Over Chai

Growing Up Bollywood

One sunny afternoon a couple of summers ago, my husband and I were strolling along the boardwalk at the Beaches, and paused at a bench to soak in the sights and sounds of summer.  A young woman, the mother of three energetic little kids, paused to catch her breath at the same bench, and it was not long before we struck up a lively conversation.  She was of Greek heritage, we told her we were of Indian heritage.

“Oh,” she exclaimed and began singing, “Aap Jaisa Koi Meri Zindagi Mai Aye….”

The 1980 hit movie Qurbani. 

Nostalgia.  A flood of memories.

As a child growing up in an Indian household, Bollywood films (though we never referred to them as such back then, they were simply ‘Hindi movies’) were a staple source of family entertainment.  We would gather together on weekends when we could spare the three-and-a-half hours, my mom would make hot fried pakoras and chai for our intermission snack and we would watch predictable though delightfully entertaining plots unfold.  We enjoyed those cozy family times filled with the simple joy of togetherness, while invisible threads drew us closer to a culture that we had mostly only known remotely.

Sometimes we would gather at friends’ homes and enjoy the hullaballoo of a Hindi movie playing amidst the laughter and chitter-chatter of all our Aunties (the Uncles were usually absorbed in a serious card game).

And on the rare occasion, when we visited India, we would go to a cinema with relatives and enjoy the authentic experience, complete with an intermission in the middle of the movie when everyone would get freshly fried hot samosas and mingle with friends.

Wonderful meaningful memories, to be sure, but in the end was it all just empty, mindless entertainment?  Sitting on that park bench and hearing about the Saturday night tradition that this Greek family had created for itself during which they would watch Hindi films and eat Indian food caused me a moment’s pause to reflect on the impact that Hindi films had had on my life.

They have given me some of my favourite songs of all time, the kind that speak to the soul from movies like Kabhi Kabhi and Umrao Jaan, the kind that compel me to dance with abandon like Koi Kahe Kehta Rahe, and the kind that make me want to sing at the top of my lungs like Kajrare.

They have dazzled me with the breathtaking array of exquisitely designed outfits and jewels that continue to inspire fashion trends in the global diaspora communities.

They have given me an understanding of the Indian culture, celebrations, rituals, values and traditions that define who we are as a people.

They taught me Hindi in the best classroom of all, the family room of my childhood home.

They inspired the Classical Indian dancer in me.

But it goes even deeper than all that.

They reinforced a profound sense of pride in calling myself an Indian, and emotionally bonded me to India forever.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to fry some pakoras for my kids before intermission is over.

___________

* Originally published on The Agenda with Steve Paikin website: 

 http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=3&action=blog&subaction=viewpost&post_id=16869&blog_id=323

Related videos on The Agenda with Steve Paikin:

1. On being a Canadian-born Indian:  http://bit.ly/kX2vjl

2. Hooray for Bollywood:  http://bit.ly/kg1ign

Warrior Boys–This “Dishoom” is No Laughing Matter

I tend to think of South Asians as a successful, motivated group of people, and with good reason. It seems that everyone I know is either a doctor or lawyer, accountant or engineer, businessperson or scientist, rising to great heights within the chosen line of occupation. Even those that follow less conventional routes are still motivated and accomplished in their own right.  But this weekend, as I was out celebrating the milestone birthday of a good friend of mine, I was engaged in conversation with a Crown lawyer who reminded me of another kind of South Asian.

The kind of South Asian who comes from a hard-working working class family that has sacrificed everything in order to provide for a better life for the next generation, but who chooses not to pursue higher education and who fails to realize on that promise of opportunity.  The kind of South Asian who lacks drive and motivation to succeed.  The kind who is disenfranchised and impressionable, falling under the influence of the wrong crowds and their misguided notions. 

It is not that my head was buried in the sand.  Every so often, the news reports on South Asian gang activity and lost youth.  The now-infamous Toronto 18 spring to mind as a quintessential example.  Young Muslim-Canadians who espoused violent ideals that would target the very same secular and egalitarian nation in which they were raised.  Tamil gangs are also often cited for high levels of gang activity in the Greater Toronto Area.  At the Network of Indian Professionals Conference last Fall, I saw a screening of Warrior Boyz, a film directed by Vancouver-based director Baljit Sangra exploring the phenomenon of gang warfare among Punjabi youth out West.  The violence, the staggering loss of life was disheartening, but even more disturbing was the aimlessness of the youth and the futility of it all. The kids just seemed so lost.  More recently, an addictions psychiatrist friend of mine told me of the overlooked impact of gang membership on girls who seek the approval of gang members and end up engaging in a variety of illicit activities, including substance abuse and prostitution.

And so I must ask:  Why??

