He, who ferries.

His name I know well. He repeatedly told me - Ramji - and repeatedly told me not to forget.

I'd only wanted to get away from the shore, not a guided tour. But the boatman was determined, now that he'd struck a deal, to give me the complete package. At all the ghats, each nuzzling the next, he'd tell me the name, the name of the king, queen, pundit or merchant who'd financed it. The information slipped off my ears like water off his oar.

At one point, he mentioned Narad, the mischief-making god.

'A couple should never take a dip together at this point. If they do, they're sure to fight. Narad makes sure.'

At another, he told me the whole story of Raja Harishchandra. I listened as if I hadn't heard it before.

At yet another, he stopped and ordered that I take a palmful of water and sprinkle it over my head. Every few ghats, he'd direct me to fold my hands in prayer, at the very least.

At one point, he used the phrase - 'our Hindu brothers...' and caught himself.

He asked my name. I told him.

He repeated - 'Naini, is it?' and I did not bother to correct him.

Then he wanted to know about my brother, my mother, my father, my work, was I married, why not, and why was I in a white saree?

Exhausted, I turned his questions round on him - how many years has he been a boatman, what did his father do, will his son do the same, are his daughters in school, why was the eldest married so young?

When the talk showed no signs of ceasing, I asked him to let me take one of the oars.

With no hesitation, he agreed, making space for me and spreading his red gamchha so my saree wouldn't get wet.

And finally, there was silence.

Except that he clicked his tongue impatiently each time the oar slipped from my hands, and made encouraging noises whenever it seemed like I was finally getting the hang of it. Fifteen minutes later, the wind was against us and my muscles were protesting.

'This is hard work,' I said.

He cocked his head and stopped rowing for a moment, as if thinking this over.

'Yes, I suppose it is.'

The minute I returned to my passenger status, the commentary and questions started again. He was saying something about a curse by Shiva, so that there must be an eternal pyre, some loved one turning to ashes, forever, at a certain ghat.

And he was also admonishing me.

'Didi, next time you come, you must come with Jijaji.'

'Yes.'

'Don't wait any longer...time enough.'

'Yes.'

'And when you come with Jijaji, make sure you ask for Deepak Maajhi. Actually, my name is Ramji, but the boat belongs to Deepak Maajhi.'

'Yes.'

'Didi, shall I tell you something? When I first saw you, I was a little worried. Especially when you said you wanted to be alone. We get suspicious because people who want to go alone will often jump off the boat. And you... in your white saree... I thought...'

'That I wanted to commit suicide?'

'Hehe, no, but we worry. We're poor boatmen and the passenger is our responsibility.... you must not wear white... Once, there was a man - must be ten years older than you. He also wanted to go alone. I took him, and at the end, he was so pleased, he promised to buy me my own boat. He gave me a phone number and asked me to call up after six months.'

'Did you?'

'It has been only four months. I will call. My own boat will cost Rs 30,000-35,000.'

'Didi, you will not forget my name, will you? You will remember Ramji?'

'Yes, I will.'

He, who asks nothing

I didn't ask his name, but now, I wonder. In Benaras, this man was unusual. He was one of those who had a chance but didn't ask for my name.

It ought to be easy - anonymity in a city of millions, which also has millions of visitors, domestic and international. A city used to faces of all colours, tongues of all timbre, wardrobes of all vintage. Why should it care what I am called?

My silence is precious to me. Especially in strange places where talk is no obligation, where there are no acquaintances, when I know I must listen and talk and listen and ask and listen all through the next few days... Why should the town care what I'm called?

But in Benaras, they all ask.

Starting from the garrulous pre-paid auto-driver at the station, who wanted to know not just my name but my surname, my address, my work-place, my knowledge of Delhi's roads, my family, their names, etc. In exchange, unasked, he offered little factoids about himself - his name, the number of years he spent in Delhi, the number of siblings who live in Delhi, their addresses, their professions, his parents, his parents' sickness, his return to Benaras, the kind of car he used to drive, his philosophical take on old parents and responsibility, his kids, their exams, his plans for the summer, holidays in Delhi and Mumbai and if he can afford it, Goa.

After numbing me suitably, the auto-wala tried taking me to a different hotel. I insisted that I already had a booking.

He wanted to know how much I was going to pay per night.

I told him and he clicked his tongue and offered to get me a cheaper deal.

I protested and insisted that I had a booking.

He began to insist that I look at the alternative hotel.

I refused.

He insisted.

I pointed out that it wasn't right - to get someone to make a reservation and then not show up.

He said he'd get a commission if he brought me to the other hotel.

I refused.

He sulked.

Too bad, I thought, and went on to where a booked room awaited.

Later in the evening, at the hotel, when I expressed a desire to visit the Annapoorna temple, the travel desk summoned this rickshaw-wala.

All he said was, 'sixty rupees' and didn't speak again until we reached the place.

A constable blocked our path, saying rickshaws were not allowed into the lane. I got off and started walking, but within a minute, the rickshaw was at my side again, asking me to sit.

I asked him how he got past the cop. He told me - by paying ten rupees.

Outside the temple, he waited while I pushed through the two-way crush of the narrow Vishwanath lane and when I returned, too soon, he asked if I wanted to go to the ghats.

'I don't know... Is there anything nearby?'

He pointed towards the Ganga.

Nothing to do and a little daylight still clinging to the sky: I stepped down to the ghats and was swallowed by a sequence of cries and whispers in three languages - all offering to sell something, ask something.

I wanted to sit alone, in peace, but there seemed to be no way of escaping except into the river. A boatman beckoned; we struck a deal so that I would not have to share the boat.

The rickshaw-wala saw me go, and said nothing except that he'd be at the stand (a parking lot for cycle-rickshaws).

When I returned - having recounted my name, birth-place, family details etc to the garrulous boatman - he stood waiting at the shore.

He asked if I wanted to wait for the maha-aarti.

'Is it was worth waiting for?'

He shrugged. 'People come to see it.'

I sat down on the steps. A boy stopped by, selling tea in tiny kullads, as small as diwali diyas, for Re 1. He asked me my name. A boy of about twelve came up, selling booklets. He asked me my name. I sighed, and told him. A young man of about twenty parked himself on my right. He asked me my name. I smiled, and did not tell him.

Noticing a protective shadow hovering on my left, I turned to find the rickshaw-wala standing there, making no attempt at conversation.

I told him he could sit down if he wished. He did so.

