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Issue 8

Black Artists on Instagram

Art is a powerful tool of expression. Not only does it appeal to the visual senses but it also consolidates powerful pictures. It brings to life realities that we often hear about. To celebrate Black History Month and keep alive the spirit of the Black Lives Matter, here are a few black artists you should follow on Instagram:

  1. Lauren Harris: @loharris_art
Image Credits: Instagram @loharris_art

Lauren Harris is a Brooklyn based digital artist, who specializes in illustration and motion design. She uses bright and vibrant palettes to create artwork that embodies kindness, joy, confidence and humanity. Her artwork revolves around the everyday life of women, with a special focus on the lives of African-American people. Through her artwork, Harris also aims to contribute to various social justice initiatives.

2. Nikkolas Smith @nikkolas_smith

Image Credits: Instagram @nikkolas_smith

Nikkolas Smith is a native of Houston, Texas. His speciality lies in children’s books illustrations, movie poster design and digital painting characters. After working on several film posters, and authoring children’s illustration books, Smith has been interested in Artivism that is Activism through Art. As a person of colour, he wants to create artwork that initiates important conversations around social justice and brings about a meaningful change in the world.

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Issue 8

Tightrope by Zayn Malik

With Valentine’s Day having just passed us last weekend, some of us may still want to continue feeling butterflies in their stomach for their significant or imaginary others, and Zayn Malik’s ‘Tightrope’ is just for that.

Zain Javadd Malik, known by the name Zayn, is an English singer and songwriter who recently released his new album ‘Nobody is Listening’. The song ‘Tightrope’ is all about how one is willing to fall into the steep slope of love, when it’s with the right person. It is perfect for when you are on your 5:30 pm evening walk, with the sun setting and the serene sky, thinking about that special someone who may or may not know of your existence. For his desi fans, Zayn provides a pleasant surprise with the 1960s Mohammad Rafi’s verse from ‘Chaudhvin ka Chand’ later into the song.

As the song is on the acoustic end, it will get your feet tapping while you immerse yourself into enjoying the serotonin rush of reminiscing the times you fell in love and “something told you it was them.”  

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Issue 8

The Midnight Library

The Midnight Library starts with a 35-year-old Nora Seed having the worst day of her life. She gets mugged, she loses her job at the music store, her only piano student decides to quit, and to top it all, her cat – the only companion in her life – dies in a car crash.

She could have been a glaciologist (as she used to tell her school librarian: Mrs Elm), a famous musician, or she could have married the surgeon Ash who asked her out for coffee once. Instead, she finds herself alone in her battered room, regretting all the choices she didn’t make. So, she decides to kill herself at midnight but finds herself caught in the middle of life and death in the midnight library with her school librarian Mrs Elm. This is no ordinary place; it is a magical library that gives Nora a passage to transport back into life. The Midnight Library offers Nora Seed a second chance in life.

It took me back in life (as it did Nora) to my school days when during the exam seasons, I used to finish preparing for it early to have enough time to read “The Famous Five” novels. There was a kind of silence in my head that amplified my inner voice and made me think more clearly about my life. About how if I get a chance to reset my life, what would I do differently? Then I started to think about if I can anything do anything to change for the better now. Matt Haig’s simple writing flows throughout the book filled with otherwise complex thoughts. I think more people should experience the silence in their heads that amplifies their inner voice.

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Issue 8

Headliner: A Chilling View of How Hate Sells

Headliner is an indie game developed by Jakub Kasztalski, where players are tasked with being the editor of a fictional magazine in a fictional town. Their responsibilities are primarily concerned with choosing which stories get reported in the next day’s news cycle. As the editor, players need to prioritize the news stories that they believe best contributes to the social cohesion of the town, while at the same time ensuring that their newspaper remains profitable. 

The game soon evolves into a test of character, as all the choices that players make directly affect their in-game family and society. Kasztalski effectively establishes conflicts that are hard to navigate – with players’ job security, familial interests and general social atmosphere often placed at odds with one another. Ranging from issues of sensationalism and hateful narratives, to personal biases and ambitions, the game provides its players with an understanding of the complexities within the operation of news media. In an ecosystem where stories that sell better outshine those more worthy of telling, Headliner proves to be an inexplicably valuable tool for highlighting the processes and dilemmas underlying contemporary reportage.

