Cloud Over Sundance

more about “Cloud Over Sundance“, posted with vodpod

Dear Aamir,

I think she’s trying to say she likes your work.

XOXO.

[Click here for Parts 1 & 3 from AnneCam]

 

Veer: Son of Mard, Conan‘s Bro

Salman Khan loves gladiators. He loves their mullets, their bulging muscles, the way they lop off body parts and dress in furs. If Dharmendra hadn’t frightened off the rest of Hindi herodom with his amazing legs in Dharam Veer, he’d probably even love their leather skirts. So when he teamed up with Vijay Galani, producer of his original gladiatorial opus Suryavanshi, and director Anil Sharma (Gadar) to give us Veer… well, hopes ran high. In my bosom if not in anyone else’s. It was going to be epic!

So how did it measure up against its forefathers – cult favorites Mard and Conan the Barbarian? Meh. Not so much.

The Evil Conquerors

Mard: The evil Brits bottle the blood of the vanquished in multicolored glass bottles. They make Dara Singh grind wheat (or was it drill for water? well, they make him turn a giant wheel anyway) for the whole country all by himself!

Conan: They make him turn a wheel by himself in the middle of nowhere too! He has thighs like tree trunks to prove it! And then they make him fight for his life and get him hookers before trying to kill him. Niiiice.

Veer: The evil Brits… make speeches about how they’re about make Indians slaves forever by teaching them English? Then they stand around and get killed? Lame.

Full of win: Mard!

Manhood is a Sacred Thing

Mard: His daddy carves it into his baby chest!

Conan: He learns it drilling in the desert all by himself while being whipped silly!

Veer: His daddy takes him out into the rain.

Full of win: Getting it carved into your baby chest makes for a pretty hardcore Mard!

The Father Son Conflict

Mard: There are misunderstandings! There are betrayals! There is separation! Father and son fight each other in an arena! Dara Singh might have worn a leather skirt. I was so exhausted by then, my poor brain can’t even remember.

Conan: Conan’s daddy done be killed. Aww.

Veer: Dadda (Mithun Chakraborty) likes to make out with Maa in public. Dadda and Veer do the Macarena before he throws Veer into tanks full of water. When Dadda and Veer fight, Veer feels each cut on Dadda’s body twice as much as he does his own. Veer cries.

Full of win: Veer stepped it up with the last minute groaning and the moaning but the sympathy vote goes to Conan.

The MAAAAAAAA!

Mard: Nirupa Roy. That is all.

Conan: Conan’s mommy done be killed. Aww.

Veer: Neena Gupta looks concerned, gives birth, looks concerned, uncomfortably shakes her booty, looks concerned, cries. What? She never loses her eyesight, pours lead in her ears, goes insane, anoints her son for battle or tells him to remember his sanskar? Have these people never met a mother?

Full of win: Haven’t you watched American Idol, Conan? The sympathy card can’t be cashed in all the time, you know. Besides, Nirupa Roy always wins. Because she is The Maa, bitches.

The Man Say What?

Mard: “Mard ko dard nahin hota.” Growf.

Conan: Conan don’t talk. Talking’s for girlie men.

Veer: “Jahan se pakdoonga, wahi se paanch ser ghosht nikaal ke rakhoonga.” Roar!

Full of win: Was Veer a butcher in his last janam? Give it to Mard!

The Girl Says Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Mard: Bow! Bow to the Mard-ess! She has a whip! She likes to tan – on top of pagodas in her swimsuit! She has a convertible and she will run over yo mamma with it! She will turn you into party entertainment! She likes it when you get so kinky with her, baby!

Conan: Some chick with no clothes and terrible taste in men.

Veer: Some chick with too many clothes and terrible taste in men.

Full of win: The Mard-ess! I’d be afraid to give it to someone else!

Fine, Fine, Finery!

Mard: Whatever the Wonder Dog and Bahadur could round up, really.

Conan: Nekkid is a lifestyle choice.

Veer: After careful research, Anna Singh threw out the research.

Full of win: The clothes were by far the best thing about Veer. I think I asked the universe, “WHAT IS SHE WEARING?” at least a dozen times. Someday, Bollywood will stop dressing their cast like this and then I will weep.

The Supporting Cast Gets One Close Up Shot

Mard: Bahadur the faithful steed! Brownie or Moti or Whatsis the Wonder Dog! Loyal commoners who die for the cause!

