Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC TV) – Indian Journeys

[caption id="attachment_776" align="alignleft" width="280"] Image courtesy of the BBC[/caption]

“Whenever I come to India I realise how English I am.....”, so says Gurinder Chadha in the programme dedicated to tracing her family history. This is undoubtedly a sentiment with which I would concur, particularly when arriving at Kolkata Airport and being driven into the smells and sounds of the city.

‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ is a BBC series delving into the family histories of celebrities. Recently a programme featured Nitin Ganatra, the Eastenders actor, and I realised I had recorded programmes featuring Meera Syal, a comedian / actress / writer, perhaps best known for the TV series ‘Goodness Gracious Me’, and Gurinder Chadha, a film director best known for ‘Bend It Like Beckham’.

Each family had slightly different journeys in reaching the UK.  Ganatra and Chadha were both born in Kenya before their parents came to the UK following discrimination against foreigners after independence, while Syal’s parents came directly from India. Their family histories are perhaps representative of many Indian families in the UK, some of whom had to struggle when their qualifications were not recognised and they could not bring money - from Kenya in particular.

I recognised many of the celebrities’ traits and culture. Like me they were all second generation, but often with a deep-rooted insecurity regarding their identity. Were they Indian, wearing Indian clothes and going to festivals, speaking Indian languages, or were they English? You learn these insecurities are perfectly normal amongst the second generation. The celebrities all spoke their parents’ language but could not read or write it. They spoke to their parents in English, and responses were in a mix of languages. When they spoke an Indian language, I realised there was a slight hesitancy as if unwilling, but then the words flowed.

For the Kenyan-born Ganatra and Chadha, the sense of insecurity and dislocation was perhaps even stronger given that they had 3 different cultures to assimilate: English, Kenyan and Indian. Ganatra’s antecedents had come to Kenya from Gujarat to work as labourers on the railroads in the 1890s, and had stayed setting up shops in the newly built Kenyan railway towns. Chadha’s great-grandparents had come from the Punjab as policemen and later set up trading posts. From the photos their lives in Kenya seemed comfortable with a strong sense of community. I was surprised there were Indian schools for the children, temples and gurdwaras, but their development is indicative of the size of the Indian community in Kenya. What was interesting was the continuous contact with relatives in India, bringing brothers to work in Kenya, the sending home of money, frequent journeys and long stays in India to, for example, marry off sisters. So those familial links were always strong and maintained.

After Kenyan independence in 1963 Indians were forced to choose between their British passports and adopting Kenyan nationality. There was increasing tension between the black majority and Indians, and many chose to come to the UK from the late 1960s onwards.  Chadha recounted how her father was unable to find suitable work in the UK and felt himself forced to shave off his beard, a religious prerequisite for a Sikh, because of discrimination, and then found work as a postman. Ganatra’s father, meanwhile, found it difficult to raise finance for his business ventures but eventually paid back his first loan, for £2,000, early.

Syal differentiates herself to some extent by focusing on the fact that her parents had a “love marriage” which must have been unusual in its time, perhaps the early 60s, and that they crossed the religious divide, one a Hindu and the other a Sikh. I presumed the marriages of Chadha and Ganatra’s parents were arranged. Syal’s background seemed the most comfortable in India with a grandfather being a journalist in pre-Independence India.

Of the three celebrities, Ganatra’s ancestors appear to have come from the most impoverished background. Ganatra was shocked by the fact that his maternal grandparents were married at the ages of 6 and 10, but what was heart rending was that so many of his uncles and aunts died at a very early age. Often the deaths were not reported but researchers found details of the death of an aunt and Ganatra was given an official death certificate. These early deaths were attributed to the high rate of complications in pregnancy and birth in young girls married before their own bodies were fully mature, as well as the high cost and limited availability of food, and diseases like malaria.  It was probably famine and disease that forced Ganatra’s grandfather to take a very hard labouring job in Kenya.

