9 Obligation and Intimacy

Ever the blushing bride, I didn’t dare allow myself the indulgence of a lie-in with the man I’d just married. It seemed vulgar to linger behind a bolted bedroom door screaming ‘do not disturb’ while the in-laws ate breakfast downstairs. My reasoning was all thanks to the old fashioned values I’d honed back in Bradford. Despite my British birth, I was mindful of the implications of being female from an early age, because my gender was bestowed with the millstone of preserving a valuable commodity – family values. Even though it was sometimes a sham, I was used to manipulating my behaviour because it was usually subject to feedback. “What will people say” was a dominant theme in our home long before my marriage. I was taught that women’s conduct needed greater protection and control because it was worth more, so much more in fact that the entire family’s honour depended on it. And now, with all eyes trained on me as I moved in with the in-laws in Islamabad, I knew it was my conduct rather than my husband’s that would be scrutinised. Besides, he was already within his comfort zone because this was his home. Now it was my home too but it didn’t feel like it yet.

I presumed that being watchful of the unspoken rule that bars public displays of affection, I might exemplify my model upbringing and the Pakistani values I’d inherited from mum. I had after all been trained to switch channels instantly if a sordid kissing scene caught us out on the TV. Mum once deserted a bus stop because she couldn’t bear to stand behind a couple absorbed in a snog. Indeed, I’d never seen a Pakistani married couple holding hands or even sitting snugly on the sofa. Then there was the story of my maternal grandmother which typified the conduct of an entire generation. She moved into the large household that was already occupied by her husband’s parents as well as his many siblings. That old house, with its enclosed courtyard and rooms leading off the veranda, is still standing in our ancestral village of Neela. Only married couples were assigned the privacy of a separate room, primarily for use at night, since much of the day to day activity took place in the communal spaces of the courtyard and veranda. Mum says if my grandmother went inside and her husband inadvertently followed her in, she would quickly retreat lest anyone think the couple was snatching a private moment together!

So there I was in my new surroundings, trying to display the sort of modesty that I thought was socially appropriate. As a naïve 23 year old just entering my first relationship, it never even crossed my mind that my sense of decorum might be based on the antiquated rules from the 1950s, that mum had hauled to Bradford in her suitcase! I wanted someone to tell me to relax and be myself. I wished there was some sort of guidebook that explained the code of conduct a British bride should adopt as she assimilates into a new household in Pakistan. Instead I felt a sort of cultural confusion. That’s why I put myself on a rota of self-imposed early starts. Ignoring my husband’s protests, I would fling myself out of bed, get dressed as quickly as possible and present myself downstairs as soon as I heard activity in the kitchen. In my own way, I was making sure nobody could even accuse me of alluding to intimacy with my other half.

My early mornings might have been entirely voluntary but they were still a struggle because I was also enduring continuous late nights. You see, with the official ceremonies behind us, we had now embarked on a whirlwind of dinner parties, which confirmed beyond any doubt that our wedding was more about a family alliance than the union of two individuals. Ostensibly laid on to honour the bride and groom, the dinners were ultimately a chance for the two families to get to know each other. The invitations always extended to the entire family which meant cooking was abandoned in several households for many days after the wedding. With so many cousins and aunts lining up to host the happy couple and their entourage, the dinners demonstrated how influential and popular each family was, the extent of their clan, as well as the value they placed on kinship ties. And so, my husband and I found ourselves, lunch after lunch, night after night, feasting with the same bunch of people at different tables across Islamabad. The induction was ingenious if a little intense and irritating, since the entourage seemed oblivious to sabotaging our chances of spending quality time together.

Even Bollywood films couldn’t help me in this unchartered territory. My own love story had only just got going after the wedding, whereas it was courtship that tended to be the focus of most of the romantic films I’d seen. The first half was usually devoted to the declaration of love. Then the couple spent the second half ironing out the obstacles that prevented them from marrying – their fathers were arch enemies, the girl was already promised to someone else, the girl was richer than the boy, and so on. Such was the emphasis on love blossoming before marriage, that I couldn’t even recall a Bollywood film where the romance focussed on newlyweds. Recent films have dealt with themes of adultery, separation and divorce yet the notion of romance between husband and wife is rarely explored. Just like this example from Waqt (Yash Chopra, 1965), a song featuring a married couple is likely to be incidental, and generally acts as a precursor to some great calamity. The evergreen ‘Ae Meri Zohra Jabeen’ establishes the couple’s happy family life. Just after the husband publicly serenades his wife at a party, the family is torn apart by a major earthquake in this classic lost and found story.