Conan: Snakes! Big ones, small ones, stiff ones, all sorts! Nekkid women! Humongous men!

Veer: The results of Anil Sharma’s raid of an Ashutosh Gowarikar set.

Full of win: Veer gets it hands down. Sohail Khan made me think twice, but really – gotta hand it to them. Never have so many well known supporting actors gotten so little to do.

The Villain Says Muahahahahaha!

Mard: Prem Naam Hai Mera! Prem Chopra! Muahahahah! Specialities include cross, double cross, cross stitch and double stitch. Fine embroidery optional. (Listen, it’s Mard – let’s not look for sense, mmmkay?)

Conan: James Earl Jones is the voice of DOOOOOOOM! He has snakes. He is a snake! He has virgins who will kill themselves if he asks them to. If you go to his parties, he’ll make you eat Soylent Green soup. He will fucking stare you to death and then cut your motherfucking head off! He has the power!

Veer: Jackie Shroff is the man with the golden arm. Beyonce called and says if you want it, you shoulda put a ring on it. Oh-uh-uh-oh.

Full of win: Veer! Ha. Kidding. Conan, of course!

***

The Final Tally

Not Veer.

 

My Mother’s Generation is Awesome

Because they will tell it like it is.

Post-screening Sundance Q&As are frequently gushy affairs, sometimes to the point of awkwardness… But last night’s The Killer Inside Me conversation veered off-script in a big way. The first question came from a woman in her 60s, who demanded to know how the film made it into the festival at all. She then proceeded to berate Sundance for the decision, her tirade going on for about 20 glorious seconds, during which it elicited some applause and far more jeers from the crowd. She then stormed out of the Eccles Theater. Director Michael Winterbottom, meanwhile, stood nonplussed at the dais. “Any … other questions?” the moderator asked.

The matter of the movie aside (it’s based on a Jim Thompson novel – I mean Stephen freaking King thinks he was over the top and he is not wrong!), it seems to me that women of my generation are shockingly easy to shut up. How many times have I or women I know chosen to just sit in passive silence, all the while seething on the inside with all these things we’d love to say, just in case verbalizing our true feelings would make us “look bad”.

We don’t want to be that crazy lady who yells at people, we don’t want to sound bitchy, what if someone makes a funny about hormones and periods, what if everybody laughs, it’s not nice to hurt people’s feelings, oh God people are going to judge me, etc.

And then there’s my mom’s generation – less educated, less privileged, less traveled, less almost everything. Except for balls. Piss them off and they will take. you. down. Maybe it comes out of fighting for everything that women like me take for granted coz it got served to me on a platter. If it’s age related, on the other hand, I can only hope it’s contagious.

Meanwhile, I want video of the Winterbottom takedown! Do not fail me, internet!

 

Apocalypse Now

Arjun Rampal won a National Award. For scowling at Farhan Akhtar and pretending to play the guitar acting.

Apparently Katrina Kaif would like one too. And she’s got the handloom saree to prove it. But what about the frown lines? Dilemma!

 

Striker: Easy Listening

I have no idea what the movie Striker – or Strikah as the title song calls it – is about other than it stars Siddharth, but if I had to make a guess I’d say kirkit? Or maybe it’s about an assassin because it apparently also has Aditya Panscholi in it and I don’t think he’s played anything else in forever.

What I do know is that it has some pretty amazing music. From an eclectic mix of people including my least favorite rapper ever: Blaaze.

Knock me down with a feather. Maybe he only sucks when he gets with AR Rahman? I’ll even forgive him the gratuitous remix of his title song – those things are pretty much the rule these days aren’t they? I don’t know why. Are the honchos of the music companies under the impression that the audience craves them in some way or are they just getting more bang for their buck by scuttling whatever plans someone else might have had for remixing their oh-so-special tracks? Do they have special acoustics in their offices that makes it perpetually sound like the 1970s? Coz not every song is worth it, you know.

Anyhoo…Amit Trivedi keeps up the excellent work from last year with Siddharth’s spoken word effort in Bombay Bombay. And sounding like Trivedi and Blaaze’s love child is Yuvan Shankar Raja’s Haq Se.

Moving towards the more traditional end of the spectrum is Swanand Kirkire with Maula, which is an enjoyable track but is terribly outshone by its company who definitely brought their A-game. However, Kirkire makes up for lost ground with his wordsmithing skills.

