Update: I hear the last date has been stretched forward until June 10th.
There is a travel-writing contest on, for bloggers.
I had written back to the mail-sender, to ask what the selection criteria was going to be like, since this is intended as a sort-of reality show, of which I have an inherent suspicion. I didn't like Indian Idol, I detest Big Brother.
But the good lady wrote back to reassure me - "oktatabyebye has nothing to do at all with anything which even remotely resembles the indian idol madness. This is an experimentative idea where the winner will blog about the trip across India on the oktatabyebye blog."
She further says that the selection process will be like this - "after registrations close on 30th May, we are going to ask all who have registered to send in a small writeup on any of their prior travel experiences in 150 to 200 words. Once these writeups are scrutinised, further shortlisting will happen followed by personal interview. Sidharth,Webchutney's CEO and a couple of people from makemytrip.com who are jointly supporting us are going to personally meet them. A final winner is then declared. Nothing emotional, nothing personal.... Also, this won't be on TV, its all online, travel and blog! That's why the initiative to talk about it through blogs and communities, if its online so should be the talk...."
So, it won't be on TV, all you've got to do is travel and write... that sounds ok-ish to me.
Monday, May 29, 2006
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
The dead fish that's making me gag
Recently, I finished reading a book called Machhli Mari Hui, by Rajkamal Chowdhary.
It is not a new book – probably written in the sixties, certainly set in Calcutta of that time.
I began by liking the book, especially since the introduction itself was written well. I liked the lusciousness of certain phrases. The extreme qualities of the characters, even though some of them didn’t ring true. The way the city and the stock market players are described.
There were flaws but one goes on, thinking the flaws are only logical, sequential failings… but by the time one gets to the end, one is worse than disappointed!
The author just doesn’t understand his material.
The trouble with books like Machhli Mari Hui is that they deal with multidimensional subjects with a unidimensional vision. Sex is a multidimensional subject. Homosexuality is a multidimensional subject. It is a mistake to approach such subjects unless you’ve either got some first-hand experience of it, or you’ve talked to a lot of people who had first-hand experience. This author, clearly, doesn’t know s**t about women’s sexuality or their feelings.
In the introduction, the author claims to have read almost everything there is to read on the subject of female homosexuality. From early medical books by psychologists, to Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. He makes references to Sappho, and to lesbians’ autobiographies. With this wealth of knowledge and this spectrum of perceptions, how he could end his book the way he did, is beyond my comprehension!
In the last chapter, his female protagonist Shirin is described as shedding her homosexual skin, and turning into a ‘woman’, instead of a fish. The fish is now dead. (That is where the title’s reference to dead fish comes from. In the book, the fish is used as a symbol of lesbian desire. The image of two fishes swimming are used to represent a lesbian encounter between Shirin and a younger girl, Priya)
What is most appalling is the sequence of events after which this ‘transformation’ comes about.
I’ll try to tell the story straight, in some sort of sequence as events happen, and not in the back and forth flashback style adopted by the author.
(Shirin’s husband) Nirmal Padmavat is the main protagonist, the ‘hero’ if you like.
He is a tall, dark, strong, hard-working, honest businessman with humble origins, who neither tells lies, nor bribes, nor discriminates on the basis of colour or religion etc. People think of him as either a magician or a monster.
From a village in Bihar, via Lahore and Bombay, he reaches New York, where he meets a beautiful woman called Kalyani. She used to be a medical student but has now become a ‘model’ (the author uses quotation marks) and a prostitute. She is sexy, fearless, alcoholic.
Nirmal falls for her.
Kalyani uses his support when she needs to. Hard times fall upon her. She empties his bank balance and offers herself to him. But there’s a problem. He loses his erection (or maybe ejaculates too soon – the details are not clear; there are euphemisms like ‘he was like a tiger/wild animal’ and then suddenly ‘he was cold; the fire was gone’)
So, Kalyani insults him and screams at him to go away and never come back. He never comes back.
But he returns to India when he hears of her death, some years later, in Calcutta. She is buried there, in a cemetery, by her husband - a well-known neurosurgeon, Dr Raghuvansh. The good old doctor has a daughter by Kalyani, six year old Priya.
A leap of some fifteen years - Nirmal is now a very rich man in Calcutta. Fortyish. He has built a thirty-storeyed skyscraper – the tallest building in the city – called Kalyani Mansion. He has married the socialite, Shirin.
She was married earlier to another rich businessman called Vijay Mehta, who made the mistake of insulting the dead Kalyani (he was one of her clients in New York). Nirmal punches him in the face. Shirin is curious about the man who punches her husband; she likes powerful men. So she lives with Nirmal and divorces Mehta (in that order).
Sex is awful.
Nirmal turns into a ‘wild animal’ (author's descrption; I don't believe wild animals behave as he does) and loses erection after erection, hurting Shirin both physically and emotionally.
In the meantime, since Priya is Kalyani’s daughter, Nirmal is attracted to her too. (The author suggests that she is both afraid and attracted, though she stays away from boys in general. )
The good old doctor smiles upon this, and is open to the idea of his daughter marrying her mother’s lover... oh yes, he knows all about his wife’s past. He is full of nothing but empathy for Nirmal.
Priya gets friendly with Shirin. They begin having sex. Shirin is described as ‘cheap’, as being obsessed with her looks and her body, and as scarred – because she saw her parents having sex, because her mother died during childbirth, because her mother disliked and was afraid of men, because her elder sister introduced her to some awesome lesbian sex.
In short, Shirin cannot enjoy men, because she is afraid of getting pregnant and wants to sleep with girls – like herself, like her elder sister. Her room has a painting of two women looking at each other with fire in their eyes. There’s a statue of a naked Negro woman, red eyes and red lips, in that room where ‘the two fishes swim and play’.
Nirmal wants Kalyani; he sees her image everywhere – in Shirin, in Priya.
One day, Nirmal goes to Shirin’s room. (The marriage is a clear disaster; they live on different floors of Kalyani Mansion). He begins making out, but loses it – both his temper and his erection. Shirin goes wild – calls him names, screams at him. Repeat of what happened with Kalyani.
At this point, Priya walks into the room. Nirmal gets dressed and orders her – Priya, not Shirin - to come to his own flat. Priya wants to go back to Shirin… Shirin is crazy already, and is tearing at her own body… but Priya is stuck with Nirmal. She is frightened, but reproaches him for mistreating his wife. Priya is a medical student herself and has seen the scars on his wife’s body.
Nirmal loses his temper and rapes her : please note, this time, no loss of erection... He rapes her repeatedly. He almost kills her.
When she leaves his place, she throws up, and rolls down the stairs. The lift-man and building guards have been warned to expect Priya, they come looking for her. They find her and deposit her unconscious body at Dr Raghuvansh’s house. He takes one look, and understands what has happened. Since he’s a doctor, he dresses her wounds, treats her, bathes her, puts her to sleep, and Nirmal calls to ask how Priya is, and this empathetic father says ‘she’s alive’.
After three days, Priya seems to be better. She doesn’t go out anywhere, doesn’t take calls. Not even Shirin’s calls.
Dr Raghuvansh sits down to write a letter to Nirmal, saying that he knows his daughter has been raped, repeatedly and brutally. He was afraid this would happen. But at least, he is glad that his daughter has helped him get over the sexual maladjustment (author’s words), for he knew Priya could cure him of it. He was hoping that Nirmal would marry Kalyani’s daughter, and would have if he hadn’t ended up marrying the unfortunate unhealthy homosexual Shirin (authors’ description) – whom he has tried to cure earlier (author’s words), but who is a gone case, quite hopelessly lesbian.
The empathetic doctor is also glad that his own daughter has been ‘cured’ of her lesbian ways; she is now 'healthy'. Normal. He insists it a great thing to be normal. It is easy to be extraordinary/abnormal (the author uses a word that is interchangeably used for both).
The doctor wills away his whole property to the medical college, leaving his brutally raped daughter penniless, and overnight, drinks himself to death.
His daughter goes through the funeral. At the funeral, she imagines that Nirmal is not only carrying the dead body of her father, but her own, and that of Shirin and that of her own mother.
But what does this girl do?
She takes her father’s last latter to Nirmal’s house. Back to the same house where she was raped. Puts the letter on the table, and offers to make some coffee.
Yes, coffee.
Shirin is still waiting – for Priya. For Nirmal. For somebody. And while she waits, she drinks and drinks, and drinks. If some cheap society ladies (author’s phrase, not mine) come to visit, she makes a little noise, then goes back to drinking, and waiting.
In the meantime, Nirmal has been surrounded by 'enemies', mostly led by the old and vindictive Vijay Mehta, whose wife got carried away by Nirmal’s power and stature, not to mention, relative youth. His little coterie of capitalists is bribing people in the audit and income tax department to ruin this honest ‘black prince’.
Nirmal’s little business empire is crashing because he refuses to pay bribes. And the workers are ungrateful – the more he does for them, the more they want. So he gets rid of them, by selling his mill to his arch-enemy Mehta. But still, he is losing everything. He doesn’t mind losing everything, only wants to keep Kalyani Mansion. His home, his sky-scraper.
Honest and incorruptible to the last, the black prince loses everything (how this happens is very vague). But to save Kalyani Mansion, he is forced to lie – that he had taken a huge loan from Kalyani, Dr Raghuvansh’s wife, to construct this building and that he is now forced to sell it to their daughter Priya.
Priya knows it is only a paper transaction, but she plays along.
At the end of it all, Nirmal realizes that he has never even looked properly at his beautiful wife, Shirin. Never looked into her eyes properly. So he goes to her room, looks at her, caresses her. She, meawhile, is all admiration and adoration. He spends the night. When he wakes up, he sees Shirin is emerging from a bath, with sindoor in her hair, and face glowing with empathetic love.
She is no longer dead fish. She is a woman (author’s description).
I cannot describe how I felt after readin that last chapter. It nullified the author and whatever virtues the writing itself may have had.
One can deal with complexes and sexual ‘maladjustments’. One can even understand a situation where a woman wants to be raped (have read of similar situations in other books, written much more realistically, much more empathetically). But one fails to understand the concept of a violent man and a lesbian girl being made ‘normal’ through rape. Or, that all this violence makes him into a tender, caring husband (with his dead lady-love’s daughter thrown in for free). It is more than unpalatable. It is disturbing.
The author is either completely insensitive, or completely clueless.
Homosexuals do not overnight become ‘normal’. After great lesbian lovemaking, somebody gets raped, and wham! Everybody’s happy...? Even if a reader goes along with the theory that a woman will feel ‘normal’ and wholly ‘woman’ only if she has sex with a man (idiotic though the presumption is, even if one agrees to go along with the theory), this book would have been worth the paper its printed on, only if the author explored the psychological complexity of the idea.
I personally do not like authors who think in terms of ‘fish’ and ‘woman’. But personal opinions aside, the book could have handled so differently.
Imagine the plight of a girl, whose father just died, deliberately leaving her penniless, leaving her at the mercy of her rapist, whom he is thanking for having ‘cured’ her of lesbianism. Imagine the plight of this girl who goes back to her rapist, knowing he was her mother’s lover, and that she might have to depend on him now – where else will she go? Imagine that she is love with this man’s wife…. Imagine what is going on inside the mind of the lesbian wife, who lives with a powerful man, who has just raped her lover.
Imagine what is going on inside the man’s head. This wonderful powerful incorruptible business genius – who has raped the daughter of the two people he loved most.
It is plot with potential, but the author fails it.
He thinks in grandiose terms – tall, black, strong, built like a rock, incorruptible ‘black prince’… the lesbian’s bedroom, the negro’s naked statue, red lips, an old empathetic doctor, a prostitute who loved so long, lived so little… Cliché-ridden to the last.
The author seems to be able to think only in black and white. His hero, Nirmal, is a larger-than-life hero: neither anti-hero nor merely human; his sexual ‘maladjustment’ is more like a fatal flaw, his hamartia, if you like, which, instead of destroying him, is sorted out eventually… at the cost of two women’s happiness and ravaged bodies.
When you finish reading it, you cannot help thinking that this is a judgmental book. That is the final, fatal flaw.
In some ways, it is a man’s book. I doubt if the author even understands women’s bodies. I doubt if a woman could have written a book like this (though I shouldn’t be making sweeping statements; time and time again, women have unpleasantly surprised me by going ahead and behaving exactly like men...much to our collective shame and despair).
A writer is a creator. Like all creators, he/she has to shed his/her skin. Nothing except your own writing style is permissible. You cannot be any gender, if you’re going to be a good writer. You can adopt the cover of a gendered voice. But your mind must be gender-free. Your values must be gender-free… and race-free, shape-free, nationality-free, colour-free, class-free, sexual orientation-free.
If you’re not free, you’re merely a peddler of words with X amount of skill... And words alone do not a writer make.
It is not a new book – probably written in the sixties, certainly set in Calcutta of that time.
I began by liking the book, especially since the introduction itself was written well. I liked the lusciousness of certain phrases. The extreme qualities of the characters, even though some of them didn’t ring true. The way the city and the stock market players are described.
There were flaws but one goes on, thinking the flaws are only logical, sequential failings… but by the time one gets to the end, one is worse than disappointed!
The author just doesn’t understand his material.
The trouble with books like Machhli Mari Hui is that they deal with multidimensional subjects with a unidimensional vision. Sex is a multidimensional subject. Homosexuality is a multidimensional subject. It is a mistake to approach such subjects unless you’ve either got some first-hand experience of it, or you’ve talked to a lot of people who had first-hand experience. This author, clearly, doesn’t know s**t about women’s sexuality or their feelings.
In the introduction, the author claims to have read almost everything there is to read on the subject of female homosexuality. From early medical books by psychologists, to Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. He makes references to Sappho, and to lesbians’ autobiographies. With this wealth of knowledge and this spectrum of perceptions, how he could end his book the way he did, is beyond my comprehension!
In the last chapter, his female protagonist Shirin is described as shedding her homosexual skin, and turning into a ‘woman’, instead of a fish. The fish is now dead. (That is where the title’s reference to dead fish comes from. In the book, the fish is used as a symbol of lesbian desire. The image of two fishes swimming are used to represent a lesbian encounter between Shirin and a younger girl, Priya)
What is most appalling is the sequence of events after which this ‘transformation’ comes about.
