"He Plays Herself" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (12 July 2015)

On seeing the billboards for Francis de Tuem’s Reporter, one would be forgiven for thinking that the title character of the currently running tiatr was meant to be a man, or the writer-director himself. Indeed, de Tuem and several other men feature prominently on the advertising materials. This notwithstanding, it is women who play the most important roles in the play that pulls no punches in remarking on present-day politics in Goa. One could make the obvious comment about gender hierarchies and portrayals in the genre and, undoubtedly, Reporter does participate in the usual relegation of women to traditional roles, especially “in the context of the construction of community identity,” as Rowena Robinson observes in “Interrogating Modernity, Gendering ‘Tradition’: Teatr Tales from Goa” (2009: 508). Yet, de Tuem’s tiatr employs gender in other ways, too, as I shall point out.

A political satirist, de Tuem is no stranger to controversy. In August 2009, the tiatrist found himself to be the subject of political drama, offstage, when he was arrested following a complaint lodged against him by MLA Francis ‘Mickky’ Pacheco. That the artist shares a name with the politician is the least of the coincidences as echoed in that oft-repeated adage about life, art, and imitation, one made even more curious by the fact that Pacheco is himself now in prison. Focusing on the machinations of a political family headed by a wily matriarch, de Tuem’s Reporter mines the recent political histories of Goa and India to deliver a drama that brings to mind the Churchill and Nehru-Gandhi dynasties among others. It is not only within the main plot that incumbent politicians find themselves parodied, but they are also directly skewered in several sub-plots and cantaram or songs, which make up the episodic nature of the tiatr form. The counterpart to Aplonia Rodrigues, the conniving matriarchal politician, is the reporter Anita – the chief protagonist whose foremost commitment is to journalistic integrity.

Even so, it is no stretch to say that the character of Anita is under conceived, for she has no developmental arc within the play and often comes across as being a bit one-note in her professional ardour, even as Anita, the actress playing the eponymous role, acquits herself marvellously. Instead, it is the director himself who takes centre stage. His many appearances between scenes to deliver politically observant cantaram about caste, the beef-ban, the ghar wapsi debacle, and various other current issues, serve as a transgression of the fourth wall and bear testimony to the astuteness of the vibrant Konkani art form in engaging with all things au courant. Considering the asides as part of the larger performance, and the use of contemporary phenomena as fodder for the play’s script and songs, de Tuem evidently stages himself as a reporter commenting on politics in Goa. Therein, the otherwise underdeveloped character of the female reporter functions as an extension of the performative writer-director himself, and the motif of the reporter bridges the asides with the main plot by emphasising political commentary as theatrical subject matter. 

 

 Despite this transgender continuity through reportage, there is no doubt that while sometimes disrupting traditional gender roles, Reporter perpetuates patriarchy. If de Tuem locates himself more prominently than his female complement, Anita’s characterisation as an independent professional woman is at odds, for example, with a song about live-in relationships where an unmarried woman is chastised for living immorally with her boyfriend. As Robinson notes, tiatr regards women as the lynchpin to “[t]he familial domain [which] is perceived as the only anchor in an unstable world …, [primarily] in the face of the disturbing forces of the modern” (535).

But if the title character is female and I read de Tuem as one side of her, am I merely suggesting his feminisation? While much more could be said about the gender-queer elements of tiatr, the larger discussion to be had about such possibilities is in how de Tuem’s own theatrical gendering serves to represent the status of Goan Catholics in society today. As the late Pramod Kale argues in his study of tiatr, “[i]t is a form which is rooted in the working class and lower middle class Goan Catholic[s] …, expressing their trials and tribulations, hopes and aspirations” (1986: 2054). If Robinson detects how tiatr positions women traditionally as the counterbalance to modernity’s onslaught, then de Tuem’s play meditates on the othering of a minority community in relation to the masculinist Hindu nationalist state as signified by its policing of morality and dietary practices among other restrictive legislations. As Reporter reveals, the very audience it caters to is the vote bank that is patronised even as other agendas play out behind the scenes. That the political family around which the tiatr revolves is a Catholic one headed by a woman only further demonstrates how nationalist and familial patriarchy metamorphose to suit circumstance. Similarly, Reporter’s ostensible use of a female lead who is overshadowed by her director is no less emblematic of patriarchy’s persistence, even as it offers a critique of the domineering state. 

From The Goan.

