The Express Tribune Magazine - July 22

JULY 22-28 2012

Pakistanis putting the ‘ in hip hop

JULY 22-28 2012

Cover Story

20 Street Smart Rap, breaking and graffiti: the ghetto has invaded Pakistan

Feature

30 Animatedly Yours Pakistani animation has come a long way, but does it have a future beyond selling soap and milk?

34 Virtual Revolution For the developers of Angry Imran, politics really IS a game

36 Finding Rumi in Rockwood Hall She once sang cover songs, but now Arooj Aftab seeks to find her own musical identity

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Regulars 6 People & Parties: Out and about with Pakistan’s beautiful people 40 Reviews: Gangsters and Romance 42 End Of The Line: Axe the effect

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Magazine Editor: Zarrar Khuhro, Senior Sub-Editors: Batool Zehra, Zainab Imam. Sub-Editors: Ameer Hamza and Dilaira Mondegarian.

Creative Team: Amna Iqbal, Jamal Khurshid, Essa Malik, Maha Haider, Faizan Dawood, Samra Aamir, Sanober Ahmed.

Publisher: Bilal A Lakhani. Executive Editor: Muhammad Ziauddin. Editor: Kamal Siddiqi.

For feedback and submissions: magazine@tribune.com.pk Printed: uniprint@unigraph.com

PEOPLE & PARTIES

Humaima Malik

Maheen Karim

Mehreen Syed

Karachi hosts the 11th Lux Style Awards

Shammal Qureshi and Rida

6 JULY 22-28 2012

Bushra Ansari

Frieha Altaf

Mathira and Ali Xeeshan

PHOTOS COURTESY CATALYST PR

Koni Meera

Gia Ali

Bindiya

Mahira Khan

Ayyan and Deepak Perwani

Ayesha and Ali Zafar

Adnan Malik

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JULY 22-28 2012

JULY 22-28 2012

PEOPLE & PARTIES

Aamina Sheikh and Mohib Mirza

Saba Qamar

Javed Sheikh

Zurain Imam Zoe Viccaji

10 JULY 22-28 2012

Sharmeen Obaid

Nabila

Saima Azhar

Mohsin Ali Asma Mumtaz

Momal Sheikh

Sana Khan

PHOTOS COURTESY CATALYST PR

Faisal Qureshi

Savera Nadeem

Enshe Sanam Saeed

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JULY 22-28 2012

JULY 22-28 2012

PEOPLE & PARTIES

Naheed and Anam

PHOTOS COURTESY VERVE

Jackie Ortuso and Sadia Salman

Amna and Sonia Altaf

Andaaz restaurant opens up in Islamabad

Minal and Zahra Raza

Tashia and Yasir

14 JULY 22-28 2012

Qurat and Imtisal

Ahmad Cheema

15 JULY 22-28 2012

PEOPLE & PARTIES

Nida Ali and Mrs Falak

Zahra and Adnan

PHOTOS COURTESY VERVE

Mr and Mrs Makhdoom

Johan and Asma

Zafar and Sadia

16 JULY 22-28 2012

Asher and Nadia

Murtaza and Zainab

Natasha, Jane, Amir and Nellofar

Jibran with a friend

JULY 22-28 2012

PEOPLE & PARTIES

Hassan Niazi

Tayyab and Tehmina

Wasif Elahi

PHOTOS COURTESY TAKEII

Rampedge network organises a press conference to announce the men’s fashion week in Karachi

Munib Nawaz

Talha Mufti with a friend

Salman Raffay

Mansoor Vohra, Zurain Imam and Anwaar Dawood Dadabhoy

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Shahzad Noor

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FEATURE

animatedly

yours Can the local animation industry move beyond selling soap and hawking drinks?

BY GREEN FLAG WAVER

When Commander Safeguard proclaimed victory over Dirtu and Kachra Rani, the dingy germ villains out to afflict children across Pakistan, the makers of the 3D animated series had a victory celebration of their own. Children would pound their fists in the air and pretend to be Commander Safeguard. Faithful to their hero, they would rush to wash their hands every now and then.

