JUNE 2-8 2013
Mira Nair’s latest work based on Mohsin Hamid’s book is a comet in a smog-filled post-9/11 sky
JUNE 2-8 2013
Feature
‘I got over my own chauvinism’ The girl from Karachi dreams of gold in Uzbekistan for arm-wrestling
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Art
Don’t look down Imran Qureshi’s exhibit at The Met’s rooftop
34 Infographic
Cover Story
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
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Mira Nair puts forward tough questions for Pakistanis and Americans post 9/11
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Website
By the numbers: Pakistan politics online
Facebook Twitter
A quick glance at the bases of parties online
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Regulars
6 People & Parties: Out and about with the beautiful people
40 Review: Steven Soderbergh
takes on scary experimentation in Side Effects 42 Mumbai & Karachi: comparing two urban experiences
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COVERSTORY COVER STORY
Mira Nair’s latest work based on Mohsin Hamid’s book re-informs the global debate on the relationship of Pakistanis and Americans in a post-9/11 world BY OUR CORRESPONDENT PHOTOS BY ISHAAN NAIR & QUANTRELL COLBERT
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Be honest. What was your first innermost reaction when you saw images of the Twin Towers falling in a cloud of concrete dust on 9/11? For some people it was instant awe — not wondrous — but incredulous. It was disbelief that something of this magnitude was unfolding before their eyes. But it is difficult to articulate that sentiment because you do not want to risk being misunderstood. More than a decade since that day Pakistanis still find themselves on the defensive. In many cases, the makers of our art, literature, music and film too have to first extricate themselves or rise above the tiresome dichotomies spawned by 9/11. And even as our artists break free from these restraints, their work is still often helplessly informed by them — by sheer virtue of trying to overcome them. Take this example: Mira Nair, the director of The Reluctant Fundamentalist that has just opened in cinemas, recalls the effort that went into turning Mohsin Hamid’s 2007 book into a film script. One potential
scriptwriter had advised: “First off, we’re going to have to drop the title. You couldn’t drag me to see a film with the word ‘fundamentalist’ in it”. Deciding to keep the title became a question and its answer turned into an act of rebellion and submission at the same time. Whether you liked Mohsin Hamid’s book or not, we would still highly recommend watching Mira Nair’s interpretation of it. For she takes us back to the Question of what 9/11 has done to us. No matter which side you were or are on, whether you cared or not subsequently and especially if you are fed up of it all.
The plot At its heart, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a thriller but one that is less about well-choreographed fights. It is propelled by the classic conflict-crisis-resolution formula embedded in one man’s experience as he is thrust into a world where you were either with them or against them. That character is Changez, who we first meet as a young professor in Lahore,
25 JUNE 2-8 2013
played by the impossibly beautiful Riz Ahmed. When the film opens Changez is being interviewed by a thickset American journalist by the name of Bobby Lincoln (Liev Shreiber) in ‘Lahore’ (recreated in Old Delhi). Bobby believes that Changez was involved with the terrorists who recently kidnapped his friend, an American academic at the university. The American journalist’s perceptions of Changez are used to cleverly strip stereotypes: young fiery-eyed Islamist intellectual with a beard who rejected living in America after studying there (He must be a terrorist or at least a sympathizer). But as Changez keeps warning Bobby and us: Looks can be deceiving. I am a lover of America. Mira Nair doesn’t stop there, though. She drives her point home repeatedly by making even us doubt Changez, right till the end. And then we are ashamed we ever did. This is one of the film and book’s strongest lessons: the stereotypes are hard to shake off, especially the ones we have about ourselves. Changez agrees to talk but only if Bobby is willing to listen to his life story. This was another clever message — first you have to listen, to the whole story. Indeed, is this inability for the two sides to listen to each JUNE 2-8 2013
other not part of the problem? And is art’s job not to remind us? We are pulled in to Changez’s transformation from an ivy-league school graduate to what he is today. We can all guess what made him go home after 9/11 even though he was working as a financial analyst and had a beautiful girlfriend who is a photographer (played by Kate Hudson who didn’t quite look right for the role). The strip searches, the police harassment, the widening schism caused by interpretations of the act of terrorism did not help. That is not what will interest you. It is how Changez reasons through the crisis that will surprise you. Isn’t it an irony that the word ‘changez’ in French means change?
