about his place in the world and how far he will go to survive.

Most striking of all about this film is the aesthetic experience; Lee transports us to an oceanic world which is much more beautiful than your average travel brochure, luring us with beautiful scenes to share this adventure with Pi. With exquisite detail in the landscape, animals and beautiful scenery, this is a movie which appreciates natural beauty as an art, transporting viewers into a simpler world of enhanced beauty, the idea of the spiritual and being human. Blending special effects so that they merge with the spectacular scenes (the night scene with glowing pools of water and fish is one of my favourite scenes, left) it’s easy to leave us breathless, mixing the almost unreal and unbelievable to make the beautifully depicted animals and epic scenes feel just a touch away.

All in all, this is a wonderful story, Yann Martel’s novel quietly questions the idea of home, and what makes us human, and Ang Lee interprets this on the screen just as well. While the novel is more successful at portraying the angst of religious conflicts and “being all religions is the same as being none at all”, as well as the concept of animals being compared to humans, the film chooses to do this in imagery. We are shown the beauty of nature in all its calm and cruelty, its mastery of mankind as well as the taming of it. Metaphors, too, come in several forms in this film, we see how ‘Richard Parker’ (the tiger) represents not only Nature, but also reflects back Pi’s wild side, just as the sea, the ship, the life-boat and the various encounters the protagonist has represents not only the circle that is Life, but also the idea of a ‘spiritual’ coming of age. Newbie Suraj Sharma plays his role amazingly, and doesn’t overact or under-emote, and his ability to express emotions realistically only adds to the calibre of the film.

I loved the book because of its haunting and quiet descriptions of a lone soul struggling to survive in an extreme situation, and just as it quietly comes to an astonishing end, this film also ties the threads to come together in a startling, yet quiet conclusion in this masterpiece. I will admit that the novel felt more articulate and the ending felt more coherent to me than the film, yet the actual cinematic experience of this film is beautiful and cannot be beaten, it is a journey which I ‘d recommend to all.

The Kathakali Exhibition – the art of South Indian classical dance

I visited the Redbridge Kathakali exhibition yesterday, which was a small exhibition about a mainly male-classical dance, which originates from Kerala in South India. I thought it was quite an interesting exhibition, as I have heard of ‘kathak‘ dance which is a classical dance from India which is popular amongst men and women, but wanted to see how the South Indian Kathakali is related to this.

Kathakali (like kathak itself) is not just dancing – but about telling stories. I was surprised to learn, for example, that the classical dance incorporates sign language to express emotions (such as fingers opening outwards to signify a flower), which I think adds layers of complexities to the dance and the stories.

And of course the costumes were amazingly decorated. In my own culture, we have our own traditional styles of dress, accessories and even other adornments like mehndi – so it’s interesting to see the extravagantly and richly coloured layers of dress worn by these dancers – from the full on bright make-up, the intricate head-gear and to the several layers of robes and jewellery.

Definitely worth a look if you’re in the area – the exhibition’s free and there’s videos, costumes and models to look at.