In a ghost white sleeveless short lace top with an elastic on the waist and a sheer net border over her small breasts, Gerda walks in to the room holding a tea tray. Her poise gets noticed in the most casual way as she leaves her short blonde curly hair open and her high on morning energy attitude, as she wakes up her husband.
The Danish Girl, opens with Einar Wegener’s painting exhibition where Gerda is accompanying her husband in a beautiful dress and coiffed hairdo. Her husband is a very well known landscape artist in Copenhagen during the 1920s while Gerda is a portrait artist who struggles a bit before gaining it big for herself before she gets a break. The first time when she asks Einar to wear a pair of stockings and shoes in place of her model, Una, he feels some sort of connection which had been surpassed in his childhood. He put on white stocking and just covers the cream coloured midi dress over himself without actually trying it on. Gerda seems happy about this that her husband is being supportive of her and is helping her out with her painting as well. In that scene, she wears the same white top over a white midi skirt and kaftan. There is no sign of sadness or melancholy and she is just happy about things working for her. Every time she’s home and painting, she’s in whites. But throughout the film, her costumes are noticeable and they speak for her in away which her expressions seems to fail in making it visible.
Later, when Einar just begins to identify himself as Lili, Gerda remains completely unknown about this fact and paints him in a white fancy net gown. She takes him as Einar’s cousin, Lili in a party, when Gerda first witnesses the unusual side of Einar which she was not aware of. By the interval, Einar starts identifying himself completely as Lily and then Gerda’s struggle as a wife comes in as well as the struggles that Einar goes through. Gerda gains popularity after she starts doing portraits of Lili and she gets to visit Paris as a part of her work and so she insists on Einar to come along.
Gerda paints Lili again in Paris when she slightly seems to get over some of the struggles of supporting her husband or pulling him out of it. She puts on white only once in Paris, when she is doing a portrait of Lili again. The scene just continues with a numerous attempts to try to get over this but later in the end, Einar settles on sex transformation surgery. The film is basically about a struggle that both the characters go through which is very contrasting to each other. Einar is already a famous painter but Gerda is struggling with it and wants to have an identity of her own as a painter. Whereas, Einar already has a name for himself as a painter but his struggle lies within his gender identification.
As we start reaching the end, we see both the characters are on their way of achieving what they want to have. Lili is finally going to be known as Lili. The first part of the surgery was a successful one where Gerda makes herself available for Lili. In the second part of the surgery which was the final and complicated one, she travels from Copenhagen to be by him. She wears a red shirt and carries the cream colour scarf that he gave it to her. After all the moments when she wanted to have her husband, she seemed happy for the first time for Lili.
I have got used to writing the reporting pieces by doing it all these semesters. I could not go out to cover any event for the writing because I was not aware that it is a mandatory writing for this set also, so, I had to settle with an event happening in college only. The event was about the recent decriminalisation of section 377 which everyone has been discussing about. So, there was enough matter to write on and not base the reporting only on the facts about the event.
St. Joseph’s solidarity with 377
Since the decriminalisation of the section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, the whole country has been celebrating. St. Joseph’s College (Autonomous) was one amongst those institutions which welcomed the verdict by organising an event in the college on this Tuesday in Xavier Hall.
The event was organised in collaboration with the department of psychology and social work, the PRO Office and the gender sensitisation cell of the college. Professor Kiran Jeevan led the even by giving a welcome speech and introducing the audience to the event. He said that when the judgement was released, it was also an Independence Day fro the country. He went on to welcome the panelists on the stage on by one as he called out their names and gave a small introduction about them.
Miss Yasmin Seth was invited as the guest of honour along with the panelists and she gave a brief talk about what she felt of the judgement and expressed deep joy towards it. Mrs Neeta Pereira, the head of Psychology Department, was then invited to greet and extend solidarity and joy of decriminalising section 377.
