Big teeth and an IMAX hall

Pic: Lee Celano/AFP/Getty Images

My earliest memory of Michael Jackson is from a story my mum tells me about when I first encountered him. An IMAX theatre at Disney World, or MGM Studios, or somewhere. We're dwarfed by the mammoth screens expanding all around us, my mum and I, and just before the show starts, she leans across to inform me that: "Michael Jackson is a very famous singer". In her telling of the story, she never forgets the details lacing the narrative: that I had rectangular bunny teeth and big glasses. I'm ten years old and with that definitive piece of cultural context, the film begins. It turns out that was all it needed to have me hooked on to him.

Maybe it was because cable TV had only just come to India. Home-grown, all we had was Remo Fernandes and who's-that-guy "Dil Dhadke, Mera Dil Dhadke...". Exchange x number of Pepsi or Miranda caps for a Fido Dido poster. Or a cassette, the one with the Alannah Myles 'Black Velvet' song on it. And then of course MJ. And Madonna for those who liked their rock stars punky and spunky and in-your-face. And Billy Joel's Uptown Girl.

But Michael Jackson was a personal favourite. The 'Dangerous' tape was a cherished birthday gift - just right for an eleven-year-old: the cover sort of Goth-but-not, just a little bit 'bad' with dark colours and gold, but not overly so. The 'Thriller' video was definitive cool: all I remember of our tenth grade farewell party (apart from the mandatory 'Who the F is Alice' screaming) was my Crush doing the Moonwalk... justifying my impeccable taste in having selected him as the honored Object of My Affections.

This morning I am talking to a 22-year-old who is probably wondering about all the shock over Michael Jackson's death. When we were kids I don't remember being particularly disturbed by his nose or his colour or even knowing much about the darker Neverland Ranch aspects of his life. But growing up now, thinking of MJ is probably thinking about him as my friend does - post-Whiteness (and wondering why on earth), post-baby-dangling (and wondering why on earth), post-pedophilia charges (why on earth) and Neverland escapades (...). It's a whole different view. It's an adult view of a adult; not a child's view of a super star who did the Moonwalk.

Pink chaddis and other eye-catchers

February and March were crazy months in Bangalore. Following a whole host of attacks in Mangalore, there were some seven attacks on women in Bangalore as well. Brazen attacks, sometimes right in the middle of the day, pulling young women up (and assaulting them) for clothes they were wearing or languages they could not speak... or for no reason at all except that they were out, in a public space, as a woman.

Fearless Karnataka/Nirbhaya Karnataka was formed in late February: a bunch of friends and groups who came together at ALF one evening to try and frame a response to the recent madness. A website came up: www.baware.in and a series of events and petitions, including petitions to senior police officials and big events across the city.

The media was on the job, overtime. From the Pink Chaddi campaign to the Valentine's Day protests to the FKNK initiatives. An attempt at analysing their involvement in Infochange India, out recently.

The campaign was not defensive about its location as middle class and urban, and the media seemed overjoyed at their most feted demographic finally coming out onto the streets, ready to talk and happy to be photographed with provocative sloganeering. The middle class was making real news, and the English media was covering it every step of the way.

Read the entire article here.

Ban city

(Pic: The Hindu)
No dancing. No live music in places that serve alcohol. No partying beyond 11:30. No smoking in restaurants and bars. No very loud music.

Welcome to Bangalore, 2008.

Here's a story that Lalitha Kamat and I wrote, on the moral politics behind the protests and the laws, and how they take place upon the imagesof women's bodies, but also looking at the urban politics framing the background to the issue:

IT, BT and Bangalore's Moral Economy

A bit here:

The suggestion of a Shanghai-Singapore framework as a discretionary model that presumably discourages "sleazy girlie bars" while retaining the "stylish," "hip" nightclubs is another step along the pathway that has carved out the growth of Bengaluru along a deepening faultline. Since the liberalisation policies of the 90s at least, Bangalore has grown unevenly along a cleavage situating the Information Technology and Biotechnology (IT and BT) "corporate" boom on the one side, and the slower, older, more staid city on the other. The issues surrounding the imposition of these regulations are poised along this crisp divide, and occurring repeatedly in different ways with varying permutations (of class, dress and occupation) are images of women, stuck in this very verbal and angry tussle between various interest groups.

Bell Bajao

Breakthrough is a fantastic group that uses media for advocacy on rights issues and their new campaign, Bell Bajao, asks you to speak out about domestic violence. Go to their site and write something... here.

The site is becoming an incredible archive of material as well... I went to post on their blog right now and found YouTube clips, discussion on the law, thoughts on popular film, poetry and free-wheeling speech.

I posted. You should too.

Upper caste-lower caste

Pratiloma unions: the woman is of a higher caste than the man
Anuloma: Upper caste men are permitted sexual access to women of their own or lower castes

I read a fascinating article by Mary E. John in a question of silence? called 'Globalisation, Sexuality and the Visual Field' in which she says that pratiloma relationships tend to "be introduced through 'eve teasing' sequences, where class and gender are played off one another". About anuloma, she says "'Happy endings' demand that the heroine has learnt to subdue her 'uppity' ways, while the hero has his family and bloodline, and therefore also, fortune and respect, restored to him. In other words, if anuloma can appear as legitimate, even progressive love, pratiloma is approached through sexual harassment. Where the latter creates a certain sexual disturbance by rendering the play of power visible, the former more easily lends itself to the kind of idealisation of conjugality that is being currently promoted on a number of fronts".