Aparita

CBC Radio : Here and Now : The Five Vengeances

The final play of the CrossCurrents Festival is Jovanni Sy’s The Five Vengeances, staging on Sunday at Factory Studio Theatre.

CBC Radio : Here and Now : Small World Music

Celebrating South Asian culture through music, Small World Music Society presents its fifth annual South Asian Music Festival. The series showcases the diverse range of sounds being performed by contemporary South Asian artists from Canada and abroad. From traditional to cutting edge, from emerging artists to celebrated stars, the Festival offers Toronto audiences a month-long journey through a remarkably rich musical landscape.

Two of the most revered names in Indian classical music, Zakir Hussain and Shivkumar Sharma, return to Toronto to open the series for on April 20. Continuing at various Toronto venues throughout the month of May, the highlights include Kiran Ahluwalia’s CD Release concert, celebrating her new disc, Wanderlust. The series culminates with the contemporary and fusionary experience of New York’s Karsh Kale. 

How do you bring a little fun back into fundamentalism? By making a sitcom, as Zarqa Nawaz is fond of saying.

Nawaz is the creator of the new Canadian TV series “Little Mosque on the Prairie.” The show debuted Jan. 9 on CBC TV–to unexpectedly strong ratings–and airs Mondays and Wednesdays at 9 p.m. and 8 p.m., respectively. As the title suggests, “Little Mosque on the Prairie” looks at the small Muslim community in a fictional Canadian prairie town called Mercy.

In the opening episode, we meet Amaar Rashid (Zaib Shaikh), a young lawyer from Toronto on his way to Mercy to follow his true calling–becoming an imam. Except that a cell-phone conversation with his mom–full of references to “suicide” (the career variety), “dropping a bomb” (meaning, the news of his vocational switch), and “Allah’s plan” (ditto)–get him hauled off by the police.

Meanwhile, in Mercy, the local Muslims are getting tired of the old imam, Baber Siddiqui (Manoj Sood), who rails that liquorice, wine, gum, and rye bread are Western traps to seduce Muslims to drink alcohol. The community can’t wait for the new imam to lead the congregation.

They’re also fighting other battles between the old guard and the new. While Baber wants to use a Costco telescope to sight the moon to mark the beginning of Ramadan, the more secular Yasir Hamoudi suggests checking out the website moonsighting.org to “let the starvation begin.” Similarly, Yasir’s wife, Sarah Hamoudi (Sheila McCarthy), who converted to Islam, would like to serve up cucumber sandwiches to break the fast, but she squares off with the traditional goat curry dished out by Fatima Dinssa (Arlene Duncan).

The aim was not to make a socio-political show, Nawaz says in an interview, but to make a good comedy. As a sitcom, the show has to deliver its laughs to get its high ratings, otherwise it will get cancelled, she points out.

“You can’t please everyone,” says Nawaz, when questioned about the criticism she’s received. “I’m just a comedy writer. I am not making a giant social statement. Ray Romano wrote about his elder brother who lived with parents. This show’s about everyday Muslim people, who live in the prairies.”

Nawaz whispers as she talks. She doesn’t want to disturb the scenes being shot in the ‘diner’ stage of the set, so the interview is being conducted in the ‘mosque’ stage. A hockey baseboard with the worn-out lettering spelling “Mercy Midgets” is near the back.

“That’s the barrier the mosque puts up,” Nawaz explains the plot of the second episode of the show. “They just use some scrap piece of wood.”

Much of “Little Mosque on the Prairie” draws from Nawaz’s own fish-out-of-water experiences moving from Toronto to Regina, Saskatchewan. A filmmaker who has made several comedic shorts, including “BBQ Muslims” and “Death Threat,” Nawaz hit upon the idea of “Little Mosque on the Prairie” when she was making her documentary “Me and the Mosque.”

When a barrier to divide men and women was established in the little Regina mosque that Nawaz attended, she traveled across Canada and spoke with scholars and lay people about the issue. During the process, she wondered what would a mosque led by a second-generation Muslim Canadian imam look like.

“Serious subjects make great fodder for comedy,” says Nawaz. “The world is getting a little bit crazier. We have to find humor in the situation to be able to deal with it.”

Some of the series’ humor comes from quintessential Canadiana, such as the way Torontonians are disliked in other parts of the country. On the other hand, there is also equal opportunity for stereotype ribbing: the right-wing radio talk show host Fred Tupper is as much a source of amusement as the extremist old-school imam Baber.

While the show proposes to find comedy in the quirks of our–in this case many Muslims’–everyday lives, the debut episode depended more on clever writing. The punning zingers, making ‘a big meal out of’ the iftar feast, for instance–were sometimes wearisome. Teasers of upcoming episodes suggest the punning will continue: In one episode a rebellious teenager tries the tactic of “shop and awe” against her father, Baber.

As for the actors, a few of them seem daunted by the show’s unusual premise, and are far too earnest in portraying their characters. That may well be first-show jitters or a result of the unbelievable buzz about “Little Mosque on the Prairie.” After all, the show had been covered by national and international media, even before it aired.

The reactions to the show have been mixed–ranging from lauding it as a truly Canadian show reveling in multiculturalism, to dismaying at the show’s (uniquely Canadian) political correctness.

The first episode drew 2.1 million viewers. Will it keep up the numbers, and bring a little fun back in fundamentalism? Only the TV seasons can tell.

SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE

The Indian classical dance Bharatnatyam can seem intimidating to an uninitiated audience. Its form is similar to ballet only in its use of the plié-like stance aramandi. Otherwise, its movements are linear and geometrical, accompanied by rhythmic feet stamping. Hand gestures and facial expressions are used to tell stories often taken from Hindu mythology.

For Malavika Sarukkai, Bharatanatyam is a way of speaking and connecting with the audience, irrelevant of whether the audience is Indian or Canadian.

“It’s about hastas, the gestures, yes, but that’s only the tip of the emotion,” she says. “It’s a non-verbal body language. It depends on how you highlight it. Your sharira, mukhaja — body and face — and hastas become one unit. It’s very evocative. . . . If you don’t get a line or two, it doesn’t matter. You get the general gist of it, and you feel moved. It’s like when you come from a good music concert, and you come out in a cloud of melody wrapped in that other frequency.

“That is the purpose of art, to take us out of our ordinary lives, to make us reach for the stars.”

Her ability to touch her audience has made Sarukkai, 46, one of India’s most celebrated Bharatanatyam dancers. She performed her debut when she was 12; less than a decade later, she was one of the youngest performers to dance at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Over the past 20 years, Sarukkai has won accolades for a choreographic style that combines, classical, contemporary and sacred influences. Reviews of her performances — whether they are in London, Paris or New Delhi — extol her as a goddess of dance. “She is lit from within when she dances. And she is lethally beautiful. . . . She makes us think and touches our hearts,” wrote Pamela Squires in the Washington Post in 2002.

Tonight, Sarukkai performs for the first time in Canada. She will dance Khajuraho: Temples of the Sacred and Secular at the Jane Mallet Theatre presented by Sampradaya Dance Creations.
Sarukkai choreographed Khajuraho to mark the millennial celebrations of the temples considered to be the earliest performance theatre for Indian classical arts. The temples were built under the Chandela dynasty that ruled northern India from 950 and 1050. They are famous for the erotic friezes, which have since become associated with the Kama Sutra. But their architectural splendour also includes intricate panels detailing war scenes.

While the sensual sculptures have become popular after the Indian tourism industry used them as a promotional tool, Sarukkai says, she wanted to look at the story the friezes tell in their entirety.

“It’s an explorative journey from the sanctum sanctorum to outside and back into the temple,” she says. “There are songs that celebrate love . . . but there are two scenes of leave-taking in which the king leaves for battle. It’s a big scape and the sacred [the spiritual theme in both sentiments] holds it together.”

For Sarukkai, her dance isn’t just entertainment. “It’s like suddenly looking up at the night sky and realizing that you’re a very small speck in the whole universe,” she says.

Call it Bombay or Mumbai, the city has been attracting tourists for centuries. Back in the day, the phoren people came by the boat load to buy spices, cotton and an assortment of exotica to stock their houses. Today desis come by the plane load to stock up on the latest Ritu Kumar designs for their cousins’ or siblings’ marriage or to party all night in the city’s booming nightlife. It’s bindaas Bombay yaar. Not dull Delhi.

Suketu Mehta had a totally different reason to go back. (Although, I’m sure he also stocked up on the latest designer duds and I know he knocked a few shots back with Bombay’s glitterati.) A journalist and fiction writer, Mehta wanted to answer the eternal immigrant question – can I go back home?

A Bombay native until the age of 14, Mehta had been living in New York and itching to go back and actually live in the city rather than skedaddling in and out of Bombay for journalistic explorations.

Naturally he jumped at the chance to write a book on his beloved city. The chance came when his article, on the Bombay riots that took place more than a decade ago, caught the eye of Sonny Mehta, the head honcho of Alfred Knopf. Obviously Sonny Mehta liked the sublime blend of the personal and the political in the article published in Granta magazine. Why else would Mehta (the writer) score a two-book contract with Random House? (Mehta is currently working on the second book, a novel.)

So, he packed his family’s effects and had his passport stamped for a year’s sojourn. Seven years later, Maximum City was published.

At 542 pages, the book is a bit of a tome. The first draft, Mehta gleefully chuckles, was more than twice that length. Sonny Mehta refused to speak to him for a short while. But a lot of patient editing later, the compendium of the modern day Mumbai resulted.

“I call the city Bombay,” said Mehta in a recent interview at the downtown Random House office. A black suit offset with an eye-catching mauve shirt hung on Mehta’s tall and lanky frame. He had a slight stoop, as if he’d just emerged from a long night in front of computer, frozen in that posture. His phone rang with various unfamiliar ring tones (I was expecting at least one Bollywood one…) while he displayed polite phone etiquette and asked if he could take some necessary calls.

The city has been christened different names by different communities, Mehta elaborated snapping his cellphone shut. And local Mumbaikars always called the city Mumbai. So the business of re-naming it doesn’t make sense to him, especially since the city was created by the British by filling in the seven islands with sand. So, if anyone, the British should get a chance to name the city. So, Bombay it is.

Besides giving the reader neat little factoids about the city, Mehta takes you on a journey that no travel book on the city will ever give you. Then again, I’m not sure the average travel book is concerned with meeting gangsters or cops who have come up with their own macabre versions of the third degree or dark alleyways where you could get any kink satisfied provided you can pay for it.

