If post-independence India isn’t an obvious touchstone for radical, neo-realist cinema it’s only because white scholars didn’t watch the movies until the nineties. The “golden age” of popular Hindi cinema happened in the fifties, and it’s not just songs and costumes. When Britain’s colonial regime left India in 1947 it vacated a newly divided country whose population had an 18% literacy rate and an average lifespan of 26. As the public looked anxiously towards the future a new crop of leftist directors emerged to expose the reality of the newly socialist state. People don’t watch the movies today because they’re three hours long, but Himanshu Suri from Das Racist is really into this stuff. We sat him down to get his opinion on the suicidal Hindi director Guru Dutt, who crafted slow-burning epics like Pyaasa (1957) and _Kagaaz Ke Phool _(1959) before gobbling a handful of sleeping pills in the mid-sixties. Dutt in Kagaaz Ke Phool I’m so much more into Indian movies now that I ever was before. My parents’ neighborhood in Long Island has a great bootleg shop. They just burn everything and sell it for two bucks. I watch every new thing that comes out. My parents don’t even watch Indian movies anymore. I can only talk to Ukranian barbers about this shit. They were watching Raj Kapoor movies in the Soviet Union. Outside of Indian cinema I’m an idiot. I can’t watch anything that doesn’t pertain to Indian people. Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa is just straight-up my favorite movie. I don’t even like to intellectualize it. It’s just a really sad movie and I’m a sad dude. Dutt plays this poor poet named Vijay whose brothers sell his poetry as scrap paper. This is India in the ‘50s, like, selling scrap paper is a thing? So this dude is shitted on in life. Went to college and didn’t amount to shit. Girlfriend dumps him because he isn’t gonna pursue a more lucrative career. So he starts hanging out with this prostitute. Classic “hooker with a heart of gold” type steez. He lends his jacket to some homeless dude who ends up dead, and everyone’s like “oh shit, Vijay’s dead.” So his poetry starts selling. At the end, him and his girlfriend leave everything behind. That ending really captures this kind of hopelessness and fear of the future that independence brought to India. It’s probably more poignant now than before. Look at how the creation of India’s middle class has taken even more money away from the poor. Could a dude like Vijay even exist in India right now? A dude who wants to make art by choice? Most Indian people are all about money. They’re unable to comprehend why doing what you love is better than making bank. Try to imagine being a broke poet. Vijay probably wouldn’t have been able to bag his girl in college if it was 2010. I think in simple terms with this shit because I have problems with depression. A lot of the shit we talk about in Das Racist is pretty sad. I just don’t put it out there on the glass. I’m talking about mixing medicines because I don’t understand my identity—that’s rough. Lakutis has a guest verse where he talks about “my money’s no good here.” That’s his EBT card being rejected at a bodega cause his welfare’s screwed up. There’s a lot of sad shit with DR and no one ever comments on it. That’s what’s up with Guru Dutt. This dude just put it all out there. He’s the saddest Indian dude. Indian films don’t really get sad, and if they do by the end its resolved. Movies like his, nothing’s resolved ever. That’s the type of shit to drive you to killing yourself, which he did, you know? You don’t want to glorify some dude just because he killed himself, but it’s like, I don’t really give a shit about Kurt Cobain. Guru Dutt’s a dude who’s producing, directing, and acting in his own films. I never really thought about it as a kid. I just liked his art. But now I’m a dude managing my own band, and starting my own label. I don’t want to overstate what my music is, but it’s kind of similar. On the surface there’s nothing political about it. It’s just stupid jokes and weed shit. But as a diasporic South Asian, Indians are always asking me what I’m doing with my life. That’s just the way immigration and diaspora works. You’re pushed into these secure lines of work, like in a pharmacy or as an engineer. Here’s this dude in 1957 making movies where characters don’t want to participate in corrupt modern society. That’s a good guide for how you should live your life. I really feel that. Check out Das Racist’s exclusive Noisey performance here.__
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