The event was inaugurated by all the panelists watering a flower pot and receiving a felicitation from the staff members of the college. The First speaker of the afternoon was Dr. Murlidhar who works in NIMHANS also called it as ‘Independence Day’ in terms of gender prototype and talked about the way the country accepted this judgement. He kept his words short brief and was followed by Mr Naveen who is a writer and a researcher and gay right activist. He confessed his openness about his sexual orientation and talked about his relationship with Karthik whom he met through a dating site. He shared his struggle of coming from an orthodox family but assured happiness that he now feels finally out of the closet.
The third speaker was Ayan Sayeed, a LGBT activist who also comes from an orthodox muslim family and their idea of him being gay is being a transgender and expressed concern that people fail to understand the spectrums of LGBTQ and some Fundamental rights that they are still devoid of. The next speaker was Jayna Kothari, a women rights activist Director of Centre of Law University. She first encouraged everyone to read the judgements irrespective of the community or the stream and read some of the statements that the Supreme Court made on this judgement. She discussed the history of 377 and how and when the law came into force. And the last speaker was Dr Akayi Padmashali who held a very strong voice towards the issues that the community has been facing and she has been very actively protesting against them. She criticised the Prime Minister for not giving any opinion since the judgement was passed saying that “it is his state responsibility, it is his social responsibility and it is his moral responsibility’. She thanked the college for accepting this judgement and coming forward to talk about it and standing for a just and non discriminatory world. Her talk was followed by a series of question answers from the students and then a beautiful dance performance by a student, Lehri. This piece is about the Banarasi sarees which is very famous in the Northern part of the country, especially in Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh where there is huge culture of wearing sarees. I got the information for the piece from a wholesale and retailer of a banarasi saree shop whom I know personally.
I wrote this piece for last semester’s portfolio but didn’t use it then because it seemed like a fact based writing, but this semester, since I was running out of time, I tried to modify this piece a little by adding some information other than the facts which were directly taken from google. I used one picture from google and the other from my own family album.
A saga of festive splendour- The Banarsi Silk Saree
Banaras, the city that speaks of culture and colour peppered with antiquity at every step. A place where enlightenment roams around the dinges and hollows of Ganga ghats, where even the ash from a burnt body is holy to some. From that mystical land in Uttar Pradesh comes a textile that has been widely popular since time immemorial. The Banarasi silk is today famous across the country as a major part of festive attire.
Known for its gold and silver 'Zari', fine silk and refined embroidery, the sarees boast of intricate yet heavy designs inspired by the likes of the Mughal empire. The floral and foliate motifs, 'kalga and bel' and 'jhallar' at the outer border are some varieties that these sarees come in. ‘Kaju lachcha’ and ‘plain lachcha’ are the most famous designs of the saree.
The saree making is a cottage industry for about 1.2 million people associated directly or indirectly with the hand loom silk industry of the region around Varanasi encompassing Gorakhpur, Chandauli, Bhadohi, Jaunpur and Azamgarh districts. The Banarasi Silk Jamdani, an ideal Banarasi saree consists of about 5600 thread wires all of them 45 inch wide. This industry has been facing quite a competition from the machine made factories who produce sarees at a much faster rate resulting in huge losses for the workers who make these handmade sarees. It is these small scale industries, that make the best sarees rather than the ones made by machines and they cost. They can cost up to lakhs, while machine made wholesale sarees begin at a range of 200 to 300 and the retail prices go up to 500 to 600 as the retailer decides.
The very famous ‘Assi ghat’ which the politicians have also used as a stunt to gain votes is quite a tourist spot in the city. Indians and foreigners assemble there in large numbers, every morning and evening for ‘Ganga aarati’. This turns to be a good opportunity for the businessmen to open up stores near the ghat. A small scale saree manufacturing industry is one of them, which manufactures and sells the sarees directly to the customers at cheaper prices. This place is well known among the tourists for direct purchase rather than buying from a store which would relatively be more expensive.
‘Madanpura’ and ‘Golghar’ are the hubs of wholesale and retail sarees in Benaras. The silk saree business in Benaras has given wide income opportunities to many in the city, where a large number of people have indulged in this work. Even in the small tiny lanes that Benaras is quite famous for, there are households who engage themselves in saree making in their homes itself and roam around on bicycles to sell them off for a source of living.
