Category Archives: Cinephilia

Cinephilia

Hunting an Internet Killer

Leave a comment

REVIEW: Netflix original docu-series Don’t F**k With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer tells the tale of a publicity-hungry murderer who likes a good chase.

ATIKH RASHID

The enduring notoriety that the Zodiac killer — who terrorised Northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s — continues to enjoy even after 50 years of the series of incidents, is not so much because of his gruesome crimes but that he turned them into a game. A game that he played with the police and public at large in full media glare.

The Zodiac killer, whose identity still remains unconfirmed, not only succeeded in forcing news dailies to publish his handwritten letters and cryptograms, but his goals of seeking meet with newer successes with every documentary, feature film or media article that appears on the scene, years after the original crimes.

About four decades later, in 2010, a 28-year-old from Toronto, Canada, sets out to achieve a similar goal, using the same methods, but via a different medium: the internet. Luka Magnotta’s criminal deeds and a hunt launched by a group of ‘internet nerds’ is the subject of the latest Netflix mini-series Don’t F**k With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer. Directed by Mark Lewis, it was released on Netflix last week. In this three-episode docu-series, a failed show business aspirant Magnotta adopts ways and means which are eerily similar to the Zodiac killer. He acquires notoriety by committing gruesome crimes and using the internet to spread the word about his ruthless methods. He deliberately drops clues for those looking to hunt him down and makes the chase a story in itself.

The documentary starts in 2010, when Magnotta posts a video on the internet, which shows him killing two cats by suffocating them using a plastic bag and a vacuum cleaner. This attracts the attention of animal lovers who launch an online hunt to catch the cat-killer. Egged on by the attention, Magnotta proceeds to repeat similar atrocities on cats and posts them on the internet. While the angry internet-sleuths take this as a challenge, Magnota is aware of this ‘manhunt’ by a small group of internet nerds and he chides them and misleads them by dropping clues in each of his videos. The US-based amateur internet-sleuths — most prominently Deanna Thompson aka Baudi Moovan and John Green — who observe Magnotta’s behaviour pattern over a period and worry that he may soon graduate to more serious crimes. They also approach the Canadian police to warn about Magnotta but the latter doesn’t show much interest.

Deanna Thompson aka Baudi Moovan


In 2012, Magnotta takes the next logical step. He murders a young man, a 33-year-old computer engineering student from China, and releases the video of the gruesome act online. Magnotta then dismembered Lin’s body and mails his severed feet and hands to the headquarters of Canada’s Conservative and Liberal Parties — wrapped in silk paper with suggestive poems written on the inner side. At this stage, the police get involved and the case then turns into a full-fledged international manhunt as Magnotta flees from Toranto to Montreal, Paris and finally to Germany.

Use of social media platforms including Facebook, YouTube and portals in the deep web are an inalienable part of Magnotta’s crime design. He carefully choreographs his entry into the scene by putting videos pertaining to cruelty to cats — thus violating the ‘Rule Zero’ of the internet that ‘You don’t mess with the cats’.

Murderer Luka Magnotta’s story is also a tale of what happens when a criminal mind obsessed with gaining fame meets cinephilia. As is revealed in the mini-series, Magnotta, a failed actor-model, draws his inspiration for the crimes depicted in movies. His choices of aliases, profile pictures for fake social media accounts as well as cities where he commits the gruesome crimes, come from some of the most well-known Hollywood crime films, such as Basic Instinct (1992), American Psycho (2000) and Catch Me If You Can (2002).

In the film, Magnotta comes across as a “narcist extraordinaire”, who yearns for Jack the Ripper-level attention of the public and the media. In this pursuit, years before he embarks on the cat-killing misadventure, he creates fake rumours about him dating a female serial killer and fools newspapers into publishing the stories of his denials. Later, when he makes the ‘snuff videos’ they are full of homages to other serial killers — historical or fictional — either through visuals or references.