One could even occasionally spot a Commander Safeguard outfit among Spiderman and Superman getups in costume parties. Most importantly for the creators, Commander Safeguard was now a household name.

Soon enough, the off-the-wall success of Commander Safeguard prompted other

multinationals and fast-moving-consumer-goods companies to jump onto the ani-

mation bandwagon. The Lifebuoy Germ Busters and Dettol Warriors arrived to wash

away nasty germs with messages of hygiene and subliminal placement of their prod-

ucts. The Milkateers were on a mission to get children to drink milk to make them strong and active. While the Jam-e-Shirin team sought to discredit ‘black’ drinks to replace these with their own herbal concoction.

Pakistan’s animation industry — even in its fledgling state — has produced impres-

sive content over the past few years. Their entertaining plots and slick production

values, with well-developed graphics, attractive colour palette and entertaining voice dubbing and musical scores, have earned them laurels internationally as well. Different episodes from the Milkateer series, developed by Sharp Images for Tetra Pak

30 JULY 22-28 2012

Pakistan, won The Animation Society of India’s Viewer’s Choice

border in envy?

Bronze Award for Animation at Phoenix Film Awards 2009 in Sin-

purely entertainment-based animated products in the market.

Commerce-Best Animated Frames’s 2011 award in the Animated

and writer, who started off producing animations for his music

Award 2008 in the Best Commissioned Short Film category, the gapore, and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Industry and TV Episode category.

It’s a measure of Commander Safeguard’s success, says a

proud Imtisal Abbasi, Chief Operating Officer of Saatchi and Saatchi,that the series is now being introduced in Africa, Latin

Certainly not. A few budding developers are working to launch

One such enthusiast is Daniyal Noorani, originally a musician videos. He has begun work on an ambitious project, an animated television series called ‘Chhota Jatt’, which is a reinterpretation of the popular Jatt movies from the ‘70s.

“I wanted to to give young viewers a character they could relate

America and China. Even though the characters are being mold-

to,” says Noorani. “This led to the creation of Chhota Jatt. I fig-

Pakistani creators are still helping in developing localised ver-

narratives, and then we could use the older Jatt, his mentor, to

ed according to the specific societal mores of different countries, sions of the cartoon.

But given the plethora of sponsored animated series on televi-

sion and the Internet, one wonders if this is all we can look for-

ured we could use Chhota to explore new stories and form new explore the rich history of the Jatt films,” says Noorani as he explains the influences behind the project.

Noorani laments that despite his efforts to get viewers interest-

ward to. When will we see animated motion pictures and tele-

ed, he could not garner an adequate following. “People enjoyed

product marketing ploys?

weren’t truly absorbed by it,” he says.

vision series based entirely on entertainment values and not on It may not be fair to compare Pakistan’s animation scene to

the concept, but the sound production was lacking and people

But in spite of the lukewarm response, Noorani kept his head

that of India’s, which has been around for a longer time and is

up and continued working on Chhota Jatt. “Being a very expen-

hits like Ramayana: The Epic (2010) and Arjun — The Warrior Prince

feasible. Generating a return on your production is also very dif-

well on its way to being an established industry. It has delivered (2012), and animated television series like ‘Chhota Bheem.’ Foreign production houses like Walt Disney Studios and Warner Brothers

Inc. are also investing in content produced and released solely in India.

So is it the fate of Pakistani animators to just look across the

sive process, animation really needs a large following to make it ficult. You really need to have something that resonates strongly

with viewers and hope that you can generate revenues from be-

yond TV, as that will only cover a fraction of your costs,” Noorani adds.

Yet, he is optimistic that animation in Pakistan will thrive if

31 JULY 22-28 2012

FEATURE it has an inspiration to follow. “There is a great grassroots comic

book movement currently going on in Pakistan, and I hope that

this will translate to animators creating more local content as well. What we need is one success story in the animation industry and then other people will follow,” he says with conficence.