A few minutes into the aarti, the smoke got too much for me. I stood up and followed the rickshaw-wala out to the stand and rode back in complete silence but for the rough sound of wheels rumbling over stones, through potholes, and the swishing of the pedals in the dim dusk.

Back at the hotel, I paid him almost twice the amount agreed on. He accepted with a wide smile. And did not, god bless him, ask my name.

Another book, another contest

A must-read, and a please-acquire book. And not just because I was included. These are 21 stories written by South Asian women under 40. I'm particularly kicked about the fact that this anthology breaks several stereotypes about 'women's writing'. There's a graphic short story, a detective story, an internet story, a prostitute story (except there aren't any hearts of gold), a tender killing story.... Worth reading.

And

A FLASH FICTION CONTEST

Toto Funds the Arts, Delhi Chapter, invites entries for its flash fiction contest. The winner will get a cash prize of Rs. 3000 and two runners-up will be awarded Rs. 1000 each. A public event will be organized for the winners to read their stories along with an established author.

Submission Guidelines

1. You cannot be older than 30 on June 1, 2007. Include a statement confirming your date of birth and that the story is original and unpublished.
2. The contest is limited to young Indians residing in Delhi and NCR. No NRIs, please.
3. Only one submission is allowed per person.
4. The story cannot exceed 500 words.
5. Entries can be either sent by e-mail to tfadelhi@gmail.com or by snail mail to:

TFA Contest, D/377 2^nd Floor, Defence Colony,

New Delhi 110024.

6. The deadline is 20 April 2007. Please mention your name and contact details separately, not on the entry itself.

She, who provides

Benaras.

Everything I thought it might be, it seemed to be. But who knows... I did not go out much.

Except that one evening, for someone told me that the city's patron goddess is Annapoorna - the grain provider. The goddess of food. And prosperity. But no prosperity or happiness is possible without food, after all.

And I was here to investigate hunger, after all. It was only fitting that I look up the goddess that fills bellies, for someone told me that nobody sleeps hungry in Benaras. Its holiness was built, he said, upon the hunger of those who flocked here, knowing that here, the virtous, the freshly-rid-of-sins were anxious to give.

I wanted to look up this mother-goddess. Perhaps, because it is so hard to understand what has gone wrong - has she stopped providing, she who provides?

I went prepared for security stress. It has been just over a year since the blast at the Sankat Mochan temple and anyway, you get frisked and your bags get searched almost everywhere you go, these days. So, I took nothing but some money and my phone. However, after a half-hour rickshaw ride, a ten rupee bribe to a cop (paid by the rickshaw-puller, without my knowing), and a fifteen minute walk down the narrow Vishwanath lane and reaching the entrance, the police said - 'Phones not allowed'.

And suddenly, the desire to see her was gone. Annapoorna, I'm sure, would understand.

A book, a book!

Finally, it's out there.

Update: It is definitely available in Landmark bookstore, Gurgaon (and in Chennai and Mumbai, I hear). I spotted it, unfortunately, under 'Quotations', right next to 'Psychology', instead of in the poetry section. It made me fret, but I felt foolish about fretting personally, so got a cousin to get the shop assistants to correct the mistake. But in case anybody goes there and can't find the book under 'poetry', you know where to look.

Dilli mein raat bhar baarish, phir se

When words begin to curl up in the corners, and meaning begins to drip off the blurry edge, you know it has rained all night in Delhi.

Adhchini, Gurgaon... the words patter with a sweetness, a slippery clayey texture that hadn't been there before. And to your ears, 'gurhganva' is firm, a vagabond word with tight calf muscles and a checked vest. Gurh-gaanv-aa. Gurhganva. The word is like the sweet, heady smell of the first light shower on a hot afternoon in a dusty town.

But that is left behind. In Devnagri, the word asserts itself firmly on the metal chest of a bus - 'gurhganva'. Not Gurgaon. Not glass. Metal. Rust. Rain.

Over the awful rev and roar of Dilli's sarkaari bus, there is a sound like a cross between a tyre bursting and a string of firecrackers muffled in cotton. There is such a blinding flash that for a minute, you think there are cameras around. Then you look at the sky. At ten in the morning, it was like before dawn. Dark and full. There is no threat, just a certainty. Firecrackers muffled in grey wool sky.

The bus driver changed the music from haryanvi folk to trance. The sky roared. The music hammered down as hard as the waters.

With each little lurch, water filled up in the ridges of the windows and spilled. Spilled.

All thoughts slipped and spilled into each other. All shades of green turned melty through the refractive window-seat. The word 'subz' floated through your head. That's the shade. 'Subz'. That it is not a shade, is meaningless. All meanings are melting.

The driver changed the tape again.

Ae door ke musafir, humko bhi saath le le
hum reh gaye akele....

I look at him closer. Wet hair. Plump. Joking with the boy-conductor.

The gear-stick is covered in scrunchies. Girls' hair scrunchies. An entire rainbow of them. Red, pink, blue, lilac, green, neon. A sticker of five film actresses in a row, holding up filmfare award trophies, with a little ditty below:

"Titli udi, bus pe chadi, seat na mili
driver bola - aaja mere paas; titli boli - hat badmaas."

In felt pen, there's another curliqueing bit of text: 'Love is God'.

And Rafi sings:
"Mere haathon mein tera chahra tha
jaise koi gulaab hota hai..."

Orange, velvety flowers have falled into a heap of fallen yellow leaves.

In the nursery, potted flowers stand ruefully straight. Resigned to the battering of the night, but all the fuschias, scarlets, pinks are coloured a deeper shade, as if a drop of meloncholia has fallen into their pollen hearts.

... jaise joi gulab hota hai...

Outside, the puddles are deep. A girl in pure white lifts up her salwar half-way up her calves. Her friend, in rani-pink, follows. They stop and look at each other and their smiles stretch from horizon to horizon.

Titli udi...

The auto-driver slows down near Nehru Park and his head is turned so that he's looking at the grass, and he takes his time rounding the roundabouts.

You breathe. Each breath is crisp and wild and slow. You shiver and think: This air does not belong to now. It is the air of February, and has been dragged back, howling and lashing, by the crackling skies of a strange hot week in Delhi.

Dilli ke is lamhe mein, kisi ko koi gham nahin hai. Raat bhar, din bhar, baarish hui hai.

And there is no sorrow possible in a moment that does not below to now.

A quiet kind of heroism

Once you've put into writing the truths that have hammered your life - your commutes, your streets, your nights, your finances - into a spreadsheet of fear, you're changed.

