In a culture that thrives on the idea of choice, it seems reasonable to want to choose to wear a bikini over a headscarf. I say this with an awareness that this is my personal opinion. I am not interested in anyone agreeing or disagreeing with me. If someone is, then it is just the way the world is-people agree and disagree all the time.
But I did not grow up in a culture where wearing the bikini was on obvious choice. In my family the hijab or the burqa as it is called (mind not the burkha) was a way of life for my grandmother, aunts and cousins. My mother modified this tradition in the years we lived in Delhi by covering her head with a milder cotton gauze cloth rather than the black one. But even now I have nieces and sisters who wear the hijab/headscarf.
For a long time I was judgmental about those in my family who would cover themselves. It sort of bordered on a certain kind of understanding of them and I felt that they were not too brave. I would wonder why don;t they rebel and react. What makes some women so accepting of whatever is offered to them.
And then I came to America. This was 2009.
I am still wondering what has happened in these two years that in Feb 2012 I ordered my first headscarf.
I don't know if I want to wear it forever but I most definitely want to celebrate this feeling of walking on the streets bearing a strange anonymity. It seems like a practice that defies mechanisms of surveillance and it also takes away from the pain of being watched all the time.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
A Separation: A Beautiful Film
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjTkXGRhy9w
To say that I found this film beautiful would not be enough. Nor would it do justice to the layers with which the story is told. A very rare exploration of a middle aged man dealing with divorce, a daughter and a father suffering from Alzeimers, and a very human exploration at that. In the whole way divorce in Muslim cultures has been represented and understood, it has been the woman at the hands of a man and Shariah law.
Here is a rare and unique story of breakdown and the impossibility of dividing what we love and share.
The performances are brilliant beyond words and because I am doing a class on Actor/Director Improvisational Collaborations this semester, so much of the process of creating those performances was clearer. There were lines that just couldn't have been written and there were moments that had emerged out from developing backstories and subtext.
It is a pleasure to watch such a work of art and honesty.
To say that I found this film beautiful would not be enough. Nor would it do justice to the layers with which the story is told. A very rare exploration of a middle aged man dealing with divorce, a daughter and a father suffering from Alzeimers, and a very human exploration at that. In the whole way divorce in Muslim cultures has been represented and understood, it has been the woman at the hands of a man and Shariah law.
Here is a rare and unique story of breakdown and the impossibility of dividing what we love and share.
The performances are brilliant beyond words and because I am doing a class on Actor/Director Improvisational Collaborations this semester, so much of the process of creating those performances was clearer. There were lines that just couldn't have been written and there were moments that had emerged out from developing backstories and subtext.
It is a pleasure to watch such a work of art and honesty.
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