Numair Abbas is another animator working towards a similar

goal. A graduate of the National College of Arts, Lahore and a Fulbright Scholar with a degree in filmmaking from University of California, Los Angeles, he never thought that making cartoons would become his career.

But now he is all set to introduce the first ever fully animated

Pakistani sitcom, titled: ‘The Apartment Complex.’ after being in

the pipeline for two years now. He proudly says that the venture, launched under the banner of his production house Numairicals

Studios, is purely indigenous with all animations designed by lo-

cal animators. After being in the pipeline for two years, the show is now in negotiations with several TV channels, and is expected to broadcast by the end of the year.

“It is meant to be a reflection of ourselves as Pakistanis,” he

says. “Deep down, everyone from our target audiences should be able to relate to the crazy characters in the show as people abroad can relate with the characters of ‘Family Guy’ or ‘Simpsons’, to

which we cannot. It’s full of things we say, like ‘only happens in Pakistan,’ but without pointing fingers at particular people.”

Even more promising for the Pakistani animation industry is

that Asim Fida Khan, an animator with international experi-

ence, is looking to launch some projects locally. He has worked as an animator on Hollywood flicks such as I Robot (2004), The

Tale of Despereaux (2008), G.I Joe (2009), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, parts I and II, (2010 and 2011) and Snow White and the Huntsman

(2012). “The experience so far has been a lot of fun and madness when it comes to deadlines,” he says. “I have been working for almost 8 years now and have worked on 11 films so far.”

He is in the planning stages of implementing a concept for lo-

cal audiences in Pakistan. “I have quite a few ideas on paper that I want to bring to the screen. Whenever that happens, I will make sure that it comes with ‘quality.’”

The use of animation is growing worldwide, in films and tele-

vision, to gaming broadcasts and smart phones apps. With a

serious pool of talent emerging from Pakistan, could animation then be the next outsourcing wave to hit us?

“You never know,” says Khan. “In fact, I should say it is just a

matter of time.

People in Pakistan know their art, and they just need guid-

ance. We have a good example across the border. They started off in the same fashion and you can see where they are at the mo-

32 JULY 22-28 2012

ment.”

Noorani, on the other hand, confirms that many animators in

Pakistan are already working for companies catering to a foreign market.

But what is it that is stunting the growth of the local industry

in Pakistan causing animators to look for work abroad?

Khan feels that mainstream media in Pakistan is either not

ready to accept animation as an established art form or feels it is still too expensive a medium.

“What they [animators] lack is a proper support system and an

infrastructure to channel their efforts in the right directions,” Khan says. “Infrastructure doesn’t only include the money. I know a lot of people in Pakistan who are willing to inject a lot

of capital to set up this kind of business. The problem comes in when they don’t have the right people sitting on top who can guide them to get the results they need.”

Ironically, another reason for the slow progress in animation

could be the deluge of television channels in Pakistan. Khan

thinks that channels, in their ravenous appetite for content, demand little quality and settle for mediocre content instead. Their

deadlines are also unrealistic, which puts undue pressure on animators and affects their productivity.

Abbas feels that animators need professional managers who

can liaise with media outlets with realistic timeframes in mind to ensure that animators can work at their optimum. “They want

an animated ad to be done in two to three days, which is not pos-

sible for quality content. Animation takes a long time to perfect,” he says. “Hence there is always something lacking in the final

product and the artists’ productivity suffers. It all comes down to production Management,” he says.

“We need, at the moment, people who know exactly how

animation production works and what kind of timelines are required to get the job well,” he adds.

Agreeing with the need for professional management, Khan

suggests that animation companies need to invest in their human resources and chalk out a production plan by hiring special-

ized people and allocating jobs to artists according to their skill set.

This way the animation industry can sidestep the mediocrity

that prevails in our media culture.

