The Great Stone-Face that Melts Hearts

 

 I don't recall when I first heard the name "Buster" Keaton. All I remember is that somewhere in my teen years my dad, who introduced me to most pop culture, mentioned his name as one of the great silent-movie stars as good as/ even better than Chaplin. Growing up in India I had only seen Chaplin comedies and never had a chance to see the Great Buster. So when I moved to the US in 1998 following my marriage, I promptly asked my spouse to point me to three things 1) the nearest library 2) the nearest video rental place 3) the classic movies channel on TV. Thus began my adventures with Buster. I watched all his movies first by myself and then with my spouse and then with friends to whom I evangelized (one literally fell off our couch when watching the boxing scenes of "Battling Butler" - which inspired Raging Bull) and then when my daughter turned 7 or 8 she too was initiated into the Busterian cult. Why, then did I wait so many years to write about The Great Stone-Face?

Well, two biographies of Buster were released this year and I promptly got James Curtis' Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker's Life. I might still get Dana Stevens', Cameraman, but I wanted a complete biography and Curtis' book was the one that offered that. 700 pages of Buster took me about a week to get through and during that time I re-watched all the movies and shorts that I so adore, this time with my teenage daughter who claims that I always introduce things to her too early and therefore she ends up needing a re-introduction. It has been a riot watching these shorts and movies with her while I read the book in parallel. Now I had more insight into the films and could pause and explain to her how a shot was made and the context. 

Before you read:If you don't know anything about Buster, please watch the links I've provided below. If you know something about him but don't know what the hoopla is all about, please watch this short clip on the Art of the Gag.  

I always preferred Buster to all the other comedians. I don't think Chaplin or Lloyd can equal him. He was a consummate filmmaker, actor, cameraman, designer, gagman, stuntman all rolled into one. No cheats, no shortcuts. This much I knew before I read the book. Now I have an even greater appreciation for him when I realize all the challenges he was up against. The underwater scene in Navigator was shot in Lake Tahoe in extreme cold temperatures and with him actually staying under water in the ridiculous diving suit. The famous house collapse in Steamboat Bill was actually executed in one take and even the cameraman closed his eyes when the house collapsed. The motorcycle scene in Sherlock Jr actually had him controlling the motorcycle from the handlebar with no brakes. He even stunted for the driver. There are many vaudevillian tricks in Sherlock but I was blown away to find that every shot on the pool table was executed by Buster after hours of practice! I can watch The General any number of times and still be awed by everything he did, especially when the bridge collapses. Curtis' book provides so many engrossing details on each of his shorts and movies that it is a must-read for anyone interested in Buster, the art of movie-making, or just films in general.

However, where the book truly excelled for me was the myth-busting biography of the second half of his life. I always thought that talkies killed his career. I was completely wrong! What (almost) killed Buster's career was losing creative control to the studios, especially MGM.  Buster was first and foremost a creative genius with a core team that helped execute his vision (Gabe Gabourie, Elgin Lessley come to mind). Directors like Mal St.Clair, Eddie Cline were quick to know when to hand over the reins to Buster as no one knew the camera and the audience as much as Buster did. He was also a technophile so it was not new technologies that killed his career in the second half. When MGM decided to treat him just as an actor who needed to be managed closely and not use his special talents it sent him on a downward spiral that turned him to alcohol and led to failed marriages. Even with all that Buster worked continuously and was still delivering pretty solid commercial hits. 

My admiration for Buster the human being, solidified when I read about how he dealt with the downward spiral and came back for a third stage of his career. He went from a $3000/week salary to $100/week writing gags for other artists just to pay the bills. "If I am worth more, they will pay more" was all he had to say when a reporter goaded him about his fallen fortunes. From villa to moving back with his parents, accepting any job that came his way, I don't think he ever stopped working until he died. His third marriage to Eleanor was a lifeline and she helped him beat alcohol and supported him in every way possible that when TV came along Buster was back. He helped identify Lucille Ball's potential helping her hone her audition, wrote scenes for Judy Garland, mentored so many other comedians and did it all behind the scenes with no credit. And during this third stage of his career he saw the revival of interest in his films which were now acknowledged to be greater than anything Chaplin did. He had no fights with Chaplin and acknowledged him all the time, something that Chaplin could never do. When asked who he thought were the greatest comedians, he listed Chaplin first among men and in the same breath said Lucy among the women. He never thought that his movies would have a life beyond two years, let alone few decades or centuries. 

