Standardised testing

I like complicating things, mostly because it makes me feel smart. The trouble with this--apart from the obvious--is that I often arrive at popular (and therefore 'shallow') notions about certain phenomena after much mental merry-go-rounding. And having thus arrived, I feel that my extra mental legwork gives my shallow ideas more comparative depth than other people's shallow ideas (of course, I never entertain the idea that other people may also have arrived at their shallow 'pop' conclusions after considerable thought), and therefore, while my subscription to those ideas shows a resigned concession to messy reality, other people's subscription clearly demonstrate a general lack of grey cells.

Since the above analytical model puts me inarguably in a position of superior intellect to pretty much the rest of creation, I have great difficulty coming to terms with the idea that *I*, Rimi, can actually be subject to the same shallow and hegemonic normalising phenomena that I actually had to grace to briefly think about before scornfully dismissing. A great deal of practice (especially after I moved to the US) has done nothing to ease the process for me.

However, while usually I snort at this individualistic culture's total obsession with meeting homogenising norms in nearly every other aspect of life (in body images and concepts of beauty, for example), I have a genuine problem with the bell-curve approach to testing merit. And not merely because I am subject to it semester after semester, and frequently yield less than satisfactory results. I also mark students myself, and the idea that my grade distribution must conform to a certain "nice middle-heavy lay out" bothers me no end. The potol-shaped narrow-ended and plump-middled distribution simply does not fit actual grade clusters. Sometimes I have students performing rather well towards the beginning--straight As--and then petering off after they're sure they shall get at least a B in the course no matter what. Others take some time to realise that they *will* be marked down if they don't conform to assignment expectations in both form and content, and buck up towards the end to pull up their grades. The unevenness in this case might "look uncomfortable", but it is reflective of the actual performance of the students. The idea that one should 'adjust' this actual data set to fit an unreal norm--unreal because if every instructor is expected to 'adjust' to an ideal, no one actually ever achieves this distribution 'normally'--seems to me both unfair and silly, and quite preposterous besides. I quite understand, unfortunately, the need to have an abstracted idea of perfection against which actual merits can be measured, but somewhere along the line we seem to have forgotten that this abstracted ideal was chosen precisely because no person can meet it... unless of course he/she makes an effort to play the system (which a great deal of non-native speakers of English do with great felicity to the the GRE, for example).

And lest we forget, these 'actual performances' that I'm championing are already being judged on culturally predetermined parameters. And I'm not talking widely disparate systems, for to even think of comparing them is foolishness, but apparently similiar structures. For instance, the 'western' mode of education in various countries. At my old university, term papers were marked down (almost disqualified, in fact) if one used prescribed texts to write them. The idea was that midterms and finals were for textual testing; term papers were to demonstrate how well students could critique the theory learned in class, and apply it to texts outside the syllbus. In the US, or at my uni at any rate, term papers are nearly disqualified if they do not deal almost exclusively with prescribed texts, perhaps because graduate students do not have take textual exams here. Also, there is something called 'class participation', in which students get a small amount of credit for offering their opinions about the texts. But often the actual content of the contribution isn't taken into consideration, merely the fact of participation. This seems to me quite counter-productive, since students often speak for the sake of registering their presence, and not because they have something valuable to add to the conversation. But that is how America works, and appears to work just fine. Except of course for those who come from outside the system and have to undergo periods of adjustment. But even then, the system is more personalised. Normative parameters must be met, but there are professors and advisers and so on who smile and encourage and hand-hold them through it.

Standardised testing, however, is quite another level of absurdity. And yet again I understand it is a useful tool of separating the grain from the chaff without involving the terribly indelicate job of failing or turning down people personally. It would never do, after all, to have unpleasantness about. But I am forced to wonder how much of the grain gets thrown out with the chaff--and consequently how deeply the system becomes populated by mediocre talent--because standardised tests fail to take extenuating circumstances into consideration. It takes into no account illnesses, emotional upheavals, technical failure or alien attacks. When I took my GREs, for instance, I had a fever and a thumping heat-induced headache. Then, the computer I was at swallowed my essay and nearly all of my maths test, and had to be coaxed back while I waited for two hours in a sultry, drowsy, hot little room which nearly put me to sleep. The personnel tried to convince me that my current test was forfeit and that I should pay for a rescheduled test (which I woudn't do and honestly, couldn't afford to), and finally let an exhausted, anxious and very sleepy me take the test, but all over again.