I’ll try to tell the story straight, in some sort of sequence as events happen, and not in the back and forth flashback style adopted by the author.
(Shirin’s husband) Nirmal Padmavat is the main protagonist, the ‘hero’ if you like.
He is a tall, dark, strong, hard-working, honest businessman with humble origins, who neither tells lies, nor bribes, nor discriminates on the basis of colour or religion etc. People think of him as either a magician or a monster.
From a village in Bihar, via Lahore and Bombay, he reaches New York, where he meets a beautiful woman called Kalyani. She used to be a medical student but has now become a ‘model’ (the author uses quotation marks) and a prostitute. She is sexy, fearless, alcoholic.
Nirmal falls for her.
Kalyani uses his support when she needs to. Hard times fall upon her. She empties his bank balance and offers herself to him. But there’s a problem. He loses his erection (or maybe ejaculates too soon – the details are not clear; there are euphemisms like ‘he was like a tiger/wild animal’ and then suddenly ‘he was cold; the fire was gone’)
So, Kalyani insults him and screams at him to go away and never come back. He never comes back.
But he returns to India when he hears of her death, some years later, in Calcutta. She is buried there, in a cemetery, by her husband - a well-known neurosurgeon, Dr Raghuvansh. The good old doctor has a daughter by Kalyani, six year old Priya.
A leap of some fifteen years - Nirmal is now a very rich man in Calcutta. Fortyish. He has built a thirty-storeyed skyscraper – the tallest building in the city – called Kalyani Mansion. He has married the socialite, Shirin.
She was married earlier to another rich businessman called Vijay Mehta, who made the mistake of insulting the dead Kalyani (he was one of her clients in New York). Nirmal punches him in the face. Shirin is curious about the man who punches her husband; she likes powerful men. So she lives with Nirmal and divorces Mehta (in that order).
Sex is awful.
Nirmal turns into a ‘wild animal’ (author's descrption; I don't believe wild animals behave as he does) and loses erection after erection, hurting Shirin both physically and emotionally.
In the meantime, since Priya is Kalyani’s daughter, Nirmal is attracted to her too. (The author suggests that she is both afraid and attracted, though she stays away from boys in general. )
The good old doctor smiles upon this, and is open to the idea of his daughter marrying her mother’s lover... oh yes, he knows all about his wife’s past. He is full of nothing but empathy for Nirmal.
Priya gets friendly with Shirin. They begin having sex. Shirin is described as ‘cheap’, as being obsessed with her looks and her body, and as scarred – because she saw her parents having sex, because her mother died during childbirth, because her mother disliked and was afraid of men, because her elder sister introduced her to some awesome lesbian sex.
In short, Shirin cannot enjoy men, because she is afraid of getting pregnant and wants to sleep with girls – like herself, like her elder sister. Her room has a painting of two women looking at each other with fire in their eyes. There’s a statue of a naked Negro woman, red eyes and red lips, in that room where ‘the two fishes swim and play’.
Nirmal wants Kalyani; he sees her image everywhere – in Shirin, in Priya.
One day, Nirmal goes to Shirin’s room. (The marriage is a clear disaster; they live on different floors of Kalyani Mansion). He begins making out, but loses it – both his temper and his erection. Shirin goes wild – calls him names, screams at him. Repeat of what happened with Kalyani.
At this point, Priya walks into the room. Nirmal gets dressed and orders her – Priya, not Shirin - to come to his own flat. Priya wants to go back to Shirin… Shirin is crazy already, and is tearing at her own body… but Priya is stuck with Nirmal. She is frightened, but reproaches him for mistreating his wife. Priya is a medical student herself and has seen the scars on his wife’s body.
Nirmal loses his temper and rapes her : please note, this time, no loss of erection... He rapes her repeatedly. He almost kills her.
When she leaves his place, she throws up, and rolls down the stairs. The lift-man and building guards have been warned to expect Priya, they come looking for her. They find her and deposit her unconscious body at Dr Raghuvansh’s house. He takes one look, and understands what has happened. Since he’s a doctor, he dresses her wounds, treats her, bathes her, puts her to sleep, and Nirmal calls to ask how Priya is, and this empathetic father says ‘she’s alive’.
After three days, Priya seems to be better. She doesn’t go out anywhere, doesn’t take calls. Not even Shirin’s calls.
Dr Raghuvansh sits down to write a letter to Nirmal, saying that he knows his daughter has been raped, repeatedly and brutally. He was afraid this would happen. But at least, he is glad that his daughter has helped him get over the sexual maladjustment (author’s words), for he knew Priya could cure him of it. He was hoping that Nirmal would marry Kalyani’s daughter, and would have if he hadn’t ended up marrying the unfortunate unhealthy homosexual Shirin (authors’ description) – whom he has tried to cure earlier (author’s words), but who is a gone case, quite hopelessly lesbian.
The empathetic doctor is also glad that his own daughter has been ‘cured’ of her lesbian ways; she is now 'healthy'. Normal. He insists it a great thing to be normal. It is easy to be extraordinary/abnormal (the author uses a word that is interchangeably used for both).
The doctor wills away his whole property to the medical college, leaving his brutally raped daughter penniless, and overnight, drinks himself to death.
His daughter goes through the funeral. At the funeral, she imagines that Nirmal is not only carrying the dead body of her father, but her own, and that of Shirin and that of her own mother.
But what does this girl do?
She takes her father’s last latter to Nirmal’s house. Back to the same house where she was raped. Puts the letter on the table, and offers to make some coffee.
Yes, coffee.
Shirin is still waiting – for Priya. For Nirmal. For somebody. And while she waits, she drinks and drinks, and drinks. If some cheap society ladies (author’s phrase, not mine) come to visit, she makes a little noise, then goes back to drinking, and waiting.
In the meantime, Nirmal has been surrounded by 'enemies', mostly led by the old and vindictive Vijay Mehta, whose wife got carried away by Nirmal’s power and stature, not to mention, relative youth. His little coterie of capitalists is bribing people in the audit and income tax department to ruin this honest ‘black prince’.
Nirmal’s little business empire is crashing because he refuses to pay bribes. And the workers are ungrateful – the more he does for them, the more they want. So he gets rid of them, by selling his mill to his arch-enemy Mehta. But still, he is losing everything. He doesn’t mind losing everything, only wants to keep Kalyani Mansion. His home, his sky-scraper.
Honest and incorruptible to the last, the black prince loses everything (how this happens is very vague). But to save Kalyani Mansion, he is forced to lie – that he had taken a huge loan from Kalyani, Dr Raghuvansh’s wife, to construct this building and that he is now forced to sell it to their daughter Priya.
Priya knows it is only a paper transaction, but she plays along.
At the end of it all, Nirmal realizes that he has never even looked properly at his beautiful wife, Shirin. Never looked into her eyes properly. So he goes to her room, looks at her, caresses her. She, meawhile, is all admiration and adoration. He spends the night. When he wakes up, he sees Shirin is emerging from a bath, with sindoor in her hair, and face glowing with empathetic love.
She is no longer dead fish. She is a woman (author’s description).
I cannot describe how I felt after readin that last chapter. It nullified the author and whatever virtues the writing itself may have had.
One can deal with complexes and sexual ‘maladjustments’. One can even understand a situation where a woman wants to be raped (have read of similar situations in other books, written much more realistically, much more empathetically). But one fails to understand the concept of a violent man and a lesbian girl being made ‘normal’ through rape. Or, that all this violence makes him into a tender, caring husband (with his dead lady-love’s daughter thrown in for free). It is more than unpalatable. It is disturbing.
The author is either completely insensitive, or completely clueless.
Homosexuals do not overnight become ‘normal’. After great lesbian lovemaking, somebody gets raped, and wham! Everybody’s happy...? Even if a reader goes along with the theory that a woman will feel ‘normal’ and wholly ‘woman’ only if she has sex with a man (idiotic though the presumption is, even if one agrees to go along with the theory), this book would have been worth the paper its printed on, only if the author explored the psychological complexity of the idea.
I personally do not like authors who think in terms of ‘fish’ and ‘woman’. But personal opinions aside, the book could have handled so differently.
Imagine the plight of a girl, whose father just died, deliberately leaving her penniless, leaving her at the mercy of her rapist, whom he is thanking for having ‘cured’ her of lesbianism. Imagine the plight of this girl who goes back to her rapist, knowing he was her mother’s lover, and that she might have to depend on him now – where else will she go? Imagine that she is love with this man’s wife…. Imagine what is going on inside the mind of the lesbian wife, who lives with a powerful man, who has just raped her lover.
Imagine what is going on inside the man’s head. This wonderful powerful incorruptible business genius – who has raped the daughter of the two people he loved most.
It is plot with potential, but the author fails it.
He thinks in grandiose terms – tall, black, strong, built like a rock, incorruptible ‘black prince’… the lesbian’s bedroom, the negro’s naked statue, red lips, an old empathetic doctor, a prostitute who loved so long, lived so little… Cliché-ridden to the last.
The author seems to be able to think only in black and white. His hero, Nirmal, is a larger-than-life hero: neither anti-hero nor merely human; his sexual ‘maladjustment’ is more like a fatal flaw, his hamartia, if you like, which, instead of destroying him, is sorted out eventually… at the cost of two women’s happiness and ravaged bodies.
When you finish reading it, you cannot help thinking that this is a judgmental book. That is the final, fatal flaw.
In some ways, it is a man’s book. I doubt if the author even understands women’s bodies. I doubt if a woman could have written a book like this (though I shouldn’t be making sweeping statements; time and time again, women have unpleasantly surprised me by going ahead and behaving exactly like men...much to our collective shame and despair).
A writer is a creator. Like all creators, he/she has to shed his/her skin. Nothing except your own writing style is permissible. You cannot be any gender, if you’re going to be a good writer. You can adopt the cover of a gendered voice. But your mind must be gender-free. Your values must be gender-free… and race-free, shape-free, nationality-free, colour-free, class-free, sexual orientation-free.
If you’re not free, you’re merely a peddler of words with X amount of skill... And words alone do not a writer make.
Money and my mouth
Here's another blog I’ve been following with a great deal of interest.
Via this blog, we hear of the great tragedy of the Jarawas, and how the law is being flouted with impunity, not to mention, with disastrous consequences. Not enough people protesting, and therefore, very little fear of being found out, being thrown out of office or being arrested for contempt of court and illegal construction.
At How the Other Half Lives (I’ve hopped on board recently) a maiden post led to a flurry of comments, some of which have made me think about myself and my take on the issue at hand.
Somebody supported reservation but not caste-based ones. Somebody else supports academic reservations, but not professional ones. Somebody asks me to ‘donate’ my job if I am such a great advocate of reservations in the private sector.
The first two have made me think a little harder about the precise form of affirmative action that I would like to see being implemented.
The third is a very pertinent question – because it all comes down to putting your money where your mouth is.
Would I?
My answer: firstly, reservations do not imply charity. They imply giving someone a leg-up.
Secondly, I do not control my own job. I don’t have hiring and firing rights, but if I did, I would still support a reserved percentage of positions in the organisation. Especially media organisations. (How many backward castes, or even poor people from upper castes, are represented in the mainstream media? Do a head-count. You’ll find a few answers as to why and how certain stories get covered) and if, as a result, my own chances of finding and keeping jobs is lessened, lowered… well, too bad. It won’t be the first time I’m sitting at home, jobless. And it certainly won’t be end of the world.
Let us assume that I did have hiring-firing rights.
Let’s say I have this little dhaba by the highway and I need a cook. Given a choice between candidate A and candidate B, both being competant, I’d give the job to whoever needed it more. And no, I would not give it to somebody who came with a hotel management diploma. I’d send both candidates to the kitchen and watch them roll out parathas – trying to gauge creativity, speed, and their enjoyment of the task at hand.
If there isn’t a vast gulf between the two candidates, skill-wise, I’ll look at their needs. Let’s say A is a runaway kid and this is a first attempt to make an honest living, or that A is the eldest child of retired parents and has two other siblings to put through school… if B has healthy parents and faces no immediate financial crunch – I would choose A over B, at least in the short term (in the long term, hopefully, such considerations would not be needed, if there aren’t vast gulfs between people’s assets and needs)
If I could give away four jobs, instead of one, I’d reserve one for a man who comes from backward origins, even if he is less competent than others, assuming he is eager to learn and work a little harder than the rest.
And I would hire at least two women, even if the men are just as skilled, giving preference to single mothers, divorcees, widows or just women with a very strong independent streak who want to live on their own. Because I have a vested interest in ensuring that women make their own money.
So yes, I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.
Not as charity, but as a way of investing in people.
Via this blog, we hear of the great tragedy of the Jarawas, and how the law is being flouted with impunity, not to mention, with disastrous consequences. Not enough people protesting, and therefore, very little fear of being found out, being thrown out of office or being arrested for contempt of court and illegal construction.
At How the Other Half Lives (I’ve hopped on board recently) a maiden post led to a flurry of comments, some of which have made me think about myself and my take on the issue at hand.
Somebody supported reservation but not caste-based ones. Somebody else supports academic reservations, but not professional ones. Somebody asks me to ‘donate’ my job if I am such a great advocate of reservations in the private sector.
The first two have made me think a little harder about the precise form of affirmative action that I would like to see being implemented.
The third is a very pertinent question – because it all comes down to putting your money where your mouth is.
Would I?
My answer: firstly, reservations do not imply charity. They imply giving someone a leg-up.
Secondly, I do not control my own job. I don’t have hiring and firing rights, but if I did, I would still support a reserved percentage of positions in the organisation. Especially media organisations. (How many backward castes, or even poor people from upper castes, are represented in the mainstream media? Do a head-count. You’ll find a few answers as to why and how certain stories get covered) and if, as a result, my own chances of finding and keeping jobs is lessened, lowered… well, too bad. It won’t be the first time I’m sitting at home, jobless. And it certainly won’t be end of the world.