The great debate Other filmmakers have taken on the vexing faultlines created by international terrorism. Karan Johar’s My Name is Khan aimed to re-analyse the identity of Muslims but its patina of Johar’s signature superficiality killed it. Pakistan was not at the centre of this story anyway. Then there was Shoaib Mansoor’s Khuda Kay Liye, a film that played a seminal role in the rebirth of Pakistani cinema. It also tried to deconstruct the post-9/11 Pakistani identity as well. In a way, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is Khuda Kay Liye done
right with a bigger budget and by a much more experienced director. In the end, Mansoor failed to take a side. (This did not necessarily dent its popularity). Khuda Kay Liye was unsure of its own central message and failed to persuade that it had really understood the issues it was trying to tackle. For many it thus emerged as an apologist film. The audience feels some form of catharsis but the debate is not driven forward. We do not learn anything new. This is where Mohsin Hamid and Mira Nair are right on the money. They lay out the unfair treatment meted out to many Pakistanis after Sept 11 but do not pander to their bruised egos. This would have reduced them to ‘victims’ and the film would have become a victim to the very black and white thinking it wants to move away from. (It failed on one front though, by demonizing the Americans towards the end)
There is a fine tightrope to tackling ‘victimhood’. The writers come really close to making us feel sorry for Changez when he says to Bobby: “You picked a side after 9/11. I didn’t have to. It was picked for me.” It is only Riz Ahmed’s non-whiny tone that allows this line to skim past by the skin of its teeth. Riz Ahmed does a brilliantly restrained job of revealing his anger and frustration inch by inch as Changez’s life starts to unravel in New York. When his girlfriend Erica picks him up from the airport after he has been strip-searched, she incredulously asks how, just how could something like the terrorist attack have happened? Changez’s answer is curt but quiet and comes after the slightest of pauses: Why do you think I would know? This kind of writing is the strength of this film. When Erica and Changez are courting, their couple’s inner joke is: I had a Pakistani. But when Erica uses this line as part of her photography exhibition its double entendre ruins it because of a wider context in the post-Sept 11 New York. Was she reckless to use her shared private life with Changez to make a political point or was it simply a case of just another American not quite understanding just exactly what 9/11 was?
The performance It took Mira Nair over a year to find the right man to play Changez, a Pakistani who spoke colloquial Urdu but dreamt in English and who was just as much at
home at a Wall Street bash as a Lahori dhaba. British actor and rapper Riz Ahmed may have been a risky choice but he delivers through and through. This is why the film is flooded with close shots of his face, treating us to a dizzying spectrum of nuanced emotional states. The secret lies in his wide eyes and their black pupils that dilate and narrow at the right times. Yes, he has been given five different looks and three beards, but the cosmetics would not have been able to carry a hysterical performance. We encounter him as an eager young Princeton graduate, open-faced and fulllipped, almost Grecian in profile, a young prince in a world for the taking. He transitions from this, without the slightest of facial muscle flickers, to darken his expression when his life in America starts to fall apart. His weeping is real. His confusion expertly blank. How many actors can give an honest interpretation of helplessness while being cavity searched at the airport while holding their groin? And then, he appears ever so slightly 27 JUNE 2-8 2013
COVERSTORY
gaunt, even wizened towards the end after he has made his choices. His moustache makes his upper lip thinner, his look sharper. There is just a smudge of fatigue under his eyes. His stiff slick Brylcreened capitalist helmet has gone. Do we detect a hint of Zaid Hamid? We are not sure. The side parting in his hair makes him look innocent but we can’t trust the look. Management of Changez’s physical transformations were carefully orchestrated with the choice of the film’s look. Mira Nair explains that she wanted to have a “palpable air of unease in every scene — a sense that anything can happen at any moment”. This is why the camera was never fixed on a tripod or static. It was always moving in the hands of cinematographer Declan Quinn or suspended on a bungee cord. It was a technique that worked without turning irritating or veering too much to the look and feel of a documentary film. Happily, the filmmaker did not fetishize locations like ‘Lahore’ or Istanbul. There were no attempts to capture the ‘heat and dust’ of the city through some hackneyed Orientalist lens. Setting supported the story but mercifully did not overwhelm it. A few strains of confusion creep in over
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Changez’s firebrand university speeches and the jihadi recruitment on campus. It was similarly a little unclear what the motivation for the riot was. For anyone familiar with the workings of groups like Hizbut Tahrir or Pakistan’s daily protests, it was easy to suspend disbelief but for foreign audiences perhaps these scenes could have been fleshed out a little more.
