The art of disagreement
New podcast A Muslim and a Jew Go There tackles the idea of people on the opposing ends of the table coming together
strength of Santosh’s image is strongly married to the strength of the actor in the rame,” he notes. “Even in the jazziest and most colourful sets, where he has to direct a large crew of lighting technicians and grips, he never misses that key moment in the scene and the magic in the performance.” He cites the intercuts of he song ‘Narumugaye’ from Iruvar (1997), where Sivan’s camera vividly captures the romance that ¢ashes in the actors’ eyes.
Iruvar and Dil Se.., both big-budget mainstream projects, fetched Sivan his hird and fourth national awards for cinematography. “Everyone thinks hat commercial cinema is all about glamour, where there s no scope for adventure. But I think it’s in commercial lms that you should showcase your talent,” he says. “It’s possible to look at he commercial format dierently. Do not take anything for granted.”
What do awards mean at this stage of his career? His answer is rather straightforward: “Power and immediate attention. When you are at workshops, students will want to listen to you.” The sweetest was the rst one — the national award in 990 for Perumthachan, he recounts. “During that ime, I was doing only action lms. My mother asked me, slightly concerned, why I was not getting an award, and suddenly I wanted one. After the rst couple of awards, it didn’t mean much.”
Three decades later, Sivan remains in he top tier of his eld. His involvement in a project often receives the same media attention as a superstar’s. Alongside expensive studio-backed lms, he pursues his passion projects — he’s just returned rom Kashmir where he is directing a eature lm on the 16th-century poet Habba Khatoon.
His last directorial in Malayalam, Jack N ill (2022), turned out to be a misre, but he has moved on. “Filmmaking is like being in a boxing ring. You must get hit once or twice,” he re¢ects. “The project didn’t begin well. The script wasn’t right here. It was mired in production ssues…”
Fondness for nature
Sivan’s early experiences in documentaries gave him a strong oundation in observing and documenting people, their work, the and, and its nature, observes cinematographer-lmmaker Rajiv Menon, his close friend and colleague. “This also meant he shot in natural light in dierent geographies in India. When he transitioned to feature lms, his cinematic canvas expanded. He worked fast and adapted to working with a wide range of directors.” Menon holds Sivan’s work as a director in The Terrorist (1998) in high regard. “It had a unique visual language — minimal yet gut wrenching.”
The Terrorist, the small-budget Tamil-language lm that Sivan wrote, directed and shot, led to his induction into the prestigious American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) in 2012, making him the society’s rst member from the Asia-Pacic region.
The lm, described by Roger Ebert as “visually breathtaking”, impressed renowned cinematographer Michael Chapman so much that he included it in his student workshops and recommended Sivan’s name to the ASC.
“I always wanted that honoric,” says Sivan, who regards the ASC recognition as a validation of the authenticity he has been practising in his work. “They invited me because my work is so unlike theirs. Indian visual art, like its music, is ornamental and colourful. I try to keep it that way, nding inspiration from my surroundings. It’s important to stay authentic.”
It must be this connection to the natural world that keeps Sivan tethered to Indian cinema. “An ASC recognition naturally prompts cinematographers to shift base to Hollywood. I feel I am past the age when one wants to move continents for a career,” he says. “My home and people are more important to me.” He is, admittedly, a man of nostalgia. “Aren’t most lmmakers and artists so? We like to think and remember.”
Does he feel worried that technology is taking over the eld of visual art, I ask. It is not the tool but the practice that makes good art, he replies. “Everybody is making images nowadays. If in the analogue times, children liked to sketch, now they prefer to take pictures on the phone. But most people who take photos don’t develop it, in the same way as most people who read and write only use language for passing information, not writing poems.”
The interviewer is a lm critic and independent researcher.
One of the things that has fallen by the wayside in Indian politics over the last decade or so is the idea of respectful disagreement, of civilly conducted debates about the issues that matter in the lives of the people. Admittedly, this is one of the smaller casualties in the larger, state-of-democracy scheme of things, but it does matter. Which is why, I quite enjoyed listening to a recent podcast, Muslim and a Jew Go There, produced by Jemima Khan’s Instinct Productions.
