I came to Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab, with a friend, Savita, whose family was from a village in this area and who lived in the city. She decided to travel with me and I had let her organize this portion of my trip. She was prepared to take me around the city and show me its “rare beauty”, as she put it, because the city was completely new, she explained to me, as she further introduced me to its unique history. After the Partition in 1947, Pakistan was created and among the many other cities that became part of Pakistan, Lahore did as well. It was for this reason the state of Punjab in India needed a new capital city. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, made the decision that instead of further developing an old, already established city, a new capital should be built on an area spread over several small villages. So, in 1966, Chandigarh, a new Hindi-speaking state, became the capital of Punjab. This was a very well-developed agricultural region with a mild climate and plenty of water. The city has an extremely modern planning and infrastructure, remarkable architecture, and magnificent parks, all the work of the famous French architect Le Corbusier. People have migrated here from neighboring cities and states, and most importantly have been hired in nation-wide banking institutions along with information technology and trade companies. Savita proudly emphasized that the residents here have the highest average income per capita, the highest literacy rate, and the highest standard of living in the whole nation.
Our excursions to the countryside proved to be a learning experience. One day we were sitting inside a shiny jewelry dukan on the main shopping street, sipping masala tea and chatting with the storeowner and his oldest son about the son’s upcoming wedding. They were related to Savita. Behind us through the open door we could hear the clamor from horns, motorcycles, music. A couple of girls peeked in for a second, mentioned that someone had arrived and a few minutes later they led a wizened old man into the shop. He had a shabby, white turban on his head. I learned that this was Mahavir. He looked after Savita’s family’s property outside of the city and had come with money from the harvest, along with some fruits and vegetables which he had left in the backyard of her house. He bowed humbly at the door as he entered, headed towards Savita to greet her and bent down in front of her and stretched his hand to touch her feet. She did not move back, but rather like someone used to receiving this form of respect, slowly extended her hand, palm down, over his head, to bless him. Then he turned to greet me in the same way, but, as I always do in similar situations, I stepped back, and instead brought my palms together in front of my chest, bowed and smiled, and he did the same. Later he insisted that we go visit his village the next day and we happily accepted his invitation.
We rented a motor-rickshaw for the day and arrived at his village in about an hour. Mahavir was waiting for us on the side of the road. A gentle and affable person, tall and quite skinny, with slow and graceful movements and a constant smile on his face in a lattice of fine wrinkles surrounding his eyes and mouth, he talked with confidence, slowly and very eloquently, and, as if he understood my curiosity, spoke before I could ask questions. He turned out to be the perfect tour guide. He took us through fields, pointing out how they were demarcated by the surrounding bushes with dark green leaves as big as opened umbrellas and he tore one for me to protect
myself from the sun. He showed us the boundaries of their farm, the varieties of trees growing there, described the crops cultivated, the harvesting schedules, told us how many temporary helpers they hired, how long the drought lasted, where they gathered water during the monsoons.
Most of the time he lived in the middle of these fields, under a tree, next to a small wooded area, not in a house, nor in a hut, but in a shed which consisted of four poles and a few rusted metal sheets placed on top as a roof. Underneath there was a bed made of bamboo strips stretched over a wooden frame, and next to it, on the ground, a ragged bundle of clothes, three small copper bowls for eating and an aluminum cup. Once a month either he went to his village, which was ten kilometers away, to visit his family, or a member from his family came to visit him. He moved here thirty years ago. Now he was around seventy, but he was not sure of his exact age. His only complaint was that about a year ago a splinter had got into his eye, which he could not remove, so now it bothered him and sometimes it caused him great pain. He had gone to a doctor in the city, but no operations are performed in the summer, he was told.
“You are not scared alone in these fields?” I asked.
“What should I be scared of? When the time comes, God knows what to do, but right now he is still protecting me.”
“And don’t wild animals show up here?” I looked around anxiously.
