From a stereotyping hypocrite...

Arnab’s voice rises up, as he dramatically bellows out “Your channel poses a question; a question that the nation has in mind. Is Bollywood perpetuating stereotypes…” And the debate continues, with panelists desperately attempting to complete a sentence without being cut short by Arnab. The questions are rhetorical perhaps; he appears to have no interest in the answers. He seems more resolute on dramatically shooting shouting out more questions in relatively higher pitches of his ear-splitting voice. One of the panelists is evidently stifling a smile at the drama happening; it isn’t just me finding the talk funny.

Down south, everyone is all enraged. At ShahRukh Khan for Chennai Express. I suspect it’s mostly because of his earlier antics such as his famed “Enna rascala dai mind it” which ignorant people recited repeatedly in pride, to show the Tamilians they knew a new language. The rage, I think mostly about the men ShahRukh is flanked by. How comical the state would be if Tamil men actually don gaudy lungis while sporting a mammoth, hairy pot belly that causes the lungi line to drop to a massive U and Tamil women sounded like Deepika! What if it wasn't just Vadivelu walking around in boxers that reveal their unabashed self below the folded lungi. It would be a "bokwas" state if it was Shah Rukh’s way in actuality. Oh did you notice the difference in skin color between the whites at the forefront and the Tamils surrounding, in the poster? The contrast is starker than in my grandmother’s ‘contrast pattu sarees’. Bring in a few more whites and rearrange them; Voila: a human chess board. Someone tweets, “The men in Chennai Express look like the cohorts of Tamil movie villains.” and I wonder why no one ever called that stereotyping. Who said bad Tamil men aren't fair-skinned? In the same Tamil movies, the women always manage to look like walking goddesses. They even make us forget that they are just walking figurines mostly a result of the brilliance of make-up artists, sellers of cosmetics and Veet of course. Poor men, even their stereotypes are ugly.

But big deal! These are movies after all. Similar to what a caricature is of a person, an unreal and hyperbolic representation of reality, like this movie, exaggerates aspects of the subject it represents. If we can enjoy comics, if Anna Hazare is okay with cartoons that give him a mammoth sized parrot nose, we got to learn to be okay with wearing lungis on screen. How sad is it if we aren't okay with a joke made out of us? If the comedy isn't hilarious enough, laugh at the attempt or the movie itself. I did that watching Aiyya and it was a jolly good evening. 

Talking about stereotyping.. to the richer nations, India is that crowded picture that TLC paints of us: we pray to cows, charm snakes, read palms and prophesize, spend hours in the yoga room, ride buffalos and horses on the roads, sit on the pavement dressed in rags and scream things raucously in the already cacophonous street where vehicles try to find a way to get through the stubborn crowds. We are too many people and too small a land that we can mostly be found in herds doing the aforementioned. It was funny when Oprah got her backsides kicked and handed to her after her melodramatic show of poverty in India and not so much when Slum Dog Millionaire was resented for its biased exposé of a few aspects handpicked from the massive arsenal of “the world’s most diverse country”. Anyone stereotypes us, we get all mad; we run on the roads, burn effigies and paint their pictures with coal. And our channel calls Harsha Bhogle or Khushbhoo or any person they find, so Arnab can do what he does: let’s not talk about that further. The whole of India jumps up and down. And then in the evening, we sit down for tea. We talk about the world and politics and then about countries like Somalia. Arrey you don’t know Somalia? It is that country with malnourished children and anorexic people. It has dangerous, life-threatening insects too; it’s in Africa after all.

Stereotyping is an amalgam of partial comprehension, ignorance, creativity and a lot of exaggeration. It’s human to classify and stereotype. We can’t abstain from it, yet we make a loud hoo-ha when it’s not us that’s doing the doing. What hypocrisy!

And I talk about hypocrisy: again, what hypocrisy!