You take a solitary walk all around a PVR complex, and you get a cup of coffee on a night so cold that the mists rising from your lips and the cup mingle and waft into a drizzle, and you look for an empty bench and when you find it, you sit and gaze into the hazy throngs of young people - up and down, arm in arm - knowing that curious stares are hemming you in, but you sit, hands wrapped around a toosweet-toohot cup, unhurried, because you'll be damned if you can't do this; a stranger with big moustaches heads towards your bench but when you fix your eyes on him, he changes direction - for you sit bang in the centre of the bench, feet stretched, head at rest, in a wet bubble of falling night-sky - and you go on sitting there, looking at nothing, spotting a familiar boy hurry past with an unfamiliar girl clinging onto his arm, and when the coffee is gone and the sky is still, you get up, toss the cup in the trash-can, breathe deep, and walk away.


[Blank noise blogathon entry, 2007]

Born (not quite) Free (but getting there)

On an impulse, I went. I had not yet received a brief, or permission, to cover this exhibition. But because the teachers - Mioi and John - had come to invite me personally, because I was surprised by the deceptive joy, the intimate ache of the photos (photoshopped out of all symmetry, unfortunately), I went to the Indira Gandhi Centre for the Arts.

It was almost closing time, the watchman almost didn't let me in; the few boys playing ball in the lawn did not understand my language; feeling foolish, I nodded and smiled until Mioi arrived.

They'd brought some musical instruments along. Drums. And long lathi-like sticks with ghungoos attached to one end. When I looked curious, they put on an impromptu performance for me. Mioi and one of the students, Jayaram, picked up a lathi each, a thumping took up my heart, and they danced. Dhhum! and chham! Teacher and student facing each other, smiles too wide to be mere performance, eyes squinting with the fun of it, Mioi quickly growing breathless, laughing.

There's a lot I've forgotten about the Born Free School (Bangalore) and the exhibition they brought to Delhi last year. But the dhhum and chham and those smiling eyes... I often re-live those. And the thing John said, about this country. 'Everything - everything! - is poisoned with a little shot of child labour'.


Here are some of the things I wrote about the students at the Bornfree Art School, rescued child labourers themselves, who have undertaken a pledge to free other working children. [I no longer have the photos but here's linking to a site, with pictures of some of the people I'm referring to below]



Eleven-year old Jalalli used to be a cowherd once. Though he now studies the arts and does not need to mind cows for a living, he retains a fondness for all things bovine. That much is evident from his choice of photographic subject: cows; but since the project was supposed to focus on child labourers, Jalalli ended up capturing child-cowherds on camera.

His photographs, and those credited to dozens of other former child labourers, are now part of 'the History Expedition', a traveling exhibition put together by the Bornfree Art School, Bangalore. The school combines art and activism. Rescued child labourers are slowly brought back into the mainstream fold of education, but the process is initiated through art - through music, dance, theatre, sculpture, crafts and now, photography. Some of the crafts were also on show. Baskets and decorative bamboo plates were covered with prints of ancient terracotta coins. Several of the products carried short stories like the ones from the Panchatantra, except that the stories had been edited and rewritten to avoid derogatory references to people or animals.

The History Expedition is as much a cross-country documentation trip as it is an exhibition. About 15 children and five adults wove their way across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Goa on bicycles and on buses. 4040 kilometres, 3000 hours of film, and 25,000 photographs later, they had seen just about every form of child labour conceivable - from child prostitutes to stone-crushers, four-year-old housewives to cotton-pickers.

A photograph, titled 'sweet violence', shows a young girl making sugar in Bidar. Another, titled 'Haya!' shows a smiling boy whipping himself to collect money. 'Dead dolls' captures a row of albino baby girls, made to sit on the street like live curio exhibits, while passersby threw coins at them.

A little girl, bare-chested, carries a heavy statue of a deity on her head. Two children pose as scarecrows in a field. A gaggle of pre-pubescent girls with mangalsutras round their necks, drawing water from a well. A child selling spider-man masks. A faceless figure holding up a sickle against a deep, blue sky.

It is hard to believe that the pictures have been created by mere children who have probably never touched a camera before. Colour and expression have been captured with truth and often, with a sense of fun that might have been impossible in the hands of an adult. There is little attempt to dramatize the agony of the toiling children; there are more smiles than screams, but the whole picture is unsparing.

Muniyappa, a former ragpicker, commented on one of his own pictures where he found a six-year-old water-seller, crying. "The only water she has, is the tears in her eyes." Muniappa was very upset when he met the girl, who would walk three kilometres everyday, barefoot, to fetch water, which she could sell for a mere Rs 5.

John Devaraj, an artist who founded the school and accompanied the children to Delhi with the exhibition, pointed out that the photographs were as much about the artists as the subjects. "Our artists are all former child labourers. What you see now is the victims writing their own histories through other child victims."

Jalalli, for instance, went from suckling milk straight from the herd's udders, to being bonded to a tea-stall owner in Bangalore - not because his family had incurred a debt, but because a software engineer, a regular customer, disappeared without paying a Rs 100 bill.

Prashanth, a fourteen-year-old, has been taking pictures of water in brilliant hues of yellow: but look beyond the spectacular colours, and you notice child-fishermen. Prashanth himself used to sell flowers once, but life was no bed of roses. "The owner of the flower-shop used to hit me with a pair of scissors. Each time I made a mistake, he'd hit me on the back of my hands. So, I ran away and became a ragpicker".

Devaraj laughs as he recalls the nickname given to the boy. "They called him 'brass-boy'. He would steal anything made of brass."

Jayaram, a teenaged boy whose body is marked with scars and other signs of violence, shyly admitted that he used to steal too; in fact, he stole from the police! Laughing, he chose his words carefully, "I worked in a bar and restaurant first, and then, well, you could say that I worked with the police." Actually, he would pilfer bullets, which he would sell by the kilo, for their metal content.

Although Jayaram has been in lock-up before, he is rather proud of his most recent arrest. While taking the photo 'Dead Dolls', he and a schoolmate, Raju, were arrested by the police. They were handcuffed and paraded through the streets. But Jayaram feels vindicated. "This was the first time in my life that I was handcuffed for doing the right thing."

These young artists are acquainted with the dangers of challenging the adult world that employs children, and taking this road trip has taught them what they didn't already know. For instance, they found children working in puffed-rice factories where sand has to be heated at temperatures of 1400 degrees. Many get hurt and some, like thirteen-year-old Tariq Ali, die. Similarly, the silk industry likes to employ small children, who are used as cocoon cooks, more or less.