What are the factors that lead to gang membership?

Is it more prevalent in some communities than others?

Why, given that the South Asian culture places a heavy emphasis on education, are some of our youth falling through the cracks?

Where are the parents who have sacrificed everything - their homeland, their proximity to extended family and culture – in order to re-settle their families here, when their children begin to exhibit questionable behaviours?

Is the nature of the immigrating class, be it a professional or a working class, a factor in the outcomes of our youth?

I don’t pretend to have any of the answers, but these questions have started to concern me.

Perhaps it is because my husband and I came to Toronto after having earned our professional degrees that our circle of friends ended up including mostly doctors and lawyers, and I suppose it was just easier to generalize with broad brushstrokes based on our personal experience.  Denial, after all, is always easier than confronting uncomfortable truths and asking the tough questions.  Thankfully, gang violence has not touched our lives directly, so nothing earth-shattering has happened to alter our perspective.  Unless you count that we are raising our own little South Asian Canadians and have a vested interest in their long-term wellbeing.  

That, in and of itself, is enough to change anyone’s perspective.

 

 

Made in India: A Booming Baby Business

If I say “outsource” which country comes first to your mind?  

India, of course! 

The notion of outsourcing, or contracting out business functions to external providers, has become inextricably linked with India over the past few decades.  With an abundance of cheap labour, a growing middle class armed with technical savvy and know-how, and a population hungry for Western-style consumerism, it was inevitable.  While particularly popular in the scientific, technical and service fields, it did not take long for people to discover that - just as goods and services are less expensive in India - so too is health care.  And so the industry known as medical tourism was born. 

It really should have come as no surprise, then, that the creation of life could also be outsourced.  Infertile couples from around the world renting out fertile wombs in India to carry their babies for them.  And yet, somehow, it was. 

Made in India, a documentary screened at the recent HotDocs film festival, explores the business of baby-making as it follows one such couple, Lisa and Brian Switzer, on their personal quest for a biological baby. 

Faced with fertility treatment and surrogacy costs between $70,000 and $100,000 in the USA, contracting out for the same services in India for somewhere around $12,000 was economically-speaking, a much more attractive option.  (I personally think the trips to India are an attractive feature of the whole arrangement, but I digress.)

So Lisa and Brian did what so many couples are now doing, they packed their bags and headed to India to have a baby.  It is now estimated that the value of the international surrogacy market is a whopping $450 million.

This is how it works. 

Lisa and Brian contacted Planet Hospital, a California-based medical travel planning company whose job it is to facilitate the whole trip, including making the arrangements for the necessary doctors and the accommodations.  The parties entered into a detailed contractual agreement setting out the terms of the arrangement, including how much was to be paid to the surrogate, in this case $7000. 

Enter Aasia, a simple Indian woman of limited means living in Mumbai, who wants nothing more than to provide a good education for her three young children.  On her husband’s salary alone, they cannot hope to accomplish their goals, so she signs a contract to provide surrogacy services through the Rotunda Clinic.  She, too, is doing this for the money, hoping to elevate her family’s economic position. 

Overall, it seems like a win-win situation.  One woman giving the gift of life, and the other giving the gift of a better life. 

But international surrogacy is not without its problems or critics.  Currently, there is no legislation setting out the legal rights and obligations of the parties, making the possibility of exploitation in developing countries a real concern and creating confusion in the legal relationships of the parties to the babies.   Moral-ethical questions are also being raised about allowing women to “rent out” their wombs for profit, and for permitting a tiered health care system as between foreigners and the local population, which often has little or no access to the same quality of care.

As for our main characters, Aasia delivered twin baby girls for Lisa and Brian on May 30, 2008*.  While she was well looked after, it did not come without personal cost to her and her family.  Her surrogacy was carried out discreetly for fear of social repercussions; she endured the physical hardships of a pregnancy with twins, as well as a prolonged separation from her own children.  While she had been promised $3000 by the Clinic, in the end she was paid $2500 because of her brief stay towards the end of the pregnancy at the home for surrogates.  Not anywhere close to the $7000 Lisa and Brian expected her to receive.  Aasia was left somewhat disappointed by her compensation.

Lisa and Brian suffered bureaucratic red tape while they waited for the hospital authorities, the Clinic and the US Embassy to determine the legal and biological parentage of the babies, as well as their citizenship, in order to have them released from the hospital.  They also faced the moral challenge of ensuring that they really had made a difference in Aasia’s life, as she had done for their lives.

Ethical and moral questions aside (these will all continue to be debated in the years to come), it is time for the law to catch up to the practice of cross-boundary surrogacy and put into place some clear rules and much-needed safeguards.

…because international baby-making has a life of its own now…and, baby, business is booming.

