Shedding Tears At The Movies: What Are We Really Crying For?

BOLLYWOOD CINEMA  produces a vast outpouring of escapist films that focus on the experience of the Indian who moves abroad, seeking fame and success, invariably to return to the preferred Indian homeland of family values.  The films I am curious about, are those that focus on the experience of the outsider (of which I am one of course) who comes to live in the Bombay; how does this film capital of India, portray the city on screen, indeed the country and her legendary hospitality towards the stranger?

Typically, in the early sequences of these outsider in Bombay films, we meet a decent, if rather naïve soul, who arrives in the city from a village or overseas, with a small suitcase and bountiful optimism.  The cameras locate us in the city, through shots of railway stations, black and yellow cabs, bustling anonymous crowds, the inevitable Gateway of India scene, mobs, gangs and the people who live on the streets.  Bombay is invariably gazed upon by the newcomer as a place where anything is possible, in what appears an exciting cauldron of diversity, if somewhat disorderly metropolitan life. The Indian doctor from London, in the film Aamir, arrives looking rather dashing in his elegant Western suit, with a confident air about him as he struts through Mumbai airport.  Within moments, in a dialogue with an immigration official, he quickly learns the harsh reality of the city’s prejudice against Muslims and a tale of the kidnapping of his family and terrorism ensues, that results in his death.
In Kalyug (2005), we meet Renuka, who arrives in Bombay from Jammu in Kashmir.  Looking a little lost and forlorn at the railway station, as she waits patiently, sitting on her suitcase, her prayer beads in her hands as she recites the mantra Aum Namah Shivaya, (signifying she is indeed a Hindu not a Muslim).   Of course in true Bollywood girl-meets boy form, she falls in love.  Her affects are towards a family friend, Kunal, whose father, a Hindu pundit, was killed in an all too common Bombay train incident, a refugee who once fled to the city from terrorists in Kashmir. Renuka’s happiness, is as short-lived as her marriage to Kunal, when she discovers a ruthless pornography racketeer, has secretly filmed the couple’s love making on their wedding night and made it available on a website called indiapassion.com.  She takes her own life, the degradation quite simply too unbearable for her, by throwing herself from a balcony at the police station to her death. We later learn that the pornography ring is headed up by a woman called Simi, a monstrously calculating character, (a bit of a drag queen looking character in a black gown and negligee), who simply measures the benefits of Renuka’s death, in terms of the improved ratings for the website, thanks to the press publicity.

If there is a psychological theme across all the movies we watch, it must surely be  that they represent and negotiate some sort of loss for us– loss of the people we love, loss of innocence, loss of hope, loss of spontaneity, loss of freedom  - and thus enable us to vicariously perhaps, negotiate our own psychic difficulties with such feelings at a safe distance. There are some fabulous Bollywood films that tackle loss in a highly dramatic way, such as Kal Ho Naa Ho, Mohabbatein and Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehan. John Bowlby, perhaps the world’s leading expert on the psychological dynamics of loss, warned us, “There is a tendency to underestimate how intensely distressing and disabling loss usually is and for how long the distress and disablement commonly lasts.”  Perhaps the unconscious pleasure at the movies is our working through of this, the vicarious and painful work of mourning. By forming conscious or unconscious identifications with the film characters – their struggles perhaps becoming ours, or our own projected onto them – there is the added pleasure that movies often offer neat wish fulfilment and sturdy conclusions, somewhat more elusive in our everyday lives.

The widowed husband in Kalyug negotiates the painful loss of his love and their life together, by embarking on a journey of retributive justice, to Zurich (interesting Switzerland often pops up in Bollywood cinema as a place where couples dance happily around trees) to seek out and overthrow the pornography racket that led to her death.  By this time, we learn he has no other choice, as the Mumbai Police are corruptly involved in the pornography ring.  Kunal tracks down Simi, the  wicked female boss of the pornography business, who we learn is actually involved in the human trafficking abroad of poor Indian girls into prostitution. Gradually, Kunal forms a mutually empathic relationship with the bosses own daughter, Tanya and together, they expose and bring down this hideous sex industry.  In a twist, rather like Arthur Miller’s play All Our Sons, (although in this case all our daughters) Tanya posts footage of herself and her lesbian girlfriend’s love-making on her mother’s pornography website.   Simi, horrified at what her daughter has done, demonstrates her lack of empathy for anyone other than herself, typical of what we would term a person with a characterological disorder (think of a charming sociopath), incapable of dealing with any loss whatsoever, whether it is her loss of status, of her daughter, or importantly, her image in the eyes of others.  She  turns a gun on Kunal, as though attempting to murder the very reality she has of course created.  But she fails, Simi, the monster, is shot dead, by her own daughter.