They also discovered that Bangalore, which likes to call itself the 'rose capital of the world', employs hundreds of little girls to pluck about 2100 tonnes of roses, everyday.

In Bijapur, they found - and photographed! - a policeman roughing up a child prostitute who appeared to be soliciting clients near the Gol Gumbaz. These girls were neither rescued nor rehabilitated, but simply driven away each evening by baton-wielding constables.


The pictures in the History Expedition are poignant but the subjects do not beg for sympathy. There is a heart-breaking note of defiance in their smiles, their happy acceptance of the moment, their trust in the camera. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that the photos were taken by children like themselves. Yet, the photographs evoke outrage and bewilderment at the sheer scale of the problem - it appears as if there is not one single industry or product that does not involve children.

Devaraj was unsparing in his critique. "The bricks in your house, the milk and sugar in your tea, the roses you buy for your wife, computers, other gadgets, the kumkum on your forehead, the puffed rice in your bhel-puri, bananas, tomatoes, spices, silk - everything is poisoned with a little shot of child labour."

Demand and Supply

A comment on my last post prompted this question: why should we expect the world (the world of manufacturers- advertisers, at any rate) to care about women's intellectual/sartorial/physical/financial needs, as long as they can induce us - through promises, false or...well, legal - to buy what they're selling?

In an ideal world, this question would have been different. In an ideal world, manufacturers of cosmetic products would not tell lies, and nobody would try to suppress research. But this is not an ideal world and profit is god.

In such a world, should the simple rules of demand and supply apply?

If there was, for instance, a huge demand for child sex workers, would it be acceptable to allow their supply? What if the children themselves agreed to be sold: maybe they're poor and hungry?

If there was a surge in the demand for, say, shark meat, and sharks were endangered, would it be acceptable to hunt them until they disappeared?

If all children want to learn, but not all have family resources, should we simply cater to those who can afford to pay?

If there's a famine, should only those who can pay, eat?

Demand and supply are not sacred, in my opinion. If manufacturers or suppliers or even buyers lack a conscience (for the lack of a better word... call it a moral compass, a set of ethics, a soul, whatever) we have to act in ways that lead to minimum damage for most people.

Some may argue that it is unfair to compare famines with women's magazines. I can only quote Steinem, again. The art of behaving ethically is to act as if everything you do, matters.

To come back to women's magazines and advertiser 'inserts':

Do advertisers have the right to dictate where their ads will be placed?
I'm not sure.
Do they have a right not to advertise in magazines that have fashion advice for non-supermodel-sized women?
Perhaps.
Does that mean that one has to look elsewhere for funding?
Yes.
Is it okay to expect that women will pay higher prices for 'niche' magazines with something other than nauseating articles about the charming benefits of brazilian waxes?
No.

Magazines (all media) are information. Are a source of knowledge, a shared cultural space and a reference point and a means of opinion formation and are - however lightly - looked up to as a source of truth.

Just like it is unethical to suppress news - no matter how unpalatable it may be to advertisers or readers/viewers - it is unethical to suppress a certain kind of reality. Even if it is something like the need for different sizes to suit different shapes. Or the fact that you age, get wrinkles and die. The constant suppression of myriad realities leads to distorted reality. It is not for nothing that anorexia needs psychological treatment. The victim no longer has any sense of truth about his/her own body. Large numbers of women no longer have any perspective on shape because they are force-fed a constant visual mush of super-skinny women.

Should we assume that all women who want an alternative will find it?
No.
I still have not found one. There was a time when I no longer found Femina and Cosmo amusing, and wanted other magazines - something that was about women, and not cars or sports or celebrities. I still can't find an alternative.

Am I willing to pay for an alternative? Yes.
Steinem brought out Ms magazine, for instance.
But do I have access to it? No.
If I order imported magazines, will I be able to afford them? No.

Forced into a situation where I must choose between the crap the advertisers want me to see or no magazine at all, I take the latter. Do I think it is right?
No.

As a consumer, I would much prefer it if advertisers simply had no control over editorial content. As a consumer, I expect this, actually, from non-fiction media.

The advertiser does have a right not to advertise at all, or to specify the size/length of the ad. But I am not convinced that the advertiser should have a right to decide what sort of article the ad appears next to.

Does this require that media and marketers re-think the way they do business, or that media reorganise its formats, and develop a common code or something?
Yes.

From a media perspective, I know this is very, very hard to do. But I also know that, often, we buckle not under pressure, but because of our fear of pressure. That we don't even put up a fight.
Is that a done thing?
In my opinion, No.

A female voice

Gloria Steinem. Second-wave feminist. Famous feminist.

I hadn't attended any feminist lectures before. I hadn't been to any feminist conferences and I wasn't so sure why I wanted to hear Steinem speak. But when I heard she was here and speaking, I wanted to listen.

And not just listen. I wanted to see her too. The staff at the auditorium told me, and a few other women, that there was no room; we'd have to sit outside and watch a large television screen. But we coaxed, cajoled, complained and insisted that there were reserved seats for us. Once inside, we just squatted on the floor.

Gloria Steinem. Tall, slim, seventy-two. And yes, beautiful. And yes, funny.

She said, that she always thought there ought to be sign outside universities like Yale and Harvard, saying: "Beware. De-construction ahead."

The funniest bits, of course, were the times she quoted from her famous essay, 'If Men Could Menstruate'.

"Men would brag about how long and how much.

Young boys would talk about it as the envied beginning of manhood. Gifts, religious ceremonies, family dinners, and stag parties would mark the day.

To prevent monthly work loss among the powerful, Congress would fund a National Institute of Dysmenorrhea. Doctors would research little about heart attacks, from which men would be hormonally protected, but everything about cramps...

Generals, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists would cite menstruation ("men-struation") as proof that only men could serve God and country in combat ("You have to give blood to take blood"), occupy high political office ("Can women be properly fierce without a monthly cycle governed by the planet Mars?"), be priests, ministers, God Himself ("He gave this blood for our sins"), or rabbis ("Without a monthly purge of impurities, women are unclean").

[Do read the whole hilarious piece.]


That evening, she was speaking about gender and censorship - the many, many ways in which women's voices have been censored out of sight and mind and discourse.

We know how terrible women's magazines are, don't we? How they mess with women's minds, self-image, etc. How they can make you believe that if you aren't skin and bone, if you can't keep a man, if you don't use foreign brands of make-up, if you can't afford to wear a 3000 rupee shirt, you're worthless.

