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S Sanjeev
Beemapally: A Video Story post 9/11 posters from UK & USA The first television and video in my life had come from Singapore. A 14 inch Philips color TV and an Akai video cassette player. Television had become the trump card overnight, courtesy Delhi Asian Games. My favorite pastime those days had been counting the antennas on rooftops. To my utter dismay our portable Philips had a tiny aerial of its own. The world around didn’t betray the secret that it had been flattening rapidly. Friends of my elder brother showed up in their tattered jeans and tee-shirts once in a blue moon with VHS cassettes of films called E.T, Brazil and Omar Mukthar. I couldn’t fathom the tremendous joy they had watching those stuff. But I sat through the screenings with the burning fragrance of Charminars and realized that I am also having pleasure from the images and sounds. I must have first heard about Beemapally bazaar one of those days; a street paradise of foreign electronic goods, clothes, sunglasses, cigarettes, and liquor. The location and time couldn’t have been more perfect – Arabian coast on one side and International airport on the other. The colorful cement mansions at Varkala and Chaavakkad with all their electronic paraphernalia had started figuring prominently in theatre and cinema. In popular imagination the smuggler and Gulf émigré had become staple protagonists. About a decade later I bought my first video player from Beemapally, a silver Panasonic. By then video cassettes had lost their aura. Rental shops were dime a dozen. Same was the case with ‘foreign’ goods. The IMF-World Bank era had begun and multi national companies had started flooding the market with ‘lawful’ consumer products. But in an amazing move Beemapally bazaar redefined itself as the hub of pirated CDs and DVDs; Auteur theorists, corporate studios, censor boards and cinephiles had finally met their match. One of the unique features of Beemapally has been its ordinary air. You could never have the gratification of being a bandit. It’s just like your office or study with all those pirated operating systems and software. But over the years Beemapaaly bazaar has found room in a more perverse imaginary – ‘Islamic terrorism.’ Let me cite from two different cyber accounts. A Hindu terrorist portal laments that “The Mafia gangs of Christians and Jihadi’s involved in CD Piracy business had turned the area into a lawless region within the Capital city.” A ‘western’ tourist story goes like this: “We first learned about Beemapally from Cresley, our Filipina friend, who is quite a clever finder of bargains…According to Cresley (and I’m still not sure if she was joking or not), Islamic fundamentalists make money for their activities, among other ways, by brokering in pirated DVDs. In theory, then, by purchasing “TransAmerica” in Beemapally, one might be making a small contribution to Bin Laden’s next plot. I guess if you buy this logic, you probably also quit using heroine because terrorists in Afghanistan make money from growing poppies.” From pirates to terrorists – the script has been provided. But since Beemapally has been a second home for many who know the intricacies of representation there shall definitely be a better chance for pirates of the Arabian. For the time being DVD trade in Beemapally bazaar has been stopped; a heartbreaking news. Let’s hope Beema, the eponymous woman saint, will show the light 9 comments to Beemapally: A Video Story |
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June 27th, 2009 at 1:07 AM
Kudos.
I have always thought that my Thiruvananthapuram has got the world’s rudest shopkeepers and by a mile too. Guys who think they are doing you a favor by selling stuff to you and whose first priority once they are open is to leave for home at seven.
Forget the post-modern pretensions of the intelligentsia, we are not even a society which has grown to a capitalist ethos of material progress.
The only exception that I have experienced to that is in Beemapally. As another one going out of Kerala to make my living, I remember going to Beemapally shops to buy my big suitcase and a big bag. Something comparable was not available in the price range elsewhere. (One of them still remains eminently usable!) I also remember failing to convince my leftist father as to why the ‘illegality’ of transactions like these are due to the idiocity, the inability to understand what is going on around the world and the inability to handle reality of the presumably enlightened but actually stupid lawmakers and their advisers.
This whole attempt to taint beemapally as just an illegal CD selling centre started, I think, with the mallu film guys who started blaming the failure of their (non-piracy worthy) pathetic films on Beemapally. And the selective targeting makes one doubly suspicious of the intentions, Pirated CDs are a thriving business in a lot other places too. In fact, they’d just need to google to find the primary sources of piracy.
While the religious fascists should be shown open for who they are, the idiocy and the incompetence of the ‘mainstream society’ and the administration which thinks it prudent to brand the voluntary transactions of torches, batteries, cell phones, bags,…. as ‘illegal’ while still allowing it to go on, making the poor shopkeepers vulnerable to goondas like the one who caused the latest mishap, sucks the worst and is the most condemnable.