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Issue 8

Queering Valentine’s Day: Navigating singlehood and ‘compulsory heterosexuality’

It is inevitable for people to feel choked during February, with all the hype around love and the joys of coupledom. It is an important month to analyse how ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (in Adrienne Rich’s terms) has hijacked our understanding of love, desire, and sexuality in our society. Valentine’s day takes me back to my teenage years. As a queer person, I remember having to force myself to fit into the idea of love that is constructed by this notion of ‘compulsory heterosexuality.’ A concept coined by Adrienne Rich, ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ expounds on the way heterosexuality becomes a political institution having the privilege to limit our understanding and expression of ‘other’ desires. This heterosexual compulsion feeds the popular cultural metanarratives of greeting cards, and other media to celebrate love, desire, and sex as heterosexual. 

Love and desire are understood as heterosexual in our society which leads to the alienation of ‘other’ identities and sexualities on valentine’s day. This raises questions like: Why is it that we have a special day to celebrate one kind of love, but not others? Do such celebrations reflect (and reproduce) a kind of hierarchy of love that is present in our culture? And how might such hierarchies be problematic, both for those who are excluded from them and for those who are included?

The problems of exclusions are more obvious than those of inclusion. Who is really included or excluded on Valentine’s day? Is it necessary that a ‘heterosexual’ couple is included, and queer couples and single folks irrespective of their gender and sexuality are excluded? 

Singledom is not the only exclusion. Valentine’s day reminds us that the romantic love that is accepted is hetero. Most cards portray pictures of heterosexual couples, or male and female animal soft toys, etc. Similarly, commemoration cards are generally intended to be from a wife/girlfriend to a husband/boyfriend and vice-versa. Sitting with a ‘same-sex’ partner in a café on Valentine’s night feels different. While most outlets—after the decriminalisation of section 377—are now welcoming, there surely is a difference to the experience of a queer couple. There may well be a similar feeling for others whose relationships aren’t considered quite as acceptable: mixed-race couples, couples where either one or both partners don’t meet the ideals of conventional attractiveness, those with an age-gap, or people who want to celebrate with multiple partners on a night where every table is set out for two.

Romantic love is intrinsically linked to sexual love, and popular Valentine’s gifts include both the sentimental gifts (such as flowers, chocolates, and soft toys) and the sexy gifts(underwear, sex toys, and erotic games). For this reason, other exclusions may include those who are assumed not to be sexual (by virtue of being too young, too old, or disabled, for example), and those who are assumed to be sexual but in fact are not. A person who is asexual and romantic, or a couple whose relationship started out as sexual in nature but is no longer so, may feel painfully aware of assumptions and expectations around Valentine’s night.

Turning to those who are included in Valentine’s day, there are difficulties here as well – although they may not be so obvious.

If a person wants to include their friends on Valentine’s day, it is deemed questionable. But then the question is: Why should the partner be considered more important than those other people that we are probably closer to? Isolating ourselves from friendship can be daunting in a relationship. It can make a person feel lonely despite being in the company of their partner, regardless of how much they love them. There is a sense of privacy around the couple whereby we aren’t meant to share what is going on with anyone outside of it. As well as exacerbating the sense of exclusion of our single friends, this can be damaging for those in the relationship as they come to rely upon each other for everything and feel unable to get support from outside when they are struggling. Hence, Valentine’s Day and an overtly heterosexual understanding of love can limit our growth as individuals. 

Valentine’s day can add to the pressure for those who are going through a tough period in their intimate relationship. There are expectations and assumptions about how we must feel on Valentine’s Day and the kinds of declarations that we must want to make to each other. Two common responses to such pressure are to either assume that the relationship must be wrong and to bolt from it, or to focus on presenting an outside image which seems appropriate whilst denying (to others and to oneself) that we are struggling, until it has reached a critical point.

One way to release the pressure is by expanding the meaning of love; it does not have to be ‘romantic’ in a very heterosexual way, but rather in a queer way. Knowing what we want to feel as opposed to knowing what to feel or what we are expected to feel can narrow down our understanding of desire, love and intimacy. This kind of re-evaluation can also expand our understanding of what might be included in romantic love, friendship, and in the blurry space in between (the friends-with-benefits arrangement, the romantic relationship which has developed into friendship over time, the friendship that has all the intimacy, passion and challenge of a romantic relationship).

So instead of ignoring Valentine’s week or the fourteenth of February, we should ‘queer it’. Make it unconventional, challenge the heterosexual ground that it is built on and re-work/re-model it to fit our identity. Prescribing a way to do it would be going against the argument of queering it. So, it is important to decide for ourselves what we want, rather than what they would conventionally want us to feel. Just remember love is not one thing or one kind of feeling; it can hold myriad feelings or meanings. Love begins when you are truly yourself. 

Artwork by Muskaan Kanodia.

Roshan Roy is a senior student of English Literature at Ashoka University. He can usually be found reading anything non-fiction, listening to John Mayer or contemplating life while listening to and singing along with Passenger’s songs. His areas of research and writing include sexuality and gender. He navigates life by writing performance poetry and non-fiction.