Freud, and here I am not sure I agree with him, seemed to suggest that there should be an ending to mourning, some sort of completion, in order to alleviate the onset of a state of melancholia.  Kunal seems wiser, to know his loss will be with him as much a part his existence as the limbs of his body.  But what does he do with that loss, what sort of creative conversion of pain might he be capable of?  It is to the values of his homeland of Kashmir, to the life priorities that his father has bestowed on him through his lived example of caring for others.  At the end of the film, Kunal tells us that even exacting revenge has not brought him peace. That he now truly understood what his father meant, "that the only way to remove pain from your heart, you must remove the thorns from the feet of others who are suffering.”  So, he takes one of the girl he has helped  escape from the degradation in Zurich into his care, in the City of Bombay, the place where he lost the very two people, he loved the most, his true love and his father.

The innocent hopefuls, in these films, in the midst of dirt, confusion, contamination, frequently find themselves exposed and vulnerable in a city at the hands of corruption, exploitation and manipulation,   the dark side of the City’s mantra, “Anything is possible.” Understandably, they are unable to read the cross-cultural and codes, the darker intentions that are inclined to assume everyone is an opportunity to exploit, beneath the surface of appearance of kindnesses.   Of course, the sort of vulnerability for women, or perhaps more accurately femininity in this City is horribly apparent. The hopeful’s nemeses, the dream-destroyers, come along, in various forms: the cruel villain, the feckless charmer, the out for himself chancer-come-gamesman. The police and authorities are often portrayed as collusive in crimes, in injustices and as villainous as the worst protagonists. The City, is therefore commonly portrayed as a place where there is nowhere to turn, no place of safety, no adequate rule of law, merely a dark hidden anarchy in the hands of the greedy and immoral, for whom human suffering accounts for little. It is a city that embraces the masculine and expels the feminine.  The dynamics of all these things, the newcomer to the City only learns through wretched experiences. The title of the film Kalyug, might been interpreted as the Hindu myth, as the age of Kalyug, that  speed, the enemy of reflection that will spread fantasy with such velocity that humans, in their pursuit of escape, will ultimately destroy themselves. Masculinity, out of control.

In Ram Gopal Verma’s recent film, This is not a Love Story, the innocent naive female arrives in the City, gazing at film posters of Aishwarya Rai with her fantastic ambitions to become a film star. After many failed auditions with odious film-directors, merely interested in exploiting her innocence and having sex with her, she finally succumbs, collapsing into the city’s presumed norms of how to make it in the film world.   Her husband, on finding the Director in her bed, impulsively murders him. Allegedly, the film is based on a current legal case in Bombay, the results of the trial remain to be concluded.

Of course the hopeful who comes to the psychologist’s consulting room, perhaps wishing to create a more comprehensible  arrangement of words to represent what they feel, is often living in an urban void of empathic company, willing to care enough and take the time to listen without judgement, or crass instructions and prescriptions.  In the urban space, there are many beautiful watches, but often little time. The human urge for reparation is of course, then inevitably thwarted without true empathy.  Kalyug is an exceptional film, for the depth of the empathic voices and states, which is set-up early in the film, when Kunal’s lawyer, sits alone with him, (think camera rolling slowly) and gently leans forward and simply asks him, “Tell me all about you..”  Not a Love Story, on the other hand, jars through the very absence of such compassion, its portrayal of ruthless manipulation and self-interest, yet you know the camera, even if the characters are not, is compassionate. The film is effective and haunting for these very reasons.

