Aparita

The Toronto Star, [05/05/2002]

For Neeru Bajwa and Vikram and Vekeana Dhillon, a quick trip to India was easy.

They’d just ride out to the local Canadian cinema playing Bollywood fare, usually to full houses. They would indulge in a three-hour-plus melodrama replete with songs, dances and over-the-top action sequences. And of course, grab a samosa during the intermission.

But soon this weekend affair with Bollywood turned into a quest that led them from the freezing temperatures of Canada to the monsoons of Mumbai, India.

They wanted to be stars, Indian style.

While a role in Hindi films still eludes them, they did end up starring in a documentary, Bollywood Bound, by first-time director Nisha Pahuja.

The sold-out Toronto premiere at the Bloor Cinema closes the international documentary festival Hot Docs tonight at 6: 30.

For many others like Bajwa and the Dhillons, Bollywood is a formative part of their hyphenated identity. It’s pop enough for their westernized tastes, yet it also speaks to their realities growing up as South Asians.

“I was talking to these girls in Mississauga,” says the 34-year-old Pahuja. “I asked them why they watched Bollywood movies. And they said they could relate to the characters. Because just like Kajol (an Indian film actress), they couldn’t get a phone call from a boy.”

Pahuja relaxes in the Chapters opposite the offices of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), which produced Bollywood Bound, sipping a soy-milk chai. Her silver nose ring matches silvery gray strands peeping through her curly dark hair.

It’s been a hectic few days full of interviews, and she’s apologetic that she only has half an hour to speak before rushing off to another one.

A graduate of English literature, Pahuja wanted to be a writer. Then a friend offered her a research job, which eventually led to the NFB. When she pitched her idea about following Indo-Canadian youth with Bollywood dreams, she got a favourable response.

“It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment I decided on this idea,” says Pahuja. “It had been brewing with me for a while. I’ve had this love for Hindi cinema. But there was also a rejection of anything Indian.”

Pahuja’s family moved to Canada when she was 4. The experience of being an immigrant child - dealing with racism and the lack of positive South Asian images - resulted in a sense of self-loathing and shame.

But in the latter half of the ’90s, with the release of technically and esthetically slick movies such as Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and 1942: A Love Story, Pahuja rediscovered her love for Hindi movies.

“I was at Desh Pardesh (a now defunct South Asian diaspora arts festival) five, six years ago,” she says. “And DJ Zahra was playing some Bollywood remixes. Suddenly she played ‘Rang Barse,’ (a famous song from the ’80s movie Silsila starring Rekha and Amitabh Bachchan), and everyone just erupted. They were dancing crazy and doing their best Rekha and Amitabh impersonations.

“I thought, holy mack! There’s so much joy. A celebration, an embracing of brownness. There’s a film in this. Something needs to be done about Bollywood. Then one day a journalist friend told me about her story on Ruby Bhatia, and it just all clicked.”

Bhatia was a former winner of the Toronto-based Miss India-Canada pageant and went on to become a celebrity as a video jockey and a morning-show host on Indian television.

In the early ’90s, Indian television was opening its doors to satellite television. Bhatia was the perfect combination of “east and west” and had that extra spark that made her an overnight star.

For Indo-Canadian kids, Bhatia’s success story has become the great Indian dream. Bajwa, one of the stars of Bollywood Bound, was also a Miss India-Canada contestant in 1999.

“When I saw her picture in the program booklet, I knew this chick was Bollywood bound,” grins Pahuja. “Where the other contestants had more sedate pictures, (Bajwa) had this really glam shot, with her head thrown back. Very Bollywood.”

Locating the Dhillons was just a fluke. When visiting Rishma Malik, another former Miss India-Canada winner who had a brief stint on Indian television, Pahuja came across an Indian magazine article on Vekeana. Pahuja got in touch with the sister-brother team when she reached India.

Speaking over the phone from Mumbai, Vikram says he’s recently formed his own production company called Miracle.

“It a miracle to be here, you know,” he laughs. “My sister Vekeana and I worked as VJs for a year. I got bored with that; it wasn’t my cup of tea. At Miracle we make TV software, music videos, ads, and we’re promoting new talent from Canada. Right now I am promoting (an Indo-Canadian) group from Vancouver called Signia.”

His sister, meanwhile, is writing a book. Now 28, Vikram hopes to direct his first film before he’s 35. He’s heard that Bajwa is in Mumbai too, but he hasn’t been able to locate her.

“If you find her before I do, tell her I’m looking for her,” he says.

For Pahuja, however, Bhatia was the most fascinating character.

“You get this sense that she’s always playing a role,” she says. “She’s very smart and intelligent. She’s also very conflicted and totally enigmatic.

“What’s interesting is that everyone (Bhatia, the Dhillons and Bajwa) has this romanticized view of India. (Bhatia’s) fantasy of India as a holy land is just as romantic as (Bajwa’s) fantasy of finding work in Bollywood or Vekeana’s of coming home.”