As a human being Buster is a shining example of how to deal with adversity with grace, what it means to mentor others, being committed to the gag with a dedication that is unparalleled and being gracious when crediting others. While I always admired the genius, it was the humanity in him that moved me to the verge of tears. At many points in the book I had to stop, close and collect myself as I could not believe that such a person truly lived! This book is a triumph because the life that is told is a triumph! I watched The Railrodder a short he made few months before he died from lung cancer. I saw the 70 year old Buster (who did all the stunts) and could see the same vitality of the guy who made The General in 1925!

I know there needs to be a discussion about racism in Buster's movies and frankly I am not qualified to address that. However, it is not addressed in Curtis' book although I am told Dana Stevens' book has a chapter on Black-face and minstrel traditions in Buster's movies and shorts. I was listening to Larry Wilmore interview James Curtis (incidentally one of the best interviews and discussions on Buster I've heard) and he mentioned that someone needs to do a proper book on minstrel shows and use of ethnic humor in Antebellum America. When we watched The General last week, my daughter said that not watching the Confederate flag in color made it a bit more palatable and it didn't make her top 3 list because of the theme. Why did Buster reverse the story and show the Confederates as winning this particular battle? Was he a Lost Cause supporter? The truth most likely was the fact that he didn't want to make fun of the losers and felt that making the Northerners as a butt of his jokes was acceptable given they already won the war. The Playhouse is truly a ground breaking innovation in cinema but that's one short that i can't watch because of the minstrel aspects. My daughter does not like Paleface because it makes her uncomfortable to see white people dressed up as Native Americans, even though the theme is that of white man stealing the land from Native Americans. To put him context, Buster was born around the time of Wounded Knee, about 30 years after the Civil War. So it is hard for me to label him a racist even though there are some racist stereotypes in his pictures. While I am not excusing these portrayals I also don't want to dismiss these pictures as just racist tropes as they are truly much, much more than that. After all very few directors have 7 of their movies preserved by the National Archives. I am going to go out on a limb and say that Buster is like Shakespeare. Yes, there are problem plays (Shrew, Merchant of Venice, Othello) but the overall canon is very uplifting and timeless and helps us question our own assumptions.

We compared notes on our top 3 Buster movies and shorts. Here is my list (most of it are available for free on youtube as the copyright has long expired)

Full Features:

1. The General
2. Steamboat Bill Jr
3. Sherlock Jr / Cameraman

Shorts:

1. Neighbors/ One Week
2. Cops / Goat
3. High Sign

Here is her list (She hasn't yet watched Seven Chances, Cameraman)

Full Features:

1. Battling Butler
2. Steamboat Bill Jr
3. Navigator
   

 Shorts:

1. The Goat
2. High Sign
3. Daydreams / Electric House

As I am writing this blogpost, I am reminded that today is the 100th anniversary of Cops one of my all time favorite shorts which my daughter and I watched this morning. Buster has been performing since he was a toddler and here we are a hundred years later still watching him. On his death Dick Van Dyke eulogized him by reciting the poem God Bless the Clowns! I feel truly blessed that my dad introduced Buster to me and I was able to do that to my daughter who I am pretty sure will be a Damfino for life and introduce the joys of Buster to the people she meets.  As a tribute to Buster, my daughter and I have solemnly sworn to wear the "Blinking Buzzard" earrings to any movies we will watch from now on!

This "Fool's" Eulogy For Her Uncle

 It's time for me to write another COVID eulogy - this time for my maternal uncle. With his passing my mom has now lost all her siblings and this one was especially hard as he basically book ended another COVID death, that of his wife back in 2020. I wrote about my aunt's passing in September 2020 and that was the last I talked to my uncle. He was 82 or 83 and lived a full life. It was not an easy one by any means as he always shouldered more responsibility than anyone else I knew, but I know he never dwelt on the difficulties and towards the end was blessed to spend sometime with his lovely grandkids.

I am personally grateful to him for a number of reasons some of which I talked about when his wife passed away. Now that I have had a few days to reflect on his life I felt I needed to say more. My grandmother used to say that my uncle had a lovely singing voice (something we've never heard) but he didn't have the luxury to indulge in music as he had to find a job at a young age and take on the responsibility of his family. My grandfather (who I never met) was diabetic and always ill. In addition he was naive and quick to anger. So he could not be relied on for a steady income and my uncle had to take on the burdens of providing for his family at a young age.