The success of Don’t F**k With Cats lies in turning this story of a cumbersome online pursuit into a compelling, binge-worthy thriller. The three-hour, mini-series has the energy and tension of a gritty high-octane action thriller — although most of the ‘chase’ happens within the bedrooms of Baudi and Green. Such a story, with a lot of information and little movement, holds the risk of being boring. However, The Cats… is also a triumph for the audio-visual medium and cinematic language as the director succeeds in making static elements such as still pictures, computer screens, web-pages become, in a way, mobile on the screen to complement the fast-paced plot.The documentary builds interest and manages to keep it at a high level as the protagonists engage in tedious work of analysing videos posted by Magnotta, frame by frame, checking the digital footprint left by him and even geographical peculiarities of the household items visible in the videos.

Although the film is about violent crimes, the gore is largely omitted. This has been achieved by making the characters describe the videos, instead of the showing them directly to the audience.

Towards the end, the mini-series poses a question to its protagonists: did the internet-sleuths who chased Magnotta from his first video until the day he was finally nabbed, feed his narcissism to the point that he had to go forward and perform one outrageous act after another? Perhaps they did. But have we, as viewers, who are intrigued, disgusted, impressed, outraged or shocked with Magnotta’s deeds, fallen for his design? Every click on the ‘play button’ must be bringing a smile to Magnotta’s face as he counts his years in prison.

Cinephilia

Colour of patriarchy

Leave a comment

Hellaro is a celebration of colour and cause. It’s enjoyable if you can ignore the shortcomings.

The film’s most celebrated part — its meticulously choreographed dance sequences — is also the most problematic one.

ATIKH RASHID

FOLKTALES provide good fodder for cinema. The tales have an inherent strength which has helped them survive for centuries. They also do not have a claimant author clinging to the content and commanding ownership. In the Indian context, where filmmakers have to ensure that the film includes certain ‘must-haves’, which will enable it a commercial life, the folktales also provide a flexibility in adaptation that would otherwise be difficult to secure in case of a celebrated work of literature.

Hellaro, directed by Abhishek Shah, which has brought laurels for Gujarati cinema by winning the industry’s first ever Golden Lotus at National Film Awards, is a folktale adaptation which tries to tick all the right boxes. This is something that has helped the film’s first-time director secure rave reviews, two national awards as well as a special mention at the recently concluded International Film Festival of India (IFFI).

Hellaro, which in Gujarati means ‘a strong gust of wind’, takes its plot from a popular folktale from a small and forgotten region of Gujarat — the sandy and solitary Prathand in the desert of Kutch, close to the frontier with Pakistan — and turns into a cinematic feast with vibrant visuals and overtly melodramatic ebbs and flows. In the process, however, the folktale that the film draws its story from is retained only in its
bare frame.

The plot follows a group of upper-caste women, who are living in an extremely patriarchal and suppressive system, and are barred from doing garba — the Gujarati folk dance — owing to a superstition that it would anger the village deity, who ironically is female. As the women suffer this injustice silently, enters a young, semi-educated and rebellious girl Manjari (played by Shraddha Dangar) after she is married into the village. During the daily ritual of fetching water from a far-off pond, the women discover a wayward, low-caste drummer (convincingly played by Jayesh More) who agrees to play for them at Manjari’s request. Although reluctant initially, the women join the dance and this becomes their secret routine during the daily trip to fetch water. As the crime is discovered and punishment is suffered, the women manage to retain their right to garba, not because of a change of heart on the part of men but as it’s discovered in the climax of the film that as women dance the goddess ‘blesses’ the village with rains.

The plot of the folktale, Vrajvani No Dholi (Vrajvani’s Drummer), is considerably different. Here, a handsome but ‘low-caste’ drummer walks into a village and starts beating his drum in the square. The sound is so enchanting and irresistible that women drop their chores, gather around the drummer and start dancing. The men find nothing wrong in this until a jealous priest turns one of the men against the dholi, pointing to his caste. The man kills the drummer, and as the beats stop, the women smack their heads with their bangles and kill themselves as if to atone the sin.