We publish all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivatives license. This means any news organisation, blog, website, newspaper or newsletter can republish our pieces for free, provided they attribute the original source (OpenAxis).

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Issue 8

Whose language is it anyway? A critique of linguistic imposition by the NEP

The Government of India in 2020 rolled out the National Education Policy with much fanfare, claiming that the reforms would revive the nation’s flagging education system. The need for reforms cannot be denied. An article in The Economist this week, noted, “Only about 55% of the country’s ten-year-olds can read and understand a simple story, reckons the World Bank. The last time India’s children participated in internationally comparable tests, they ranked almost last out of 74 countries.” The NEP seeks to introduce changes at all levels of education, and one way it proposes to improve the level of Education and literacy in India is by stating that “the medium of instruction until at least Grade 5, but preferably till Grade 8 and beyond, will be the home language/mother-tongue/local language/regional language”. As someone who was only educated in English, I was, at first, rather optimistic about such a shift. I had often resented the lack of exposure to the literature of the language most of my family spoke, Hindi. English education meant that I knew neither English nor Hindi very well. To not have to do one, the language that seemed most alien felt like a decent escape from having to struggle through both. But in almost no time, optimism gave way to scepticism, and soon after, to worry. 

The policy advocates for the use of the “mother tongue,” or a regional language, as a medium of instruction wherever possible. In a diverse nation such as ours, the lack of specificity of the term ‘mother tongue’ only leads to confusion. Is ‘mother tongue’ the tongue of a student, or the tongue of a region? Won’t there be situations where the tongue of the student may not be the language of the region? Had the policy been around when I was in junior school, for instance, I would have been educated (‘if possible,’ as the policy notes) in the Kumaoni dialect, since I live in the Kumaon region. However, the composition of my district is nearly entirely native Punjabi speakers, resettled to what we now called Uttarakhand. The languages spoken within 30 kilometres of my home are Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, and English, each understood by a separate demographic. And my village is not an exception to the rest of India, but it is the rule. Most of India is polyphonic, and like the poet Walt Whitman, can boast of containing multitudes. In the situation that the recognised regional language becomes the official medium of education in a particular school, its usage will only mirror the imposition of English. That is, the hegemony of English will be replaced by the hegemony of another regional language, whichever may be dominant in the area, or in the vogue with a particular government. For a policy aiming to make education more accessible and inclusive, the NEP seems to achieve the opposite.

For the masses, school is where several students are exposed to a new language, especially one like English. For many, learning English is the sole aim of starting school. And whether we like it or not, English does open doors. Most of the vocabulary of Science and Technology is in the language. It has, since the national movement, been a language that has allowed non-Hindi speakers to communicate further. Wouldn’t such a policy end up making opportunities less accessible for the students in government schools? And I stress on government schools here, because for private schools, bypassing such a policy is easy, and the ‘English Medium’ is emphasised. This could widen the gap in the education received at public and private institutions and reinforce class hierarchies amongst those who attend them. For most students, their exposure to their regional languages is through social interactions largely outside the classroom. English is taught to many only in schools. 

What also complicates the NEP is that it does not list English as an Indian language, even though English is constitutionally recognized as a national language. While many Indians may not speak English, it cannot be denied that English is a widely spoken Indian language. Indian writers have made English their own, Indian films and television use English liberally. In an op-ed in the Hindu, K Chidambaram argued that English is an Indian Language and that it is aspirational, useful, and should not be done away with in such a manner. The Poet and translator, Ranjit Hoskote, too, views English as a language that has become Indian, and does not see it as a borrowed tongue. 

Even if everything with the policy is ironed out and every region is given as inclusive a language as possible, the logistics remain complicated. Education is a concurrent subject, legislated upon by both Central and the State governments. Even in college student governments, the shifting of responsibility between hierarchies prevents much work from being done. Between disparate regimes at the Center and states, this may be a recipe for disaster. 

While the importance of including more regional languages in syllabi cannot be denied, we must be mindful of how the Indian languages are taught, and that they are not taught at the cost of one another. The way to promote the regional languages is not to replace English as a medium of education and entirely disregarding its utility, but rather, to include the practice of communication and appreciation of regional languages and literature, to encourage students to be critical by employing the languages they are taught in, and to teach them in a way that the process of education does not make learning more difficult and stressful. This means that for students whose homes are not familiar with English, there is a greater responsibility with their teachers to communicate material with their students in the language they understand. 

To change subject material without altering the pedagogical approach will continue to limit students in one way or another. It may be more freeing to consider ways to incorporate the thinking of Paulo Friere and restructure education or “men and women develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality but as a reality in the process of transformation”. This could be done by training teachers to adapt to the needs of polyphonic classrooms, by introducing practices of translation, or by making conversation a greater part of the experience of learning. 