The ‘Muslim’ part of the title is represented by British lawyer and former Conservative Party minister Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, and she is joined by her compatriot, the Jewish writer and comedian David Baddiel.
In the podcast, Warsi and Baddiel talk about
Israel-Palestine, anti-semitism and Islamophobia, the similarities and dierences between Islam and Judaism, the English public’s perception of the Israeli government, and so on. Basically, there are issues that bring
Muslims and Jews together and there are those that divide them. Warsi and Baddiel frequently disagree, but always with
Aimpeccable manners and with a sense of genuine warmth and curiosity about the other person’s point of view. As Warsi says in the rst episode, “There are so many conversations happening behind closed doors and we want to bring them out in the open. The kind of things about which people say, ‘don’t touch that, don’t go there!’. Well, we are going to go there.”
Life as a minority
You can see the areas where Warsi’s and Baddiel’s experiences converge, and they shine an important light on the lives of minorities in the U.K. Baddiel recalls going to one of the few public schools in his hometown that had a sizeable Jewish student populace, where he wouldn’t be teased for, say, wearing a yarmulke. Warsi, on the other hand, pointed out that while the yarmulke was a visual marker of Jewishness, in most other situations, Baddiel would be “just another white person”. Whereas Warsi, like a lot of other brown kids growing up in the U.K., was never far from random people calling her “Paki” (a British slur aimed at Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis et al) in the street.
“I’ll have to challenge you on that” is an oft-used line on the podcast by both Baddiel and Warsi — it’s their way of expressing dissent, of pushing back against the other person’s ideas. And to their credit, they have often shifted their stances during the course of an episode, too, swayed by the other person’s testimony, the texture of their lived reality.
The second episode, where the duo discusses the victory of independent candidate George Galloway in the Rochdale by-election, is a masterpiece in miniature. Galloway won a shock landslide victory over Labour candidate Azhar Ali recently, mostly because of the former’s strident criticism of Israel. Now, Galloway’s sudden re-emergence into electoral relevance is surprising also because in the past, he has made a number of xenophobic, anti-immigrant statements. How, then, did he win this election on the backs of votes by people of colour?
Warsi and Baddiel explain the background to this issue: the Islamophobia of the
Conservatives and the anti-semitism of the
Labour Party are both brilliantly explained. There are some lighter moments as well, when Warsi and Baddiel are in splits discussing Galloway’s infamous appearance on the reality show Celebrity Big Brother, where the politician wore a cat-like leotard, purred and lapped up milk from a saucer at one point.
Pressing issues
This segment also shows how well-chosen the two people at the centre of this podcast are. Warsi resigned from her position as Minister of State for Faith and Communities in 2014, citing the Conservative government’s Gaza policy. To that extent, she is ahead of the curve by about a decade. Baddiel is the writer of the hilarious British lm The
del (2010), about a British Muslim man who goes through an identity crisis after discovering he was adopted and was actually born into a Jewish family. In the climax of the movie, the man reconciles his dual identities by reading the Talmud and the
Quran and realising the similarities between the two (Baddiel talking about his lm’s making is a delight on the podcast). Clearly, these are issues that both Warsi and Baddiel have thought long and hard about, and it shows.
Moreover, as the two of them admit during the podcast, there’s no shame in accepting one’s mistakes, saying ‘sorry’ and letting oneself be educated on the ner points of a matter. Warsi has, in the past, apologised for homophobic remarks she made in her early career.
Baddiel, similarly, has apologised for using blackface in one of his comedy skits. These are regular, ¢awed human beings who accept their limitations and want to nd common, broadly progressive ground at a time when polarisation and knee-jerk reductionism is the norm. And for that reason alone, I would highly recommend A Muslim and a Jew
Go There.
InSantosh Sivan’s early experience in documentaries gave him a strong foundation in observing and documenting people, their work, the land, and its nature. This also meant he shot in natural light in di erent geographies in India
is a writer and journalist working on his rst book of non- ction.