Pakistani animators may not be short on talent, evident from

the excellent productions of the ‘commercial’ animated series.

But if the animators get the required financial support and an environment in which they can flourish, it may not be long before

the Chhota Jatts can give the Commanders a run for their money.

33 JULY 22-28 2012

FEATURE

virtual

revolution

The Pakistani political scene provides fodder to the local gaming industry, as creators of Angry Imran talk about their inspiration and future plans

BY EMA ANIS

“Tabdeeli Agayi Hai!” shouts a triumphant, yet still angry, Imran Khan who has just used his big round head to send Pakistan’s entrenched politicians rolling in the dirt. City after city has fallen to Khan and the revolution is very much at hand. This isn’t a look at post-election Pakistan, but rather the victory screen of Angry Imran, an Android app developed by a team of Pakistani game developers known as CreatriXe. It can easily go the other way, of course, with Nawaz Sharif, President Zardari, Asfandiyar Wali and Rehman Malik cackling in glee at Khan’s defeat.

Sound familiar? That’s because it is. You

have probably already spent hours cata-

Well Angry Imran isn’t just the localised

ects for any other political party that ap-

is also a demonstration of the designers’

our clients, without any discrimination,”

version/ spin-off of the viral game but own admiration for PTI chief Imran Khan.

The three budding game developers —

Muneeb Ali, Hina Zafar and Ameed Ansari — admire Khan to the extent of develop-

ness.

The release of the game — which was

ness venture and has nothing to do with

planned on the day of the rally, to gar-

insist their latest offering is just a busitheir liking for the Khan.

“We are not officially affiliated with

the PTI, but yes, we do like Imran Khan.

I would definitely vote for him. But the game was just based on an idea of depict-

PTI rally in Islamabad — was initially ner hype amongst PTI supporters, but its implementation took more time than

expected, which also resulted in the low quality of the game.

But just like everything else related to

ing the current political scenario of the

Imran Khan tends to go viral on social

is not political at all. Imran Khan doesn’t

traffic. “We got around 10,000 downloads

country,” says Ali. “You can see the game come in the game saying: vote for me.”

And just because they like Imran Khan

popular and addictive Angry Birds game.

clear that CreatriXe is open to doing proj-

JULY 22-28 2012

while politics is politics, business is busi-

launched on May 29, two days after the

doesn’t mean that they’re going to reject

34

Ali adds in a professional tone. Clearly,

ing an entire game based on him, but they

pulting hundreds of red, blue and black birds at grunting pigs in Rovio’s massively

proaches them. “We’ll deal with them as

any other offers that come their way. Ali is

media, this game too received unexpected in just the first week,” says Ali who credits the numbers at least in part to the PTI’s

social media presence. The download rate grew ex-

ponentially

“Our next version will also be based on Imran Khan. It will be a continuation of Angry Imran,” says Ali who adds that the game will be released online as well as on Android.

Even though the game is very similar

was willing to hire us. We didn’t even

Angry Imran do not fear facing any legal

plied. But since the launch, each of us

to the original Angry Birds, the makers of

from there, and the game currently stands at around 50,000 downloads.

Hina Zafar, who has been working as an

Android team leader for an international company, adds that she was personally surprised that even those who do not support Imran Khan appreciated the game.

The appreciation has led the young de-

action over the issue. “We are fully aware

of the moral and legal implications of IP

[Intellectual Property] infringement, but

we’re not legal experts and if the creators of Angry Birds think we have infringed

proved game play and yeah, new sounds

too. It’s not the final version, and we are launching it as a Beta 2.0 to bring more excitement with more levels. We are also

planning to include a few bonus levels in this version, which will hopefully be added by August 14.”

continue with our business.”