Swati Singh is a student of English Literature and Creative Writing at Ashoka University. They are a member of Sandhi, the languages society at Ashoka University, and are interested in translation. 

We publish all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivatives license. This means any news organisation, blog, website, newspaper or newsletter can republish our pieces for free, provided they attribute the original source (OpenAxis).

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Issue 8

Translation As Preservation: Understanding the Worlds Within Languages

Translation, for both of us has been an act of transgression. In our pristine Anglophone academic life, it has been a way to discuss and express in other languages, and marvel at the art of expression. We therefore talk about the process and politics of translation between Bangla and English, and think about the idea of preservation in various ways. What is lost in translation? What is gained?

Through months of trying to transport emotions, idioms and punctuation from Bangla to English, we’ve grown closer to our mother language than we’ve ever been. Alongside that familiarity has come the sense of inhabiting a world held only within the cadences and curlicues of this language. But this isn’t a sensation peculiar to Bangla. In every translation session, our classmates have brought metaphors and phrases from their languages that pose annoying, yet delightful, problems of translation. Working through those doubts has always felt like dipping our toes into the waters of a separate, thriving world. Something about these colourful phrases feels very private and intimate. Yet we’re pursued by the need to share the wonderful literature in the languages of the Indian subcontinent; to share the array of emotions each one of these narrative worlds make you feel.

Each language has its own perspective of time and place. These aspects come together to knit the sense of inhabiting a separate world. Both of us have primarily translated from Bangla into English, and can, therefore, only speak of Bangla. It is an experience that comes with doubts at every turn. By the end, we’re always left with two questions: have we done justice to the source text? Does it sound well in English? It’s always hard to reconcile both of them. The conflict mainly comes from the differing nature of both languages. English comes from a family of languages quite different from those spoken in the Indian subcontinent. Naturally, the rules of its grammar, its idioms and banter provide a distinctive way of understanding time and space, which might not always be compatible with those of Indian languages. Underlying this conflict is a colonial history that makes English widely accessible, but also necessitates promoting indigenuous languages. How then do we convey to a wider population what inhabiting the worlds of Indian languages feels like?

One can argue that after several years of being spoken and written in the subcontinent, English has become an Indian language, where the grammar is tweaked and several Indian catchphrases are fondly used in English sentences. This liberty to mould an imported language into something homegrown might simplify the problems of translation. But if this form of English is indeed an Indian version, how wide will be the readership that can understand it? It is a question we’ve argued over to no end.. Often, we’ve stubbornly wanted to retain the roughness and peculiarities of our source languages in our translated texts, protesting that some words are untranslatable, and English readers must work through the difficulties to enter this new world. But does that practice make the text more accessible, or does it further obscure its essence by producing puzzling sentences? 

Along the way, we’ve arrived at a compromise for Bangla. We try to make the translated text sound like a naturally English one, but use sentences that are the closest options for the source text. But the sense of time and space are located further within the structure of Bangla. The time the text is located in is denoted by the tense of the narration. In English, there is a clear demarcation between present and past tense however, in Bangla there is a slippage between both. Narratives are often written in between past and present, and jumps between these two time frames are not uncommon. The sense of time is, therefore, one that we carefully thread as translators of Bangla-English-Bangla.

But time and place aren’t just located in the tense of a text. They are embodied by the characters who live in that environment, and in some ways, that environment lives within them. How, for example, can we translate the banter of two boys living in an ashram in ancient India? Which is the more important question—preserving the archaism of their context, or making them sound like young and defiant adolescents?  

The act of translation is also an act of historical preservation. Translating Bangla texts into English opens up new audiences and new possibilities. A new kind of readership emerges. Translating texts whose publication dates back several decades helps revive its readership, and foster conversations between the changing tastes of readers. But with these possibilities comes the responsibility of representation. A work of literature can become the voice of a people through its language. It is always intimately twined with the emotions and experiences of a community which might be as mundane as lone words and phrases, but hold political undercurrents and the history of a language within them.

The seamless juxtaposition of both is fairly easy to glean for us as Bangalis. But the task of its reproduction inevitably becomes a personal one. Dissatisfaction over translated works probably arises from the intersection of the personal and the political. As translators starting out, we’re far from mastering the rules of the game. But for now, we rely on this intersection to guide us, to help us preserve what the work of literature makes us feel. While we fear losing much along the way, the gains have often been insightful. It is a long process, and often a frustrating one, but one that is exhilarating, leading us down new avenues.