But the worst punishment such magazines mete out, according to Steinem, is that we grow contemptutous of each other other, because we are led to believe that other women want these things. Which is not necessarily true. She told the crowd about how advertisers in the US dictated content through their 'inserts'. Little notes, clauses almost, that tell the editorial staff: "Must not appear with depressing articles" or "Must not appear in an issue with large-size fashion".

Think about that. Advertisers insisting that not only will they use images of super-skinny women, but that they want nothing to do with any sort of clothing, or word of advice or attitude that may be non-skinny. That is censorship too, isn't it?


Steinem made me think from new angles. Like she herself had been made to think. She had always assumed that women talk more than men (because that's the stereotype.... there are jokes about women not being able to sit quiet, a roomful of silent women being the joke), perhaps, because talking is women's way of expressing themselves, perhaps because other forms of self-expression were denied to them? That is what she thought, until she came across research work that concluded that, contrary to popular belief, women talked LESS than men. In fact, the study found that men talked more about everything, including subjects of female expertise, like child-rearing.

Why did the opposite view prevail, then? Perhaps, because, female talk "was measured against the expectation of female silence." When you say 'more', who decided 'more'? Who decides 'women talk too much'? Probably the many generations of men who were not used to listening to female voices at all.

While on censorship, Steinem spoke about the politics of channeling (where a person claims to have access to spirits, and writes down whatever the spirit says). It seems that most women were channeling men. One of the more famous instances being that of a Columbia University professor who claimed to be writing as Jesus dictated.

According to Steinem, very possibly, these were women who had things to say, but would not be taken seriously, perhaps, but if they claimed to be speaking for famous men, they were listened to, and very possibly made successful. Few men have claimed to be speaking for female spirits. The only exception seemed to be a gay man who channeled the writer Gertrude Stein.

The other, murkier side of censorship is buried in problems such as trafficking. While all efforts are directed at stemming supply, almost nobody talks of stemming demand. For instance, people may argue about legalising prostitution, but nobody seems to think it is a good idea to fine the customer, or to discuss his role in the process.

She spoke of the revolutionary act of translating, of language and exile, the censoring of the oral tradition.

She spoke of how battering men behave like addicts and that asking a man to 'control' his aggression is like telling an addict he can have a little bit of heroin.

She spoke of the campaign to attribute an economic value to all care-giving, at replacement value, and the possibility of making such services tax-deductible and tax-refundable.

It was a joy listening to her and I could easily have sat there listening another hour, had she the time or energy to go on. Many other things were said, of course, but these are some of the things Steinem said that stayed with me:

"We are encouraged to give birth to others before we can give birth to ourselves.

Terms such as 'sexual harassment' have been given to us by the feminist movement; before that, it was called 'life'.

The art of behaving ethically is to act as if everything we do, matters."

That, above all. To act as if everything you do, say, don't do, matters.

Giving it back

Last year, around this time, I first started speaking up about street sexual harassment.

Thanks to Blank Noise's blogathon, many women's ghosts began to be exorcised - talk about it, get angry about it, start fighting it.

This year, another blogathon has been announced, asking bloggers - male, female, all - to speak up again. But not just about 'victim' experiences. Talk about how you fought back.

From the blank noise blog:

On the morning of March 8th, 2007, share with us a story (or two, or five or...) of fighting back?! When did you flip a situation so you could resist, when did you give back as hard as you got? When and how did you choose to confront? When did you become an Action Hero?

To participate:
1. announce the event.
2. blog your story
3. email us about it and we will link you right away!
email blurtblanknoise@gmail.com (with the subject titled: Action Heroes Online).

Spread the word.

Thumb impressions

Sarojini Nagar market. Thursday. 15th Feb.

I'd been here only two days before: getting new curtains, socks, sunshine, weird banana split. And here we were again, carrying a map, pens, pamphlets, letters saying 'Dear Stranger....'

It is a little awkward - street actions in places where we also hang out. Abby mentioned the awkwardness last time at PVR Saket, after we gave out letters to strangers, wore red reflective tape on our chests, forming a 'KYA DEKH RAHE HO?' and then, we calmly sat down at one of the open-air eateries and proceeded to order.

It felt funny. To go from 'action hero' to ordinary. To go from staring back, confronting the non-existence of the lone woman, even in 'okay' places like PVR.... to sitting down, eating. As if nothing had happened. As if, handing out folded letters to strangers was an everyday thing for us.

We'd got used to disappearing soon after the intervention, heading out for coffee, a drink, dinner. Heading away... Why did we not stay on?

Because we had, mentally, separated our own personas? - our aggressive, blank noise persona, and our normal, relaxed-on-guard passive persona?

Did we need to change that? Perhaps. At Sarojini Nagar market, again, we did.

We began with sitting at a small restaurant where we formed a little pool of bemusement as we spread out a large map of Delhi, stapled it onto a sheet of hard chart paper, wrote 'Harassment Hot Spots' along the edge, brought out an ink-pad and pens, folded letters, ate rasmalai, waited for others, and returned to the same place later.

The plan for the evening was to mark out each area of Delhi where a woman has been sexually harassed. At the same time, we were doing a variation on the 'dear stranger' theme. Instead of handing out testimonials of harassment to men, we gave a hand-written format to women, asking them to fill in the blanks, and then give them away to others.

We started thumbing the map ourselves, before approaching other women.

"Excuse me, ma'am, do you have a minute?"

"Hi, listen, we're trying to do something about eve-teasing."

"Suniye, ek minute, please?"

"Ma'am, would you please look at this map?"

"Have you ever been harassed?"

"Ma'am, will you please..."

"Half a minute?"

"Aapko kabhi kisi ne pareshaan kiya hai? Badtameezi ki hai? Jise hum chhed-chhaad kehte hain?"

"Kahin bhi? Kabhi bhi? Yaad kariye..."

"Ever? Never? Anywhere... in the bus? On the streets?"

"Really?"


The first ten minutes found us rolling our eyes at each other, reining in the impulse to shake these women hard.

Most said: No.

"No. I have never been eve-teased/ I don't recall any incident/ I'm not from Delhi/ It doesn't happen in my town/ I'm too large/ I'm too aggressive/ My face is so forbidding that nobody dares."

Really?

"If somebody tries anything, I beat him up."

"So somebody did try something?"

"No."

Really?


"No idea. We only travel in cars." Or "I only go out with my husband."

"What about sisters? Daughters?"

"No."

"What about when you were younger? In college?"

"No."


Really?

We rolled our eyes. One would think we were the only freaks around who'd spent half our lives being harassed.

