#context this is essentially what i went through in 8th grade. & also what made me realize i wasn't straight.

[end-orfino]

I know that I'll sound like every "why is no one talking about this" post and these are pretty infuriating but like, why does no one mention that specific kind of a crush that's like. Mostly focused on adoration. Like you don't even have to be that close to this person, you don't even have to be friends or anything, but you suddenly think they're so cool and nice and just everything neat on this god damned earth and on one hand you know that you don't even know them that well (and sometimes it wouldn't even work out between you two) but at the same time it's unmistakenably a romantic feeling and you still can't help but want to get closer to them in some way. Like is this what all crushes are like? Is this not?? Often experienced? I feel like this should appear in dramas more often bcs these feelings can get so fucking confusing and would make for a good romcom plot.

[amzbailey]

very important personal post (for Pride Month)

I’ve been working on this for several days and I think I’ve finally said enough about it, so let’s just get right into it!

In honor of pride month, and because this is my Tumblr and probably the one social media outlet that I feel is my personal safe space, I feel that now’s as good a time as any to officially put this out there.

I identify as bisexual. I am attracted to both men and women. I won’t go as far as to say pansexual at this point (mostly because I haven’t really had a proper education on what the main differences are between the two terms, and the definition of bisexual really seems to cover all my bases). But over the past two years, I’ve become more comfortable with embracing my bisexuality as part of my personal identity.

Although this is the first time I’ve “come out” and said it in a not-so-private setting, I’ve been more open about it recently to close friends, and I even went as far as to briefly mention it to my mom. But there are a number of reasons why I’m not “out” to most people. The first and most obvious reason is that I think it might devastate my dad and upset other conservative/Christian family members and friends, and I really am not ready to deal with that type of reaction. However, the second and probably more paralyzing reason for not coming out publicly is my fear that this will be the response: “Wow Amy, that sounds like you’re just trying to include yourself in this ostracized group for no reason—obviously you’re not actually bi because you’ve never even been with a girl and wouldn’t know what it’s like. And even if you were, it wouldn’t matter because you’re married to a straight guy, so why even mention it?”. Which, to be honest, sounds about right in a number of ways. It doesn’t really make that much of a difference in my life because I am happily married to a man. In fact, it is also true that I’ve never dated or been in a relationship with a woman, so how the hell did I come to this conclusion, and why does it even matter?

Well, honestly, I’ve been aware of my attraction to both men and women since I was a young teenager. In fact, I know exactly who my first celebrity gay crush was—Hilary Duff. I would literally stare at her pictures in the liner notes from The Lizzie McGuire Movie album and Metamorphosis album for hours and didn’t know why. It was pretty damn gay, honestly.

However, in case you weren’t aware, I was raised in a very conservative Christian home in a deeply Protestant, traditional suburb community with mostly homophobic friends and family members. Anything I may have felt that would accurately be defined as “attraction” to girls was always reduced to something--anything--else. I just “really liked her as a person” or “envied her beauty”, or “admired her from afar”.

It wasn’t until I was about 15 or 16 when my group of friends learned the hilarious no-homo term “hetero-man crush” from our favorite YouTube channel Barats and Bereta (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiXhQUym0fA in case you’re curious), and started “joking” about our own hetero-woman crushes (needless to say I had a lot on my list) that I really started to even consider the idea that I could possibly be attracted to women. Because there was no question that I was attracted to men. I don’t even know how many guys I had “dated” or had some time of romantic/physical relationship by the time I started dating Jackson (probably 9 or 10), but everyone who knew me at 16 knew that I really liked boys. Although, in retrospect, I’m not even sure that was it--I think I really just liked making out--but we’ll never know now, and there’s no real point in thinking about it.

Anyway, moving on...

In order to really convey how I came to this very personal conclusion about my sexuality despite my hetero-normative monogamy, I have to take you back a few years for a little more context… And maybe even dig into some other personal aspects of my life like my spirituality and religion! Whee!!