Pratiti and Ipsa are members of Sandhi, an ever-evolving society at Ashoka engaging with language both academically and  otherwise. We are not dedicated to any specific language(s), or only to tangible languages at all. We think about language at various levels— the idea of language itself, the interplay between languages, the nuances within a language and much more. Currently, they are holding the 2021 edition of their flagship event, Bhasha Mash.

We publish all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivatives license. This means any news organisation, blog, website, newspaper or newsletter can republish our pieces for free, provided they attribute the original source (OpenAxis).

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Issue 8

The Economy Of Stories

‘Any story you can come up with has already been written in the Mahabharata;’ by popular consensus, this is often heralded as the truth in India. The Mahabharata, with its intricacies in plot, characterisation, details, off-shoot narratives and adaptations, could easily be considered as the mother of fiction. Christopher Booker in The Seven Basic Plots argues that any given story is bound to fall within one of his seven major plot structures. If we were to consider this true and assume that the Mahabharata encompasses all major plotlines, then every single work written in the world today would simply be an adaptation or a rewriting of an existing story.

Why then do we bother writing, re-writing, adapting and recirculating existing stories? Are we simply enabling the production of another economy, where stories, like currency, exchange hands only to be drawn on or crumpled in one’s pocket before being handed to its next owner? This brings me to a theory that I have decided to call ‘the currency of fiction’.

What happens to the currency we use on an everyday basis? The notes either exchange hands till they are torn/worn, at which point they are replaced by crisp, new ones that everyone loves to get their hands on; or, they become old enough to be worth preserving for their collectable value. I see something similar happening in the economy of stories—the basic plot is the monetary value, and the currency or the stories are the means to access this value. New notes are the rebirth of these existing stories, in the form of adaptations or re-imaginations. The stories that gain age, wisdom and stand out in some sense, then become Classics, or collectables. Any subsequent note with significant resemblance or reproduction of thought of these Classics are the ones that are the most desirable, i.e., the ones with the most exchange-value.

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Be it Enola Holmes, Maria Dahvana Headley’s feminist translation of the classic Beowulf, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Forest of Enchantments – the tale of Sita from the Indian epic Ramayana (the Sitayan), Kamila Shamsie’s novel adaptation of Greek tragedy Antigone into present-day Britain and Pakistan—Home Fire, or even a spin-off of Hindi soap Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai to the new Yeh Rishtey Hain Pyaar Ke with the stories of the children, and grandchildren (or was it great grandchildren?…I lose count) of the previous leads, recent times see no dearth of the return of our beloved characters.

Why? Why reimagine Juliet in 2020, as opposed to creating a new Desdemona or Laila or Heer? What about these particular characters makes us want to bring them to life again, albeit in a new socio-political scenario, or a reimagined world? I argue that it is our need for familiarity.

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“Desi tadka with a fusion twist” | “Chai tea latte.”

What do you see common to both these ‘fusions’? I see the need for familiarity wrestle the desire to explore – the ‘certainty’ component of your personality in a heated debate with the ‘uncertainty’ percentage. Both these notions do just what an Enola Holmes does—brings you something you know that you like and that you trust is good, while adding some spice to it. The need to watch it, buy it, or consume it, is motivated by the same need to check your phone when a notification pops up with “Your friend ShortAttentionSpan has updated her profile,” you know the existing story is good, and you believe that if something new has been added to it, it ought to be good too.

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Stories are thought to have been born as a form of relief or a doorway to a world beyond. Be it by way of murals on cave walls that showed horses racing through the clouds to greener grass, or by way of an ‘ajji’s’ (grandmother’s) stories to her grandchild of a crow placing rocks into a thin-necked vase in order to able to drink the water inside.  All of these stories, while allowing for this momentary escape from reality, most definitely contain a component of the ‘real’ encompassed within themselves. The horses could be human beings rushing towards something and ignoring the metaphorical clouds around them; the crow could be ‘Sharma Ji’s beta’ (the ideal neighbour’s son, a prodigy who every Indian child is asked to be more like) who manages to do smart work and reap the best results.

What all of these stories do is play with the distance between you, and the world you are reading/watching/accessing. By making it appear sufficiently afar, the stories allow for a commentary on the real world, enabling you to access it without winning the assured eye-roll a moral lecture would otherwise merit.

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During theatre club meetings, we would play a game called ‘You!’ 3 characters would take their place in the centre, surrounded by a circle consisting of the other participants, or the spectators in this case. They would proceed to enact a scene—a short one, only a few minutes long. After the first performance, they would enact it a second time; the spectators were then free to clap their hands, at that  point the actors would freeze within the circle, point to one character, and yell, “you!” They would therein, take the place of said character and proceed with the scene in their stead, with one crucial change.

