Ishq Junoon Dewangi and the Male Gaze

If you haven't seen the play Ishq Junoon Dewangi (Hum 2009), written by Momina Duraid, here's a snapshot.  More sophisticated than her Humsafar, it depicts modern relationships with candor, and there are no terrible misunderstandings that freeze the plot.

Play features Humaima Malik, playing a delicate and nubile débutante actor.  Incidentally it is Malik's first role.  The play is based almost entirely on the predatory sexual male gaze.  Aptly its commercial viability is also Humaima's gaze-ability.  When Director Sahil, approaching 40, (Humayun Saeed ) discovers her, it's that mythical innocence scripts are based on that drives him mad - that ethereal beauty without awareness, the innocence that soothes the hearts of world weary men, and allows them temporary, vicarious pleasure of reliving youth and evade impending mid-life.  



Sahil is a married, mid career film director and moneyed.  Paras a struggling post teen artist waiting for her big break.  It's all very awkward.  She is so thin she could be poor, but for the healthy tan.  Yet failure is close to her heart as her mother was a struggling artist who never made it past playing an extra.  In false defiance to the censorship years, the camera greedily offers her up in tight capris, zooms in on her bony shoulders, slender ankles in high heels, mascaraed eyes, shows her in shadows before she's ready for consumption.  She gazes at her own reflection before she goes on to turn on the director and his camera man, and is pleased with what she sees.  Her beauty is thick and silky like in a Kala Kola ad. 

Consider this innocent beauty notion that drives men mad.  Women are socialized to be intensely aware of how they look so they can be looked at.   Yet man craves for the woman who looks fab but is totally ignorant of how she looks as if she were Heidi or some kind of wild mountain girl with a heart of gold.  In reality, women go on diets, post pictures of themselves with vacant stares, wish they were taller, thinner, they conform to beauty norms, worry about their features, scrutinize their flaws, judge themselves, and carry scars of being judged.  Before they can reject the male gaze and recover from its dehumanizing and crippling effect, many young women will spend years vying for it-- even posing and projecting naivety.  

Some 1990s feminists may say you can look good and sexy for yourself.  But can you?  It's true that women dance with abandon, and not for stares, and not all stares are bad.  But, it's all so mixed up with the male gaze, how do you separate the talcum powder from the heroin?  How do we even re-imagine and sift female sexuality that is free from these corrosive notions of innocence and gaze?   

The innocent gazeable girl is an anomaly, the creation of a misogynist mind.  The virginal sweet oblivious afreen afreen girl  running through deserts in a toga does not exist. If she did she'd be six.

Jism Jaisay Ajanta ki Murat koi.  
Jism Jaisay ke Khilta Hua Aik Chaman.  
Jism jaisay ke Sooraj ki Pehli Kiran.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEUwXluEd0E

Notice also, the male gaze/innocence played out in Bollywood blockbuster, "Cocktail".  Saif Ali Khan (41), plays a 32 year old Gautam who leaves the slutty, dancing, smoking, world wise Veronica for a sultry, earthy, unaware of her beauty (Betty?) (Meera).  In the song Tumhi ho Bandhu, she dances with abandon while Saif gazes, Veronica gazes, the camera crew gazes, over 6 million viewers on youtube alone.  She does not even realize how drop dead gorgeous she is...

Mujhe kiya Parva is dunya ki
Jag Mujh pe Lagai Pabandi
Main hoon hi Nahin is Dunya ki.

...except Meera is played by Diana Penty - and if you google her name she's a 5 feet 10 inch model whose bust size and leg length is available through her modelling agency. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GYi4n_gHUc

Be it Javed Akhtar (Afreen Afreen), Momina Duraid, or Imtiaz Ali writing Cocktail -- the archetype is on repeat mode.  Feminist critique does not impact market demands.  And it's back with a vengeance.  Easy access to the primitive parts of our brain.  

Even when Paras admits that it was her plan to be spotted and picked for the role as she pretended to do yoga on a rock in Cape Town, Sahil is so besotted by her, he does not care.  There couldn't be a more honest confession.  But Sahil has feasted on her slumbering on the flight back.  For him, her innocence is revived when she comes clean like a school girl.  The fictitious sweet Diya merges into the real life Paras and Sahil finds himself falling in sick, poker faced, and unrequited love.  