The plans of the team include cashing in

in the telecom industry. “We plan to in-

Releasing Angry Imran on iPhone is also

penses and a lack of interested investors

“You’ll find some nice graphics, im-

offers are of no use anymore. We want to

developers.

we’ll gladly rectify our mistake,” say the

will be a continuation of Angry Imran,” leased online as well as on Android.

multinational companies,” says Ali. “The

on the growing Pakistani smartphone mar-

one of the goals of the company, but that

says Ali who adds that the game will be re-

have received excellent job offers from

their rights they should contact us and

velopers to aim for more. “Our next ver-

sion will also be based on Imran Khan. It

reach the interview stages when we ap-

will not happen any time soon due to ex— a problem which many start-ups in Pakistan face. “Waqas Arif , the venture capi-

talist backing us, was willing to invest the initial seed money, but of course he can-

ket and to partner with some major players troduce an innovative model where your

credit card is replaced by a cell phone credit card allowing you to purchase apps and

make in-app purchases without the hassle of having to integrate a credit card. It’ll be a

win-win situation for the users, the telcos and the app developers,” say the team.

So, with the political climate promis-

not keep on investing, especially when we

ing to heat up with the impending elec-

through,” says a disappointed Ali.

have more projects on their hands very

haven’t achieved any real financial break-

The game itself may not have made

them millionaires, but it has at least put their names — and talent — out there.

“Our country works in a weird way. Be-

fore we launched Angry Imran, no one

tion season, the Angry Imran team may soon. And who knows? Perhaps the next

game we’ll see will be a Mortal Kombat style showdown between the Chief Justice and a succession of PPP Prime Ministers? Fatality! t

35 JULY 22-28 2012

FEATURE

finding rumi in

rockwood hal From singing cover songs at Stings concerts to singing traditonal south asian music in Manhattan, Arooj Aftab has come a long way

BY ANNIE A KHAN

It’s a Sunday evening but the pavements are still sunlit as friends, fans and first timers pack into the Rockwood Music Hall, an intimate performance venue located in the Lower East Side neighbourhood of Manhattan. They’re all here to listen to Arooj Aftab sing traditional South Asian music.

With her lilting soft voice and slowly unfolding melodies,

27-year-old Arooj already has a following among discerning listeners, but her mass popularity is also increasing day by day as

news of her music spreads by word of mouth. While she’s by no means a household name just yet, Arooj is doing more and more

Arooj’s love affair with music began early, and she spent end-

less weekends of her childhood singing with her family, who were not professional vocalists but shared a love for singing.

While her older brother was always considered to have the best

voice in the family, it was Arooj who chose music as a career.

Although she never has trained with a bonafide Ustaad, Arooj

spent time studying classical music with Sara Zaman, a little known but highly respected traditional singer from her hometown of Lahore.

At Rockwood Music Hall that evening, the first song is “Man

live performances and earlier this year she played to a packed au-

Kunto Maula”. Arooj is dressed in a black velvet sherwani with a

Arif Lohar.

her kajal lined eyes, she is the very picture of her musical style.

ditorium at the Asia Society Foundation in New York alongside Along with artists like Quratulain Balouch, Meesha Shafi and

Zeb and Haniya, Arooj is part of the recent current crop of young

Pakistani female musical artists who have made a name for themselves. Arooj grew up in Lahore but left for the US at the age

36

leges of contemporary music in the world.

of 20 to pursue a degree in music engineering from the Berklee

College of Music in Boston, one of the largest independent colJULY 22-28 2012

gold thread motif over a dark tank top and jeans and, along with

There are no vocal fireworks or unnecessary embellishment as Arooj fuses elements of eastern classical poetry with western

technique to present an honest and spiritual form of music that is both deep and conversational.

A tribute to the late Mehdi Hassan is next and then she sings

an improvised version of “Mohabat Karne Walay” before launch-

n

ll

ing into her own songs. “Udhero na” a melancholic song from her upcoming eponymous debut album is next. But it is Rumi’s

poetry which, despite her warning that the song is still “a work

in progress”, proves to be both haunting and uplifting. The prose seamlessly blends with the beautiful music provided by guitarist

Brighu Sahni, a band member and fellow collaborator of 4 years.

