Everyone wants to go to Dubai

A line from the classic Malayalam film Ee Naadu captures all too well the mood of Kerala in the 1980s “Everyone wants to go to Dubai! They think we are Sheiks there.” Though the Gulf Malayalee toils in the sweltering desert sun all the yearlong; for a brief while, on furlough he lives it up quite like a little Sheik. The period also saw the price of goods was not governed by market forces but by the whims of the Gulf Malayalee.

The dizzying growth of the manmade paradises in the desert kingdoms has the ineluctable stain of sweat and gore of the Indian migrants. And back home, Kerala’s economy, landscape and cinema was shaped by the Gulf migration. The enchantment with the Middle East which began in the late 70s peaked in the 90s and journeyed down the decades. Malayalam cinema, too, took the migratory route capturing the images of struggling migrant life with all its complexities.

Ee Naadu (1982)
Set in the political milieu of the 80s, Salim (Mammooty) works in the Gulf and comes home once in two years. Treated like royalty he finds his family and friends desert him when he loses his job.

Nadodi Kattu (1987)

Two friends Ramdas (Mohanlal) and Vijayan (Sreenivasan) fantasise about life in Dubai. They sell their cow, everything, to pay an agent for their dream jobs. They are taken on a fishing boat to Dubai but they soon find themselves on the shores of Chennai instead, scammed off their savings.

Garshome (1998)
Nazar (Murali) returns home fed up with working 12 years in the Gulf only to discover his family finds his presence intrusive. Everyone wants to know when he will return. A peaceful life is illusory as the demands of his family become troublesome.

Aarabi Katha (2007)

Mukundan (Sreenivasan) tries to escape the political designs of his fellow comrade and flies to the Gulf in search of a job only to find that the enemy has spread his tentacles there too. He is finally forced to seek the job of a camel keeper.

Khadhama (2011)
Is the woeful tale of domestic help Ashwathi (Kavvya Madhavan) in an Arab’s house in Saudi Arabia. She flees the cruelty of her employees and her slavish job and roams the streets. With no passport and no place to stay, she is on the run from the police.

Diamond Necklace (2012)

Arun Kumar, a young doctor, working in Dubai pushes his credit cards to fund his heady lifestyle. High on credit and low on morals, Arun cannot help stealing a diamond necklace from a patient.

Comments

Book Review: An Autobiography Of A Sex Worker by Nalini Jameela

I am 51 years old. And I would like to continue to be a sex worker.” This is how the candid and defiant opening statement in Nalini Jameela’s autobiography in Malayalam, Oru Lymgika-thozhilaliyude Atmakadha, goes. It at once throws a challenge at society’s double standards — harsh on prostitutes and soft on the clients. Nalini Jameela, who is the coordinator of the Kerala Sex Workers’ Forum, reveals her sordid story with no trace of compunction. Nalini was a 24-year-old widow when she entered the profession to feed her two children. At that time she did not think about the repercussions of her act. She writes, “I was earning Rs 4.50 at a tile factory near Trissur. My mother-in-law served me with an ultimatum to either give her five rupees a day to look after my children or leave the house. I recounted my woes to a friend, who introduced me to Rosechechi. Rosechechi promised me Rs 50 if I spent time with a man. The first thought that came to my mind was that my children would be looked...

Kochi Muziris Biennale: Whorled Explorations

London-based artist Hew Locke was in for a bit of shocker when he reached the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014 site, Fort Kochi in Kerala. His installation, Sea Power , was apparently crafted from his imagination of what the historical kingdom of Cochin would have been. Indeed, he had yoked his imagination to that of a 17th century German printmaker. The printmaker had in turn conceived the kingdom of Cochin based on the tales of another. “My work is imagination based on the imagination of an image that was perhaps real. It was double fiction and I thought the prints were elaborate romantic imagery...but I discovered when I arrived in Cochin that this double fiction has elements of reality. People still wear lungis and walk around bare-chested,” says an amazed Locke. Hew Locke’s beaded frieze of mythological and historical figures that gently sway in the wind is a response to the biennial theme, ‘Whorled Exploration’, and suggests blips in the seminal movements of history. Whorled...

SnooTea: Just My Style

(Photographs by Minu Ittyipe) It began on a lark to spiff up my morning cuppa. Oh well, I just wanted a change from what I had been drinking all my life. I am not complaining about the faithful brew that I stir up with tea dust, it does merrily improve with two extra spoonfuls of sugar but I was just plain bored with the regular. My concept of a cup of tea was corralled in the traditional Indian style- coppery coloured liquid topped with plenty of milk and sugar but now there was in me this undeniable thirst for a more delicate bouquet. Tranquilitea, Coonoor Curiously, though grown in our own backyard, few of us have heard of the orthodox leaf tea, forget the Silver Tips, Golden Tips and the White Tea etc.. that quietly find their way to the export market. To make a foray into this relatively unknown terrain, I headed for Tranquilitea, a tea lounge in the Nilgiris, for a cup of “Tippy” tea. On a sober note, you are cautioned not to confuse “Tippy” with the more commonplace “Tipsy” for...

Krazy Kochi

Search This Blog