I think it’s important to briefly note that the first time in my life that I ever even interacted with a gay person was in middle school. I had dated this boy named Justin for a few months in 6th grade (we went to the Valentine’s Day dance together), then we broke up, then we got back together in 7th grade (maybe? honestly, I don’t remember), but eventually broke up for good. I do remember in 8th grade, after my parents had already pulled me out of public school to homeschool me (another story for another day), my friend Sarah told me that Justin was now gay. My initial reaction was complete devastation and outrage because the way Sarah had phrased it basically implied that dating me had been so terrible that Justin didn’t want to date girls anymore. I had “turned him gay”. Not only was this a blow to my already fragile middle school self-esteem (because in my naive 13-year-old mind, I must have been so manly looking and ugly that he lost all attraction to women altogether), but also in an equally naive and warped way, it was my chance to save someone’s soul, and it would be a sin for me not to do/say something. Again, please keep in mind that this was my first encounter with homosexuality, and my parents had always taught me in was a disgusting sin, so my response to this news was to send Justin an email (yes, this was pre-Myspace and even pre-Xanga days, my friends) telling him that I would be praying for him to repent and change his ways so he wouldn’t go to hell for being gay.

Yikes. Trust me, I shudder every time I tell this story because of its absurd cringe-worthiness. But it’s also kind of funny, especially considering who I am today and who my friends are. Even so, despite later attempts at communication with Justin many years later to apologize for my 13-year-old hysteria, we never spoke or saw each other again.

Anyway… I include that story to demonstrate just how extensive my ignorance was and how sheltered I had been. I didn’t even associate with or really know anyone who was knowingly gay until college. That’s how isolated I was from the LGBT+ community, and that’s why I never even considered the possibility that I could possibly not be straight. It just wasn’t a thing.

I was 16 years old when I met the man that I would marry. I was 17 years old when we started dating.

Jackson and I officially met in the summer of 2007 and started crushing pretty hard on each other. The first time we bonded was a church youth trip to Six Flags, where my “friends” at the time had essentially deserted me, so I made a rather brave move as an introvert to hang out with some new social group—three boys named David, Jackson, and Zach that I didn’t know very well—in hopes to flirt with at least one of them and maybe even get a boyfriend out of the deal. By the end of the day, somehow Jackson and I ended up riding rollercoasters alone, talking about nerdy-ass roleplay forums, video games, and cartoons. I thought he was adorable, charming and funny, and he thought “wow this hot girl thinks I’m funny”. I thought we were a perfect match, but unfortunately, it wasn’t 100% reciprocated because he was apparently interested in someone else. To this day we’re a little foggy on the time line, but he officially started dating someone else (Kim) a few days/weeks later, so when I found out, I begrudgingly backed off. We remained (awkward) friends throughout the summer, I dated a few guys throughout fall and winter, and almost a year later, we finally “became a couple” in May 2008.

From the moment we “made it official” via text, Jackson and I stayed together. We weren’t on and off, and we never took a break. We continued our relationship through the end of high school and through college. We went on vacations with each other’s families, we lived in the same dorm buildings for 2 years, and ultimately stayed together through it all. He proposed to me in December 2013 and we were married in November 2014. We are—quite miraculously—still together and still very happy.

I say “quite miraculously” because statistically and by all other odds, we shouldn’t still be together. For starters, we’re by definition “high school sweethearts”, which already is doomed by statistics. It’s very rare for couples to last through high school and college. But what’s even more astonishing is that our relationship was completely embedded and grounded in Christianity. We met at church. His parents were in my dad’s Sunday school class. Most of our “first dates” were at youth group functions and on church trips. On May 11, 2008, Jackson said he really wanted to be more than friends, but he was worried that it wasn’t God’s will, so we promised each other that we’d pray for God to reveal whether or not we should take the next step. And we both agreed 2 nights later that “well, He didn’t say no!” and therefore, it must have been God-approved!

Throughout high school and college, our faith held strong. We remained deeply involved in church. We attended and hosted Bible studies, we led small groups, we volunteered to teach high schoolers in our youth group and stayed with them for 4 years... We almost gave up everything in 2013 to start a church with our religious mentor at the time. Through it all, Jackson and I were united in our faith and religiosity. It was all we ever knew and all we ever wanted.

After we got married in 2014... Things started to shift. Almost the first thing to go was church. It wasn’t because of our marriage that we stopped attending church regularly—it was mainly because of our newfound freedom. We no longer had to go. Our small group kids had graduated. Our Sunday school class fell apart. Worship was dull and generic. The sermons were irrelevant and repetitive. Also, there was a lot of shit going down at our home church. Corruption. Hypocrisy. Church politics that were far beyond what we were accustomed to seeing. There were lots of reasons why we stopped going, but at the end of the day, it’s because we didn’t have to anymore, so we realized we no longer wanted to and simply chose to stop going. But that didn’t mean we weren’t still Christians. Church attendance does not equal faithfulness... right?