“Well, there’s a tiger in this area. He attacked a cow a few nights ago, bit her neck and ate a big piece from her chest. But he won’t come near me!”
“How do you know?”
“He’s not a fool! He won’t get enough if he kills me. And he needs fresh flesh, not old and stale like mine. He’s smart.”
“And are there any snakes?”
“Yes, of course, but we don’t worry about them. They don’t come near us,” he comforted me and further noted that “they know that if we catch them we’ll hurt them, so if they see us, they run away. Some climb on trees and catch their prey from there.”
“How big are they?” My anxiety grew.
“Some are as thick as my arm and very, very long, but, listen, they do not come around people often. Don’t be afraid. They usually hide …”
Mahavir had two sons and a daughter. He raised his family practically by himself. His three sons were very small when his wife threw herself in the well in front of the house. No one knew why. There was some water inside, though, so she didn’t die. She was taken out and she stayed in bed for a few months. Her broken bones were fixed, but soon after that she ran away with a lover to another village. They had not seen her since. A while ago, they heard that she was on her deathbed. Mahavir and his sons sent a shroud right away, which traditionally is used to cover the corpse before cremation, but they did not receive any more news about her.
“My youngest son died when he was two years old, soon after my wife deserted us. He ran a high fever one night and …” He was recounting all this in a calm, dispassionate tone, as if narrating someone else’s story.
He invited us to visit his village. He wanted us to meet his family and welcome us as his guests by giving us lunch. We agreed to have tea and sweets instead because we needed to get back to the city soon. When we left on the motor-rickshaw, he rode behind us on his bike. On the way we visited the shrine of gram-devta, i.e. the village deity. Mahavir mentioned that according to the legends, she came to this spot because the soil around here was very fertile, created this village, and became its guardian, protecting it from evil forces. She inhabited a huge fig tree whose branches had been decorated by the villagers with many flags and pieces of cloth, which were symbols of their dreams and desires. Around its trunk on a cement platform, offerings had been made of a few coconuts, fresh jasmine garlands, and a handful of coins scattered on a colorful sheet of cloth. A thin stream of sandalwood-scented smoke was curling up in the air from the incense lit when the worshippers came to pray for forgiveness of their sins and to express gratitude for the devta’s divine protection both during difficult and happy times. Every neighborhood and village in India has its own tutelary deity, accepted as a heritage from the ancestors. Gram-devta takes care of the welfare of the community and, usually, a local natural spot such as a solitary hill or cliff, or a spring or a tree is turned into her sanctuary. Usually in a female form, she personifies nature’s powers, which is why she has a dualistic character. She is not only a guardian, however, because during her never-ending battle against evil, sometimes the demons prevail and possess her. Then she becomes a malevolent destructive force and causes natural disasters like droughts, thunderstorms, floods, infertility, hunger, diseases, and death, to occur, which is why the gram-devta needs to be worshipped daily with appeasing rituals and propitious offerings4. 
Mahavir’s family was building a new brick house where his younger son was going to live. It wasn’t finished yet, but it had two big rooms and its best feature, he explained to me, was the flat roof, used by the whole family to sleep on during the hot summer nights. It had been covered with a layer of unfired clay right after the rainy season and now it was completely dry. At his grandfather’s injunction, one of his grandsons grabbed my hand and took me up there and showed me the thick cotton sheets used to lie on under the stars.
The old house, which was right next to the new one, was for the oldest son and his family. It also had just two rooms, one in the front and one attached to it in the back. I sneaked a quick look into the back room where I saw a clay stove in the corner and a wall-niche with several metal pots and pans. Obviously a kitchen, it served also as a passage to the backyard which I glanced at through the open door. The front room was the bedroom. The door was half open and I saw whitewashed empty walls with several brownish traces of leakage here and there, a wall-niche with a few statuettes and pictures of gods with a couple of incense holders and a few flower petals strewed in front. On the other side there was a rope stretched across the corner with a small pile of clothes and sheets thrown over it, a sort of wardrobe, I imagined. Also in the room was a huge king-size, all-wood-bed, where the family of eight slept, I was told. However, at this time about a dozen young boys and girls were sitting on it, their faces shining with happiness and excitement as they stared at an old black and white television. They paid very little attention to us and I knew that I had showed up at the wrong time, so I hurried out of the room.