Let us assume that I did have hiring-firing rights.
Let’s say I have this little dhaba by the highway and I need a cook. Given a choice between candidate A and candidate B, both being competant, I’d give the job to whoever needed it more. And no, I would not give it to somebody who came with a hotel management diploma. I’d send both candidates to the kitchen and watch them roll out parathas – trying to gauge creativity, speed, and their enjoyment of the task at hand.
If there isn’t a vast gulf between the two candidates, skill-wise, I’ll look at their needs. Let’s say A is a runaway kid and this is a first attempt to make an honest living, or that A is the eldest child of retired parents and has two other siblings to put through school… if B has healthy parents and faces no immediate financial crunch – I would choose A over B, at least in the short term (in the long term, hopefully, such considerations would not be needed, if there aren’t vast gulfs between people’s assets and needs)
If I could give away four jobs, instead of one, I’d reserve one for a man who comes from backward origins, even if he is less competent than others, assuming he is eager to learn and work a little harder than the rest.
And I would hire at least two women, even if the men are just as skilled, giving preference to single mothers, divorcees, widows or just women with a very strong independent streak who want to live on their own. Because I have a vested interest in ensuring that women make their own money.
So yes, I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.
Not as charity, but as a way of investing in people.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
An argument and a few stories
A story from nine years ago, in Lucknow.
I was enrolled at Aptech for a computer course and had shifted location to Lucknow during the summer vacations (for the record, I dropped out of the course, after the ignominy of flunking miserably in the programming module; in the instructor’s words, my efforts to write a computer program had ‘gone for a six... gone for a toss.’).
My old and mostly immobile grandparents lived in Gomtinagar; I had to attend classes in Halwasiya. It is a long commute, involving a ride over a bridge over the river Gomti, usually in a rickety six-seater called a ‘Vikram’, though I obstinately insist on calling it ‘tempoo’. It used to cost me ten rupees everyday.
One day, a tempo strike had been announced. In solidarity, all the auto-wallahs were also staying off the roads.
All of a sudden? Not all of a sudden - the tempo-walas must have given out a date and time when the strike would begin, which I didn’t know about.
After my classes, I stepped out and found that there was no way of getting back home, except a cab. I emptied out my purse – only thirty-three rupees left. Rs 33 will not get you a taxi ride to anywhere, not in Lucknow…not even round-n-round, in your own garden.
To add insult to injury, the clouds broke water and the rain came pouring down. All of a sudden… this was June. No umbrella, no raincoat, because monsoon was a month away.
No umbrella, no raincoat, no money for a taxi.
A very young and very clueless me, drenched in the rain, walking down Hazratgunj, getting stared at by loafers who had nothing better to do. It wasn’t pleasant.
And then, I saw a cycle-rickshaw. Not one, but many cycle-rickshaws. But the point was… would they agree? Hazratgunj to Gomtinagar takes half an hour even in a nonrenewableenergysource-guzzling tempo. No cycle-rickshaw would go that far.
Even if they did agree to, with this tempo-strike on, they’d want to make a killing. Anybody would ask for a hundred rupees. Even an auto-wala would have asked. But that day, I didn’t have that hundred; I had only Rs 33.
But the rain was pouring. And men were staring. So finally, I went up to an old rickshaw-wala, “Tees rupaye mein kahaan tak chhodenge, bhaiya? (How far can you take me, for thirty rupees?”)
He peered at me, surprised at the question. “Kahaan tak jaogi? (How far do you have to go?)”
I said, “Gomtinagar.”
He thought this over, then, agreed to take me as far as the petrol pump, just before Gomtinagar starts.
I agreed. The petrol pump was about a kilometer and a half, from my grandparents’ place. I could walk the rest, and hopefully, the rain would have stopped by that time.
The old rickshaw-wala put up the hood to offer me whatever little protection and privacy he could offer, and pedalled away. Through the rain, against the wind.
It was bitterly cold, and I can’t imagine how difficult this trip must have been for that old man.
Near the petrol pump, I got off, gave him all the money I had. Each paisa in my purse, and started to walk. It was still drizzling.
The old man called out to me. “Kahaan tak jaogi, bitiya (How much further, little daughter)?”
I told him, pointing, - the colony on the left.
He asked me to get back on the rickshaw. I protested, said I hadn’t have any more money.
He just said, “Ladkiyon ke liye theek nahin hain. Hum kone tak chhod aate hain. Phir chali jaana. (It isn’t safe for girls. I’ll drop you at the corner. Then you can walk.)”
And he did.
I can’t quite describe the feeling as he dropped me off at the corner of our lane. Partly, it was being eaten up by guilt at not paying him as much as he deserved… how much did he deserve anyway?
But mostly, it was the knowledge, that I could not pay him as much as he deserved. Even if I had a hundred rupees, two hundred rupees, five hundred rupees to give him - it would not be enough to repay him, now.
Because now, he was the bada aadmi; the big man.
He had done his good deed, and in my eyes, developed a stature that prevents me from monetizing the value of the service. He left me spiritually bankrupt.
Today, people ask why cycle-rickshaws should stay – in a city that is crawling with cars, autos, taxis and cows – where is the place for these shabby, skinny men who bring nothing to this city except their sweat and sinew?
I have the standard arguments - the ‘cycles are easy on the environment’ argument. The ‘need for cheap modes of transportation in smaller geographical units’ argument. The ‘right to livelihood’ argument. The ‘who are you to decide who stays and who goes’ argument.
But those are not real arguments.
My real argument is that memory – of an old man who took pity on a hard-up young girl in the rain and pedalled and pedalled, all the way to a distant suburb, when he could have made five time as much money, if he’d hung around in the market-centre, to take advantage of an auto/tempo strike.
My argument is not his sweat and sinew, or his right to life. It is his calling me ‘bitiya’ and taking me that extra mile, that had not been agreed upon.
My argument is that I have a debt to pay and I will go on arguing for cycle-rickshaws as long as there are men who want to pull rickshaws for a living.
Because transport is not just about fares or convenience. It is also about journeying. Low fares, quick modes, quality service and all that jazz… but what about lasting memories?
Transport and commutes are about stories.
You want to hear other stories? I have more. Many more.
One of my favourites is about my friend, G, who used to study at Allahabad university, and lived in Civil Lines; a cycle-rickshaw was appointed to take her there and to drop her back home, everyday.
As old men do in bhaiyya-land, this man used to call my friend, ‘bitiya’. Little girl or daughter.
This shabby old man who had nothing to offer but his scrawny muscles, but he didn’t just stop at calling her ‘bitiya’. You see, in north-India, according to tradition, you do not touch your daughter’s money. So he would not accept money from G’s hands.
She tried to explain, to protest. But it was no point arguing. He would accept money only on days when G’s parents paid him.
Silly traditional nonsense? I know.
Pointless sentiment injected into, what was essentially, a commercial transaction? I don’t know…. I don’t know about that.
Because, this man is another of my personal arguments. A man who knows how to treat you like a daughter, when he addresses you like one, is worth having in our cities, don’t you think?
I can also tell you about the young boy who helped me bring up mattresses to the third floor, when we didn’t have a lift. Yes, I paid him extra, but that’s not the point. He is not a loader, he is not a coolie, he is not a manual labourer – he pulls a rickshaw and his job only required him to drop me at my doorstep. But I asked for help, and he agreed to help.
I can tell you that some of my most beautiful childhood memories are from the time when six of us kids would be on one rickshaw, me standing on a narrow plank behind the wheels, holding onto the hood for support, the wind in my face, shrieking with delight.
I can tell you of the look on the faces of some of the rickshaw-walas, as they turn to look over their shoulders, meeting this delight with their own smiles.
I can tell you of the time in Ajmer, when six unruly college girls hailed a tonga, took the reins from the driver’s hands, and bullied him into letting them drive. I can tell you about all the crazy men who deck up their cycle/auto-rickshaws like new brides. I can tell you about boring flights too. You can see for yourself which is more fun, or worth holding on to.
Some day, maybe I will acquire and learn to drive a khataaraa piece of metal, and start navigating the roads myself. Some day, maybe I will not need the rickshaws. But if I ever forget that old man who left me spiritually bankrupt at the corner of a lane in Lucknow, may the gods strike me down, when I take the wheel... Because if I forget the things that make life worth living and fighting for, I might as well be dead.
My point:
When I began writing this, it was in an entirely different context – the context of anger, alienation and the difficulties of transportation in a western, modern society... Their clean, clean roads and their organised, rule-bound traffic. Cars and buses only. Bicycles being the only alternative.... If there is one thing I miss in this small Scottish town, it is the cycle-rickshaw… no, that's not entirely true: I miss seeing dogs and cows too, and the occasional horse or elephant or camel.
[Those who think they’re are a traffic menace, I’d like to point them in the direction of a certain busy road near Andrewsganj, Delhi; with mine own eyes I have seen a row of cows balancing delicately, all hoofed fours, atop a narrow road-divider, patiently waiting for the traffic to slow down before crossing. Which is more than you can say for half the speeding guys on speed, who treat narrow kuchha lanes like virtual superhighway]
Then, I began thinking of those people who actually believe that cycle-rickshaws are a menace!
I am writing this post, because too many people have been lobbying to allow fewer and fewer cycle-rickshaws in Delhi. First it was just the heart of New Delhi; now, there are moves afoot to keep them off the suburbs too. I could cite reports by way of counter-argument.
But the point is this - we talk about giving the public a choice.
So, I want that choice. Have low-cost airlines by all means; I want those too. But I also want buses. I want my tonga, I want my metro, AND I want the cycle-rickshaws. I see absolutely no reason why not.
The roads are public property.
The rickshaw-pullers are as much the public as the cabbies or pilots. If you want them out of the way, build separate tracks for rickshaws, and then talk about speed and safety issues. Delhi does have separate 'priority' bus lanes, in some suburbs. How difficult would it be to just plan for different sets of tracks, in different regions, starting right now?
Make it a part of the master plan. Listen to the experts. It is not undo-able.
And if it is undo-able, tough!
Learn to drive slow, and pay at least as much respect to the man pulling a rickshaw, as you do to the cows. Defer. Slow down. Wait to let them pass.
For the world-class wannabes, a reminder: out here, in the UK, cars wait, while a duck waddles across; those are the rules.
I was enrolled at Aptech for a computer course and had shifted location to Lucknow during the summer vacations (for the record, I dropped out of the course, after the ignominy of flunking miserably in the programming module; in the instructor’s words, my efforts to write a computer program had ‘gone for a six... gone for a toss.’).
My old and mostly immobile grandparents lived in Gomtinagar; I had to attend classes in Halwasiya. It is a long commute, involving a ride over a bridge over the river Gomti, usually in a rickety six-seater called a ‘Vikram’, though I obstinately insist on calling it ‘tempoo’. It used to cost me ten rupees everyday.
One day, a tempo strike had been announced. In solidarity, all the auto-wallahs were also staying off the roads.
All of a sudden? Not all of a sudden - the tempo-walas must have given out a date and time when the strike would begin, which I didn’t know about.
After my classes, I stepped out and found that there was no way of getting back home, except a cab. I emptied out my purse – only thirty-three rupees left. Rs 33 will not get you a taxi ride to anywhere, not in Lucknow…not even round-n-round, in your own garden.
To add insult to injury, the clouds broke water and the rain came pouring down. All of a sudden… this was June. No umbrella, no raincoat, because monsoon was a month away.
No umbrella, no raincoat, no money for a taxi.
A very young and very clueless me, drenched in the rain, walking down Hazratgunj, getting stared at by loafers who had nothing better to do. It wasn’t pleasant.
And then, I saw a cycle-rickshaw. Not one, but many cycle-rickshaws. But the point was… would they agree? Hazratgunj to Gomtinagar takes half an hour even in a nonrenewableenergysource-guzzling tempo. No cycle-rickshaw would go that far.
Even if they did agree to, with this tempo-strike on, they’d want to make a killing. Anybody would ask for a hundred rupees. Even an auto-wala would have asked. But that day, I didn’t have that hundred; I had only Rs 33.
But the rain was pouring. And men were staring. So finally, I went up to an old rickshaw-wala, “Tees rupaye mein kahaan tak chhodenge, bhaiya? (How far can you take me, for thirty rupees?”)
He peered at me, surprised at the question. “Kahaan tak jaogi? (How far do you have to go?)”
I said, “Gomtinagar.”
He thought this over, then, agreed to take me as far as the petrol pump, just before Gomtinagar starts.
I agreed. The petrol pump was about a kilometer and a half, from my grandparents’ place. I could walk the rest, and hopefully, the rain would have stopped by that time.
The old rickshaw-wala put up the hood to offer me whatever little protection and privacy he could offer, and pedalled away. Through the rain, against the wind.
It was bitterly cold, and I can’t imagine how difficult this trip must have been for that old man.
Near the petrol pump, I got off, gave him all the money I had. Each paisa in my purse, and started to walk. It was still drizzling.
The old man called out to me. “Kahaan tak jaogi, bitiya (How much further, little daughter)?”
I told him, pointing, - the colony on the left.
He asked me to get back on the rickshaw. I protested, said I hadn’t have any more money.
He just said, “Ladkiyon ke liye theek nahin hain. Hum kone tak chhod aate hain. Phir chali jaana. (It isn’t safe for girls. I’ll drop you at the corner. Then you can walk.)”
And he did.
I can’t quite describe the feeling as he dropped me off at the corner of our lane. Partly, it was being eaten up by guilt at not paying him as much as he deserved… how much did he deserve anyway?
But mostly, it was the knowledge, that I could not pay him as much as he deserved. Even if I had a hundred rupees, two hundred rupees, five hundred rupees to give him - it would not be enough to repay him, now.
Because now, he was the bada aadmi; the big man.
He had done his good deed, and in my eyes, developed a stature that prevents me from monetizing the value of the service. He left me spiritually bankrupt.
Today, people ask why cycle-rickshaws should stay – in a city that is crawling with cars, autos, taxis and cows – where is the place for these shabby, skinny men who bring nothing to this city except their sweat and sinew?