What is surprising at times is how little awareness of family history there is or that facts have been glossed over even from two generations previously. Perhaps there is a desire not to talk about some elements of family history. Ganatra was not aware of his grandparents’ early marriage or of the deaths of family members. In addition, Ganatra did not seem to know about the political tensions that drove his parents out of Kenya. Chadha believes she has a black African cousin but family members alternately support and deny the notion. Her family believes they may be related to a noble house. Amongst my own family anecdotes there is an assumption that my paternal grandfather was doctor to the King of Nepal. I had visions of going to Kathmandu and trying to ascertain the provenance of the story.

Towards the end of each programme the celebrities try to find their home village in India, or in Chadha’s case in what is now Pakistan. Often that is quite moving, particular for someone like them who is a product of a trans-national diaspora. Ganatra found a man who knew his family and, without prompting it seems, knew that they had gone to Africa.

The celebrities also try to find records of their families.  Unlike in the UK where it would be a matter of looking at censuses, and registers of births, deaths and marriages, such government records did not exist in India. Instead family histories are noted by priests in books or on cloth going back several generations.  However priests, have to manually go through the records as there are no indexes. Syal’s family records are noted on a single piece of cloth to prevent fraud. The sexist nature of Indian society becomes apparent when it is revealed that the records only follow the male line.

I have over time researched a little into my family history. I have records and documents of my grandfather’s medical student days, one uncle painstakingly wrote me out a comprehensive family tree, and I have visited the house in the grounds of a hospital in a small town in West Bengal where my father was born. I have collected more information, and with the help of cousins, and surviving uncles and aunts will try and visit more places relevant to our family including houses that are still family owned.

While the three celebrities and I are second generation, although the Kenyan born-duo’s families might have been in Kenya for 2-3 generations previously, there is a strong connection to India but it remains to be seen how future generations will feel the pull of India. There might be an interest in some elements of culture like food, clothes and Bollywood, but there might be little interest in exploring India and family history. Almost certainly future generations will not speak or understand any Indian languages. My understanding is that, while members of the Indian diaspora in the Caribbean retained some Indian culture, they feel emotionally distant from India.  My generation was almost forced to assimilate as there was little Indian culture in the UK to explore. Like the three celebrities I found the pull of India greater as one gets older but balanced by a greater security to explore the culture and my roots.

 

New style website on its way...

We hope you like our new website!   It's not quite how we want it yet, so are still working on it.

Thanks for your patience.  Here's a picture of a Buddha, to promote calm and equanimity (that's for us while we try to configure the website.....)

Could you be married without knowing it? What the UK might learn from India

I have never been a big fan of marriage here in the UK and have avoided it myself (so far!)  It carries with it a history of patriarchal baggage to my mind and a 1950s – type image of being the perfect housewife, content to be cook, cleaner and nanny inside the home and nothing more than an appendage to your husband.  Historically, marriage has not been kind to women.  In the 19^th century (UK), married women did not even legally exist, their identity being subsumed into their husband’s.  So, a married woman could not own property, sign her own legal documents, keep her own salary, enter into a contract or pursue an education against her husband’s wishes.  Even in the 1970s a married woman could not obtain a mortgage without her husband’s signature and rape wasn’t criminalized within marriage until 1991 (and sadly still not criminalized in India).  Women were, and still are, expected (though not legally bound in the UK) to change their surname to their husband’s – an important marker of one’s own identity and family history.  [Though I notice that in a recent European Court of Human Rights case, the judges ruled that to legally require a woman to change her name – as in Turkey – was discriminatory (1)].

Nowadays, although law reform and social change have made marriage more of an equal partnership between men and women, its popularity is still declining.  So, just as same sex couples are set to gain the same right to marriage as heterosexual couples in the UK, statistics show that cohabiting couples are as likely to have children as married couples.  Living together – before or instead of marriage – is so accepted now that even Prince William and Kate Middleton lived together before their marriage.

For cohabiting couples in the UK, however, there still persists the myth of the ‘common law marriage’ with either partner assuming they have acquired some rights (for example to property or businesses) by virtue of having lived together and/or had children.  Unfortunately this is not the case and can lead to much hardship and unfairness on the breakdown of the relationship.  A patchwork of other laws have to be relied on (such as trust law or the Children’s Act 1989) to attempt a solution and although the Law Commission recommended legal change in its 2007 report on cohabitation, so far nothing has been done.