The music Well, of course Mira Nair would have chosen Kangna, safely one of the most iconic pieces of music of these times. Critics will call it an orthodox choice, putting a qawwali at the opening of a film on Pakistan. But watch closely. As Fareed Ayaz and Abu Muhammad sing it, we simultaneous cut to the scene where the American academic is being kidnapped elsewhere in Lahore. Mira Nair has said that she wanted Fareed Ayaz’s crimson paan-filled mouth to echo the blood of the kidnapping but don’t be
distracted by that symbolism. Something much more clever happens. As the kidnappers ambush the American academic and his wife on the street, the violent pitch of the refrain from Kangna rises to a near scream. “Kangna de de!” Give back the bracelet! The wife is beaten and thrown onto the street as the terrorists drive off with her husband. She runs behind the car screaming for help. “Tori binti karoon,” sing the qawwals. I beg and beseech you. We are treated to another masterful use of a Pakistani song towards the middle of the film with Atif Aslam’s rendition of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Mori Araj Suno made legend by Tina Sani. It is placed at the point when Changez finds himself in Istanbul, ready to take the wrecking ball to a Turkish publisher’s company. We see him silhouetted against the Blue Mosque as Aslam’s quavering high notes tug at our heartstrings. Changez is at a crossroads, as Istanbul is between two worlds. He is shown sitting in the Blue Mosque but he doesn’t pray just yet in another example of sophisticated exercise of restraint in the film. The film has been well received abroad and it should be dubbed for the wider audiences in Pakistan. Sadly, certain key pieces
of dialogue are unfortunately blanked out and one or two sexy scenes have been cut. Mira Nair could only understand so much of Pakistan as a relative outsider. But that does not necessarily matter because the film gets all the right pieces right. Indeed, perhaps Nair is unaware of the effect it can have. Take for example the magnitude of what she was saying in interviews to publicise the film: You never know what is going to happen next. This, as any Pakistani will tell you, is how we live each day in this country. T With additional input from Rafay Mahmood
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FEATURE
‘I got over my own chauvinism The girl from Karachi dreams of gold in Uzbekistan for arm-wrestling BY NATASHA RAHEEL PHOTOS BY AYESHA MIR
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In June, Sinthia Rose will sit opposite a 65-kilogramme Uzbek woman and try to wrestle her. The 21-year-old has a firm grip and steady eye. Indeed, she hopes to bring back gold at the Asian Arm-wrestling Championship, buoyed by the pride of representing Pakistan as a Christian at an international event. “Arm-wrestling is a new sport for us but I take it very seriously,” she recently told The Express Tribune from her Liaquatabad home. She tried to excel in other athletics and took part in throwball, long jump and basketball events but feels there is no scope in them. “I believe that arm-wrestling has a future.” She and 300 others. They were scheduled to take part in the All Sindh Arm-Wrestling Championship 2013 before the elections but the event was postponed over bloodshed in Karachi. Patience, however, is one of Rose’s techniques even though a match lasts just four to five minutes. The game is about patience rather than being on the offensive, as her coach Nayab Ma-
lik taught her. “We need to keep eye contact so that we can read the other’s move,” Rose says. “Sometimes we just hold our opponent’s move for more than a minute so that they get tired, or till their hand starts to ache.” Only after exhausting the opponent does she make her move. The second rule is that the fight is about subtlety instead of the strength. “We have to hold the hand at an 80-degree angle and pull our competitor’s hand towards us slowly,” she says. “If that isn’t done correctly, the game is over.” This technique is called ‘go’ and it is all about how you approach the opponent and direct their own strength against them. “I wouldn’t give away my own force into one match,” she adds. Her longest matches have lasted for five minutes and the shortest less than 30 seconds. Rose abides by these rules for the game and in life. And they seem to have worked for her. In her two-year career, she has so far won two Sindh Games gold medals, a Karachi Games
sm’ Sinthia Rose, pictured right with the glasses. gold medal and the 65-kg title at the National Games last year. “I’ve always been good at sports, but I also believe that [you] can only excel in any field if [you] enjoy it,” she explains. However, she adds that armwrestling is the most fun and the easiest sport for women who have already tried their hand at athletics or other sports and failed to make a mark.