I have the standard arguments - the ‘cycles are easy on the environment’ argument. The ‘need for cheap modes of transportation in smaller geographical units’ argument. The ‘right to livelihood’ argument. The ‘who are you to decide who stays and who goes’ argument.
But those are not real arguments.
My real argument is that memory – of an old man who took pity on a hard-up young girl in the rain and pedalled and pedalled, all the way to a distant suburb, when he could have made five time as much money, if he’d hung around in the market-centre, to take advantage of an auto/tempo strike.
My argument is not his sweat and sinew, or his right to life. It is his calling me ‘bitiya’ and taking me that extra mile, that had not been agreed upon.
My argument is that I have a debt to pay and I will go on arguing for cycle-rickshaws as long as there are men who want to pull rickshaws for a living.
Because transport is not just about fares or convenience. It is also about journeying. Low fares, quick modes, quality service and all that jazz… but what about lasting memories?
Transport and commutes are about stories.
You want to hear other stories? I have more. Many more.
One of my favourites is about my friend, G, who used to study at Allahabad university, and lived in Civil Lines; a cycle-rickshaw was appointed to take her there and to drop her back home, everyday.
As old men do in bhaiyya-land, this man used to call my friend, ‘bitiya’. Little girl or daughter.
This shabby old man who had nothing to offer but his scrawny muscles, but he didn’t just stop at calling her ‘bitiya’. You see, in north-India, according to tradition, you do not touch your daughter’s money. So he would not accept money from G’s hands.
She tried to explain, to protest. But it was no point arguing. He would accept money only on days when G’s parents paid him.
Silly traditional nonsense? I know.
Pointless sentiment injected into, what was essentially, a commercial transaction? I don’t know…. I don’t know about that.
Because, this man is another of my personal arguments. A man who knows how to treat you like a daughter, when he addresses you like one, is worth having in our cities, don’t you think?
I can also tell you about the young boy who helped me bring up mattresses to the third floor, when we didn’t have a lift. Yes, I paid him extra, but that’s not the point. He is not a loader, he is not a coolie, he is not a manual labourer – he pulls a rickshaw and his job only required him to drop me at my doorstep. But I asked for help, and he agreed to help.
I can tell you that some of my most beautiful childhood memories are from the time when six of us kids would be on one rickshaw, me standing on a narrow plank behind the wheels, holding onto the hood for support, the wind in my face, shrieking with delight.
I can tell you of the look on the faces of some of the rickshaw-walas, as they turn to look over their shoulders, meeting this delight with their own smiles.
I can tell you of the time in Ajmer, when six unruly college girls hailed a tonga, took the reins from the driver’s hands, and bullied him into letting them drive. I can tell you about all the crazy men who deck up their cycle/auto-rickshaws like new brides. I can tell you about boring flights too. You can see for yourself which is more fun, or worth holding on to.
Some day, maybe I will acquire and learn to drive a khataaraa piece of metal, and start navigating the roads myself. Some day, maybe I will not need the rickshaws. But if I ever forget that old man who left me spiritually bankrupt at the corner of a lane in Lucknow, may the gods strike me down, when I take the wheel... Because if I forget the things that make life worth living and fighting for, I might as well be dead.
My point:
When I began writing this, it was in an entirely different context – the context of anger, alienation and the difficulties of transportation in a western, modern society... Their clean, clean roads and their organised, rule-bound traffic. Cars and buses only. Bicycles being the only alternative.... If there is one thing I miss in this small Scottish town, it is the cycle-rickshaw… no, that's not entirely true: I miss seeing dogs and cows too, and the occasional horse or elephant or camel.
[Those who think they’re are a traffic menace, I’d like to point them in the direction of a certain busy road near Andrewsganj, Delhi; with mine own eyes I have seen a row of cows balancing delicately, all hoofed fours, atop a narrow road-divider, patiently waiting for the traffic to slow down before crossing. Which is more than you can say for half the speeding guys on speed, who treat narrow kuchha lanes like virtual superhighway]
Then, I began thinking of those people who actually believe that cycle-rickshaws are a menace!
I am writing this post, because too many people have been lobbying to allow fewer and fewer cycle-rickshaws in Delhi. First it was just the heart of New Delhi; now, there are moves afoot to keep them off the suburbs too. I could cite reports by way of counter-argument.
But the point is this - we talk about giving the public a choice.
So, I want that choice. Have low-cost airlines by all means; I want those too. But I also want buses. I want my tonga, I want my metro, AND I want the cycle-rickshaws. I see absolutely no reason why not.
The roads are public property.
The rickshaw-pullers are as much the public as the cabbies or pilots. If you want them out of the way, build separate tracks for rickshaws, and then talk about speed and safety issues. Delhi does have separate 'priority' bus lanes, in some suburbs. How difficult would it be to just plan for different sets of tracks, in different regions, starting right now?
Make it a part of the master plan. Listen to the experts. It is not undo-able.
And if it is undo-able, tough!
Learn to drive slow, and pay at least as much respect to the man pulling a rickshaw, as you do to the cows. Defer. Slow down. Wait to let them pass.
For the world-class wannabes, a reminder: out here, in the UK, cars wait, while a duck waddles across; those are the rules.
This year, I have not been able to read properly.
I am reading, but in fits and starts, as if I have lost the art of being absorbed. Or at least, of being absorbed in a linear, narrative fashion… I get fascinated by an idea, then I let go. I grasp again, cling, flounder, tentatively touch, but then, float away.
I go away from a book, but return a month later. I run beside one author, but abruptly abandon him/her, change tracks and start running with another. This is guilt-inducing – because I usually don’t leave authors in the lurch; I’m a faithful reader. Or was, until now.
Now, it is impossible to become one with a book; my whole brain refuses to be dragged into the experience of reading. Part of the problem is being bilingual.
It all started when I began to read Hindi literature seriously again, some time last year.
As a result of being more or less equally fluent in both English and Hindustani (my real mother-tongue is Hindustani, which is neither pure Hindi nor pure Urdu, but a colloquial mixture of the two), there’s this corner of my mind that begins to translate it back to me. Hindi to English.
This corner of my mind is busy translating simultaneously. Each word, each sentence - this corner pokes at it, picks it up as if it was a curio and then translates it into another language, to make it a souvenir.
This corner wants to feel the intricacies, the fine-ness of the ideas, in another tongue. I like to wrap my mind around the words and turn them over and over until they’re something else, and yet, the same.
Sometimes, I even go from English to Hindi. Especially when the book has an Indian context. The bilingual corner of my brain immediately begins to wonder how this would sound in Hindustani: would it sound better? Worse? More natural? Would this narrative sound as if this could be any place, in any other nation, if I put these thoughts into English? Would the flow be more delicate, the language more impactful, in Hindustani? Suppose you mixed up the two?
Most recently, this habit has transcended books with an Indian context. I find myself trying to translate Orhan Pamuk and Murakami into Hindustani – just to see if it works.
Unfortunately, this means that there’s a one-second time lag between one part of my brain and the other. Sometimes, I get stuck, because the part of my brain that is translating is stuck for a word or appropriate idiomatic transformation. It gets larger and more assertive and refuses to let me read further, until I can solve its bilingual dilemma.
Sometimes, I must take a firm stand and yell at the corner – ‘I don’t care what this means in English, okay? I want to finish the damn story!’
Sometimes, I go and google up the word in an online dictionary. Sometimes, I run down my address book, to check if there’s somebody whom I could randomly call or email, to see if they’d help me with word-meanings.
And sometimes, I just content myself by telling unsuspecting bibliophiles - ‘Read this, read this; get a translation. Is there a translation? There should be a translation; why doesn’t somebody do a translation?’
All the same, it has become impossible to read with the old fluency of thought. Maybe I should just translate something and exorcise the ghost, once and for all.
I am reading, but in fits and starts, as if I have lost the art of being absorbed. Or at least, of being absorbed in a linear, narrative fashion… I get fascinated by an idea, then I let go. I grasp again, cling, flounder, tentatively touch, but then, float away.
I go away from a book, but return a month later. I run beside one author, but abruptly abandon him/her, change tracks and start running with another. This is guilt-inducing – because I usually don’t leave authors in the lurch; I’m a faithful reader. Or was, until now.
Now, it is impossible to become one with a book; my whole brain refuses to be dragged into the experience of reading. Part of the problem is being bilingual.
It all started when I began to read Hindi literature seriously again, some time last year.
As a result of being more or less equally fluent in both English and Hindustani (my real mother-tongue is Hindustani, which is neither pure Hindi nor pure Urdu, but a colloquial mixture of the two), there’s this corner of my mind that begins to translate it back to me. Hindi to English.
This corner of my mind is busy translating simultaneously. Each word, each sentence - this corner pokes at it, picks it up as if it was a curio and then translates it into another language, to make it a souvenir.
This corner wants to feel the intricacies, the fine-ness of the ideas, in another tongue. I like to wrap my mind around the words and turn them over and over until they’re something else, and yet, the same.
Sometimes, I even go from English to Hindi. Especially when the book has an Indian context. The bilingual corner of my brain immediately begins to wonder how this would sound in Hindustani: would it sound better? Worse? More natural? Would this narrative sound as if this could be any place, in any other nation, if I put these thoughts into English? Would the flow be more delicate, the language more impactful, in Hindustani? Suppose you mixed up the two?
Most recently, this habit has transcended books with an Indian context. I find myself trying to translate Orhan Pamuk and Murakami into Hindustani – just to see if it works.
Unfortunately, this means that there’s a one-second time lag between one part of my brain and the other. Sometimes, I get stuck, because the part of my brain that is translating is stuck for a word or appropriate idiomatic transformation. It gets larger and more assertive and refuses to let me read further, until I can solve its bilingual dilemma.
Sometimes, I must take a firm stand and yell at the corner – ‘I don’t care what this means in English, okay? I want to finish the damn story!’
Sometimes, I go and google up the word in an online dictionary. Sometimes, I run down my address book, to check if there’s somebody whom I could randomly call or email, to see if they’d help me with word-meanings.
And sometimes, I just content myself by telling unsuspecting bibliophiles - ‘Read this, read this; get a translation. Is there a translation? There should be a translation; why doesn’t somebody do a translation?’
All the same, it has become impossible to read with the old fluency of thought. Maybe I should just translate something and exorcise the ghost, once and for all.
A story
I'd come across this story weeks ago. It's worth reading. It's worth replicating.
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/mar242006/she105642006324.asp
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/mar242006/she105642006324.asp
Thursday, April 20, 2006
excuses, excuses
Since people have begun to ask, I had better post something about where I am and what keeps me from blogging (though I must confess that I have also been wondering and testing the issue of how long it takes before bloggers start wondering about where another blogger is, and why the blog is silent... it took nearly three weeks.)
Anyway, the blog is silent because I am not in India at the moment. I'm at Stirling University, UK, and will be here for another couple of months, thanks to a residency offered by the Charles Wallace India Trust... which is no reason to abandon the blog. Some friends suggest that it is all the more reason why I should blog - new stuff, new country, new eyes.
But the thing is - this blog has a persona, an identity of her own.
Known Turf has never been a 'personal' blog, yes, I do believe that the personal is public and the public is personal, but I have rarely written about my life, my feelings - unless it was in the context of my work. Known Turf is the result of my experiences on the reporting field, the discovering my own country and people, smaller and larger issues of social concern, media debates...
and well, also about chai (but that is only because chai is an issue of great social import. And while I am on the subject, I might as well say that I have a peculiar longing for extra-sweet, extra-strong, thick and full-bodied chai, which is impossible to get anywhere except at street corners in Bombay, where the tea-leaves are boiled for at least an hour... here, I manage by boiling tea-bags - yes, you can get a reasonably strong brew if you boil two dainty English Breakfast tea bags, for a good ten minutes - am wise enough not to attempt buying ready-made tea from a cafe.... and oh, there's an advertisement for Tetley Extra-strong which I totally love: a hefty, middle-aged lady is held up, horizontally, by three young men with big muscles, smiling faint but determined smiles. Winking, the lady advocates the virtues of 'extra-strong' tea. Must try it next.)
But what I'm trying to say is - Known Turf is the record of what I see, wonder at, grow thoughtful about, fail to understand, want to change - but only when I looking outward, especially in my own country.
Over here, my life is turned inward... I don't step out much, or travel much, or even talk to people all that much.
I'm still keeping a record of living and thinking and wondering etc - but am not sure if I want to blog all of it (though I get tempted sometimes - there is a certain amount of gratification that comes from writing and immediately being able to hit 'publish'). But I am not yet ready to make Known Turf a personal diary... so the likelihood of updates happening is not high.
I may change my mind, though... and if I do... well, either your bloglines account will inform you of the change. Or, just keep coming back here every week or so, to check.
PS - for the reader who asked me about the Jesustan Diaries: I do know that the said blogger is alive, but I don't know why he isn't updating. To the best of my knowledge, he does not have another blog. But it is possible - if and when he chooses to tell me, I'll post the link.
Anyway, the blog is silent because I am not in India at the moment. I'm at Stirling University, UK, and will be here for another couple of months, thanks to a residency offered by the Charles Wallace India Trust... which is no reason to abandon the blog. Some friends suggest that it is all the more reason why I should blog - new stuff, new country, new eyes.
But the thing is - this blog has a persona, an identity of her own.
Known Turf has never been a 'personal' blog, yes, I do believe that the personal is public and the public is personal, but I have rarely written about my life, my feelings - unless it was in the context of my work. Known Turf is the result of my experiences on the reporting field, the discovering my own country and people, smaller and larger issues of social concern, media debates...
and well, also about chai (but that is only because chai is an issue of great social import. And while I am on the subject, I might as well say that I have a peculiar longing for extra-sweet, extra-strong, thick and full-bodied chai, which is impossible to get anywhere except at street corners in Bombay, where the tea-leaves are boiled for at least an hour... here, I manage by boiling tea-bags - yes, you can get a reasonably strong brew if you boil two dainty English Breakfast tea bags, for a good ten minutes - am wise enough not to attempt buying ready-made tea from a cafe.... and oh, there's an advertisement for Tetley Extra-strong which I totally love: a hefty, middle-aged lady is held up, horizontally, by three young men with big muscles, smiling faint but determined smiles. Winking, the lady advocates the virtues of 'extra-strong' tea. Must try it next.)
