Pictures in Paradise

A man with coiffed hair, wearing a long-sleeved floral shirt and grey pants belted almost at chest height lip-syncs a love song, while the object of his affection smiles prettily and shyly evades his advances for roughly two and a half hours..Apart from the Dhivehi language and the setting – the jetty of one of the Maldives' hundred-odd upmarket resorts (cue sunset, sparkling sea) – the scene could have been pulled from any one of hundreds of Bollywood films. This particular scene, shot in the 1990s, featured two of the most famous Maldivian actors of the era: Mariyam Nisha, and 'Reeko' Moosa Manik. Such was Manik's appeal that one dedicated female fan in the mid 90s was reputed to have swallowed kerosene after accepting that he was out of her reach (thankfully she recovered)..Moosa went on to become a successful businessman, an MP, and a high-profile street activist in the democracy movement of 2005 which toppled Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's 30-year dictatorship, making way for the Maldives' first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, in 2008. A divisive figure with a flair for the dramatic, Moosa was much maligned by the remnants of the former regime, who accused him of using his "movie make-up skills" to exaggerate injuries sustained by Nasheed's MPs during regular punch-ups in the country's fractious parliamentary chamber..Immediately following the ousting of the MDP government in a police-led mutiny on 7 February 2012, Moosa found himself on the receiving end of some of the country's worst police brutality since the pro-democracy marches of 2005. Dragged behind police lines and savagely beaten – "they told me they were going to kill me," he later recalled – Moosa was reportedly saved at the last minute by the intervention of a military officer. He was then hospitalised and flown overseas for surgery. As hospital pictures of the stricken former actor trickled out to the media, commentators peddling the new government's line continued to insist the bandaged head, bloodied shirt, bruising and glazed expression were "the product of fine make-up and acting as per his background.".It is perhaps surprising that the combination of free time, disposable income and English proficiency has not led to a vibrant and thriving entertainment industry in the Maldives..Moosa's storyline is just one example of how Maldivian politics often appears to follow the plot of a Bollywood film, complete with heroes, villains, violence and an abundance of wicked uncles..Setting the scene .The Maldives' 330,000 people live on 200 of the country's 1192 islands. Almost half the population lives in the capital, Male, a densely packed 2.2 square miles of candy-coloured concrete buildings sticking out of the Indian ocean like something from the post-apocalyptic Hollywood movie Waterworld..Internationally, the country is best known for its resort islands, the upper tier of which attract an assortment of glitterati honeymooners, football legends, movie stars, arms dealers and Russian mafiosos. With each resort on its own private island and the locals housed on the handful of 'inhabited' islands, one of the archipelago's core appeals for tourists is the relative privacy and guilt-free relaxation of a cultureless beach holiday; 'Fly and Flop', in travel-industry speak. The isolation of the individual resorts and the dependence of the Maldivian economy on tourism have turned these tourist islands into almost miniature fiefdoms, each providing its own food, power, accommodation, entertainment, sanitation and desalinated water not just to guests, but also to a small army of local and imported staff..While the heavily manicured beaches and relaxing open-air restaurants and bars dominate the postcard image of the Maldives current among the million-odd tourists who visit each year, that picture is divorced from – if not schizophrenically opposed to – the realities of life facing the average Maldivian. Some of the more immediately obvious contradictions are products of the strict Islamic regulations in force for the local people: the complete ban on alcohol; the conservative dress code; the lack of a beach culture (many Maldivians, particularly women, have never learned to swim); and, in recent years, the closing of discos and attempts to ban locals from dancing. Ask a Maldivian to name the country's greatest social challenge, and many will say boredom and the lack of entertainment..The problem is especially acute for the country's massive youth demographic. According to the Maldives' UN country office, 62 percent of the population is aged under 25. The vast majority of young Maldivians are relatively urbane and highly 'switched on', thanks to one of Southasia's highest rates of internet penetration, at 28.4 percent. Ninety-eight percent of Maldivians aged between 13 and 35 have a Facebook account..However, while these young people boast a high literacy rate and English-speaking ability, the poor overall standard of school education means that around two-thirds of Maldivian candidates fail their secondary school O-level exams. Vocational education opportunities are next to non-existent, and the vast majority of both skilled and menial labour is performed by an army of imported labourers – mostly Bangladeshis on unpalatable wages – a workforce estimated to be one-third the size of the local population. As a consequence, every year thousands of young Maldivians are pumped out onto the streets, aged just 16, and with no functional education or prospects of further learning opportunities such as apprenticeships. They then face the ennui of two years' idleness before reaching the minimum age of employment and a chance to find a job in the resort industry, the bloated civil service or the meagre private sector..As a result, almost 30 percent of the population is unemployed, and the problem is getting worse. Between 2006 and 2010, unemployment increased by 20,000 people – an increase of over 100 percent. According to the government's 'Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2009-2010', the problem is worse for women, who face social stigma discouraging them from working in the 'morally corrupting' resort industry. In 2006, the overall unemployment rate for women was 15 percent, increasing to 39 percent in 2010. The unemployment rate among males increased by 10 percent to 19 percent during the same period..Despite this, the country has a per capita annual income of USD 8700 – the highest in Southasia – and in 2011 it became one of only three countries ever to graduate from the UN's list of 'least developed' to 'middle income' countries. If this appears