Aparita

Toronto Star, [04/12/2003]

West’s love affair with the East has such deep roots that it’s hard to tell which is which

Special to the Star

Stretch cotton yoga pants: $55. Henna tattoo on the navel: $15. Silk sari window treatment: $150. Nirvana-in-three-easy-steps: Priceless.

Easy exotic is up for grabs, from “chai tea” to Bollywood-inspired blockbusters such as Moulin Rouge.

And it has become so enmeshed in everyday life that it’s sometimes hard to recognize what you could call the “exotification” of Western culture.

The idea is that one can buy an essence of India, bottled into yoga kits, henna tubes or Bollywood movies.

But whereas in the past the exotification of the East largely occurred outside mainstream Western culture, the current revival has somehow made its way inside.

“This kind of movement usually starts on the fringes, mainly by the people involved in art, fashion or culture,” says visual artist Shelly Bahl, who divides her time between New York and Toronto.

To illustrate her point, she draws on examples from the U.K., Toronto and New York:
In the U.K., Talvin Singh came out with an album in 1997 called Anokha that uses the Indian drums tabla tradition.

In Toronto, we have Funkasia, a monthly club event where Bollywood tunes play alongside r’n'b hits.
In New York, there’s a Bollywood disco movement going on.

“In the past, this would have been considered alternative. These days, everyone goes for it,” Bahl says.

“Or, in the past, Bollywood used to have a cult-level interest. Now you just turn on the TV or go to a mainstream cinema to watch a Hindi film.”

With the Indian culture’s resurgence in the West, Bahl experienced déjà vu.

“It suddenly hit me last year. I woke up one day and I wasn’t sure what decade I was in,” says the 33-year-old Bahl, whose own work explores the exotification of Indian art. “Fashion magazines had these India-inspired clothes, yoga was big, people were talking about Buddhism. It was a complete hippy culture revival.”

But it’s been a long time since the Beatles jammed with Indian sitar maestro Ravi Shankar and meditated with Indian yogi Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Today, we take the fallout of that culture shock for granted.

Take yoga.

It’s no longer limited to celebrities. Most physical fitness centres worth their salt offer a few classes ranging from power yoga for the busy Bay Street executive to a gentle version for pregnant women. Specialized yoga centres are all over the city offering different types of yoga and yoga exercise kits can be bought at department stores, your local Chapters and even at some newsstands, alongside yoga books and magazines.

Henna designs, an art form peculiar to eastern and African cultures, has fascinated the West for decades. Maybe it’s because the burgundy-black stain is so ephemeral, maybe it’s the exotic allure, but henna has certainly gone beyond a ritual application at marriage ceremonies.

Several Toronto salons offer henna applications, varying from traditional hand and foot designs to more contemporary armbands or navel tattoos.

Saris and bindis were discovered and discarded by the likes of Madonna, Mary J. Blige and Gwen Stephani a few years ago, but they haven’t gone away. The sari is ubiquitous, appearing not only on people but also as window treatment and wallpaper on home decorating shows.

Bollywood chic invaded the streets of New York and several British department stores last year, following the success of Monsoon Wedding and the Oscar nomination for the Bollywood movie Lagaan.

And just when you thought the Indian look was out, the April issue of Cosmopolitan includes a section on how to wear the shirt inspired by the kurta, the Indian tunic (it should be worn with jeans or slim fitting pants). A similar look was also sported by Courtney Cox and Jennifer Aniston in recent episodes of Friends.

Even more interesting was the decidedly Eastern influence on urban artist Truth Hurts track “Addictive,” which sampled some lines from a Bollywood soundtrack of yesteryear. The video shows women dancing to hip-hop beats but pairing jeans with a combination of Indian and Middle Eastern outfits and wearing intricate henna designs on their hands.

The West has a long history of looking to the exotic East to serve as muse. And as before, India, too, is cashing in on this trend by packaging its culture and spirituality to attract the West. But why is it happening with such intensity now?

One of the reasons could be Bollywood. India’s mammoth filmmaking industry, churning out close to 1,000 films a year in several Indian languages, has had a worldwide impact. Hollywood constantly influences Bollywood, but recently the roles have been reversed.

Hollywood’s affair with Bollywood was set rolling by Baz Luhrmann’s spectacle Moulin Rouge. Luhrmann made the film, starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGreg, in 2001, inspired by a mixture of the Orpheus myth and the stylized extravagance of Bollywood.

Recent movies such as New York-based Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding, U.K.-based Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham and Toronto’s own Deepa Mehta’s Bollywood Hollywood indicate that movies with more than a hint of Indian masala can get play in mainstream cinemas, even as Bollywood movies run regularly at select South Asian theatres in the GTA.

Then there was The Guru - a Bollywood-inspired Hollywood production that put together Hollywood star-power (Heather Graham and Marisa Tomei) and British-South Asian actors (Jimi Mistry and Emil Marwah). From the makers of Notting Hill and Four Weddings And A Funeral, The Guru is about a young Indian dance teacher Ramu Gupta (Mistry) who comes to America in the hopes of becoming a Hollywood star but ends up becoming an overnight celebrity as “the guru of sex.” He is aided in this transformation by porn star Sharrona (Graham) and ditzy socialite Lexi (Tomei).

The growing South Asian diaspora may be another factor in this revivalism of “India Pop.” People who have ethnic roots in South Asia share in this idea of India as a land of Eastern sensuality and ancient wisdom.

This way, they maintain their cultural distinctness, but are part of mainstream Canadian culture.
India itself is fanning the market. Ritu Birla, associate professor of history at the University of Toronto, points out that the figure of the Indian yogi, a spiritual adviser from the East, is a perfect example. It feeds into the concept of the disillusioned Westerner aching for some Eastern spiritual respite.

Take for example, medical-doctor-turned-lifestyle/spiritual guru Deepak Chopra. Over the past five years or so, Chopra has transformed himself from just another advocate of holistic health and nutrition to an international supersage, with reported earning of more than $22 million.

Chopra’s slick packaging of ancient Indian wisdom in credible Western garb is in vogue in India, too. Models-turned-yoga teachers are opening up yoga schools in Indian cities such as New Delhi and Mumbai. Alternative therapy is huge, with a dedicated following of moneyed Indians.

This is reminiscent of a few years ago, when various members of the Indian elite confessed to having “found Buddhism” at the same time Richard Gere was talking about his lifestyle as a Buddhist.

The East mimicking the West mimicking the East. There is another element of the ridiculous in all this.

“It’s interesting that you are trying to get away from the consumer culture (of the West), and yet you are consuming another culture,” says Bahl.

“Even if your interest in another culture is with the best of intentions, unless you completely understand the history and are conscious of your own participation in the process, there will be an element of appropriation.”