The most fascinating characters in the book are undoubtedly the gangsters. Mehta even manages to speak to the ‘don in exile’ Chota Shakeel. (Anyone who’s been keeping a track of fillum star Sanjay Dutt’s various peccadilloes will recognize the name.) And the engrossing explanations of gang histories are also your Coles notes to movies such as Company and other upcoming Ram Gopal Verma ventures. Mehta even initiates you into Bombay underworld slang, which will definitely come in handy for wannabe Bombay wallahs.

For Mehta, who painstakingly researched his subject by networking with the black-collar workers and hanging out at their places of business, chasing gangsters was exhilaration. He had a sample of the sort of rush war correspondents feel, when a joke eased the tension of facing a loaded gun.

Interviewing gangsters and the cop who led the arrest of Sanjay Dutt (for his alleged links in the Bombay bomb blasts) resulted in Mehta’s contribution to the film Mission Kashmir. (His film scriptwriting career was thus jumpstarted and now Mehta is working on the upcoming Merchant-Ivory production Shakti, starring Tina Turner.) While co-writing the movie, Mehta had a chance to speak to various Bollywood types – actors, directors, etc. The most amusing part of this Bollywood interlude has to be the section on Eisshan, a struggling actor in Bombay. (Anyone who wants to make it in Bollywood should definitely read this section, besides watching Bollywood Bound. Not everyone will have the same luck as Shah Rukh Khan.)

The book is a definite must read, especially if you’re planning a Bombay trip. Interviews, mixed with personal and honest observations, as well as well-crafted prose throw the reader into the hurly-burly of Bombay. Telling the stories of his characters, Mehta paints a picture of Bombay that goes much deeper than shopping excursions, meeting family and hobnobbing with celebrities.

The Globe and Mail, [04/23/2005]

Backyard gathering of Muslims crosses ‘another threshold of conservativism’

APARITA BHANDARI

SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE

For Raheel Raza, becoming the first Muslim woman in Canada to lead publicly announced prayer was awe-inspiring, a “silent revolution.” And while the gathering of more than 20 men and women yesterday in the backyard of a home in Toronto’s Cabbagetown was small, the importance of the event was not lost on the worshippers.

“This is a landmark event because it crosses yet another threshold of conservatism,” said Tarek Fatah, co-founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress and whose small yard was the venue for the Juma Prayer led by Ms. Raza. “It sets an agenda where you can’t go back from here.”

Back for Mr. Fatah and others is to the belief among many traditional Muslims that women-led prayers are heretical and un-Islamic. Indeed, it was fear of confrontations that caused the traditional Friday afternoon prayer to be moved twice — from the Noor Cultural Centre and from a commercial building in downtown Toronto, after a New York-based Urdu-language newspaper published the leaked secret location — before landing in Mr. Fatah’s yard. The prayer had also been condemned as anti-Islamic.

In her manner of dress, Ms. Raza did not stray from tradition: The black shawl with red embroidery that covered her head also covered her traditional dress of long tunic and pants, resembling a burqa. One of the many reasons for segregation of men and women in prayers is the potential distraction of a woman’s sexuality.

Before addressing the gathering, Ms. Raza — who has led many inter-faith prayers at churches, temples and synagogues — went over the passages she had marked in the Koran she was clutching.

“I am in awe, and I have this responsibility. I don’t want to mispronounce anything,” she said. “This is such a significant day. Firstly, because it’s actually the day of the Prophet’s birthday. And it’s the Juma Prayer, a significant weekly ritual for Muslims. And I have been asked to lead the prayer.”
Starting with a zikr (chanting of a verse), Ms. Raza stood to read her khutba (sermon). The Juma Prayer went off without a hitch.

“It’s a very humbling experience to be asked by my own community to lead them,” she said. “This is my submission to God. This is not for people, it’s not for the media. It’s not that I want to take over the duties of male imams.

“In terms of a movement, I call it a silent revolution. Other women will hear about it and feel empowered. It’s not being equal to men. Because men can’t be equal to women. But it’s about being equal in spirituality.”

Mr. Fatah, whose MCC organized the prayer, added: “There’s a sense of solidarity with women who do feel they need to be in leadership positions, with all respect to those who don’t wish to be. There are many ways of expressing Islam. And I think this is the way the Prophet would have appreciated it, had he been alive today.”

Among those at the prayer was Asra Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter-turned-author based in Morgantown, W. Va. She was in Toronto for the fifth stop on the Muslim Women’s Freedom Tour she launched on March 1 to visit North American cities, promulgating the message of women’s rightful place alongside men in Islam.

The first stop had been New York. On March 18, a mixed-gender Friday congregational prayer was led by Amina Wadud, a female Islamic studies professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. The prayer made news around the world, and the protests, as well as support, extended from the pavement outside Synod House at the Cathedral of St. John in New York to Malaysia and Egypt.

On Thursday night, hours before attending the prayer led by Ms. Raza, Ms. Nomani read from her book, Standing Alone in Mecca, for an audience at the Noor Cultural Centre. While on a pilgrimage to Mecca, she said, she was inspired by the throngs of men and women praying side by side. She spoke about losing her religion and reclaiming it from the strictures of patriarchy.

“After yesterday’s prayer, Ms. Raza and Ms. Nomani hugged. The gilt of the Arabic calligraphy on Ms. Raza’s Koran glinted in the sun.

