As for the scarf (called ulna) I have very strong opinions about it. It's a totally pointless cumbersome garment and I'm convinced that it's a conspiracy of the patriarchy. You (woman) are supposed to drape it over your bosom and over both shoulders, to cover the chest area and deflect the destructive attentions of men. (The chest is already covered by clothes but never mind that. Evidently the lecherous mind of men isn't foiled by anything as simple as a shirt). This is 'for modesty' and the entire responsibility of doing it rests on the woman. That is, the responsibility to avoid giving men anything to look at in terms of breasts... because if there is anything to see they will invariably look?... and if they look, they will invariably have impure thoughts and, moved by this superhuman force of their impure thought, will be inevitably moved to rape? The poor boys, helpless puppets of their animal lusts. Wrap up, ladies, it's a jungle out there and nobody's going to defend you.
What is all this saying about the personality, morality and, most of all, self-control of Muslim men? If a man is so weak that he can't even stop himself ogling and violating women if they aren't draping a scarf across their boobs, then we have to conclude that these men are not in control of their actions. Others who are not in control of themselves tend to get sequestered in asylums or jails. Self-control sets us aside from the animals. So why the hell would we let these men, who can't even control their own eyeballs let alone hands, control things like moving vehicles, heavy machinery, the accounts, or the economy?
Seriously.
The argument 'it's not me but all the OTHER men who want to ogle and rape my woman' argument doesn't wash. It's the argument of someone who thinks he sees his own evils in everyone else.
Similarly the argument 'If my woman gets attention from other men she will feel flattered and leave me' is also hollow. Are you such a bad man that your lady will dump you for the first lout who gives her a sonorous wolf-whistle?
Assholes.
Personally I detest the pressure to wear an ulna, not because it falls off when I bend down to pick things up or because I have to faff with it when I go to the toilet, but because I have to even think about it. I have to check that it's in place, adjust it if it goes too high or too low (showing the area of my shirt under which there are gasp breasts!) and hence, I'm worrying about whether I'm exposing anything 'immodestly' to the hundreds of guys on the street who have nothing better to look at. I've become a victim of somebody else's lack of self-control and normal adult behaviour and even if ulna worrying only takes me ten seconds then that's ten seconds that are really somebody else's responsibility.
It's true that if you get raped here, there's nearly zero recourse to justice. Plus your social standing is shot to hell, all the more so if you're unmarried and hence lose your value added, namely the guarantee that your husband will feed only his own DNA. So it makes sense to avoid all rape risks.
But hell, Western rape justice is also in the pits. Our judicial system may work on a different plane of efficiency than the Bangladeshi one, but rape convictions are still despicably low and your life is also shot to hell if this happens to you. Here, I have to say that our men are better brought-up than the Bangladeshi ones. Even if some get mad jealous if their lady wears provocative things, and even though comments and groping occur, generally men can deal with a bit of attractiveness and still relate to the woman as a fellow human being. (another interesting discussion is whether social pressure to cover up is more or less aggravating than social pressure to look sexy.)
And the 'run and hide' victim mentality of Bangladeshi women won't do anything to tame the dogs. Sorry guys, here poverty is no excuse.
Friday, 20 November 2009
Weird shit story no. 3: soap and the hereditary unclean
We came to visit a Dalit (Hindu casteless people) NGO, Parittran, outside Khulna (in fact, right enxt to that stretch of bad road I wrote about). These guys were the only angry ones I met during the visits. They had a burn in their eyes, a grudge, a seething knowledge of all the injustice they suffer. Dalit traditionally do all the dirty jobs, like tanning leather, sewage diving, garbage disposal, and less nasty things like being barbers and cobblers and weaving gorgeous baskets.
I can see how this is an ancient (Hindu religious) way to make sure that someone gets the disgusting jobs done: make it the hereditary trudge of a specific class of people, and make sure that the rest of society has good reason to keep it that way. Casteless people's contact can 'spiritually pollute' higher-caste people by getting in physical contact with them. Your toilet cleaning is solved for 500 years ahead and you never have to squabble about whose turn it is. Spiritual pollution, baby! tough luck.
But here's the weird shit - in Bangladesh even the Muslims ostracise the Dalit. Dalit aren't allowed to drink tea from the same cups as others, hence not allowed in the tea stalls or restaurants... not allowed to sit in the same schoolrooms, and here's the really bad part, not allowed in the cyclone shelters. With the rest of the Bangladeshi citizens, while there's a cyclone out of hell raging outside, drowning cattle and disabled family members, unleashing storm tidal surges, ripping roofs off etc. These NGOs guys' eyes were burning.