I think I can say with a certain amount of certainty that my scraps from the second exam would not have yielded such mementos as "1129x2=1158" and similar had I been in better shape and been spared the assorted troubles. So if one goes by my GRE score's position on the bell-curve, I'm a right idiot. And I'm forced to say that this 'evidence' is patently false. I am by no means attempting to establish myself as a genius and am well aware that my intelligence is only of the moderate sort, but an idiot I am not. You can take my word for it. And therein lies the trouble, because of course no one *will* take my word for it--to do that would lead to the collapse of the entire concept of emperical evidence. But it's either my flawed initial scores while I was still trying to figure out the American system of grading plus my less than perfect GRE, or my own assurances that I am an intellectually competent human being. I think I can tell which would be treated as an objective evidence of my abilities, and which not. And frankly, now that I am back on the competitive market, it worries the hell out of me.

So much for you, then, Superior Scorn. Don't be a stranger.

See, spot, kill.

Rimi's friend: and if that wasn't enough, he complains about my cooking *all* the time!
Rimi (incredulously): X complains about other people's cooking?
Rimi's friend: my point exactly.
Rimi: well, this gives me hope. I have been meaning to write a critique of nuclear physics for some time now.

Rimi's friend's annoying flatmate, who had been 'reading' the same page of the newspaper for the last fifteen minutes, decided to give up the pretence and join in.

Annoying flatmate: oh, so you're a physicist?
Rimi: god, no! I wish I were!
Ann. flatmate (shrewdly): so, you want to criticise nuclear physics without actually being a nuclear physics person.
Rimi (complacently): quite right.
Ann. F: and you don't think that is unethical?
Rimi's friend (with an exaggerated sigh): Ann, Rimi was only joking about...
Ann. F: but she isn't a physicist!
Rimi's friend: that's exactly the damn point!
Ann. F (in tones of superior astonishment): you mean to say it is 'the point' for non-scientists to criticise science??? You are going to encourage her to do this?
Rimi: (lets slip involuntary giggle)

My friend set down her enormous cup of latte carefully on top of Ann. F's shiny new copy of a bestselling lifestyle book, and looked at him directly.

Rimi's friend: Ann, I'm sorry. Obviously we haven't been clear enough for a mixed audience... we thought this was a private conversation. Rimi here was suprised that X criticised my cooking, given that he burns water. Her statement about critiquing--not criticising--nuclear physics was an... is allegory right, Rimi? [Rimi indicates she hasn't a clue] Anyway, it was a joke. All right?
Ann. F (getting up to go): anyway, I don't think anyone would have let a non-science person publish a criticism of physics.

A brief pause, while we hear the door open and close.

Rimi's friend (swallowing a hearty sip of coffee): he is moving to Chicago next month. Thank god!
Rimi: new job? Partner? Family?
Rimi's friend: do I care?
Rimi: good point.

Singing praises.

(Familiarity with Bengali required for some parts)

What does one miss about the vibrant, vivacious, dazzling, crowd-clogged, loud, sumptuous autumn festivities? Well, *I* miss complaining about them. They say in Bengali that one doesn't appreciate one's teeth while one still has them, and this might well apply to the pujas... for some people. But for me, not so much. The first time I got away from them--and I left town a week or so before Mohaloya last year--I had the distinct feeling of a narrow escape. One does not appreciate being woken up by the dhaak at four thirty in the morning after being dragged around town and through an ocean of people on the pretext of 'thakur dekha' till 3AM. And one certainly does not appreciate Reshammiya or Kumar Shanu blaring from the mikes all day.