I have never seen him express love but actions always spoke louder than words. My mother wouldn't be where she is without his unflinching support towards her education and her career which made her financially independent at a time when most Indian women depended on their husbands for everything. My mom recounts how he was at her side when I needed a surgery as a baby and even yelled at my dad for not making it on time. He enrolled me in my kindergarten and I used to go to school staying with him. From that point onward he was there for every aspect of my life - my first school, my first job, my first trip abroad and being his niece he played an important role at my wedding. He was also by my side when my dad died. I remember a cook at the funeral didn't want to take the money from me (a woman) and asked if my uncle could hand him the check. My uncle refused and said - you take it from my niece who arranged everything or we will take your services for free!

What I admired the most about him was his directness in speech and action. He never used flattery or fancy words. He came to the point quickly, said everything to your face, and more importantly didn't do it to offend anyone personally. He was careful about money and didn't believe in frivolities. Long distance phone calls were not wasted on unnecessary niceties. The other thing I truly admired about him was the fact that unlike so many other aging Indians I know he would never once make me or any of us who owe so much to him feel guilty! I didn't have to call him regularly or inquire after him. He cared that I was happy, my child and husband were doing good and my career was going fine - but I didn't have to personally convey that to him. There was no "reading between lines and taking offense" - an art so many elders seem to have mastered - with him. Never once has he said things like "for everything I've done for you..." - these phrases never came out of him.
 

When he turned 60 many years back I got him a nice, designer shirt - not because I owed him that, but because I genuinely wanted to celebrate his birthday. I could see he was touched, but he said and I quote "Fool! Why do you waste money on me? You take care of yourself and you don't have to do anything for me." If you met him briefly you might not see the gentleness behind the rough exterior but if you took the time to warm up to him you were in for a treat! Even now my brother and I quote many of his pithy sayings and we find ourselves laughing over them. He never troubled anyone when alive and that's how he died. I heard that he donated his organs and I am sure he probably didn't want his son to go to any extra trouble regarding his last rites. 

People say that I have some of his features as my mom is just a female version of her brother (When I was a teenager I was once approached by a random person at a bus stop who asked me if I was related to Ramachandran! )As I look back on his life I hope I inherited more than his looks and the directness of speech - I hope I have the sagacity to adopt a WYSIWYG approach to life, not heap guilt on others and dwell on difficulties. I am sure if he read this eulogy the only thing he would've said would have been "Fool! Don't get sentimental." So I will stop the gushing now and simply say THANK YOU Mama!

Power of the Voice

 As a regular listener of Tiny Desk I am especially grateful to NPR for bringing these three artists into our lives - Khaira Arby, Tamino and the unbelievable Silvana Estrada. So when I heard Silvana was touring and was going to be in LA, I promptly got the tickets as I knew my 16 year old would not want to miss seeing her live. But is she worth driving through 3 hours of Friday evening traffic from San Diego to LA, standing outside for 30 minutes waiting for the doors to open, then listening to the opening act (Doris Anahi who was also really good!) for another 30 mins (all standing) and then hearing her for an hour and a half (continuing to stand) and then driving back home close to midnight? The answer is ABSOLUTELY YES!

 

My daughter and I were probably the only folks in the 400 people theater who did not speak/understand Spanish, but that didn't mean we didn't know the music. This was just pure soul, something that struck you deep inside whether you are 16 or 60. This was my daughter's first non-Classical/ non-Indian music concert and what a glorious way to start! She was so grateful to me for doing all the driving on a working day, but I told her that this was something my dad would do for me (except he never drove any vehicle, so i had to drive him to accompany me to anywhere I wanted to go) when i was her age and I am only paying forward. My dad's family loved all arts and were not limited in who or what they admired and I am so thankful for that openness in my upbringing. A soulful voice is a soulful voice is a soulful voice! Throughout the concert, although we were probably 6 feet away from her, we could not believe that she was real and her music was actually coming from within her.

 

I also have to say what an amazing crowd of people to share the music with! With the pandemic we all have lost what it felt to share a live experience with a bunch of strangers. This concert proved how important that was to the human experience. Here we were amidst a sea of strangers, most of whom spoke Spanish and seem to know the lyric of every song, sharing the delight of music. People were so kind and typing into my daughter's phone any song title she had not heard before, or just being polite not blocking the view and being sensitive to each other.