The beginnings When Rose was competing in another event at the Sindh Sports Board she found that other athletes were switching to arm-wrestling, which piqued her interest. Today, she and her sister Amniks (also a 45-kilogramme gold medalist) practice at the board every day with their coach Nayab Malik, who introduced them to the sport. She reinforces these practise sessions
I’ve always been good at sports, but I also believe that [you] can only excel in any field if [you] enjoy it with a balanced diet of three meals a day and never skips breakfast. It was especially after her FSc at a convent boarding school in Gujranwala this year that Rose’s ambitions grew to really make a name for herself. She will be training with 37 other women for the Asian Arm-Wrestling Championship, according to coach Malik, who also manages the national arm-wrestling team. More women are now keen on it because it helps
change perceptions. The training sessions are more like a community gathering in which each woman comes with experience from her former discipline. For Rose, though, it was not a feminist cause that made her roll up her sleeves. It was a personal struggle. “I remember that all the fear and the hesitation was coming from within me, others really didn’t care,” she says. “I’d lose the matches in the beginning because I thought it would look odd as a woman. But then I got over my own chauvinism.” She sometimes practises with her elder brother now. And her father, a tailor who has funded her education with his income from the business, watched her compete at the nationals. “It took them some time to get used to the idea but they enjoy it now.” T 33 JUNE 2-8 2013
DON’T LOOK DOWN Paksitani artist Imran Qureshi is invited to paint the roof of the world’s most prestigious art museum BY AMNA IQBAL
Imran Qureshi’s exhibit at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s rooftop in New York is almost a classic case of Pakistani artists suffering from vertigo. The condition often results in a balance disorder and motion sickness. Looking down can be disorienting enough to make you fall. You stay where you are and move as slowly as possible. You focus on a point in space and block the peripheral. Mr Qureshi did exactly this. The work, which intended to open up dialogue, took as its point of departure the threshold from where the horror of violence meets hope. But, as I would argue, his vertigo paralyzed him. Qureshi is a celebrated artist who was born in Hyderabad in 1972. He was trained as a traditional miniaturist in the classical Persian style of finely detailed paintings (1526–1857) made so famous by the Mughal courts. But here, he has spread himself too thin by aiming to transform a space that measured 8,000 sq ft. The result is an endeavour that appeared to want to hit all the right notes or a checklist of obvious metaphors associated with violence. Red — check. The Muslim artist’s visual language crossed with ritual sacrificial iconography — check. Hope depicted through blossoming leaves — check. His greatest weakness was, however, the site he was working with. The acrylic paint splashed across the space was more Jackson Pollock than Miniature Art. As a result,
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“AND HOW MANY RAINS MUST FALL BEFORE TAINS ARE THE STAINS WASHED ED CLEAN” -INSTALLATION ION BY IMRAN QURESHI, RESHI, 2013, ACRYLIC. COMMISSIONED ONED BY THE METROPOLITAN ITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW W YORK FOR THE IRIS AND B GERALD CANTOR ROOFGARDEN. EN. URESHI AND THE © IMRAN QURESHI ITAN MUSEUM OF METROPOLITAN ORK ART, NEW YORK
“BLESSINGS UPON THE LAND OF MY LOVE” IMRAN QURESHI, 2011 ACRYLIC AND EMULSION PAINT ON INTERLOCKING BRICK PAVEMENT BIENNIAL, COMMISSIONS & PRODUCTIONS SHARJAH ART FOUNDATION © IMRAN QURESHI AND ALFREDO RUBIO
IMRA QURESHI – “ARTIST OF THE YEAR” 2013, DEUTSCHE IMRAN BANK KUNSTHALLE, BERLIN, APRIL 18 – AUGUST 4, 2013
“WUZU 2” IMRAN QURESHI, 2006 ACRYLIC AND EMULSION PAINT ON WALLS AND TILED FLOOR MASJID SULTAN, SINGAPORE BIENNALE, SINGAPORE © IMRAN QURESHI AND CORVI MORA, LONDON
“THEY SHIMMER STILL” IMRAN QURESHI, 2013 GOLD LEAF AND ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, DIPTYCH, EACH 280 BY 205 CM
I would argue that the space wasn’t transformed; it was just painted upon. A comparison with his earlier piece ‘Blessings Upon the Land of My Love’ for the Sharjah Biennial in 2011 illustrate the weakness of his current exhibit. That space was the courtyard of Beit Al Serkal. The miniaturist in him took to the grid that already existed and worked with it. His visual language emerged with the intricacies of the traditional 16th and 17th Century style that he was trained in. The context, both in terms of the Middle East, and his visual language, were apt. The motifs were derivative of the same region and their shared history of violence gave them depth. The use of red, though obvious, was impactful enough to have a transformative effect. The courtyard of the gallery (formerly a residential space) became reminiscent of a mosque: a space for ritual engagement with God who then leaves room for hope. But then Qureshi departed from this approach and went the way of Muslim artists who have chosen to represent their countries torn apart by violence to the Western audience. For The Met he stuck to red even though the palette was really just a mix of US-Pakistan diplomatic relationships, 9/11, drone strikes, the Boston bombings. Hope cannot be represented by lush foliage in a land where there is such little rain. To do true justice to the complexity of violence, the visual language has to be pushed to similar extremes. The piece falls flat. Literally. A The exhibit will be open from May 14 to November 3