But what I'm trying to say is - Known Turf is the record of what I see, wonder at, grow thoughtful about, fail to understand, want to change - but only when I looking outward, especially in my own country.
Over here, my life is turned inward... I don't step out much, or travel much, or even talk to people all that much.
I'm still keeping a record of living and thinking and wondering etc - but am not sure if I want to blog all of it (though I get tempted sometimes - there is a certain amount of gratification that comes from writing and immediately being able to hit 'publish'). But I am not yet ready to make Known Turf a personal diary... so the likelihood of updates happening is not high.
I may change my mind, though... and if I do... well, either your bloglines account will inform you of the change. Or, just keep coming back here every week or so, to check.
PS - for the reader who asked me about the Jesustan Diaries: I do know that the said blogger is alive, but I don't know why he isn't updating. To the best of my knowledge, he does not have another blog. But it is possible - if and when he chooses to tell me, I'll post the link.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Will somebody please sit up and take notice?
This is a mail I received from an activist with the Samajwadi Jan Parishad, in Betul, Madhya Pradesh (I am reproducing it, sic, below) and I'm wondering what to make of it because, despite all the talk of a victory of sorts in the Jessica Lal case, thanks to a media-supported campaign, I see no sign of a report in the national dailies in Delhi, which might have prompted some action.
And to think that these are journalists getting murdered... whither solidarity?
A LONE WITEENESS TO JOURNALIST'S MURDER SHOT DEAD
Betul, March 11, 2006
Within a week of framing the charges in the journalist's murder, today the main and the only eye witness has been shot dead in bright day light at point blank range in Betul city of M. P. The bureau chief of Hindi Daily Raj Express was lynched in his office in Betul on 13th September2005. The witness Manoj Arya had, many times, complained to the police that there was a threat to his life, but he was not provided with any security. The same Journalist had expressed his apprehension to police before his murder but he was not taken seriously.
While lot of heat is being generated by Jesica Lal case, this murder of a lone whiteness to journalist's murder has exposed corrupt nexuses between police and criminals. Samajwadi Jan Parishad demands immediate action in the matter and action against erring police officer. SJP also demand overhauling of Criminal Justice System.
And to think that these are journalists getting murdered... whither solidarity?
A LONE WITEENESS TO JOURNALIST'S MURDER SHOT DEAD
Betul, March 11, 2006
Within a week of framing the charges in the journalist's murder, today the main and the only eye witness has been shot dead in bright day light at point blank range in Betul city of M. P. The bureau chief of Hindi Daily Raj Express was lynched in his office in Betul on 13th September2005. The witness Manoj Arya had, many times, complained to the police that there was a threat to his life, but he was not provided with any security. The same Journalist had expressed his apprehension to police before his murder but he was not taken seriously.
While lot of heat is being generated by Jesica Lal case, this murder of a lone whiteness to journalist's murder has exposed corrupt nexuses between police and criminals. Samajwadi Jan Parishad demands immediate action in the matter and action against erring police officer. SJP also demand overhauling of Criminal Justice System.
Blood for belief?
My grandmother used to say 'qayamat se daro' (Or maybe she didn't; maybe it was some other grand-maternal figure in the family). She taught me to fear the Day of Judgment, when we're confronted with ourselves : that truly is qayamat... What we did, didn't do, should have done, and wanted to do.
I must confess that I don't believe in an apocalypse, or a final confrontation. I must also confess that if I'm wrong and grandma's right, then I don't look forward to giving an account of myself.
But, in times like these, when the 'judiciary' in Afghanistan thinks it can kill a man for converting to christianity... at times like these, I begin to wish for a day of final reckoning, now, so they could come face to face with a god, his messengers, or somebody who's THE authority.
Because, how, in god's name, can you justify the taking of life? Especially when a man's done nothing except admit that his beliefs have undergone a slight change? Not murdered, not abetted, not waged war, not abused children... all he did was convert.
How, how, how can anyone justify a death sentence?
How can you justify even wanting to pass that death sentence? How can you justify putting somebody on trial for a new set of beliefs? How can you call yourself a muslim, if you do so?
How can you forget that before Islam, there was Cristianity, and Judaism, and a thousand different kinds of faiths in the world? That every single person who took to Islam, must once have belonged to another religious community? Mohammad himself was not born into Islam; he created a new religion, and got a whole lot of others to convert.
If these Afghan 'judges' were to come face to face with Mohammad tonight, how would they justify ending a life, just because that life wanted to try a different route to finding god. How would they explain their greed for spilling blood?
Because that is all it is, finally.
I must confess that I don't believe in an apocalypse, or a final confrontation. I must also confess that if I'm wrong and grandma's right, then I don't look forward to giving an account of myself.
But, in times like these, when the 'judiciary' in Afghanistan thinks it can kill a man for converting to christianity... at times like these, I begin to wish for a day of final reckoning, now, so they could come face to face with a god, his messengers, or somebody who's THE authority.
Because, how, in god's name, can you justify the taking of life? Especially when a man's done nothing except admit that his beliefs have undergone a slight change? Not murdered, not abetted, not waged war, not abused children... all he did was convert.
How, how, how can anyone justify a death sentence?
How can you justify even wanting to pass that death sentence? How can you justify putting somebody on trial for a new set of beliefs? How can you call yourself a muslim, if you do so?
How can you forget that before Islam, there was Cristianity, and Judaism, and a thousand different kinds of faiths in the world? That every single person who took to Islam, must once have belonged to another religious community? Mohammad himself was not born into Islam; he created a new religion, and got a whole lot of others to convert.
If these Afghan 'judges' were to come face to face with Mohammad tonight, how would they justify ending a life, just because that life wanted to try a different route to finding god. How would they explain their greed for spilling blood?
Because that is all it is, finally.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
When in trouble, blame the blog
And now, Judith Miller blames the bloggers too!
Them, and a lot of other people... But seriously, now who's slandering whom, I'd like to know.
Miller describes to Vanity Fair the process by which the Pajama People destroyed her:
The bloggers were without editing, without a way for people to understand what was good, what was well reported—to distinguish between the straight and the slanderous. Things would get instantly picked up, magnified, and volumized.
The bloggers were without editing, without a way for people to understand what was good, what was well reported—to distinguish between the straight and the slanderous. Things would get instantly picked up, magnified, and volumized.
In Miller's mind, the bloggers not only poisoned her relationship with the Times brass but also with her colleagues, who, she says, "believed what they read on the blogs."
Them, and a lot of other people... But seriously, now who's slandering whom, I'd like to know.
This is how you show some respect
Now this is how a government deals properly with women, if it wants to treat them with respect.
To me, the act - of letting strippers take meal breaks and a weekly day off - is a strong indicator that this country, or at least the majority of her people, respect the women who may choose to strip for a living.
In the process, it sends out a signal that everybody has the right to choose their own livelihoods, without facing moral umbrage from those who do not wish to make their livelihoods in the same way. It also helps organise a sector, however small the numbers of workers involved, letting them know that their rights are worth protecting, and that they are valuable as workers and citizens.
Compare and contrast this with our own Maharashtra government's decision to ban dancing bars altogether, thereby depriving thousands of women of their livelihood. Such blatant disregard... such an impoverished sense of right and wrong.
To me, the act - of letting strippers take meal breaks and a weekly day off - is a strong indicator that this country, or at least the majority of her people, respect the women who may choose to strip for a living.
In the process, it sends out a signal that everybody has the right to choose their own livelihoods, without facing moral umbrage from those who do not wish to make their livelihoods in the same way. It also helps organise a sector, however small the numbers of workers involved, letting them know that their rights are worth protecting, and that they are valuable as workers and citizens.
Compare and contrast this with our own Maharashtra government's decision to ban dancing bars altogether, thereby depriving thousands of women of their livelihood. Such blatant disregard... such an impoverished sense of right and wrong.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Links and meets
Two spaces I've been meaning to link to, for a while now.
How The Other Half Lives
For some good writing and some significant questions,
Tattletale
for some exceptional writing by someone I'm proud to call a close friend.
In other news, Neha - of Desipundit and Within/Without fame, is going to be in town this weekend, and there's a blogmeet happening. I am not in town, unfortunately, but am sure the others will turn up in droves for coffee and conversation.
How The Other Half Lives
For some good writing and some significant questions,
Tattletale
for some exceptional writing by someone I'm proud to call a close friend.
In other news, Neha - of Desipundit and Within/Without fame, is going to be in town this weekend, and there's a blogmeet happening. I am not in town, unfortunately, but am sure the others will turn up in droves for coffee and conversation.
Friday, March 10, 2006
rimjhim-rimjhim
When rows upon rows of cycle-rickshaw-wale lie curled up on the passenger seat of their blue rickshaws, head and shoulders swallowed by their dusty gamchhas, at 11 in the late morning...
toh samajh lo, dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
When white china roses, growing a few feet from the ring road, who've spent February refusing to sit up and take notice of the spring, suddenly sit up straight on their delicate stalks, each petal achingly poised like a butterfly wing waiting to be painted upon...
toh samajh lo, dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
When your chin turns out, and up, to meet the gulpworthy crisp air...
toh samajh lo, dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
When there's traffic jammed on both sides of a railways crossing, but no horns are blaring and no faces are frowning....
toh samajh lo, dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
Dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
toh samajh lo, dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
When white china roses, growing a few feet from the ring road, who've spent February refusing to sit up and take notice of the spring, suddenly sit up straight on their delicate stalks, each petal achingly poised like a butterfly wing waiting to be painted upon...
toh samajh lo, dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
When your chin turns out, and up, to meet the gulpworthy crisp air...
toh samajh lo, dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
When there's traffic jammed on both sides of a railways crossing, but no horns are blaring and no faces are frowning....
toh samajh lo, dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
Dilli mein raat baarish hui hai.
If, when... and until then
Yesterday, I was filled with a deep, deep sense of despair.
Never, in recent memory, have I felt this numb, this deflated. As I read, account after account, after abusive account - from women and men and the children we have been - I was engulfed by a frozen sort of exhaustion.
Account after abusive account on Blank Noise led to more windows opening up into my own memory - this happened to me too, at ages six, eight, nine, ten, eighteen, fifteen, twenty-five.... all of this and more. That man, that place...
Writing the last post, I had thought I was making the token gesture - how difficult could it be to speak up, anyway? If I can live it, I can talk about it.
Talk about something that's choking our gender-divisive culture, something that is making monsters of us when it comes to sexual attitudes and liberties.
When the comments started pouring in, I was a little overwhelmed. Then the downpour became a deluge, and now, I am very quiet, very sad.
Because... that these 'strategies' I had written of, in part-horror, part-rage, with a sense of bitter irony, should be taken as 100% serious advice.... could anything be sadder than that?
One part of me wants to un-read it all - all those hundreds of stories here, in the comments and those entries for the blog-a-thon. As if un-reading it, could undo it.
But for all that, I have more to say.
If we're going to build a serious debate around this issue of abuse (please let's give 'eve-teasing' a grand burial right now. This minute. The word has no significance, no relevance, no place in our experience), we need to talk beyond the rage, beyond the sharing, beyond the opinions.
Because if we stop here, then we might as well have never started.
The first thing we have to deal with is the definition and scope of 'harrassment'.
We may recognize that each individual has different needs for personal space and different perceptions of appropriate behaviour, BUT if we're going to take a legal stand, insist upon pan-Indian, or even global standard of behaviour as a norm, we're going to need specifics.
Is staring/ ogling/ checking out/ leching wrong?
I don't think so.
Does it make me uncomfortable?
Yes.
A man leering at you through the evening can ruin your party. But I also recognize that this bothers me more in situations where I know the leer can easily turn into a grope.
Besides, there are many occassions on which I have 'checked out' members of the oposite sex (no pun intended, she says, biting down a smile). I want to continue to have the right to look at men, appreciatively or just to guage the attraction quotient. Men have the same rights, then.
Is whistling, passing comments, singing songs wrong?
No.
Does it annoy me, as a woman?
Sometimes.
But I recognize that the man is not phycially or psychologically damaging me in any way, and so he has a right to whistle, sing or comment.
EXCEPT when the words turn abusive or sexully violent. Verbal violence is punishable by law. Threats are punishable by law, and there is no reason a woman(or man) should have to hear any.
Is touching wrong?
Yes.
When you touch a another person without his/her permission, you run the risk of violating the person. If you touch them in places that are - in normative terms - regarded as sexual areas, therefore off-limits for those who do not have sexual rights over you, this person will be perfectly justified in snarling, snapping, slapping or otherwise reacting violently to your gesture. You could also be punished for it legally, though we - as a society - must come to some sort of agreement about what punitive action is fair, or deterrant enough. (One blogger - I'm confused about who - suggested community service. Picking up trash. Scavenging. I think that's not a bad idea, actually.)
I also believe that we Indians already recognize this, cultural conditioning be damned!
That is why there are many more incidents of feeling up/groping/pinching in crowded places like buses, trains, bazaars, footpaths - where it would be hard to pin blame, where one can pretend it was all an accident. That is also why men will take fewer chances if a woman is accompanied by a man, but will grope and pinch with alacrity if they're in a big group themselves.
Is following/stalking wrong?
Yes.
I have not figured out the precise definitions for this, but legally, at least, there is a precedent for disallowing stalking. (And we really must learn to use the word 'stalking' instead of 'following', which sounds like a benign sort of thing a cute puppy-dog might do, when he isn't nipping at your ankles.)
Is propositioning wrong?
I don't know.
We are swimming in slightly murky waters here. Almost all relationships begin with a proposition of some sort. (This, incidentally, is the same line adopted by every single stranger who has come up to me with a proposition for 'friendship') Almost all of us have accepted some propositions at least partially, tentatively, from some trusted people.
I personally do not blame the stranger who walks up to me, saying he wants to have sex, or offers to 'buy' me. He is only asking me a question. I find it offensive - but I think we, as women, must also learn to question the reasons for our taking offense at such a question. Why are we so insulted if somebody equates us with, or treats us like, a prostitute?