The host invited us to sit on a hand-made bench right outside the room. We were facing the front yard that had a well in the center and on the left a shed for hay and grains and another one for the cows. Actually, because cows in India are considered sacred usually they are not used for daily work or milk. Farmers usually take care of water-buffalos, beautiful animals with horns curved toward each other as if two crescent moons face each other above their head.
Mahavir’s daughter-in-law brought in the tea and returned to the kitchen. His brother and his niece Renu, who lived in a nearby house, came. Mahavir had asked them to come and meet his guests. She didn’t sit down and talked to us with her head down and eyes focused on the floor. Renu didn’t want to get married and her father only nodded in confirmation of all she was saying.
“Why?” I was surprised.
“Absolutely not!” she responded quickly. “I will have to leave my family and go somewhere else, who knows where … who knows how they will treat me … he will beat me and abuse me … he may kick me out, even kill me, or put me on fire.”
“But you don’t know this for sure.” I was surprised by her words.
“It happens so often! I would rather stay unmarried. Yes, it is shameful, but at least I will stay at home. I won’t go out a lot, but my husband wouldn’t let me go out alone either. No. I am not getting married! They know!” And with that she pointed to her cousins in the room.
“But they can find you a good family. Your in-laws could be nice people.” I tried to sound convincing.
“No, no! Who will want someone who didn’t go to school.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Well, I was the oldest of eight. I had to help at home with work, with my two brothers and five sisters, in the field. Can you imagine how much money my parents needed to marry off six girls? We didn’t have any. So, my sisters didn’t go to nice families. They suffer and cry all the time … my family will never kick me out. Even when my parents leave this life, my brothers will never do that to me. I help them in everything and, after all, I took care of them when they were little. They will have some space for me in our house. Why should I fast and pray for someone who is treating me bad? Why should I go to someone who got no money for me and will always be mad at me and punish me for being poor and without a dowry.” She said all this while continuing to stare at the ground right in front of her feet. She was never going to receive respect and she was always going to be jeered at by members of her village community because she was a spinster. I thought there was a sad irony in her name – renu in Sanskrit means ‘dust’ or ‘sand’. She always looked down in the dust and wouldn’t look you in the eyes. She was expected to do that, of course. In public she always had to act with obedience and humility, lowering her head and keeping her eyes down.
Our voices mixed at times with the really loud sound of the film songs rumbling out of the half-open door of the room behind us. Once in a while we even had to stop and wait for a pause or the end of a song to resume our conversation. No one thought of turning the volume down or turning the T.V. off. Before we left Mahavir’s home, I peeked again in the room to say goodbye, but without taking their eyes away from the screen, everyone perfunctorily waived at me and continued blissfully to follow the romantic love story unfolding on the screen mesmerized by one of their favorite actors Amir Khan.
Indian films! A world-wide addiction coming out of India. The films are viewed by a billion and half people on a yearly basis across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Shri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, as well as Fiji, the Mauritius, South Africa, Europe, and North America, where large immigrant communities have settled in the last couple of centuries. Bollywood, the center of the Indian film industry is based in Mumbai, known until very recently as Bombay, and is unsurpassed in production volume in the whole world with about a thousand movies made per year and with a daily audience of more than forty million people. Hindi/Urdu is the language spoken in these movies, two languages very similar at the colloquial level used in everyday exchange. However, they show differences in vocabulary and a few grammar features when operating at higher specialized registers, such as in the literary, journalistic and administrative styles. Generally, each film entails a love story, contextualized within a social or religious issue or around traditional family values, and has a happy ending. The hero and heroine are exceptionally beautiful and chaste; the villain is ugly, repulsive and crude, and ultimately he gets punished. They live in palatial mansions, drive fancy cars, fly helicopters and travel in the Himalayas or the Swiss Alps, where the splendid nature efficiently yields the construction of strong metaphysical parallelism: magical love enthrallment with fabulous scenery in the background, bodies touching and moving away from each other in front of crystal waterfalls, splashing in the water, lips wet and glistening just before they meet in a kiss, the scene dissolving in a passionate and vibrant song and dance sequence, all this an example of supreme romance constructed on the basis of the legendary love stories in the Hindu epics and measured up in accordance with the local taboos.