Actually, I'm being unfair. For the last four or so years, our parar pujo has chosen to play music one wants to hear: Hindi film classics from the sixties and seventies--lots of Asha, Mukhesh, Rafi, Kishore-- in the evenings, and plenty of Hemonto, Shyamol Mitro, Sholil De, Srikanto Acharjo, Orghyo Sen, Konika Bannerjee in the mornings, a nice blend of robindroshongeet and what is still called 'adhunik'. I never quit understand why people leave out Debobroto out of their playlists, incidentally. His renditions of Tagore's songs are often my favourites. In fact, if anyone has .mp3 versions of his robindroshongeets and are willing to share, I would be very grateful. But anyway, so we had these sterling mixed tapes being played for our aural gratification all day, and I would have been pleased... except that:

1. the same songs were repeated ad infinitum on a tedious loop, which, no matter how much one lives listening to Kishore singing Gulzar's lyrics to RD's music, is very, very painful.
2. the next locality had generously strung up two mikes facing our locality, so that Rafi was often superimposed on Alka Yagnik, and Shyamol Mitro on DJ Hot's "KaaNta Lagaa!".

All in all, I was quite happy to fly the nest before the Decibel Assault was launched. But in doing so, I was also withdrawing all claim on the pleasanter sounds of pujo--the call to onjoli on oshtomi mornings, the montropaath interspersed by ghonta bajano during shondhipujo, dhakir naach, dhunuchi naach [tiny video of just the first moves], the broken snatches of private conversations picked up by the microphone, people rushing around overseeing the serving at communal lunches on oshtomi and dinners on nobomi ("Bannerjee kaku ke luchi diyechho toh? Uni kintu chaichhilen.", "Ei ektu dekh toh Uma mashi khete boshlo kina, shokal theke mondope kaaj korchhen. Ei fol-mishtita diye aaye ontoto"). I even like the dhaak at more reasonable hours. In fact, provided I had managed the requisite eight hours, I quite cherished being woken up by the slightly intoxicating rhythm that gets under the skin and whispers to the blood. It gave the peaceful glow of an autumn daybreak a primal undertone of excitement--pujo eshe gaechhe!

There's also perhaps a sensual undertone to the association of the dhaak with the worship of the mother goddess. Feel free to treat this as a pop theory popped out by an amateur (I certainly do), but our goddesses are not pristine submissive vestal virgins in white, spending their days in seclusion. Or, for that matter, virgin goddesses reknowned for their intellect, but lined firmly with patriarchy. Our goddesses are far more sweat-and-blood, far more raw power that smites, far more protective love tempered by firm disciplinarianism. And although we in our psuedo-Victorian way shy away from it, far more powerfully, sensually, playfully sexual. Despite the ridiculously fake blindfold of 'Indian culture' that we wear voluntarily, perhaps this subterranean association seeps into the romantic overtones to pujo celebrations. And not just the sweetly romantic, neither. While the pujo pandals are a favourite first-meeting type place for potential sweethearts in Bengali films and novels, pujos are also the time when, slipping away from the performances like this, lovers go off to... do what lovers are always sneaking off to do. You couldn't ask for a better background score. And if someone raised an eyebrow you could always say you were embodying Shiv and Shakti, and enacting their reunion post-bijoya doshomi :-) (not that I've ever heard anyone use that excuse, but I would love to)

And perhaps that is why the only piece of commercial pujo "music" I'm missing is an ancient Thumbs Up! commercial. It's not on Youtube or Google videos. Does anyone remember it? "Shoptomi te prothom dekha, oshtomi te haashi... nobomi te bolte chaoa, tomaye bhalobashi. Doshomite hothat kaeno aakul holo praan... praan protima tumi ebar jaabe ki bhashan?"

Praan protima, tumi ebar jaabe ki bhashan? Shubho Bijoya.

"Disrespect".

I hear the word a *lot* around here. It's a novel feeling, because while the society I come from is big on respect, it is a thing that remains largely inarticulated. No one bandies the actual word about. There is little talk about being respectful or feeling disrespected, or even about children being disrespectful--a favourite theme of most grown-ups. On the event that the latter is discussed, the behaviour is usually labelled as rudeness, or more circumspectly, as "a lack of good manners". And I've absolutely never heard anyone say, "I feel disrespected". Or any variations thereof. If one has to demand respect, I was always told, that person probably does not deserve it. That respect isn't Halloween sweets. You cannot demand someone give you a fistful of it just because it pleases you to coddle your system with it.

