Indian filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt with Ethan Casey and director Sanjay Jha, at the mahurat for Jha's film Deshdrohi 2: 26/11 War in Mumbai, March 3, 2009. Photo by Pete Sabo.

Here’s a chunk of dialogue that I transcribed recently, from an interview I did in early March in Mumbai with the well-known Bollywood filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt:

“Prior to the attack in Afghanistan and Iraq, there was a kind of demonizing of people of the region which kind of made the American people look the other way. And then through very clever tools of control, they made sure that the images of the barbarism came back home.”

“Do you think that that can be changed in America now, under the new administration?”

“I wonder. I don’t think even America, in spite of the happy ending that you have superimposed on this tragic situation, is still not really going to look unflinchingly at what you have done over the last eight years to the world. The so-called War against Terror has only enlarged the war.”

“I think that’s something that’s done a lot in Hollywood,” I suggested. “Americans have a habit of superimposing happy endings on any story.”

“That’s what an average man wants. He wants fairy tales to lull him to sleep.”

“Do you feel that Obama’s election was that?”

“I think that the American dream of a black man in the White House is a yarn that the young people of America made into a concrete reality. That is not to take away the charm and the charisma of the man. He has a charm, he has a charisma. But what is the magic wand that he can flash and resolve the problem? A nation which has supported a war of demonic proportions had it coming. You are the architects of doom of the human race. No power is going to reverse it. What you have started, you cannot reverse now. Because you can’t start a war – even the Second World War was supposed to be a good war. Look what happened: it led to the catastrophe of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. This war was the so-called War against Terror, against those values which you say are barbaric. And repeated through tools of mass distraction, amplifying to the world that your vision is the sanest vision and the most civilized, the most humane vision. How? By censoring? By buying people off? By getting wordsmiths to work on your payroll? Bush’s America was far more dangerous than Hitler’s Germany.”

“In what way?”

“Look at the magnitude of destruction. You’ve not even begun to finish a body count.”

“Do you think there’s any potential for American people to face that honestly?”

“I don’t think so, as of now. As of now there’s a euphoria of getting the slum kids onto the Oscar dais and putting the black man in the White House. You’re patting yourself on the back that how fair a nation it is. But I want to know one thing: will the American people come to terms and deconstruct the war industries that you have as your lifeline? The lifeblood of your nation is the war industries. It’s not because you hate the world. That’s the only route to survive. The mosquito doesn’t bite you because it hates you. It has to bite you because if it doesn’t bite you it can’t get your blood, which is its only means of sustenance.”

Ethan Casey with Brig. (ret) Siraj and Aslam Mughal, Lahore Gymkhana, March 2009. Photo by Pete Sabo.

I’ve been writing and transcribing quite a bit lately, as I try to finish a draft of my new book by the end of the summer. I have a tentative title for the book (which I might divulge soon), and Pete Sabo and I are starting to talk about which of his many wonderful photos to use as an image for the cover.

On Tuesday I happened to be transcribing my conversation on March 21 in Lahore with Aslam Mughal, a very interesting man who, as it happens, has a professional background in housing and urban development. And it happened to be the day after Seattle, where I live, finally launched its long-awaited light rail line, which my Seattle friends Dennis and Eric and I discussed on and off throughout the day by email. (The three of us used to share an office; we’ve now moved our BS-and-procrastination sessions online.)

I sent them the following excerpt, which I think nicely illustrates how alike we all are - whether in Seattle or in Lahore - in our needs and aspirations:

“I came back in 2000, after eighteen years of just wandering around here and there, with the United Nations. And I’ve been trying to make certain changes in the system of Pakistan in my field, which is housing and urban development. But I failed. I mean, eighty percent of the population in urban areas, they cannot afford their own transport. Which necessitates that the public transport system should be strong. The pedestrians should be safe, the cyclists should be safe. They should be able to move very safely and securely and pleasantly. But a pedestrian cannot cross a road, even at the intersection, because the left turn is there. The people who have to travel on the buses, they cannot get the buses. And everything is being dictated by the car. I mean, where is the democracy?”

“Could there be a metro here, like in Delhi?” I asked.

“I don’t think we need a metro. I would go for a strong bus system, which we can afford and we can manage. Even that we are not managing properly.”

“Start with that.”

“Start with that! There is a very good model, where they have a bus system which is just like a railroad – two buses joined together. The infrastructure is changed and there are bus stations, proper bus stations like a metro.”

“Like light rail.”

“Yeah. But it’s very flexible, because you can shift the buses from here to there and there, and fix the road system. But first you have to make a decision that you plan and you do things for the majority of the public. This has not happened. So those eighty percent people – and housing also: eighty percent people cannot afford housing. But on the other hand, if you go out, there’s so much land subdivided, lying vacant, developed and semi-developed and fully developed, for speculative purposes.”

“In nearby suburban areas?”

“In nearby suburban areas of major cities: Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi. I’m talking about my field.”

“So you really have to have a political revolution, though, to …”

“To change things. And policy being formulated for the majority of the public. Once this decision is taken, everything will start working for the general masses.”

“Now, people speak highly of Shahbaz Sharif [Chief Minister of Punjab province and brother of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif] as an administrator.”

“Exactly. That’s the reason: because he’s hitting at the middle class, and the lower middle class, and the poor people. All his focus is on this segment of the population, which is really, really deprived.”