The evening is brief and the performance ends within the hour after she sings two more numbers.

As the crowd of people mill about afterwards, I walk over to

Arooj to ask her about her upcoming album. “We are trying to redefine and reinterpret world music and pre-partition South Asian music,” she says about her style of music. “Sufism ko bhee

hum aage daal rahe hain and we’re promoting ambient minimalist music. We are stripping it down. We are doing pahari,

khayal, ghazal and thumri and re-composing and re-harmonis-

ing all this ancient music and poetry, creating a neo-sufi genre, a new age deeply intricate class of fusion world music.”

Aftab has come a long way from her first ever performance in

Lahore, where she recalls singing cover songs as the opening act for a Strings concerts at Kinnaird College. The two thousand plus

“We are trying to redefine and reinterpret world music and pre-partition South Asian music,” she says about her style of music.

crowd had been fun, but the focus was elsewhere. Arooj has her own following now, but that doesn’t mean that her sound is, by

any stretch of the imagination, mainstream. I ask her about the response her music has received so far. “I think that people are re-

ally interested in being relaxed and having a vision of peace and love. They want to listen to good world music,” she says, speaking the way she sings, with English sentences

following Urdu ones. “And I feel like New York is the best place for this kind of music because, yahan pe diversity itnee zyada hai and openness itnee zyada hai, you know people have loved it — it’s been amazing thank God.”

Most of the crowd I speak to seem to agree. I

was particularly interested in finding out the impressions of people who were not familiar

with Urdu. Lehna Huie, a native New Yorker, has come with a friend and was listening to Arooj sing live for the first time. I asked her

what she thought of the songs with Urdu lyrics. “I felt like I was still able to understand it

on some level,” she said. “That was my reac-

tion to the mellowness of her voice. I felt it in my heart, so I really enjoyed it.”

A woman visiting from Karachi said she

had heard Arooj for the first time at a perfor-

mance in Boston. “I was crying,” she says. “It was an experience.” As I made my way out

onto the busy pavement, I couldn’t help but agree.

JULY 22-28 2012

37

REVIEW

gritty and grounded

BY NOMAN ANSARI

Cold, brutal and extremely violent, the criminals portrayed in the Swedish gangster film, Easy Money, are about as pretty as the guns they carry. These are hard men, who won’t hesitate to break bones or teeth when it comes to getting their way. For them it is pure business, without the glamour that accompanies the gangster lifestyle in popular perception. They don’t have fancy cars and luxurious surroundings, nor do they have an army of attractive bimbos to surround them. Yet their lives are given a fascinating portrayal in this irresistibly bleak Swedish gangster film, which for my money, is one of the most absorbing heist dramas since Michael Mann’s Heat (1995).

Where Easy Money really hooks you in is in its lead character Johan “JW” Westlund (Joel Kinnaman), who plays the only person in the film the audience can identify with on some level. Johan, a business student by day, spends his nights partying with the elite, pretending to be rich when he is actually from a modest background. And after he begins a romance with society girl Sophie (Lisa Henni), he is left acutely aware of his own lack of wealth.

Here, he turns to a shady acquaintance named Abdulkarim (Mahmut Suvakci), for whom he has run minor hustles in the past.

Abdulkarim asks him to pick up a contact for some easy money, but little does Johan know that this contact is a recently escaped convict named Jorge Salinas Barrio (Annika Ryberg Whittembury), who acts as a middleman for Abdulkarim’s cocaine business. Barrio has his own ambitions to make it big and leave the business so that he can take care of his family, while also looking to settle a score with Yugoslavian mafia boss Radovan Kranjic (Dejan Cukic) for putting him in jail.

When Johan tries to collect Barrio, he ends up having to rescue him from Mrado Slovovic (Dragomir Mrsic), a Yugoslavian hitman sent to kill the escaped convict. Eventually Johan gets in over his head, as he makes more perilous deals with the deceptive Arab mafia to make more dough, and soon realizes that there is truly no honor in thieves.

