The Charm and Humanity of "English Vinglish"

“English Vinglish” is an Indian movie that is as good as, if not better than, Mira Nair’s 2001 hit “Monsoon Wedding.” But while Monsoon enthralled Americans, English Vinglish has not created much of a ripple among moviegoers. That’s a pity because this is an unforgettable story conveyed through convincing performances.

Shashi is the ideal homemaker. She loves her husband (Adil Hussain) and adores her daughter and son. Her home in the Western city of Pune is an ode to taste. By the side, she runs a catering business selling golden, sweet snack balls called “Laddoos” that her clients are willing to die for. It brings her a nice income of her own. She seems to have everything, everything but respect from her husband and daughter. Her fault? She is pathetically deficient in English.

When she mispronounces a word (“Jaaz” becomes “Jhazz”), she faces the withering scorn of her husband and contemptuous daughter. No matter how hard she tries to shower her family with  love, she cannot save herself from her fatal flaw. “My wife was born to make Laddoos,” the husband tells anyone within earshot, barely hiding his contempt.

She begins to hate herself.

One day, her sister in New York invites the family to attend her niece’s wedding. Shashi has to travel alone because her husband is in the middle of a business deal and the kids are in school. They will join her later.

At the U.S. embassy, the immigration officer senses her difficulty with the language and mocks her. “How can you go to my country when you don’t even know English?” An Indian worker at the embassy supplies the perfect retort on her behalf: “You have been in India for years and still you don’t know how to speak Hindi!”

After suffering more insults and humilations, she finally lands in New York. The custom officer asks the inevitable question: “What is the purpose of your visit?” She flubs her line and says “I am here to attend my wedding.” The disgusted interlocutor waves her through.

Shashi (played with sublime pathos by Sridevi who has returned to the screen after a fifteen-year hiatus) tries to get used to the hectic New York life. One day, she notices an ad on a bus that promises to teach English to novices in a 4-week crash course. She has had enough of contempt and disrespect. Somehow, she manages to enroll herself in the language school.

The real story unfolds in the English class. There is a Mexican, a Pakistani, two Indians, a Korean, a Frenchman, a mysterious African and an irrepressible teacher. The Frenchman (Mehdi Nabbou) falls for Shashi ("her coffee-bean eyes float in a cloud of milk") as she stumbles her way through the minefield of basic English.

Shashi is the quintessential Indian wife. Adultery is not in her vocabulary. But the Frenchman awakens a certain feeling in her. In a cruel and mocking world, he extols her beauty and her rapid progress with the language. When Shashi’s younger niece, who had seen the duo walking animatedly down Manhattan Avenue, encourages her to respond to new love, Shashi replies: “I am not looking for love, only respect.”

The husband and the children arrive in New York. It’s the fourth and final week of her class. There is to be a final test before a certificate of course completion can be issued. But it interferes with her niece’s wedding. What to do? What to do? She cannot be in two places at once. On one side is the reason why she had traveled to New York; on the other, an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to infuse her life with meaning.

The loose ends get tied but not after some heartbreaking scenes of loss, longing and love. “Thank you for making me love myself,” she tells the Frenchman, the ultimate expression of her gratitude. For in loving herself, she realized that she had found the self-respect she had been craving all her married life.

She is now the confident citizen of a world whose redeeming values are diversity and acceptance.

Written and directed by the gifted Gauri Shinde, “English Vinglish” should be seen by Americans of all hues and backgrounds. It is a touching story that lifts you up and enlarges your humanity. Can anyone ask more from a movie?

Thoreau and the "Occupy Wall Street" Movement

What would Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) make of the “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS) movement now sweeping America and the world?

Based on how he lived and what he wrote, it is likely that the author of Civil Disobedience (1849), whose words inspired Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, would throw his full support behind it.

Thoreau defended John Brown when the abolitionist seized a federal armory in 1859 to arm slaves to rise against the South. He built his own cabin by Walden Pond without borrowing a cent from the bank. He had observed how the crushing burden of mortgages robbed his neighbors of their economic freedom. “When the farmer has got his house,” he wrote in Walden, “he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him.”

If Thoreau were to review the “State of the Union,” these are some of the grim statistics he would encounter in America today:

- The richest 1 percent (the One Percenters) take home almost 25% of the national income, which represents a more unequal wealth distribution than most of the world’s banana republics.

- From 1980 to 2005, more than 80% of the total increase in incomes went to the One Percenters. They now have more net worth (34%) than the bottom 90 percent (29%), according to figures compiled by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

- According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, over 14 million Americans (9.1%) are unemployed as of September 2011. (This does not include the significant number of Americans who have given up looking for jobs, particularly those over 50). About as many Americans are working only part-time because they are unable to find full-time work.

- 46.2 million Americans are living in poverty, the most in more than 50 years. Foreclosures and bankruptcies are at an all-time high. Over 50 million Americans do not have any medical insurance.