“We did it,” Ms. Nomani said. “It was so simple. Just a few people and a woman willing to lead them. But it was so profound.”

The Montreal Gazette

Montreal’s JoSH is not troubled by mobs of fans at home, but over in South Asia, MTV India picked the duo as best new artist and their songs are everywhere on radio, TV.

APARITA BHANDARI

SPECIAL TO THE GAZETTE

By the time JoSH came on stage at Toronto’s Docks Nightclub, the 3,000-plus audience was primed to greet the Montreal-based duo that’s become a pop sensation in South Asia.

Opening with their popular bhangra remix of Nelly Furtado’s single Powerless (Say What You Want), JoSH kept up the tempo, singing popular tracks from their second album Kabhi (Sometimes).

“We’re from Montreal, and Montreal really rocks with us. But we want to see how Toronto does it,’ yelled Rupinder Magon, while Qurram Hussain romanced the crowd.

The irony is that almost no one knows about JoSH in Montreal, but they get hounded for autographs in New Delhi, Magon says.

“One of my favourite shows was in a coffeeshop called Caffeine, in Karachi,” he said. “It was a 50-seater and 150 people crammed into the place. We weren’t really supposed to sing, but we walked up and sang maybe 10 words of Kabhi, and the crowd sang the rest. It was unbelievable.

“In Montreal, we can just walk out on the streets, and no one will know. And that is great. As much as we love performing and touring, it’s always nice to come back home.”

Today, JoSH is as famous a Canadian export in South Asia as Bryan Adams and Alanis Morissette. In South Asia, JoSH is on regular rotation on music TV channels and radio playlists. Fans line up for autographs, and performances command audiences ranging from a few hundred to 15,000. Last December, JoSH won MTV India’s award for best new artist (non-film category), after performing onstage with U.K. bhangra singer Sukhbir.

JoSH has been ripping up the MTV World Chart Express with a popular mix of tracks inspired by bhangra (the folk music and dance from the Indian state of Punjab) and Urdu ballads with a North American sensibility. Kabhi’s title track stayed in the Top 10 for more than 25 weeks after its release last year.

It’s been more than a decade since Magon and Hussain - or Rup and Q - first met on the bus from Brossard to Champlain College. At the time, Magon was part of a four-member version of JoSH. The band was looking for a keyboardist and Hussain fit the bill. In those days - Magon and Hussain went on to get degrees in economics and engineering, respectively, at Concordia University - JoSH used to perform covers of Bollywood and popular bhangra songs, playing at such venues as Theatre St. Denis, the Spectrum and Place St. Henri.

Bhangra has become a part of South Asian popular culture - and beyond. Now, it gets sampled by urban artists; most recently, United Kingdom bhangra producer Panjabi MC collaborated with Jay-Z on the popular track Beware of the Boyz (Mundian To Bach Ke).

“We started out playing covers, and having some fun,” Hussain said. “Slowly we started doing originals, just gave it shot. And slowly the bug of doing originals bit us.”

But it wasn’t always an easy road to South Asian stardom for JoSH, which has been whittled down from a quartet to a duo.

“People didn’t greet us with open arms right from the beginning,” Hussain said.

It was tough being a South Asian band in Quebec, as opposed to cities like Vancouver and Toronto with a significant community of the South Asian diaspora, but that’s the sort of music that came naturally to JoSH.

“At home, although I was born in Montreal, I was more influenced by the kirtans (devotional songs) at the gurudwara (Sikh place of worship). I was more influenced by (Sufi singer) Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Bollywood,” said Magon. “I didn’t know English music. I still don’t know it that much. I listen to more Indian music, that’s just the way it is.”

The North American flavour is more Hussain’s contribution. Born in Muscat, Oman, and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, Hussain has lived in Montreal for over a decade. Hussain considers himself to have been influenced by such bands as Guns N’ Roses and Europe, as well as Pearl Jam and Soundgarden.
“How do you put boundaries on music culturally?” asks Hussain. “We’ve grown up listening to everything. And our music reflects that. We’ve never tried to define our music.”

Experimenting with this hybrid sound, JoSH decided it wasn’t enough to play for the South Asian diaspora. Besides, any big South Asian act in the diaspora comes via the homeland. So, JoSH dreamt of grabbing a chunk of that music-industry pie.

“It was just logical that our biggest market was in South Asia,” said Hussain. “There was no point in being an independent band and trying to get released here in the world music market, when our audience was going to be massive in India. It was harder, and it took us longer, but all things considered it worked out best for us.”

JoSH’s first Indian foray was in 1998. They landed in Mumbai, looked up the addresses of recording companies from the back of Indian CD covers and asked a rickshaw-wallah to take them around. They “got thrown out of a few places,” said Magon, and were told their sound was “too modern” for an Indian market saturated with Bollywood music at the time.

“There was no Indian pop,” said Magon. “We were ahead of the times.”

But JoSH persevered. They tinkered with their sound in Montreal and regularly travelled to India. Full-time students with part-time telemarketing jobs, JoSH had limited financial resources. So they borrowed money from friends and family and shot their first original video, the title track of the debut original album Main Hoon Tanha (I Am Alone). With demos and the video in hand, they went back to India in 2001. This time they managed to catch the interest of TIPS Music, India’s largest film music distributor, which released their album in 2002.