The film plays down the caste aspect of the story and reduces it to a sub-plot. Instead writer-director Shah invents the theme of women’s rebellion against patriarchy and suppression as the rallying point of the film. For this purpose it has to introduce the ban on garba, although, in the folktale, there’s no embargo on the dancing of women. This new plot works fine too — the changes can be ascribed to Shah being, confessedly, a ‘feminist’. But the apparent success of the screenplay, the bland characterisation dampens all the fun that the plot holds promise for. Bhaglo is a man with sympathy for women’s cause because of his regular trips to the city. Like most men in the village, Manjari’s husband is an incorrigible misogynist, who believes in violating his wife than loving her.

Such characterisation and overt melodrama takes the film closer to the aesthetics of the one strand of the Indian art-house cinema of ’70s and ’80s. One is reminded of Ketan Mehta’s Mircha Masala (1987) which, although doesn’t specify its setting, is based in the same desert of Kutch. In fact, the setting, structure and sartorial choices of its inhabitants, the ritual of fetching water from a far-off water body, hints that it’s the same cinematic village that
we have seen in Mehta’s film.

The film’s most celebrated part — its meticulously choreographed dance sequences — is also the most problematic one. The sequences designed by the celebrated Gujarati choreographers Arsh and Sameer Tanna, who have previously worked for Bollywood blockbusters Ram Leela (2013) and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999) — reduce the women’s brief interlude from the repression into a spectacle for the viewer. The group wears colourful chania-cholis and does synchronised dancing. It is done in a way that it is agreeable to the camera, to the extent that the vessels dropped by women in the sand arrange themselves in symmetric form at the edge of the frame. It makes one wonder if the women are dancing for their freedom from patriarchy or to the enslavement of the camera.

That said, the praise and recognition that the film has received is likely to reinvigorate the Gujarati film industry. What has been achieved by the team, in a respectable but small budget of Rs 2.5 crore, is no small feat. Hellaro is a celebration of colour and cause, and it’s an enjoyable film if you are ready to ignore its many shortcomings.

Cinephilia

Love is a Taboo

Leave a comment

A short film by the students of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), And What is the Summer Saying, was selected for the recently concluded Berlin International Film Festival. The students talk about the non-fiction form and the possibilities it offers.

ATIKH RASHID

TALKING of love has never been easy in India. It’s more difficult for women. As one travels away from urban centres, to smaller towns and villages, it almost becomes a taboo. A short film made by the students of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) captures the expression of love and longing in a remote village that must only be conveyed in whispers. The 23-minute film, And What is the Summer Saying, which was screened at Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) that concluded last week, is set in a tiny village nestled in the Sahaydris where humans and forest co-exist as amicable neighbours.

The film, which calls itself a documentary, is far from true to its generic convention. It comes close to the tradition of experimental filmmakers such as Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) and Mysterious Object at Noon (2000), and London-based Ben Rivers’ Two Years at Sea (2011) and What Means Something (2016) — films that trade the borders of fiction and non-fiction filmmaking.

This is the third film made by the team, comprising Mayank Khurana as cinematographer, Shreyank Nanjappa as sound designer and Ghanshyam Shimpi as editor, helmed by Payal Kapadia as director. Their last project Afternoon Clouds was the only Indian film to be screened at Cannes last year.

The audio emerges as a primary storytelling device in the short film, with the soundtrack giving sound and words the space to create meaning.


According to Kapadia, non-fiction filmmaking is an open form which concedes a lot of space for experimentation. “You can use a lot of devises because it is not necessarily narrative filmmaking. We look at documentary in narrow terms but its only difference from fiction is the approach. While making this film I was like a scavenger, looking for many stories and finally selected a few that made sense to me, and created a sense of a whole,” she said.

eam members from left (Shreyank Nanjappa, Payal Kapadia) during the shoot. 

In the film, a honey-gatherer who depends on the jungle, to earn his living, enjoys an intimate relation with the jungle and those who inhabit it. The wilderness that engulfs the village in the night is captured in quiet, still visuals which let the soundscape of the film do most of the talking. The audio emerges as primary storytelling device with each layer serving a purpose. The whispers carrying sentiments of tenderness stand out.