Interestingly, romantic songs within marriage often feature older couples, even grandparents. There’s a song in the film Baghban (Ravi Chopra, 2003) where the sons, their wives and children help to celebrate a senior couple’s wedding anniversary. Since the grandparents’ roles are played by Amitabh Bachchan and the astonishingly youthful Hema Malini, I can’t help wondering if the song was little more than a ploy to relive the magic these veteran actors created some 20 years earlier in films like Naseeb (Manmohan Desai, 1981).

The exception is ‘Payalay Chunmun Chunmun’ from Virasat (Priyadarshan, 1997) featuring Tabu, my favourite actress. Anil Kapoor (from Slumdog Millionaire) marries out of obligation, but isn’t sure if he’ll be able to fall in love with his bride. The song beautifully portrays the newlyweds’ blossoming romance. Towards the end of the song, there’s a delightfully telling scene in which the husband playfully drenches his wife whilst they water their crops. When she runs inside to remove her soaking sari, he sheepishly checks for onlookers before rushing inside to join her.

My own bedtime routine was being compromised by a pressing matter. After returning from yet another dinner party close to midnight, I would wearily remove my makeup and jewellery, and set about rummaging through the various suitcases containing my clothes which now occupied our bedroom. In anticipation of my early starts, I would plan my outfit the night before. This was time well invested because as a new bride, it wasn’t just my behaviour that was under scrutiny, my appearance was too. The scrutiny had started the moment I set foot in my new home on the wedding day. I received a diamond ring from my husband, his first gift to me, as part of the ‘munh dikhai’ ceremony which literally means ‘unveiling the face’. And in the days after marriage, I was similarly ‘viewed’ in exchange for a cash gift, by family, friends and nosy neighbours. You know how it is when your house is up for sale, and the thought of potential viewings, as well as the pressure to promote your property compel you to spruce up your home to an impossibly high standard. Well, that’s just how I felt at times, although the term ‘strictly by appointment’ was often lost on the people coming to greet me.

The problem was that planning the outfits took much longer than usual. All the belongings I’d packed at my mum’s house now sat in suitcases around my new bedroom. The new outfits mum had paid for had already been displaced by an entire wardrobe courtesy of my husband’s family. This was my ‘bari’, the traditional gift of clothing and jewellery to welcome a bride into the fold. It would now be tactful to show my acceptance and appreciation by wearing these outfits. But you see, although the bari was prepared especially for me, my taste and preference had been irrelevant – apart from a request for my measurements and shoe size, I wasn’t even consulted. In fact, the bari was put together secretly, partly to amplify the impact of its presentation. But then, the whole point of the bari is to allow the donors to make a statement about their status and style.

Luckily, it was my good fortune that the wife of my husband’s older brother was in charge, because she was renowned for her fine taste and had a degree in home economics to boot. Still, putting the bari together is no mean feat. It’s a huge undertaking requiring the skills of an experienced project manager – a methodical approach, budgeting and brokering skills, sound judgment, chasing up deadlines, discretion and flair. Then there were the months of shopping trips to bazaars in the gruelling summer heat. Fabrics were selected and delivered to a trusted tailor, and there were discussions about the design of each outfit. An embroiderer was commissioned to create intricate beadwork on the neckline and hem of the kameezes. Dupattas were delivered to the dyer to ensure they matched the accompanying shalwar kameez suits perfectly. Then they were edged with gold or silver trimming to make them appropriate for ‘occasion wear’. Matching shoes, handbags and make-up also needed to be bought or preferably imported.

You’d hardly go to all that trouble if the results weren’t going to be publicly appreciated. In fact, the grand unveiling is precisely the occasion to showcase the efforts and enthusiasm with which the bride is being welcomed. And so the big reveal took place on the eve of my wedding during the mehndi celebrations. With the ceremonies conducted, the food eaten, the bride-to-be poised in her ringside seat, out came the suitcases. Every single item from those suitcases was unveiled to the gathered crowd of women. Each of the 21 outfits had been pinned together to facilitate its exhibition. My sister-in-law and her team held up each outfit with outstretched arms, conscientiously revealing the front as well as the back, then turning 180 degrees to ensure everyone in the audience could appreciate the detailed embroidery. I smirked beneath my yellow dupatta as the scene reminded me of the glamorous hostesses on the TV programme, Sale of the Century. The ladies would then turn the outfit towards the cameraman to ensure an eternal record was being kept of their triumph on video.

The most spectacular outfits were revealed first, like the lengha I would wear on the walima (the celebration to mark the consummation of the marriage). I gasped with delight when a shimmering red shalwar kameez was held up. An aunt sitting nearby instructed me to wear the white China silk outfit when it was her turn to host a dinner. The women nodded admiringly, approving the extent of embroidery on a particular kameez, or acknowledging the quality of the imported court shoes. Now a green towel was held up, forming a canvas for the skin coloured bras and knickers stitched on to it, presumably to make them easier to display. The obligatory gold jewellery was refreshingly tasteful. I spotted a bottle of Lou Lou perfume, a nightie I’d never wear, some very usable clutch bags, as well as a couple of hand knitted cardigans. The clothes were then spread out on a charpoy for closer inspection. Each outfit had been impressively packaged to allow them to be handled by curious women without being damaged.

