Mar-a-lagoman can say whatever he wants, but Iran is so the epicentre of cool – The Economic Times
Anubav Pal is an Indian stand up comedian, screenwriter, playwright and novelistThere's so much talk these days of burning down Iran and using the same rhetoric as a former US president used for Afghanistan, that it makes sense to look at all the cool things Iran has given the world. Also, there's some misconception that because of all the clerics shouting and the secret police shooting citizens, that Iran is somehow backward, tribal, and foreign. Iran is the epicentre of cool.
But before I begin explaining why I say so, I should state that Iran and Afghanistan are two separate places. Readers of this pink paper will know this, and will be offended by such a statement. But, dear readers, in a post-truth world, one must always clarify.
I was in Florida recently and met someone who said: 'I really hope the president bombs Iran just like he did last time when Osama bin Laden was hiding there.' So, as you see, clarifications are important.
Also, a significant portion of the world (I mean America), does think that Afghanistan and Iran are similar places, cultures, and people, all bearded and hijab-wearing, and shouting, 'Death to America!' So, here's another clarification: when I say bearded and hijab-wearing, I mean two different people, not the same person, which would be intriguing, to say the least.
Afghanistan has warring tribes, a decimated economy and is now under the Taliban, whose gender policies make the Stone Age look quite advanced. Iran, on the other hand, is a 5,000-year-old civilisation that had sophisticated drainage, fashion shows, and chess competitions, in an era when most of the North American plains had nude hunter-gatherers being chased by bison.
Around 400 BC, Persepolis, built under the great Persian kings Darius, Cyrus, and Xerxes, was so majestic and grand that when Alexander burnt it down during a drunken celebration, his real motivation apparently was that no one should know how advanced these people were. His own Greeks decades before, were Persian-speaking.
For 600 years, in India, Persian was the court language – it was like French in the English court, refined and spoken by nobles. Jehangir, Shah Jahan, Siraj ud-Daula, and the Nizams of Hyderabad would all announce things in Farsi only, big decisions like a present of 2 acres of land or a doubling of personal tax, and most Indians had no idea what was being said. But they knew if they wanted to be in the cool club of those who ran things, their peasant dialect wouldn't do.
Duniya, zindagi, deewar, raat, khush, dushman, mehman, sharbat, and thousands of other words, apart from being part of Indian everyday life, are all Iranian.
Without Iran, Bollywood movies would have no titles. My favourite is the word Topi, which is hat in Persian but means conning someone in Hindi, which suggests something changed as the word travelled across the Hindu Kush mountains.
Speak to any cigarette-smoking, dishevelled film festival-type, and they'll tell you, without Iranian cinema – Makhmelbaf, Panahi, Farhadi, Kiarostami, Majidi – there's no cinema. As one Bengali critic told me, 'Iranians invented stories', which, in itself, is a crazy story.
While I am sure Trump can throw a party at Mar-a-Lago, many forget that Iran threw the greatest party ever hosted when the Shah of Iran celebrated 2,500 years of the Persian Empire in 1971, spending almost a billion dollars, catered by Maxim's of Paris (with roast peacock on the menu), and building a temporary city just to host the party.
Iranian fashion (no ties, no collars, the round-neck shirt) is so much cooler compared to how everyone else dresses, and it's also at the origin of the Fab India look we've co-opted. The chello kebab, an iconic Kolkata nostalgia staple, is an Iranian dish. Freddy Mercury, the Tatas, the comedian Omid Djalili, the footballer Ali Daei, the rug, the poems of Rumi and Hafez… the list is endless.
Iran is not the history of Iran. It is the history of all of us.
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