I overheard a conversation on the metro the other day, where an uncle-type was telling off a late teen for disrespecting him... because said late teen refused to buy the brand of tyres uncle recommended. To classify rejection of advice as disrespect seemed ridiculous to me, but to the uncle it seemed perfectly legit. "I have been driving on these roads for more winters than you have been born [sic.]", he emphasised. "I know more about them than you do. I'm trying to share this knowledge with you. But I will not be disrespected in public because your roommate likes a different brand!"
I watched the man closely, and he reminded me of nothing so much as a tiny little frog puffed up with an inflated sense of it's own importance, just at the verge of bursting with a messy wet "PLOP!" He inspired amusement and condescending pity, but never 'respect' (as I understand it).

Therefore I get the feeling this American 'respect' is a different beast from the one we find back at the tropics. It's not the thing we dutifully offer up to our, say, school teachers--the ones that taught us our alphabets and numbers and the ones that screamed us through differential calculus. In fact, I get the feeling school teachers don't command much respect in the US at all. Anyway. The point is that in India there are certain categories of people that command respect by sheer virtue of their categories, and this respect is a sort of public demonstration of "looking up to", even if there is no actual feeling of respect involved. In the US, on the other hand, I think 'respect' has got more to do with protecting one's rights to whatever (validating one's ethnic identity, emphasising one's individuality, etc.), and making sure no one points and laughs or gets nasty while said rights are being exercised. Again, such observances of 'respect' do not necessarily demand the observer actually support such rights ideologically, merely that he keeps his toes off other people's territory. Or so I think, anyway. I'm not sure about the 'respect' dynamics here yet. And yet I have already, according to my American acquaintances, experienced this 'respect'--or lack thereof--first hand. This morning, in fact. And at a university office, no less.

So I walk into a campus office for the third time in a row, because I need to put my name down on a list. The first time I went, I was asked for my passport. I went back with my passport, and was asked for my social security. This was the third time, and I was armed with my passport AND my social. Confident that the matter would be dealt with in a few minutes, I approached the undergraduate student employee behind the counter. She asked to see my I-20. I confessed I wasn't carrying mine, it being a valuable doc. and all, and promised to return (yet again). However, I asked her for a check-list of *all* the things I would need, since I did not wish to carry my passport, I-20 and social security card for a fifth trip. This was when the episode truly began. First, the girl merely repeated herself slowly and clearly, as one does to the deaf or the mentally deficient: "Look. You don't have your I-20. We need your I-20. Just come back with your I-20, and we'll do it."

I should probably have left it at that and left altogether, but one's patience wears thin after three failed trips, especially if they're no fault of one's own. So I asked if my university ID would suffice, since it was issued after my I-20 was scrutinised. At this the girl threw her hands up in exasperation.

Girl: Okay. Do you speak English? Or should I get someone to translate? Because clearly I'm not getting through to you. Before I give you any money [because my father is the University tsar, of course, and all it's money is hidden under my bed], I need to know that you are not here illegally and that you have the legal right to work in America.

At which point I decided I should perhaps seek out an employee actually in possession of her mind, so I gave the girl a friendly nod and started walking carefully away, not turning my back on her.

Girl: uh, excuse me! Yeah, I need to know: are you already working for the university? Are you getting any money from us?
Rimi (from a safe distance): yes. I draw a regular stipend.
Girl (in a blend of sanctimoniousness and "take that!" manner): you should know that you are doing it illegally. You have no right to do that. If I wanted I could report you.

Unfortunately, I suffer from a secret hero complex. I could have walked away from this without a further word, because the dumb child's crassness rather amused me, but suddenly I pictured another international student who actually doesn't speak English too well, and who doesn't know that stipends are perfectly legal and are paid by a completely different university office. I pictured this person in my place, thoroughly harassed and confused because a minor clog in a major machine was power-tripping by virtue of having access to a daily stamp and a cluster of cheap office supplies. Bullies are my secret button.