strange, picture an average middle-class family living in Male. The family probably owns a small but precious parcel of land on the crowded island, and a lack of capital and the difficulty of obtaining a bank loan leads them to enter into an agreement with a construction company to build a block of apartments on their land, in exchange for a large share of the new property. The family receives the penthouse and several apartments, which they then rent out at exorbitant London-esque rates to poorer islanders seeking work in Male. Many such families then move to less congested and less oppressively regulated cities such as Colombo in Sri Lanka or Trivandrum in India, where they live off the rental income. The children of these 'landlord families' who remain in the capital can expect security of accommodation, a disposable income, and difficulty in gaining employment, creating brisk business for the island's many hundreds of coffee shops. Young people living on remoter islands however, have even fewer options..The local film industry blossomed during the 90s, mimicking Hindi-film tropes in Dhivehi for Maldivians with time on their hands and cash in their pockets. It remains surprising that this combination of free time, disposable income and English proficiency has not led to a vibrant and thriving entertainment industry in the Maldives.."People were crazy about Dhivehi movies. The entire media revolved around [local] film stars until the early 2000s," says Hawwa Lubna, a Maldivian journalist. The Bollywood influence was near absolute, tweaked only to cater to local appetites for romance, horror, the supernatural and evil mothers-in-law – often all at once.."I think the interest in horror maybe has something to do with our own superstitions," Lubna suggests. "One famous plot was about a guy who is also a genie who falls in love with a woman and has half-genie children." Naturally, Moosa played the part of genie.."There's a lot of genies falling in love with humans," Lubna says. "In another film a female demon falls in love with a toddy collector, who finds her after she sings for him. There's a lot of shining eyes and thunderbolts coming out of eyes.".Love triangles are also very common, as is the romantic entrapment of men by women, observes Mohamed Naahii, a young law student living in Male. "A typical plot might involve a rich guy who falls in love with a girl from a very poor family, and the rich guy's family doesn't agree, so despite their objection he marries her and goes to live on an island. Eventually something bad happens and he comes back," he says. "Another might involve a good couple who are affected by a lady who wishes to have an affair with the man, who falls into her trap. Sometimes it involves fear and horror – a rich ex-wife may come back to life and haunt or kill [her ex-husband].".Online piracy and in-house idolatry .The hunger for entertainment has guaranteed a demand for cinema, though how and where Maldivians watch films has changed significantly in recent times. For years, Male's government-owned Olympus Cinema, a rather dilapidated place until its recent renovation, regularly screened both Dhivehi and Hindi films using nothing more than a projector and a DVD player..However, with the rise of home entertainment, cable, and with the screening of Hindi movies on the state broadcast network Television Maldives (TVM), many people preferred to stay home..This coincided with soaring piracy rates. Lubna, who grew up on Addu Atoll in the country's far south, recalls that "until early 2000, there was a shop on every corner where you could go rent pirated movies [for] VHS for MVR 10 (USD 0.65) each.".The insatiable appetite for Hindi films led to the arrival of Hindi soap operas, initially via bootleg Airtel television dishes, but later via legitimate cable connections to Indian channels such as Star Plus. One cultural side-effect of this obsession has been that even very conservative Muslim women, who are otherwise isolated inside their family homes and live by strict religious norms, can now speak fluent Hindi and recite the names of the Hindu pantheon..Lubna, for instance, speaks fluent Hindi, and in rapid-fire conversations with her friends flits between English, Hindi and Dhivehi, often in the same sentence. "I started speaking Hindi when I was in kindergarten," she says. "My aunt would test me. Every night before I went to bed all the ladies in the house would turn on the TV and watch Bollywood movies. That was around the time female heroes were coming up in Hindi cinema, with stories about women rising up against male oppressors –like stories of women raped and forced to marry their abuser, who then rise to get justice.".I started speaking Hindi when I was in kindergarten," she says. "My aunt would test me. Every night before I went to bed all the ladies in the house would turn on the TV and watch Bollywood movies..Male's congested living conditions and the large number of extended family members typically sharing a single home often means control of the television remote is firmly in female hands. Not that a blood connection is needed for a television to be appropriated as communal property; one UK expatriate living in Male with his Maldivian partner in a rented apartment complete with large-screen TV (used mostly for watching English football) recalls returning home one evening to discover his sofa packed with middle-aged, burka-clad women engrossed in Hindi soap operas. "They looked at me as if to ask, 'Why are you here?'" he recalls..Naahii faces a similar challenge. "In my house I cannot watch anything from 8pm to 11pm because all the women take over the TV," he says. "If I'm lucky I get to see the 8 o'clock news. It's like a separate state government." Our interview was momentarily interrupted by a phone call from Naahii's mother, reminding him to pay the cable bill..The simultaneous broadcast of several soaps seems only to feed the addiction: "It's normal to see women switching channels, watching multiple shows at once, sometimes in 'mosaic mode'," says Naahii..Given the Maldives' ban on the public display of non-Islamic religious sentiments, which extends to stern notices on immigration cards warning visitors against bringing in religious symbols or literature, the widespread tolerance of Hindi soap operas regularly featuring scenes of idol worship is surprising. Lubna says she has heard rumours of some houses complying with clerical edicts against watching the soaps, but, she says, "I don't think women generally have stopped … It is in the DNA of Maldivian women to watch these shows now. I don't think sons and husbands have the power to switch them off."