Simultaneously, there were a number of deeper things going on, both on the surface and beneath. During one of my last semesters in college (spring 2013), I took two classes that challenged my faith more than I ever could have imagined: Psychology and Religion, and Jesus In and Outside the Gospels. If I’m honest, those put the initial seeds of religious doubt in my mind long before we stopped going to church. These professors never went out of their way to give reasons for students to denounce their faiths... But the knowledge I gained and the data I was presented with definitely left their mark. Psychology and Religion focused on the psychological and emotional effects that religion has on individuals. Jesus In and Outside the Gospel introduced me to the confusing process of Christian canonization and the even more confounding non-canonical gospels and records of Jesus.

At the same time these major doubts were marinating in my mind (for example, “was my religious conversion nothing more than a result of the manipulated environment that pastors are specifically instructed to create in order to gain converts due to its psychological effectiveness?”), my best friend came out as gay. Now, I had already vocalized my criticism about the supposed Christian approach to homosexuality, and had personally concluded that Christians were absolutely wrong to condemn and exclude that entire community. However, having a gay best friend and dealing with that theological dilemma was a completely new area for me. I had a few gay friends and acquaintances at this point (for example, during my sophomore year of college, I decided that my pansexual roommate would be a perfect person to witness to and hopefully baptize one day!), but this was different. It struck far closer to home.

It was about this time that I made the decision to never again attend a church that preached that homosexuality was a sin—which basically said that I was done with church. It became a major riff between me and my family—a frequent topic of discussion and debate that still remains today. Despite how open-minded my mother has become in recent years, we just discussed the other day that she still believes that homosexuality at its core is a sin and should never be “celebrated”. It honestly makes me sick to my stomach, but… anyway, that’s a topic for another day.

It was around this time of confusion and questioning that Jackson and I moved an hour away from our hometown so he could be closer to his job. This physical distance now combined with the spiritual and emotional distance from our Christian upbringing really started to take its toll. My parents worried about my faith and constantly begged me to find a church to attend. But Jackson and I had no interest in going back for a number of reasons. For one thing, we both had full time jobs now and we cherished our weekends too much to sacrifice a chance to sleep in. But for the most part, I was finding more and more reasons to question Christianity as a whole, and I felt more and more distant from it. It’s important to note that while I was voicing my faith doubts, Jackson was beginning to do the same. He claims that if I hadn’t started questioning, he may not have either. The two of us slowly started letting go of our old Christian selves to take on new ideas and belief systems.

With this newfound open-endedness, I decided to start expanding my horizons. I not only opened my mind to the possibility that Christianity was not entirely true, but I also began to consider the authenticity of other “alternative” lifestyles—more specifically, LGBT+. I rekindled a friendship with a former acquaintance I met through Tumblr years before who now identified as transgender. I listened to her story and opened myself to her insight. Other friends of mine also came out as LGBT. I witnessed their struggles too, as many of them also grew up in similar communities where their new identities would most likely not be accepted. It was very challenging, but also… encouraging. It was helpful to know I wasn’t alone in questioning everything I had ever known, and it was amazing to see how they coped and dealt with it.

Even so, somewhere in the midst of all of this, I began having a major identity crisis, and I fell into a deep depression full of anxiety and fear. Up to this point, my entire life—my identity, my thoughts, my hopes and aspirations, my relationships, everything—was completely embedded and intertwined in my faith. Everything I did, I did as a result of or in some connection with my faith. Every friend I had, I believed that there was a divine reason for their presence in my life. Everything that happened to me was God-ordained, and while I did have some control over my future, it was ultimately a part of God’s plan, and I just needed to follow His Will for my life. Everything I did, I did it for God, or at least I tried to.

This way of life became very unclear and ambiguous, however, when I started questioning the authenticity of the Bible. This also became very difficult when my prayers were no longer being answered. Everything became complicated, and I started to fear and question everything.