(Speaking for myself, I find it equally offensive when I am asked my religion while entering a temple or a mosque, or filling up a government form. In all honesty, I think the latter is a far more dangerous question).
But when I have said 'no', and this stranger persists in making his offer, it does amount to harrassment. Then, I have the right to tell him to get lost. If he doesn't listen, I have the right to drag him to the law enforcement authority.
Which brings us to the cops.
The police is known to be unsympathetic. I think we should lobby for the police to be especially trained in dealing with instances of harrassment and I also think that the women's cell of the police should be prepared for complaints against their colleagues who fail to treat a victim of sexual harrassment as they should. The battle will be uphill at first, but a few prosecutions should set a precedent. Precedents are good weapons.
And yes, I believe training and counselling does help.
I have been to a police station alone in Delhi - fighting off my own instinctive misgivings - and have found at least one bunch of officials to be polite and non-lecherous, even though they may not have been as quick and efficient as I want them to be. I was later told that some sections of Delhi police have been slowly workshopped into behaving with a modicum of courtesy. If this is true, bless the workshoppers.
Some people have spoken of clothes and the impact they have on harrassment.
From personal experience, I know there is no direct correlation.
The first incident I mentioned, when I was 13, occurred when I was in frilly frocks and still had ribbons in my hair. Almost all later incidents have happened when I have been in shalwaars and full-sleeved kameezes.
Strangely, the rare times when I have stepped out wearing short skirts and tank tops, men have kept a slight distance. I fail to understand this paradox. But I do have a hypothesis -
When I am wearing a short skirt in public, I give out a signal. That I am not meek. I'm not your regular bhartiya naari and that you cannot count on my being a placid, accepting victim.
Many more men stare at bare shoulders, bare legs... many more women stare too. But, in my limited experience, few men dare to touch a woman they're shocked by.
And yet, knowing this, I find myself hesitating. Worrying.
I bring out my short, revealing clothes every week, try them on and put them back in the cupboard. This is not because I will attract potential molesters. This is because I know that IF there is an attempt, I will be held responsible. I will hear 'but look at what she's wearing'.
I do this because my own women-friends come up with quasi-insulting statements like 'you don't like clothes, do you?'. Because I've been told that there's a time and place for every dress; high heels and bare shoulders are only okay if you're at a private party, amongst friends and are getting picked up and dropped off in a private car.
I've been told and I cannot shake off the fear that IF something goes wrong, I will be humiliated even further by allegations that I was 'asking for it'.
THIS fear is what we have to counter.
We begin by watching our own tongues. When we see a girl in a mini-skirt in the train or in the vegetable market, we stop saying 'ohmygod! what's wrong with her?'. We have to stop telling each other 'your bra strap is showing'. (It's only an effing strap! Give me one good reason why it should not show?)
Sure, the change will take time. But the change must come from us. From everybody who believes that a person has the right to not be molested, whatever the circumstances.
Some other men mentioned feeling ashamed. They are angry that all women view them with suspicion, contempt and fear.
All I can say, is - the burnt child dreads the fire.
Or like we say, doodh ka jalaa chhaas ko bhi phook-phoonk ke peeta hai.
Besides, the nice men are in a bit of a minority. I can recount more than ten incidents of harrassment, right now, without having to dig into the darker recesses of memory. Listening to other women, I'd say that ratio is fairly average. If there are ten wrong-doers for every one victim.... you do the math.
Can you imagine the scale of this gender's collective fear? Where is the room for rational behaviour, or trust?
Yes, this too can change.
For every man that tries to grope me, if there are five men stopping him, it will change.
For every small gang that roams the streets looking for somebody to harrass, if there are two small gangs on the lookout to protect, it will change.
For every woman in an oversize t-shirt, walking with a file across her chest, if there are a hundred who refuse to cover up, refuse to de-sex their persona, refuse to slouch, it will change.
For every family that tells a daughter 'don't go out alone at night', if there are fifty families who send their girls out at night, armed with the determination to have fun and the confidence that they're not going to be the only women out alone, it will change.
For every woman who scurries past, head bowed, if there are ten who strut, and smile at nothing and everything, it will change.
When we have men and women talking to each other without being censured for it,
when boys in school are taught to take permission before touching women,
when girls in school are taught that it is okay to give this permission, if they want to,
when both genders can interact without fear of ostracism or moral policing,
it will change.
Until then, I leave you with these lines by Dushyant Kumar :
"sirf hangama khadaa karna meraa maqsad nahin
meri koshish ye hai, ki ye surat badalani chahiye.
mere seene me.n nahin to tere seene me.n sahi
ho kahin bhi aag, lekin aag jalni chaahiye"
[My purpose is not to simply create a furor
this attempt is to try and change our situation.
And if not in my breast, then let it be in yours -
it doesn't matter where, but the fire must burn]
Let's keep this fire burning.
Never, in recent memory, have I felt this numb, this deflated. As I read, account after account, after abusive account - from women and men and the children we have been - I was engulfed by a frozen sort of exhaustion.
Account after abusive account on Blank Noise led to more windows opening up into my own memory - this happened to me too, at ages six, eight, nine, ten, eighteen, fifteen, twenty-five.... all of this and more. That man, that place...
Writing the last post, I had thought I was making the token gesture - how difficult could it be to speak up, anyway? If I can live it, I can talk about it.
Talk about something that's choking our gender-divisive culture, something that is making monsters of us when it comes to sexual attitudes and liberties.
When the comments started pouring in, I was a little overwhelmed. Then the downpour became a deluge, and now, I am very quiet, very sad.
Because... that these 'strategies' I had written of, in part-horror, part-rage, with a sense of bitter irony, should be taken as 100% serious advice.... could anything be sadder than that?
One part of me wants to un-read it all - all those hundreds of stories here, in the comments and those entries for the blog-a-thon. As if un-reading it, could undo it.
But for all that, I have more to say.
If we're going to build a serious debate around this issue of abuse (please let's give 'eve-teasing' a grand burial right now. This minute. The word has no significance, no relevance, no place in our experience), we need to talk beyond the rage, beyond the sharing, beyond the opinions.
Because if we stop here, then we might as well have never started.
The first thing we have to deal with is the definition and scope of 'harrassment'.
We may recognize that each individual has different needs for personal space and different perceptions of appropriate behaviour, BUT if we're going to take a legal stand, insist upon pan-Indian, or even global standard of behaviour as a norm, we're going to need specifics.
Is staring/ ogling/ checking out/ leching wrong?
I don't think so.
Does it make me uncomfortable?
Yes.
A man leering at you through the evening can ruin your party. But I also recognize that this bothers me more in situations where I know the leer can easily turn into a grope.
Besides, there are many occassions on which I have 'checked out' members of the oposite sex (no pun intended, she says, biting down a smile). I want to continue to have the right to look at men, appreciatively or just to guage the attraction quotient. Men have the same rights, then.
Is whistling, passing comments, singing songs wrong?
No.
Does it annoy me, as a woman?
Sometimes.
But I recognize that the man is not phycially or psychologically damaging me in any way, and so he has a right to whistle, sing or comment.
EXCEPT when the words turn abusive or sexully violent. Verbal violence is punishable by law. Threats are punishable by law, and there is no reason a woman(or man) should have to hear any.
Is touching wrong?
Yes.
When you touch a another person without his/her permission, you run the risk of violating the person. If you touch them in places that are - in normative terms - regarded as sexual areas, therefore off-limits for those who do not have sexual rights over you, this person will be perfectly justified in snarling, snapping, slapping or otherwise reacting violently to your gesture. You could also be punished for it legally, though we - as a society - must come to some sort of agreement about what punitive action is fair, or deterrant enough. (One blogger - I'm confused about who - suggested community service. Picking up trash. Scavenging. I think that's not a bad idea, actually.)
I also believe that we Indians already recognize this, cultural conditioning be damned!
That is why there are many more incidents of feeling up/groping/pinching in crowded places like buses, trains, bazaars, footpaths - where it would be hard to pin blame, where one can pretend it was all an accident. That is also why men will take fewer chances if a woman is accompanied by a man, but will grope and pinch with alacrity if they're in a big group themselves.
Is following/stalking wrong?
Yes.
I have not figured out the precise definitions for this, but legally, at least, there is a precedent for disallowing stalking. (And we really must learn to use the word 'stalking' instead of 'following', which sounds like a benign sort of thing a cute puppy-dog might do, when he isn't nipping at your ankles.)
Is propositioning wrong?
I don't know.
We are swimming in slightly murky waters here. Almost all relationships begin with a proposition of some sort. (This, incidentally, is the same line adopted by every single stranger who has come up to me with a proposition for 'friendship') Almost all of us have accepted some propositions at least partially, tentatively, from some trusted people.
I personally do not blame the stranger who walks up to me, saying he wants to have sex, or offers to 'buy' me. He is only asking me a question. I find it offensive - but I think we, as women, must also learn to question the reasons for our taking offense at such a question. Why are we so insulted if somebody equates us with, or treats us like, a prostitute?
(Speaking for myself, I find it equally offensive when I am asked my religion while entering a temple or a mosque, or filling up a government form. In all honesty, I think the latter is a far more dangerous question).
But when I have said 'no', and this stranger persists in making his offer, it does amount to harrassment. Then, I have the right to tell him to get lost. If he doesn't listen, I have the right to drag him to the law enforcement authority.
Which brings us to the cops.
The police is known to be unsympathetic. I think we should lobby for the police to be especially trained in dealing with instances of harrassment and I also think that the women's cell of the police should be prepared for complaints against their colleagues who fail to treat a victim of sexual harrassment as they should. The battle will be uphill at first, but a few prosecutions should set a precedent. Precedents are good weapons.
And yes, I believe training and counselling does help.
I have been to a police station alone in Delhi - fighting off my own instinctive misgivings - and have found at least one bunch of officials to be polite and non-lecherous, even though they may not have been as quick and efficient as I want them to be. I was later told that some sections of Delhi police have been slowly workshopped into behaving with a modicum of courtesy. If this is true, bless the workshoppers.
Some people have spoken of clothes and the impact they have on harrassment.
From personal experience, I know there is no direct correlation.
The first incident I mentioned, when I was 13, occurred when I was in frilly frocks and still had ribbons in my hair. Almost all later incidents have happened when I have been in shalwaars and full-sleeved kameezes.
Strangely, the rare times when I have stepped out wearing short skirts and tank tops, men have kept a slight distance. I fail to understand this paradox. But I do have a hypothesis -
When I am wearing a short skirt in public, I give out a signal. That I am not meek. I'm not your regular bhartiya naari and that you cannot count on my being a placid, accepting victim.
Many more men stare at bare shoulders, bare legs... many more women stare too. But, in my limited experience, few men dare to touch a woman they're shocked by.
And yet, knowing this, I find myself hesitating. Worrying.
I bring out my short, revealing clothes every week, try them on and put them back in the cupboard. This is not because I will attract potential molesters. This is because I know that IF there is an attempt, I will be held responsible. I will hear 'but look at what she's wearing'.
I do this because my own women-friends come up with quasi-insulting statements like 'you don't like clothes, do you?'. Because I've been told that there's a time and place for every dress; high heels and bare shoulders are only okay if you're at a private party, amongst friends and are getting picked up and dropped off in a private car.
I've been told and I cannot shake off the fear that IF something goes wrong, I will be humiliated even further by allegations that I was 'asking for it'.
THIS fear is what we have to counter.
We begin by watching our own tongues. When we see a girl in a mini-skirt in the train or in the vegetable market, we stop saying 'ohmygod! what's wrong with her?'. We have to stop telling each other 'your bra strap is showing'. (It's only an effing strap! Give me one good reason why it should not show?)
Sure, the change will take time. But the change must come from us. From everybody who believes that a person has the right to not be molested, whatever the circumstances.
Some other men mentioned feeling ashamed. They are angry that all women view them with suspicion, contempt and fear.
All I can say, is - the burnt child dreads the fire.
Or like we say, doodh ka jalaa chhaas ko bhi phook-phoonk ke peeta hai.
Besides, the nice men are in a bit of a minority. I can recount more than ten incidents of harrassment, right now, without having to dig into the darker recesses of memory. Listening to other women, I'd say that ratio is fairly average. If there are ten wrong-doers for every one victim.... you do the math.
Can you imagine the scale of this gender's collective fear? Where is the room for rational behaviour, or trust?
Yes, this too can change.
For every man that tries to grope me, if there are five men stopping him, it will change.
For every small gang that roams the streets looking for somebody to harrass, if there are two small gangs on the lookout to protect, it will change.
For every woman in an oversize t-shirt, walking with a file across her chest, if there are a hundred who refuse to cover up, refuse to de-sex their persona, refuse to slouch, it will change.
For every family that tells a daughter 'don't go out alone at night', if there are fifty families who send their girls out at night, armed with the determination to have fun and the confidence that they're not going to be the only women out alone, it will change.
For every woman who scurries past, head bowed, if there are ten who strut, and smile at nothing and everything, it will change.
When we have men and women talking to each other without being censured for it,
when boys in school are taught to take permission before touching women,
when girls in school are taught that it is okay to give this permission, if they want to,
when both genders can interact without fear of ostracism or moral policing,
it will change.
Until then, I leave you with these lines by Dushyant Kumar :
"sirf hangama khadaa karna meraa maqsad nahin
meri koshish ye hai, ki ye surat badalani chahiye.
mere seene me.n nahin to tere seene me.n sahi
ho kahin bhi aag, lekin aag jalni chaahiye"
[My purpose is not to simply create a furor
this attempt is to try and change our situation.
And if not in my breast, then let it be in yours -
it doesn't matter where, but the fire must burn]
Let's keep this fire burning.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Streets, stories, strategies
I had my doubts about blogging this - writing about street harassment. After all, it's as common-place as paan stains, as ubiquitous as spit.... Will my saying 'NO' to harrassment prevent it? How does telling my stories serve any purpose?