The aim of the game was to first understand how a single action contributes to the larger plot. The second aim was to help people understand what a good move, and a bad move, was —if the change elicited a story worse than the original, it was a bad move. And third, the real-life connotation—to be able to understand when and how your actions impact other people, and how you can think before doing something.

This game, while our little self-creation, is one that had been played on a much larger scale, a long time before us. Forum Theatre, a creation of Brazilian theatre practitioner Augusto Boal is motivated by similar goals, with the only difference being that the scene performed would be one of oppression, or societal harm, that could be averted through the tiniest of actions – one single action, that could contribute to, or help stop oppression.

In a similar manner, the economy of stories, in its distancing and temporary suspension of reality allows you to re-think the actions of a character, while also giving you the chance to step in with the whole, “why didn’t Rose simply move over and give Jack some space on the plank?” criticism. Stories provide us with an alternate space where we can think about the actions of characters, their motivations and aspirations, without directly realising that while so doing, we are also questioning and tugging at the loose ends of similar questions that arise around us on a daily basis. Stories thereby become powerful tools for critique, for questioning, for dialogue, and thus, for civic action.

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In the economy of stories, as we recycle tales making a few crucial changes, we ‘adapt’ them to suit our present conditions. We play with the ‘distance’ of the story from its consumer, awarding the latter either the discomfort of reading about something too close to home, or the pleasure of an imaginary universe with a hidden resemblance to reality. We bring the reader/watcher/consumer to the right distance from our story in order to be able to comment on reality in the manner of our choosing. All of this while preserving the familiarity of existing characters, broad plot design, and the ambit of criticism that the root story fell under, in case of direct adaptations.

This ‘replaying of the same scene’, or ‘recycling of currency’, with a few crucial changes, shows the reader the light of the world of Forum Theatre, or ‘You!’ The potential to affect some real-world outcome; some civic change. The paranoia of ruling bodies about seditious fiction, crowd-exciting theatre, anti-establishment fictional narratives, suddenly makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? Imagine a large puzzle, with each piece being a currency note—the economy of stories produces a larger picture. The notes are connected by strings. That, if you sufficiently step back to look at, make up a compelling image. It is up to you to be able to decipher this image, make changes, provide new decisive shapes to the notes in order to elicit a different picture.

The economy of stories has immense power. As does art. Be it with a single currency note, the larger narrative, or the need for relief from reality, stories rule our world, as they should. The economy of stories is here to stay, and you are a part of it, either as a spectator or a motivated spect-actor. All you need to do is choose. And choose wisely, as Krishna tells Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, at the beginning of the Great War, a.k.a., the Mahabharata.

Varsha Ramachandran is currently an Editorial Associate at Agents of Ishq. She graduated from Ashoka University in 2018 with a degree in English Literature. 

We publish all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivatives license. This means any news organisation, blog, website, newspaper or newsletter can republish our pieces for free, provided they attribute the original source (OpenAxis).

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Issue 8

A Monochromatic Tug of War: A semiotic analysis of black and white in Black Swan

The use of colour in film allows for multilayered cinematic representation, beyond what is shown at face value on the screen. We associate emotions with every colour—for example, pink is used to convey femininity, yellow for warmth, green for growth or nature, red for danger, passion or violence; the list goes on. We also encounter binary oppositions extensively in the arena of film and literature—in tropes of good versus evil, black versus white, young versus old and more. I will be looking into the use of colour in cinema in alignment with binary opposition. Cinematographer Matthew Libatique uses black and white to convey this opposition in Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 film Black Swan. The film is about duality, both allegorically through its premise in Swan Lake, and literally through the protagonist’s breakdown. Libatique makes use of costume and set design to portray this duality through the colours black and white.

On the surface, the story is about Nina Sayers, played by Natalie Portman, who is a ballerina at a company that is planning to put up a showcase of Tchaikovsky’s ballet, Swan Lake. The story of the ballet is as follows: Princess Odette has a spell cast on her that makes her a white swan, which can only be broken by true love. She falls in love with a prince, but before the spell can be broken, her evil sister, the black swan, swoops in and seduces him. The white swan, devastated, kills herself and finds her freedom in death. As the film progresses, we see that Nina’s life in some way starts to mirror the story of Swan Lake. After being cast as the Swan Queen for the ballet, the film traverses her internal conflict in trying to embody both the white and black swan for the sake of her art. She is threatened by Lily, another dancer in the company, who fully epitomizes the turbulence of the black swan. As the film progresses, her internal struggle, drive for perfection and threat of replacement triggers Nina’s descent into madness, which takes the form of her “doubles”. As her madness peaks, there is a conflation of Nina’s alter ego with Lily, which shows that in Nina’s mind, Lily is the black swan that she herself is trying to become. 