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© COURTESY: IMRAN QURESHI AND CORVI MORA, LONDON JUNE 2-8 2013
Rank in Pakistan
Global rank
Website
942,863
Facebook Twitter
Estimated users per day
19,743
859,268 25,998
Party
Website
PPP
ppp.org.pk
PML-N
pmln.org
PTI
insaf.pk
MQM
mqm.org
JI
jamaat.org
ANP
awaminationalparty
PML-Q
pml.org.pk
APML
apmlpak.com
Total Pakistanis online: 20 million
Total Pakistanis on Facebook: Over 8.5 million Total Pakistanis on Twitter: 1 million
732,208
603
13,955 11,064
394,740 368,217 5,462 3,464 1,473 835 116
By the numbers:
144,149 130,833
15,416
Pakistan politics online BY JAHANZAIB HAQUE
38
Are 20 million online Pakistanis worth the time and effort it takes to build a winning web presence? Most political parties don’t think so, or possibly they have no idea how to actually do it. A quick glance online reveals the wide disparity between the major political players. The 2013 elections may have them thinking differently now. The online presence of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and its emergence as the third largest party in Pakistan may not be altogether unrelated. The online landscape may very well be changing given the reality of the PTI’s success. A JUNE 2-8 2013
498
176 160 91 87 54
Estimated pages viewed per day
Estimated time on site (per visit)
Users from Pakistan
Facebook likes (by party name)
67,125 1,200,000
Name
Twitter account
Imran Khan
@ImranKhanPTI
Shehbaz Sharif
@CMShehbaz
Followers 628,887
3 minutes
87% 3 minutes
86% 2 minutes
Sheikh Rasheed @ShkhRasheed Ahmad
97,346
Maryam Nawaz Sharif
@MaryamNSharif
94,317
Rehman Malik
@SenRehmanMalik
91,660
Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari
@BakhtawarBZ
73,967
Dr Arif Alvi
@ArifAlvi
64,166
Aseefa Bhutto Zardari
@AseefaBZ
61,853
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari
@BBhuttoZardari
51,575
Pervez Musharaf
@PMPakistan
51,317
84%
54,250
442,000
2 minutes
84% 1,320
119,336
3 minutes
400,000
78% 1,195
3 minutes
77%
242,000
4 minutes
440
198,000
76%
400 190 155 140
98,000 3 minutes
74%
40,000 14,000
Source: Twitter.com, Klout.com as of May 24 2013 Facebook.com as of May 24 2013 Alexa.com, websitetrafficspy.com as of May 24 2013 Note: Facebook interests are based on what users have entered as an interest on their timeline. Only the exact party name was used as a keyword for the above stats. 39 The photos used above are from official Twitter accounts as of May 24.
FILM
One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small
Steven Soderbergh’s last film takes on scary experimentation with new but needed drugs BY AYESHA ABDUL RAZZAK
If Side Effects played in Pakistani cinemas it would only have the effect of reinforcing our popular dread of anti-depressants. Emily Taylor’s (Rooney Mara) husband (Channing Tatum) is about to be released from jail after serving a sentence for insider trading. A day or so after his release she attempts suicide by ramming her car into a wall. In the ER she is introduced to Dr Jonathan Banks (Jude Law) and agrees to go into treatment for depression. She asks to be put on a new drug whose side effect is sleepwalking. As expected, and we are on the edge of our seats even though we know what is coming: the medication has disastrous consequences. Dr Banks is blamed and Emily ends up in jail. This was the preamble to a film that is divided into two distinct parts. Up until the medication leads to disaster we cannot help but feel nerve-wracking suspense at every camera pan. But in the second half of the movie, the treatment of the film feels disjointed. The suspense disappears and we just see Dr Banks fumble through a series of discoveries about the drug as he seeks to clear his name. Still, the kicker in the end is satisfying. The star of this work, however, is Rooney Mara’s performance as a vacant-faced patient who we can’t quite trust. The triumph of her acting is the ability to imperceptibly alter her expressions as the ‘depression’ progresses. Don’t bother registering Channing Tatum as he does little more than fill in for the supporting actor. A smaller and perhaps undervalued appearance is made by the eerie Catherine Zeta-Jones as Dr Victoria Siebert, Emily’s former psychiatrist. But as Dr Banks must discover, that spate of treatment entailed more than prescription writing. We’ve seen Jude Law in stronger roles but he manages to do justice to the prominent psychiatrist who falls from grace. Side Effects was in the top 10 on the US box office for a few weeks. It is a shame that its director, Steven Soderbergh, who brought us We Need to Talk About Kevin, is giving up film to move into TV. But it seems that his fascination with the human physiology and psychology continues with his new series The Knick about a hospital during 1900 when antibiotics were being discovered amid high death rates.