It takes around fifteen days to six months to complete one saree depending on the intricacy of the designs. It can take even up to one year for the royal Zari designs to be added. Currently only four key varieties of the sarees exist. Others are variations such as 'Organza' and 'Kora' with Zari. Usually, one particular design of a saree comes in seven to eight different colours. Usually, it requires three craftsmen to work together to create one of these. The sarees are now being designed by very renowned designers too in collaboration with the weavers.
Banarasi silk sarees are very popular among brides as it boasts of a royal aura. Moreover the zari patterns make it a staple for weddings and other joyous festivities. It is very common to see Banarasi Silk sarees in the trousseau of married woman as a gift from
their 'Mayaka'. Thus it is no wonder, that Banarasi Silk saree has a place of pride among the hand woven fabrics of India.
The Local and the missing local
The Hindustan Times has a four page weekly supplementary, HT City which mostly covers the Bollywood movie industry and film. The cover page of the paper is comprised entirely of film and celebrity coverage. There is not much that the paper does with the local. This isn’t uncommon, most of the supplementary news papers are films and celebrities excluding much of the other news. Since I’ve had to travel within cities and have lived there for a considerable period of time, the idea of local kept changing from place to place and every place had a different news coverage. HT City, Ranchi was again filled with page 3 news and such less coverage of the local. The local only covered some fancy night parties and nothing about what’s happening around. The 2nd page consisted of the usual TV schedule and sudoku games. The third page was mostly health and beauty and all of that. The Sunday supplementry used to be a little interesting with respect to the the coverage of the arts and culture. There would be some articles on health, yoga, travel, art and other such things. Sunday supplementry was the only arts and culture one where the readers could read something on a lazy Sunday but still there was no local coverage.
The whole local thing completely lacked in the newspaper. There were actually so many events happening around in the city which people would have definitely been interested in knowing about it. I think that’s also one of the reason that all small towns remain so uninformed about their own area and are somewhat well aware of the metropolitan cities rather than their own. I knew quite a bit about Chandni chowk, paharganj, SN Market all these places around Delhi but didn’t know that any such places existed in my own town. The small towns remain lagged with their local coverage as compared with the metropolitans in the English newspapers. But what I noticed with the Hindi newspapers, they covered a little more of the local. They included events and stories around the city. Papers like, hindustan, Dainik Bhaskar and Dainik Jagaran covered their local in a more detailed aspect. In some small towns where the English newspapers sell, they have a different timings and some articles that were published came from the writers who don’t reside in the city.
During IPL seasons, one match is held every day at 8 in the evening but only on weekends, two matches used to be held on the same day. One at 16:00 and the other at the usual time, 20:00. With the match coverage in the newspapers with respect to English and Hindi, only Hindi newspapers covered the 8 pm match in the next morning newspapers.
I was a huge KKR fan and the match was going on between KKR an CSK. It was the last ball and 6 runs to go. Dwayne Bravo of CSK has to take the ball and the light went out and I missed watching my team win. And always for my satisfaction, I wanted to see it in the newspaper and then just feel happy about it. The next morning, I took the ‘Hindustan’, the Hindi paper and opened the page where the headline read as, “KKR hui parajit” which actually means ‘KKR lost’ and I being unaware of the word ‘parajit’ was very happy about my team getting ‘parajit’ until next morning when I read the Hindustan Times which said that “KKR lost to CSK at the last ball” and I discovered the meaning of parajit which I haven’t forgotten till date. The English newspapers would write about it one day later. So a match on Tuesday would be covered in the papers not on Wednesday as it’s usually done but on Thursday. So, I feel that the local language newspapers do more justice than the English newspapers in the small towns.
Back at home, in a small town in Bihar, Sitamarhi, I was shocked that they even sell English newspapers. But an order had to placed and then they would start getting it from the next morning. The newspaper sellers didn’t even carry one extra English newspaper with them which was quite surprising. With respect to news coverage there was no local coverage at all. The Hindustan Times didn’t even have a supplementary HT City. There was just a page in the newspaper with some Bollywood news and literally nothing at all. Like in Hindustan, they still had a city page, where there were all the local news but Hindustan Times that was sold there had nothing at all of that sort. They just covered some stories of the state itself and most the Capital, Patna.