Vishal Bhardwaj then teams up with Gulzar to show him how it’s done with Yun Hua. When the man can take a song that by rights belongs on a Hallmark commercial – or some other product that makes Young Love flip their hair a lot and punch the air in celebration – and melt your heart with it, you know things are good. Could anybody stand up to these two?

Funny you should ask. Because the person who does the most interesting work on Striker is Shailendra Barve. He gets two songs and he makes them count. After what seems like a long time, Sunidhi Chauhan gets to do something different with her voice  in the quietly reflective Pia Sanvara. And it is Barve who composed what is the standout track on this album for me: the semi-classical Chham Chham. Here’s something after a good long while that actually asks Sonu Nigam to do more than coast.

To me, it sounds like the song I always wanted AR Rahman’s Kehna Hi Kya from Bombay to be. If it manages to capture the zeitgeist a la Amit Trivedi’s Kavita Seth-crooned Iktara from Wake Up Sid, I bet you’re all going to be mighty sick of this song in the near future. The good news is that I’ve been listening to this song, alongside that other recent Vishal Bhardwaj gem, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan’s rich caramel-y Dil to Bachcha Hai from Ishqiya, on a near constant loop for the past week and it still hasn’t palled.

This is something I would buy. If the movie’s even half as interesting as its album, you can sign me up. But then you already knew that. 2010′s off to a flying start. What’s everybody else listening to these days? I need weekend recommendations!

 

Mahi Way: I See Pigs Fly

Mahi Talwar (Pushtiie S) is young, pretty and smart. She wants to be a serious journalist covering serous topics. In the meantime, she’s putting in her hours at Delhi-based ladymag “Trend” where she writes an agony aunt column and is paid in all the temp-work and humiliation she can take. Why? Because she’s fat.

Not pleasantly plump or a little overweight. Fat. And if anyone knows anything about Punjabi girls in Delhi, it’s that that kind of weight is only acceptable after she’s gotten married to and reproduced with some teenager who’s in line to inherit his daddy’s business. Then, it’s golgappa city, baby, because chickadee has done. her. ever-lovin’. job! She’s hooked her man and popped out a kid! Pile on the pounds before that holy state of affairs though, and you’re just the eyesore that’s going to break the family’s back.

Mahi is convinced she’s never going to find her Prince Charming at this rate and her over-critical mother (Suparna Marwah) shares her belief. To severely undermining levels. Add to that an unrequited crush on the hottest guy who doesn’t even know she’s alive (and who prefers to date six foot tall blonde amazons anyway), and you wouldn’t take Mahi’s life if it came free with a packet of biscuits.

So how does she deal? With liberal doses of her favorite cookies, her ditsy-but-hot BFF Roshni (Monica Khanna), chocolate, a gazillion pairs of shoes that have a habit of making her trip at unfortunate moments, whatever she can find in the fridge, romantic movies (from the Yash Chopra stable, natch), all the golgappas she can chow down and her other BFF Sid (Mark Farokh Parekh) the gay fashion designer who is totally hot, doesn’t lisp, lachko-matko when he walks or dress in Hello Kitty colors.

Three episodes into its run, what I find most unbelievable about Mahi Way is that it’s on Indian television. I give both Indian TV and producer Aditya Chopra a fair amount of grief for their increasingly substandard produce – albeit heretofore in separate fields. So I wasn’t expecting their synergy to result in anything good. I was wrong.

Mahi Way has all the trademark YRF-isms that have turned its movies into such a chore and a parody of its Bollywood heyday in the recent past: from the “cunningly” inserted footage of old Yash Chopra romances, references to the cult of Romantic SRK, a Punjabi joint family presided over by a sweetums grandmother (Alka Mehta), etc. But head writer Devika Bhagat (with dialogues by Anvita Dutt Gopalan) and director Nupur Asthana actually pull it off.

The father (Ikhlaque Khan) is the gentlemanly type who can never win in a family situation and has already made his peace with it; the mother is a total harpy who is about as far away from the Mother India ideal as you can get – “Sometimes my mother looks at me and wishes she’d practiced family planning,” Mahi muses as an aside. Her elder sister (Amrita Raichand) is a nightmare: the popular girl from school whose life has gone exceedingly well and is now set into the habit of rubbing it in her dorky sister’s face – upon being told of her sister’s decision to enter the Mrs. Delhi pageant, Mahi imagines herself standing on the stage with a sash labeled “Miss Nobody”.

