There are hundreds of people streaming around a circular, stunning white building on Fifth Avenue as cars and buses and taxis honk and inch their way on the traffic laden street. With a start you realize the men are all wearing suits and hats, the women prim dresses, even the children are dressed decorously in coat dresses – and the automobiles are all large, with chrome plating and flashy tail fins.
If all the world is a stage, then who better to tell the story of the ongoing drama of Indian immigration and Diaspora tales than playwrights? For years insightful writers from Africa to the UK to Canada have been documenting the stories of those who left the homeland for uncharted territories, and now some of them gathered in New York to share their experiences.
He’s the smarmy, conniving game show host in ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, a regular bad guy. We’ve seen him in diverse roles but Anil Kapoor, with a glittering stud in one ear, rugged good looks and oozing Bollywood charisma, has a real life role as a good guy, as spokesperson for children who have received a raw deal in life.
When the writer Gita Mehta was growing up in Orissa, a small ancient image of Ganesha was unearthed in a mound of dirt as the foundations of their family home were being laid. “I’ve always kept the Ganesha which came out of my parents’ home,” confided Mehta when I interviewed her once in New York. “That is the one image that goes with me wherever I go. He came out of the Indian soil so to me he’s like an umbilical cord that connects me to India. So it doesn’t matter where I live – he is my India.”
Lord Ganesha enters people’s lives in mysterious ways – sometimes it can even be just a chance encounter on a busy New York street! When photographer Shana Dressler passed a bookstore in Manhattan, she stopped in her tracks. In the window was a photography book which had on its cover a striking 20-foot high plaster of Paris statue of the elephant-headed God in the water, being splashed by a small army of men.
“In our family, the moment a child is born, my grandmother would come with a jar of honey and would dip her little finger into the honey and write ‘Om’ on the baby’s tongue with it. And my mother always tells me, ‘You just opened your mouth and licked up the honey and when she put it again, you licked it up again.”
The mini series was filmed in Mumbai and actually has five full-fledged Bollywood musical numbers, while the soundtrack features Javed Akhtar, Shiksta, Shreya Goshal, and the Bombay Dub Orchestra. Several crew members of ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ were also part of this team, including Longinus Fernandes, who choreographed the Jai Ho number.
Through the powerful voices of the dastangohs the tale came alive; you saw life and death, the grandeur, the sorcery, the parades, the fires and the warfare in your mind’s eye. For two hours the crowd at this sold out show sat riveted, taken quite far away, centuries back, on the wings of a language many of them did not understand.
All this was achieved without a blow being dealt, without a sword being drawn or a match lit – a testament to the story-telling powers of the three dastangohs.
“Water is life and I think as a human rights activist there is no more poignant metaphor than water – the commoditization of water and the corporate control of water is to me the human rights issue of the millennium.”
It was a sight not to be missed – the Indian flag spotlighted on the NASDAQ Exchange board in frenetic Times Square.What are your thoughts on India’s Independence Day? Do you have any reflections to share?