But what made it really frustrating was that every woman who was accompanied by a man, turned to look up at him. In confusion, for permission, to gauge whether she should speak or not?

"Have you ever been harassed?"

Look at man.

"Have you been felt up, followed, commented upon, touched against your will, brushed against?"

Look at man.

"Will you please put a thumb-print on the map?"

Look at man.


But we didn't snap - "What're you looking at him for? We're asking you!". Or - "If it happened, would you tell the man in your life?" Or even - "Do you think that, if eve-teasing happens, the girl is asking for it?"

We re-structured the conversation.

"Nowhere? Not even in buses?"

Slowly....

"In buses, of course. But it does happen in buses, doesn't it? That sort of thing is normal."

We asked them to mark out a bus-route. That, for some reason, was easier for them.

It was also easier to deal with younger women. College-goers, or those who hung out together, without boyfriends/husbands/fathers in sight.

One girl was particularly angry; she thumbed Gurgaon a dozen times. "Oh, everywhere in Gurgoan", she said.

Another inked Noida. Another said, "In busy markets. Here, in fact!"

There seemed to be a blue north-centre-south axis. The Delhi University (north campus), Chandni Chowk, Connought Place, Nehru Place, GK-1 and 2, Lajpat Nagar, Sarojini Nagar were hotspots.

There were funny moments too. More than one man wanted to thumb-print the map; as it turned out, because his wallet had been stolen. We had to explain that theft is not really our area of concern.

One conversation was particularly interesting (and particularly long). A woman (late thirties? forties?) with a man, began by denying she'd ever been harassed. (After looking at the man, of course).

"Nothing happens to me. You see, I've taken a self-defence course."

"You have? Did you ever get to use what you learnt?"

"Yes, I did."

"When? Where?"

"There was once this man..." (pause, turn to look at man)

"Yes?"

"In a bus. I elbowed a man. Just like I'd learnt in karate."

"What was he doing?"

"He was behind me."

"But what was he doing?"

"Nothing happened as such. Because I know self-defence."

"Was he doing... badtameezi?"

"Yes. So I elbowed him in the middle."

"Good for you. Would you put a thumb-print on the map?"

Badtameezi. Bad behaviour. Easier to deal with. Eve-teasing. Easier to deal with. Sexual harassment?

It does not happen to us. No.


The learnings from the evening were huge. As blank noise interventions go, this was the first time we had to explain ourselves. We were not standing up, mutely challenging a public space. We were not making a statement. We were engaging.

This was the idea. Mapping the city. Getting women to fill in the blanks - create their own letters to strangers, based on their own experiences. Involving them in ways that is not possible if they only look at us.

The first thing we learnt was something we'd forgotten: that it is taboo to talk about what has happened to you. That many, many women still fear the accusation (or the assumption) that they were responsible. There is, perhaps, a culpability associated with sexual behaviour, even if it isn't your own.

The second thing we learnt was that it is easier to confront, harder to draw out, engage.

The third was that even those who were hostile, were intrigued. We ran out of pamphlets and letters quickly.

The fourth was that we needed more time, more volunteers, more maps.


While we gathered round a bench later, talking about what we'd just seen and what frustrated us, a woman came up to us.

"So what will this accomplish? What are you trying to do?"

"To stop what we call eve-teasing. So many people said, 'it happens; it's normal'. Our point is to establish that it is not normal. It is not right."

"But you cannot change men's attitudes."

"We can. We can change women, at least. So that we stop putting up with it and enforce a change.... would you like to put your thumb-print on the map?"

Grinning, she held up her thumb. It was already inked blue.

Cross-posted here.

Chai as self

I've been told that those who do not love themselves will never be able truly love anyone else (although they often do/say things that wins them the love of others, which may then persuade them that they are lovable). Those who do not treat themselves with respect, will find it hard to truly respect anyone else. They will respect things, instead - the money one makes, the clout one has, the accent one speaks in, the contacts one boasts of... But take away all of this, and what do you have?
A person. Who deserves to be respected just for being that. A person.

And those who do not love chai do not know what it is to treat a brew with respect. With a genuine interest, curiosity, and no prejudices based on package, brand or price.

For, chai needs to be loved just for itself.
Not because it is fragrant, flavoured, exotic, from new trees or old.
Not because it can bring you relief, respite, anti-oxidants.
Not because it is strong, or mild, or just right, or vaccum-sealed.
Just because it is chai and chai is good (unless it has been treated badly).


A true chai-lover loves chai in all its colours and ethnicities, regardless of whether it can accomplish something for you or not. North-hill darjeelings or south-hill munnars; Chinese or Bangladeshi; Pakistani or Indian. In your heart, they all have a place.

For you must experiment. It is like discovering one's own moods. It is like discovering how deep your own capacity for tolerance, sweetness, change, patience is.

Chai reveals itself over time, over years. Like you don't really know what you enjoy doing, until you've done it, you never know what brew you'll take a fancy to. You might spend ten years sipping sticky-sweet tapri chai with enough milk in it to sate a new calf, but then you might go to a Chinese restaurant where they keep your (tea) cup full, and your heart might expand just a little bit with your stretching horizons.

Like you may spend ten years swearing by ginger, and eschewing elaichi, and adding only three tablespoons of tea to a large mug of chai, and that's that. But then, you might move into a new place and your flatmate might have bought a pack of chai masala and you might begin pinching a pinch, now and then, and as the spice floats up your nose, you will know that you've just been seduced by a stranger. Whom you're going to go on seeing, now and then, though you're still awfully committed to ginger.

Like you may dislike the tea-flavoured milk the villagers in Punjab serve you, but after the fifth, sixth, seventh, seventeenth cup, you will smile at the memory and wonder if you should attempt something similar at home. Because, things grow on you.

Like you never know where you'll end up, in chai or love. But if you're brave, you'll have something unique. Like my flatmate who, at university, used to start with an attempted chai, discover that it wasn't quite working, and end up using the chai in a pancake batter. Chai pancakes... ever thought of that?!

Perhaps, not everybody's cup of tea , but the thing with tea is, it doesn't need to be everybody's. It just needs to be yours.


Chai 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

A separate section for the ladies

A string strung across two trees. Half a dozen calves strung to the string. It is momentarily eerie. Almost as if the calves – child-bulls – were threatening to commit suicide. But they're only chewing the cud, waiting to be sold.