But while discussing the Blank Noise Project with a male friend (who has never maaro-ed seeti, never chhedo-fied, never sung lewd songs, never felt up, pinched, grabbed any part of any woman), he told me: "How do you know? Some teenaged boy somewhere reads this and decides not to molest women... you never know." For men like him, I write this.
Some things, you learn to expect, growing up a girl.
You expect to confront harrassment as surely as the sun in May and the fog in a Delhi December.
When you leave the house, an invisible snake of alert suspicion will wind down from your shoulders down your back and become a clenched fist in all public spaces, through all journeys.
How optimistic you're feeling about man-kind, on any given day, determines whether you take a bus home, or just hop into an auto, or a cab, knowing you cannot really afford it. If you really cannot afford an auto some day, you will not take the bus at rush-hour.
You'll let bus after bus after bus go past. Waiting is tiresome. But waiting is easier than bristling.
You didn't always expect to do this, of course. One learns these things, by and by.
I began learning in Bombay. Yes, that delightfully sprawling city that is so kind to its women.
My first lesson was delivered atop the railway bridge at Andheri station when I was 13 years old. My first visit to this city by the sea. The first brush with the overspilling local trains. The first time someone grabbed my 13-year old breast.
After all these years, I cannot forget - his face pudgy, more fair than dark, moustache, white shirt, briefcase in hand, big belly, must have been about 40. Old enough to be my father. I remember he had walked into me - or pretended to - and while I struggled with the shock of what he'd been doing under the guise of walking into me, he calmly walked away... Just a regular uncle-ji hurrying home after a hard day at work.
What did I do?
Nothing. I kept walking, alongside my brother.... My 17-year old brother who might have picked a fight if I'd told him.... What could I have told him?...
It was too late anyway. The crowds had swallowed all of us so completely.
Some things, you learn to expect (though relief is always unexpected).
Therefore, you will be very pleasantly surprised when a man takes the seat next to you, and actually leaves two inches breathing space between you, instead of pushing so close that the windowpane leaves marks on your forearm.... All the same, old habits die hard, and you will spend the journey with a clenched fist balled up somewhere in your shoulderblades, because, you never know when he'll start acting up, do you?
You will also feel miserable when the well-behaved one gets down two stops before yours - it's too much to expect two well-behaved men sitting next to you on a single trip.
But no matter how much you steel yourself to it, sometimes, you will still get reduced to tears.
Seven years later, again in Bombay, after swearing to travel only in the ladies compartment of the local train, I learnt yet another lesson: some 'ladies' compartments turn into a free-for-all feel-up-jam-session after nine o'clock at night.
Suddenly, there were men's crotches pressing into my face, my knees and my shoulders. I stood up and fought my way to the door. Only to be surrounded by half a dozen men offering to 'get me out safely'. As the train stopped, half a dozen men got on, half a dozen got off. Trapped between them for a few seconds, I lost count of how many hands felt me up.
I cried tears of rage - if only that train hadn't moved away. I wanted badly to drag at least one of them off that train and smash his skull on the nearest railway track.
Some things, you get used to. Like rage.
Your ears will be whispered into, your behind will be touched. Songs will be sung...
You will learn to laugh. Humour is a great self-defence tool.
For instance, when a boy calls out 'good morning, madam' on a busy street crossing, I laugh it off.
When a boy follows me from my office everyday, offering to marry me, I laugh it off.
When silly men accost me on the streets and demand to 'make friendship', refusing to take 'no' for an answer, offer me lifts, I laugh it off.
When somebody calls me 'taazaa malaai', 'mirchi', 'badhiya maal', 'chhammak-chhallo', 'lassun-pyaaz' (yes, even that!), I shake my head and laugh it off.
Over the years, I even learnt to focus on the merits of the songs being sung/whistled, thinking about the musical tastes of the modern roadside romeo, instead of the intent behind the singing or whistling.
But when I am walking home at night and a car full of drunk men slows down, I cannot laugh. I can only seek relief in the other car coming down the road. If that car also turns out to be full of drunk men who also slow down near me... it is hard to keep up a sense of humour all the time.
Five years ago, once again in Bombay, I lost my humour and learnt not to NOT do anything. At Andheri station, again, for the first time, I used violence.
A man asked me 'how much?'.
I tried to walk past quickly.
He asked me a second time. 'How much?'
I took a step forward, then stepped backward, swung around, and threw a punch.
He looked very surprised and asked 'what did I do?'
I didn't stay to explain. That night, my fist was swollen. I'd never seriously hit anyone before.
The next time two times I punched men, it was at railway stations in Bombay. In both instances, I didn't hit out immediately. It was only when they persisted a second or third time, despite my obvious disinterest.
The third time was in Kathmandu, outside a movie hall. The man touched me three times before I finally lost it. He began by protesting - 'I didn't do anything' - and ended by saying 'sorry, sister'.
(Bless his poor sister, if he has one; I wouldn't want to be in her shoes.)
Some things, you learn. Some things are shaken and scolded into you. For example:
When walking, don't think. If you get lost in your own internal world, somebody or the other might misinterpret this as an invitation to grab some piece of you.
You stay alert. Not glaring at every passerby suspiciously can be interpreated as an invitation.
When walking, don't take quieter, narrower lanes which are more picturesque and less polluted. Those are pretty much reserved for the goonda-types and 'eve-teasers' of the city.
When walking past a parked car with the engine idling and man/men sitting inside it, step aside and put at least four feet between you and the car's doors ... don't you read the newspapers?
When lost, don't roll down the car windows all the way while asking for directions. Ask women and chowkidaars for directions, preferably.
Try not to park in basement parkings zone, if alone.
When in public - don't sing, don't smile, don't swing your arms, or your hips. It is better to wear a frown on the streets, along with mouth that looks like it can chew your head off, spewing some rather choice invective, if bothered.
Learn filthy abuse; use it.
When something is lost/stolen, don't go to the police station alone.
If propositioned in a dark, lonely spot, do not slap or insult. In a low, pleasant voice, say you're already engaged. If cornered in a really dark, really lonely spot, give him a fake name, fake phone number.
When accosted by a cop, tell him your dad/grandad/uncle is a senior cop.
If there are less than six people in a bus, don't get on. From Churchgate, at night, don't travel in Ladies first class. From Andheri, early in the morning, don't take the Ladies first class.
Don't hitchhike.
Don't sit alone by the sea for more than ten minutes.
Stop thinking about watching the sun rise over a field, all by yourself.
Stop thinking about long, leafy walks that lead nowhere.
Stop wondering how the streets looks at midnight, after a drizzle.
Stop... I don't know where, if, and how, this will stop. But I hope it does.
There is another aspect to this that I can't help thinking about: it creates a never-ending trap of dependence that many men resent equally.
We women depend - are taught to depend, are left with no option but to depend - on men for our safety and survival.
We can go out, but with 'ghar ke ladke' to take care of us. The brother, husband, father, cousin or boys known to the family will escort us - to a movie, to a mall, to a party. At best, you might be able to manage if you're a big group of girls. But how many times can you walk around as girl-gangs?
We learn, consciously and sub-consciously, that we cannot do anything alone. And if we do, we're going to have wage war every inch of the way.
That lesson is etched in so deep that conceiving of 'life' alone is...
No wonder you need men. No wonder you need marriage. No wonder you cling to the man, because how will you manage alone?
But while discussing the Blank Noise Project with a male friend (who has never maaro-ed seeti, never chhedo-fied, never sung lewd songs, never felt up, pinched, grabbed any part of any woman), he told me: "How do you know? Some teenaged boy somewhere reads this and decides not to molest women... you never know." For men like him, I write this.
Some things, you learn to expect, growing up a girl.
You expect to confront harrassment as surely as the sun in May and the fog in a Delhi December.
When you leave the house, an invisible snake of alert suspicion will wind down from your shoulders down your back and become a clenched fist in all public spaces, through all journeys.
How optimistic you're feeling about man-kind, on any given day, determines whether you take a bus home, or just hop into an auto, or a cab, knowing you cannot really afford it. If you really cannot afford an auto some day, you will not take the bus at rush-hour.
You'll let bus after bus after bus go past. Waiting is tiresome. But waiting is easier than bristling.
You didn't always expect to do this, of course. One learns these things, by and by.
I began learning in Bombay. Yes, that delightfully sprawling city that is so kind to its women.
My first lesson was delivered atop the railway bridge at Andheri station when I was 13 years old. My first visit to this city by the sea. The first brush with the overspilling local trains. The first time someone grabbed my 13-year old breast.
After all these years, I cannot forget - his face pudgy, more fair than dark, moustache, white shirt, briefcase in hand, big belly, must have been about 40. Old enough to be my father. I remember he had walked into me - or pretended to - and while I struggled with the shock of what he'd been doing under the guise of walking into me, he calmly walked away... Just a regular uncle-ji hurrying home after a hard day at work.
What did I do?
Nothing. I kept walking, alongside my brother.... My 17-year old brother who might have picked a fight if I'd told him.... What could I have told him?...
It was too late anyway. The crowds had swallowed all of us so completely.
Some things, you learn to expect (though relief is always unexpected).
Therefore, you will be very pleasantly surprised when a man takes the seat next to you, and actually leaves two inches breathing space between you, instead of pushing so close that the windowpane leaves marks on your forearm.... All the same, old habits die hard, and you will spend the journey with a clenched fist balled up somewhere in your shoulderblades, because, you never know when he'll start acting up, do you?
You will also feel miserable when the well-behaved one gets down two stops before yours - it's too much to expect two well-behaved men sitting next to you on a single trip.
But no matter how much you steel yourself to it, sometimes, you will still get reduced to tears.
Seven years later, again in Bombay, after swearing to travel only in the ladies compartment of the local train, I learnt yet another lesson: some 'ladies' compartments turn into a free-for-all feel-up-jam-session after nine o'clock at night.
Suddenly, there were men's crotches pressing into my face, my knees and my shoulders. I stood up and fought my way to the door. Only to be surrounded by half a dozen men offering to 'get me out safely'. As the train stopped, half a dozen men got on, half a dozen got off. Trapped between them for a few seconds, I lost count of how many hands felt me up.
I cried tears of rage - if only that train hadn't moved away. I wanted badly to drag at least one of them off that train and smash his skull on the nearest railway track.
Some things, you get used to. Like rage.
Your ears will be whispered into, your behind will be touched. Songs will be sung...
You will learn to laugh. Humour is a great self-defence tool.
For instance, when a boy calls out 'good morning, madam' on a busy street crossing, I laugh it off.
When a boy follows me from my office everyday, offering to marry me, I laugh it off.
When silly men accost me on the streets and demand to 'make friendship', refusing to take 'no' for an answer, offer me lifts, I laugh it off.
When somebody calls me 'taazaa malaai', 'mirchi', 'badhiya maal', 'chhammak-chhallo', 'lassun-pyaaz' (yes, even that!), I shake my head and laugh it off.
Over the years, I even learnt to focus on the merits of the songs being sung/whistled, thinking about the musical tastes of the modern roadside romeo, instead of the intent behind the singing or whistling.
But when I am walking home at night and a car full of drunk men slows down, I cannot laugh. I can only seek relief in the other car coming down the road. If that car also turns out to be full of drunk men who also slow down near me... it is hard to keep up a sense of humour all the time.
Five years ago, once again in Bombay, I lost my humour and learnt not to NOT do anything. At Andheri station, again, for the first time, I used violence.
A man asked me 'how much?'.
I tried to walk past quickly.
He asked me a second time. 'How much?'
I took a step forward, then stepped backward, swung around, and threw a punch.
He looked very surprised and asked 'what did I do?'
I didn't stay to explain. That night, my fist was swollen. I'd never seriously hit anyone before.
The next time two times I punched men, it was at railway stations in Bombay. In both instances, I didn't hit out immediately. It was only when they persisted a second or third time, despite my obvious disinterest.
The third time was in Kathmandu, outside a movie hall. The man touched me three times before I finally lost it. He began by protesting - 'I didn't do anything' - and ended by saying 'sorry, sister'.
(Bless his poor sister, if he has one; I wouldn't want to be in her shoes.)
Some things, you learn. Some things are shaken and scolded into you. For example:
When walking, don't think. If you get lost in your own internal world, somebody or the other might misinterpret this as an invitation to grab some piece of you.
You stay alert. Not glaring at every passerby suspiciously can be interpreated as an invitation.
When walking, don't take quieter, narrower lanes which are more picturesque and less polluted. Those are pretty much reserved for the goonda-types and 'eve-teasers' of the city.
When walking past a parked car with the engine idling and man/men sitting inside it, step aside and put at least four feet between you and the car's doors ... don't you read the newspapers?
When lost, don't roll down the car windows all the way while asking for directions. Ask women and chowkidaars for directions, preferably.
Try not to park in basement parkings zone, if alone.
When in public - don't sing, don't smile, don't swing your arms, or your hips. It is better to wear a frown on the streets, along with mouth that looks like it can chew your head off, spewing some rather choice invective, if bothered.
Learn filthy abuse; use it.
When something is lost/stolen, don't go to the police station alone.
If propositioned in a dark, lonely spot, do not slap or insult. In a low, pleasant voice, say you're already engaged. If cornered in a really dark, really lonely spot, give him a fake name, fake phone number.
When accosted by a cop, tell him your dad/grandad/uncle is a senior cop.
If there are less than six people in a bus, don't get on. From Churchgate, at night, don't travel in Ladies first class. From Andheri, early in the morning, don't take the Ladies first class.
Don't hitchhike.
Don't sit alone by the sea for more than ten minutes.
Stop thinking about watching the sun rise over a field, all by yourself.
Stop thinking about long, leafy walks that lead nowhere.
Stop wondering how the streets looks at midnight, after a drizzle.
Stop... I don't know where, if, and how, this will stop. But I hope it does.
There is another aspect to this that I can't help thinking about: it creates a never-ending trap of dependence that many men resent equally.
We women depend - are taught to depend, are left with no option but to depend - on men for our safety and survival.
We can go out, but with 'ghar ke ladke' to take care of us. The brother, husband, father, cousin or boys known to the family will escort us - to a movie, to a mall, to a party. At best, you might be able to manage if you're a big group of girls. But how many times can you walk around as girl-gangs?