Ideally, I’d have scheduled 48 hours to unpack and organise my wardrobe; to try on the new outfits at my leisure and identify the shoes, bags and earrings that were the best match. I could have done with some order in my surroundings to counter the confusion I was feeling already. It seemed ironic that the person I was supposed to adorn myself for was the one I wasn’t spending much time with. Rather than bonding as a new couple, our first days together seemed to focus on the social ties that our union had created.

I greeted the end of the honeymoon period with a huge sense of relief. The flurry of activity had died down with the final relatives returning to their homes in different cities, leaving just me, my husband and his father. With the return to normality, I would finally have time to catch up on sleep, sort out my wardrobe and rearrange the bedroom furniture. But there was sadness too. My husband said goodbye to me with a handshake in the driveway as his friend prepared to drive him to the airport. After two and a half weeks of married life, it was time for him to return to his job in the Middle East.

THE NEXT INSTALMENT: LOST IN BRADFORD

PREVIOUS: THE WEDDING NIGHT

8 The Wedding Night

What troubled me most about my wedding night was the lack of privacy. Obviously we had our own bedroom at my in-laws’, but I wasn’t keen on spending my wedding night in a house swarming with guests. To anyone unfamiliar with Pakistani culture, this may seem a tad inconsiderate, perverse even, so allow me to explain. You see, where I come from, families are huge, the bonds are strong, and lineage is a source of strength and pride. Take my mum, for instance. Her father alone was the eldest of 14 siblings. Even though most of mum’s immediate aunts and uncles have now passed away, the younger generations of the different branches remain close. I can reel off the names of my grandfather’s 14 siblings as naturally as the alphabet, and I can do it according to their birth order. At a push, I could probably also name their spouses and offspring. Needless to say, several generations of each branch were represented at my wedding. Of course my mum also gave due consideration to her mother’s side of the family. It won’t surprise you to learn that even the daughter-in-law of my maternal grandmother’s deceased step brother got an invitation.

You can state ‘Mr and Mrs only’ as loudly as you like on the invitation; it’s still best to assume the entire family will decamp for the celebrations, especially those travelling from further afield. Most come for the three day feast involving the mehndi (the henna party prior to the wedding), the wedding day, and the walima (the groom’s celebration of the consummation of the marriage). We don’t compile guest lists according to individuals. I’ve watched as relatives name the head of a household and then add up all the people in his family unit. And sending out a list of hotels in different price ranges close to the wedding venue would be inconceivable. You see, if our guests can make the effort to attend the wedding, then it’s their prerogative to be accommodated, with three decent meals per day, as well as transportation to the various venues, all at the host’s expense naturally. I’ve known aunts and uncles to rent out houses for a matter of days especially to accommodate wedding guests.

Now I hope you won’t think me selfish for saying so, but here’s the thing; as much as I love a houseful of people, it can all seem a little chaotic when you have to line up for the loo on your wedding day. I might have been the bride-to-be, but for several days I’d been sleeping on a quilt on the living room floor because so many people were sleeping at our house in Islamabad. It was a relief to be able to escape to the beauty parlour to be professionally plucked, preened and polished to Pakistani bridal standards. It was an even greater relief when I later learned that the groom had the good sense to book us into a hotel for a couple of nights – for all I knew, our bedroom was probably already in use!

It took much longer than expected to reach the hotel bridal suite. It was around 10pm and I’d been sitting demurely and with some patience for several hours now; first on the stage in the specially erected marquee on my mum’s lawn where the wedding ceremony was held, and now on the sofa in the lounge in my matrimonial home. I felt wiped out, disorientated and emotionally drained. Meanwhile, it seemed my husband had mysteriously disappeared to run an errand with some friends, so my new in-laws were left to make small talk and to keep me company. Given the occasion, my initial amusement about the delay soon turned to unease as I pondered the possible reasons for the groom’s apparent lack of urgency.

It turned out his friends had taken him out for a drive with an ulterior motive. As is customary at Pakistani weddings, they planned to fleece the groom. You see, the groom spends much of the wedding day collecting envelopes stuffed with cash from wedding guests, in line with the tenet that boxed gifts are useless and cash is always king. So, with a cash reward as an incentive, it’s little wonder that young relatives are keen to goad the groom. The bride’s sisters or cousins start the proceedings. It’s customary for them to find a way to remove one of the groom’s shoes and demand a decent pay-out for its return. The ‘joota chupai’ (hiding the shoe) tradition apparently stems from an old Hindu belief that by touching the groom’s feet, the bride’s sister can help the happy couple to ward off bad luck. Of course the bride’s sisters have an unfair advantage. They know all too well that the groom will be on his best behaviour. He’ll obviously want to impress his new family with his sense of humour, warmth and bigheartedness; no man wants to be labelled a miser by his in-laws, not least on his wedding day!