While the film lacks many action sequences, it makes up for it with a constant level of high tension and suspense. The film is quite gritty and grounded, yet powered by some subtly stylish camerawork.

Skillfully directed by Daniel Espinosa, and released in 2010 as , Easy Money is now making it to select international theaters in 2012. The film is worth a watch, especially for the acting of its main cast.

40 JULY 22-28 2012

Joel Kinnaman is fantastic in his performance as Johan, and portrays the gradual disintegration of his character under the weight of life-threatening pressure with convincing emotional range. The other characters are also played well, with the narrative extremely strong in the characterisation of its sociopathic leads. The subplots involving a pregnant sister and an infant daughter add a stroke of humanity to these hardened criminals, making them all the more nuanced and compelling. But if there is a real moral to this tale, it is that crime does not pay and that there is no such thing as easy money.

putting the ‘melo’ back in ‘drama’

BY NOMAN ANSARI

Directed by Michael Winterbottom, the highly somber melodrama, Trishna, is a British production loosely based on Tess of the d’Urbervilles, a novel written by celebrated English writer Thomas Hardy. I say loosely, because while Hardy’s literary heavyweight was based in England during the late 1800s, Trishna is an adaptation that takes place in modern day India. This change in venue works because the theme of ‘being sexually free against social norms’ is just as relevant in both settings. What also works is Trishna’s honest view of a Rajahstani woman from an impoverished background, tragically caught in the fast moving sandstorm of India’s modernising culture.

Things start in the traditional society of Rajasthan with Jay Singh (Riz Ahmed), a part English part Indian businessman, touring the rural sections of the city with his mates. While exploring some tourist-friendly temples, he meets a young woman named Trishna (Freida Pinto). Jay, who can’t speak a word of Hindi, is immediately attracted to the innocent allure of Trishna, much to the bemusement of his friends.

After Trishna’s father gets into an accident that destroys his Jeep and results in minor injuries to herself, Jay offers her a job in his father’s hotel in the main city. The Rs2,500 salary on offer is fairly siz’s family circumstances, and she takes the job with able given her father’s blessing. When she arrives in the city, she is received at the train station by Jay himself, and their courtship begins with moments that are sweet, yet also uncomfortable. The sweetness in their courtship comes from Trishna’s tale of discovery, while the discomfort stems from the contrasting values of both lovers.

Jay, who is shown to begrudgingly take charge of the family’s hotel business, comes from a society where couples living together and being sexually active is acceptable, whereas the opposite is true for Trishna. This is exemplified after the couple’s first sexual encounter, when Trishna is left sobbing with what we can assume to be feelings of overflowing guilt.

Circumstances improve when the couple moves to a more modern city in India, where their lifestyle is free from the shackles of conventional cultural norms. Here, Trishna starts studying hotel management while also following her passion to dance. Unfortunately, their bliss doesn’t last, and the couple is forced to return to Rajasthan, where they must keep their relationship a secret once again.

In this final act, Trishna takes an absolute turn for the bizarre.

Unconvincingly, the tale turns to themes of sexual dominance,

rape, murder and suicide. Perhaps Michael Winterbottom (who has adapted a Thomas Hardy novel into a film thrice) was trying too hard to reference the book, but the film’s turn to the dark side is almost laughable in how unpersuasive it is. One can even say that Trishna’s attempts at drama are, well, overly melodramatic.

That being said, Trishna is beautifully shot with vivid cinematography of a rapidly evolving nation. The performances are quite commendable, with Pinto particularly good at displaying the stark naivety of her character. Ultimately though, Trishna does stumble clumsily in its final act, which rather than drawing sorrow, evokes bemusement. That in itself is the film’s greatest tragedy.

41 JULY 22-28 2012

Are you capable of drawing a straight line? Do you have a comic or doodle that you think will have us rolling on the floor with laughter? If you’ve answered yes

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www.facebook.com/kgcomics

BY KACHEE GOLIYAN

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