It’s one of the reasons why Mahi is so endearing as a character – she’s funny because her humor is of the scorched earth variety. Underneath the prickly layers of the sulky fat chick who snarls at strangers who cut in line is a decent human being who’s hardly ever given a chance to be recognized as such because all anybody can notice about her is her weight.

Mahi Way has a habit of deftly switching back and forth between the truly ridiculous (the “perfect for Mahi” underwear barons The Chhadhas, for example) and the truly heartbreaking (the hippo arc) without so much as a hitch in its stride. “That really wasn’t necessary,” she tells a date who leaves her with a nasty comment about her weight after a really disastrous evening. “Yes it was,” he says, echoing all the other people in her life who go straight for the blubber as an easy way to put her down.

Not that Mahi doesn’t have issues of her own when it comes to people. Or men. She’s obsessed with her crush because he wears expensive clothes, wears an expensive cologne, and is the kind of guy who would make her mother and sister’s eyes bug out if she ever brought him home. We have a better idea about the unknown stranger she’s constantly bumping into and skirmishing with all over town, than her dream man who works in the same building as her magazine.

This is, of course, deliberate but like I said earlier, this is a show that isn’t afraid to embrace the cliche so that it can put its own stamp on it. For instance, the wise old Yash Chopra grandmother who likes to overshare about her romantic past is very much in play here – but she balances it out by assuring Mahi that her Prince Charming must be on his way. “You know what idiots men can be about asking for directions,” is her way of cheering up her granddaughter.

So yes, Mahi Way sounds like an uneasy cross between Ugly Betty and Sex and the City. What of it? They make it work, with better production values than you’ve seen on Indian TV before, and have a channel on Youtube so you can watch it. That’s all that matters.

 

I Need a Binky

What on earth? A “genital cosmetic colorant”? This is a thing?

I guess it’ll go great with my fake boobs, my pasted on eyelashes, my hand-drawn eyebrows, my collagen-pufffed lips, my made-to-order “just like that of my favorite celebrity” nose, my lipo’d thighs, my chemically peeled butt (to remove cellulite, duh!), etc. And then maybe I too can look like this! I’ll be my very own robot! Beat that, Japanese scientists!

However, it’s an ill wind that blows no good and thus we can thank “My Pink Button” for this post:

The kit contains 20 of the cheapest eye shadow applicators you will ever see, the kind where the foam is kind of wonkily glued on to the plastic stem. Also included is a small vial of pink powder, helpfully labeled “Marilyn.” I chose this shade because I felt like my vagina could most identify with her: pill-popping, confused, and crammed into small garments…I put the product on and let it sit as the instructions advised. Things were okay for a few seconds, and then…THE BURNING! I have certainly felt worse, but it was very noticeable. The instructions assure me that this burning is “due to the ingredients reacting to your bodies own PH balance which is normal and will go away upon rinsing off the colorant.”

Hmm. You know, I’ve never felt any kind of burning in that area and don’t really feel the need to start now. Pass!

I was going to laugh until I remembered this scene from a Jilly Cooper novel in which the woman actually tries something similar. So apparently this is a real fear that women have? I’m beginning to wonder if someone’s going to show up on my doorstep and ask me to turn in my female card on grounds of insufficient body image issues.

 

The Englishman’s Cameo: An Interview

I’ve always considered historical detective fiction one of the hardest genres to pull off. Unlike historical romantic suspense, you can’t depend on the characters’ chemistry to take the heat off your plotting skills. Similarly, while historical fiction allows you to take interesting little detours into intriguing deadends as a writer, the “detective” part of this genre demands you hew to a certain pace that tends to cut out the excess bits, no matter how much you love them. It’s a bit like creating a whole another universe for a fantasy novel, complete with strange customs and languages, except you’re stuck with actual events and yet have to create a real feel for it in your reader.

I don’t know why anybody would ever sign on for such grief, but I’m always glad when they do. Especially when someone does it as well as Madhulika Liddle (filmblogistan knows her better as DustedOff)  in The Englishman’s Cameo.

In the book, Muzzafar Jang is a minor aristocrat in Emperor Shahjahan’s decadent, not to mention nearly bankrupt, court in Delhi. His taste for low company (read: commoners who do a bit more with their time than cultivate respectable vices like courtesans, opiates and pretty young boys) leads him deeper and deeper into the shadowy underbelly of a slowly rotting empire when he involves himself in the false arrest of a friend on charges of murder.