Music, the ancient tonal sounds of India, the reverberations, the echoes of wailing and longing, is one of the most delightful elements of the more sophisticated Hindi and Bollywood films. If you don’t like this music, you won’t like Hindi films.  Like the depths of the wordless unconscious, the true home of our dreams, it connects us with an earlier knowing of ourselves at a visceral bodily level, the place where all young feelings begin and live-on.  Perhaps this is why we sometimes cry at the movies, our bodies understand our loses, even if we do not dare to risk finding the words to explain what is going on in ourselves. That pre-verbal body-hint is perhaps the young child part of ourselves willing us to deepen our understanding of what it is we are mourning for.  Is it singing of our loss of a treasured one, of our innocence, or simply a loss of our capacity to care?  And how do we lament the losses we have inflicted on ourselves, in our rush to focus on less worthy investments? 

In the U.S. there are therapists who I gather do some sort of movie therapy.  I imagine you explore not only what sort films you invest time in and perhaps why, but what specific elements of a movie grab at your emotions, at that young bodily self of yours. Is it when the lovers’ part, or someone is abandoned, or do you find yourself drawn to moments of reconciliation? Is it the act of retribution of injustice, or  perhaps a moment of awakening, when a character learns the extent to which they have been hurt and manipulated?  Is it when father and son, finally make amends and learn to love one another more fully?  A Bombay client once told me he didn’t watch Hindi films, saying, “They just make me cry.”  All the more reason to watch them, to know what needs comfort and attention one is aching for, beneath the tears.

Lately, I notice I feel unusually emotional when a character in a film, kindly and sensitively attends to the heart and soul of another, for no other reason than good old fashioned decency and respect. I don’t need a therapist to explore why I am drawn in this way.  This is a city of excessive masculinity - by women, as well as men - of performative fakery, strategizing and manipulating of people, that seems increasingly to makes homeless the very heart of the India I love, her femininity, her care for others and her tender intimacy.  These films, it seems to me, are essentially tender portrayals of how the city is killing-off the real foreigner – femininity itself. Kunal, in Kalyug, we know by the end of the film, will not allow that to happen to him, however painful that might be.

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My Top Ranking Leadership Hero in Mumbai

            Extraordinary acts of leadership come from many sources, rarely in my experience, just from those with the most positional power. Over the years, any leadership coach is likely to develop a private little book, at least in the mind, of their top ranking leaders and today, I want to share with you about my top of the list guy in Mumbai.

But first, imagine for a moment, you are working in your team and after hours of arguing and debating, you finally agree on your plan of action. Then suddenly, from left-field, the CEO does a complete turnabout, reneges on the decision and starts to dictate an entirely different game-plan. What are you likely to do? Will you speak up, will you be silent, or will you do something else?

The psychoanalyst might suggest that it is worth exploring how as a child, you dealt with such turn of events, say at a family mealtime. What this hints at, is the unconscious link between your first team, i.e., your family, its unique culture, are likely to shape your leadership, especially in group moments. Back in your family or origins, did you for example, accept the injustice that your brother took all the cakes, perhaps because you felt you had no choice? Or did you stand up for your rights? Or even yell the house down, or perhaps appear to accept things and act out your anger a little later, in a perverse brand of sabotage, like putting a frog in his bed or something. For those who experienced their parents, i.e. authority, as figures you can never please, whatever you do, how is a child did you cope?  Wander off alone perhaps withdraw at least in a visceral form of agitation even you mouth stayed firmly closed. 

What you actually do now as an adult of course is what matters, being (hopefully) less entangled in the physical, childlike dependence and dynamics of authority, depends of course on the freedom with which you navigated your way towards adulthood.  This involves those dreadful moments of awakening that you don’t always get your own way that you will like the rest of us, suffer losses. In psychoanalysis, this is understood as the “depressive position,” the difficult negotiation of loss of childhood, into adulthood and the trials and tribulations of independence.    

I firmly believe that the challenges of group dynamics, ranging from the small business meeting, to the nation level negotiations, the challenges come from what is evoked in our first group in life, when we were very young, and in our new group, our desperate need to belong.  It seems the world of groups is divided in two: we are wonderfully creative, truly present in the moment, or somewhat back in that family mealtime and most of us swing between the two, neither of us entirely one or the other.

