Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Shape the Nation

Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Shape the Nation is an exhibition currently running at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. — it showcases Indian-American culture, history and experiences. As reported by the BBC:

The curators from the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center say it about the “history and contemporary experiences of Indian Americans as they have grown to be one of the more diverse and well-recognised communities in the United States”.

With a population of 2.8 million, Indian Americans are the third largest group among Asian Americans.

They are also among the wealthiest communities in the US, with a median annual household income of $88,000 (£52,900) compared with the national median of $49,800 (£29,900), according to one study.

And more than 70% of Indian American immigrants over 18 years of age speak English very well, compared with 53% of all Asian American immigrants.

The vast exhibition covers everything from Indian American food to yoga, engineers to cab drivers, and the LGBT community to hip hop.

In addition to the physical exhibit, the museum has also curated a fantastic digital collection that you can view from anywhere online, as well as a blog featuring interviews and insight from the artists and people involved with the project, and a collection of Indian American family portraits on Pinterest.

There’s a lot of amazing context to explore – check it out!

Which Hindu God Are You?

Ever wonder what Hindu deity best suits your personality? Check out this fun quiz to find out!

A Bollywood Education

KALKI
This is your Bollywood education, I’m not repeating myself, so pay attention. – Ok, her. She’s crying cuz she loves him so much. See how she really really means it? With her whole face.

…

GIRL 1
Now they’re just staring at each other. I mean really, just staring.

KALKI
Look at all those feelings. They’re feeling all over the screen, it’s like slick with it! Mmmmmmmmmmm-

Bollywood is the Hindi language film industry based in Mumbai, India. The term is a portmanteau of Bombay (the former name for Mumbai) and Hollywood, though unlike Hollywood, Bollywood does not exist as a physical place.

The plots of Bollywood movies are usually melodramatic, featuring familiar tropes of star-crossed lovers and angry parents, love triangles, sacrifice, corrupt politicians, conniving villains, courtesans with hearts of gold, siblings separated by fate, and dramatic reversals of fortune.

Bollywood films are known for their elaborate dance sequences and musical numbers, and have developed their own signature style of song and dance that combines classical and folk dances from India with more modern elements of jazz, hip hop, Arabic, and Latin dance forms. It is not unusual to see Western pop and pure classical dance numbers side by side in a Bollywood film. Songs typically comment on the action that is taking place in the movie. Sometimes a song is worked into the plot so that a character has a reason to sing, or a song is an externalization of a character’s thoughts.

Check out this YouTube playlist of Bollywood clips to get a sense of the typical tropes and aesthetic of the genre:

Khajuraho, Temple of Love

BRAHMAN:

That’s right. Where right wing politics, wimpy school districts, and squeamish parents fail their teenage constituency daily, the loud embarrassing relative with the South Asian art history textbook comes through!

(Auntie) “Khajuraho! The Temple of Love!”

I would now like to share with you a few of the more memorable illustrations.

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Khajuraho, sometimes referred to as the Kamasutra Temple or Temple of Love, is actually a group of monuments spread over about 20 square kilometers in the northeastern part of Madhya Pradesh, within the Vindhya mountain range of central India. It is a major tourist and archaeological site, as well as a UNESCO world heritage site. Khajuraho is renowned for its intricately sculptured temples dedicated to Shiva, Vishnu, and Jain deities, and for the sexually explicit carvings that make up about 10% of the temple art. The temples are divided into three sections or zones – western, eastern and southern. The western complex is the largest of the three and comprises the most popular temples.

Most of the Khajuraho temples were built during the Chandela dynasty between 950 and 1050 AD and were in active use through the end of 12th century. This changed in the 13th century, after the army of Delhi Sultanate, under the command of the Muslim Sultan Qutb-ud-din Aibak, attacked and seized the Chandela kingdom. The region remained under the control of various Muslim dynasties from 13th century through the 18th century, and during this period, several temples were desecrated and many others left in neglect. Of the surviving temples, six are dedicated to Shiva and his consorts, eight to Vishnu and his affinities, one to Ganesha, one to Sun god, and three to Jain Tirthanks.