In India, by contrast, marriage is still an expectation in most people’s lives.  Relationships outside marriage – while perhaps becoming more common in the major urban centres – are still not accepted and marriage at a young age (including child marriage) is still widespread (child marriage is illegal in India, although still sadly very common). Anyone who saw this week’s edition of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ on BBC1 featuring East Ender’s actor Nitin Ganatra will have learnt how his own grandparents were married in Gujarat at the ages of only 6 and 10.  Registration of a marriage, however, is not (yet) compulsory, which can lead to disputes over the existence of an actual marriage (2).

With this background, it was therefore with interest that I read about the recent Madras High Court judgment in the case of Aysha v Ozir Hassan.  Jayna Kothari, an advocate in Bangalore and a founder member of the Centre for Law and Policy Research (3), has written about the case elsewhere, and I draw on her analysis here (4).  Briefly, the background was that Aysha had been in a relationship with Ozir, with whom she had 2 children.  She claimed they were married, but had no proof of this.  The relationship broke up and Aysha was left to care for the 2 children.  Aysha then made an application to the Family Court for maintenance for both her and the 2 children.  The Family Court initially rejected her claim for maintenance because of the lack of evidence of a marriage but this was overruled by the High Court who referred to hospital records where Ozir had said he was her husband.  On this basis, the Judge granted the maintenance sought by Aysha.  The Judge’s reasoning was that since the couple held themselves out to be married and had lived together, their relationship was in the nature of a marriage.  There had already been a precedent for this kind of decision in 2011 – although not relied on by the Judge here - where the Supreme Court had laid down a number of conditions for cohabiting couples which, if met, would hold their relationship to be in the nature of a marriage (5).  So far so good – and already it goes further than UK law would allow.

But the Judge didn’t stop at that.  He went on to say that all sexual relationships are in the nature of marriage – and couples could therefore not separate without getting a ‘divorce’ – so all sexual relationships carried all the consequences of a marriage.

This was an interesting development.  You can imagine the calculations going through the minds of some more liberal types – trying to work out how many times they might have been married without even realizing it!   Despair at the undermining of Indian culture was another reaction – for example one reader commenting in the Times of India (online), ‘Our Indian tradition is entirely different from this court ruling we have a belief marriage is fixed in heaven and married life is holy one sex is a part of married life.  I really do not understand where our lives are leading by such kind of ruling by courts’ (19 June 2013).

The consensus of legal opinion, however, seems to be that making all sexual relationships into marriage was probably not really central to the Judge’s decision, so doesn’t set any new precedents.  The Judge in this case was probably just interpreting the law as he saw it to ensure justice for Aysha and maintenance for her 2 children and lack of appropriate words or language may have hampered the Judge.

Nevertheless, interesting times in India.  If India follows the Western route, in increasingly downplaying the importance of marriage – with many more cohabiting couples – these are issues that will continue to occur.  And if cohabitating couples are given the same rights as married couples (following the 2011 Supreme Court case - above), what effect will that have on the future popularity of marriage in India?  Will it still be essential - if not for legal rights, but for divine or social blessing?  Maybe the UK should keep an eye on developments in India as a way forward for cohabiting couples here in the UK.

(1)   Leventoğlu Abdulkadiroğlu v. Turkey

(2)   This is set to change shortly with the passing of a new bill.

(3)   http://clpr.org.in/

(4)   Her article is available at http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/indiaatlse/2013/07/15/what-rights-marriage/#more-1727

(5)   See the case of D.Veluswamy v Patchiammal.  The conditions are a) the couple must hold themselves out to society as being akin to spouses b) they must be of the legal age to marry c) they must be unmarried and so qualify to be married d) they must have voluntarily cohabited and held themselves out to society as being spouses for a significant period of time.

Masala Zone – Restaurant Home Cooked Indian Food

Like Roti Chai this is one of those places we have been meaning to try for a few months now and so a quiet Sunday recently saw us taking the bus to the Covent Garden branch just behind the Royal Opera House for lunch. We had also been recommended Masala Zone by one of Asma Khan’s Bengali friends so it was somewhere we had to experience.