Nanjappa, the sound designer, says the aim was to make the audience feel the wilderness. “Although dialogues and words can give information, they might not always help in conveying feelings.We meticulously designed the soundtrack giving sound and words the space to create meaning and unfold its effects on the viewer.”

There’s no piece to camera, a prominent feature of the documentary form, with exclusive reliance on voice recorded during intimate, informal chats. The fact that the crew was mostly male, didn’t help in making the women open up about matters of love when on camera.

“Considering the circumstances and the time that I had at my disposal, I remained an outsider. Even with the way the film is framed, there is always a distance. At one point in the film, one of the women weave a song with my name in it, telling me to dance. As if, I as a filmmaker too, am being led somewhere down a rabbit hole,” says Kapadia.

The director and some of the crew members have returned from Berlin where the film was screened multiple times, among other films in the ‘Berlinale Short’ that dealt with issues of gender and sexuality. “We had quite an interesting response. But I think most people outside are not completely able to fathom the extent of the issues here. For a woman here, to even openly say ‘I love you’ is so difficult. I cannot claim that the film was able to make people understand the issue but it definitely opened up an interesting dialogue,” says Kapadia.

The team is now working on their next film, which will be their final project at FTII that deals with the “impossibility of love”. The film tells the story of two scientists, who are trying to investigate the effects of climate change in the Western Ghats, and a woman who remembers her love affair when she was a teen.

Cinephilia

I like the high of filmmaking: Gajendra Ahire

Leave a comment

Marathi filmmaker Gajendra Ahire, winner of many national and state film awards, has made 44 films so far. He talks about his beginnings, what drives him to make films at breakneck speed and his latest film Pimpal.

ATIKH RASHID

In an article written on him in 2011, the author compares director Gajendra Ahire to American director Roger Corman and controversial Japanese filmmaker Koji Wakamatsu in terms of their filmmaking speed. The only Indian name that comes to mind is of Priyadarshan, who has made over 90 films in three decades. Apart from this aspect, there are no similarities between the international directors or Ahire’s Indian counterpart.

While the majority of Priyadarshan’s work can be classified as “comic potboilers”, Ahire’s films are grim, probing and often offer a heartbreaking take on social realities in contemporary society. His characters — always fully developed and well-crafted – pose questions that are not only uncomfortable but often brushed under the carpet.

For Ahire (48), the question — “Why do you make so many films?” – is an easy one to answer. “Because that’s the only thing I do. I like the high that filmmaking gives you. I’m not doing anything else. I am not sitting in a bar sipping booze. I’m not involved in any other business. All I’m doing is writing films and making them. Fortunately, I have people around me who are helping me make them.”

He takes a pause as if he has made his point, only to add, “To tell you the truth, making a film doesn’t give you fulfillment. You always feel that something was left out. That feeling of anxiety, sense of incompletion leads you to another film. This chain doesn’t stop. It makes you work in a loop; that’s why I’m doing movie after movie.”

In early 1990s, when he was 21, living in Mumbai with his family and a graduate in Marathi literature, he left his home to escape the pressures of finding a job and settling down. “There was no point living there and continuously fighting with them,” he says. He then lived on the streets for several years guided by the protagonist of Arun Sadhu’s novel Shodhyatra, who also leaves his home to find the meaning of life.

During these two-three years, spent on the street — going places, doing odd jobs as a daily wager such as a cleaner, he came face to face with life and its realities. The people that he met and admired during this period and the situations which he lived and observed, often inspire the characters and plot lines of his films.

It was at the age of 23 that he wrote his first play for commercial theater. It was successful and opened doors for him for more plays, television serials. “You can’t replace vivid life experiences with observations or reading or imagination. It wont work if you say, ‘Let me go out and see what’s happening on the streets’. You would have to go through the process of life which gives you experiences that accumulate within you like honey drops. They will eventually come out in your work,” he says.