Doris Anahi in her opening act talked about how blessed it is to be from two cultures and that was a feeling my daughter totally understood. When she creates music she borrows the best from her two cultures and to hear such strong, thinking, feeling, emotional young female voices was life-affirming for her. Thank you Silvana Estrada for giving my daughter and I an experience that is firmly etched in our shared memories!  

Tales of Whale Tails

A pair of whale tail earrings sent me on a stroll down memory lane this past week. After our nightly walk I noticed that my daughter was missing one of her earrings. They were cheap ones gotten as a souvenir from Alaska when we visited the state a few years back. Was it worth re-tracing the four miles at 9:30PM after a long and tiring day? My daughter's face told me yes. She believes that whenever she wore these plain whale-tails I tended to be (subconsciously) more expressive with my love for her and that made those earrings worth going back for. So armed with a flashlight and a phone light we retraced our steps and with pure luck and my eagle eyes we found the lost one to complete the pair! She paid me back with her joy and a fantastic poem about these whale-tails. It is true that the whale-tails are keepers of identity. Each whale-tail is unique in its marks and coloration that individuals are often identified by their tails. My daughter's earrings seem to have been imbued with these qualities - they were keepers of memories.

I am terrified of water. I believe that gravity always trumps buoyancy, but I love whales. I don't know anyone who doesn't. I am not a religious person by any means but the closest spiritual experience I have had was when I watched a mama blue whale with her calf off the coast of Los Angeles on a whale watching trip many years back. Back then I was still getting used to the concept of motherhood. Seeing the whale calf nuzzle alongside her mom while holding my daughter's hand tightly on a rocking boat I distinctly remember the feeling of kinship (however brief) that extended beyond my species. Like an iceberg, the size of the whale is beyond comprehension. What I saw on the surface did not do justice to these giants. How can anyone so huge have so much grace and gentleness? Words failed me as I struggled to make sense of what my eyes were seeing. The romantics had a word for such things - sublime. You know you are in the presence of something sublime when you are in complete awe but also can detect a tinge of fear as the scale and perspective of nature is mind boggling. Was my face covered in salty ocean spray or my own tears, I couldn't tell. But after that experience my then five year old never asked me why we did not go to Seaworld although it was practically in our backyard.

Maybe it was this experience that also made me viscerally upset when in Tokyo I realized whale meat was sold in many places both for human and pet consumption. I had a hard time reconciling the presence of so many Buddhist and Shinto shrines and the peace loving people of Japan with cruelty of whaling and eating cetaceans. But as Melville reminded me "A man's religion is one thing and this practical world quite another." Melville was trying to reconcile the peace loving Quakers who were "sworn foe to human bloodshed... (yet) spilled tuns and tuns of leviathan gore." I had avoided reading Moby Dick for the longest time because I didn't want to read about the butchery of these magnificent beings, but Philip Hoare's The Whale convinced me otherwise. Hoare's book traces his own fascination with whales and along the way he lays bare the difficult relationship our species has had with Cetaceans. 

Whaling stations and whalers fueled the world before the age of fossil fuels. Working on a whaling boat had to be one of the most dangerous professions of all time. For those who could not resist the call to adventure whaling offered a life on seas that took them to the remote corners of the world. When Shackleton was stranded in the Weddell Sea following his Endurance expedition his rescue plan was to reach the remote whaling station of South Georgia. Before there were Antarctic explorers there were whalers. However, while the owners of the whaling ships profited, the hands on the deck, as Melville found out for himself, sometimes came back owing more than they did before they left on a whaling voyage. If there was one benefit of our obsession with fossil fuels is that it saved the whales from being hunted to extinction although it has put the planet on the brink of catastrophe.

There is so much we still don't know about whales. What we know is already enough to blow our mind. Language, sisterhood, songs, teamwork - how can we not see culture in these creatures? How could we have boiled them down for oil! For a species that boasts a superior brain we don't seem to learn from our past. Although we are not hunting whales like we used to, we haven't stopped exploiting the oceans that they depend on. On the same trip that I saw my first Blue whale, a docent showed us what the whales feed on - krill. 