"States of Suspended Animation" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (28 June 2015)

A key of gold unearthed from a pregnant woman’s grave; another pregnant woman hacked to death; and an exhumed corpse discovered to be as fresh as on the day it was buried. These are the strangely wondrous elements of Johny Miranda’s novella Requiem for the Living (2013), translated by Sajai Jose from the original in Malayalam, Jeevichirikkunnavarkku Vendiyulla Oppees (2004). That the title and the aforementioned moments from the narrative reveal its obsession with death and thwarted reproductivity is apparent. At the book’s centre, however, is a man whose youth is meant to symbolise futurity. Osha/Josy Pereira’s Portuguese name evidences his identity as a Paranki. Descendants of the Eurasian encounter between Iberians and natives of the Malabar coast, they were speakers of the once thriving Cochin-Creole language. Despite the potential of his youth, Osha’s quest to find the lock to which the golden key is the counterpart serves as a metaphor for his impotence; an ineffectualness that is itself a metaphor for the condition of his community. And herein lie the parallels that can be drawn between the religious minority around which Miranda’s magical realist story revolves and Catholic Goa. 

The most obvious linkage between the two is their shared religious and colonial heritage. All too often, because the Malabar came to be seen as a Dutch colony, its historical intersections with the Konkan have been obscured. Of the influences that make up the historical, cultural, and linguistic background of the Parankis, J. Devika notes in the introduction to the novella that it is just as important to consider the Eastern influences that Portuguese colonisation would have brought along with it to the Malabar. Cautioning against binaristic notions of miscegeny and other forms of cultural mixing, Devika catalogues “elements from South-east Asia, especially Java and Malacca, which were prominent centres of Dutch and Portuguese trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries” as also being part of the Paranki experience. Clearly, Devika cites the need for an understanding of colonialism that is not only beyond the usual Anglo-centrism of the field, but also of the nexus between colonial powers, and the trans-colonial trajectories of subaltern groups. Similarly, in Goa, one might ask how coloniality can be understood as a local experience marked by the multiculturality of early modern and later coastal interactions that were Arab, African, European, and South Asian on the one hand, but also intra-Asian and inter-coastal on the other. 

Though these cultural crossings on both coasts may ostensibly represent an openness, as Devika points out, “foreigners and foreign ideas were welcomed only insofar as they were willing to be integrated within the terms of the highly iniquitous hierarchy of caste…” Within this twisted notion of cosmopolitanism, what becomes of the Parankis – a community whose very miscegenation and religion renders them impure? Relegating their Eurasianness to the mists of time, Devika chronicles how the 1931 Census decreed that Parankis – a term derived from the Malayalam word for Portuguese – “no [longer had an] admixture of foreign blood”, but also that “[t]hey differ[ed] very little from Indian Christians”. This official redesignation of Paranki identity not only signifies a crisis over concerns of racial purity, but also the primacy of caste-Hinduism in the nationalist conception of proper Indian subjectivity and its resulting religious hierarchies. As suggested earlier, Miranda’s Parankis may well be seen as occupying a similar strata in contemporary Indian society as their coastal cousins, the Goan Catholics.

It is no surprise, then, that Osha, Requiem’s protagonist, lives in a state of suspended animation. This is proven by his reluctance to consummate his marriage and his impossible pursuit of a lock that can be opened by a key he found in a pregnant woman’s grave. That the dead woman’s own future was cut short is amplified in that she was pregnant, her unborn child symbolising the lost hopes of a new Paranki generation. The requiem, or oppees, of the book’s title refers to a prayer offered in memoriam for the dead, but in this case it is a dirge for those whose impending demise is in sight, while the ultimate horror resides in the realisation that even this self-awareness cannot ward of the inevitable. Though Devika argues that Miranda’s book is a prayer for the imminent loss of a community whose unique set of ritualistic practices and cultural expressions are being swallowed up by Roman Catholicism, this critique of institutionality must also be extended to the State which has marked the Parankis as other to itself.  For even though cosmopolitanness is prized as a signifier of Indian modernity, Parankiness is difference for all the wrong reasons. Yet, Requiem is not a tale of hopelessness. Reminiscent of the relic of St. Francis Xavier, the unearthing of the unblemished corpse of Osha’s grandmother – a female village elder – represents a cultural remnant that lingers despite efforts to bury it away.

From The Goan.