Despite being 44-films-old, Ahire feels that finding a producer for his next film is “as easy and as difficult” as it was for his first film, Not Only Mrs Raut. “It’s only your work that will help you get a producer. Although Mrs Raut didn’t get a release, people came forward to produce my next film because they saw the potential. It’s same even now. Anumati (2013) gave me Postcard (2014) which helped me get a producer for The Silence (2016), which then helped me get a producer for Pimpal (2017),” said Ahire.

Talking about Pimpal, his latest offering which won the Sant Tukaram Best Marathi Film Award at the recent Pune International Film Festival, Ahire reveals that the story, about the loneliness of a 70-year-old widower in Pune, whose kids are living in the US, came from his son, Chintamani. “He told me this story some years ago. I was surprised that a 17-year-old was talking about the psychological state of a 70-year-old man. The film is about the roots of an individual and how he struggles to cope with the fast-changing world. It’s also about happiness which, in these days, has become virtual. This happiness has no colour, smell or shape,” he says.

Cinephilia

‘An artist is not a toy in the audience’s hand’, says filmmaker Umesh Kulkarni

Leave a comment

Kulkarni, the maker of contemporary Marathi classics Valu (2008), Deool (2010) & Vihir (2009) on exploring the non-fiction genre and his latest documentary, titled Kumbh, which chronicles the biggest gathering of humans.

Marathi film maker Umesh Kulkarni at his residence. Express photo by Arul Horizon, 17/05/2018, Pune

ATIKH RASHID

SINCE his very first feature film, Valu (The Wild Bull, 2008), filmmaker Umesh Kulkarni found his own audience base across Maharashtra and beyond, which only grew with his subsequent films — Vihir (2009), Deool (2011), which he directed, and Masala (2012), Pune 52 (2013) which he produced. But it’s been a long break for Kulkarni since his last release as director Highway (2015), which did not do too well in cinemas.

So where’s this filmmaker who turned the tide for Marathi films in the late 2000s, which were facing both aesthetic and commercial challenges, with Valu? Apparently, Kulkarni (42) is immersed in exploring new possibilities that have opened up in the non-fiction genre. He has spent the last two years making a documentary on the Kumbh Mela and is in the process of making another on the Wada culture in old Pune. At the same time, Kulkarni has also launched a documentary film club with the help from artist Raju Sutar and National Film Archive of India (NFAI), with an aim to showcase best works from Indian non-fiction filmmaking tradition to the general public.

Still from Kularni’s student project Girni which he made while studying at Film and Television Institute of India.

“In 2009, I had made a documentary for FTII called Three of us. It was shown at several international festivals including the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IFDA), which the biggest festival of documentary films in the world. While visiting the festival to present my film, the exposure to non-fiction form opened an entire new world to me. It was there that I realised that feature films and documentaries are not two separate, distinct forms with fixed boundaries. The way films are being made internationally, the boundaries between these two genres are getting merged and filmmakers are trying to explore the area that lies in between,” says Kulkarni, adding that some of the documentaries that he watched at the festival influenced him and left a lasting impact.

Back home, he observed that while India had a certain tradition of non-fiction filmmaking, there were no avenues for these films, with filmmakers struggling with the release and screenings of the films. “In many countries, there are festivals dedicated to non-fiction films, in some places there are television channels exclusively for documentaries. In India, although we had filmmakers like Mani Kaul, Shyam Benegal and others making documentaries and the Films Division funding a great number of them, there was very little exposure to the common public,” says Kulkarni. The film club, he adds, has recently screened Kamal Swaroop’s Pushkar Puran (2017), the first-ever retrospective of Amit Dutta in India, as well as non-fiction work by Mani Kaul.

Meanwhile, Kulkarni also started working on his own non-fiction projects. Kumbh, which he finished recently, was shot over several years chronicling the biggest gathering of humans. The film was selected at IDFA, New York Indian Film Festival and Kerala International Film Festival (KIFF).

“Kumbh is not a conventional documentary, as it tries to explore the space in the margins of fiction and non-fiction. I am at present also working on another documentary on a wada in old Pune where my grandma used to live. I have spent many days of my childhood there. Now, all the families that used to live there have shifted to their own apartments. I’m trying to explore the texture of life that the wada offered to its residents and how it has changed,” says Kulkarni, adding that he has decided to make a documentary or short film between every two feature films.