The Muslims don't give a shit about having their caste purity compromised - caste being a Hindu idea. But they do want someone to clean their toilets without saying 'hey, why the hell am I cleaning this toilet and not the person who shits in it?' So this class of outcasts continues to serve its purpose, i.e. doing the dirty jobs, stripped of the Hindu mumbo jumbo excuses. You'd think that you can still respect someone who works with the hides of dead animals and drink tea with them, after they've showered. But maybe part of the machine is to demoralise this class of people so they don't even think of moving to more agreeable professions. Because it would cost too much to compel someone to do this with wages rather than with psychological bullying?
My theory.
Parittran, the Dalit NGO is next door to the Union Parishad headquarters, or local administration. The front court and roof of the building were covered with dinnertable-sized platforms with makeshift rooves - shaped like those American pioneer ox wagons, made from plastic sheeting and reed mats. This was a shack city for 400 families whose farmland and houses are under water. The river breached the embankments 6 months ago - not even a dramatic media event or a special disaster, it just overflowed and drenched the land, and the water isn't draining out because the riverbed is silted up to a level that's higher than the farmland. So. About half the displaced people are Muslims, the other half Dalit/Hindu. The Union Parishad let them set up camp in its grounds and only kept two offices open for themselves. The muslims moved in to the other office rooms; the Dalit weren't allowed to share and now live in an area the size of a small town square, between the main road, the rice field, and the UP building. One dinner table per family, waiting for the government to dredge the river channel.
So, thinking about this... in pre-antibiotics, pre-soap times it makes perfect sense to avoid someone who has spent the day elbow-deep in typhoid sludge 'like the plague', literally. And I guess the continued exclusion of dalit shows that Bangladesh is still in practical term pre-antibiotics and pre-soap for the majority of the population (I think the stats are something like 80% living on less than $2/day). (Interestingly, some ethnic minorities are also considered dalit not because of their spiritual Hindu position but because they eat unusual/unclean things like foxes, rats and cockroaches.) But why be so nasty about it?
How do we enlightened bla bla bla white people deal with our toxic sludge? How do we get pest-controllers and slaughtermen and nuclear power plant operatives and cleaners and binmen... partly by paying them well. And partly by setting up changing rooms and hot showers in the workplace. I used to have a boyfriend who came home from his job as a vet at the slaughterhouse and still smell of pigs. His many excellent qualities made that a minor detail. These jobs still contaminate you to some extent but if you met a guy in the pub and found out that he works as a binman it wouldn't necessarily stop you buying the next round.
Ah, this is poverty: the stupid little indignities, the minor easily solved problems, wrecking your entire life. No soap.
I can see how this is an ancient (Hindu religious) way to make sure that someone gets the disgusting jobs done: make it the hereditary trudge of a specific class of people, and make sure that the rest of society has good reason to keep it that way. Casteless people's contact can 'spiritually pollute' higher-caste people by getting in physical contact with them. Your toilet cleaning is solved for 500 years ahead and you never have to squabble about whose turn it is. Spiritual pollution, baby! tough luck.
But here's the weird shit - in Bangladesh even the Muslims ostracise the Dalit. Dalit aren't allowed to drink tea from the same cups as others, hence not allowed in the tea stalls or restaurants... not allowed to sit in the same schoolrooms, and here's the really bad part, not allowed in the cyclone shelters. With the rest of the Bangladeshi citizens, while there's a cyclone out of hell raging outside, drowning cattle and disabled family members, unleashing storm tidal surges, ripping roofs off etc. These NGOs guys' eyes were burning.
The Muslims don't give a shit about having their caste purity compromised - caste being a Hindu idea. But they do want someone to clean their toilets without saying 'hey, why the hell am I cleaning this toilet and not the person who shits in it?' So this class of outcasts continues to serve its purpose, i.e. doing the dirty jobs, stripped of the Hindu mumbo jumbo excuses. You'd think that you can still respect someone who works with the hides of dead animals and drink tea with them, after they've showered. But maybe part of the machine is to demoralise this class of people so they don't even think of moving to more agreeable professions. Because it would cost too much to compel someone to do this with wages rather than with psychological bullying?