He walks away from a solid marriage with his script writer wife who is intelligent, patient and serene (Seep, played by Deepti Gupta.)  He forces her to edit out Diya's intimate scenes.  In a scene that would make even the most confident woman crumble in insecurity, he leaves her in a South African hotel room, goes to Paras's room, drives her to the beach where he first laid eyes on her, grabs her hand, and makes his indecent proposal.  His wife travels home to Karachi alone for that wait of despair hoping he'll snap out of it.

He doesn't.  Paras, in the meanwhile, has fallen for the flirtatious and handsome Zain, her co-star in Sahil's film (played by Adnan Siddiqui.)  Zain leaves a marriage-anxious live-in (hence immoral) girlfriend for Diya.  Mercifully, he doesn't forbid her to work, but his own career takes a nosedive.  He becomes insecure and possessive.  

You'd think the play is about Sahil regretting his mid life folly, running back to his solid wife, begging for mercy, and she saying no, and him learning a lesson.  However, it is not about the righteous wife being vindicated.  It's about him seeking Paras's forgiveness and perhaps rightly so.  He subjects Paras to the most awful night - the kind spent by Byron and Mary Shelley when Frankenstein was conceived.  He promises her he'll cast her failing, ageing husband as lead if she spends the night in his bedroom.  He won't touch her, just ruin her relationship, and devour her with his eyes.  Male gaze on Crack Cocaine.

And here is the one scene that is the inspiration for this blog -- the one where Momina Duraid's feminism (despite the play's exploitative gaze tactics) for one and a half minute, sees the light of day.  The male gaze has reduced Humaima's Paras to nervous breakdown and addiction.  She is bed ridden.  Tearfully, she describes what it feel like to be the object of scrutiny.

Watch 16:45 to 18:08:

Mujhe is Ghinonay Ehsahs se Azaad kar do
Us ki nazrein aaj bhi meri rooh ke aar paar ja rahin hain,
Mujhe tatol Rahin hain
Meri Zaat ke Tukray Tukray kar Rahi Hain
Vo Mujhe sirf Apni Nazon se Beparda kar de Ga
Meray Jism Par Libaas Naam ki Koi Cheez nahin hai

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAVOkw0fqyc

Amen.

My Boring City and its Banal Details

Doctors of Karachi (not the striking ones)

A cloud's been lifted from over me.  It happened to coincide with the dulling of a throbbing nerve near my mother in law's spine.  The doctor descended like an angel and seduced her into the procedure for 40K.  He did this soft, holistic approach thing, and it worked.  America return and what not, except his own personal story is a bit inelegant, and his type do the manners bit before they peddle a brand new vaccine.  Still better than the diva orthopaedic surgeon I met a few weeks earlier.

Diva said he’d make incisions, straighten vertebrae, tie knots, diffuse pain, stitch.  Three days in the Middle East, three days in Pakistan; his stare was that of a man who makes so much money in surgeries, he has no time for niceties.  Angry, jet set, cigarette stained lips, and ferocious gaze.  'Surgery is the only choice.  There is risk in everything, even for a 25 year old woman.'  But doctor, there is age, sugar, frailty, despair.  More glares.  Eric says I should have asked for a percentage, an exact risk fraction.  But there was nothing more frightening than coming between the doctor and his money or cocaine.  I'd thought we'd give him hell for making us wait two hours.  I resisted getting coffee from Dunkin Donuts on another floor in case he showed up.  Well, he showed us.  But he performs miracles on deformed bones, a few misses permissible by stats, and complaining about a wait would be indicative of my pathetic existence.

Charity delays revolution 

People give zakat from the U.S.  It's a lot of money, and even though philosophically I'm against charity, some things must be done, fast -- a rough, manual redistribution of wealth. That's where the nation's at.  Systemic change, revolution, institution building -- all gone to hell in a hand basket.  Its TV Politics, and settling for that fuzzy comfort the act of giving brings.  People are nervous about the future, disillusioned with the present; no one says sorry or thank you; they criticize and under appreciate; cheating is norm; everyone's hurting from a memory; most people self medicate; Zardari as president is metaphor for the end of the world; but when you fix someone's transient problem the instant gratification you get from their brief gratitude; in knowing that the extra cash will go some ways – it's nice.  You've made a difference in an impossible world.  Showed the finger to KESC.  Created hope amidst hopelessness.  Sugar, oil, murghi will feed some; three days of stitching stars and sequins on collars, and when the light goes, then working nights when it returns, or piles of untouched piece rate bundles.