These are probably prize calves, from racing stock. Probably from the tough bulls racing up a storm barely half a kilometer away, at the Grewal Indoor stadium in Qila Raipur. Racing outdoors, though. Two bullocks were yoked together with a slim plank of wood trailing behind, attached to two motorcycle wheels. It wasn't unlike the two-wheel chariots I remember from Hollywood periodicals.

The jockey has a tougher time. At least, it looks tough. Can't be easy balancing with your feet on a narrow ledge between two wheels and your torso thrown forward on the slanting plank of the yoke. Imagine that you're half-lying, face down, hands busy with reins or a chaabuk.

One pair of bulls took a tumbling somersault in one of the races. They were a determined pair, though; within seconds, they were back on their feet and raring to race again. Except that the jockey had fallen off and the bulls didn't wait long enough for him to catch up. Besides, they were disoriented and didn't know which direction to run in; they ended up running in a diagonal across the track, with the jockey in hot pursuit.

I never saw the indoors of this indoor stadium which hosts the annual 'rural olympics' in Punjab. I wasn't there for the sports anyway, but because of the elections. Qila Raipur is a constituency and this is a good time to be at the sporting event because there are many people from various districts. I was there to speak to them, to talk politics. To hold up a straw, so to speak, to see which way the wind was blowing.

The first old turbaned gentleman I tried talking to spoke a dialect of Punjabi that I was, well, more unfamiliar with; I could barely make out his name and that he was from Toor. The second one told me he was an athlete; in the fifties, he had won second place in the district 100 metre run. An ex-army man and two-time sarpanch now (the first time, his wife won as sarpanch, which he said, was the same thing as him winning), he's making a football stadium in his village. To prevent the youth from being corrupted by narcotics.

The third one didn't say much. He was 92 years old (born 1915, as mentioned on his i-card from the Punjab Association of Veteran Athletes) and intended to participate in the next day's race for veterans. The old regulars were a little sulky about the changes in the sporting event. There was a time where the crowds were three times thicker. When there were no chairs and everybody squatted in the dust. When there was no 'security', no policemen keeping the crowds in line. When there was no loudspeaker and no running commentary and no sponsors. Most of the spectators couldn't see the 'entertainment' (songs, dances, acrobats, gymnasts) because at least twenty photographers and camera crews blocked the view. Also, because of the determined young men holding placards saying Parle-G insisted on positioning themselves right behind the performers, so that the sponsor's name was in each and every frame of the cameras.

I had just begun to talk to a couple of elderly farmers sitting on a parked scooter when a small crowd gathered around. This is not unusual; I'm used to crowds gathering around anybody with a notebook or a camera in most places. But this time, it felt unusally unpleasant. Our conversation was interrupted by a stocky, high-spirited sardar who'd been in one of the races. He'd won the first round and was aggressively conversational. I asked him if he was having fun. He said he was and so was everyone else and then he laughed. For some reason, the whole crowd burst out laughing too.

I turned to look all around me. For the first time, I noticed that it was all men. Not a single woman or child. And they were all laughing. A sliver of anger shot through my head (causing an immediate headache that lasted the whole day).

The anger had been simmering for the last few minutes, actually; ever since an anonymous hand touched my backside; anonymously buried itself into the crowd. For the last few minutes, I had been trying to tell myself that it may have been an accident. But the anger was waiting to take over from denial.

The bullock-racing sardar went on with the fun theme. How some people found fun in bulls, some in horses, some in kabaddi and some in watching... everybody had their own 'shaukh'. This caused another burst of laughter from the crowd.

I turned to ask the people on my left – what was so funny?

Another round of mirth, but less sure of itself. Some of the younger boys broke away from the fringes of the crowd. To my right, a young man spoke up. Began to answer the questions I was angling to ask; he seemed to know why I was here, and what to say.

Instinctively, he sensed my anger. As I stepped away, he apologized indirectly for the crowd. "There are no positive-thinking people here, madam. All negative-thinking. I think you should go inside and watch the races."

I told him I was not keen on the races. I needed to talk to people.

He told me that there was a separate section for the ladies.

And there's always one needed. Isn't there?

The unexpected garden

Jallianwala bagh... I had not expected to want to visit it.

Just like I do not wear white khadi to show support for Gandhian thought, just like I do not use prayer to reaffirm faith, I do not usually visit martyr-memorials to remind myself of the freedom struggle. Overt nationalism makes me uncomfortable; as if we were trying to prove a point about our self-worth. Besides, patriotism leaves me with strange questions (What is a legitimate nation? Are we a legit nation? Are we the nation we promised ourselves we’d be? If we have failed ourselves, do we have the right to de-nation ourselves? Why/why not?).

But the taxi driver, on the way back to the hotel, pointed out the sign; Jallianwala bagh, he said.

And I asked him to stop the car.

I had not expected to find that particular song float through my head...‘aapki baat, baat phoolo.n ki’…

But I had not expected to find flowers either. Flowers were the first thing I saw in the bagh (it really is a bagh now, though there was no garden at the time of the massacre. What was called Jallianwala Bagh was simply a space, about five and a half feet lower than the surrounding streets, with houses all around and only one narrow entry/exit, and was almost a dump, used occasionally for meetings and public gathering. The land was bought off at least 34 different owners, after 1920, to build the memorial, and later, the landscaped garden).

I went through the same narrow entry/exit, where General Dyer had once led his troops, past the spot where the soldiers knelt to fire, past fading geroo-coloured walls which neither beckoned nor imposed, past a sign mentioning timings – different, for summer and winter – where I noticed that I had only a few minutes to look around.

Rows upon rows of flower-pots. Snap-dragons, daisies, pansies. Yellows, purples, whites, pinks. A rose-patch. Neat hedges.

And constant music. Patriotic filmy songs. As it happened, the one playing right now was apt - ‘is mitti se tilak karo, ye dharti hai balidaan ki; vande matram…’

I had not expected to be moved.

Perhaps, it was not the song. Perhaps, it was the amar-jyoti (eternally burning, courtesy Indian Oil) that stood trembling before me. Or, I before it.

Perhaps, it was the late winter afternoon and the setting sun and the five white-bearded men sitting on a stone bench, all in a row. Perhaps, that was why I had gooseflesh.

Or perhaps, it was because of the now-covered well that I couldn’t see the bottom of, from where 150 corpses were pulled out. One shudders a little near it: the air is cold there; the very smell is cold.

Or maybe, I was moved because of the kites. Almost every tree had a torn kite stuck it its branches. Some dead trees. Many dead kites. Maybe, it was the sad poetry of it.

But I had not expected to struggle with awkward tears.