My theory.
Parittran, the Dalit NGO is next door to the Union Parishad headquarters, or local administration. The front court and roof of the building were covered with dinnertable-sized platforms with makeshift rooves - shaped like those American pioneer ox wagons, made from plastic sheeting and reed mats. This was a shack city for 400 families whose farmland and houses are under water. The river breached the embankments 6 months ago - not even a dramatic media event or a special disaster, it just overflowed and drenched the land, and the water isn't draining out because the riverbed is silted up to a level that's higher than the farmland. So. About half the displaced people are Muslims, the other half Dalit/Hindu. The Union Parishad let them set up camp in its grounds and only kept two offices open for themselves. The muslims moved in to the other office rooms; the Dalit weren't allowed to share and now live in an area the size of a small town square, between the main road, the rice field, and the UP building. One dinner table per family, waiting for the government to dredge the river channel.
So, thinking about this... in pre-antibiotics, pre-soap times it makes perfect sense to avoid someone who has spent the day elbow-deep in typhoid sludge 'like the plague', literally. And I guess the continued exclusion of dalit shows that Bangladesh is still in practical term pre-antibiotics and pre-soap for the majority of the population (I think the stats are something like 80% living on less than $2/day). (Interestingly, some ethnic minorities are also considered dalit not because of their spiritual Hindu position but because they eat unusual/unclean things like foxes, rats and cockroaches.) But why be so nasty about it?
How do we enlightened bla bla bla white people deal with our toxic sludge? How do we get pest-controllers and slaughtermen and nuclear power plant operatives and cleaners and binmen... partly by paying them well. And partly by setting up changing rooms and hot showers in the workplace. I used to have a boyfriend who came home from his job as a vet at the slaughterhouse and still smell of pigs. His many excellent qualities made that a minor detail. These jobs still contaminate you to some extent but if you met a guy in the pub and found out that he works as a binman it wouldn't necessarily stop you buying the next round.
Ah, this is poverty: the stupid little indignities, the minor easily solved problems, wrecking your entire life. No soap.
Cuanto es cuento?
It's been a peculiar ten days in Khulna (south-west Bangladesh) where I've been doing Field Research with a team of colleagues. The topic was 'what do these local NGOs think about/intend to do about climate change?' so you'd expect some pretty sober accounts. But while trying to work out what the hell was happening, a whole zoo of weird tales cropped up, psychedelic dream-snakes among the grey obvious elephants of standard NGO spiels. The experience was energising, exciting, fascinating, bewildering, and often the stories were so absurd that I had to laugh. But, to quote Mateo (who is doing his own fieldwork in Brazil) - cuanto es cuento? Cuanto realidad? that is, how much is story? How much is reality? The integrity of the report is on shaky shifting ground here. I'm starting to sympathise with the anthropologists.
And now, at home, I'm still wide staring awake with all this craziness like an overexcited child... no question of resting or putting my feet up. This might lead to a crash soon but for now I think I could make some sense by writing things for your titillation and amusement, and also because I like to throw unexpected leftfield missiles into the artificial order we create for our life narratives.
Another reason the stories make so little sense is that my Bangladeshi conversation partners know the background where I don't; and that they often mess up the distinctions in English between 'for', 'of', 'at' etc; and that they don't always start at point A and proceed from there. (more on that later).
So, weirdness!
1, the Bad Road:
Linda: Why is this stretch of road so badly maintained when the rest between Khulna and Satkhira is fine?
Answer: "A motorcycle can charge 4 taka a kilometer but a bus can only charge one taka. So the motorcycle people pay the Highways Authority not to repair it. [so that they can charge people for lifts across the bad stretch of road]. This was some time ago so now they are bribing less and the Highways Authority is slowly repairing it.
Linda: "So if you don't bribe the authorities, they will build you a road?"
Answer: "This is Bangladesh."
1, the Bad Road, version 2:
Khulna University professor: "When you travel from Khulna to Satkhira you will see that one part of the road is rotten, about 2-3 kilometers. The rest is a beautiful road. This is because the MPs on both sides of that road are fighting, so one has blocked the river to spite the other one. Now both sides of the road are water-logged and the people are suffering. So the NGOs will go there and say 'ooh! the poor people are suffering from water-logging! Let us show them how to grow fish in cages' and all this other absurdity, as if you only pick up one fish when you want dinner, all this floating gardens and other crazy things." [note that this didn't actually explain why the road is bad.]