Well, truth be told - taking pleasure in charity may be narcissistic.  Charity appeases the giver; it's self indulgent and congratulatory, doesn't help the neediest.  It's random, unfair, and short lived.  It's the drama of the giver.  Do what you can is a half truth.  Yet, when crude Marxists proclaim, "I hate charity; I never give money," that just seems heartless.

If you are able to give donations, you've probably benefited from an unjust economic system, and the receiver has borne its brunt.  So if you don't stand on a street corner with pamphlets, or file lawsuits against management, at least quit the drama, the hoopla, the celebration of charity.  Be discreet, but not the selfless martyr who gives without advertising, but anticipates an accidental leak to personal glory -- just alert to the dissonance in the act of charity, its moral blandness and inadequacy -- how without the state stepping in large scale, it will be the proverbial bandage on a cancerous brain.

Religion and Culture 

As my Marxist friend once said, if the people believe in the God, then who am I?  Call it opiate or membership in a giant brotherhood.  Hostile atheists, always fighting, seem a bit rash.  There’s profiteering in belonging, long term survival in community, solace in having a code and bending before the lord.  Religion is a pragmatic choice, and most atheists forget it's not about rational debate between Evolution and Eve -- it's a club with benefits.  But the atheists can't handle the extremism, the constant proselytizing, the coercion of the mosque, and fight they must to overcome their own demons.

Reason why I'm often reluctant to sip the wine, break the bread, or fully embrace Ganesh or Gandhi is this: Religion for us, and I speak for a large, closeted group of Zia's bastards is associated with the dull but talented Nayyara Noor and Noor Jehan; ustani ji who taught Quran but sat under the bougainvillea tree on a broken bench, 10 feet away from where our dog Billu was tied; Moulvi Saab on his cycle; constant religion on TV; Zia making sex, music, and modernity illegal.  Faith was depressing.  Also always tied up with class and our parent's ambivalence about the new social order promulgated by Zia -- brow beaten by the mullah and reduced to nodding to Hum Dekhain Gai, like the military dad came back, born again, and found his kids threw a party.  Add to their shame and ambivalence, our own.  Boys in school were sexier if they played basketball, lived well, and did milaad and naat;  but impotent if they did only milaad and naat.  Had my period once at a soyem.  I was 15, and post Zia, normal bodily functions were regarded as contemptible (remember he even banned urinals as these were too causal about such functions.)  I needed an alibi for my shame.  Read a whole sipara while the outcast ladies chatted (shamelessly.)   Add to the list bleeding in secret.   

I would later (after college) grow bored of the argument that the so called keepers of faith have given it a bad reputation.  If you follow the true spirit, you are awakened.  Fatima Mernissi and Riffat Hasan may be right about Muslim Xeenas, but Blasphemy, Hudood, Death for adultery, and other state imposed vices were a bit distracting and the feminist ladies of Medina weren't exactly blazing by on horses.  If anything, now the class aspect is taken out of religion and even the elites are drawn to evangelists -- Farhat Hashmi and her sister Nighat who delivers strange lectures at the Royal Rodale.  Even the old leftists succumbed and grew softer on God, dressed up for Eid and Diwali, paving the way for young, reactive atheists for whom the god question does not necessarily mean questioning economic oppression.

Progressive spins on religion, in theory, are fine; its doctrines may even be open to beautiful interpretation but in practice, and as I see it in Pakistan, it simply affirms capitalism, and its sidekick -- charity, and oppression of women and minorities.  

It is what it is what it is.

And this is what it comes down to:  KESC has blessed us with a mosquito biting and fanless night.  The battery on my computer will lapse soon.  The UPS slacked off hours ago.  My children’s backs need to be scratched so they can sleep.   No one lies in roza.  For one whole month hope, joy and faith and ethics reignite.

Ramzan Mubarak.