Three films that made us understand the madness 1
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One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
2
Leaving Las Vegas
by Milos Forman
by Mike Figgis
The director who brought us Amadeus created this classic from the novel in 1975. Jack Nicholson is sent to a mental asylum where he wreaks havoc and challenges the system. Bittersweet and terribly funny. One of the best films on psychiatry.
This 1995 film won an Oscar for its treatment of alcoholism and won accolades for Elisabeth Shue and Nicholas Cage, a prostitute and a washed up Hollywood screenwriter who fall in love even as he insists on drinking himself to death. Haunting soundtrack includes work from Sting.
3
Interiors by Woody Allen
If you’ve been depressed or known anyone with depression don’t watch this incisive non-funny Allen work. After her husband divorces her, a woman finds she cannot function. Her children are in their 30s and struggle to help her. A brilliant and painful portrait of the debilitating condition.
Mumbai & Karachi Princeton professor Gyan Prakash compares two urban experiences TEXT BY AYESHA R SIDDIQI & PHOTO BY ASHWIN JOHN
When Princeton history professor, Gyan Prakash, came to Karachi, he saw a lot of Mumbai in it. Both are port cities, and as cities on the sea, both have an “expansive sense about themselves” that comes from not being tied by their hinterland or location in the nation. He visited Pakistan much after the publication of his book Mumbai Fables (2011) and The Express Tribune asked about his perceptions of the two great cities. As a historian of modern India, his perspective is sweeping. But more sexily, Mumbai Fables is being turned into a film called Bombay Velvet by director Anurag Kashyap for Fox Studios. It stars Ranbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma and tells Bombay’s story as an evolving metropolis through the 1950s and 1970s. Shooting begins in June. Few people in Karachi would disagree with Prakash’s assertion that the city has “a distinct urban consciousness”. He sees it as a sense that the city has a life of its own, one that enables or disables aspirations. “I think this is why both [Mumbai and Karachi] also attract migrants from near and far, far,” h he said, “Not just for livelihood but also for th the possibilities, real and imagined, that the city offers.” Of course, there are quite a few differences. He had planned to visit Orangi but cell phone services we were suspended. “Even viol if there isn’t any violence, the fear of vi[Karac olence affects [Karachi],” he said. “One it energy is through way the city derives its mobility. And we hav have the entire city ... closed off through con containers and blocks.” colou Fear perhaps colours life in Mumbai too. Prakash is h honest enough about 42 42 admitting, as he did in an interMA M MAY AY A Y 119-2 1919 19-25 9-2 9 --2 2 5 20 2 2013 0 113 3
Professor Gyan Prakash
view once, that Mumbai is the “centre of terror and fulfiller of capitalist dreams”. But there is one important difference from Karachi. The terror “doesn’t seep into the everyday life of [Mumbai]”. His new work has branched out to explore homelessness. When people move d d and the pace of change that they experience iis speeded up, they begin to ask what home is. “So, as people flock to cities like Mumbai and Karachi, they have to patch together social relations and home in the city,” he explained. For example, the attacks on Shias in Karachi cannot but affect how secure or at home they feel. The same can be said also of anti-nativist campaigns in Mumbai. Prakash intends to organise conferences that would include scholars who work on, among other places, Karachi. “Consider, just for example, the anti-terror furniture on Karachi streets. The ubiquity of the containers on the street, I would think, must affect how people feel about being secure in the city.” The message, it seems, is that these sprawling, heaving beautiful entities are paradoxes. In Mumbai Fables, Prakash divides this into the ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ city. “Urban life and experience [are] not just a matter of demography and statistics but also of dreams and nightmares, hopes and disappointments, imaginations and aspirations,” he said. Literature, cinema, signage, shop displays become part of the “soft city”. They feed our imaginations, produce desires, inflect how we see and live our daily life. What Christopher Morley once wrote seems to apply here: “All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful, but the beauty is grim.” T