Despite the success of Main Hoon Tanha - the title track was a No. 1 single on Indian music charts - Magon and Hussain were unsure about pursuing full-time music careers. Growing up, they’d both had intense discussions with their parents, who preferred to see them in regular 9-to-5 jobs. And they were newbies in the business, without a band or tour manager. Main Hoon Tanha got them several performance requests, but there was no marketing plan for the band.

So, Magon and Hussain came back and took full-time jobs, and tried to continue musically on a part-time basis. But with Magon’s job as a software sales manager in New York City, it was tough. JoSH went on hiatus.

After 9/11, Magon returned to Montreal and got a job at Sygenics Corporation, an information management technology development company.

“This time, (Hussain) and I got a job at the same company, and all we would do is talk music all day,” laughed Magon. “The guy who owned the company is JoSH’s biggest ambassador. He was the one who had told us, ‘No more covers, record original tracks.’ His name is Raj Vadavia. Poor Raj, he used to ask us to do some work as well. But at the same time, he has this almost undying love for us, our music.

“We completed Kabhi two years before its release. In the process, we also met with Nelly Furtado. It all kind of came together.”

About their remix of her Powerless, Furtado told The Record Music Magazine in an interview excerpted on the duo’s Web site, www.planetjosh.com: “I loved it. I thought it had a great beat and it gets a lot of play on hip-hop stations here. … I might do some more stuff with JoSH.

Kabhi was released by Universal Music India in 2004. A much more polished album, it was co-produced by Carol Bergeron and Karl Wolf, who’ve worked with artists such as La Chicane and Eric Lapointe. The video for the title track was directed by Pierre-Alexandre Bouchard, who works in video production at MusiquePlus. Kabhi started off a bidding war between MTV India and Channel V and Sony Entertainment Television. MTV India won exclusive rights.

“I have never heard anything like JoSH,” said Bergeron, who has also worked on Star Academie. “Their vocal quality, the complexities of their vocal abilities is very good. It makes them unique.”

These days, JoSH has a hectic schedule between recording tracks in Montreal, sourcing music from South Asia, and a tour schedule that takes them from Kuala Lumpur to Karachi, with pit stop performances in London, Ont., Los Angeles and New Jersey.

Their third album will be released this summer. They recently shot their fourth video, an English song titled Meri Jaan, and are working on getting it on MusiquePlus and MuchMusic, to make it their debut on Canadian music TV.

JoSH has also completed the score of an upcoming Bollywood-Hollywood co-production called It’s a Mismatch, which will be released worldwide this summer.

For more on the band, see www.planetjosh.com online.

The Globe and Mail

SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE

It was Diwali night, the Hindu festival of lights, and the temperature had dipped to ungodly lows. Decked in their good silk saris and satin salwar-kameezes, fingering the gold bangles on their wrists, a group of South Asian women swapped stories about their children, venting about their much too Canadian ways.

“Well, I’ve told my son that he can bring any girl to my house. Just don’t bring a BMW,” one woman remarked.

“A BMW?”

“Black. Muslim. White.”

Such stereotypical zingers are common among many South Asian parents, who prefer to have their children marry within their own culture. And, yes, there are rare cases of South Asian parents taking more severe measures against children, usually girls, who dare to defy them on what makes a suitable alliance.

Last week, a jury in New Westminister, B.C., began deliberations after the week-long trial of Rajinder Atwal, who is charged with second-degree murder in the death of his 17-year-old daughter, Amandeep, in July, 2003. The Crown alleges that Amandeep’s relationship with boyfriend Todd McIsaac, now 20, was the cause.

This case isn’t representative of the diverse range of reactions among South Asian parents, but interracial unions in many minority cultures are frowned upon.

“It’s not just South Asians and other races, it’s also about Hindus and Muslims, or Sikhs and Muslims, or Hindus and Christians,” says Soni Dasmohapatra, 29, community development co-ordinator at the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians.

“But it also depends on migration patterns and geographical locations. When I was growing up in Edmonton, there were hardly any South Asians around. It was okay if you dated other people from South Asia, it was better than dating someone white.”

While movies such as Monsoon Wedding and now Bride and Prejudice reflect some of the intergenerational tensions that arise, a more apt analogy for interracial marriages is perhaps provided by the upcoming movie Guess Who.

Starring black comedian Bernie Mac as a curmudgeonly father and white Ashton Kutcher as a potential son-in-law, Guess Who is a loose remake of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, starring Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier and Katharine Hepburn. Set in the sixties, the film dealt with the delicate situation when a black man and white woman announce their decision to marry to their parents.

Things have changed since, but not a whole lot.

Growing up in Chatham, Ont., Tripta Chandler didn’t have many Indian friends. So when she went to York University in Toronto, where she met Indian boys from suburbs with large Indian populations such as Mississauga and Brampton, she couldn’t relate to them.

“They were traditional Indian men,” says Ms. Chandler, 30, searching for words to describe them. “Mother’s boys. I couldn’t find an Indian man who could deal with what I wanted — working late, not being around to make food.”

Ms. Chandler met her husband Anthony at McGill University, where she studied law. She told her parents about him when they decided to get engaged.

“It was just a don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy,” Ms. Chandler says. “I wouldn’t have said anything unless it was serious.”