These minuscule organisms feed on even tinier marine algae. They remove carbon from the surface and take it with them deep into the ocean as they plunge into colder waters where they become food for whales and penguins. Climate change and human exploitation are the double whammy these creatures are facing. The Weddell Sea in the Antarctic is facing unprecedented changes and needs to be protected. One of my childhood heroes Jacques Cousteau summed it up beautifully when he said

"Man, at least so it seems, is incapable of leaving a place the way he finds it, whether it is outer space, the moon, or Antarctica. The mark of man's presence is often an absence - the disappearance of blue whales in familiar water....The hope is that man will somehow be able not only to define the problems, but also divine the solutions. Hope is an ephemeral thing. It can easily be shattered by the unscrupulous, the ignorant, the distrusting, the economically deprived. The very nations that found it profitable to exploit the polar regions are the countries that must be relied upon to protect the seas."

Will we rise up to these challenges or are we going to be Ahab on the Pequod? Melville often referred to the whale as a Leviathan, a sea-monster. That word brought to mind the other Leviathan - Hobbes' where he called for a new social contract between the ruler and the ruled. As we are slowly realizing that killing other species and contaminating the planet is just a sure-fire way of killing ourselves, perhaps it is time for a 21st century Leviathan to emerge forging a new social contract between Homo sapiens and all the other species.

Caste - the monkey on our backs

My daughter has been reading Caste by Isabel Wilkerson as part of her summer reading assignment for school. This has led to some very uncomfortable yet thought-provoking, must-have conversations at our home. She posed this question to me the other day "Did her parents' caste contribute to her life of privilege in the US?" Just for some context I should say we've been having these discussions around privilege since the early days of BLM. As someone who came of age during the Trump presidency my daughter has not been shielded from uncomfortable questions. She hated it when she was classified as a "person of color" (POC) not because she denies she is one, but because she knows that despite being the daughter of immigrants, her tech-worker parents did not experience the trauma of immigration and she was in a place of privilege. By being labelled a "person of color" she felt she was taking the spotlight away from others who have truly suffered because of the color of their skin. We've spent a good part of the past four years trying to help her deal with the guilt of privilege despite being a "POC" and so I was hesitant to open another can of worms when it came to our caste. Around the time she was reading Wilkerson, I've been reading Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste and Yengde's Caste Matters and this topic was swirling inside my brain. So I decided to first answer her question - How did her parents' caste (Brahmin) in India contribute to her privilege in the US? I came up with this list as the sources of my privilege

1. Precedence: The journey of our lives (high school to engineering to Masters in the US to working in the US) has been undertaken by countless others in our social circle that this was a road well traveled by members of our caste.
2. Education emphasis: This was a huge factor in our lives. Brahmins = learning was something ingrained in our psyche over millennia. So high expectations for academic achievements was something of a norm.
   
3. Art education: Even the poorest in our caste were exposed to the arts. It was considered almost a necessity and there were a number of role models to look up to in any field from classical to popular.
   
4. Confidence: Although intangible this was priceless and came from a source that goes back many many generations
5. English Language Fluency: English newspapers, works of literature, movies/ music were part and parcel of everyday life.

As you can see not once did I mention wealth, because our families were not wealthy by any means. Our ancestors didn't own land or huge properties. But it didn't matter as in most cases every generation ended up being a bit better than its previous one. Every individual's story is unique but some combination of the above 5 factors can be traced in everyone who is now in the US even those who have denounced the shackles of caste. We can all fool ourselves into thinking that it was pure meritocracy that got us here, but there is no denying the cushion that has been afforded by the caste over thousand years.

Here I was happily living in a bubble that I had shed my caste when I immigrated. Our daughter has not been forced to learn Carnatic music, we hardly go to the local temple, the house explicitly avoids any overt symbols of our caste or even religion, I've volunteered for groups that work in India with denotified tribes, landless laborers, migrant rights and protested Modi's handling of Godhra when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat and Modi's Hindu nationalism. I gave up milk & ghee (staple for my caste), silk and leather when I turned vegan two decades back. I have felt suffocated by a highly ritualistic culture that enforced patriarchy in every aspect of its rituals that I rejected many of them. I questioned our scriptures treatment of women and found my religion in nature. But then it dawned on me that caste was like a monkey on my back. There were numerous coded behaviors and the invisible cushion that I failed to see / chose to not see / conveniently ignored.

So where does all this leave me? I know guilt alone is not enough. It has to be turned into positive action. This is important especially when raising a very sensitive child who is sometimes overwhelmed by the burdens the world imposes on her generation for faults that were not of their making. For her, I've always recommended two things 

1. Not to be driven by an "achievement /entitlement mindset" in anything she undertakes. Instead focus on learning and helping others around her learn and grow. I have seen her live by this especially in high school. She understands the importance of leveling the playing field be it through affirmative action or reservations and knows that every child starts the race at a different point depending on the uterus they were born to. So yes while she takes pride in her "achievements" she is trying to not let that define her.
   