We learn, consciously and sub-consciously, that we cannot do anything alone. And if we do, we're going to have wage war every inch of the way.
That lesson is etched in so deep that conceiving of 'life' alone is...
No wonder you need men. No wonder you need marriage. No wonder you cling to the man, because how will you manage alone?
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Raj and my dilemmas
Ever since I met these women, I've been thinking about my 'bai'.
The maid, the maidservant, the domestic 'help', the domestic worker, the kaamwali, the 'ponchhewali', the bai - the one woman we can't do without.
Yes, we... all of us.
All of us have complained about this woman. I did my share of cribbing.
She didn't turn up on time. She didn't turn up at all. She borrows money all the time. She snoops. She gossips. She's asking for clothes. She's asking for more work. She is overpaid...
Her name is, let's say, Raj.
I do not have a close relationship with Raj. (She's my fourth, in a little over a year). Once in a while, she'll ask questions that I don't like answering, and my only defence is to start asking questions myself.
Where do you live? What does your husband do? How many children? The usual...
Raj tells me a story that's so familiar, I could just as easily have been talking to some other bai, in some other house, in some other city.
Husband doesn't work. She doesn't mind... if he works, he drinks; if he drinks, he spends, and beats her. Sitting at home, he's quieter.... Brother-in-law works as a painter - no regular income... Three kids. One daughter who gets fits, fevers.
The last time that happened, Raj took an advance on her salary. Since then, it's been one loan after another. For medicine. For her own landlords. For food.
Turns out, she doesn't have a shack of her own. Not even in a slum anywhere.
She used to live near a slum in Nehru Place. She even had a television set, some basic furniture. She could walk to work, or take a bus for Rs 2.
Then, the slum was demolished. The television set was broken by the bulldozers. And Raj was moved far away - to some resettlement colony, where she pays rent. She tells me no house was allotted to her family. There is no question of finding work in that area - nobody can afford it. So, she spends Rs 14 every day on bus tickets. That's Rs 420 a month. If she brings her daughter along, it's twice as much.
Raj must work in at least one house just to cover the cost of her commute! She needs to work for 3 others to be able to feed five other people (she always says 'five mouths to feed', I notice, never counting herself). Recently, she lost some work (I must admit that I have no sympathy for the latest; she claims to have quit work there, because 'all sorts of girls came... who knows if the man is even married to the woman...?')
Now, my dilemma is this:
I know Raj is paid the going rate, possibly more. We are paying her twice as much as some domestic workers get paid in Bombay.... but I also know she can barely survive. On the other hand, I cannot possibly afford to pay her more. I can give her small loans and forget about them... it's less than a good cup of coffee...
but I barely make enough to survive myself.
Yet, there's this core of disquiet somewhere inside me. Surely, all workers are entitled to minimum wages? Why isn't there a minimum wage for domestic workers?
I ought to pay Raj a minimum wage. On the other hand, a minimum wage is based upon a day's work. A woman breaks stones under a hot summer sun, for eight long hours, and only then is she entitled to Rs 70 a day, (or Rs 80 or Rs 95, depending on which state she's in).
How can I compare that to one hour of sweeping or washing clothes on alternate days?
Besides, a day-wage labourer works on a given site all day, while Raj works at 4 different houses. Maybe she does make the equivalent of a minimum wage, from all sources. Maybe more. I could only think along minimum-wage lines if she was what we call a 'live-in maid', or worked in my house from morning to evening.
There are very complex questions to contend with: How much is a fair wage?
How much should a woman be paid for sweeping one room?
What if the family lets her use a vacuum cleaner?
How much for dusting?
How much for sweeping everyday, and dusting once a week?
How much for doing a thorough spring-cleaning once a week?
Is this more difficult than the daily routine, or less?
Which is why I am terribly interested in these developments.
I am all for workers being organised and I am all for perks and benefits in addition to the basic pay, but the leaders of this union need to take a very close look at the various options open to them, before laying down their conditions. The demands seem, to me, to be paper-thin, and give rise to even more complex questions:
If I offer medical benefits - would that mean a built-in extra in the pay-package, as is the norm - or would it mean that I must reimburse medical bills for my bai and all her dependents. What if she has six children and an alcoholic husband? Am I responsible for ALL their hospital expenses?
If I allow a weekly day off (I do, incidentally), am I also allowed to cut pay when an extra day is taken as leave? What if there is a dispute? Will I have to maintain an attendence register? Will the bai sign in and sign out everyday? What if she is illiterate? Do I educate her? Is this part of my responsibility?
How much of a bonus do I give her? Based on what? If I give her a bonus, I have the right to stop giving 'baksheesh' on Diwali, and Eid, and Holi and every other festival, or don't I?
What if the bai brings her babies along? What if my house is too small to allow for kids to play about in it, without disrupting my work?
If there is no creche in my area, who is going to be responsible for the kids?
If my bai brings her daughter to work and makes her do half the work, do I have the right to tell her off, or don't I? The daughter is hers but the house is mine and I hired an adult, not a child. Can I accuse my bai of promoting child labour?
How can I fix 'regularised hours' when I don't work regular hours myself? If the employer leaves for work at 8 a.m., is it unfair to expect the domestic help to turn up at 7 a.m.?
I think the union leaders and the workers will have to think long and hard, before formulating the rules they want for themselves, and perhaps they should allow for a certain flexibility that the running of a household requires.
Limerick fun
This lady has a delightful take on the news and I've been meaning to link to her newsmericks blog for a while now.
I would also like to point to a hilarious thread of limericking banter, sparked off by one of Aparna's posts, on the subject of the blanket-ban on sex in the nude.
It begins with Aparna's:
It seems clerics are hotly debating
The right and wrong methods of mating!
Some have decreed it rude
To enjoy sex in the nude.
'Be modest, use a blanket', they are stating!
And sample this refreshingly honest one, by Manish Bhatt:
On nudity, the clerics might soften
And the debates might continue off-on
I say, then I repeats
I don't mind them sheets
As long as I can do it often.
There's other fun stuff there. Do go look, if you're limerickally inclined..
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Kathgulab
Kathgulab was not an easy book to read, and it is not an easy book to describe. At best, I can describe how I dealt with it.
I can only describe how I found myself translating each line, turning the words over and over in my mouth, whispering them back to myself in three different tongues, and wishing hard that others could also read this book, wanting to thank Mridula Garg for having written it.... Why had no one told me about it before?
That said, I have to add that it is not what I would call a 'narrative masterpiece'.
It doesn't tell a damn good story. It doesn't build spectacular or unique protagonists. It doesn't have any set pace. It meanders, goes off at tangets. It is more like a shape-defiant matrix, than a narrative. In fact, even the ways in which the paths of the major protagonists criss-cross... all too pat, for my tastes.
But what Mridula Garg may ignore, by way of plot, she more than makes up for, in dissecting desire. These are not stories of people; not just that, at any rate. These are stories of an internal landscape, of philosophies, the routes they found and were betrayed by, and then, these are stories of their times.
Our times.
Our times.
Garg has chosen five major characters - Smita, Aseema, Marianne, Narmada and Vipin.
The book itself is divided into five sections. One for each protagonist. However, though all of them begin in the first person, the narrative invariably switches to third person. Not that this annoys the reader in any way.... in the case of Smita, in fact, Garg switches to third-person for a definite reason... 'it is easier to pretend it is all happening to somebody else, isn't it?'
Smita is the one who has memories of a kathgulab (wood-rose).
(Having never seen one, I found it hard to absorb the redolence of the first few pages, given over to the flower - the unusualness, the fragility, the eternity, the sudden flowering, the black-hearted seed.... I struggled at first, also because I read the book in the original Hindi, which one reads rarely. But by the time I touched the seventh page, I found myself tied to this tale.)
Smita's account - written in the same distracted vein in which it might have been conceived - is wrapped up in memories of a Kathgulab bush that she once grew. She has many memories... Memories that jumped between decades, years, across continents, between now and then and here and nowhere. Memories that are suspect - may not be memories at all. Smita is the one who chooses a plant for a best friend in a foreign country, and almost has a nervous breakdown when autumn gives way to the white tomb of winter.
Marianne tells you about intellectual rape. Marianne is the one who recognizes the essential unity of women across ages and times (she herself is all women), but also recognizes that each one is different. She is the one who discovers that creation is the real instinct, reproduction is but a manifestation of this instinct.
Narmada is the domestic slave. The orphan. The one who is so fascinated by a word like 'jhenp' (embarassment) that she thinks it would be nice name for a daughter. The one who knows when she is being used, and will no longer let herself be used - not even by the newspapers. She, for all her lack of education, sees the irony of people refusing to give a beggar-child a coin, but spend happily enough on books or papers that tell stories of destitution.
Aseema has a violent streak - the overwhelming desire to beat up every man she meets. If not through her karate chops, then using her sharp tongue, her rationale. She refers to her father as 'haraami number 1', and her brother as 'harami number 2'. (Gradually, she demotes her poor father to 'harami number 25', as life introduces her to newer forms of masculinity). She is the one with the courage to set her own aspirations free - change her name from Seema (boundary/limit) to Aseema (the one with no boundaries).
Aseema is the one with the clarity to see that the urbal 'liberal' feminists have a vested interest in limiting poor women's formal education (who'd do the dishes, then?)
And Vipin - the only male protagonist, and the only one who is not a 'haraami', even Aseema is willing to concede. The man who believes that if there is anything which is eternal, all-emcompassing, indivisible, formless, complete - it is pain. Sorrow, then, is his God. And he spends his life escaping this divine ideal: no love, no marriage... But then, he wants a baby, after all. And for that, he needs a woman.... a young woman at that.
For me, all these characters and their stories are significant because the questions they grapple with are my questions. Faith, human nature, gender, rights, instinct, children... eternity, divinity, memory, inevitablity.
Kathgulab confronts these... no, it bring you to these questions... and leaves you there. At your own personal crossroads.
The Oscars represent...
"....a long-standing myth that Hollywood is in the business of making great—and original—movies.
This illusion, like all successful deceptions, requires misdirecting the audience's attention from reality to a few brilliant aberrations.
Take this year's Best Picture nominations: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Munich, and Good Night, and Good Luck. What all of these films have in common is that they have virtually nothing to do with the real business of the Hollywood studios. For Hollywood to choose them as a public display of its virtue is almost as absurd as international oil companies presenting awards to avant-garde artists who happen to paint in oil...."
My feelings exactly!
Read the whole thing here
This illusion, like all successful deceptions, requires misdirecting the audience's attention from reality to a few brilliant aberrations.
Take this year's Best Picture nominations: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Munich, and Good Night, and Good Luck. What all of these films have in common is that they have virtually nothing to do with the real business of the Hollywood studios. For Hollywood to choose them as a public display of its virtue is almost as absurd as international oil companies presenting awards to avant-garde artists who happen to paint in oil...."
My feelings exactly!
Read the whole thing here
A lesson in writing
Came across this article, about clean water legislation in the US... I'm not writing about it because the law or the environment interests me, but because I like the way this piece is written.
Look at how the writer begins on a personal note... he's talking about grandmothers!
"The great comfort of visiting the Supreme Court is that nothing ever changes there, so there is nothing to see..... Duck in to "watch" an oral argument, and you have that cozy familiar feeling of visiting your grandma: Close your eyes and you know just where the porcelain ballerina is, which is why today's visit feels like a trip to grandma's, except for some reason the couch is on the roof...."
By the end of this paragraph, the reader (speaking for myself) is won over. At this juncture, the writer could go on to discuss the most irrelevant law on earth, but the reader would listen; because our sensibilities have been softened up, made receptive.
Then, just as swiftly, the writer goes on to explain, in very simple terms, what the law is about, and what the crux of the present legal argument is.
How I wish people wrote about laws in such familiar, easy-going ways, in India. I have not seen many legal correspondents describe the ambience or debate the procedure of the courtroom.
How much do we really know about the Supreme Court? Our apex judicial body is a stranger to us. Words like 'judicial activism' are tossed around. There are interviews with newly-appointed and outgoing Chief Justices... or with retired judges heading special commissions of enquiry (which I cannot understand, by the way; you retire because the government believes you can no longer perform as well as you used to, right? Then, how is it that the most serious crimes - genocide, state-sponsored human rights' violations, multi-crore scams - are entrusted to the care of these retired people?)
Our newspapers and magazines carry reports, true (well, some of them are true), but...
but where's the texture, the sensousness of the report? Where's the person behind the column, and the persons he/she's coming across, writing about? I see journalists in newsprint. But where have all the writers gone?
Look at how the writer begins on a personal note... he's talking about grandmothers!
"The great comfort of visiting the Supreme Court is that nothing ever changes there, so there is nothing to see..... Duck in to "watch" an oral argument, and you have that cozy familiar feeling of visiting your grandma: Close your eyes and you know just where the porcelain ballerina is, which is why today's visit feels like a trip to grandma's, except for some reason the couch is on the roof...."
By the end of this paragraph, the reader (speaking for myself) is won over. At this juncture, the writer could go on to discuss the most irrelevant law on earth, but the reader would listen; because our sensibilities have been softened up, made receptive.
Then, just as swiftly, the writer goes on to explain, in very simple terms, what the law is about, and what the crux of the present legal argument is.
How I wish people wrote about laws in such familiar, easy-going ways, in India. I have not seen many legal correspondents describe the ambience or debate the procedure of the courtroom.
How much do we really know about the Supreme Court? Our apex judicial body is a stranger to us. Words like 'judicial activism' are tossed around. There are interviews with newly-appointed and outgoing Chief Justices... or with retired judges heading special commissions of enquiry (which I cannot understand, by the way; you retire because the government believes you can no longer perform as well as you used to, right? Then, how is it that the most serious crimes - genocide, state-sponsored human rights' violations, multi-crore scams - are entrusted to the care of these retired people?)
Our newspapers and magazines carry reports, true (well, some of them are true), but...
but where's the texture, the sensousness of the report? Where's the person behind the column, and the persons he/she's coming across, writing about? I see journalists in newsprint. But where have all the writers gone?
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