While he’s following his changing interests, doesn’t he feel that it may take away his fan base which may rather like him to stick to his flair — comical realism with a social message. “As an artist, I feel that I have to keep trying to find newer ways of expression. An artist can’t be a toy in the hands of the audience. If I continue to do what I have been doing, then I become too predictable and it gets boring. Also, we should give an opportunity to a different art form to get established. It may take some time as had happened in other cases such as Impressionism in painting or short story in literature. People resist, ridicule at first but later they accept if the movement has its merits,” says Kulkarni.

Cinephilia

Mythology as a political tool

Leave a comment

Independent filmmaker Kamal Swaroop talks about his fascination with mythology, Battle of Banaras, and the controversies around the latest edition of IFFI.

ATIKH RASHID

FILM director Kamal Swaroop, whose last project Battle of Banaras was blocked by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) in 2015, has returned with Pushkar Puran. It is the opening film of the Non-Feature section of Indian Panorama at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa. In an interview, Swaroop talks about his fascination with mythology, Battle of Banaras, and the controversies around the latest edition of IFFI.

Why did you decide to return to Pushkar again after your previous documentary on the Pushkar Mela?

I go to Pushkar every year, and shoot something everytime. While Image Meets the Shadow (2004) was about myths, and how people interact with them, Pushkar Puran is inspired by Italian writer Roberto Calasso’s Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India. The film focuses on ‘the search for the fifth head of Bramha’, which Shiva had cut and carried away with him, and the Ashwamedh Yajna that happens there.

Since Om Dar Ba Dar (1988), you have been engaging with mythology. Where does this interest come from?

I grew up listening to myths. I’m also deeply interested in archaeology and its relation to mythology. In our country, people use mythology as a political tool. Myths are moulded to suit financial, social and political needs.

Battle of Banaras didn’t see an India release although it was appreciated abroad. This year, Pushkar Puran is opening the non-feature section of Indian Panorama at IFFI so your work is being recognised by the same political structure which blocked you in the past.

It’s a matter of chance. They thought that Battle of Banaras was an anti-government film; it isn’t true. But the CBFC must have thought of blocking it to safeguard the government. In fact, Pushkar Puran wasn’t submitted to the CBFC, before it was sent for IFFI. Now I have submitted it to them, and I am expecting trouble. They might say that it propagates or portrays wrong myths. They might even point out cruelty against animals.

Swaroop at his apartment in Mumbai.

As someone who has had a long association with Pushkar, how have you seen the town changing?

About 35-40 years ago, when I would visit Pushkar, there wasn’t much tourism there. Only the villagers would come to the mela to sell and buy animals. There was little employment. After tourists started coming in, it grew and became a prosperous town. That was also the time when the state government realised that Pushkar is a big tourist attraction. Nowadays, the government pours in money to create a spectacle. It’s become an event which is managed by several event management firms. Homes have turned into hotels and restaurants.

At IFFI this year, Nude by Ravi Jadhav and S Durga by Sanal Sasidharan have been dropped from the Indian Panorama section. How do you see this?

It’s everybody’s own fight. I didn’t get a CBFC certificate for Om Dar Ba Dar for two years, and it was rejected for the Indian Panorama section. Battle of Banaras was blocked from releasing in India. I didn’t shout about it. If it’s not working, it’s not working. I didn’t go crazy about people not accepting the films or blocking them. I just don’t think about these things.

How do you see the controversy of IFFI dropping films?

There’s no need to block or stop the films. Nobody can do much harm specially with films. There’s no need (for the government) to get touchy about it. If the jury has selected them, then respect the jury; their selection is like a judgement.

We hear you are returning to fiction after Om Dar Ba Dar?

Yes. The film is called Omniyam, based on The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien. It’s about a person who is dead but he doesn’t know it yet. It’s a comic-crime thriller.

You are also making a film about Kashmiri Pandits?