The story is premised on the dynamic between the innocent white swan and her dark and seductive counterpart, which is conveyed effectively through the pervasive monochromatic tug of war throughout the film. White is a colour that generally connotes purity, goodness and innocence. Black, being its binary opposite, comes to symbolize sin, rebellion and evil. The binary that the narrative creates between Nina and Lily is translated on screen, using costume, through the binary that already exists between black and white—Nina is consistently shown wearing white clothes at the beginning of the film, whereas Lily is shown chiefly in black. The instructor, Tomas’ demand for the balance between artistic perfection and daring passion is indicated through costume as well; he is always shown wearing either grey or both black and white. 

The costume changes for Portman throughout the film trace Nina’s journey of maturation as it starts to take the form of her madness. As she starts to give in to her darker impulses, the transition is shown through her wearing grey, symbolizing that she is arriving at a middle ground between the white and the black in her life. Her defining act of rebellion—going out to the club with Lily—sets in motion the big change. The scene at the club in which she pulls over a black top over her white top illustrates her conscious decision to suppress the brand of her innocence to unleash her more reckless urges. In the events that follow, Nina experiences true sexual liberation for the first time, which finally allows her to surrender her old self and embody the black swan. This shift is conveyed through a switch to black costume for Portman in every scene from that point on.

In the days leading up to the final show, Nina’s madness crescendos and her hallucinations take the form of her literally turning into a black swan. She starts to pull out black feathers from her body, symbolising her internalization of the black swan. In the penultimate scenes of the film, in Nina’s performance as the Swan Queen, her struggle to play the part of the white swan convincingly shows that she has finally let go of her childlike inhibitions. The dressing room scene following the first act shows the climax of Nina’s deliration. Her violent physical altercation with Lily has sudden camera switches where we see her fight—not Lily, but herself. The juxtaposition of black and white in this scene shows the last scuffle between Nina’s alter egos in order for her to finally embody the black swan. The scene ends with her stabbing her counterpart, followed by an artistically perfect performance as the black swan. These scenes hold immense connotative value; her literal transformation into the black swan while dancing represents the act of her casting away the last shred of childlike innocence and inhibition in order to let the darkness take over. The act of stabbing Lily—or so she thinks, we later find out that she was hallucinating and actually stabbed herself—symbolizes the need for Nina to kill that part of herself in order to embody a darker persona.

In the final scene, as the white swan leaps to her death, Nina’s bloodstain from the stab wound grows, making this the fall to her actual death. In the closing shot, instead of a traditional fade to black, a blinding white light fills the screen as Nina utters her dying words of “finally feeling perfect”, which symbolizes her finally being set free from her misery, just like the white swan. 

Colour’s link with emotion can be wielded as a tool to make a film more profound, owing to the added layer of meaning that colour can impart to a scene. Once the significance of colour has been established in a film, it allows its viewers to make subconscious, emotional connections with its usage on the screen. Black Swan is a subjective character study, and the costumes, production design and Libatique’s mastery of light and shadows work together brilliantly to depict the tumultuous trajectory of an obsessed artist who is willing to go as far as it takes to achieve perfection.

Nidhi Munot is a second-year Economics and Finance student at Ashoka University.

We publish all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivatives license. This means any news organisation, blog, website, newspaper or newsletter can republish our pieces for free, provided they attribute the original source (OpenAxis).

Categories
Issue 8

Racy Raj Tales: Miscegenation in British India

Despite all romantic notions about love and desire, the choice of a sexual partner has seldom remained just a matter of mutual agreement between two partners. Governments and regimes have, through different time-periods, attempted to control, and channelize people’s sexualities, in the name of ‘social order’. Relationships that do not subscribe to the cultural codes of behaviour, and threaten the patrilineal descent of the race or community, are regarded as aberrations. Such relations do not receive social sanction, as they challenge socially constructed rules, and are thereby labelled as forbidden or ‘illicit’. 

The British Raj in India witnessed several such ‘forbidden liaisons’. The British East Indian Company was particularly preoccupied with the issues of love, sex, and marriage with regard to the sexual health of the sahibs and memsahibs, because of various ‘risks’ that were associated with uncontrolled space of the ‘exotic east’. Victorian codes of conduct were directly antithetical to the unrestricted native morality, and the Indian society was understood to have a more relaxed notion of bodily shame (reflected in the traditional gossamer cotton clothing that barely seemed to cover their bodies), which the British believed indicated at the absence of moral order. According to them, this could lead to the breakdown of the British society stationed in India by encouraging similar patterns of behaviour amongst the sahibs and memsahibs. Moreover, the tropical climate could lead to moral laxity, and ultimately jeopardise the imperial enterprise.  