2. Women and tabla:
Linda: "That little boy was excellent at tabla! He's so small, only eight years, and making all those amazing rhythms! But I've never seen a woman play tabla. Why is that?"
Female colleague: "I used to play tabla when I was small, but then my teacher told me I had to cut my nails to do it. So I cried and said no! and my little brother played instead. And also it's a problem for girls. You have to move your arm like this [a swing from the elbow]. And your scarf doesn't stay in place."
-Giving up an instrument because it's not ladylike?? The scarf moves? -My next blog is about the scarf, no fear... and the Dalits as well...OK, this is long enough, some of the weirdness should get their own blog entries.
And now, at home, I'm still wide staring awake with all this craziness like an overexcited child... no question of resting or putting my feet up. This might lead to a crash soon but for now I think I could make some sense by writing things for your titillation and amusement, and also because I like to throw unexpected leftfield missiles into the artificial order we create for our life narratives.
Another reason the stories make so little sense is that my Bangladeshi conversation partners know the background where I don't; and that they often mess up the distinctions in English between 'for', 'of', 'at' etc; and that they don't always start at point A and proceed from there. (more on that later).
So, weirdness!
1, the Bad Road:
Linda: Why is this stretch of road so badly maintained when the rest between Khulna and Satkhira is fine?
Answer: "A motorcycle can charge 4 taka a kilometer but a bus can only charge one taka. So the motorcycle people pay the Highways Authority not to repair it. [so that they can charge people for lifts across the bad stretch of road]. This was some time ago so now they are bribing less and the Highways Authority is slowly repairing it.
Linda: "So if you don't bribe the authorities, they will build you a road?"
Answer: "This is Bangladesh."
1, the Bad Road, version 2:
Khulna University professor: "When you travel from Khulna to Satkhira you will see that one part of the road is rotten, about 2-3 kilometers. The rest is a beautiful road. This is because the MPs on both sides of that road are fighting, so one has blocked the river to spite the other one. Now both sides of the road are water-logged and the people are suffering. So the NGOs will go there and say 'ooh! the poor people are suffering from water-logging! Let us show them how to grow fish in cages' and all this other absurdity, as if you only pick up one fish when you want dinner, all this floating gardens and other crazy things." [note that this didn't actually explain why the road is bad.]
2. Women and tabla:
Linda: "That little boy was excellent at tabla! He's so small, only eight years, and making all those amazing rhythms! But I've never seen a woman play tabla. Why is that?"
Female colleague: "I used to play tabla when I was small, but then my teacher told me I had to cut my nails to do it. So I cried and said no! and my little brother played instead. And also it's a problem for girls. You have to move your arm like this [a swing from the elbow]. And your scarf doesn't stay in place."
-Giving up an instrument because it's not ladylike?? The scarf moves? -My next blog is about the scarf, no fear... and the Dalits as well...OK, this is long enough, some of the weirdness should get their own blog entries.
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Chinese takeaway with extra helpings of eyeshadow
Soooooo last night my two film-making Quebecois neighbours invited me over for Chinese takeout dinner and to meet the subjects of their documentary: the godmother of Dhaka's hijras and her favourite disciple. Hijras are transvestites who have a special place in South Asian society... as far as I've understood, they are some sort of beggars/witches/gypsies/fairy godmothers, as in Sleeping Beauty. They dance at weddings and to celebrate newborn babies and that's good luck. But if you don't give them baksheesh and they curse you (or flash you!) it's mega-bad luck. So they are a kind of walking talking mincing cackling emotional blackmail.
Imagine having such a specific cultural niche - in a repressed, surface-hetero, conservative Muslim culture you have this gap where men can dress as women, get covered in bling and lipstick, and harass people for money. Oh and they aren't always just transvestites; all sorts of people with transgender tendencies or ambiguous genitalia can end up as hijras.
So the Boss-mama of all hijras takes on young ones and takes care of them; in return they give her a share of what they earn dancing in the market. Protection racket? Madaming? The term is 'patron-client relationship'. Boss-mama is also a civil society activist: she started her own NGO for hijras and sex workers and goes to conferences and gets USAID funding.