 

Namrata at HotDocs: A Powerful Inspiring 9-Minutes

It is human nature to be fascinated by other people’s lives.  Curiosity is innate to our species.  Voyeurism, whether of a benign or nefarious nature, is a quintessential example, and the surge in popularity of reality television programs in the last decade is testament to this ongoing appeal.  It is no surprise, then, that Canada’s annual international documentary forum – HotDocs – generates the anticipation and excitement that it does.  After all, local and international filmmakers afford us an intimate insider’s view into the lives of people around the world.  How utterly fascinating.  Over the coming weeks, I will share with you some of lives I have had the privilege of peeking into.

Let me start this week with the shortest film that left the biggest impression. 

Namrata, a 9-minute short film directed by Shazia Javed and produced by the National Film Board of Canada, screened for the first time in Toronto this week.  Namrata Gill, the woman baring her soul for viewers, was also an inspiration behind Deepa Mehta’s movie, Heaven on Earth (See my earlier blog “Life After Marriage: Heaven on Earth?”: http://mybindi.com/lifestyles/ArticleDetailUI.aspx?RefId=1237).  Sometimes, less really is more.

The film opened simply, quietly, with Namrata talking of that day 17 years ago, when she was an innocent young woman in India getting married with all the hope and expectation of a happy married life in Canada.  Dressed in her wedding lehenga, she gazed at a mirror as she spoke, slowly adorning herself with her bridal jewellery.  That day was to be the first day of the rest of her life, her dreams were coming true. 

Reality in Edmonton was not what she expected.  Now dressed in elegant casual wear, she spoke candidly of the early years of her marriage.  Whereas she had hoped to pursue higher education to get a good job, her husband did not permit this, instead requiring her to work grueling long hours at the family-owned convenience store.  (After all, knowledge is power and how could he exert control over her if she became aware of her rights?)  Eventually, she bore a child, a daughter, all the while enduring increasing emotional and verbal abuse.  Inevitably, the abuse became physical for minor transgressions, and sometimes for no reason at all.  As is often the case in domestic violence, his reactions were unpredictable and therefore unpreventable.  She recalled one instance when she was pinned to the floor by her mother-in-law and sister-in-law so that her husband could mete out her punishment more effectively.  Throughout it all, she wanted to escape the marriage, but did not know what to do or how to do it, and she worried about losing her daughter.  So, Namrata remained silent, not confiding in anyone, not seeking out help.  She breathed not a word to her family in India, for fear of causing them anxiety or shame. 

Then one fateful night, everything changed.  Her husband, whose touch she had grown to detest, forced himself upon her and violated her as a woman.  Perhaps she had hit rock-bottom, perhaps she felt she had nothing left to lose, but she finally mustered the courage to share her hardships with her family.  Her father came immediately from India to support her and to help her find the community resources she needed to extricate herself (and her daughter) from her abusive situation.  And as she developed emotional strength, she worked out to develop her physical strength.

[SPOILER ALERT! Do not read what follows if you do not want to know how it ends.]

The last scene was so dramatic, even in its simplicity, that it took my breath away.  We could not see Namrata, but she was clearly getting ready again.  The camera’s close angles focused on a snap here, a button there.  It gradually became apparent that this time, instead of adorning herself as a bride, she was adorning herself with accoutrements of a different nature altogether… and as she pushed a baton into her belt loop, shoved a gun into its holster and placed her police officer’s cap on her head, she reclaimed her power, her independence and her womanhood.

And let me tell you, the audience absolutely loved it.   

 

Life After Marriage: Heaven on Earth?

Sometimes a writer goes in search of a topic, and sometimes the topic finds the writer. 

A short time ago, a dear friend of mine needed my emotional support and physical help as she extricated herself from an emotionally abusive relationship where she grew fearful for her safety.  I personally know of three other women who have walked in those same shoes.  Around the same time, during a home visit with a field worker from the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, where I serve as a director on the board, I was saddened to hear firsthand of the physical and emotional ordeal one South Asian woman endures daily in her marriage.  More recently, I had occasion to see Deepa Mehta’s film, Heaven on Earth, which exposed the dark reality of domestic violence that some Indian brides face in more traditional families settled here in Canada.  And this week, the CBC held a town hall discussion entitled, “Turning Point: Moving Beyond Stereotypes of Family Violence in the South Asian Community in the Greater Toronto Area.”  Somehow, it seems that I was just meant to reflect on all this.

Domestic abuse is colour-blind.  It cuts across ethnic, racial and cultural groups, discriminating against none.  It happens in every corner of the globe, in every culture, in every imaginable shape and form.

Naively, I did not always know this.  When I was younger, I could not imagine that this kind of reprehensible treatment of women could occur within South Asian families in Canada. 