The groom’s own friends, siblings and cousins reserve their teasing until he returns home with his bride. On my cousin’s wedding night, I was one of a gang of 25 relatives who mischievously blocked the door to his bedroom where the bride was already waiting, and we demanded payment. The groom wanted to be left in peace with his bride while we wanted cash for a midnight feast at one of Lahore’s smartest restaurants. Needless to say, the groom quickly relented. On another occasion, my cousins sought revenge after realising that a young uncle had pre-empted their plans by taking refuge with his bride at Lahore’s Pearl Continental Hotel. While the newlyweds relaxed in their room, my wicked cousins made themselves at home in the hotel’s swanky restaurant. There, with the help of some willing friends, they ran up a considerable bill over the course of a couple of hours. Naturally, they had no intention of paying. After countless interruptions from reception about the outstanding bill, the unfortunate groom finally emerged from his hotel room in a rage and in little more than his shorts and vest.

My husband’s friends too seized the opportunity to play their own prank. Like my cousins, they knew the optimum time to test the groom’s patience is when he is finally sanctioned religiously and socially to be alone with his bride. It turned out my husband’s enterprising friends had driven him into the secluded Margalla Hills where they threatened to abandon him unless he paid up!

Many old Indian films I’ve watched from the 50s, 60s and 70s have depicted the moment the bejewelled bride sits alone on a bed strewn with rose petals, bosom heaving and lips quivering with anticipation, in an elaborately decorated room. The dashing groom makes a polite entrance and takes his first real look at his bride. While he gazes at her poetically and presumably with some relief (that she hasn’t turned out to be a dog), the bride is too bashful to meet his gaze. After a brief and harmless caress, the lights go out!

I think the most daring portrayal of the ‘suhaag raat’ (maiden night) in Indian cinema terms is probably in the following iconic song from an equally iconic movie, Kabhi Kabhie (Yash Chopra, 1976). To appreciate the scene and for the sake of continuity, you need to know that the bride broke off her relationship with a well-known poet after her parents decided to marry her elsewhere. Ironically, her ex-lover is also her husband’s favourite poet. As he admires his beautiful bride, he asks her to recite a favourite song by the poet to commemorate their wedding night. This explains the bride’s wistful tears and the brief entrance by Amitabh Bachchan (the poet), although rest assured he appears purely in her imagination!

I was nine years old when Kabhi Kabhie was released and I remember watching it on television in Pakistan. As I sat through this bold scene countless times, I was still too young to understand the symbolism it contained. Little did I know then that the bride’s long, dark, silken tresses, now unravelled, alluded to her state of undress. Her hair also cleverly obstructed my view, in line with the unspoken ‘no kissing’ rule that existed in the classic Bollywood films of yesteryear that I grew up watching. This immortal scene beautifully depicts the couple’s growing intimacy through the groom’s removal of the bride’s jewellery, one piece at a time – the pearl and gold ‘tikka’ hanging over her forehead, necklace, earrings, and finally the nose ring. The song ends as the groom removes his bride’s nose ring, a crude reference to her loss of virginity. The term ‘nath utarna’ (removal of the nose ring) traditionally signified a dancing girl’s initiation into the sex trade, and is still sometimes used today.

A similar theme is portrayed in a song from the classic film Gunga Jumna (Nitin Bose, 1961). When Vyjayanthimala wakes up beside her husband for the first time, she ventures outside and coquettishly sings about her lost jhumka earring, while the other one remains intact. When her husband comes to find her, the missing earring stuck to the back of his shirt alludes to their intimate night.

I spent the morning after my wedding fending off distant female relatives who seemed particularly interested in my wellbeing: “You look tired dear. Didn’t he let you get much rest last night?” The women giggled knowingly, expecting me to blush like a new bride should, implying just like those Bollywood song sequences did, that what we’d set out to achieve on our maiden night had been duly accomplished. It was a couple of days later that I received a more perceptive enquiry, one that for the first time seemed to imply that there might be more to marriage than making it through the maiden night. A distant uncle asked me, “Understanding ho gayee? Click ho gaya?” What he meant was this: “Have you worked things out? Have you clicked?”

I’d often heard Pakistani women in Bradford mocking youngsters like me about our illusory aspirations to settle down with someone with whom we ‘clicked’. When friends wanted to dismiss an unsuitable match during heated discussions with parents, that’s what they’d say: “We just didn’t click!” meaning there was no spark.