"Is Milk in my Coffee a Racial Metaphor?" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (21 March 2015)

I fear my skillset has been rendered redundant and that all prospects for my employability have been lost. What has given rise to this panic, you ask? The announcement that the American coffee company Starbucks, which boasts a global presence, has now positioned itself as an expert on race. Earlier this week, the company announced that it was going to initiate a programme called “Race Together”, wherein baristas at 12,000 Starbucks locations across the United States would engage patrons in conversations about race. Who knew that all it would take to end oppression was a nice chat over a cup of coffee? And what does this say for those of us who work on race-related issues, but are no good at making a decent cup of joe?

When I acquired my Masters in Asian American Studies from UCLA, it was with the awareness that that degree was conferred upon me by an educational entity that had been borne out of the political struggle of the US Civil Rights movement. Indeed, the legendary Campbell Hall where my MA programme shared space with other Ethnic Studies centres, such as the Native American, African American, and Chicano Studies programmes, was the site where John Huggins and Bunchy Carter – members of the Black Panther Party who were UCLA students – had been slain in 1969. It would be revealed that the FBI had had a hand in the murders. 

Thanks to my MA in the study of race, I went on to acquire work where I could analyse how effective high school programmes were at catering to the specific learning needs of multicultural student bodies. And, in case you were wondering, the answer is not very well. But as simply rendered as that answer seems, it was arrived at after a great deal of data-collection and analysis at my first post-graduate school job, which was with the Los Angeles Unified School District. The team I was part of hoped that in answering that question, which seemed like a foregone conclusion anyway, that the way would be paved to bring about necessary educational changes. This, not least because Los Angeles is a city where, as US census data indicates, the birth rate among minority groups has outstripped that of whites. Now, imagine having that kind of conversation while buying your cup of coffee as you try to make it to work on time in the morning!

Don’t get me wrong – this isn’t a putdown of the capabilities of baristas to, both, get your day started on the right note with a much needed caffeine boost and to aid dialogue that could foster community relations. In fact, coffeehouses have quite the history of being the sites of information exchange, hotbeds of revolution even. Take the European coffeehouses of the 17^th and 18^th centuries, for example, where people gathered precisely because those were the spaces where news could be sought and conversations had. And these were not always genteel affairs. On 12 July, 1789, Camille Desmoulins stood atop a table at the Café de Foy, shouting out a call to arms while, himself, waving two pistols in the air. “Aux armes, citoyens!” he is believed to have proclaimed, a moment that would go down in history as the precursor to the fall of the Bastille a mere two days after. Something tells me that, in this day and age, getting one’s non-fat soy latte at Starbucks is not going to inspire the same kind of fervour… 

To be fair, however, it has less to do with political apathy than with what Starbucks itself has come to represent. Arguably, the popularity of Starbucks lies in its sheer ubiquity rather than in the quality or taste of its coffee. In most major American cities, one is guaranteed to find a Starbucks location (or three) in the most well-trafficked spots, and even in less frequented areas. Like McDonald’s, it’s the place you go because you know they probably have a restroom you could use without necessarily having to buy something. To discuss race relations? A less likely choice. 

Even as Starbucks rolls out the #RaceTogether programme, little has been said about what the company has done to educate its baristas on the most pressing of racial concerns in the United States today. Without judging the intelligence of the person who makes my coffee, I expect them to know how to do precisely that and not to need to entertain queries I have about why white cops can kill unarmed black people and be acquitted for crimes of that nature. Honestly, it’s probably hard enough dealing with customers desperately in need of a cuppa ahead of going into a soul-crushing job without also having to make believe that talking about race is as simple as creating a hashtag.

From The Goan.

"Guilty of Walking While Brown" - INDIA CURRENTS (California - March 2015)

On February 6, 2015, an elderly Indian man was left partially paralyzed following an encounter with the police in Madison, Alabama. News of the event spread on social media and elsewhere online. When it became known that a police car had captured video of the incident on its dashboard camera, an online petition was circulated to exert pressure on the Madison City Police Department to release the footage. But even before the petition had acquired the threshold of 1600 signatures it had set itself, the police had made the video public.

Watching the video for the purposes of writing this article was difficult. At the edge of the screen, one sees Sureshbhai Patel (57), with his hands behind his back, possibly handcuffed, being thrown to the ground by officer Eric Parker. Later, when Parker, along with one of the other officers on the scene, attempts to get Patel to stand up, it becomes apparent that the “suspect” is unable to, and is literally hauled onto his feet before sagging back down. Patel, it was discovered, had suffered a neck injury that would cause him paralysis in some parts of his body. 