You see, I grew up with a great deal of admiration and respect for my cultural and religious inheritance, believing nothing but the best in their ancient wisdom.  As a faith,

Hinduism is open and tolerant, celebrating feminine strength and power at the highest levels.  Female deities such as Lakshmi, goddess of material and spiritual wealth and prosperity, and Sita embodying the notions of the ideal daughter, woman and wife, play a significant role.  For us mere mortals, twice a year on the occasion of Ashtami, my father would symbolically worship the embodiment of female divinity in my sisters and I as he ceremonially bathed our feet and fed us sweets.  Females are respected, revered.

I had blind faith.

“Family” and “marriage” are central to Indian life, inextricably woven into our cultural fabric.  So much of what defines us is our deep-rooted commitment to our close-knit family structures.  The same holds true for marriages, they are meant to last.  We honour and respect these institutions with a passion.  And women are at the center of them. 

In most cases, this is beautiful.

In some cases, it is tragic.

Much to my disillusionment, I am forced to confront a distasteful truth.  Domestic violence does exist within our South Asian community.  To be clear, most South Asian women are not victims of abuse, and most South Asians do not commit or condone acts of violence against women.  But a small minority do.  Where one incidence is one too many, it becomes incumbent upon us all to ask some uncomfortable questions. 

Is there something in the Indian culture that is unintentionally facilitating the occurrence of domestic violence, or that is making it more challenging for victims to speak out and seek much needed help?  The optimist in me would like to believe that the culture that I hold so dear would not betray any woman’s trust.  The realist in me questions that belief.

After all, ours is a culture where respect is given to men, elders and others in positions of authority without regard to merit, a culture where family honour is paramount and public shame is the ultimate humiliation, a culture that values men more than women and that creates inequities and power imbalances between the genders that extends to brides’ and grooms’ families, and a culture where the notion of family is so central that anyone disrupting the family unit is vulnerable to social ostracism.

The South Asian victim’s ability to survive may be hampered by culturally-learned values of unwavering commitment, honour and respect, an accepted position of subservience, an expectation of obedience, and a real fear of social isolation, not to mention lack of knowledge of helpful resources, lack of access to money or passports, potential language barriers and sometimes even restrictions on personal freedom.

Recognizing the role that parts of the culture may play in no way denigrates the whole culture, nor does it weaken outside perceptions of the culture.  Instead, talking about, questioning and challenging outdated notions are signs of confidence in ourselves, in our culture and in our place within the broader society.  And it begins a positive dialogue about factors that may be important in addressing the issue and in changing the experience of victims.

Otherwise, have we gone from a culture that almost reveres the institution of marriage, to one that, by turning a blind eye, implicitly condones domestic violence against women?

Julie & Julia…and Niru

Last weekend, my husband, my sister and I befittingly tucked into our sumptuous meal as we watched the elaborate culinary delights being prepared in Julie and Julia.

The movie was exactly what I needed - light, entertaining and inspirational. 

But much to my surprise, it had another rather unexpected impact on me.  It was my Eureka! moment on – of all things - blogging and social networking. 

I’ll be honest.  My husband and I resist change, especially technological ones.  Many of my friends are guffawing now, since they have lived through it with us.  “How do you live without caller ID??”  “When are you going to get a cell phone??”  On principle, my husband and I had resisted the temptation to buy a cell phone, that is, until public pay phones started to disappear from street corners!  Let’s not even talk about Blackberries or iPhones, home theatre systems and the like.

We are not complete dinosaurs, though.  We are the proud owners of a MAC and I did join facebook for the sheer pleasure of adding friends…those who found me, that is.  But that’s the extent of it.  And as for blogging, I barely understood this new word in the English lexicon, let alone who did it and where.  While it seems the whole world was saying blog blog blog, all I heard was blah blah blah.  I was clueless.

And then I bore witness to the power of the cyber-word.  A woman, struggling to make her life meaningful, transformed her passion into a personal challenge and shared that challenge with, well…no one at first, and then the world!  She blogged and gradually, more and more people read.  So popular became her blog that Julie Powell now has two published books to her name and a movie in which her inspired project was brought to life by Hollywood greats.  All due to the transformative power of the blogged word.  Truly amazing.

So, in keeping with the new year, a fresh beginning and firsts, here I am with my maiden blog, and with a public declaration of the passion that I intend to transform into a reality. 

The Dream:            Produce and Host a Talk Show

The Challenge:       Everything.  And every step.  This is my Mt. Everest.

Realization:            Sometime during the course of my lifetime, but preferably in 2010.

Follow my journey on my weekly blog as I try to make this happen.  And wish me luck or write me a cheque (for the show)!

Would you believe that before I blogged, I tweeted.  We’re off to a good start…