“What is this click business?”  The parents would moan as they ridiculed our unreasonable standards. Wasn’t it enough to be found a ‘sharif’ (decent) man who didn’t drink or gamble, who had a stable job and a strong family background?

I sensed this uncle wasn’t interested in my reply. I must have smiled and nodded shyly to his satisfaction, but here’s what I was really thinking: “Worked things out? Understood each other? Isn’t that rather a lot to accomplish in 48 hours?”

We had only just broken the ice. Where exactly do you begin when your terms of reference are totally different and you’ve got a lifetime’s worth of catching up to do? Besides, I was still waiting for the click.

THE NEXT INSTALMENT: OBLIGATION AND INTIMACY

PREVIOUS: THE WEDDING DAY

5 Yorkshire Bollywood and Me (Geography)

In the previous instalment, I explained that Yorkshire is one of Britain’s most sought-after filming destinations: scenes from The King’s Speech and several Harry Potter movies were filmed here, not to mention TV stalwarts like Emmerdale and Heartbeat. It was with this legacy in mind that the region decided to bid for the International Indian Film Academy Awards (IIFAs). If the team behind Yorkshire’s bid could pull it off, the ‘Bollywood Oscars’ would offer a massive boost to the region’s economy and tourism. It would give Yorkshire the perfect opportunity to inspire Indian film directors with its stunning landscape, castles and abbeys. But in order to understand Yorkshire’s offering, and the strength of its case, you first need to appreciate how love works in Bollywood.

If you know only one thing about Indian films, it’s probably that they feature several song and dance sequences. Songs create a spectacle but also have an important function; they are often used to declare love and emotion in the narrative so it’s vital that the backdrop matches the romantic sentiment. Nowadays, most protagonists in Indian films expect to choose their own life partners, yet their behaviour still endorses strong family values. The age old technique is to show the unmarried couple cavorting outdoors rather than confining them within four walls. This is Bollywood’s answer to damage limitation: if the couple are in a public space, no matter how remote, they won’t be tempted to indulge in physical intimacy. Being outdoors somehow dissipates sexual tension.

Most settings are chosen purely for their visual beauty. The priority given to aesthetics over any sense of continuity actually gives the director a great deal of freedom. He can use a song and dance sequence to display exotic locations without the background being part of the story. As long as the backdrop contributes to the mood of the scene, it doesn’t matter if the protagonists were travelling in a dusty rickshaw seconds earlier; they can be suspended on the Swiss Alps long enough to frolic gaily in the snow with multiple costume changes. We don’t need an explanation about how the characters got from A to B because we know they’ll go back to reality as soon as the song ends.

Songs also act as a key marketing tool. The sequences are a bit like mini pop promos, and they’re aired on Indian music channels before the actual film hits the big screen. Songs offer audiences a real flavour of the film and they’re critical in determining the film’s popularity. No wonder that filming the song and dance sequences in glamorous foreign locations eats up a huge chunk of the budget. While foreign locations bring a sense of excitement, escapism, adventure and aspiration to the film, they also have a practical purpose. Having all the cast available in one location away from home can minimise disruptions sometimes caused by an unpunctual or absent diva!

Film makers are permanently on the quest for the perfect romantic backdrop. During the 60s and 70s, exotic meant snow. In fact, the first time I saw snow was probably in Junglee (Subodh Mukherjee, 1961). However, having endured my share of severe British winters, it’s difficult to see how sliding down a snow clad mountain on your front can inspire romance, particularly when you’re inappropriately dressed in a flimsy shalwar kameez and court shoes!

This scene was shot in Kashmir in India, which was widely regarded as ‘heaven on earth’. The pure white snow, crystal clear lakes, the spectacle of snowy mountains presented idyllic surroundings for falling in love on screen during the 50s, 60s and 70s. In fact, Kashmir’s scenery and landscape became so popular that lakes, trees and mountains became synonymous with romance in Bollywood. So much so, that when the militancy and terrorism threats of the late 1980s made the place inaccessible to film makers, substitutes for Kashmir had to be found overseas. This was a move that did wonders for my geography. Somewhat shamefully, I must admit that my initial knowledge of Europe’s beauty spots was probably culled from repeat viewings of favourite Indian films.

Switzerland and its lakes, snow-capped mountains and impossibly green alpine valleys quickly became an obvious replacement for Kashmir. Actually, you could argue that film director Yash Chopra (nicknamed the godfather of love because of his contribution to the romance genre), has single-handedly placed Switzerland in the Indian consciousness as an aspirational place to visit. Seriously, he has filmed so often at a particular lake that the Swiss Tourism Board has unofficially named it The Chopra Lake. Now, remember those relaxed rules of continuity? The heroine in Chandni (Yash Chopra, 1989) is fast asleep in her bed in India, and probably doesn’t even have the means to fly to Switzerland. Yet she is conveniently transported to the idyllic location, after a detour to the beauty salon it would seem, as she dreams about the man she loves.