- The CEOs of the largest American companies earn an average of more than 500 times as much as the average worker.

In New York, the epicenter of the OWS protest, the wealth of the One Percenters derives almost entirely from the sector known primarily for its “financial innovation.” These “innovators” work in Wall Street, commercial and investment banks, hedge funds and credit card and insurance companies. They create nothing. Instead, they claim to create “value” by speculating with others’ money, be it in mortgages, car loans, credit card debt, gas and food prices, always hedging the bets so that they end up with piles of cash whether society wins (rarely) or loses (almost always).

Thoreau would find that in the America of today, the One Percenters control the rest of the population, the Ninetynine Percenters, through economic and political hegemony. He would find that our government has become a government of the One Percenters, by the One Percenters, and for the One Percenters. He would be deeply disappointed with President Obama who promised to clean up the economic disaster he inherited from George Bush. Obama vowed to be an agent of change, a beacon of hope. Instead, he coddled those responsible for the meltdown - bankers, hedge fund operators, reckless speculators and other assorted wealthy sociopaths - and bailed them out with billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money, while turning a blind eye to their uninterrupted multi-million dollar quarterly bonuses.

But Thoreau would also be heartened by the sight of his moral descendants taking a stand. What began as a small gathering by a handful of New Yorkers on September 17 has spread not only coast to coast but beyond, including cities like Rome, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid, Sydney and Tokyo. Like the Arab Spring, this grassroots movement has no leaders, heroes or ideologues, only ordinary citizens bound by a fierce desire to right the terrifying inequity that threatens that most fundamental of rights, our freedom.

Seeing the resolve of protesters growing by the day, Thoreau would reconsider deleting from Walden, circa 2011, his biting observation that the “mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Occupy Wall Street movement is drawing the “mass of men” into an ever-widening circle of passionate activism. Yes, the movement grew from the desperation of intolerable injustice but now it has acquired a momentum that transcends desperation, charging the national and international discourse with timeless ideas of equality, fairness and justice.

“We are the 99” is a banner that Henry David Thoreau would have been proud to unfurl on Main Street, America, for the world to behold and act upon.

America's Enduring Values

War in Iraq. War in Afghanistan. Over 14 million Americans out of work. Gulf oil spill. Widening gap between the wealthy and the debt-ridden, paycheck-to-paycheck families. The bitter polarization between blue and red states. The simmering summer of discontent.

It is easy to give in to cynicism, to lose hope, to become despondent in this time of doom and gloom. Yet it is when we think we have hit the bottom that something happens to lift our spirits, to remind us of the enduring values that make America great.

The Cordoba House planned near Ground Zero in New York would include a mosque and an interfaith cultural and community center. The plan was attacked by Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and other conservatives and political opportunists who considered it an insult to the 9/11 victims. After all, didn't Muslims kill almost 3000 Americans on that fateful day in September?

Many politicians, columnists and commentators came to the defense of the Cordoba House but none more forcefully and eloquently than the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg. With the Statue of Liberty in the background and flanked by religious leaders, the mayor summarized what America was about and why the mosque could become a beacon of hope in a nation troubled by deep division and discontent. His speech reminds us why, in spite of the difficulties we are now facing as a nation, America will (to paraphrase William Faulkner) not only survive but endure. Excerpts:

“Our doors are open to everyone. Everyone with a dream and a willingness to work hard and play by the rules. New York City was built by immigrants, and it's sustained by immigrants -- by people from more than 100 different countries speaking more than 200 different languages and professing every faith. And whether your parents were born here or you came here yesterday, you are a New Yorker ..."

“On that day (9/11), 3,000 people were killed because some murderous fanatics didn't want us to enjoy the freedoms to profess our own faiths, to speak our own minds, to follow our own dreams, and to live our own lives. Of all our precious freedoms, the most important may be the freedom to worship as we wish ..."

"Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here."

“This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions or favor one over another. The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan."

“Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11, and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values and play into our enemies' hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that."

"For that reason, I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetimes, as important a test. And it is critically important that we get it right ..."

"On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, 'What God do you pray to?' 'What beliefs do you hold?'"

"Muslims are as much a part of our city and our country as the people of any faith. And they are as welcome to worship in lower Manhattan as any other group. In fact, they have been worshipping at the site for better, the better part of a year, as is their right. The local community board in lower Manhattan voted overwhelmingly to support the proposal. And if it moves forward, I expect the community center and mosque will add to the life and vitality of the neighborhood and the entire city."

"Political controversies come and go, but our values and our traditions endure, and there is no neighborhood in this city that is off-limits to God's love and mercy, as the religious leaders here with us can attest."

The Cordoba House may or may not materialize but the enduring values of America that mayor Bloomberg touched on in his stirring speech will continue to challenge and inspire us for years to come.