I gave the too-thin brunette a thoughtful once-over. She looked back at me with--and I could be a wrong--a superior glint in her eye.
"Has anyone ever told you," I said in a slow, largely indifferent voice, "that you are a singularly unpleasant young woman?"
The singularly unpleasant young woman did an exaggerated imitation of dropping her jaw in shock, while managing to gasp out a "What???"
"I know you don't need a translator for that," I continued in an indulgently reprimanding tone, "because I speak rather a classy version of your language. Now, I'm going to be back tomorrow, and you will manage to make yourself unavailable when I am here, because if I have to speak to you again, there might be unpleasant consequences."

And I left, this time turning my back on her, confident that I'd uprooted her venom-sack--if temporarily. I heard her say in a shocked voice to her colleague, "Did you hear what she said to me? Oh my god, she was like, so disrespectful! Okay, now I'm officially upset. Did you just hear the things she said?"

"In my country," I wanted to turn around and say, "respect has to be earned, not demanded. And you fail the qualifiers by a couple of thousand miles, cupcake."

But I didn't. This lily, I felt, didn't need that extra guilding.

Our Basterds

Aaand, in a completely uncharacteristic move, Sauce! presents it's first actual film commentary, which basically is hardselling Vishal Bharadwaj's Kaminey in a respectable disguise. The man should be sharing his spoils with me.

The first question my mum asked when I came home from the film and praised it sky high was, "So what's the story?" And that's the stroke of genius--or at least the beginning of it. There is no story. Or none that one would notice. 'Mistaken identity flick with identical twins' is a category/subgenre description, not a plot summary. When Bharadwaj set out to make a chartbusting Bollywood film with all the trimmings, he set out to make a chartbusting Bollywood film with all the trimmings. Of Kaminey it may truly be said that iss film mein drama hai, comaydee hai, rrromance hai, akshun hai, traagedy hai... aur kahani bilkul nahin hai [this film has drama, has comedy, has rrromance, has action, has tragedy...and has no sustainable story whatsoever]. And to top it all, it has a Happy Ending. And only if you've been watching the the impishly clever little subaltern current of subversion throughout the film will you wonder whether it's a bona fide H.E.

I shall not dwell here on the excellent of the camerawork and the texture of the film--the brilliant use of light/shade/shadow/motifs... because I understand precisely zilch about those things. What I can tell you about is the sheer vitality, wicked humour, excellent performances, and a unfortunately, a couple of Very Serious iroksomenesses of the film. But most of all, the vitality.

Because, boss, Kaminey sparkles and almost sloshes at the sides of the screen with it's barely contained aliveness. This is a film where stuff happens, and unlike films full of mad car chases and crazy heists and getaways, it doesn't deafen you with it's one-track obsession with speed plus loud gunfire plus showy glossiness. Kaminey is all action, but it's also all quirky subversive humour, and so if you think you can safely visit the loo while the film is on and come back to pick up the plot right where you left off (and no one would blame you, because after all Bollywood has trained it's plotlines to play dead for two and a half of its three hour runtime), Kaminey is not your best bet. You'd come out confused, wondering where the mad capers came from and where they went, and what you, the poor paying audience, had done to deserve it.

Before we went to see the film someone mentioned the Bangali aspect of the film (there are three Bengali actors in the film, of which Rajatabha is completely wasted). What I didn't expect was to have it drag Feluda and my school Bengali teacher to mind even before half-time was stylishly announced. An association for which my teacher wouldn't thank me, and neither, if I know my fictional characters, will Mr. Mitter. But it's impossible not to compare Kaminey plot elements with the "hit formula" Feluda outlines for a Hindi potboiler to Lalmohonbabu in Bombaier Bombetey. And Kaminey is word perfect, if we substitute a Sholayesque group of dacoits with the most eclectic collection of underground 'businessmen' any Bollywood flick can boast of. Too bad the 'international' villian Tashi doesn't have pet sharks and crocodiles. But then again, Bharadwaj spares us the torture of "designer" clothes for the entire cast and ostentatious locations whose only point is being tastelessly ostentatious, so I suppose it balances out.