I would love to expand on this part of my life (because I have SO MUCH TO SAY about Christianity as an institution and its brutal and toxic effects on my emotional and mental state), but that’s a story for another day. The main point for this story is that I was questioning and doubting literally every single aspect of my life with one major exception: Jackson. He was my rock. He was my life preserver in my ocean of terror, the only thing keeping me from drowning. Don’t misunderstand—my friends were a huge support and I don’t know where I would be now if they hadn’t been there as well. But Jackson was my constant, probably because he was always physically there as well as emotionally. We were miles away from home, miles away from our friends and our support system, but we had each other. He watched my world turn upside down and witnessed my sanity slip away. He stood by me through it all and helped me come out the other side. All the while, he was dealing with his own doubts and spiritual questioning, too. He couldn’t give me the answers I needed because he didn’t have them either. But he was there, and he loved me. Everything else was in shambles, but I knew where he stood, and I knew where I stood. I didn’t know if God loved me or if my parents loved me, but I knew Jackson did. I didn’t know if I loved God anymore, but I knew that I loved Jackson.

This went on for several months and I finally sought professional help from a counselor. It took some time, but after seeing her for a few weeks, I finally started letting go of some of the existential anxieties and accepted the fact that it was okay to not be a Christian anymore. It was okay to question things, it was okay to change my mind. It was okay to not know what I believed. It was okay to not be sure about anything. It was okay to be myself, no matter what. With this new sense of freedom, I really started to explore more about myself. And that’s finally when I allowed myself to bring my sexuality into question.

Again, I had always known I wasn’t completely straight. I had several crushes on many girls, celebrity and friend alike. But I kept coming back to the fact that I was in love with Jackson, wholeheartedly. Even if I was attracted to girls, it wouldn’t matter, right? I had never even had a romantic encounter with a woman, and I never would because I had no desire in leaving Jackson. So why even bother thinking about it?

Early in the process of questioning, I told Jackson that I might be bisexual, hoping that he wouldn’t react negatively. He wasn’t surprised at all and was actually incredibly supportive. “You’re still Amy and you’re still my wife—why would that change anything?” In fact, the only thing it changed was the frequency that we would point out cute girls to each other in public, or discuss the hotness of Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Lawrence, or Anna Kendrick. In a strange way, you could almost say my “gayness” brought my husband and I even closer.

While that was overwhelmingly comforting, I still had a lot of anxiety about the validity of my bisexuality. If I claimed this new identity, would I have regrets? Could I live with the fact that I had never been with a woman? What if being with a woman was better? I would never know, but I would always wonder. What good could come from just wondering? What if I was overwhelmed by temptation? Would I leave Jackson? In retrospect, some of my anxiety was valid, but most of it was silly stuff that happens to everyone in long-term relationships. I could make the same arguments for other men, too. What if I was overwhelmed by temptation for another man and left Jackson? That wouldn’t be because of my “straightness”—it would be a very natural curiosity followed by a selfish action. So why would it be any different if it were a woman? If I truly loved Jackson and we both wanted to stay together, we just had to make the effort to overcome whatever came our way.

In late 2015/early 2016, right in the middle of my deep spiritual depression and sexual identity crisis, I was at Alex’s house with a handful of friends without Jackson (I think he was having a guy’s night with some of his friends). To help ease my anxiety and force myself to have a good time, I got super drunk really fast. I had already shared my half-revelation of my sexuality with this group of friends, and in a very uncharacteristically bold moment, I started making out with my friend Sara who also identified as bisexual. At the time, it was awesome and very hot! But the next morning and for days afterwards, guilt overwhelmed me. It’s important to note, though, that I didn’t feel guilty because I made out with a girl (because it felt surprisingly natural and normal), but because I, a married person, drunkenly kissed someone that was not my spouse. And I was afraid to tell Jackson, despite the fact that I had been very intoxicated at the time, and I knew he’d forgive me. Even if I hadn’t been drunk off my ass, I knew he would still love me for it, and yet the thought that he might leave terrified me.

When I eventually told him (probably 3 days later because I’m not good at keeping secrets from him), he was more upset that he wasn’t there with me than anything else. But he also admitted feeling jealous, just as he would if I had shared a kiss with a guy. We had always half-jokingly discussed before that we’d be down for a threesome with another girl, but honestly, I don’t think I could emotionally handle sharing Jackson with anyone. And, as we found out with the Sara incident, he’s not sure he could handle sharing me either.

Anyway... I kind of went off on a tangent there... I probably need to just wrap up, as this is getting waaaay too long.