As the video spread virally, the indignation, particularly of South Asians, was instantaneous, and rightly so. It would be revealed that Patel, a citizen of India, had come from that country to help care for his grandson, born prematurely and, to do so, was living in his son’s home in Alabama. As more of the story became known, perhaps we likened Patel to members of our own family. We saw in this grandfather our own parents and grandparents, those transnationals and migrants who connect our lives between continents. In fact, I had heard of this case of police brutality from a cousin whose children my father took care of in Texas. Like Patel, my dad and other relatives like my aunt and uncle, had come to the States for the function of temporarily helping out with childcare. And while I appreciate how much coverage the event has received, there is something about the nature of the conversation around the incident that leaves me dissatisfied. 

This is not an isolated event of police brutality. To regard it as such runs the risk of reducing it to a sign of South Asian American exceptionalism. Consider that the police had been alerted by a resident of the neighborhood who claimed that a “skinny black guy” they had “never seen … before” was “just wandering around,” and who was estimated to be in his thirties. That the police would be compelled to respond to such a call should make one question who and what they wished “to Serve and Protect,” as the police motto goes. In all likelihood, the call probably originated from a white household, but what is unmistakable is that the police reacted precisely because the person being reported was believed to be black. Evidently, it was unfathomable to, both, the caller and law enforcement that a young black person should have any business in such a neighborhood.

“This is a good neighborhood. I didn’t expect anything to happen,” Chirag Patel, the victim’s son told the press, possibly explaining why he had thought it would have been all right for his father to walk around in broad daylight as he had become accustomed to doing in their town. Speaking to The Washington Post for their February 12 report, the younger Patel had said: “It is a dream for me [to live here] because I came from a very poor family and I worked so hard … I’m totally devastated that I might have made a big mistake.” 

Even as middle class aspirations and immigrant desires to live the veritable American dream prove to be no protection against racism, there is no doubt that the Patels – just as anyone living in the United States – should not have had to feel that the commonplace act of walking out one’s door would put one’s life at risk due to the commonplaceness of racism. Nonetheless, it is specifically because of the assurance felt by a community that is often emblematically deemed the upwardly mobile model minority that South Asian Americans can believe themselves to be immune to systemic racism. Moreover, this extends itself to the notion that the police, rather than being embedded within such systems, are testament to the protection of those who are considered ideal subjects in the multicultural civil society of the United States. 

To cut to the chase, Sureshbhai Patel, who speaks very little English and is an Indian farmer who was visiting this country, was severely injured by a white policeman because Patel was identified as being black. Following the recent verdicts in the Eric Garner and Michael Brown cases, where the white policemen who were responsible for the deaths of these two black men were tried and found not guilty, I would argue that the incident involving Patel received as much attention as it did because of the growing inescapability of questions surrounding abuses of power. As crystallized in the trending hashtag “Black Lives Matter,” these questions center on how racial difference is perpetuated by such abuses, both by the police and laws that protect them over minorities. 

While Parker was swiftly charged with third degree assault, the attack on Patel should not be seen as an outlier to forms of racialized violence that have been manifesting increasingly through the involvement of the state, be it in the form of the police or even politicians. Note the lack of irony in Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s declaration in a January radio interview with the Family Research Council’s Washington Watch that the United States was under threat of a Muslim invasion because immigrants of that faith background “want to use our freedoms to undermine that freedom in the first place.” An Indian American who converted to Christianity from Hinduism, Jindal’s opinions are those of the garden variety Republican, but the danger lies in those views emanating from a politician of minority racial origins. They serve to obfuscate the very real threat to the lives of Muslim Americans, such as Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha, the three young relatives who were executed by a white gunman in Chapel Hill a week after Parker attacked Patel.

In that South Asian American immigrants are of many faiths, Jindal’s callous statement, made for political gain, diminishes the post-9/11 Islamophobic violence his own community faces, let alone those other Americans who so happen to be Muslim. Being deliberately oblivious to xenophobia, coupled with a sense of insulation that can emanate from being considered a model minority, especially because one is not black, can easily lull one into being complacent about institutionalized racism. But are you sure “they” know who you are when you take a walk around your neighborhood?

From India Currents. The longer version appears as "Walking While Brown While Looking Black" on Media Diversified, and a short piece on the subject appears in The Goan as "To Serve and Protect (Someone Else)."