I screened Crossing Lines with all 69 students today. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I knew the students would have different perspectives than the South Asian audiences in the U.S. After the screening, we had a class discussion about the film. I admit in the U.S. I pride myself on learning the names of students quickly. But why is it harder for me to remember so many Indian names? Is it because I don’t have as much interaction with them (only teaching a couple workshops a week and that too with two different groups of students)? Most of my friends are Indian in the U.S., so Indian names, I would think, would come more naturally to me. Or am just conditioned to remember names like Killeen, Katie and Holly? There are definitely more female students, and this batch actually has more Bengali students. I’ve remembered the male students’ names, but then again there are only about 10 males students out of 69.
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The overall reaction to film from the students was positive. Some talked about how they are used to seeing India portrayed negatively in Western media and added that Crossing Lines was “refreshing.” We talked about some of the themes of the film, such as the loss of a parent, the father-daughter relationship, the Indian Diaspora, Hinduism and the identity of a single woman.I was curious to get their reaction to certain scenes, like the tea scene, which they thought was funny. The scene about my father’s ambitions to get me married. I asked students to raise their hands if they could relate to the prospect of meeting someone through their parents. Almost everyone raised their hands. Some also admitted that they had been (or expect to be) introduced to possible future life partners from their parents. But they didn’t necessarily want that. Then I asked, “don’t you trust your parents’ judgment?” Most said “yes,” but they wanted to find someone on their own. Some admitted that they would feel content even if they didn’t meet someone and stayed single.
One student shared with me how she could not relate to the film, because she was not raised with such strict conservative values. She said her grandmother’s mother was married at age 30 and her own grandmother was married at age 36. In fact the post-film discussion then turned to how my generation was raised by parents stuck in a “time capsule”– meaning they (the people who migrated to the U.S. between 1960 and 1972) still think of India the way it was when they left in the ’60s. Many students suggested they (my parents’ generation) have not changed with India.
Hardly anyone could relate to the scene of me holding the mala to meditate. In fact, one person said that she has seen her grandmother use a mala, but she does not use one. One student mentioned that he follows religious traditions and goes to a Gurudwara every Sunday. But many of the students explained how they have been taught certain rituals of their religion from their childhood, but not all understand the meaning of what they practice. They just follow the rituals, because that is what they have learned.
A few students shared how they have experienced the loss of a parent, specifically the loss of a father.
For me, it was highly refreshing to hear students appreciate a film about an Indian-American.
Indira S. Somani, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Media, Journalism and Film at Howard University, Washington, D.C. Somani studies effects of satellite television on the Indian diaspora, specifically the generation of the Asian Indians who migrated to the U.S. between 1960 and 1972, and their media habits.
She has been published in the Howard Journal of Communication, Journal of Communication Inquiry, International Communication Research Journal, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, and the Asian Journal of Communication.
For the fall of 2011, Somani was awarded a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship to study the Western influence of Indian programming in India.
Somani is also an award winning independent producer and director of documentaries. Her most recent production, Life on the Ganges (2016), is a 10- minute documentary short about the life of one boatman, who rows tourists along the Ganges River in Varanasi, India, particularly around Dev Diwali when people from all over India travel there to bathe in the Ganges to wash away their sins and purify their souls. The film has been screening in film festivals all over the U.S.
Another production, Crossing Lines (2007), is a personal essay 30-minute documentary about her struggle to stay connected to India after the loss of her father, and about how Asian Indians maintain and preserve their cultural identity. The film has won numerous awards, screened in film festivals nationally and internationally, screened on PBS affiliates, and has also been distributed to more than 100 university libraries in the U.S. through New Day films.
Somani brings 10 years of broadcast journalism experience as a television news producer to the classroom, most notably with CNBC and WJLA-TV, the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C. She has been a leader of the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), where she has also won several “Outstanding” awards on her coverage of South Asians in North America.
Prior to joining Howard University, Somani was an Assistant Professor of Journalism at Washington and Lee University (Lexington, VA) and American University’s School of Communication (Washington, DC). Somani earned her Master’s in Journalism from the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University in 1993, and her Ph.D. from the Phillip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park in May 2008.