From its opening scenes at the Red Fort, or the Qila-i-Mubarak as it was called back then, to Jang’s hilariously furtive jonesing for a cup of coffee, Cameo had me hooked and didn’t let go until it was done. At the end, there were just so many things I wanted to know, I decided to ask Madhulika if she’d answer a few questions.

And she did! Thanks Madhulika:

Q. 1. What made you choose the last years of Shahjahan’s reign as the historical setting for The Englishman’s Cameo?

A. This was the result of a combination of interest and necessity—I’d decided I wanted to write a historical detective novel, so to make life easier for myself, I had to set it in a time period that I liked, and which wouldn’t be too difficult to research. Shahjahan’s reign in Delhi is ideal for this: it’s colourful and fascinating (the court at that time was probably the richest in the world), and thanks to contemporary travellers and diarists, there’s plenty of material available for research.

Q. 2. Was the research difficult?

A. Not for the broader aspects of the setting. The political background; how people lived; what they ate and drank and read—all of that isn’t difficult to find. The really tough bit was to figure out the obscure details. For instance, how much paperwork was prevalent in administration at that time (plenty. I discovered that the invention of paper was one of the technical advancements that enabled the Mughals, and the earlier medieval dynasties that ruled from Delhi, to control the administration of their empires). Other things that took me hours to unearth: how the Mughals drank coffee; what their boats looked like; what porcelain they used… and more.

Q. 3. In your acknowledgments you mention the historical walks you took with your sister. I grew up in Delhi and I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t even know there was such a thing! Do you have recommendations or a favorite part?

A. Yes, there are people in Delhi who conduct historical and heritage walks, usually for a very nominal sum. The Delhi Chapter of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), for example, does fixed-route walks on weekends in areas such as Shahjahanabad, Mehrauli, Nizamuddin and the Lodhi Gardens. So does the India Habitat Centre, though they tend to explore some very obscure places as well. Among my favourite walks are in Mehrauli (Delhi’s oldest continuously inhabited area), Shahjahanabad (especially Katra Khushal Rai, Naughara and Namakharam ki Haveli), and Nizamuddin: all very historic areas where many of the buildings are fairly well preserved.

Q. 4. What drew you towards historical detective fiction as a genre?

A. I have to confess I’m nuts about history. And about detective fiction. So the combination’s irresistible! I read my first historical detective novel (Robert van Gulik’s The Chinese Maze Murders) when I was a kid, and I’ve been fascinated by the genre ever since: the exotic nature of a historical novel—a way of life that’s alien, and often surprisingly similar to our own—combined with a socio-economic and political scenario that one’s (usually) read about only in school or college text books: I think that’s so amazing. Used as a backdrop for a good old-fashioned whodunit, I think a historical setting can be both informative as well as entertaining.

Q. 5. I know from your movie blog that you’re a fan of noir. And I thought I could see the influence in your work. Was I just imagining things?

A. No, I guess not! I love mysteries, noir or not. Personally, I don’t think The Englishman’s Cameo is as dark as a noir film would be, but some of the elements are definitely there. Unintentionally, I may add. It just so happened that after the first draft was written, I realised the plot and the main character needed spicing up. The first thing that came to mind was to include noir-ish elements (probably because I’m familiar with them?), and so that’s what happened.

Q. 6. Speaking of film noir, as a Joseph Cotten fan struggling against the Humphrey Bogart juggernaut, I have to ask – who’s your favorite? Or what are your favorite noir movies?

A. Frankly, I’m not much of a fan of Bogart (great actor, but not a favourite of mine!) or Joseph Cotten. But yes, I do like noir a lot. Some of Hitchcock’s darker films—Rebecca, Spellbound, Rope—are among my favourites. Also Gaslight, The Night of the Hunter, Pursued (though that’s noir crossover, Western + noir), Crossfire, and the unusual The Crimson Kimono, which is noir + romance + anti-racism. Two of my favourite Kurosawa films are superb noir: Stray Dog and High and Low.

Q. 7. There’s something charmingly mid-20th century pop-fiction about The Englishman’s Cameo (and I mean that as a complete compliment because I love that stuff and constantly bemoan the deterioration of talent that has made barely literate trash rocket to the top of bestseller lists these days), and one of the things that struck me about it, especially given its title, was the way it took the standard “white man in exotic climes gets caught up in shenanigans” story and flipped it. I’m so used to reading novels in which Muzaffar Jang would have been the brownie supporting character in the story of William Terry, ace English gunner on a personal quest. Was this deliberate or did the story just naturally evolve to that point?