Although her parents were accepting and have adjusted well, it wasn’t an easy decision. Even now, Ms. Chandler realizes that her parents will have a better understanding with her brother-in-law, who is from India.

You never escape the guilt, of losing out on culture, language, even cooking, which will die with your parents, Ms. Chandler says.

So liberal South Asian women find themselves between a rock and a hard place. “You can marry someone North American and make your parents unhappy. Or you can follow tradition and make yourself unhappy. It’s worse for women, because they’re expected to make the home, build relations with family and in-laws, keep culture.”

The choice of a mate can depend on anything from the kind of neighbourhood you grow up in to maybe rebelling against conservative values, Ms. Dasmohapatra says.

Some second-generation Canadians grow up in ethnic neighbourhoods, others might find themselves a minority. Some decide to choose partners based on shared culture values. Others look outside the box.

“I don’t understand why you have to limit yourself,” Ms. Dasmohapatra says. “It’s stressful, wanting to please everybody. South Asian culture demands respect [from children]. It can feel like carrying the weight of world on your shoulders.”

Then, there’s the hierarchy of racial preference.

“Toronto is 43 per cent visible minority,” Ms. Dasmohapatra says. “Now you have many South Asian youth dating Caribbeans of African descent. The whole world has a big stigma with Africans, and within the South Asian culture, they are so shunned. South Asians dating blacks fight with a triple jeopardy. Besides family and society, there’s also the white man’s view.”

The pecking order sounds familiar to Irene Toye-Nakamura, 35, and her sister, Suelan Toye, 37, who trace their ancestry to the Chinese province of Taishan. From a young age, their parents tried to match-make them with boys in Chinese dancing, music and language classes.

The first time their mother laid eyes on Ms. Toye-Nakamura’s then-boyfriend, Kenji, she made her distaste clear. Japanese were at the lowest rung of preference among other visible minorities.

“My parents hated Japanese people because Japan had attacked China in the Second World War. In fact, part of the reason my family came to Canada was that Japanese soldiers had burnt down my father’s village,” Ms. Toye-Nakamura says.

The Toye-Nakamuras’s four-year courtship was very difficult. Ms. Toye-Nakamura had to hide her relationship from her parents. “I used to lie to my parents when I went out,” she says. “Kenji would hide behind a tree, and pop his head out when I came out of the door.

“One day, my dad came out and saw Kenji. He chased him down, yelling, ‘I see you.’ It was very embarrassing.”

Her parents came around when they realized that the marriage was inevitable. Still, right before she was married, her parents showed Ms. Toye-Nakamura Second World War videos where Japanese soldiers used Chinese babies for target practice.

“It was like having to choose between family and my partner,” she says. “I was fortunate because they realized they would lose me. I respect my parents, but they can’t impose their choice on me. I have an African-Canadian friend who married a white woman, and his mother hasn’t spoken to him in 10 years.”

Since Ms. Toye-Nakamura had broken the mould, it was easier for her sister to marry her Irish-Canadian husband. While her mother had softened at the prospect of her over-30 daughter getting married, there was a sense of unhappiness.

Having struggled with her identity as a child, Ms. Toye chose attributes such as a sense of humour and mutual understanding instead of culture. There’s a sense of having let her parents down, but it’s also her life to live, she says.

Marriage is the biggest hot-button topic between parents and children of immigrant families, says Usha George, associate dean of the faculty of social work and director of the Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement.

“It’s one of the sacred activities, it’s the most intense relationship,” she says. “It’s not like bringing a friend home after school.”

The opposition can be either explicit or implicit. The more authoritarian parents flatly tell their children that they can’t date someone outside their culture. The rational parents politely suggest that cultural differences aren’t easily wished away.

“There are some parents who just leave it up to their children, but they are rare,” Ms. George says
Sociologically, it’s about comfort zones. Ms. George points out that historically, even in the West, economic status, class and race decided suitable alliances.

It will take a long time for things to change, especially in the case of visible minorities, because interracial marriages challenge core values.

“I hate to say it, but there’s a hierarchy,” Ms. George says. “Social constructions of where you come from are still there. Immigrants who came 25 to 30 years ago changed their names; they don’t become white.

“And first-generation Canadians attribute values to colour, white being the highest. The young people may not follow it, but it’s definitely there among first generations.”

Aparita Bhandari is a Toronto writer.

Facing the folks

If you’re in a mixed-race relationship and your parents openly disapprove, it can be very painful. It can also be difficult if you sense disapproval, but your parents deny it. You want your parents to respect your choices. And it’s hard to open a dialogue with them at the time you probably need them most.

Here’s how to start:

Find support systems.

Is there someone in the family or community who is more open to listening to you than you think your parents are?

Try to have a conversation with mediators perhaps, to understand what you sense as prejudice. Is it a discriminatory attitude or genuine concerns about the monetary or employment status of your potential spouse?

Gurinder Chadha loves to support her desi community, even if it means turning a blind eye to Southall shopkeepers selling pirated DVDs of her movies.

“Off and on, (I) go down the shops and buy baingan (eggplant) or whatever with my mum,” she says.

“And the shopkeepers are smiling. And the little girls passing by, asking for autographs, you know on the brown paper bags that you buy stuff in.