Next is again a small town in Himachal Pradesh, Solan. The local coverage was different here as the town itself was very small and some events used to take place in the hills and it would get a decent coverage also.
The Hindu newspaper has a very indie policy towards art and culture which also has a very concentrative policy influenced by geographical locations and indigenous culture because of its editorial policies. But recently it has been trying to shift its interest more towards poetry in the vernacular presence and it has also shifted its interest from mainstream ideas. They have covered the old Hindi manuscripts of writers such has Premchand, Kazi Mazroom Raza, Mahadevi Verma, Ishmat Chungtai etc etc. Their coverage also includes remarkable film reviews ranging from black and white/cultural/technologically advanced/societal films. These shifts have broadened the vision of other arts and culture newspapers as well. The only confusion lies when it comes to differentiate among these weekly newspapers is their presentation of the matter – intelligently and sensibly concentrated with arts and cultural treasured pieces or very cunningly created to enhance self business of the production houses through patronising the very famous ‘PAGE 3’.
Over the years, different media houses have come up with numerous versions of their own to print these indie focused articles. The Times Of India’s supplementary, which circulates once a week every Sunday – ‘Times Life’ has a very contemporary presentation focusing on a more modernistic idea of what our culture is. The ‘Times Life’ supplement compliments the modern lifestyle of the present day with a partial part of its coverage dedicated to focusing completely on medieval and ancient forms of art and cultural patterns which may still bear influence on the modern world and its present outlook. This seems like some attempt to balance out the earlier mentioned modern outlook. But when its contemporariness can be seen so strongly in their choice to be more inclined towards showcasing ‘PAGE 3’ hotshots, this attempt is not to much avail. Much similar to this has been the case of The Hindu Newspaper’s supplement HT City. The news delivered in these has clearly been more of a reflection of the mainstream culture and their plain repetitive ideas, which bores me almost immediately.
The indie link, which I feel is crucial to my sense of the local seems to be missing in these supplementary papers. On the occasions that I do find it, it is so obviously outweighed by its hotshot ‘PAGE 3’ counterparts. When we studied Raymond Williams during our Journalism classes, we came across the statement that he made about culture ‘culture is ordinary’. The local is synonymous with culture, and its representation is characteristic of the local’s presence in the paper. Williams always spoke about the collective nature of ideas, language, and values, which define culture. For him culture is not something that should separate the people of the society but join them. I don’t see this attitude in these newspapers and their supplements circulated today. They are extremely picky and choosy about what they wanna focus on, and its always towards more of the richer people’s interests. Even their attempts to appear as balanced are all redundant and hopeless.
EDITED PIECES REFLECTION
Editing the pieces got a little complicated opposed to the usual conception I had of editing. I had to bear in my mind that I do not change much of structure yet make the changes I feel is necessary. The basic editing of syntax worked well as it does not involve much of thinking about what and how to go about. I could also feel that while editing a piece, I was trying to put things in the writing which I felt or wanted to be in. As different individuals, we want to add different perspective to a piece of writing. I felt that there arises a slight conflict between the writer and the editor as to what and how certain things are to be told.
I edited Avni’s reporting piece, ‘Fighting for the voiceless’ which got more complicated because I did not know everything about the event to make relevant changes. thus, I gathered enough information to have an idea and to stand on point where I can make changes with it. I tried changing some words and syntax and nothing more than that because we could not align our thoughts on same basis. I also the felt that the article could have been more than just the reporting of the event. I also felt that the writing failed to give away much to the readers but only understand some points which the writer wanted them to know.
The second piece was Sathyavak’s piece, ‘two things I bet were in your childhood, mine and everyone else’s’ where we came up with a headline for him. With his piece, I could not make much changes because he had a story to tell and hen wanted to tell it in his own way. So, I made very slight changes with his piece and tried to leave it the way he wanted it to be read. But what I thought was that he could have made the piece sound a little more humorous and I suppose that he intended to do that but could not fulfil it completely.