 A few years ago, observing a team like the one I described earlier, just as the CEO did is about-turn, I watched as the largely passive group of men, became utterly silent and pensive, jaws locked tight, as if the headmaster were stood in front of them with a threatening cane. Then finally, the regional head of Asia, who over the years became quite a hero-leader of mine, rose slowly to his full 6ft height, his chin reverently downwards and quietly said, "Just because my lord is not acting as a Lord, does not mean a Samurai should not act like a Samurai."

Immediately, the red-faced CEO apologised and returned to his earlier commitment as agreed. No dull language with all the creativity of a motorbike handbook, no more endless debating and time wasting. The verbal sword was on the table, a line was drawn. What is interesting about his man, as is with all higher levels of leadership, is that his actions were thoughtful, yet entirely based in the particular moment. He did not speak with his mind turned towards the next financial bonus round and what he would or not get.  He did not wonder if he might lose his job, he just powerfully stayed connected to himself, trusting, as I know he does, in a higher faith that always supports truth and purpose.  

When I shared this story with my teenage daughter Emily, that evening, she simply said, with a total lack of surprise, “Yeah mum, sounds like he’s not for sale,” as she continued to eat her Spaghetti Bolognese. If only in business, people would learn to speak as freely as kids. Interestingly, though, timing is again an important element of her response.  In a sense, she is saying “not for sale right now.” The research on higher levels of leadership is bewilderingly contradictory.  On the one hand it is saying “now”, this moment and on the other, thinks beyond this moment, beyond even your own lifetime perhaps.

When I was teenager, the targets of my hero worship, were David Bowie and the activist/playwright, George Bernard Shaw. Both were plastered on the walls of my bedroom. David and George, an odd pair you might think, but on reflection now, I see the common thread; both willing to do something unexpected with words, to create a new story, create movement in the cul-de-sacs of commonplace speaking. Take these Bowie words for instance (it’s Changes, so sing along if you know it): So I turned myself to face me/ But I've never caught a glimpse/ Of how the others must see the faker/I'm much too fast to take that test. Or George Bernard Shaw’s humour: Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. 

My top ranking leadership hero in Mumbai, head and shoulders above all others is Madhav Subrahmanyam. Madhav is from Bombay, and was recently voted by the UK Guardian newspaper, as one of the top 50 individuals in the world, most likely to save the planet. This leader, for the last 7 years or so, has been working relentlessly to protect the tiger from complete extinction. 100 years ago, there were around 100,000 tigers; today there are less than 3,500. As Bittu Sahgal, one of the leading environmentalist’s in India puts it, “By protecting the tiger, we are protecting India's forest, and we end up protecting our water sources. It’s not just that we say there are no tigers and if there were tigers that would be fine, it’s not that. It’s symptomatic of something much larger, it’s across the world.” The main threat to the tiger, according to Madhav, is humanity: “If humanity will only be humane to a human, then we are using our brains in the worst possible way. Instead of helping other species, we are only trying to advance ourselves. We are encroaching on other species and destroying them.”

Madhav is 13 years old.

As with most extraordinary leaders, not only do Madhav's actions stand out from the crowd, but his use of language, his way of speaking makes you alert, engaged, you just want to listen. You want to know what is coming next, when he speaks, it's vibrant, alive, just like the words of our Samurai man, earlier in this piece it is the sound of transformation.

Madhav started his fund-raising when he was about 8 years old, by first polishing shoes, washing babies (“No nappy changing please,” I remember on his signboard) and arranging flowers, for a few rupees. Compelled by a passion to do more, he went on to start the Madhav Tiger Fund. Encouragement and good quality attention in Madhav’s life, came from Bittu Sahgal (whoops, add another hero to my list), who is also editor of Sanctuary Magazine and runs the educational programme Kids For Tigers, where the two met. Madhav was concerned, whether poachers or the people who protect the animals, the wildlife wardens, get paid more (Poachers sadly of course.) “It’s obvious,” Madhav says, “If there is more money in poaching, that’s what people will do.” So to rectify this, Madhav raises money, and puts the funding towards the schooling of the wildlife warden’s children and providing financial incentives when the wardens go the extra mile to protect specific wildlife.