“And the people in the community see me very much as part of the community. And these sardars, especially these Afghanistan sardars, they have all the stalls. And they all have pirate copies of my films, down the street. And I am looking at them. And they look at me, (laughing sheepishly).

“And I say to them, ‘You know this is illegal. What are you doing? I can go to the police you know.’ And they say, ‘Behnji. Tussi aine paise bana liye. Sannu bhi banan do na.’ (Sisterji, you have made so much money. Let us make some too.) To my face they say this. And I say, to hell with piracy. It’s a bad thing, but what can you do. In a way it’s that people can’t wait to see your work.”

Sitting in a downtown Toronto hotel room, Chadha laughs at her observations. She’s dressed in a black shirt and jeans. The shirt proclaims, ‘one Funk’n desi. A pair of gold baalis (hoop-like traditional Indian earrings) peep through her shag-short-cropped hair.

“(It’s) Desi Wear,” says Chadha. “Toronto-based group of designers that I am proud of supporting. I am very proud of what they are doing. I like to wear their stuff in England, in the U.S., everywhere.”
Chadha was in town to promote the North American release of Bride and Prejudice. The movie will premier in America on February 11, and will open across North America on February 25.

After a day filled with interviews, Chadha was tired. And it didn’t end there. In the evening, after a public screening of Bride and Prejudice at the Paramount Theatre, Chadha was available for a Q&A session with the audience. But she’s ready with a laugh, and humours the endless questions about why Bollywood, why Aishwarya, why Jane Austen. Even, why Bride and Prejudice.

The success of Bend It Like Beckham, which also launched the career of Parminder Nagra in the Emmy-series ER, had people waiting for Chadha’s next film.

Supporters of Bride and Prejudice say it’s a great film and has given the first hook for Bollywood queen bee Aishwarya Rai’s global recognition. Rai has been on 60 Minutes and the Late Show with David Letterman in anticipation of the North American release of the movie.

But Rai was on the cover of Time magazine and on the Cannes red carpet long before, and news of her role of a prostitute along side Meryl Streep in upcoming movie Chaos also predates the current frenzy.

Bride and Prejudice also has its critics, in U.K. and India. To wit, here’s Shobhaa De in the national daily Times of India: “The film employs the worst pre-packaged cliches about ‘natives’ letting their hair down at assorted weddings, as a classy, uptight American gulps in embarrassment while discreetly eying the pale and lifeless daughter of a middle-class family in Amritsar. Of course, there are shots of the Golden Temple to thrill the cockles of Britain’s nostalgic Sikh community. What? No snakes and snake charmers? Relax, there’s a hilarious Cobra dance. Sorry, the film’s a dud.”

In England, Cosmo Landesman sniffed: “Chadha seems to think that as long as you pile on the songs, splatter the screen in bright colours and have lots of men with fluorescent white teeth gyrating with pretty women, that will do,” he wrote in The Sunday Times, and went on to say Rai had “the well-groomed, doe-eyed prettiness of an air hostess.”

But Chadha is unfazed by the criticism, sliding the blame on the perception of Bollywood as the fantastical Indian film industry and its absurdist song and dance sequences.

“And I think it also has to do with Aishwarya,” she say. “Either people like her or don’t like her, in India. And I think that the other thing is also that people, a lot of Indians don’t really respect Bollywood. And quite right too, because a lot of it is s***.

“But I think there are some wonderful directors and some wonderful movies. There are movies that I grew up with and I respect people like Yash Chopra, Raj Kapoor, Manoj Kumar. And they are fine filmmakers. And so the film I made is referencing their work.

“I saw a lot (of Bollywood movies) in the late 60’s and 70’s in the cinemas in Southall. And then everything went to video. And then, I never even bothered watching movies again. I think Bobby was the last really big movie in Southall … And then it was DDLJ (Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge) that brought everyone back to the cinemas. And I loved that film.

“I thought I would like to make a film like that, but my own version.”

The idea of doing of a Bollywood co-production had been with Chadha for a while. She had been working on a project with Sunny Deol until it fell through largely because Deol wanted “a pure Bollywood (film), with lots of fight scenes.” The Bride and Prejudice concept came to Chadha while washing dishes one day. Chadha thought she would approach Bollywood from a completely opposite angle.

“And I thought what’s the exact opposite of Bollywood,” she says. “It was English literature, classic English literature. From more than 300 years ago. So I thought let me take (Austen), which is so beloved to the English as their classical cultural form, and combine it with something that people will think, ‘Oh my God. That’s never gonna work.’ Sort of like integration.”

By including an American angle, casting Darcy as a snotty American hotel tycoon, there’s even a political slant to the movie, says Chadha.

“It questions the attitude of the United States, the role it’s taken as the premier nation of the world,” she says. “It’s questioning America’s role.”

There will be no more Bollywood for Chadha. Her next directorial venture - an $80 million I Dream of Jeannie prequel for Sony Pictures, starring Kate Hudson - will have no Bollywood songs, dances or music. So, this is your chance to watch Bollywood à la Chadha.

“I think after watching bad pirated copies, everyone really wants to watch the movie in theatres,” Chadha laughs. “They say, haan bada maza aaya (yes, it was fun). But we couldn’t see it properly. So let’s go to the theatres.”

Pink Ludoos references the practice of new parents celebrating by offering family, friends and neighbours their thanks soaked in ghee and sugar. Only laddus are usually a warm golden colour (when made traditionally) or a flashy orange colour (when brought from ye local grocery store).