Masala Zone has a strong restaurant pedigree with others in its London stable including Amaya, Chutney Mary and Veeraswamy. It has a number of locations in the capital. The restaurant suggests that the best food in India is not found in restaurants but in the home and in the form of street food. The thali, a complete meal on a tray, is the centre piece of its menu and intended to replicate the combination of the home and the street. Furthermore, it suggests that its food is a far cry from that of the average curry house in the UK.

The restaurant has clean, modern lines, and the furnishings are simple but adequate. Unlike Wagamama’s or Busaba Eathai the tables are separate. In the Covent Garden branch Rajasthani puppets are suspended from the ceiling which gives the restaurant plenty of India related atmosphere, character, and colour.

On that Sunday afternoon the restaurant was quiet and we received an immediate warm welcome. There was quite an international clientele with Arab women and Indian families from India, who perhaps were taking economical options after the fall of the rupee.

The menu consists of street food, individual curries, and thalis which are small quantities of each dish presented in small bowls on a large stainless steel tray. The restaurant did have a number of special offers which rather confused us but we stuck to the main menu. Sue chose the Pre-theatre Thali with the Chicken Mangalore and I the Grand Thali with Goan Prawn. Otherwise our thalis were identical. Our thalis comprised rice, chapatti, dhal, cauliflower curry, potato curry, onion bhaji, raita, a small salad and coriander chutney. Immediately we felt the quantity of rice would be inadequate so we ordered more.

We found the thali worked well with well-judged combinations and quantities, rice apart. I found the cauliflower and potato curries to be very good and I could have eaten a lot more in theory. However, my Goan Prawn curry was rather bland and disappointing. But Sue’s Mangalore Chicken was very tasty, judging by the small bite I had. I’m not generally a great fan of chapatis but these were well-cooked and prepared. The thalis were surprisingly filling and we both struggled to finish ours, and weren’t able to tackle any desserts.

I would concur with Masala Zone’s marketing in suggesting that the food is better than that of the average curry house. The service was swift and professional. Apart from my bland Goan Prawn curry my only criticism would be that the breadth of the menu andd special offers might be confusing, particularly if trying to introduce people to a relatively new way of presenting Indian food in restaurants.

Our bill was £42 including service which included two rounds of mango lassis each. We thought it good value in terms of the quality of the food, good service and the location. I would rate it 6-7 / 10, and would suggest it would be ideal for a quick lunch or dinner but perhaps not worth a special trip. However, the chain is exactly what the capital needs to rival Wagamama’s or Busaba Eathai for quality and consistent Eastern food.

Masala Zone, 48 Floral Street, London WC2E 9DA  Tel: 020 7379 0101

www.masalazone.com

Chennai Express

The only time I have ever walked out of a film was 5 minutes into a Hindi film in Southall when I realised there were no subtitles. Luckily my Hindi speaking companion was sympathetic. Even now I am rather tense watching the first moments of a Hindi film until the subtitles appear on the screen. I bring this up because had Sue suggested we leave at the interval I would have been out of my seat like a shot. I think we stayed partially because we were already there and, for me, to see if the second half could be worse than the first.

Chennai Express is one of the fastest grossing Bollywood films of all time. It’s already a member of the 300 Crore Club ($48m) worldwide, one of only four films to do so, and broke box office records in the weekend of its release in India. While the public have flocked to the film the critics, both in India and abroad (the film was released worldwide almost simultaneously) have not been so impressed.

So to the movie: Rahul (Shah Rukh Khan (SRK)) is the scion of a well-to-do sweet seller’s family in Mumbai, raised by his grandparents after his parents’ deaths. After an indulgent and spoilt childhood Rahul (SRK) is seemingly prevented from meeting women because he’s so committed to his grandparents and the business. At the time of his grandfather’s death Rahul is planning a “boys’ “ weekend in Goa but plans are complicated by having to dispose of the ashes near Chennai. Getting on the Chennai Express Rahul helps a running woman, Meenamma (played by Deepika Padukone) onto the train, but finds she is pursued by a number of non-Hindi speaking brutish men. Then Rahul finds they are her father’s henchmen who have found her after she ran away. Some comedic moments follow with lyrics from songs from SRK’s films changed to confuse the Tamil speakers. But escape attempts are futile and they arrive at her father’s “territory” and Rahul finds he is a local underworld chief who has promised his daughter to a friend’s gigantic son, Thangaballi. Rahul and Meenamma escape spending time at another local village, are found and escape, but Rahul returns to the mafia village to fight the brutish Thangaballi. Rahul says he fights for the “common man”. Love conquers all and her father accepts Rahul as her husband.