How Police Interrogation Works

Last week, the Stuff You Should Know podcast released an episode about police interrogation. It gives some historical background on interrogation techniques, and provides context for some interrogation tactics that the Cop would know about, even if he chooses not to use them all while questioning the two girls. Questions about how forthright the Cop is with the girls, and what information he is withholding, have come up in rehearsal and are also addressed in the podcast.  You can check it out here!

The New Yorker article mentioned at the top of the show, “The Interview” by Douglas Starr, provides an ever deeper look into the subject and can be read online here.

The Reid Technique has influenced nearly every aspect of modern police interrogations. Illustration by Leo Espinosa for The New Yorker.

 

Upping the Aunty

Brahmani:

Ladies and gentlemen, my Auntie.
Eating pistachios, sitting criss cross apple sauce on my outer space bedspread, sorting discarded shells onto planets, like that’s going to contain the mess.
I sorted my scraps onto the milky way, where it was harder to see them.

Auntie sitting cross-legged in a sari, who knew that was possible? This young Jedi has much to learn.

The character of Auntie plays a big role in Brahman/i. She serves as a sort of mentor for B, helping them navigate family history, Indian mythology, and their developing self-identity.

NPR’s Code Switch recently featured Upping the Aunty, a mixed media portrait project by artist Meera Sethi that celebrates the South Asian “aunty”. From Sethi’s website:

In South Asian culture, an aunty may or may not be a biological relation. She may be a friend of the family or a stranger. But if she is older than you – old enough to be your mother’s friend – then she is accorded the status of aunty. Neither our mothers nor part of our peer group, aunties may be trusted confidantes or gatekeepers of social decorum.

There are many aunties, and we may meet them every week, occasionally or only once; however they have a considerable impact on our lives. In jest, we may fondly mimic their gold and diamond studded hand gestures or their pairing of traditional clothing with running shoes. This mimicry is a form of distancing, while simultaneously drawing attention to cultural traditions that may continue unbroken, be discarded, or are transformed.

Upping the Aunty will honour this unique relationship through portraiture by paying homage to the fabulousness of aunty style and the importance of their role as transmitters of social and cultural knowledge and practices.

Here are just a few images from the project featured on Code Switch — do any of these ladies remind you of B’s Auntie?

Sunita Aunty

 

Gunalaxsmi Aunty

Shoba Aunty

More images from the project can be found on Tumblr and Instagram at #uppingtheaunty.

A Primer on Stand Up Comedy

Creating the feeling of an authentic comedy routine is a huge focus for the BRAHMAN/I team. Toward that end, we’ve compiled a slideshow below with some basic concepts about stand-up, as well as a bunch of videos and interviews with comics. Enjoy!

 

A Primer on Intersex

We’ve kicked off BRAHMAN/I rehearsals with a lot of conversation about the central relationships in the play, and how B’s identity has developed over time. Through the play we hear about B’s intersex condition and how it impacted their understanding of sex and gender as an adolescent, and later, as an adult. First person accounts of intersex life, as well as research from experts like Anne Fausto-Sterling and Alice Dreger, have been informing our table work all week.

Here’s an introduction to what it means to be intersex, along with some additional resources on the subject:

Becoming a Warrior: The Ramayana and Kalki Connection

KALKI

If you stay within this circle you’ll be safe.

If you leave the circle, nothing will ever be the same.

Young girls have a long literary heritage cast as damsels and victims. Fairy tale culture primes young girls to aspire to be the untouchable princess in the tower, waiting for the prince to rescue them from monsters, evil hags, and the presumable boredom that comes with being locked up in a castle for years. But as Girl 2 says, she hates waiting, and Aditi Kapil subverts the damsel-in-distress trope when bad-ass avatar of Vishnu Kalki rises out of the football field to vanquish adolescent evil in the guise of a high-school girl.

Both Girl 1 and 2 chafe at the powerlessness of being unpopular and mired in the high school hate machine. Kalki answers the girls’ need, tempting them with empowerment, and offering each the chance to take control of her identity and sexuality and become a warrior.

Prince Rama, hero of the Ramayana and one of the most popular Hindu icons.