Bollywood Bound plays with this notion of illusion and reality by interspersing clips from popular Bollywood films in the midst of its narrative. This juxtaposition also reflects the importance of Bollywood for South Asian children growing up in Canada.

“For people of my generation, everything is a negotiation. We’re not comfortable in our skin,” says Pahuja.

“These films are somehow representative of a community trying to locate itself. There’s a mixture of anger and loss. Anger because you know the films are playing on your emotions to make a buck. But there’s also that call back home.

“Hindi films have somehow made the transition from that world to this world easier.

The Toronto Star, [04/03/2002]

Mangoes, I’d sigh.
On hot summer school-afternoons in Delhi, my sister and I would slowly trudge home in the suffocating heat.

Once home, we’d take a quick bath and collapse on the cool cement floors. Watching the fan whirring giddily, scooping gusts of hot air in the room, we’d think of all the things we liked about summer.
Ice cold baths. Slake-your-thirst-drinks. Frozen treats from the food-franchise Nirulas.

And mangoes.

Mango is one of the most popular tropical fruits and has been cultivated in India since at least 2000 BC. The Indian mango, mangifera indica, is the descendant of a wild tree still found in northeast India.

It’s said the Chinese traveller, Hwen T’sang, who visited India in the 1st century AD, first made mango known outside India. He used the name an-mo-lo, a phonetical twist on the Sanskrit amra.

By the 10th century AD cultivation of mangifera indica had spread as far west as Persia (now Iran), where it stopped. From south India, the Portuguese took it to Africa in the 16th century. It reached Brazil and the West Indies in the 18th century, and Hawaii, Florida, and Mexico in the 19th century.

Although large numbers of mangoes are now grown across the globe, India remains the world’s largest producer, not only meeting the demands of an international market, but also the high domestic one.

The beginnings of the relentless summers in Delhi see vendors with portable carts full of mangoes lining vegetable markets, bus stops, or any busy intersection. Swatting away flies with a piece of cloth otherwise perched on their shoulders and sprinkling droplets of water on the fruit to cool it, they coax passers-by to buy their wares.

It doesn’t take much persuasion to buy a kilo or two of mangoes. But mango buying can become quite complicated. More than 500 named varieties (some say 1,000) have evolved in India. It’s said the Mughal emperor Akbar loved mangoes so much he had a mango orchard with a million varieties of the fruit planted over 200 years ago. The orchard is called Lakh (million) Bagh (garden).

Even with a dozen varieties to choose from in our neighbourhood vegetable market in Delhi, it would take a fine balance to satisfy each family member’s palate.

My sister and I, for instance, love dussheri. This variety is known for it’s elongated shape and bright yellow to orange hued skin. When sliced, it yields a supple orange flesh, lightly fragrant and sweet.
My grandfather always hankers for langda, known for its round shape with a beak-like end and green skin. This mango yields a yellow flesh that’s stringy and sweet. My father’s favourite is chausa, a yellow-skinned mango, which is extremely sweet.

Then are others who swear by the alphonso variety grown in the state of Maharashtra and one of the most expensive varieties of mango. I remember my aunt carting crates of the fruit from Mumbai to Delhi to distribute among family and friends when she would visit during summer vacation.

There were many ways we consumed mangoes. Eating them is a messy but satisfying affair.

My favourite way was to suck the flesh out of a small incision at “the mouth” - the top - of the fruit. But mango milkshakes were also divine and simple to make.

Perfect summer quenchers.
De-skin the mango, cut into chunks. Pour milk, sugar and the chunks into a blender. Blend. Add lots of ice and serve the frothy drink in tall glasses.

Other than serving gourmet pleasures, mango figures in other aspects of Indian life.

Hindu epics such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata are replete with references to mangoes. The mango tree is often depicted as the kalpvriksha, or the wish-granting tree, in Indian literature.
Even Buddha is said to have favoured a mango grove as a resting place during his travels.

Mango leaves are an integral part of Hindu rituals and religious ceremonies, and are festooned on doorways. Mango blossoms are used to worship Saraswati, the Indian goddess of learning.

The mango motif is a popular one, recurring in Indian architecture, textiles and other art forms, even if stringing mango leaves has given way to stringing lights at the doorway due to lack of availability.

Torontonians can still enjoy the fruit imported from nearby warmer climes. Of course, you don’t quite get mangoes like the Indian varieties. The closest matches, in terms of appearances and tastes, can be found in Indian grocery stores or Chinatown.

In Indian grocery stores, cartons marked alphonso mangoes can be found. The ones I have seen aren’t the alphonsos I remember, but are definitely sweeter than other locally available varieties.

The ones I have bought from Chinatown are reminiscent of the smooth flesh of a dussheri mango.

Cans of alphonso mango pulp are also available in Indian grocery and speciality stores and are often used to make mango milkshakes, yoghurt lassis and other desserts.

Ah, mangoes.

I’m sighing again, just at the thought of them.