When Madhav was 9 years old, he played a key role in our film Inside India’s Forests, produced for the Conservation Action Trust in Bombay. The gang of us who made the film were Lizzie de Planta, Pavan Sukhdev, Debi Goenka, Bittu Sahgal and I. Madhav had just raised about 15 thousand U.S. dollars, from making and selling tiger quilts with his mother.

The importance of how the effects of such early attachments in young children’s lives create the sort of adults we become was the subject of a week-long conference at UCLA. Amongst a sea of scientists and psychologists, the Dalai Lama addressed us on the importance of love. In response to asking the audience if there were any questions, a bright young girl, aged about 10 years old I guess, asked him ”Why are you so happy?” He replied, “It is simple, I had a very nice mummy.” The other heroes who deserve our respect are of course, Madhav’s parents, who with enormous dedication have nurtured their son to become a person who truly lives beyond merely his own self-interest, for all species not just humans. His mother, Pavitra Rajaram’s parenting philosophy is as clear as her son’s sense of purpose. She says:

When children see things the way nature intends them to be, they understand that

that's the natural state and that is something as parents we can do very, very easily. Don't take your children to the zoo, don't show them animals behind bars, don't take them to the circus and see elephants and lions jumping through hoops. That's not the way nature intended them to be. Take them to the forest, show them the trees…

Whatever is shaped in childhood, largely by us parents, is our ultimate legacy to the future of this planet. In the boardrooms of tomorrow, we will either have adults with the courage to do the right thing, and stand by deeply held beliefs, knowing what those might be of course, or those for whom my daughter would say, are simply “For sale.” If our children learn from us, that all they need to do, to get what they want, is demand like a toddler, to ignore the views of others, whether it be a person, a tiger or an ant; that is perfectly normal to simply buy whatever they want, or mindlessly destroy something else in order to get it, whatever species that maybe, human or otherwise, we ultimately have put our planet up for sale. Children are oddly wise, they pay attention to what we do, not what we say.

And yet, there is Madhav and others like him, who have a profound sense of personal identity, a strong compass of right and wrong to help him navigate through life's grey areas,  from strong loving attachments with  others, rather than merely towards possessions and other kinds of ownership. There are also many children, who simply need the care of others to flourish in thw way Mahdav has.  Who knows where his incredible passion, his care and his determination will lead. In an interview for Sanctuary magazine, Madhav says, “I want to make an impact on the world’s carbon footprint by working actively to reduce it. I want to do this by making changes in my own life and using my voice to help others make the change too. I want to be a director and use film as a way of exploring and communicating my thoughts and ideas.”

Bittu Sahgal, Madhav’s mentor, has honourably dedicated his life not only to protecting nature and educating children. Advising a young child who was concerned about deforestation, he encouraged her to stand-up and speak, saying that the trees "Simply do not belong to the adults who cut them down.  Its like adults are stealing your pocket money, or your school bag, or anything else that belongs to you, just because they are more powerful." Most importantly, he truly listens to a massive proportion, literally 100’s of 1000s of India's young people, encouraging and really empowering them to have a real voice. Many of whom started out in the Kids for Tiger Club and have gone onto some fantastic occupations in the journalism,  film, and conservation.  

When Madhav’s mother says, we need to consider, “When children see things….,” she reminds us to think deeply about what our kids are actually exposed to, what they feel, what they think. Do our urban children merely see shopping malls, computer games, manicured gardens and expensive hotels, or are they actively nourished by natural living systems, by rivers, by forests and thus truly begin to learn the interconnectedness of all things? What happens right now with leaders of the future will ultimately shape who they become, as well as, their capacity to care for others and all our species. This is the peculiar reality of acts of transformational leadership: it is both completely in the present and yet into the future, beyond one’s own lifetime. 

Perhaps this is why Madhav can teach us that saving the tiger actually means saving ourselves. That makes him my leadership hero.

 
Resources for this article:

There is a great animation about India, the work of Madhav & Bittu by Claus Lundin on youtube, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN9S1JVQzAQ

Sanctuary Magazine Asia, go to: http://www.sanctuaryasia.com/index.php

Kids for Tigers, go to: http://www.kidsfortigers.org/

Conservation Action Trust, go to: http://www.cat.org.in