Rewriting History: A still from Jodhaa-Akbar

Jodhaa-Akbar highlights culture clash

More than a week after the St Valentine’s Day release of Jodhaa-Akbar in the UK, the film was continuing to attract healthy audiences at Cineworld Wandsworth in south London. I detected a detectable buzz in the foyer as people queued to get in. Some of the Gujarati women got agitated when they thought others were jumping the queue, which is always a sign of eager anticipation. There were also a significant number of Muslim women wearing hejabs in the audience who had no doubt been drawn by a Hindu-Muslim love story.

The chances are that the younger generation of British Asians probably knows little about the Mughal period since this does not figure in the school history syllabus. To them, the idea of a tolerant Akbar, who married a Rajput princess to further his political aims but then fell in love with her, must have been something of a revelation. It mattered little that the princess was called Jodhaa.

Thankfully, the writ of Mr Lokendra Kalvi, well known history scholar and spokesman for the Rajput Karni Sena, does not run in south London or anywhere else in Britain. The film has done quite well at the UK box office, getting to number 10 with takings of £365,785 from 46 prints in its opening weekend. So far, it has grossed £680,000, with distributors hoping to make the £1m mark. The average revenue per screen was the highest in Britain at £7,951 (which means that the typical Asian family, with everyone from grandmother to baby, turned up to see the filum).

There is a risk, of course, that the impressionable will take what they see on the screen as history and think that Akbar spent his leisure hours, for example, annoying wild elephants. But then had the film been made by a Britisher, artistic licence would have ensured that the Emperor did have an affair with his daughter-in-law just to whip up a bit of promotional controversy.

Generation after generation of British schoolchildren were taught Elizabeth I was a “Virgin Queen” until your good friend and mine, Shekhar Kapur, came along to suggest she got up to all manner of tricks with the Earl of Leicester behind the Elizabethan equivalent of the bicycle shed.

I would have withheld a censor’s clearance on the grounds it contains one irritating flaw. Did the subtitles really have to have American spelling? Have we become the 51st American state? Ashutosh Gowariker, lovely chap though he is, ought to have known better with this ‘labor’ of love.

CLASH OF THE TITANS: Sheffield University’s team for University Challenge with host Jeremy Paxman (middle) and Aditya Balachander (far left)

Aditya’s Challenge

After Lakshmi Mittal’s son, Aditya, we have another very clever young man with the same name.

Aditya Balachander, an Indian law student raised in Texas, came across as a brainy whiz kid when his side, Sheffield University, knocked out Magdalen College, Oxford, last week by 105 points — that is quite a margin — to storm into the finals of University Challenge this year.

The finals will be broadcast tomorrow night when Aditya and three other fellow students from Sheffield, Paul McKay, Phil Smith, and Kathryn Swindells, take on the might of Christ Church, Oxford.

Master Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is not in the Christ Church team but if the 19-year-old co-chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party can take time off either from running the affairs of Pakistan by remote control or handing in his history essay on time, I am sure he will be cheering on his college.

I must say I was pretty impressed with young Aditya. For an Indian, he seemed to know a lot about western culture. For a music starter for 10, he pressed the buzzer with lightning speed and identified the composer: “Beethoven”.

He was right.

Since the questions on University Challenge, which began in 1962, assume a great deal of knowledge of Greek, Latin and the ancient classics, the format tends to favour Oxbridge. So for Sheffield, assisted by Aditya’s valiant efforts, to crush Magdalen College, winners in 2004, was quite a feat.

Sheffield, which has 23,000 students, 4000 of them from overseas, knocked out Central Lancashire, Edinburgh and Exeter to get to the final. If Christ Church is vanquished tomorrow, it will be the first time Sheffield will have won.

Wordsmith: Nigel Molesworth

Word games

Some in India may be puzzled by the expression, “weed”, as applied by the distinguished Australian linguist, Mr Matthew Hayden, when discussing Mr Harbhajan Singh: “The first time I ever met him he was the same little obnoxious weed that he is now.”

In my part of south London, which is not so far from the West Indian settlement in Brixton, “weed” — or “magic weed” — has long been a euphemism for marijuana.

But Nigel Molesworth, the fictional schoolboy described as “the curse of St Custard’s” in the humorous tales written by Geoffrey Willans, used “weed” to deride fellow pupils he considered weak, studious and perhaps teacher’s pet.

I am sorry to say I still get hysterical giggles when thumbing through such Molesworth books as Down with Skool! A Guide to School Life for Tiny Pupils and their Parents (1953) or How to be Topp: A Guide to Sukcess for Tiny Pupils, Including All There is to Kno about Space (1954).

Molesworth would be proud of Mr Hayden who has deployed “weed” as used by boys at minor English public schools. For the record, Molesworth is not much enamoured of his younger brother, Molesworth 2, who is described as “uterly wet and a weed it panes me to think i am of the same blud”.

Commonwealth consolation

India may have drawn a blank at the Oscars and at Bafta but Indian authors have a better chance when the £10,000 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize is announced in May in South Africa.

From 113 entries, the six shortlisted include four Indian-origin authors — David Davidar for The Solitude of Emperors; Usha K.R. for Girl and a River; Hari Kunzru for My Revolutions; and Indra Sinha for Animal’s People.

The two others are Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid for The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and Nicholas Shakespeare for Secrets of the Sea.

It is pointed out that the Queen, who is the head of the Commonwealth, “has in the past graciously invited the Best Book Winner for an audience in London”.

With even more luck, the winner may get to take tea with Kamalesh Sharma, the new Commonwealth Secretary-General.

Tittle tattle

Awards galore: Shah Rukh Khan

Compared with the Oscars, which merits acres of newsprint in British newspapers, Indian film awards receive no attention at all.

Personally, I think last Saturday’s Filmfare awards were more glamorous than the Oscars on Sunday — on looks and colour, the surgically enhanced of Hollywood cannot match Kareena, Deepika, Vidya Balan, etc — but Indian events won’t ever be taken seriously so long as one person is nominated twice in the same category. It comes across as a fix.

For best male actor, Shah Rukh Khan, icon though he is, was nominated twice — for Chak De! India and Om Shanti Om. It would be more honest to have a category like “Best SRK Film” and simply nominate any four of his movies.

Also (here SRK is an exception) the way forward for Bollywood is really to disband dynasties.