Bollywood movies are intoxicating for the Indian people. They make them forget the harshness of reality and offer them ready-made ideals. There is no doubt the movies are entertaining, but they also serve as a didactic tool used to establish and perpetuate traditions, morals, attitudes, along with social, religious and political stereotypes. All this is well mixed and blended and offered as a marvelous presentation on a tray of stereotypical moral formulas and fantasies. All this said, one must acknowledge the existence of art films or parallel cinema in India. Made by talented film makers with a special vision, these are meaningful and provocative films, addressing critical and controversial issues. However, although occupying an important place in the history of Indian cinema, these works rarely reach a wide audience and, even if they do, they do not have the same impact on the exhausted spectator who longs to have a break from the vicissitudes of real life reality, who wants to sit atop a pink cloud for a few hours, wallow in the overpowering emotions of a bunch of gorgeous people, enjoy their songs and dances, marvel at spectacular landscapes, and witness pure love which overcomes all obstacles and ultimately triumphs over evil.
Villages often organize fairs and enjoy elaborate theatrical or dance performances based on the epics or folk narratives that last during several days. It is a rich cultural event, the only one that can substitute the hypnotic effect of the movies. Not so long ago, arranging the delivery of a film projector was considered by the village council their budgetary, social and educational responsibility. A big white screen was stretched between two poles, people from the upper class sat on chairs and rugs on one side, while the lower classes, for whom it didn’t matter that the titles or signs that showed up on screen were the wrong side up since they were illiterate anyway, sat on the bare ground on the other side. The most important part was that all were there and that they were viewing the movie for the fifth time. Young and old, women and men, rich and poor, know by heart film songs, dance moves, dialogues delivered by famous heroes or heroines, and all of them are always ready to absorb the next portion of a thrilling fantasy that makes up all Bollywood movies5.
Until recently electricity was not available everywhere in the rural areas and even nowadays because of constant electricity cuts, the kerosene lamp is a coveted possession. However, it has gradually been replaced by the television set. It is a dream come true to own this miracle box, which is sometimes the result of several years of sacrifices and savings undertaken collectively by all the members of the family. Acquiring a TV provides the family with prestige, but it also becomes a matter of pride for the owners and of joy for the neighbors who get to pop in and watch the ubiquitous and ever popular drama series. The refrigerator, for instance, does not seem to be in the list of desirables. Food is cooked in the amount needed for each meal and very little is left over; fruits, vegetables, grains and rice are kept fresh in clay containers in the ground or in bamboo baskets hanging above the ground.
Every year when I go to India, I find myself not worrying about whether the place where I intend to stay has a refrigerator, but whether there is a TV and a generator. Water cuts I can handle — moist toilettes do an amazing job instead of water — but electricity cuts and no TV, that’s impossible to deal with. Late at night, when I can’t fall asleep, I turn the lights on hoping to do some more reading or writing and soon enough I figure out what is wrong with me: I haven’t taken my daily dose of Hindi movies. A whole day has gone without them. Quickly I turn on the TV and feverishly start surfing the channels until I find a movie to watch, even if it’s from the middle. And the effect is immediate. The addiction is inevitable.
_______________
4 See for more Kinsley, David R.. Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Devine Feminine in the Hindu Religions. Delhi: Motilal Benarsidass Publishers, 1998. 197-212
5 See for more Ganti, Tejaswini. Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema. New York: Routledge, 2004.