The first half was fairly pacey establishing Rahul as restricted by family issues, a familiar theme in Bollywood. But that was just to set the scene. The “boys” again were just thrown in for effect. The Hindi songs bastardised on the train were an in-joke taken from SRK’s previous films – along with a number of other references to other Bollywood films (Dilwale Dulhania le Jayenge; My Name is Khan; Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara; Khabi Khushi Khabie Gham). But beyond that there was very little characterisation, particularly of Meenamma. There were hints of racism - Indians are racist too - in the portrayal of the darker South Indians as large unintelligent brutes. There were a couple of dance numbers in the first half but they were simplistic dances and songs, often childish and facile.

The second half was actually a bit better, but that’s not saying much. A couple of the dance numbers, particularly set on the South’s tea estates, were actually quite entertaining. A car chase followed but for someone raised on Bond and Bourne the chase was fairly tame. But then a quite brutal fight scene between Rahul and Thangaballi.

None of the characterisation was strong. Rahul’s invocation of the “common man” was quite unexpected, and the love between Rahul and Meenamma was just not believable, certainly not compared to some of the couples in SRK’s previous films.

The hints of racism were added to by confusion between Hindi and Tamil, and just made one very uncomfortable. In addition, a scene when Rahul is on the run and comes across a man with dwarfism and a speech impediment is meant as a comic interlude partially but is gratuitously exploiting a dwarf and added nothing to the plot. But the Hindi speaking families behind us found it quite amusing.

The film also featured pure unreconstructed sexism of the type ingrained in Indian culture, but also of the type you hoped an international Bollywood film might manage to transform a little. Instead, we had a fairly assertive Meenamma on the run from an arranged (perhaps forced) marriage to Thangaballi, being captured and brought back to her domineering father by his henchmen. She seems to have no choice but to go through with the marriage to her father’s chosen partner before Rahul comes to her rescue. Rahul eventually ‘wins’ and is granted his chosen bride by Meenamma’s father – but only after the classic punch-up between the two would-be grooms over who gets the ‘girl’. Despite her feistiness, and constant attempts to escape, Meenamma returns to the passive bystander while the men fight over who gets to marry her. Hardly a promising role model for a 21st century woman – one in control of her own destiny - in whatever country – or indeed for her father or potential husband.

Brought up on the best of modern Bollywood and starring SRK we were expecting a lot better both in terms of the plot, songs and dances. The racism, sexism and casual treatment of the dwarf detracted considerably from the film. We didn’t find the comedy scenes funny at all – perhaps something was lost in translation.  If the film was meant as a parody of your classic Bollywood romance or Tamil action movie, then it wasn't a very good one and the in-jokes and references may well have been lost on an international audience. We do wonder if Bollywood tries too hard to combine what would normally be separate genres in its films from rom-com, to thriller to social commentary, and this was just a step too far.

Sue and I both evinced some concern for SRK’s continuing career. As we have noted before despite the fact he is good shape he can’t continue to play action roles, dance, and play the romantic partner of an actress in her 20s. Bollywood doesn’t appear to have the range of genres and movies that would be available to a leading actor of SRK’s age in Hollywood. But with SRK’s star power he can surely mould the industry to suit himself. Perhaps his wife’s involvement as a producer of Chennai Express skewed his judgement. Almost incidentally SRK and Padukone appeared on breakfast television in the UK, Daybreak, to help publicise the film. But the appearance was cringeworthy; the presenter had no idea that she was in the presence of a movie superstar, nor about the Indian film industry.

Overall 1 out of 5 and that’s mainly for the rather expensive popcorn we devoured.