I came in for dinner and instantly felt under-accessorised. Boss-mama is tall and wide - not really fat but solid, cylindrical, with stubby hands and a lovely refined face. Quite a smooth broad oval face with a sweep of eyebrows and a short leonine nose. She was wearing an understated dark blue sari and a gracious smile and kind eyes and many earrings. She smoked cigarettes: "I have had many lovers but this one is forever". Her young slip of a trophy husband was lounging next to her, pretty uninterested; apparently everybody knows that he's only in it for the money.
The young protegee is extraordinary. Short and solid and pretty. Frizzy hair tied in munches on the top of her head with flamboyant red ribbons - looks like the hair is at that pesky stage of growing where you can't do anything good with it, I can sympathise. But the main thing is that she hams it up constantly, with a kind of street-fighter daring. She looks like she's trying it on all the time, and knows it, and won't mind if it doesn't work, because at least she's given it a shot and hey it's entertainment. Head held high, back straight, belly out, feet deliberately planted, padding around looking like she's up to no good. Lipstick, three-tone eyeshadow, four plastic necklaces, short dress over trousers which is the standard clothing for women here.
But a Bangladeshi woman (unless she has <i>no breeding</i>) wouldn't ever loll around on cushions letting the dress hitch up above her (baggy trouser-clad) crotch... she wouldn't stroll around like she owns the place... wouldn't sit with her legs open... wouldn't suggest that you give her your scarf and threaten to take a brandy bottle with her. I LOVED seeing someone who looks like a Bangladeshi woman behave so subversively. It was happifying and refreshing and made me want to laugh. The Protegee would slouch and loll, but move her head and hands with a dancer's grace. She constantly get up and wander about like an American TV-era attention-deficit victim and pick things up and poke people and interrupt to make jokes or wide Hollywood smiles or to flirt with the Quebecois cameraman.
Our Quebecois hosts had found a transvestite movie at the mall and it was running on the TV: Princesa, Brazilian film from ca 2000. The dialogue was in Italian but every now and then the hijras would comment. 'Her breasts!!??' '-Hormones from Europe'. 'She is sexual girl, yes?' -'Yes... with those boots...' (thigh-high red latex boots were in evidence). They hooted when the tall blond-wigged trans used her big handbag to give a muscular beating to homophobic Italians who were shouting abuse. One Quebecoise commented, of the madam in the film, 'She is like their guru!' and Boss-mama had to say 'my girls are not sexual girls'. Maybe it was a bit much to show a transvestite movie to transvestites as if they have nothing else going on in life, but I must admit I was curious about their reactions. Well, Protegee was bored most of the time and looking around for mischief.
So there we go, exotic dinner parties in exotic places!
Imagine having such a specific cultural niche - in a repressed, surface-hetero, conservative Muslim culture you have this gap where men can dress as women, get covered in bling and lipstick, and harass people for money. Oh and they aren't always just transvestites; all sorts of people with transgender tendencies or ambiguous genitalia can end up as hijras.
So the Boss-mama of all hijras takes on young ones and takes care of them; in return they give her a share of what they earn dancing in the market. Protection racket? Madaming? The term is 'patron-client relationship'. Boss-mama is also a civil society activist: she started her own NGO for hijras and sex workers and goes to conferences and gets USAID funding.
I came in for dinner and instantly felt under-accessorised. Boss-mama is tall and wide - not really fat but solid, cylindrical, with stubby hands and a lovely refined face. Quite a smooth broad oval face with a sweep of eyebrows and a short leonine nose. She was wearing an understated dark blue sari and a gracious smile and kind eyes and many earrings. She smoked cigarettes: "I have had many lovers but this one is forever". Her young slip of a trophy husband was lounging next to her, pretty uninterested; apparently everybody knows that he's only in it for the money.
The young protegee is extraordinary. Short and solid and pretty. Frizzy hair tied in munches on the top of her head with flamboyant red ribbons - looks like the hair is at that pesky stage of growing where you can't do anything good with it, I can sympathise. But the main thing is that she hams it up constantly, with a kind of street-fighter daring. She looks like she's trying it on all the time, and knows it, and won't mind if it doesn't work, because at least she's given it a shot and hey it's entertainment. Head held high, back straight, belly out, feet deliberately planted, padding around looking like she's up to no good. Lipstick, three-tone eyeshadow, four plastic necklaces, short dress over trousers which is the standard clothing for women here.
