Movie Watching in the Indian Army

Written before the 2009 Oscars:

Movie watching was a way of life for us in India. As all my Indian army brat-mates will bear out, no one but no one even understands movie watching unless you are one of us. I am talking of movie watching taken to an art form …as in entertainment, socializing, daily pastime with fashion, food, fun and romance thrown in. My siblings, Kalyani, Roopa, Manish and me must have watched movies by the hundreds. By the time I was through high school (1973) not only had we watched every single Bollywood film but all Hollywood films brought into India by the army. This was the era of no-television. The movies would be screened for the soldiers and officers in the army in the open air. Huge screens were put up with sound system and all and these amazing stories from all over the world unfolded before our eyes practically  every other day. I remember watching Jerry Lewis and Tony Curtis movies and in keeping with the innocence  of the era and my age, laughing my guts out at the Laurel and Hardy or the Chaplin films, I Love Lucy or later the Pink Panther series. The grandeur of Citizen Kane, Dr Zhivago, Ten Commandments, Spartacus, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Sound of Music, Roman Holiday, Wait until Dark, Oliver Twist, Wuthering Heights, How Green was my Valley, Lillies of the Field, To Sir with Love, War and Peace, My Fair Lady, the Hitchcock movies, Kubrick, Polanski, Dracula, House of Wax, …so many many more. We were young…..in the midst of watching movies, we dressed in the latest fashions of the day, bell bottoms and crepe cotton tie up shirts and what-nots, we found our own romances and had our little trysts (strictly hidden from the adults) exchanged letters, surreptitiously held hands, and ate the most delicious kababs, and mutton chops and dal moot and tea and pop. The officers and wives drank and socialized during the intermission (couldn’t care). Each station we were posted to had its own food specialty. Oddly (to me at the time) the soldiers did not mix with the ranked officers. The lines of the army were strict and never crossed. Later on in life I remembered that oddity and was able to place it right along with lines drawn in society between rich and poor, between job-holders and job-less, between classes of all kinds all over the world as I traveled and worked across 3 continents. It was not like the drive-ins in the US because we actually got out of the cars and sat in chairs and mingled. More like a huge movie screening –party. I particularly remember Bhopal (of the Union Carbide gas tragedy which happened later in 1984) where the heady mixture of a huge 70 mm open air permanent screen and fantastic sound system in Bairagarh came together with fabulous movies and my out-of-this world high school experience. Every movie was a tale full of imagery, sound and music which filled the senses and made me escape into these imaginary lands seen only in tiny letters on a world map. I never would have guessed that I would perhaps one day live and work in the lands I saw.

By the time I came to Kolkata, my thoughts were influenced by books from Rand, Tolstoy, Tagore, Gandhi, Nehru and to the political atmosphere around me. I wanted to make a difference. Perhaps when I stepped over my first open sewage drain with ooze into my in-law’s shanty in the Watgunge bustee in Kidderpore, Kolkata and crossed over to a life of the reality of poverty, the laughter of innocence left me gasping for air to survive the struggles I took head-on in my youth. This was the life I chose because I was tired of being in the unreal, disconnected world of the army. Movies at this stage became my only way of escape. This was strictly Bollywood. The unreal song and dance bonanzas full of tear jerking stories of infinite complications which always seemed to get sorted out in the end. I would fill my students’ heads up with dreams of a world of hope and light. I had my daughter and worked through graduate school and completed my thesis work. Life changed as I moved out of the slum into our first apartment and made a life for ourselves amongst the daily struggles. My affair with the movies continued, this time taking in the Bengali movies as well. This was a period of serious movie watching along with the art, jatra, theater and classical music, rabindrasangeet scene of Bengal. Several low budget films with serious actors like Smitha Patil, Naseeruddin Shah and Shabana Azmi, Soumitra Chatterjee, Sharmila Tagore were delightful. I did not miss a good Bond movie or The Graduate or several other gems from Hollywood during the period. I even named my daughter Rinku, after the nickname of my favorite Bengali film actor.

And then there was Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray,  1954). I had read the book by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay and for once I could not say which was better. The sheer honesty of the story and the lyrical quality of its depiction was simply grand. The movie has been endlessly reviewed by far more knowledgeable critiques than me. Ray has won accolades for this , his first movie and several others and is considered one of the greatest film makers of the world. Adding to that is unnecessary.

Amidst my own struggle I found strength in the trilogy of Apu’s life and struggles and believed that in the end I would prevail. Through my own reality of having to give up my first fetus , walking miles everyday with my baby and bags through rain and shine, riding in buses with a toehold clinging for my life after passing my baby in for some stranger to hold…getting my PhD, working in Germany, immigrating to the US, scientific experiments, learning to survive in Science more than life, having a son, getting a green card, surviving my husband’s suicide after 16 years of the struggle, getting my citizenship, publishing all through, falling in love again for a second chance at happiness with my husband, starting 3 new departments and my today … I realize that Pather Panchali has to be my best movie of all time. It makes me realize that every human has a story equally important, heartbreaking and stressful. We all have a hero inside us which shows up and works in times of strife and struggle. It is only when a crisis has passed that we can even look around us and see how well we have managed and done what was ours to do without breaking down.

After word: I have watched most of this year’s Oscar nominated performances Danny Boyle/Tandon’s Slumdog Millionare will probably win Best Picture. For me, it was a bit too close to a portion of my own story and thus I know that even though it was a “feel good in the end” story well told, it is probably not one that would have ended well in real life. The maladjusted child from the slum can have a dream and  can succeed in making it come true but the harsh realities of life, even after winning a million dollars, would test his experiences and depth constantly. But movies are about dreams. About struggles, hope, love, music, imagery, art and feeling good. I have held on to them to live. Dreamweavers my solemn salute!

My favorite movie of all time