To conclude this very disjointed, convoluted story… I’m bisexual. It may not matter to anyone else, and it may not change anything in the grand scheme of things. In fact, I am well aware that many in the LGBT+ community would be hesitant to include me because I’m monogamously with a man and therefore have never and will never experience the kind of discrimination and bigotry they deal with on a daily basis. And while that would be deeply upsetting to me (because my love for the LGBT+ community is deeply rooted in me, not just because I consider myself a part of it, but because so many people I love are LGBT and I will fight tooth and nail for every cause every time), I wouldn’t blame them. The last thing I want is an ostracized group who already struggles with being taken seriously to think of me as some straight interloper trying to claim gay identity like a white girl wearing a tear dress and claiming her 1/16 Cherokee blood as justification.

But it matters to me. My sexuality is a part of me and has always been a part of me. I understand myself better now by acknowledging and accepting my bisexuality. Even if I never had a chance to explore it and may never have an opportunity to experience what a sexual relationship with a woman would be, I’m still perfectly content because I already found my perfect partner and he makes me happy.

Growing up, I always clung to the idea of finding my “soulmate”. And while I’m not as sure now about whether a soulmate exists for every person, I know without a doubt that I found mine. As I said before, it’s pretty miraculous that Jackson and I are still together considering how drastically we’ve both changed since high school. When we started dating, I was a 17-year-old conservative, relatively homophobic Christian who never in a million years would consider herself non-heterosexual. When we started dating, Jackson was a 16-year-old libertarian/conservative Christian who was slightly less homophobic, but pretty sure he was pretty straight. We were kids who had been raised in an environment with a very narrow perspective of the world, but as we grew up together and experienced what the real world was like, we matured. We opened our minds, we challenged our beliefs, and we became adults. Together.

Through it all, despite all my spiritual doubts and questions, I do still believe one thing is still true: I do think God put us together. Whether he kept us together doesn’t really matter, because we kept us together. It hasn’t always been easy, but our bond has never faltered. In fact, I told him the other day that even if my upbringing had been different and I would have explored my sexuality at an earlier age, and even if I had dated girls and guys, I still very well could have ended up with him. We’ll never know of course, but Jackson, despite his ever-skeptical personality, said he agreed. He calls what we have a “cosmic bond” as opposed to being “soulmates”. I think I like that better, too.

Anyway.

So, Happy Pride to all my LGBT+ friends and family! I consider myself an “honorary” member, and it means more to me than you’ll ever know!

[whatisvignesh-blog]

#ReadingFilms : A Film Far Too Ahead Of Its Time

Swades (Swades: We, the People) Directed by Ashutosh Gowariker Story by Ashutosh Gowariker Screenplay by Ashutosh Gowariker, Sameer Sharma, Amin Hajee, Charlotte Whitby-Coles, Yashodeep Nigudkar, Ayan Mukerji Starring Shahrukh Khan, Gayatri Joshi, Kishori Balal

Swades is a film I have watched multiple number of times. Given the numerous times I have watched the film I have come to realise that I was emotionally in places distant from serenity and reality to understand and appreciate what the film was all about.

In the 5th grade (when I first saw the film) I thought it was a depressing and a needlessly long movie. 8th grade, I thought there was a hint of reality to the movie. 10th grade, I thought the film was emotionally honest, yet I found it long, way too long.

I watched the film a week ago and I was reduced to tears. I remember saying to myself, “What a spectacular film!”.

For starters, I thought Swades was eons ahead of Writer-Director Ashutosh Gowariker’s debut, Lagaan. 

The counterfactual-historical film, Lagaan, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture in a Foreign Language category.It won plaudits from moviegoers and critics alike because it managed to weave a story around the independence struggle, cricket and a narrative involving a retelling of David taking on a fierce Goliath.

The audience, obviously, lapped at it.

Swades, to me, stands out because it unflinchingly paints a portrait of an India that is painfully real. Seldom has a film been made which touches upon the macroscopic absurdity of the invisible structures that holds the Indian Civilisation.

I found very similar intellectual threads running between Swades and Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Ikiru’.

