Last Saturday evening, the Indian Summer festival wound up for another year. In the final event of the Ideas Series, "I Don't Want to Choose," the featured conversation between film director Deepa Mehta and journalist-musician-poet Jeet Thayil was lively and full of laughter.
Mehta has directed many great films (Earth, Water, Fire, Midnight's Children and more) and Thayil has recently added novelist to his repertoire by publishing Necropolis). He read a short and charming series of "how to be..." poems, including one that featured the flaring nostrils of a horse.
Mehta talked about the challenges of making her film Water, which she was unable to complete in India after the set was bombed by religious fundamentalists. The work was filmed five years later in Sri Lanka. Mehta is both Indian and Canadian, but like Jeet Thayil, she dislikes being labelled. India inspires her with stories she wants to film, and Canada allows her to make them, she said.
Earlier, at "Reclamation/Exclamation," poet Renee Saklikar discussed roots, memory and transformation with educator Dr. K.S. Neel and radio journalist Gurpreet Singh. The moderator was Naveen Girn, and the conversation flowed from humour to seriousness and back.
In conversation with Diversity educator Satwinder Bains, the brilliant novelist Shauna Singh Baldwin talked about her "Reluctant Rebellions" concerning culture, identity and individuality.
"I resist; therefore, I am," she said, apologizing for the alteration to the quote of Descartes. When she read a passage from her WWII spy thriller The Tiger Claw, I knew I had to read it. Review here.
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