From Taking Stances to Real Understanding

What years of knowledge about the rights of gay, lesbian or trasngender people could not do for me in terms of creating a transformation in attitude, was achieved by watching gay and LGBTQ romance shows. I was never someone who was opposed to ‘alternative sexualities’, but I always thought of their issues in terms of rights and in terms of sex. Gay relations for instance were always imagined understood in terms of – they are attracted to the same gender. I didn't always relate to it, I even sometimes found it odd, unrelatable. I could only say that well, there are different kinds of people, different realities and people have a right to be who they are. So standing for a gay person for instance, involved ‘taking a stance’. However after watching male love stories, there was not even any need to take a stance. my understanding extended from a sexual orientation definition, to romance, feelings, flirting, heartbreaks, loneliness, acceptance by family, aspirations for one’s own family and so on. The naturalness with which I felt an understanding was of another level. Somehow never having had a close gay friend I never accessed these things earlier.

Dan Levy the man who co-scripted the series Schitt’s Creek with his father, said something like this about his show. I wanted to create a world wherein everyone felt safe and had respect and place in that town in which the tale was told. He plays a gay character and a romantic relationship is also portrayed in the show. No one in that show is fighting for the right to be gay, the family, the neighbourhood are all at ease with it, other men are not uncomfortable around him and so on. This may be somewhat idealistic, but I feel that by writing and creating films or shows in this manner, we make it possible to imagine that what we think are really big issues or will make us awkward actually may not be so, or could easily be worked out. On the other hand, a narrative that is mostly about rights and struggle, creates two parties pitted against each other – obscuring the fact of how we live in shared worlds. The very structure of this narrative, compels each group in a sort of automated way – to stick to its guns.

I don’t mean that stories of struggle and rights are not important. Times matter too. In the 70s and 80s public content that was even sympathetic to gay or queer people focused more on their struggles, the prejudice and violence against them. And of course this was a reality. It still is, though perhaps a little less. It is probably the natural evolution of a social movement and its narrative to reach such a stage today, when rather than only fighting for space, stories are more and more about imagining coming out to one’s family, teenage love, romance, marriage or families for LGBTQ people.

Anyhow, this experience for me was a learning one. Very quickly we get into debates, we stand for or against issues. But such a support is in the shape of concepts, ideas. There is another joy in actually coming upon a lived reality of another, such that a ‘stance’ shifts to an ‘understanding’ or as something relatable. To take a different example, rather than simply saying that Pakistan too is a country with its own people and culture and is not simply a hub of terrorists, that we ought to be more understanding, watching a show such as Zindagi Gulzaar Hai, could make it immediately relevant to an Indian. College life, youth, family troubles, fashion, gender struggles, dating etc. all come alive in this show and make an obscured neighbor a little more relatable.

Shakeel Badayuni.. A time.. A mood

  Today I played my Mughal-e-Azam music cassette. I have until now managed to continue the playing of some cassettes (that are still working) on my philips cassette player 

Mughal-e-Azam's music is absolutely divine. Classical, Filmy, emotional, kathak thumris, Shayarana... Pardah nahin jabkoi khuda se, bandon se pardah karna kya... gets to me each time. I just started looking up Shakeel Badayuni's life story on wikipedia (yes that has become the first stop these days.. hopefully not always the last). he is the lyricist of the songs of this film. What a life this man had. what a beautiful contribution to life, to India, to music and emotion. 

I read that he had been given an education in the usual persian, arabic, urdu and hindi at home, as was common in many muslim homes. Really an education in the languages and literature in a home-based scenario with a strict but concerned teacher, is probably the most beautiful thing of the pre-modern era... a sort of intellectual luxury.  

Badayuni did not display an early bent towards poetry at a young age but when he went to study at Aligarh Muslim university he started taking part in inter-college mushairas and it turned out he was quite good at them. Imagine that these beautiful things used to happen in some of top universities... The wikipedia piece mentions that in those days (which is the 1930s and 40s, a period of nationalist ferment and also modern religious reform) shayars often used poetry to comment on the downtrodden sections of society and the betterment of all. Badayuni however was more inclined to romantic and heartfelt writing. Often we who have grown up later, think that shayari was only about weak emotion, soppy romanticism. we forget that it has had many other sides too. Even romance ought not to be taken lightly. Romance is after all about our highest ideals, our visions of the ideal life, not only for ourselves but our country, our world, the betterment of humanity. I recall that many a time my romantic visions involved meeting someone whom i loved and how we both would maybe set up a school, or open an organic farm, or set up and organise waste management and composting or some such crazy idea. change things, help people. my romance was always tied to some such activity as well. So romance is tied with idealism. In pride and prejudice romance was tied deeply with the question of how a man and women ought to treat each other and respect each other's intellect. for its time it was important idealism. 

The shayars at our universities were expressing their concerns about equality and social reform through their poetry... and no poetry is complete without the edge and black humor about the realities of life. Badayuni grew in such an age. I feel that at that time soooo many beautiful, unforgettable musicians, lyricists and screenplay writers emerged in India... many but surely not all of them muslims. They expressed not only a 'muslim' sensibility but the very poetry that india was at that time. 

What drove them? I feel that sometimes it happens this way... somewhere deep down the consciousness of a people living in a certain time is aware that the times they are living in are crucial, that they will never return, they will be gone forever. The ganga jumna sanskriti, the confluence of Indic, Hindu, Muslim and sikh sensibilities in northern India, were dying out in these years as independent India was marching ahead. So such people knew, without knowing, that they must pour out their entire creativity, their nostalgia, their entire knowledge because even poetry is knowledge - a model of relating with interiority. So they sang, and wrote and made stories which channelled the very mood and warp and woof of their times. These expressions carry an entire 'dharohar' (heritage) of a certain kind of personhood. funnily it emerges as its brightest just before it is going to be overrun... and then the memories drive the next generations... teaching them important tales, built on their own very bonfire.