Visualising Identity

Visualising Identity

 

 

It was refreshing to view two visual treats that deal with the issue of asserting identity in a somewhat different, even humourous and ironic manner

 

 

Malavika Karlekar

 

The search/assertion of identities in the contemporary world has become a mired field, often bristling with anxiety and tension. Hair-raising media accounts of the terror and rejection associated with issues arising over certain forms of identity are dime a dozen, the stuff of everyday journalism. It was refreshing then, to view two visual treats that deal with the issue in a somewhat different, even humourous and ironic manner - the construction of masculinity in India and an Australian woman putting down roots in this country. The photo essay on Men and Masculinities by Sanjeev Saith (designed by Itu Chaudhuri Design and funded by UNIFEM and ZONTA International) is the visual component of a study of masculinity coordinated by Radhika Chopra who teaches at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, while the 52-minute documentary film, My Mother India, provides an insider’s view on the life of Patricia Uberoi, also a sociologist, at the Institute of Economic Growth.

 

Shot over a period of 15 days in a process that helped him "learn sociology" photographer-cum-publisher Sanjeev (he is the co-founder of IndiaInk that published The God of Small Things) brings his own sensitive aesthetic sense to this "independent visual documentary to complement four chosen fields of research". Funded by UNIFEM, the study, that was carried out by a group of inspired researchers, focuses on family businesses in Purani Dilli, male domestic workers and beauty parlours, also in Delhi, and neighbourhood boys’ clubs in Kolkata . Choosing not to follow the ordering of study (given above), Saith takes us from the male practices of the gullies of old Delhi through boys’ clubs - both assertions of machismo of different kinds, to the liminal world of male domestic workers and beauty for men.  In doing so, he is able to manipulate the viewer to not only see but also to reflect on and experience shifts in male self-definitions. 

The blood and gore of slaughtered animals leap out at the unsuspecting eye as Ateeq, heir to art of qurbani - blood sacrfice, integral to the family business of butchery -  surveys his art;  Mohammed Aarefeen and his elderly friend, no longer in the business, sit by in an  amazing composition of togetherness, yet  one where rheumy eyes are fixed on separate spatio-temporal spaces. A few cliché-tic shots show a jeans-clad Kashiq working at his father’s tandoor after college hours, others helping in assorted family trades.  Next, the boys’ club in Kolkata where, presided over by an overly- colured print of Mother Teresa on the wall, the empty carom board is a trope of the adda space. The clubs are areas of "hypermasculine performances laden with threat" and Saith’s camera captures the latent tension in the mien of an anxious woman negotiating her way as a street dog grabs at a packet and hands-in-the pocket toughs give her the once over.

If the club exuded an untrammelled post-adolescence maleness, this is readily quelled in the downcast eyes and servile attitude of the male domestic; the employer at the table and through two doorways, the shadowy figure of his `Jeeves’. Or the interface of effeminacy and maleness that "collude in the company of women" as both pick at a basket of tomatoes in a market place. Of course, one might question the stereotypying of male roles here a bit. In the world of work, often enough, the mandate of poverty and necessity smudge gender-based role definitions as women carry enormous head loads at construction sites and become hand pump mistris while men lounge in the sun. Or, when pushed, become domestic servants.

The traditional nai (barber), the apocryphal informant and conveyer of family news and gossip, is reincarnated in the beauty parlour for men. "At the crossroads of caste-based occupations and feminine cultures of beauty care", along with the masseur, manicurist and pedicurist, he pampers, smoothes and creates in the male-only environment. But Saith is careful to extend the male gaze to the Other - albeit at the margins: Vishnu, the domestic servant is eyed by his partner, Shanti and resisted by his nieces as he assiduously grooms them for school. Or, in another shot, the female persona is literally on the margins of a brilliant composition of a `want-to-look-serious’ young lad who yields a toy gun (in a ludicrous shade of red, to match his socks) as he strikes a male pose on a scooter. Undoubtedly, Sanjeev Saith’s 85 images have their own life and can be fruitfully viewed as an impressionistic account of Indian malehood - even as they  serve to loosely weave together the study, or rather case studies, on an increasingly popular theme.

The winner of umpteen awards, My Mother India, a story of feminine `adjustment’ - and resistance is more than a daughter’s homage to her mother.  When Safina Uberoi set out to discover what are essentially her own roots, she found that she was actually telling " a big story through such a small story". While at one level, being "bi-cultural is quite funny", as this disarming and talented young film-maker was to find out there, is a lot of pain lurking there too. Patricia Robyn married J.P.S. (Jit) Uberoi, a student in Australia, in the mid-1960s and came to India with him. Parenting three children while developing impressive academic records (both are eminent sociologists), collecting kitsch (popular calendars) as well as providing a home full of books, stray dogs and cats - and Patricia’s underwear drying on a well-exposed washing line - is only part of what Himman Dhamija, the skilled cinematographer, captures in his wife, Safina’s film.

In a tragic juxtaposition of events, Jit loses his father in 1984 just as riots and violence against the Sikhs break out; the short-haired, goatee-bearded son dons the pugree at his father’s death rituals and re-claims his Sikh identity.  Safina watches her father’s transformation as her younger brother and sister are sent away to their maternal grandmother in Australia.  And Patricia cares for her mother-in-law, (who had DIVorced her husband thirty years before), kneads dough for chapattis, and keeps the family links going  -- while north India is on fire.  At the end of it all, Patricia changes her nationality while her daughter becomes an Australian; yet like many children of mixed parentage who have chosen to make their home in a country to which they also belong - but where they have not grown up, Safina’s umbilical attachment to her father’s homeland is palpable. And in cleverly providing the big story - religious strife in India - as the backdrop through the use of her parents’ kitsch collection - she tells the small tale with sensitivity and good humour.

Both visual offerings go well beyond what literally meets the eye. Both are impressive accounts of how sensitive and intelligent handling by the visual media that has an immediacy, can in a flash, provide insights into what it means to forge identities and a sense of belonging.  Whether it is the salwar-kameez clad Patricia coming home bearing her jholas of shopping or it is the street-corner boy juggling roles, the subtext of each vignette is one of identity, denial and of course, longing in a uncertain and fast-changing urban world of opportunity and loss.

Contact: karlekars@vsnl.com