Before the arrival of the memsahibs in the nineteenth century, the ICS officers of the Company married catholic women of the Portuguese descent. The sahibs also kept bibis, and maintained zenanas, which was far more economical than taking on the expenses of maintaining a European wife. Such arrangements could end if the officer left a particular regiment. If there were children, the sahib was not bound to provide for them. However, even though such alliances were not binding because they were interracial in nature, they had the same status as that of a legally formalised matrimony. Moreover, Bibis were not simply for utilitarian purposes, and the officers often praised the tender and loyal bibis they consorted with. Moreover, such forms of cohabitations were not known as ‘forbidden liaisons’ until the nineteenth century, when they became stigmatised due to the increasing concerns over miscegenation in the Raj. 

Sexual practices in the Raj were quite lenient up until the rise of venereal disease outbreaks amongst British officers, after which the Company was forced to amend the rules regarding sexual health of the white officers. Prostitution was widespread at the time, and while the Company understood the importance of brothels for maintaining order amongst the often-lonely ranks of sahibs, they understood the need to curb infections. Brothel houses came to be closely monitored and regulated to prevent diseases, as the idea of contagion came to be linked with anything related to the ‘Other’, or native. Prostitution was not banned because an active sexual life could ensure the physical robustness of the sahibs and prevent pent up desires and frustrations that could possibly result in under-productiveness. Regiments even had European madams manage brothel houses for their officers. With the nineteenth century, when batches of young women called the ‘fishing fleet’ came in looking for husbands in the Raj, interracial couplings gradually became condemnable, as the Company wanted to prevent the dilution of the white race in India. 

Due to the expansionist nature of the empire, British women’s sexuality was closely governed. Memsahibs were understood to be vulnerable in the native space, due to their susceptibility to tropical illnesses, and due to the added fear of sexual violation. Racist stereotypes surrounding the native man’s carnality buttressed such suspicions, especially in light of the accounts of abuse and violence against British women during the revolt of 1857. Recent feminist historiography has revealed that such rumours stemmed from biases and prejudices rather than actual realities, and were meant to perpetuate the fear of the ‘Other’ among the British officers/community/etc. in India. However, such notions served to deepen the prejudice against interracial marriages. The issue of miscegenation deeply concerned the British administration also because the children of mixed couplings came to be tabooed. The presence of the Anglo-Indian race was a rude reminder of the racial crossings, and the resultant dilution of the white race in India. 

Nonetheless, a number of interracial relationships were borne out of the Raj. Not only did sahibs have children with native women, there are several cases of European women falling in love with and marrying Indian men. Unlike popular perception, the men who courted and wed white women were not licentious natives who fetishized white skin, but devoted husbands who deeply cared for the women they married. Some of the stories of such unlikely matches are extremely tender and romantic, and allow us an insight into fulfilling mixed unions that dispel stereotypes. Yet, the postcolonial imagination continues to fetishize such relationships. A good example is Indian Ink by Tom Stoppard. 

It must be said that during the colonial period, the so-called ‘transgressive’ marriages and subversive liaisons occurred despite the political and social repercussions. Such instances become testament to the fragility of social conventions and orthodox belief systems that attempt to negate sexual agency of the people. While it is difficult to draw direct parallels between the ‘forbidden liaisons’ of the Raj, and what constitutes as forbidden today, in the current political climate, it is not altogether impossible to locate similarity in the regimentalisation of love and desire in contemporary times. The idea of ‘forbidden’ remains rooted in the social divisions, be it class, caste, race, cultures, etc. and relationships that attempt to transcend these boundaries automatically are labelled as taboo or criminal. Interracial marriages during the Raj provoked as much backlash as inter-caste and interfaith marriages do today. 

Indeed, governments since time immemorial have attempted to curtail sexual and romantic desires, to maintain ‘social order’. However, history and literature demonstrate the sheer subversive quality of love as transgressive amours not only take place in spite of societal and political restrictions, but also are also consistently idealised and romanticised. The ultimate ineffectuality of the State or governments in the matters of the heart and soul can serve as a heady reminder of the potency of love and desire across time and culture.

Ipshita Nath teaches English Literature at University of Delhi. She is currently a doctoral candidate with Jamia Millia Islamia, and wrote her thesis on postcolonial representations of memsahibs in Indian literature. Her book of short stories, The Rickshaw Reveries, was published by Simon & Schuster India, in March 2020.

We publish all articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivatives license. This means any news organisation, blog, website, newspaper or newsletter can republish our pieces for free, provided they attribute the original source (OpenAxis).