A. Another confession: the book had no white characters to start off with. From the beginning, I’d decided my hero was going to be a Mughal nobleman. Then someone at a publishing house, to whom I narrated the plot, suggested I bring in a European—for a mundane reason: it would make the book more attractive for publishers abroad. I was initially hesitant, but after I did some research and discovered that there were a fair number of Europeans bumming about in India at the time, I decided to give it a try, mainly because I thought it would make the book more interesting, foreign markets or no. Thus William Terry (whose last name, by the way, is the same as that of an English traveller called Edward Terry who visited India in the 17^th century).

Q. 8. Are we looking at the first of a series? (You should totally do a series.)

A. Thank you! And yes, this is going to be a series. Right now I’m writing a set of short stories, all of which feature Muzaffar Jang, the detective of The Englishman’s Cameo.

Q. 9. One of the things that made me laugh was Muzaffar’s addiction to coffee. Was that a sly take on detectives with bad habits like House with his Vicodin and Holmes with his cocaine?

A. What’s a detective without a vice?! Muzaffar started off being too goody-goody: he had to be given some weaknesses. I didn’t like the idea of a hero who was an opium addict or partial to pretty boys, so (since I’m a coffee addict too), coffee seemed like a good option.

Q. 10. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this! One last question for those who liked The Englishman’s Cameo and would like something in its vein while they’re waiting for your next book: any recommendations?

A. There are loads of historical detectives out there, and some of them are really, really good. For a sensitive, warm style of writing and a detective whom I instinctively liked a lot, I’d suggest any of the Brother Cadfael books by Ellis Peters. Peter Tremayne’s Sister Fidelma series, about an ancient Irish princess/lawyer/nun, are excellently plotted; and Robert van Gulik’s novels and short stories about the medieval Chinese magistrate Judge Dee are fabulously rich in detail—besides being superb whodunits. Also check out Lindsey Davis’s Falco books, a series featuring a detective in ancient Rome. Excellent, and very funny.

Other writers who mostly write historical detective fiction: C J Sansom, Ariana Franklin, PC Doherty, Boris Akunin (look out for his Sister Pelagia series, in which the detective is a nun in Czarist Russia), Giles Brandreth (his detective is Oscar Wilde) and Jason Goodwin. In India, I’ve rarely come across these in bookstores, but they’re easily available on Amazon.

 

Duh.

And so the ghost of internet campaigns past, finds a new home. And for once it’s entertaining. And doesn’t require me to eat or send foodstuffs to ungrateful networks.

 

“Rape”. That’s The Word You’re Looking For

The cover story of this week’s Outlook (King Leer) is all kinds of gross. Where do I even begin?

The fact that this kind of rampant exploitation takes place and nobody even thinks it merits a look-see until somebody in the media feels a need to boost their ratings or increase their circulation or whatever?

The fact that it all sounds so sordid and smutty that it reads like a really badly written internet rape fantasy (or maybe the plots of several no-budget porn movies shot in somebody’s garage in Kerala – or wherever the fuck the desi porn industry is situated these days)?

The fact that all the stories are peppered with “expert” testimonies that repeatedly hold to the POV that a woman’s best chance to succeed in India is on her back – to an extent that it begins to take on shades of an universal truism?

The fact that politicians are actually giving each other props on how best they handle being sexual harassing, adultering, raping, pussy-hounds? “OMG, ji! Your skills as a sociopath are amazing!”

Interestingly, most political observers agree—and this includes those from the BJP—that Congressmen tend to conduct such relationships with greater finesse than those from their main rival political party. A civil servant from UP, who worked both with Kalyan Singh and the currently headline-hitting N.D. Tiwari, had this to say: “Congressmen are better at compartmentalising their lives, allotting time for work and play. Kalyan Singh’s biggest mistake was that he allowed his relationship to consume him and his political career. N.D. Tiwari, on the other hand, juggled many female interests and administration deftly.” Of course, Tiwari has finally been outed, but only after living a rather full 86 years, and surviving tales of his successor in UP, Veer Bhadra Singh, washing the Lucknow secretariat with “gangajal” before taking office, to remove the “Tiwari taint”. Indeed, a senior BJP leader speaks almost enviously of two senior, married cabinet ministers in the current UPA government for their deftness in pursuing sexual relationships without attracting the ugly odour of scandal: “What champs they are—X and Y.”