2. Volunteering, not for the sake of showing something on your resume, but because you truly care. Since she was 7 she has been doing this in her community and nothing gives her more satisfaction than working with her hands and speaking up for other species.

I have realized that these two things have personally helped me with my own journey. The one other thing I have learned from her is to always give people a second chance. She was bullied by a kid in school and even when upset she was trying to find the source for that kid's meanness. Our pasts influence us in positive and negative ways and knowing where someone is coming from can lead to a better understanding of the other.

Regarding questions of caste I am inspired by the four simple strategies Ambedkar offers

1. Denounce religion based on rules and instead adopt one based on principles - fraternity, equality and liberty. This is a type of religion I can subscribe to. I have hated rule based religion all my life as it always made women bear the brunt of it. I now see how rule based religion fuels casteist ideals. This doesn't mean you have to give up your food, your clothing, your art, your symbols. Just being aware that the other person's food/art/clothing/symbols mean something significant to them and making sure our own symbols don't violate the principles of fraternity, equality and liberty is a good place to start.
   
2. Be selective and prune and transmit only what is useful to the next generation. The concept of the goddess, the worship of nature, the individual soul's relationship to the world's soul, the accommodation of different practices - these are some of the most beautiful concepts of "Hinduism." The rituals and codes that classify and rank people is a deprecated function. I only partially joke when I tell my daughter - just watch Avatar: The Last Airbender (the TV show, not the movie please). It has distilled all the good things about many of the Oriental philosophies that are truly magnificent.
   
3. Let not the past dictate all your ideals. Just because something has been around for 2000 years doesn't automatically make it ideal. It took courage to reject Aristotle (who has been right about many things and spectacularly wrong about many other things) before the scientific revolution could truly take place. While it is OK to take pride in a civilization that is thousands of years old it is important to acknowledge when that pride results in shackles.
4. Consider nothing is fixed and change is a way of life. There needs to be a constant revolution of old values. We appreciate this in every other aspect of life. My favorite artists are the impressionists, not just because they started to represent a world that I know and see with my eyes but also because they rejected the Salon and their rules. Shakespeare borrowed liberally from Virgil and others before him but made it his own. Stories can be timeless but how we tell them can and should change. Last week I watched Dev Patel as Gawain. Gawain is a tale from the 14th century. I am sure the Gawain poet never imagined that one day an Indian man would play Sir Gawain in a new and improved interpretation of his work. But this new interpretation has opened up his poem to millions who would have never heard of this tale otherwise. 

I am still on this journey and my own beliefs have changed/ are changing and are evolving that I am sure I sound like a hypocrite at times. When I feel bogged down by my own hypocrisy I remember that beautiful quote from Brandon Sanderson's Oathbringer "sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a person in the process of changing." For now I am OK to be a hypocrite as long as I am changing for the better.

Summer of Art

 I am no artist. Have zero skill in anything artistic but I enjoy a wide range of artistic expressions. I walk away from good art not understanding the technical aspects of why it worked but just knowing it worked for me. Our daughter therefore has been subjected to museum tours from the time she was a toddler. Any trip we undertook was never complete without a stop at the local museum - whether it is natural history or national art. This year she decided to take an Art History class at school for a bunch of reasons but the primary one was to enjoy these "unavoidable trips to the museums with mom" better. I am happy to report that she enjoyed the class (kudos to her wonderful teacher) and I offer incontrovertible proof - of her own volition she asked for a trip to the Getty villa and the Center this summer. 

Although I don't need any special motivation to visit these places, two women reached out from the past and offered us inspiration. One was the world's first known author/poet and the other was a brilliant painter whose achievements are finally being acknowledged by the world at large. From the villa to the center we went from 1800 BC to 1600AD and through the lives of these two women one can trace an arc of women's role in society.

The Villa hosted exhibitions which featured artifacts from Mesopotamia and of all the things on display this tablet was my favorite! This was Princess and High Priestess Enheduana's work "Exaltation of Inanna" from 1850-1700 BC. Although the original is lost this is a copy done by scribes who preserved the hymn in clay tablets. Enheduanna was the daughter of King Sargon who upon conquering Ur made his daughter the High Priestess of Nanna the moon god. It is interesting to note that during a time of crisis she composed the hymn not to Nanna (her husband, the moon god) but to Inanna the Goddess of love. Sisterhood rules!