Second, our Bengali teacher. Mrs. D was convinced that not more than two girls in her class of eighty anglicised brown girls (or, as she would say, ei shob deshi memshaheb) actually knew a thing about their mother tongue, and that even fewer cared. And therefore it was surprising how much effort she put into teaching us the subject, and how brilliant she was at it. It's thanks to her, entirely, that I am aware of a rhetorical device called the jomok olonkaar (based on, yes, the concept of twin meanings of the same word or phrase), that very clever use of language where one apparently says something on the surface, but means precisely the opposite. Or, if not precisely the opposite, then mocks a certain idea while at the surface seeming to approve of it wholeheartedly. And Kaminey does exactly that to standard Bollywood tropes. Estranged goodtwin-badtwin with over-emphasised signature traits, homegrown and imported villians, family drama, villians' family drama, good cop-bad cop, young virginal maiden in luuurve, you name it.

So if you want to watch Kaminey, watch Kaminey. Some of the cleverness is so in-your-face you couldn't possibly miss it. For example, when Guddu walks out on a pregnant Sweety and locks himself in the graphiti-covered communal loo, and Sweety hammers on the door. The scrawl just above Sweety's pounding fists read "Apna haath Jagannath". Particularly effective, since it accompanies Sweety admitting that she is an ethnocentric sectarian politician's sister, which makes her and Guddu's continued intimacy almost impossible. And then there's Tashi's brilliant and completely inaccurate line, "Why do war for no reason? Am I America?" And yet there's Chandan Roy Sanyal's (credited, I notice, with his surnames clubbed together as Roysanyal) wonderful innuendo of an endearment, "Mukhta ektu kholo dekhini, shonamoni". Open your pretty mouth, sweetheart. When one takes into account that the addressee--Charlie, the bad-boy twin--is without doubt his partner in matters more than professional, the sentence acquires a whole new *nudge nudge, wink wink* meaning. Also, don't forget to note the conspicious absence of any mention of weepy mothers in the film (a dead father gives proxy for parent-as-conscience instead). Alas, Nirupa Roy, have we finally laid your ghost to rest?

But despite all the fabulous performances (where did Bharadwaj find the debutants? Tenzing Nima is very good, Roy Sanyal as the flamboyant mafia chhotokorta perennially high on cocaine is brill, and thank you for bringing back Amol Gupte!), there are two major and one minor thing I had serious problems with. One is when Guddu refers to an abortion within the first month of pregnancy as murder. Boss, does becoming a global citizen imply buying into the worst aspects of American mass culture? Since when is abortion in the first trimester murder, and isn't it a bit rich coming from a boy who absolutely totally doesn't want the baby, isn't prepared to marry the mother and therefore socially acknowledge the child, and doesn't even want a marginal role as an unwed father? And for those of you who think opposing abortion is "religious" or "traditional", I suggest you read up on your Hinduism (given Guddu and Sweety's roots) and not merely take Ekta Kapoor's word for it when she makes her characters screech, "Yeh mahapaap hai!" And what's with making Charlie marry a girl in the end? Enforced heteronormativity, eh?

All right, I'm prepared to consider the idea that Bharadwaj meant to show how most gay men are still required to act if they want to be 'accepted', and how Charlie twists even that to his advantage by marrying a beautiful girl clearly made of money. And I'm even prepared to agree that a 'modern' urban man mistakes popular ritualistic faith and media-propelled pop ethics for religious beliefs, and that is where Guddu's accusation of murder comes from. But those momoents still stick out like sore thumbs in what is an otherwise brilliant film, and I wish Bharadwaj hadn't taken the easy way out. Not that I don't understand why he had to, but nonetheless. And finally, why take on an actor as brilliant as Rajatabha and then not bloody use him, boss?

But. Pliss to be seeing Kaminey. It is the tewkewl film only.