Tag: Urdu

One is Civil War. Here is a piece I thought I had shared one of my other blogs (C90 Lounge) but may have not. Apologies if you’ve read this before.

I saw Civil War yesterday. My companion, an emotionally hard-boiled Aussie of the 80s, was sceptical. He expected a ‘made for TV’ type production and groaned at the poster’s depiction of a gunner’s nest in the flame of the Statue of Liberty. 

I’m invested in this, I said.  

Years ago, in the era of ‘W’, my brother and I half-seriously agreed that should ever there be a revolution in America, we would return (he was living in Canada, me in Australia) and fight for the good guys.   So, I’ve been seeing armed rebellion in the heartland for decades. In the intervening years I’ve worked in Iraq and the former Yugoslavia and Tajikistan. Each of those countries, in their own space and time, were places where citizens believed, ‘it will never happen here’.  

Of course, it did happen there. Half a century of state building and brutal imposition of power by an ultimate stable, seemingly intractable family or party structure crumbled faster than anyone could have imagined leaving once proud capital cities and rural hamlets alike pockmarked with the imprints of thousands of shells, collapsed roofs, burned out vehicles and bands of uniformed heavily armed men with trembling trigger fingers in attack or perhaps in retreat. 

The picturisation of the road trip from NYC to DC depicted in Civil War gets full marks from me. The mayhem and the menace were completely believable. The Americanisation of the scene, for an initial moment seemed unreal, but quickly the recollection of similar road trips I’ve made through Bosnia and Kosovo, Central Asia and Angola, made me appreciate the truism, local context is everything.  This is exactly what civil war and the collapse of a national superstructure looks like. It just so happens that McDonalds dot the landscape instead of mosques.  

The film is not edifying. I left scratching my head what it said about the media. Villian or simply the least-worst group in a land full of horrible people?  The scene with the red-headed militia man with his red sunglasses was completely real and believable.  Appropos to the storyline I left the theatre wondering, ‘who were the good guys?’. Maybe my brother and I would have fighting each other, not side by side. It was depressing. 

Much better than I expected, said my hardboiled friend. Neither of us had much to say for a long time. 

**

The second film is Shatranj ke khiladi (The Chess Players). It came out in 1977 and is a brilliant picturisation of Indian writer, Munshi Prem Chand’s, beloved short story of the same name.

Set in 1856 it recounts the final days of nawabi ¹Lucknow, the most important ‘successor’ kingdom to emerge in the years following the severe collapse of Mughal political authority in north and central India, beginning in the early 18th century.

Satyajit Ray directed the all star cast which includes Sanjeev Kumar, Saeed Jaffrey, Sir Richard Attenborough, Amitabh Bachchan, Shabana Azmi, Amjad Khan, Victor Bannerji and Tom Alter, with whom I share a personal connection and whom I knew as an ‘upperclassman’ at boarding school. Each actor gives a generous and pitch perfect performance.

I love the sound of this film which is told in Urdu. Lucknow was accepted as the center of the Urdu speaking world and Urdu, with a Sanskrit grammar base but Persianised vocabulary, is among the most beautiful languages ever devised by us humans. The atmosphere (mise-en-scène?) of the film is authentic to my imagined 19th century nawabi Hindustan, ² and captures the dust-layered pale clay and brushy landscape of that part of India perfectly.

The story is both hilarious and deeply sad. It is a tale of self delusion in a time of political chaos and confusion. A story about the passing of one era and the forceful, violent birth of a new order. A story perfect for this notorious American moment. The copy that is on You Tube is high quality with English sub titles, though significant parts of the story are told in English. Highly recommended!

1. Nawabi is an Urdu term meaning ‘royal’ but which over time has become shorthand for a particular culture and lifestyle of Muslim (mainly) elites, centered in Lucknow but prevalent across much of the Gangetic plains of north India. Nawabi is a way to signal decadence, hedonism and a self indulgent ruling class of land owners and pleasure seekers. ↩︎
2. Hindustan is often used to refer to India as a whole, but historically and culturally it refers to the area of northern India the is watered by the Yamuna and Ganga (Ganges) rivers, also known as the doab (two waters.) More broadly it refers to the heartland of Muslim India that stretches from Lahore in Pakistan to Dhaka in Bangladesh. ↩︎