Anita and Me(era)
By Ramesh Kallidai
“Don’t ask me any questions please,” screamed Meera Syal, the star of Goodness Gracious Me, as she got up to receive me. “All I’ve been doing since morning is answering questions.”
I put on a brave smile and wondered if I should tell her she could ask me questions for a change. Instead, I ended up prudently congratulating her new film, Anita and Me. The film humorously portrays a teenaged Asian girl Meena, and her quest to bridge the cultural divide as the only Indian family in a mining village in Nottinghamshire.
“How much of the film was fiction and how much autobiographical?” I asked, almost getting the last word twisted the wrong way in my tongue. It was her turn to put on a brave smile now. “Some of it was me, while other bits were fiction. I had a similar schizophrenic childhood and the same parents as Meena – lovely and doting,” she elaborated. “And like Meena, I too struggled to bridge the gap between my parents’ culture and the new culture. Meena’s friend, Anita was an amalgamation of many different girls I used to admire. And like her, we were the only brown family in the village and our whole social life was centred around the Methodist Church.”
“And did you call the Priest, ‘Uncle’ like Meena did in the film?” I enquired. “Oh yes,” she replied. “Uncle Allan was a real dear, and was very forward thinking.”
“And what about your own role in the film?” I asked. “You played Aunty Shaila, the rather loud-mouthed and interfering family-elder, didn’t you?”
“Oh, I miss my aunts,” she sighed loudly. “These women actually hold the back of the sky. And in Asian families, everybody looks after everybody’s children. So its so much more fun.”
Meera’s father comes from a Hindu background while her mother is a Sikh. “My father believes that all paths lead to the same God. So we grew up in a liberal atmosphere,” she added. Meera believes that any person of colour is prone to experience some form of discrimination. “During my childhood I just accepted it as an everyday occurrence,” she remembered. “But in the media it is translated in different ways.”
“But didn’t you do anything about it?” I prodded. Meera raised her eyebrows and whispered in a clear voice, “Success is the sweetest revenge.” Indeed!
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Compassionless Auras
Swami Krupanandji’s representative Dhiresh Sachdev called me one fine rainy day. Apparently the Swami is not really a Swami. He lives a happy married life and has a doting family.
“According to the Vedic tradition, only someone who has renounced family life is awarded the title ‘Swami’, isn’t it?” I asked Sachdev with a puzzled expression. “So how is he a ‘Swami’?” “He goes back to his family only a few days a month,” explained Sachdeva, as if that made it quite all right. “Then Swamiji goes into a trance. And when he goes into a trance, his disciples enter into a greater trance.”
Not really keen on all this trance stuff, I quickly asked him if I could meet the Swami who was not. “He is in isolation here,” came the stoic answer. “His auras expand very rapidly so he can’t meet people.” I was getting more and more confused. A married Swami who had auras and trances, and still wouldn’t meet people seemed to have a mysterious aura, if anything. What on earth will they invent next?
“In order for him to meet people he has to bring them to his spiritual level. Therefore he must cleanse them first,” explained Sachdev. “He undergoes a lot of spiritual pain to undertake this process. So he cannot just pick a person from the street and meet him.”
Since I do roam the streets of London quite often, and since I am not really a very kind sort of person, I thought it prudent not to disturb the ‘auras’ and other thingamajigs of the Swami who was not. Apparently he had lectured on 18th October in Dormers Wells High School, Southall, but the thought of giving spiritual pain to a person of such high social etiquette put me off from going.
“All his work is based on meditation. Unless there is peace and contentment within, there can be no peace outside,” finished Sachdev. I wondered what kind of peace and contentment the Swami who was not must have (or not have) if he was so keen to exclude people on the streets. Compassion is a scarce commodity. Swamis who are not, are not. Did that make sense?!