Bus ladies

A few months ago, I had the good fortune of being invited to the Women of the World Festival, held in Brisbane this year.

Because it focusses on women – as artists, creators, activists, change-makers, musicians, amateur wall-climbers – it also hires mainly women. It is no longer unusual, of course, to see women hosting and organising events, marketing and managing ticketing counters and so on. However, it is still unusual to find women chauffeurs. What's rare is the sight of a woman driving a mini-bus. What's rarer than that is to board a bus and expect a woman behind the wheel. In Brisbane this year, I had this rare experience.

Around the world, at cultural or artistic events, the people who are driving guests to and fro the venue are often volunteers. They inhabit the city and would like to participate in its cultural life. Perhaps they get a little stipend too, but they are not professional taxi drivers. They are students or aspiring managers or just people who have a bit of spare time on their hands.

Even so, the first time I found a young woman at the wheel of a mini-bus, I was pleasantly surprised and I also thought that she must be an unsual woman. Maybe she has experience handling big vehicles. Then I realised that all the volunteers were women and they were all driving these huge vehicles. So I got talking.

Some of them turned out to be students at one of the local universities. They also had other jobs. None of the ladies I talked to drove big vehicles regularly. This was a new experience for them. They admitted that it looked a bit daunting at first, but also said that they felt confident handling the vehicle after the first day. They were cheerful, besides being good, careful drivers and I couldn't have felt happier or safer out in a strange city than knowing that the bus I was waiting for was being driven by a woman.

Back home, of course, this is not an experience I have had. I did bump into a female auto-rickshaw driver once in Delhi, but that was nearly a decade ago. I take hundreds of rickshaws every month in cities like Delhi and Mumbai but I have never again found a female driver. A few years ago, I found myself in Rohtak, and I spotted a few pink share-rickshaws. Curious, I hired one all by myself. It was driven by a young teenaged boy but a saree-clad matronly woman was seated up front beside him, on the driver's seat.

I asked whether the rickshaw was actually the woman's and she confessed it was given to her under some state scheme, meant to encourage women's employment. The boy was a family member, though, and she said she let him drive it most of the time.

I can't help thinking how different our world would look if, every time we hailed a cab or waited at the bus stop, we wouldn't know whether the hands on the wheel were going to be men or women. What if there was a fifty-fifty chance? And what if women didn't have to announce their presence on the streets by painting everything pink every time they got behind the wheel?

First published here: https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/motoring/getting-behind-the-wheel/article24744774.ece

With gratitude, some good news

A script I wrote recently, Untitled 1, has won The Hindu Playwright Award for 2018. I am glad and grateful and feel very lucky. 

Here is the announcement of the prize: 

https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/annie-zaidi-wins-the-hindu-playwright-award-2018/article24661130.ece

And here is an interview with some detail about themes and characters in the play:

https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/theatre/untitled-1-the-luxury-of-privacy/article24611939.ece

Or, how I learnt to think

My grandfather was once in jail.

As a kid, I’d pronounce this with a little flush of pride. My grandpa! Way back in 1939.

As a young man, my maternal grandfather became involved with student politics and wrote rousing poems, neither of which the British government cared for. A warrant was issued. He went underground, but was eventually arrested.

I know nothing of his jail stint except that he wrote more Urdu poetry and learnt the Hindi (Devanagari) script. I did ask once if his mother was mad at him for getting arrested. She was upset, he said, mainly on account of the family’s reputation. His marriage had been fixed, but after his arrest the girl’s side broke off the engagement. Clearly, not everyone thought it was such a fine thing to go to jail – not even in the name of the freedom.

My pride rested on the fact that Grandpa was a political prisoner. So was the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, and our first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the tallest leaders of India’s freedom struggle. Some were charged with ‘sedition’, causing disaffection towards the government, but that didn’t stop them. They courted arrest, confronted police batons and went on hunger strikes. They emerged from jail with their heads held high.

Then came freedom. On 15 August 1947, at the stroke of midnight, politicking was no longer quite the same. Inquilab Zindabad – ‘Long Live the Revolution’ – became a fraught slogan. My grandfather was no longer so political. The sedition law stayed on the books.

ONE OF MY earliest memories has me standing under a dilute sun at morning assembly in school, feeling nervous and weepy. Every day we stood in neat rows, sang a prayer, recited a patriotic pledge wherein we swore that all Indians were our brothers and sisters, after which our hair, nails and teeth were inspected by the class teacher. That particular morning, in 1984, we were asked to stand for one minute’s silence to mourn Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Read the full essay here (Note: the 1941 mentioned in the link is actually 1939; I had written the essay long after my grandfather's death and did not recall the year precisely, but have since gone back and looked in the archives, and found the correct year, hence the change in this post):

https://griffithreview.com/articles/dangerous-little-things-turning-political/

One pedal man

There was something odd about the way he wore the rubber slipper on his right foot. It was half off all the while he kept his foot pressed to the pedal.

The other odd thing was the way he pedalled the cycle rickshaw. He would pedal only with his right foot. The left foot was balanced on the pedal but it did not move and so, the strain of pushing the rickshaw forward came in half cycles, which served to double the effort he had to put into it since it broke momentum and didn't let him ride lighter.

I sat in his rickshaw a bit reluctantly. A young man, probably in his late twenties, he was the thinnest, most undernourished rickshaw puller I'd seen in a long time. He also seemed not to want to make even the most cursory conversation, choosing to communicate in gestures. I told him my destination; he held up two fingers in response.

It was a two-minute ride and all along, his half-worn slipper was bothering me. Finally, while getting off, I asked him why he wore his slipper the way he did. He didn't respond and I hurried away into the station.

What are the chances that one will end up hiring the same rickshaw, the same day? In a big city, very few. It is even rarer that one will remember a rickshaw-puller whose face one has not had a chance to look at properly. After all, one sees only his back and he doesn't get to look at his customers through the ride.

I was returning very late that night. In the dark, I didn't think I would have recognised him. But there he was, the same thin frame, one of his hands waving madly at me to come to his cycle-rickshaw instead of the autos. Silent, but waving very insistently. And again, his slipper was half off his right foot.

Again, I noticed that his manner of pedalling was odd: a series of half cycle pushes forward. Finally, I asked him why he was pedalling like this. He told me; he had hurt his left leg a while ago, so he tried not to use it.

I paid him and then spent a week thinking about him. It is true that I am relieved that nowadays, in cities like Lucknow and Delhi, there are more e-rickshaws than cycle rickshaws now. I feel guilty, especially when elderly or clearly undernourished men pull a cycle-rickshaw, but it is also true that I can see that the elderly or undernourished citizen is the one who needs the money most desperately. I'd rather give it to him than to the auto-rickshaw driver. Even so, this was the first time I had sat in a rickshaw pulled by someone who had had an injury and was probably still in some pain.

He had been chewing paan or tobacco. He had been spitting too. And for a handful of minutes, I had watched him go about his life, pedalling hard, pushing his body to its limits so he could make a bit of money and exist in this world. A honest living, after all.

I am still thinking about him and his rickshaw, and a city where a young man like him gets others to their destination safely, at minimal cost. What is the meaning of being accommodating in such a world, and what is the meaning of trust?

First published here:  https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/motoring/a-two-minute-ride/article24564601.ece