So, what’s with the pink colour?

Well, Pink Ludoos is a movie written by Belle Mott and directed by Gaurav Seth set to release soon. It makes perfect sense when you’re told the story has to do with a feisty young Sikh girl Gugan who gets pregnant with triplet girls outside wedlock. Starring Jay Kazim (notice that bespectacled receptionist in the Diet Coke ad where an interviewee takes off her laddered stockings?), Shaheen Khan (the adorable mum from Bend It Like Beckham whose takiya kalaam was ‘Khasma nu khani’) and Jazz Mann (who’da thunk the comic could do some drama), Pink Ludoos is about Gugan’s tussle with tradition as she decides to keep her babies rather than aborting them, as is norm in her community.

Pink Ludoos is Mott’s debut screenplay. An Indo-Canadian substitute teacher from Delta, Mott wanted to write a story about the gender bias she’s seen first-hand in the community in Vancouver.

In fact, when Seth first read the script, he found it mind-boggling.

“But Belle introduced me to three of her friends who had their girl-child aborted,” says Seth. “And these were the women who were willing to talk about it, who have regrets. There are others who don’t even talk about it.”

Like his previous movie A Passage to Ottawa, which has won a bunch of awards including Best Film at Sprockets Toronto International Film Festival for Children, Pink Ludoos was a result of serendipity. Seth had been working on a psychological thriller and was looking to shop it around.

“After A Passage to Ottawa, which was a very sweet, simple movie, I wanted to do something completely different,” laughs Seth. “So I wrote a screenplay (that’s) sort of like Memento meets Sixth Sense. My agent told me I should contact production houses myself. It makes it more personal.

“So I went alphabetically and the first call was Brightlight Pictures. Within two hours, I had a call back. They said they would look at my screenplay, but they also had a screenplay for me. Apparently they had been trying to get in touch with me.”

It makes sense because Mumbai-born Seth is something of a rising star in the Canadian film scene. Seth had wanted to be a storyteller since he was a kid. By the time he left for Russia to study filmmaking, 18-year-old Seth had written his first screenplay.

“It was probably horrible,” laughs Seth, now in his late 30’s.

It was the five year filmmaking course – covering a bachelor’s and master’s degree – that clinched Seth’s decision to forsake Bollywood in favour of the former U.S.S.R. And he went to the Moscow Film School, now known as the All Russian State Institute for Cinematography, on scholarship, which meant it was all free.

“This was a program that began in the 70’s where the former Soviet Union got students from third-world countries with a very specific aim,” says Seth. “They had a program to fill the students with Marxist, Leninist ideas and then sent them back to their own countries to start a revolution.”

For Seth, the revolution began at home. He first had to find the courage to tell his parents of his filmmaking aspirations. When he did tell them, he found support from unexpected quarters.
“I was closer to my mother than my father, but on this subject I got more support from my dad,” laughs Seth. “Maybe it’s because my dad fancied being an actor in his younger days. He even did some plays and theatre but had to give it up when he settled down.”

Even when he managed to convince them, Seth’s parents were perplexed by his decision to study in Russia.

“We’re not a film industry family, but even then the only thing my parents understood was that films meant Bombay,” says Seth. “People came from all over India to work in the biggest film industry, and I had no interest in staying there. At one point, my dad was keen on setting me up in Bombay after my studies.

The experience in Russia was amazing. Seth studied at the world’s oldest film school – the Moscow Film School was established in 1919 – where masters such as Sergei Eisenstein (Strike, Battleship Potemkin and Ivan the Terrible) had taught. Every morning, at 9:00 a.m. students were shown Russian and world cinema classics.

“Sometimes it was hard to attend those screenings, after partying till 3:00 a.m.” laughs Seth. “I missed some great films, and regret that now. The technical aspect of filmmaking can be taught in a few months. But the aesthetics, that’s harder to learn.”

But Seth was obviously paying attention. His films are a world apart from the current slush-pile of diasporic Indian films, both in subject and in treatment.

Although there are some stilted performances from fresh faces such as Chenier Hundal (but he’s quite yummy) as Kazim’s love-interest, Pink Ludoos is a well-handled, touching story.

There’s no gratuitous UK Bhangra soundtrack accompanying various shots, and the movie really does everyone a favour by peeking inside South Asian society’s skeletons in the closet.

Khan shines as the superstitious Sikh mum (hope she’s not typecast in that role) and the rest of the newbie cast does a decent job. Naturally, the quality of Pink Ludoos is much better than the slew of software-engineer-discovering-art-and-love movies that cast everyone from the neighbourhood aunty to the caterer’s brother’s wife’s niece.

Hopefully Pink Ludoos will be out in a theatre near you soon. Seth sees no reason why not. At a recent screening in a Whistler film festival, many white audience members shed a tear or two.

“In telling the story, I had to find the balance. I didn’t want to make it too depressing. But I didn’t want the humour of the film to lessen its potency. And I think we’ve achieved that,” says Seth.

Hoping for spring release, Seth says Canadian audiences are ready for movies such as Pink Ludoos.

“Movies like Monsoon Wedding and Bend It Like Beckham have proved that these are not just niche market or ethnic market movies,” he says. “Maybe we won’t have the box-office returns like those movies but at least the doors are now open.”