June 27th, 2009 at 11:46 AM
Beemappalli was also the target of the anti piracy drive two years back by the government in a bid to save malayalam cinema from counterfeit CDs. It really affected business for a while and also unsettled some sort of short term equilibrium in terms of business and religion.
Also Poonthura – Beemappalli area is probably one of the few regions in the world where ethnic Christians and Muslims live in anatagonistic coexistence. It reminds one of Andalusia and Moors in the middle ages when cultural diversity breaks down to communal enmity.. and Moors were great seafarers and explorers so to speak. I guess “free trade” produces its other “piracy” just like nationalism produces terrorism.
nice piece, Sanjeev
June 27th, 2009 at 1:47 PM
If you run you’re dead…if you stay, you’re dead again.(quote from City of god)
my experience in contemporary beemapally coming on the way…………
June 27th, 2009 at 3:02 PM
Just the other day my friend and I were at Beemapally in search of some good old classic DVDs. My friend had come over for the IDSFFK and I pinged this guy to whom I always approached when I am at Beemapally. Strangely he was not responding to my call. So we moved on to his store and suprisingly found the RAF guys before the shop, all armed with guns and weaponry. So that meant no more of DVD extravaganza for folks like me..and then suddenly from no where a guy approached us and asked if we need DVDs. We went with him to this-someplace-god-knows-where behind all these stores – clandestine and sly as it looked, we were being asked if we needed Grass, or were there to sell something – IT WAS A HELL RIDE.. just to say in malayalam….KATTAYUM BOARDUM MADANGI…..After almost of 10mns walk we reached this guys house where we found tons of DVDs all stacked up in a clogged room…all those were just some trash regional and bollywood films. My friend was looking out for some refined works of Pasolini, Kusturica and Fellini and yeah we didn’t find any these here. This guy had taken all the trouble to bring us here, and I thought we going to be in some kind of trouble. God’s grace he was kind enough to leave us back to the place where he found us. We sure would have lost our way had he not brought us back to the main gates. I tried again to call this guy who owned a shop in here and luckily he showed up while later. He explained to us of what happened (the riot had taken place right in front of this guy’s shop only).
Eversince the riots, the Jamath group had decided to close down all shops selling DVDs. A couple weeks back post-riot, a few guys had come to buy DVDs. One of the sellers discreetly took them to his shop and locked them from outside so that noone would suspect. Those who saw this happen demanded to open the shutters of the shop and throw the customers out. A fight broke and the shopkeeper was stabbed with blood all over him.
After explaining this, the shopowner friend of mine asked us to get inside the shop and said he would lock us from outside….I went numb for a second…Errr…We decided to go inside, took almost 40 DVDs which I thought was worth for us to make a deal…
June 28th, 2009 at 2:18 PM
Karthik, thanks for mentioning about the ‘riot’ here. Sanjeev did mention that the DVD trade has been stopped temporarily, but chose not to go into the details (probably because that was not in the scope of his article).
For those who did not know (if you are outside Kerala, there is a very good chance you did not), there was a major police firing in the area and about 50 people are still in the hospitals with bullet injuries. Six people died in the firing.
Some details (and people’s reactions) can be found here.
June 28th, 2009 at 7:14 PM
Beemapally bazzar has not been closed,only DVD/liqour trade.why is it that’communal riot’ and its aftermath have only affected these two articles?
June 28th, 2009 at 8:36 PM
DVD was the major source of income for these guys there and like u ppl know thanks to Chinese market…unlike in the 70′s and 80′s we get almost everything what we used to get there in beemaplly now in almost every next shop u c here in trivandrum…may it be toys,or whatever…so by ruining this DVD sales the so called peace keepers can have a control over the flow of smuggled Goods…i think that is the reason
June 28th, 2009 at 11:44 PM
During the International Film Festival season, if we go to Beempally we see lots of pilgrims who have come for the festival raiding the DVD shops there for movies- classics to contemporary.
In recent times, coming to festival has this dual purpose of watching films as well as visiting Beemapally for DVDs. This is a major attraction. In every store at Beemapally, one could also see in this time a copy of the schedule of IFFK films.
And all those who have gone there knows how much proficient were the sales managers about films – be it directors or cast. The closure of Beemapally may even negatively hit the film festival season.
The news of the closure is certainly disheartening. I know, since the closure, when we talk Beemapally, we all end up with the hope that some fine day the shops will be re-opened. It is so that the informal market, which is part of mega-global network of mass re-production industry, has to necessarily find new avenues. This is not just a crisis of a street market perhaps, but more a crisis of the network- a high-investment venture, I guess.
