The Internet Personified: Bollywood dreams
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This past week I had my Delhi book launch (a terrific discussion with Ira Mukhoty, I'll upload the video as soon as I edit it) and I went off to Chandigarh for 24 hours to speak to the students at Chandigarh University. I had a good time, even though it was one of those panel discussions which suddenly veer off into a discussion about politics or everyone starts speaking Really Academic Hindi, even though they were told by the VC that a lot of students came from South India or from abroad and didn't all necessarily understand Hindi. (Why do Hindi speakers do this especially on stage? Is it nice to alienate some people while at the same time conveying--I don't know--a sense of "you should already know this language and I assume you do which is why I am adopting this hail-fellow-well-met tone to talk to you") (Okay, I might be speaking out of a mainly monolingual person's woe, but at least when I use English to address a crowd, I do not assume they all understand me, I do not use three syllabled words. I do not break into goddamn shers whenever provoked, making the Hindi speakers applaud and the rest of us muster up polite smiles.) (At least I understood most of what was being said, but I saw quite a few obviously foreign students leave the audience.)
Anyway, all the students were super engaged and mostly asked good questions (except for the one guy who asked whether reservations existed just to bring him down and to him I offer a "read more, kid.") But I was blasted to the past when a student came rushing up to me just as I was leaving and asked for an autograph for her friend. So gather round, friends, it's story time.
This week in Throwback Tuesday: Back in 1996, I went to the Lawrence School, Lovedale, known colloquially as Lovedale, so much so that if you say, "I went to Lawrence" people will be like, "Eh?" until you say, "Lovedale." Actually, living up in Delhi, everyone only knew the North Indian Lawrence, up in Sanawar, so then you'd have to say, "Ooty" and they'd look at you a little pityingly because they'd never heard of it.
Delhiites have this remarkable Face of Disdain every time they've never heard of something you've mentioned--your address, your school, the book you've written. "Oh?" they'll say, politely, but behind their eyes there's wow, you must be hard up to have lived/studied/worked at something the common person, ie ME, has never heard of.
Anyway, other people had heard of Lovedale, including the cast and crew of a Tamil movie called Minsara Kanavu (Hindi language version: Sapnay),. It won a bunch of awards and AR Rahman scored it, but none of this is very important to my story except for the fact that Kajol was starring in it, and one weekend before we broke off for the summer holidays, she was going to shoot one of the songs in our school. In our classrooms! Down the main staircase! In Large Hall!
1996 was peak Kajol. These were her DDLJ years, she had finished rising to fame and had risen. She was India's sweetheart, with her round face and thick eyebrows and her expressive mouth. She was Simran where none of us could hope to be Simran, falling in love with Shah Rukh, her strict dad all bark and no bite, which never happened in real life. Kajol was one of the few movie stars I recognised, which is actually a big deal, since I have always been slightly behind in pop culture references. One day the word went out that the movie needed extras and they had decided to use us! Actual schoolgirls! We were all very excited, even though only a few of us made the cut--I realise later in retrospect that they didn't pick anyone with a darker skin tone than was acceptable in those days in the Indian film industry, which was fucked up. At the time though, I was pleased to be chosen, along with my bestie Ashwati (everyone, say hi Ashwati) even though we were in different scenes. (My uncle was in town that weekend and was taking my cousin and I out for the day, so I couldn't shoot the next day.) We did a dining room scene, we're all banging our cups, like a prison riot, and Kajol, the most adult looking fourteen year old you ever saw jumps on the table while she's singing. I was surprised to see that she was wearing skin coloured tights underneath her skirt, I thought for sure a Bollywood star wouldn't bother about people seeing her naked legs. The boys were all very jealous because they weren't in the movie and--I guess--they didn't get to look up her skirt when she bounced on the table in front of them. They all clustered around her after asking for autographs, and I remember her being quite snotty, not friendly at all and even snapped at one boy for asking her to sign his tennis racket. I felt like she could be a bit gracious, seeing she was in our school and all, but maybe she was all worn out from a long day shooting and didn't have the energy to indulge us. However, that story made me kinder to kids who have asked for my autograph later in life--maybe they'll have a nice story about me when they grow up. (Granted, I don't get even one tenth the amount of requests as Kajol, but at lit fests, you're often bombarded with school children who are collecting autographs even if they don't know your name, so yes, it takes a little effort to be kind to all of them.)
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Here is the video of the Hindi version of the song. I'm a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance at 2.17 (hint: I am wearing a dark green t-shirt) and a surprise for people who know my friends at 0.20! For a long time after, whenever the video came on, my mum's colleagues would gather around the TV at the newsroom and go, "Look, look, Minna's song!" and they'd all wait for that 2 second appearance of half my face. I bet even Kajol never got that.
This week in stuff I did:
I'm on the Sandip Roy podcast talking about the Mahabharata, #MeToo and more. It's a really fun conversation, so listen in.
Firstpost carried an excerpt of The One Who Had Two Lives, if you still need convincing.
Also on Firstpost, my new Mythology for the Millennial column on angry women in Hindusim.
This week in stuff I liked on the internet
Another day, another terrific article on living the childfree life.
I occasionally wonder if my not having children has made me open to experience in ways I might not otherwise be. That’s not to suggest that women with children can’t be equally open. But caring for a child demands a specific focus, for years at a stretch. My runway of opportunity was a straight shot, for weeks, months and years. I could say yes to almost anything I wanted to do. Every yes meant I met a new set of people, a new set of friends. And with every yes, my world got a little bigger.
An interview with the first voice of Siri
So, how did you land the Siri gig?
In July of 2005, I was hired by ScanSoft [now Nuance Communications], the biggest IVR company in the world, to do some recordings.
It was 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, of reading pages and pages of these nonsensical things—
Sorry to butt in, but can you give us some examples?
“Militia Oy Hallucinate Buckram Okra Ooze”… “Cow hoist in the tub hut today”… “Cathexis fefatelly sexual ease stump”…
Then, there were sentences where you’d change just the vowel each time: “Say the shrodding again,” “Say the shroding again,” “Say the shreeding again,” “Say the shriding again,” “Say the shrading again,” “Say the shrudding again…”
And a great interview with Shashi Deshpande whose memoir I am definitely going to read now
“The quiet, reflective writing done most often by women is ignored all the time. Look at Nayantara Sahgal or Sunetra Gupta or Nabaneeta Dev Sen in Bengali. There is a clear bias towards the young male writer, or the young, good looking, sassy female writer,” she says. Deshpande rues that both the female experience and the woman writer is considered inferior to the real deal: men. “We are dismissed because we write about the domestic space. But when Jonathan Franzen writes about family life, he is given extra marks…But I find women far more interesting than men. I think they are complicated, interesting people, and especially considering the lives we have had to live, how much we have had to suppress ourselves,” she says.
Have a great week!
xx
m
Where am I? The Internet Personified! A mostly weekly collection of things I did/thought/read/saw that week.
Who are you? Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, writer of internet words (and other things) author of seven books (support me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.
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