Granted she was the daughter of a king, but she was powerful in her own right. After all she remained a priestess through the reign of her father, her brothers and her nephew. She certainly was not an exception. Right next to this artifact there was a small statue. It showed another powerful woman, a priestess and it seemed to be fairly common in Mesopotamia 4000 years ago! These women controlled large tracts of land, received huge dowries which remained their possession throughout their life and were theirs to dispose of at the time of their death. Many scribes were women (the kings were illiterate) and the patron deity of scribes was also a goddess!

Standing in front of this object with my daughter (who is a budding writer) next to me I was covered in goosebumps. Never did I imagine that the world's first author was a woman! There is no doubt we've made significant strides in women's education in the past 50 years but when I look back to the early civilizations I can't help wonder how far we've actually fallen! Women priestesses, women writers, women in control of their own finances - this is humanity's collective past. 

From Old Babylonia to Baroque Italy - our next stop this summer was at the Getty Center to see their latest acquisition - Artemisia Gentileschi's painting of Lucretia. Artemisia has become a feminist icon these days and in the era of #metoo it is not hard to see why. Her story adds to her art as she usually painted "donne forti" or strong women and thereby carved out a unique space for herself in the world of Baroque art. Raped by Tassi who then reneged on his promise to marry her, she took him to court, testified against him despite being tortured and got him convicted. She then married another, got accepted into the Academy at Florence, went on to paint a number of masterpieces in many famous courts. 

I love this painting of Lucretia about to stab herself due to her rape proclaiming her innocence. A woman having faced sexual violence is about to commit a violent act on her own body. Historians remind us not to see everything Artemisia created from the perspective of her rape. She after all lived a long life and saw much professional success after the rape. Perhaps that is the message here. Women who have faced sexual assault don't have to be defined only as victims. She seems to have taken charge of her career and her destiny. Both the art and the artist are emotionally complex and they evoke complex feelings in the viewer too. 

That wrapped up July for us! I was thrilled my daughter loved both the trips and she got so much out of them. Walking from room to room with her and hearing her talk about things that she loved was one of the most  memorable experiences for me in recent times. My daughter always saw art everywhere. We went on a grocery run recently and as I parked my car and got out, a leaf that got painted over caught her eye. She snapped these three pictures and forced me to look closely even if it was just a parking lot in Costco!

The Tamil #metoo movement

 These past few days my birth city of Chennai has been rocked by a couple of major scandals. 1) The sexual harassment of female students by a male teacher in a leading school in Chennai 2) The seemingly free pass afforded to one of the most powerful poets/lyricist in Tamil cinema despite 17 women accusing him of sexual harassment. At the outset I have to say that I have not lived in Chennai for nearly 25 years but spent the first half of my life there. I also did not go to the school in question (although I am married into a family in which everyone graduated from the school) and have no direct connections to the movie or literary industry. Thirdly, as anything in Tamil Nadu is an intersection of caste and class I have to state that I grew up in an upper middle class Brahmin family, not financially rich but not poor either. 

With all that out of the way, I wanted to share what it meant to grow up as a woman in the so-called "Tamil culture" in the period between 1975-1995 Chennai. I am not speaking for other parts of India although I am sure that the Tamils are not unique in terms of the reckoning they need to have w.r.t misogyny and patriarchy that is so ingrained and steeped in everything we do that we never had words or phrases we could use to describe the female experience in such a suffocating environment until recently. 

1. Misogyny in everyday life

The Great Indian Kitchen captured this beautifully and this is a story that has been timelessly repeated in every home in India and TN is no exception. Our moms and grandmoms always ate the last despite having prepared the food; there was an expectation that the girls in the family have to help out with chores around the house (how else will we survive when we get married); you can study all you want but when I say it's time, you need to be ready for marriage and marry the guy I ask you to; your wedding will break my bank and back but that's the way it is; put up with any "inconveniences" in your married home; when it's time to raise a child step back from your career. Some classes and some castes might do a bit better on some parts of this narrative but this playbook applies to most women. I personally didn't face much of this at home and this also meant I naively challenged a lot of these issues outside of home and wherever I encountered it and this came with its own side effects as it generally made me angry and come across as a belligerent person.