The fact that I’m pretty sure I just solved one of their blind items and it’s freaking me the fuck out to think I might actually know one of these scumbags?

It is to barf.

But even worse is their follow up article that focuses on how sleeping your way into power is an ancient Indian tradition. It reads as an extended profile of some lady from the CPI(M) called Ramnika Gupta, apparently the only one with the balls to give damn-the-consequences no-holds-barred quotes.

I don’t know what the fuck kind of tone the article’s author Sheela Reddy was going for, but I’ve seldom been more disturbed. Ms. Gupta’s relentless efforts to couch her reminisces in Free Love Hippie terms fails rather spectacularly as soon as she starts going into details and within a matter of seconds just turns bone-jarringly creepy. After “cuddling” with the Chief Minister of Bihar to get her job done, apparently

she agreed to visit the state Congress chief, Raju Mishra, in his home to put forward Sahay’s recommendation. This time, she says, she had to pay a higher price. She let him have his way and did not complain. “The only choice for a woman starting in politics is to either quit or accept the fact that she has to sleep with some of them at least,” she says. “You have to compromise until you are in a position to reject them.” What she could do, however, was to try and avoid being anywhere alone with the BPCC chief. For her compliance, he nominated her as Bihar’s representative at the Jaipur AICC meet in 1966.

This pleasant interlude of business-as-usual is followed by another in which she is confronted by a stark naked Neelam Sanjiva Reddy who proceeds to rape her in his hotel room, after which she switches parties to one in which she is still expected to sleep with people if she wants to get results but actually gets to choose the men she must please in the sack.

Of course, this only lasted as long as she didn’t dump one of those men. The resulting nastiness sent her to another Chief Minister whose primary attraction was that he wouldn’t allow anyone to rape her. Please keep in mind that this is a woman who, while all this was going on, could apparently muster up “a hundred truckloads of people for political rallies”.

Which brings me to two things:

One, what the fuck is wrong with these men? If you’re making appointments to meet strange women in your office at 4 a.m. (!!!) for a bit of a cuddle and a kiss… dude, you’ve got problems. And the kind of society that turned you into a furtive 4 a.m. cuddler has even greater problems. The kind that can’t be washed away with any amount of freakin’ gangajal.

What really strikes me about all these men, apart from their rampant rapeyness, is their completely off-the-charts servitude to the power-sex equation. Not only do these men apparently feel sex, consensual or nonconsensual, is one of the perks of the job but their complete and utter ineptitude at it is staggering.

I always thought the movie villains who ask for sex in return for favors given were hilariously cartoonish. Real life villains of that sort must have at least a little bit of polish, yes? The answer is apparently: no. They really are the kind of bozos who take off their clothes and swagger out of their bedroom to pounce on their latest victim.

I have to wonder if these men think this is the only way they’ll ever get women to have sex with them. “Bone me and I’ll give you stuff. All sorts of stuff. Stuff that you haven’t even asked for. Just bone me! Somebody! Anybody! No? Well, then, I order you to!” And it sounds as though everyone’s rationalized it to the point where they don’t even see it as rape.

Q: In what universe is being a midwife – a midwife! WTF?! -  code for “fair game for sexual harrassment”?

A: The universe controlled by our politicians and civil servants.

Two, “rape”. They probably left it out for legal reasons in which case let me just say – when a person is forced to have sex with another person? The technical term for the act is “rape”.

Ramnika Gupta has clearly been through a lot of shitty things in her life and she doesn’t need me to pile on or tell her what’s what at this late date, but sweetheart, it’s pretty damn clear what happened to you and it wasn’t sleeping to the top: it was rape. Yes, you were assaulted and the degree of that assault was rape.

If you’ve actually chosen to achieve success on your back, then that’s one thing. I think it’s a crappy way to do it and it hurts others of your gender along the line but what do I know? I have a non-traditional life and I enjoy vast amounts of privilege. Ignore me. But it seems to me that if achieving success or job security on your back is simply a matter of you working the “system”, then it’s a whole another thing from you making a choice.

It’s this little thing called rape. Use the goddamned word. It’s real, it’s ugly, it’s important.

“Either do it without guilt or don’t,” is apparently Ms. Gupta’s mantra when it comes to trading sex for favors. It seems to me that she has precious little to feel guilty about. And the people who actually did stuff they should have felt guilty about, didn’t feel any.