While Ikiru is about relationships at the Systemic level, Swedes is about relationships at a Grassroots level. Ikiru educates the viewer about the various bureaucratic walls that cut off elected officials from their people while Swades flips this exposition on its heads and takes it to another level implying that there is not only a division between the people and the elected officials but also various cultural barriers that cut off people from themselves. And I think at the heart of both films is an idea of pessimism. Kurosawa, in the case of Ikiru, is very explicit about it; the candle of idealism can resist today’s storm but not tomorrow’s wind. Swades prefers to remain idealistic in its pessimism despite knowing that the diaspora wouldn’t be moved to action. Swades sticks to the story, giving the film a happy ending and hopes for the best.

Swades also talks about feminism, the diaspora, an idealistic future, the idea of community, and of course, what does it mean to be a Modern Indian.

Big, powerful ideas. Let’s unpack them one by one.

1. Feminism

Over the course of the last few years, there has been a pro-feminist wave whose impact can be felt far and wide. ‘Dangal’ seems to be the latest film preaching the feminist gospel. However, during a time when ideas of individuality in the context of feminism weren’t so prevalent, Swades was really a breath of fresh air. 

In an era where the awareness campaigns via the internet were too few, I felt Swades really went out of its way to really represent an idea of the being of a modern woman.

Gita (portrayed by Gayatri Joshi) is a character who has been intentionally designed to represent the archetype of the modern Indian woman- educated, independent and forward thinking.

Through Gita, Gowariker aims to show the viewer the value of an independent woman in a rural land plagued with mindset and culture problems. A teacher and an aspiring agent of social change, it's also interesting that she has a younger brother. Why? Is it to signify a change of seasons in terms of the Indian Mindset, shaped by the actions and the beliefs of an elder sister? I don’t know, I can only speculate. It's exciting, nevertheless.

2. The Diaspora 

No subject in the film has touched me as deeply as its take on the diaspora. 

The Indian Diaspora to this day are the carriers of the flame; the flame of the Indian Aspiration.

To start off I’d like to direct you towards a video of the filmmaker Vikas Bahl where he talks about why Swades was a film that changed his life. In the video, he brings up a conversation he had with a teacher during his college years who told a young Bahl that “India’s greatest export is her People.”

We, as a society, and as a civilization pride ourselves leaving the Mother’s Nest, to alien and foreign lands, never to turn back home. As absurd as this may sound, it's actually true. I’d even go as far as to say that some parents exclusively breed children to have them earn foreign degrees, earn foreign money and settle down abroad. There might be only an iota of proof that some parents do this for the welfare of their own children. However, a contrarian view on the matter is the assumption that the parent uses the child’s success as a point of worldliness and authority on the noble art of child rearing, elevating their stature in society through the actions of the child.

The Young Indian has his mindset and imagination made malleable by the ideas and the views of the West. Freedom and a better standard of living are reasons why a return to India isn’t even an option in their books. 

And the truth is they can’t be hated for their decision. It's actually pretty rational.

The perpetrators, in my opinion, are the ones here at home, encouraging young people to forget their sense of identity and their sense of culture in the face of western liberalism and opportunity. Let me be clear, I am not against the West; I am against how Indians in India think about the West.

President John F. Kennedy, in his famous inaugural address, instructed his citizens to “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” The Indian Mindset, in a nutshell, can be described as the antithesis to the aforementioned statement. We ask what the country has done for us and dare we talk about what we can do for the country. As long as this is the dominant mode of thinking about things throughout the country, accelerated progress and dreams of a developed nation are only ideas that we will celebrate in our sleep.

Swades does a wonderful job flipping the bottom-up model of social change. It is an example of the kind of impact a top-down model of social responsibility can bring. This is done through the metaphor of an NRI using his skills and knowledge for the betterment of India at the grassroots level by generating electricity to (em)power a village.

3. The Idealistic Future

Gowariker belongs to a rare breed of filmmakers who aren’t locked up in an ivory tower. He is very attuned to the realities and the fallacies that are shaping and reshaping Indian Thought.

To box the film in a Thielinan Matrix, Swades falls under that ‘Indefinite Optimism’. Ikiru, for instance, falls under the ‘Definite Pessimism’ category.

The natural question to ask is “Why Indefinite Optimism when you have previously stated that Pessimism is at the heart of the film?”.

While Kurosawa drew the viewer out of the story and into the reality of bureaucracy mechanics, Gowariker consciously ensures that the viewer watches the film as the story progresses; only upon the progress of the story can there be a valid generation of ideas and opinions inspired by the film. I’m not saying that Ikiru doesn’t perform the same function. I’m saying that Kurosawa, interestingly, makes the viewer follow the story, then there is a sudden splash of reality dominated social commentary, and before we realize it, Kurosawa throws us back into the story. Gowariker, on the other hand, does all his social commentary within the framework of the story, the characters, and the dialogues. There are differences between the two modes of representative storytelling, but they are ones of subtlety and metaphysics. 