I’ve never been to Switzerland, and to this day, what I know about the country is probably scraped together from Indian films I’ve seen that were shot there. You see, we were taught to look to Pakistan for inspiration. Pakistan was the ideal and we were leading second best lives in Bradford; there were times it felt like mum’s heart was still beating in Rawalpindi. Circumstance had brought us to Britain. After my father took another wife, mum didn’t want to depend on her parents. Thankfully, our British passports meant we could return to Bradford and the council quickly put a roof over our heads. It’s easier to make a life for yourself on your own in Britain. It’s less judgmental and more forgiving. And the distance allowed mum to pretend to her family that life here was much better than it actually was. It also meant she could indulge us in a love affair with her homeland. It became the place where everything was good, where the sun shone brighter and where the mangoes were sweeter. And so, I was conditioned to believe that my family’s dream destination could only ever be Pakistan, traipsing after mum who’d be diligently catching up on 10 years’ worth of births, deaths and marriages among her extended family.

I didn’t know much about The Netherlands either. It was only after watching Rekha and Amitabh Bachchan in Silsila (Yash Chopra, 1981), running through endless stretches of tulip fields that I linked the flower with the country. Actually, I doubt I’d ever seen a tulip until I watched Silsila. If I was to recreate this scene, my heroine would be running through pots of red geraniums because that’s the only blessed flower we had growing in our house throughout my teens. Mum wanted to grow something pretty on the window sill in front of the net curtains. Being the cheapest of all pot plants, and the only ones available in Morrisons anyway, even we could afford them on our budget. Not only were geraniums easy to grow meaning results were guaranteed, they came in a variety of colours and proved to be incredibly good value. If one of the long stems broke off accidentally, you simply buried it in moist soil and it would soon take root, without any fuss. So with her initial investment, mum soon had geraniums lined up all along our window sill.

Thanks to their glossy portrayal in Bollywood blockbusters, many overseas destinations have enjoyed a real boost from Indian tourists. Although the story of Fanaa (Kunal Kohli, 2006) was set in Kashmir, the snow clad terrain of the Tatra Mountains in Poland was used as a Kashmir replacement. This created a lot of interest from Indian tourists wanting to walk in the footsteps of Kajol and Aamir Khan. Singapore Tourism Board launched a tour package to coincide with the release of the superhero film Krrish (Rakesh Roshan, 2006) which was shot there. In her debut film, Jeans (Shankar, 1998), Aishwarya Rai managed to complete a round-the-world trip in just one song, taking in The Great Wall of China, Eiffel Tower, Empire State Building, Taj Mahal, Pyramids, Roman Colosseum, as well as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Unsurprisingly, filming for the song Poovukkul (Tamil) involved a budget breaking 30 day round-the-world trip with the cast and crew.

Britain too has become a very popular screen location in Bollywood films. So much so that VisitBritain produced a Bollywood Movie Map to encourage Indian film fans to visit the British locations shown in their favourite films. The map highlighted old and recent Bollywood productions and included Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (Karan Johar, 1998), whose title track was filmed at Glencoe, Ross Priory and Loch Lomond in Scotland.

Thanks to the casual approach to continuity, Scotland’s diverse landscape could provide the backdrop for the song even though Scotland had nothing to do with the storyline. However, recent Bollywood storylines have featured non-resident Indians (NRIs) to appeal to the huge number of Bollywood fans living outside India. It’s well worth keeping them happy because the higher ticket prices paid by audiences in Canada, USA, Middle East and Britain can recoup more than half the total earnings of a film. For instance, my cinema ticket guarantees a higher return because I probably pay twenty times more for it than someone in India! With all this in mind, it makes sense for Britain and Bollywood to strengthen their ties, which is exactly what Yorkshire had in mind when it successfully bid to host the prestigious International Indian Film Academy Awards in 2007. It goes without saying that the region would offer an impressive backdrop to song and dance sequences. However, in my next blog post, I’ll reveal Yorkshire’s other unique selling points which convinced the organisers to bring the Bollywood Oscars to our doorstep.

