Sunday Long Reads: Sustainable living in tiny homes, documentary on cinematographers, bees, and more

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‘We are being culturally, technologically driven towards anxiety-inducing elements of identity’: Mohsin Hamid

Mohsin Hamid (Credit: Jillian Edelstein)

In The Last White Man (Hamish Hamilton, Rs 599), his fifth novel that will release at the end of the month, Mohsin Hamid throws up an interesting proposition — what happens when a White man wakes up one morning and realises he is no longer so. That his deracination is part of a great changeover taking shape in his city. How would the future unspool? Can one really become the Other? In this interview, the Lahore-based writer, 50, known for novels such as The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) and Exit West (2017), speaks of nurturing this story since 9/11, thwarting bigotry with empathy and writing less to say more.

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‘Chhayaankan’, a new documentary throws light on the forgotten cinematographers who made Hindi cinema great

Documentary filmmaker Hemant Chaturvedi, a former cinematographer who quit the Bollywood film industry in 2015. (Credit: Abhinav Saha)

When Guru Dutt died in 1964 in Bombay, his cinematographer VK Murthy was shooting in Madras. Govind Nihalani, who was assisting Murthy, and who would go on to become a cinematographer and director himself, asked his mentor how he felt at the news of Dutt’s passing. Murthy said to him, “I cried, but more for myself than for him.” Murthy and Dutt were a dream team, like Spielberg and Kaminski, David Lean and Freddie Young. “Murthy ji was as calm and composed as Dutt saab was impatient, but the two were aligned in their vision,” recalls actor Waheeda Rehman in a new documentary. This faith in each other created magic in Dutt’s films, the oblong chiaroscuros, and the “mirror shot”, for instance, in his swansong, the German Expressionistic noir Kaagaz ke Phool (1959). Nihalani, whose horoscope declared he would work with art and mechanics, was only too glad Murthy took him in.

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A lesson in democracy from the bees

A bee in search of nectar. (Source: Ranjit Lal)

The moment the news got out that bees are ‘sentient’ Down in Jungleland (DiJ), at considerable personal risk and in a full beekeeper’s suit obtained an interview with the Queen of a well-established hive, whose location cannot be disclosed. Excerpts:

DiJ: Congratulations Your Majesty! You have now been deemed to be a ‘sentient’ species along with the great apes, dolphins, elephants, parrots, and us. How does it feel?
Queen: So what’s new? We’ve always known who we are. Bees!

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What the brouhaha over MP Mahua Moitra’s LV in Parliament says about aspiration and resentment

Trinamool MP Mahua Moitra with her Louis Vuitton bag. (Photo: PTI)

As someone who barely ever questioned Carrie Bradshaw’s fashion choices, I was shaken out of my nonchalance after the Sex and the City (SATC) movie in 2008. Carrie gifts a $4,500 handbag to her Black assistant Louise. It’s a Louis Vuitton, a “Motard Firebird”, which debuted that year. Louise already has an LV — only, it’s a rental. When she opens the gift, she can’t believe her eyes. “My very own Louis Vuitton?!” she exclaims.
If there is one handbag that should have been hidden away, it is this one. It’s a quizzical palette of purple, coral and yellow, made worse by embellishments that pop like ulcers. But, as SATC emphasised, a Louis Vuitton — even a garish one — is timeless.

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How the 39th Jerusalem Film Festival offered a chance to experience Israel, in reel and real

The Western Wall and the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the background in the Old City of Jerusalem (CREDIT: Wikimedia Commons)

Streaming into Sultan’s Pool, the open-to-the-sky location of the opening film of the Jerusalem Film Festival (JFF) 2022, you are aware of the duality that is so overwhelmingly present in this wondrous city: antiquity and modernity. The large amphitheatre is said to go back to Roman times, and here we are, about to watch Ruben Ostlund’s Cannes winner, Triangle of Sadness, a film about the repercussions of 21st-century hedonism. It feels both bizarre and perfectly fitting that in this place, wherever you turn, the old and new mix and meld, making it a unique experience.

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Russo brothers: ‘The Indian film industry is so vibrant, it rivals Hollywood’

The Gray Man (2022). (L to R) Anthony Russo (Director-Producer), Joe Russo (Director-Producer-Writer). (Source: Netflix)

When American producer-director duo Joe and Anthony Russo — widely known as the Russo brothers — visited India last month, coinciding with the Netflix release on July 22 of their latest action thriller The Gray Man, they made it clear that they were aiming to grow their association with it. “I love India. So, we will keep casting Indian talent. The Indian film industry is so vibrant; it rivals Hollywood. There is so much talent here that’s untapped at an international level,” says Joe, 51, on his third visit to the country.

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