The story focuses on the return of an Indian influenced by Western thought. The water bottle, the caravan, the internet all symbolize this. The film is a masterclass in understanding the mechanics of holistic progress.

Gowariker’s ‘Ideal Indian’ is similar to his concept of the ‘Modern Woman’. Gowariker is brilliant in drawing no differences between the role of either sex, making it an apt metaphor for gender equality, an issue we spend so much time debating on. 

4. The Community

Swades (brilliantly) is not a film about nationalism. Its a film about People, Progress, and Principles. 

At the intersection of People, Progress and Principles is Community. Swades is a class apart in its application of Community as a dominant character in the story.

In 1973, Italo Calvino wrote the introduction to the Italian edition of Balzac’s ‘Ferragus’. The essay was titled, ‘The City as a Protagonist in Balzac’. While the village in Swades is not a protagonist, its Community is a powerful player in the story.

History textbooks do students a great disservice by feeding them a very selective interpretation of India’s past. The textbooks essentially portray the British as looters, but not as moral monsters who, by editing the philosophical framework of Indian Life for their administrative benefits, destroyed and refined (for the worse) the idea of Community.

The ramifications of these changes brought forth by administrative dictums like the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms is etched and is echoed in the mindsets and the attitudes of the villagers at Charanpur. Its what stifles progress, unity and a pan-Indian concept of what does it means to be Indian. 

Swades is a representation of what it takes to bring a fundamentally (and an ideologically) divided community together- a problem that torments the Community to this day. 

Maybe I’m talking out of my ass here, but maybe the dysfunctionality of the Government is a solid enough catalyst to develop communal togetherness at a grassroots level. Maybe this is a philosophical rationalization for the Government’s little or no interest in developing a pan-Indian consciousness (and why would they ? Wouldn’t this result in leaders losing vote banks ?).

Maybe the British haven’t left after all.

5. The Modern Indian

Swades ultimately made me ask myself the question ‘Who or What is a Modern Indian?’

This is a really big question and its one the film attempts to answer.

The point is not whether home-brewed values outflank globalized values, neither is it an Us versus Them argument, nor is it a case where we ask whether Indian Abroad is smarter than the Indian At Home.

I mention these dichotomies beforehand itself because its almost always the default mode of answering or reasoning we employ; unfortunately, reductive thinking doesn’t really help out much in this case. 

Swades teaches us that loving our land is no different than loving someone; true, it has its flaws and inequities, but the first and the hardest step to take is to be loving and accepting. Once you do this, change is right around the corner. 

I write this in March 2017, yet Swades’ message is timeless and poignant. It is many ways a film still relevant to this day. It's a timeless film.

My only qualm with the film is that I knew that the actors were acting.

Of course, someone will tell me, “Well, Vignesh, that’s because that’s what actors do; they act.” But my point is steeped in the craft and the subtlety of cinema.

If you watch Raging Bull, you know de Niro is not acting; you watch There Will Be Blood, you know Daniel Day-Lewis is not acting. And that’s my point. Great actors morph into the characters the story demands. There were moments where I could see Shahrukh ‘act’. Just as how a magician never reveals his tricks, an actor must never give his audience the impression that he is acting.

Nevertheless, this may be Shahrukh’s greatest role and performance to date.

A.R.Rahman’s hauntingly mesmeric background score supplements the narrative masterfully. Gowariker and Rahman’s partnership is yielding profoundly meaningful visio-sonic experiences for the cinema-goer. 

Swades also wonderfully lives up to two of my favorite Godard adages :

- “Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form.”

- “Good films get smaller audiences, but more of the viewer.”

I rest my case.

[ayoswim]

Soundtrack to my Life: How Music Helped Me Grow as an Artist

By Kyle Mantha

Music is something that has always been a part of my life. Growing up, music was constantly played in my household. I have vivid memories of my dad dancing around the kitchen and singing along to Aerosmith and Johnny Cash. As a young child, music was just something that my parents played loudly as they cooked dinner or drove to the supermarket. I enjoyed the sounds and liked to sing along, but it didn’t truly speak to me on a deeper level until I got a bit older and started forming my own musical pallette.