But a Bangladeshi woman (unless she has <i>no breeding</i>) wouldn't ever loll around on cushions letting the dress hitch up above her (baggy trouser-clad) crotch... she wouldn't stroll around like she owns the place... wouldn't sit with her legs open... wouldn't suggest that you give her your scarf and threaten to take a brandy bottle with her. I LOVED seeing someone who looks like a Bangladeshi woman behave so subversively. It was happifying and refreshing and made me want to laugh. The Protegee would slouch and loll, but move her head and hands with a dancer's grace. She constantly get up and wander about like an American TV-era attention-deficit victim and pick things up and poke people and interrupt to make jokes or wide Hollywood smiles or to flirt with the Quebecois cameraman.
Our Quebecois hosts had found a transvestite movie at the mall and it was running on the TV: Princesa, Brazilian film from ca 2000. The dialogue was in Italian but every now and then the hijras would comment. 'Her breasts!!??' '-Hormones from Europe'. 'She is sexual girl, yes?' -'Yes... with those boots...' (thigh-high red latex boots were in evidence). They hooted when the tall blond-wigged trans used her big handbag to give a muscular beating to homophobic Italians who were shouting abuse. One Quebecoise commented, of the madam in the film, 'She is like their guru!' and Boss-mama had to say 'my girls are not sexual girls'. Maybe it was a bit much to show a transvestite movie to transvestites as if they have nothing else going on in life, but I must admit I was curious about their reactions. Well, Protegee was bored most of the time and looking around for mischief.
So there we go, exotic dinner parties in exotic places!
Saturday, 31 October 2009
Modest Disney
A rickshaw gives you a great vantage point to check out life around the streets: park, commuters in buses (scratched and dented to a degree where they look like they've been driven through a narrow tunnel and the chassis squeezed to fit), sidewalk-dwellers wrapping up against the glare of the streetlamps to sleep, looking disconcertingly like corpses, and the open shops. I was returning from the Bangladesh-Zimbabwe cricket match this evening and was feeling happy to have seen something new and strange with great people, relatively drunk. My rickshaw driver was clowning around a bit, leaning to the sides and talking to himself. I was checking out the shops. Corner shop, corner shop, bananas on strings, crisp packets, bottles of water, evening diners, snack shacks, crutches?
Crutches, toilet-chairs, pharmacy, the Orthopaedic Hospital aha!, stacks of crutches, neck braces, pharmacy, snacks, snacks, diner, pharmacy, the children's hospital, snacks, toy shop, pharmacy, five shops with men's shoes, the amusement park.
Ah, what a heartbreaking thought, to stop to buy a soft toy tiger and some bananas to visit a child in hospital.
And the amusement part right next door. So if your child is only a bit sick, you can take them 50 meters along the road for a few rides to cheer them up. But also - the kids who are too sick to go out, would they stand in the windows and look at the rides and want to be there and be sad that they can't?
You could drive yourself crazy with this kind of thinking.
At the time I was pretty happy about life and just happy that there is a children's hospital and that private, enterprising people set up the kinds of shops that you need, where you need them.
And I was pleased to see the paintings on the amusement park walls: Disney characters. Mickey Mouse with a Bangladeshi flag; Minnie in a sari, the dupatta pulled up between her ears.
Crutches, toilet-chairs, pharmacy, the Orthopaedic Hospital aha!, stacks of crutches, neck braces, pharmacy, snacks, snacks, diner, pharmacy, the children's hospital, snacks, toy shop, pharmacy, five shops with men's shoes, the amusement park.
Ah, what a heartbreaking thought, to stop to buy a soft toy tiger and some bananas to visit a child in hospital.
And the amusement part right next door. So if your child is only a bit sick, you can take them 50 meters along the road for a few rides to cheer them up. But also - the kids who are too sick to go out, would they stand in the windows and look at the rides and want to be there and be sad that they can't?
You could drive yourself crazy with this kind of thinking.
At the time I was pretty happy about life and just happy that there is a children's hospital and that private, enterprising people set up the kinds of shops that you need, where you need them.
And I was pleased to see the paintings on the amusement park walls: Disney characters. Mickey Mouse with a Bangladeshi flag; Minnie in a sari, the dupatta pulled up between her ears.
Friday, 30 October 2009
Book review: A Case of Exploding Mangoes
Aside from the fact that I think the plural of mango should be spelled mangos, this was an excellent and very enjoyable book. I bought the cheery yellow hardback with the vague educational motive of reading up on South Asia, and that wholesome thought put me off reading it for six months. Turns out that that was just delayed gratification.