While this shutting down of shops is depressing, we also know that Beemapally located at Cheriyathura was engulfed in fear and gloom for several weeks since the Cheriyathura police firing and killing of 6 innocent people. It is in the aftermath of this the Jamaath finally decided to close down the DVD market.
Were there any connections between Cheriyathura police firing and the DVD market? At an obvious level, as such there is nothing. It is said that the local don was regularly receiving hafta from the street shops. But then it was also reported that even the ASI was paying the don his due. It was not only the DVD shops but all other electronic good shops were also perhaps paying the extortion amount.
Yes, the question begs an answer: why only the closure of DVDs and Liquor shops?. In our enthusiasm for the DVDs etc, we may not see the fact the location is originally famous for the mosque. I don’t know much about the history of the mosque. Beemapally is primarily religious site. We know large no: of believers from different parts comes to visit the mosque. We cannot miss to see this fact. And it is also a fact that it was the jamaath committee that decided to close down the DVD shop. It was not a direct State intervention.
Nevertheless, what provoked the jamaath to decide on the closure of the shops? The busniness was going well for several years? I think it is for the first time such a decision came from the committee. Some time back, there was attempt by the anti-piracy cell of the Kerala Police to raid Beemapally along with other DVD retail outlets. In Beemapally, this was resisted. No raid could take place.
The present Jamaath decision might have been promoted by the fact that after the firing incident, the police have been stationed at this place and patrolling day and night. The business of DVDs, which attract a lot of hype as well as attention, may invite further trouble as Polic can raid any shops on the ground of anti-piracy hunt.
Whenever there is an issue of crisis in Malayalam industry, the blame is squarely placed on piracy and this helps the leaders as well as charlatans of the industry to possibly overlook the gross limitations and inadequacies of the industry. Even then nobody hinted negatively at Beemapally, I believe. No film maker would dare to. It is not all startling a fact that our film makers are also greatly benefited by the DVD market, though the fact remains that exposure they got via Beemapally did not result in any drastic improvement in cinematic communication.
Many young filmmakers, college campus film makers were all greatly enthused by Beemapally DVDs. It actually encouraged them to pursue a new visual language. For example, the DVDs of Korean films, which were unavailable otherwise, definitely must have helped the young to search for new idiom of cinematic language. And the result of this will be seen in coming years.
However, the anti-piracy, simultaneously a free software enthusiast, State was at odds with Beemapally. Coupled with this is the issue of coastal area location. I had read somewhere that Union Home Minister, P. Chidamabaram had fore-warned the state government based on some intelligence about certain “unlawful” activities in coastal area. Coastal area being at the edge of National sovereign space had always been a “migraine” for the state.
Some may find me hatching a ‘conspiracy theory”. Mind you, all social theories are basically “conspiracies”, including Marxism. It is so that the empirical evidences are all marshaled just to prove what theorist wants to conclude
Or shall I frame a question instead of a ‘conspiracy” attributing statement, say like this: was Cheriyathura, just an “accident”?
While this doubt lingers and while we respect the Jamaath decision for closing down of shops, is there anything we are missing? Or as in jigsaw, everything is there, are we able to place all in its proper order?
As this puzzle continues, we also think about the people for whom, as Karthik said, this business was a livelihood. The informal sector, with its particular nature in the context of globalization has no other way other than to survive in some form or another and hence we can surely hope that the DVD bazaar would come up somewhere else. Alas! We never forget our dear Beemapally. New technological re-production methods may facilitate new modes of “delivery” mechanism of films and liquor. It will defy the conventional panopticon but the newly technologized panoctipon will invade even there. The game will continue.
On the informal economy aspect of Beemapally, I may quote Kalyan Sanyal who has done extensive work on the nature of dual economy and informal sector in the period globalization. He says: “Informal economy, that is, the economy of “surplus” labour force, is a product by which the capitalist economy secures its resource minus the people who traditionally survived on it; a process can be referred as “exclusion”
The film industry, the film studies ranging from the innumerable articles to the varieties film programmes owe so much to Beemapally. All have been benefited. If there is an “aesthetic surplus” in the above categories in recent times, it is the “excluded” who has the real stake on it.
October 29th, 2009 at 10:32 AM
A crowd full of ignorence and running after money by neglecting the State and Indian trade rules…most of the electronic items are duplicate and imitation no long life garunteed.. some time even the Jama ath authority is supporting this practice.. The most paradox is even the highly educated Malayalles are the usual customer of such Anti-Indian markets.. this is a dangerous place ever i witnessed in my life. beware of life threat..