THE NEXT INSTALMENT: YORKSHIRE BOLLYWOOD AND HISTORY

PREVIOUS: YORKSHIRE BOLLYWOOD AND KEIGHLEY

4 Yorkshire Bollywood and Me (Keighley)

I often wonder why it was that when my dad got off at Heathrow Airport in 1958, he rejected a life down south and carried on travelling until he reached Bradford. The truth is that he wasn’t interested in sightseeing, museums or palaces. He’d come to England to find a pot of gold. So he headed straight for the textile mills of Bradford where work was a plenty, well paid, didn’t require much English, any skills or qualifications. All you needed was a willingness to graft. You could arrive in Bradford at night and report to work the following morning with the men you were staying with. “Is there any more like you?” the mill supervisors would ask the immigrant workers. Such was Bradford’s reputation as a textiles centre, and such was its appeal to labourers, that I’ve heard stories of new arrivals not being met by friends at Victoria Station, and taking the porter’s advice to catch the Bradford train because that’s where the majority of Asians were!

Coming to Bradford was a financial arrangement, and a temporary one at that. There wasn’t much to do back home. A British wage and exchange rate meant that men like my dad could send more rupees each month to their families than they could dream of earning in a whole year. The men hoped that working in the mills for a few years would give the family in Pakistan a leg up; clear debts, build a house, and perhaps start a business. The aim was to earn as much as they could whilst living as cheaply as possible, which is why they didn’t bring their families with them.

If ever there was a man dedicated to finding his pot of gold, it was my father. If the work was available, he’d happily do double shifts all week, the equivalent of 16 hours on the trot. And what was the point of spending Saturday resting when he could earn time and a half at the mill! Being an entrepreneurial chap, dad bought 1 Alpha Street, Keighley, furnishing the modest terrace with several beds in the two bedrooms and two attics, as well as the lounge, and taking in about 15 lodgers. A rota system determined who slept when. If you finished work early, you might have to wait for a housemate to get up for his shift before you could use the bed. We might call it overcrowding now, but this was the norm among the migrant workers living in group houses, and of course it made things cheaper. They were probably awake for no more than an hour or so at either end of a shift, which was probably a blessing because there wasn’t much personal space to be found.

The men didn’t have much time to socialise. Any time off tended to get taken up with births, deaths and marriages among the new settlers. Seriously, people waited until the weekend to bury the dead because the concept of taking a day off didn’t exist. Dad didn’t even attend his own wedding. The family had taken on debt to buy land in Pakistan. It didn’t make sense for him to lose money by taking time off and incur the expense of flying back to Pakistan. So the couple took their marriage vows down the phone in 1964. A few months later, the last lodger at Alpha Street was just moving out as mum landed at Heathrow Airport. Thankfully, it was a weekend so her arrival didn’t interfere with dad’s shifts. Mum says you never saw anyone out in the daytime except for women and children. The English men would be working the daytime and evening shifts, while the Asian men, who tended to work the night shift, would be sound asleep.

Mum didn’t leave the house much after she came here. Dad did the grocery shopping or he would arrange a delivery. A rare treat, if you can call it that, was being accompanied by dad in a taxi to Bradford perhaps once in three months to visit friends and in-laws. The fare was around £2, probably a few hours’ wage in those days. But this was a necessity rather than a luxury as far as dad was concerned. A conservative man, he believed that his pride was dependent on his wife’s public demeanour. So, when mum accompanied dad, the onus was upon him to protect her honour, which mainly involved distancing her from the gaze of other men. This included male travellers on public buses, even if the alternative was costly. The rules were somewhat flexible though – mum was free to take a bus on her own because nobody would know whose wife she was, meaning dad and his honour couldn’t be implicated.

It was only after she befriended an English lady, Aunty Ivy we called her, that mum came to know there was more to Yorkshire than the main road between Keighley and Bradford. Mum remarked to Aunty Ivy one day what a built up area they lived in. She said she was bewildered by the ten mile journey between Keighley and Bradford, along the old A650 route. When she’d travelled by bus or train in Pakistan, she recalled recognising the end of a town or the outskirts of a new one by the ensuing fields which stretched out for miles and miles. The changing landscape and different crops acted as landmarks, alerting her that Gujarat was approaching, or Jhelum. But, wondered mum, how could you tell when Bingley finished and another area started. All she ever saw were row upon row of soot-stained terraced houses.

Dad would say, ”That’s just how it is here”. To be fair, even though he’d now been living in Keighley for a decade, dad didn’t know any different. You could say his relationship with the area was purely contractual so it probably never occurred to him to indulge himself during his Keighley voyage. There was no motivation for him to get to know the place. He’d bought a house in Keighley not because he was swayed by the area’s aesthetic values, but because he knew it would make him money – what you might call a buy-to-let I suppose, crucially located within a few minutes’ walk of several mills. Even after mum joined him in Keighley, dad still regarded his stay here as temporary. When mum grew tired of using the mismatched crockery she’d inherited from the lodgers and decided to buy a dinner set, dad chided her for wasting money on things they’d one day have to leave behind.