When I was 7 years old my dad bought me a copy of Green Day’s “American Idiot.” My mom thought I was too young to listen to it, but my dad insisted that I’d enjoy it. So, later that day, I took the CD upstairs and popped it in the CD player my grandmother got me for Christmas. Immediately upon hearing the opening riff of the title track, I was hooked. Many consider “American Idiot” to be the beginning of Green Day’s descent into pop-rock mediocrity, but to me, that album is a classic. The politically charged lyrics and themes of loneliness and crippling despair are things that have stuck with me to this day. The pure desperation that exists in tracks like “Jesus of Suburbia” and “Give Me Novacaine” is absolutely heartbreaking. After listening to “American Idiot”, I immediately threw myself into the world of music. This was 2005, so the internet didn’t really exist the way it does today, but we had a computer in our living room and I happened to know my way around Limewire. So, I spent the majority of my days downloading music and forming what would eventually become what some would call “musical taste” but what I would call “shit that I like”.

As I grew older, I became able to more closely discern what I liked and didn’t like. Around 11 years old is when I began to broaden my horizons and look into music outside of the well known artists and bands. I developed an affinity for sad and emotional music, and I began to enjoy the aggressive tough talk of hip hop. I was never a kid who had a lot of friends, and I never felt particularly “cool” growing up, so hip hop allowed me to escape from my mundane reality and step into a world where “coolness” depended not on how you carried yourself in front of other people, but how “real” you were. Being cool in hip hop isn’t about appealing to images and stereotypes, it’s about being yourself to the fullest extent. That really spoke to me.

As time went on, I got more and more into hip hop. I was obsessed. I spent hours scrolling through blog posts and YouTube videos trying to discover new things I hadn’t heard. I had blazed through the classics and devoured all of the contemporary records I could consume. The only thing left to do was to keep up with what was happening in the present. I always made sure I was up to date not only on the newest artists, but also the latest news in hip hop. I knew about every beef, every controversy, and every media mishap within the world of rap. I stopped listening to other genres altogether. I was married to the game, as they say.

Once the 8th grade rolled around, I started to hang out with kids who had similar music taste. Before, I never had many friends, so I just hung out with whoever was around. I didn’t care to pick and choose my friends based on how many similar interests we had. But once I met some kids who shared my taste, I felt like I truly belonged. My friends and I were constantly showing each other new songs and artists. It was around this time that I was introduced to Odd Future, the loudmouthed collective of skate kids who were doing DIY rap to the fullest extent. I related to the crew a lot because I too was a skater kid with a steadily growing capacity for teenage angst. At the time, the standouts from Odd Future were Frank Ocean and Tyler, The Creator. Frank was an experienced R&B artist and Tyler was a rapper who absorbed influences from early 70s soul music as well as the mid-2000s production work of Pharrell and The Neptunes. Listening to the two breakout stars allowed me to re-explore other genres outside of hip hop and expand my musical pallette. I started to get into R&B, soul, and alternative rock. By the time high school rolled around, I was listening to a variety of different genres. I was open to pretty much everything, but my tastes were closely tailored around hip hop. I wasn’t really into slow, melodic singing. I liked when songs had a rap-like cadence to them. The free-form nature of many non-hip hop artists turned me off, mostly because I didn’t really have a context for it. But when I turned 15, I met a girl who was really into indie music. She introduced me to artists like Arcade Fire and Bon Iver. After she showed me the ropes of indie, I dove right in and started learning the history and consuming the work of the greats. I spent my time finding new and obscure indie artists. It gave me the same feeling that I had when I would spend days scouring rap blogs for new mixtapes.

Today, my taste is split between rap and indie, but I still lean more towards hip hop. It will always be my favourite genre, regardless of whatever else finds its way into my rotation. Growing up and being constantly exposed to music has been essential in helping me grow as a listener, as well as a writer and musician. I have a wide variety of influences to pull from, and it has aided me a lot in my creative pursuits. If you’re an artist, spend as much time as you can consuming art and studying it. Learn what makes it good and learn what draws people to it. It will help you so much in the long run. It’s been said before that good writers are good readers. If that’s the case, then good musicians are good listeners.

Kyle Mantha is a writer and musician living in Ottawa, Canada. You can follow him on Twitter here.