Kalki knows a thing or two about being a warrior – the beloved Prince Rama, like Kalki, is also an avatar of Vishnu and a powerful fighter. Both he and Kalki are incarnations of the same god, and Kalki even shares a memory with the girls about her time as Rama:

…The worst is when I’m human. I don’t like being human. Why do there have to be so many mistakes? I was a prince once. To be loved so much for doing so little. For being so flawed. It hurts.

The story of Prince Rama, as well as his lover Sita, is detailed in the Ramayana, one of the great epics of Hindu literature. In Brahman/i, B gives us a tongue-in-cheek version of the tale:

Bullet-point recap of the Ramayana:

Horrible ten-headed demon tries to take over the world!

Vishnu sends avatar in form of super-noble Prince Rama to save world!

Romantic comedy side-plot: Rama and Sita fall in love and get hitched, woohoo!

Oh no, Rama is banished due to horrible conniving second wife of clueless Dad!

Rama and Sita go to live in the forest … sudden segue into action flick: Sita is kidnapped by demon! Rama and side-kicks kick Demon ass, and Sita is rescued, woohoo! They return to Ayodhya as heroes!

I mean this story is like epic summer blockbuster awesome, I’m loving this shit!

Between Rama’s banishment and the action adventure that follows, Lakshman (his brother and side-kick) tries to keep Sita safe while he and Rama are hunting by drawing a circle around her that will prevent her from being harmed. The disguised demon tricks her out of the circle and holds her hostage in his lair. Rama rescues her but is not convinced that Sita has been faithful, so she is commanded to walk through a circle of fire to confirm her innocence. She does so, and remains untouched by the fire, proving herself so pure that not even a single flower petal in her hair was wilted by the heat of the flames. All’s well that ends well.

Rama and Sita

Aspects of this section of the Ramayana show up when Kalki corners Girl 2 in the library. In the sunny bower of books, she offers Girl 2 peacefulness and safety – a chance to stay in the circle and remain protected by a prince’s arrow as beasts lurk outside in the schoolyard. However, Girl 2 decides to step outside of the circle, choosing to take action rather than live a passive existence.

Girl 1 embodies another aspect of the Sita story – the trial by fire. Girl 1’s circle of fire takes the form of a mortifying incident in the schoolyard, as she’s surrounded by a ring of classmates pointing and laughing at her. This moment of humiliation purifies her, and is a test that serves as an important rite of passage.

Sita in the circle of fire

In the play’s final moments, the girls stand united and powerful, now fully capable of saving themselves, while Kalki goes off to slay other demons. Kapil has created a contemporary Ramayana where girls can kick butt and vanquish evil without needing a male hero to rescue them at the end of the day.

PS: Another aspect of the Ramayana also connects with Brahman/i: when Rama and Sita returned home, they found the hijras waiting for them in the grove at the edge of the forest – they had waited fourteen years for the prince to return!

You can read the full story of the Ramayana at this link.  The story of the Sita’s abduction is in Canto III. A condensed version of the story is also available here.

Bindi: Status Symbol and Fashion Statement

Girl 1: What’s that?

Kalki: Bindi.

Girl 2: Where’d you get them?

Kalki: You can buy ‘em for like a buck at any Indian grocery, I have a shit-load.

Bindi is a forehead decoration worn in several South Asian countries, including India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. The word comes from the Sanskrit word bindu, meaning “a drop” or “small particle,” and is usually seen as a red or maroon dot. They may also be an elongated pear shape, or a series of lines on or around the forehead. Hindu women wear bindi primarily, but men may have these markings as well. Traditionally, the bindi is placed between the eyebrows – the area said to be the sixth chakra and seat of concealed wisdom, or representative of the third eye.

In India, the bindi still holds the symbolic significance of Hindu mythology for many women. In Nothern India especially, married women wear bindi as a marker of social status and to convey commitment to their husband. However, there are different regional variations of the bindi, and in much of South Asia the bindi is more of a decorative item worn as a fashion statement, regardless of religious affiliation or nationality.

The kind of bindi Kalki gives the girls are sticker bindi – disposable substitutes for the traditional kind made with kumkum or vermilion powder. Sticker bindi come in many colors, designs, and sizes. Some look traditional, but others may have rhinestones or other embellishments.

Women often wear bindi during ceremonial events and important rituals. By bestowing each of the girls with bindi, Kalki is acknowledging that they have completed a significant rite of passage.