There was no incentive for him to learn anything new, to raise his potential. He knew where the mills and the grocery shops were. He didn’t need to know anything else. Trained hands were in such high demand that you could walk out of one mill and straight into another. Maybe that’s why he didn’t bother to learn English, even after 25 years of working in this country. Perhaps his lack of education also contributed to his lack of curiosity about the world around him. So you can imagine then, can’t you, that introducing mum to the fabled Pennine landscape and the Yorkshire Moors wasn’t on dad’s list of priorities. Ironically, mum had read the classic works of the Bronte sisters at college in Rawalpindi but never realised, as she puts it, that for all these years, she’d been living in the armpit of Bronte Country. What mum knew about Haworth was that the mills there made a finer quality of wool than was made in Keighley. Whenever mum wanted to do some knitting, dad would ask acquaintances that worked in the Haworth mills to pick up some cheap wool for her. And so, it was Aunty Ivy who educated mum about Yorkshire’s legendary landscape, taking her on the bus to show her empty spaces, farmlands and different crops.

Mum’s ‘temporary’ stay in Keighley ended in 1971 when dad sent his wife and kids to settle in Pakistan. Mum brought us back in 1977 and we were allotted a council house on the Canterbury estate in Bradford. Mum was now our guide in what was really a new country for me (I was nine) and my siblings. In a way, we were still stuck in survival mode from my father’s era. This time, mum was the one working shifts and she had three pre-teens to care for. So we still weren’t sniffing around Bronte Country or the Parsonage looking for inspiration. I doubt that we could afford the bus fare, let alone the entrance fee.

During the early 80s, mum’s younger cousin from Lahore began making annual trips to London as part of her training to become a gynaecologist. A vivacious character, she’d represented Pakistan as a member of the table tennis team at the Olympics many years ago. After a round of training and exams in London, she’d borrow a car for the weekend and turn up at our door with a group of Pakistani friends – all female trainee doctors, and desperately homesick. Looking back, we didn’t have much to offer besides traditional food and hospitality. We didn’t have a car and didn’t know there were places locally that we could take guests to. Our repertoire involved walking down Canterbury Avenue to the Central Library, or taking two buses into Leeds City Centre, though our purchases were usually restricted to window shopping. It was probably my aunt and her friends that taught us how to be tourists. My first memories of ‘sightseeing’ involve my own doorstep, so to speak – driving through vast stretches of unspoiled countryside with my aunt, hunting for dainty little tea shops in pretty Yorkshire villages.

My aunt would also talk about the Lake District, apparently a place of great beauty with sweeping hills, lush green fields, and gorgeous lakes. Apparently it was just a stone’s throw from Bradford, easily manageable in a day trip although it was well out of our reach. I’d heard the Indian film, Lamhe (Moments, Yash Chopra, 1991) was famously shot in England, but I had no idea that one of its songs was actually filmed in the Lake District. Had someone asked me to identify the location, I would probably have said Switzerland, because the country’s scenery regularly features in Indian films (I’ll explain more about this in the next blog). And yes, the handsome chap in this clip really is Anil Kapoor from Slumdog Millionaire.

The Lake District was also immortalised more recently in a song from the film Mujhse Dosti Karoge (Will You Be My Friend, Kunal Kohli, 2002). In the title track, two families enjoy a day out in the Lakes including a ride on a steamer boat on Lake Ullswater. This sequence also showcases the area’s celebrated features – scenic lakes, rolling hills, narrow winding roads, dry stone walls dividing up the farming landscape and fluffy white sheep.

Much like it was in my family, the sights of Yorkshire are a relatively recent discovery among Indian film makers. I only know of one Indian film, a supernatural thriller called 1920 (Vikram Bhatt, 2008) which was filmed at several locations in the region including Allerton Castle, Ripley Castle and Bolton Abbey. Of course, Yorkshire hasn’t just hosted Indian film makers. I suppose Bronte Country is most famously epitomised in The Railway Children (1970). And who can forget Richard Gere blessing Keighley train station with his presence in The Yanks (1979). Of course, Yorkshire’s grandest moment under the Bollywood spotlight came in 2007, when the region beat rival bids from the likes of New York, Barcelona, Rome and Hong Kong to host the International Indian Film Academy awards (Bollywood Oscars). The prestigious IIFA weekend was jointly hosted by five Yorkshire cities (Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield, York, Hull) with the award ceremony at Sheffield Arena being watched by something like 400 million people in around 100 countries.

I’ll be writing about Britain as a Bollywood film location and how the IIFA’s came to Yorkshire in the next instalment of my blog.

THE NEXT INSTALMENT: YORKSHIRE BOLLYWOOD AND GEOGRAPHY

PREVIOUS: RISHI, RAJ AND ROLF HARRIS