A case of Exploding Mangoes is an exercise in the genre postcolonial neo-magic-realism. Come on, you know the stuff. Captain Corelli's Mandolin. The God of Small Things. The Book of Chameleons (review coming up next!) These things are typically pretty anglo-centric, but juicy and rich and refreshing.... um, perhaps like an iced mango-ginger smoothie with English mint. And these types of books deal with serious questions and real history/traumatic events. But packaged in whimsy, exotic settings and twisty language. My kind of education.
So, author Mohammed Hanif hasn't invented his own genre here but never mind. The novel is about the assassination/freak accident death of former military dictator of Pakistan, general Zia ul Haq. The narrator is airforce underofficer Ali Shigri, a sympathetic and feisty albeit army-brainwashed chap, but General Zia features as the central character about half the chapters. This is a pretty merciless caricature in the style of Il Duce in de Bernieres' "Captain Corelli" ("is that the cat that shat in my helmet!!! where is my pistol!!!") and very similar to Josef Stalin in Solzhenitsyn's "The First Circle", constantly calling on their sypmasters to increase the alert level. You start to feel a vaguely nauseous pity for the character, partly because of the proximity to a real scumbag and party from his treatment from the author.
The General Zia episodes are layered with stories about CIA/Afghanistan/cold war, how to thrive in the army, appreciation of your friend's eyelashes, various psychoactive drugs, torture, communism, G-forces, and Arab princes. Did I mention that it's also funny? And political? And still really relevant, even though it's set in the late 1980s. For example it features the story of the Texan with a Wonderbra fundraising in Lufkin, Texas, to fund the jihad against communism in Afghanistan.
Yeah, this is a good one people. Buy it and read it and support Mr Hanif, former airforce pilot!
A case of Exploding Mangoes is an exercise in the genre postcolonial neo-magic-realism. Come on, you know the stuff. Captain Corelli's Mandolin. The God of Small Things. The Book of Chameleons (review coming up next!) These things are typically pretty anglo-centric, but juicy and rich and refreshing.... um, perhaps like an iced mango-ginger smoothie with English mint. And these types of books deal with serious questions and real history/traumatic events. But packaged in whimsy, exotic settings and twisty language. My kind of education.
So, author Mohammed Hanif hasn't invented his own genre here but never mind. The novel is about the assassination/freak accident death of former military dictator of Pakistan, general Zia ul Haq. The narrator is airforce underofficer Ali Shigri, a sympathetic and feisty albeit army-brainwashed chap, but General Zia features as the central character about half the chapters. This is a pretty merciless caricature in the style of Il Duce in de Bernieres' "Captain Corelli" ("is that the cat that shat in my helmet!!! where is my pistol!!!") and very similar to Josef Stalin in Solzhenitsyn's "The First Circle", constantly calling on their sypmasters to increase the alert level. You start to feel a vaguely nauseous pity for the character, partly because of the proximity to a real scumbag and party from his treatment from the author.
The General Zia episodes are layered with stories about CIA/Afghanistan/cold war, how to thrive in the army, appreciation of your friend's eyelashes, various psychoactive drugs, torture, communism, G-forces, and Arab princes. Did I mention that it's also funny? And political? And still really relevant, even though it's set in the late 1980s. For example it features the story of the Texan with a Wonderbra fundraising in Lufkin, Texas, to fund the jihad against communism in Afghanistan.
Yeah, this is a good one people. Buy it and read it and support Mr Hanif, former airforce pilot!
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
Three pieces of good news
1. One feisty woman agreed to be in love (with a guy who was supposed to be 'just for Christmas')
2. Another force for creativity and beauty is pregnant (her funky husband is the dad)
3. The funding proposal I wrestled with for interminable months a year ago has been approved by the European Commission! (€200K plus!)
FOUR pieces of good news
4. Mateo's research is going strong and he's zooming around central Brazil talking soya
FIVE pieces
5. My own research project at work is gathering momentum
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!
2. Another force for creativity and beauty is pregnant (her funky husband is the dad)
3. The funding proposal I wrestled with for interminable months a year ago has been approved by the European Commission! (€200K plus!)
FOUR pieces of good news
4. Mateo's research is going strong and he's zooming around central Brazil talking soya
FIVE pieces
5. My own research project at work is gathering momentum
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!
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