2. Portrayal of women in our popular art (specifically Tamil movies and songs)

Model women are often portrayed as selfless creatures whose duty to the family trumps anything she wants to do as an individual. Our movies will show women as one of the following stereotypes

a)The shrew who had to be tamed- she had a choice, but unfortunately she chose badly and had to be taught a lesson

b) Angel in the house - she gave up choice and did her duty - this is usually reserved for the mother characters

c) The victim - no choice, just die

d) The sex siren during courtship who turns into the angel the moment the wedding is over 

It is also important to juxtapose these stereotypes against the hyper-masculinity of our heroes in Tamil films as the two go hand-in-hand.

3. A woman's body is not hers.

It is meant to be prodded, pinched, rubbed against and violated in countless other ways everyday and in public. It is meant to be shrouded in 6 yards of mystic beauty - the magical sari which somehow still doesn't guarantee any protection from violations. It has been dictated to in terms of what it can wear or not wear. It was an unsaid rule in my college (1991-1995) that I am better off not wearing jeans and not parking my bike in front of the department so I won't incur the wrath of certain male professors. 

Then there is the concept of a girl attaining puberty that has been celebrated in tamil films and music and is also fertile ground for male fantasy. It never ceases to amaze me how a woman's natural bodily function is simultaneously both celebrated and ostracized.

 The concept of "karppu" (virginity) in tamil cinema has made me want to throw up. Rape is termed as "karpazhipu" (erasing of virgnity), model women in tamil literature are referred to as "karpukarasi" (the queen of virginity). I wish someone does a study of the number of popular movies that have played with these notions, not from the point of view of stepping away from trying to control a woman's body. Modern movies have moved away from explicitly mentioning karppu but I bet you to revisit any movie from even a so called modern film maker like Shankar or Maniratnam and see if you can spot these themes or the 4 stereotypes I laid out in #2

4. Lack of awareness of what sexual harrassment and trauma does to a woman's psyche.

Growing up we had a number of weird phrases "eve teasing", "accused", "jollu party" to describe the predators and perpetrators of sexual harassment, for to even use the word "sex" was a taboo. Most girls and women knew the perpetrators - they went to school with them, study under them, work with them, meet them in family gatherings but very rarely we spoke up and when we did we used the watered down phrases that somehow made it seem harmless. Even before social media, no woman would want to speak up as it brought unwanted attention to her and any small spot to her reputation will be a violation of all the rules laid out in #1. In general there is a lack of awareness that sexual harassment is not about sex. It is about power and the more stratified a society is, the more patriarchal its values are and the more rigid its structures are the power equations don't favor women.

Take all of the above and now let's consider intersectionalities which complicate the picture even further.  Two types of intersectionalities are at play here.

These intersections have made it nearly impossible to get to the truth and bring about change, because everyone is coming at this with the lens that suits them best. Tamil Nadu politicians have always known how to manipulate casteism to their advantage. So any political solution is going to come from that angle. The Tamil movie industry and the associated popular culture is closely intertwined with the political establishment that it is going to take cover under politics. The school in question should be seriously taking a look at its own policies and the protection it owes to its student body. Instead the case has become politicized and as politics = caste in TN it has become a conversation about caste instead of about the children whose well being is at stake. In fact the incident at the school only goes to make my point about the second intersectionality above - if this happens to girls in an upper class, upper caste school, can you imagine what would be the plight of girls who belong to the lower classes and lower castes? (I am cringing to use the phrase upper and lower castes, but in TN we take pride in our myriad classifications OC, BC, MBC, SC, ST - innocuous abbreviations which make everyday casteism more palatable. It is like KFC but for castes).

These days I visit Chennai only for a couple of weeks every other year. Some things are different and for the better. More women seem to be exercising their choices from clothing, to career, to partner choices, but this is still not the norm and certainly this is not true across classes/castes. I don't see a bunch of "road side romeos" (another one of our watered-down phrases) stalking women on sidewalks, but they don't need to do it physically. Most trolling has moved online. I still love Chennai, but being removed from it has allowed me to see its culture honestly. Culture is not simply about the past. It is a living, breathing thing. We can sit on our laurels and talk about Sangam, Thiruvalluvar, Bharathi, Mammallapuram etc but let's look at the lived reality for women today. Let's not forget that just because a culture worships women it does not automatically value them. After all witch burning in the west during medieval times also coincided with the rise of Marian worship. And from where I stand we seem to be stuck in medieval times and have a long way to go before this culture does it right by its women.