I’m shooting in Ujjain, Jaipur, Ajmer and Meerut, where my four sisters live. The film does not focus on the Kashmiri Pandit issue alone, nor on conflict and terrorism. It’s mostly about a family which left Kashmir in 1958, and whose members are now scattered in various cities. Their children don’t speak Kashmiri anymore. What the projects seeks to examine is the sense of belonging and the idea of home. Have they reconciled with their new identity? What happens to the Kashmiri identity when they become a part of the national mainstream?

Cinephilia

Breaking Barriers

Leave a comment

Jordanian author Fadi Zaghmout on his popular blog The Arab Observer and writing on subjects considered taboo in his homeland

ATIKH RASHID

IN 2006, Jordanian author Fadi Zaghmout started a blog that discussed issues pertaining to individualism and sexual freedom in the Arab society. The blog, written predominantly in English, proved popular among Arab netizens as it delved into social issues that were not addressed traditionally by the media in Jordan. However, when he decided to write his debut novel a few years later, Zaghmout turned to his mother tongue — Arabic. According to him, the decision was an outcome of his urge to contribute to the discourse in his local language, when there weren’t many liberal voices.

Though the blog was a convenient tool to spread ideas, it had limited audience. “I felt the blog was limiting with regard to the audience I wanted to reach. Since the issue of sexual freedom and body rights was highly censored in Jordan before the internet, I thought maybe I can explore the same themes I talk about on my blog using traditional media. I wanted these discussions to be printed in a book in Arabic to reach more people. The transition wasn’t easy but during my years of blogging I practised writing short stories and short film scripts, which helped me compile a list of ideas and themes that helped me write Aroos Amman (The Bride of Amman),” says Zaghmout in an email interview. The UAE-based author will be in Pune next week for the Pune International Literary Festival.

The novel proved to be an instant success and also raked controversies for dealing with taboo themes such as homosexuality, inter-religious marriage and more freedom to women, among others. The novel has five main characters — four of these are women, each with her own predicament, and a gay Muslim man who is married to a woman — with each trying to cope with the societal pressure to conform to their gender roles. It looks at the institution of marriage as a means to regulate sexuality, which is seldom successful. It critiques the Arab society for still following age-old beliefs, expecting a woman to be a virgin before marriage, while a man is responsible for building and maintaining the household.

While women readers wrote to him saying the book is a source of strength for them, some even went to the extent of calling it their “personal constitution”. The novel’s portrayal of women and their eternal struggle to claim lost ground has earned Zaghmout a sobriquet, from those who hate his work: the feminist mouthpiece. “I take it as a compliment. I really love it when a woman calls me and asks how can I be very accurate in describing the emotions of women. Having said that, to me it is more than being a ‘female mouthpiece’, it is about social justice. I am a mouthpiece for gender equality, sexual freedom and body rights that help us all live a better life. I believe that strict gender roles are harmful for both men and women equally,” he says.

Since Bride of Amman, Zaghmout has written two more novels, Heaven on Earth (2017) and Laila and the Lamb (2018). The latter features a “sexually dominant” woman as its protagonist. As per reports, Jordianian authorities saw it as a work with “a problematic premise” and stopped the entry of the book into the country. Zaghmout, however, feels that the themes and characters that populate his works come from real men and women who exist in Arab society. “There are indeed many homosexual men in Jordan and the Arab world who opt to marry a woman in order to fit in a society where homosexuality is still not accepted and same sex marriage is not legal. The same applies for women who fall in love with men from another religion, as marriage is still a religious institution in Jordan. I usually build my characters by borrowing characteristics from people I know,” he says.

On his maiden visit to India, Zaghmout hopes to learn about Indian society, which he sees as one with diverse cultures and attitudes where women may face the same prejudices as Arab women. “Although I have few Indians friends in UAE, I am yet to know more about Indian society. I have the impression that India is a large country with diverse cultures and attitudes. I understand that patriarchy is a dominant force across modern cultures and I can see that Indian women face many of the same prejudices Arab women are facing these days, especially the pressure to get married and adhere to strict gender roles,” says Zaghmout.