There is a little museum inside, full of portraits and explanations. Dr Kichlu and Dr Satyapal, already old men both, who were arrested and deported. Their arrests were what sparked off the protests that led to the Jallianwala bagh meeting.

But I spent the most time with Ratan Devi’s portrait.

Ratan Devi, widow of Chhaju Bhagat, who had gone to the meeting at Jallianwala Bagh. When the soldiers opened fire, Ratan Devi began to worry, to cry with fear. Her husband did not come back. She decided to go and look for him, although there was a curfew from 8 pm onwards. Once inside the bagh, she found his body and she asked her sons to bring a charpai, to bring the body home.

But it was already 8 pm. Her family did not show up. One after another, she asked people to help her carry the body home. But nobody was willing to risk their own lives, to bring home the dead.

Ratan Devi decided to wait there, not willing to leave her husband's body lying there alone. She thought herself lucky when she managed to find a bamboo stick, so she could keep stray dogs off the body. Where she sat, there were injured people. Still alive. Writhing in pain. Three men. A buffalo. A twelve-year old boy.

She asked the boy if he was cold. If she could cover him with a shawl or something. The boy asked for water. There was none to give.

All through the night, she sat there, guarding a dead man, listening to the dying. There she sat, until half past five in the morning, when her family showed up with a charpai. And she said - what she went through, that night, only she knew or god did.


Outside, the dying sun allowed itself one last burst, glinting against the silhouette of a woman sitting on the grass. All I could see was a shock of white hair on a faceless old woman and the sounds of screaming, running children.

I had not expected that.

Link, link!

This is about freedom. Fottal gives you free space and let's you be what you want to be. It's an intriguing question: what, indeed?

And this one is about Sarnath Banerjee. Do visit, and find out more about The Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers

The UP mess

One of the newspapers recently had a letter (to the editor) on page 2, where a concerned citizen was asking: when will UP learn?

Sooner or later, I knew that discussions around Nithari would turn into one of those bhaiya-bihari bash-fests. Usually, I resent this when it happens, because I know that not all is wrong with the states of UP or Bihar. I have such sweet memories of traveling (eating, living, talking to and about people) in these two states that the picture is neither black nor bleak, in my mind.

And yet, when I began to dig up info, there was no escaping the fact that Uttar Pradesh has a worrying track record (although other states are hardly clean). According to data from the National Crime Records Bureau, the total number of crimes against children in India was 14,975 (2005), marking an increase of 33.8% over the previous year. There were 3518 cases of kidnapping and abduction, marking an increase 10.1%, of which 21.3% were contributed by UP alone.

It was Uttar Pradesh that also has the dubious distinction of the highest number of child murders, a 29.4% of a total of 1327 cases (not including infanticide).

Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are together the top contributors to crime against children. Child rape has also on the rise – by about 13.7% - with 4026 cases reported in 2005.

Unfortunately, the conviction rate simply does not keep pace. It stands at only 35.7% for crimes against children (across India). Which means that about 65% of the people who've killed/raped/otherwise harmed children are walking away scot-free.

Like a friend pointed out, if the purpose of legal punishment is deterrance, there's not much to deter a would-be criminal. Is there?

Needs, abuses, options(?)

So, are we spending 12 paise per child per day?

Not really. The vast majority of the 35 million kids get zero paise per day.

About 10 percent, i.e., about 36,500 children are lucky enough to find their way into various facilities like juvenile institutions, homes, shelters, or other state-supported infrastructure. There is zero guarantee that they will be safe and happy here. But their chances of suvival, of not being isolated, and not being physically, sexually or economically abused are higher, as compared to their chances on the streets.

Those who don't live in families or in state-run facilities end up in private institutions where, thanks to a poor monitoring mechanism, they sometimes find themselves abused.

Something like this happened at the Swami Balnath Ashram in Ghaziabad. Happened to dozens of girls over decades, while nobody heard a whisper of protest, until some foreign altruists smelt a rat and called in local activists, who called in the media, who called the national commission for women, who called the cops, who raided the place.

I first heard of the ashram through Project Why, and decided to check out the place.

Ghaziabad is less than an hour's drive out of Delhi, and Balnath Ashram was one of the few places (perhaps the only one) where orphans or abandoned girl-children - especially those with disabilities - could be taken.

We (me and a collegue) visited the ashram, which has been running since 1979, without prior intimation.

A makeshift school was in progress, with three teachers leading a jumbled chorus of voices crying out 'ka-ba-kab...ta-ba-tab'.

A large signboard proclaimed that a special school for children with disabilities existed, but there was no teacher in sight. There used to be one but was missing at the moment. Balnath claimed she was sick for 15 days. The other teachers said that she has been gone so long that they don't even remember her name.

There was one male caretaker, but no female attendant or teacher living within the ashram although nearly all the 70-odd inmates were girls.

The girls with disabilities (and there were only girls there) were isolated and uncared for. They seemed to live in a separate wing of the building, and though Balnath denied their being isolated from the other girls, it was evident that the other girls were given rooms elsewhere.

Some of them were severely malnourished but it was hard to say whether that is neglect or whether that is because they have recently arrived and they came from poor homes. Some girls had injuries and scars, which they refused to explain. A few seemed very sick and in urgent need of medical attention. Balnath, the saffron-clad swami, claimed that one girl had been in and out of hospital. That she'd needed a saline drip. To me, she looked very much like she still needed to be in hospital and still needed a saline drip. Probably a lot more.

The older ones managed the kitchen themselves, and bathed the little ones. There are piles of clothes and mattresses lying locked up in store-rooms. However, many of the girls seem to be sleeping on bare, hard beds, without mattresses.

Without being asked a question, Balnath had complained, "These girls are forming a non-cooperation movement against me. They keep saying they're not taken care of. I'm sick of them."

The girls did not say a word against him. Not to me. But after a few hours there, some of them had begun to clutch at my hands, my kurta. Some wanted to leave right away. One howled, calling for her mummy.

This ashram once used to be a co-gendered one. There were both boys and girls. Balnath claimed he got rid of the boys (transferred them to another similar home in another location) because "the boys were leading the girls into bad activities... introducing them to strangers outside".

The girls said they missed the boys they'd grown up with. They were like their brothers.

The school running inside the premises was not recognized and was only upto class 8; the only option for taking the secondary exam was to do so privately. However, so far, none of the girls had cleared this exam. Not since 1979. No vocational courses were taught either. Balnath claimed that the girls were simply not interested, and that they did learn something, anyway: bhajans and harmonium practise.

"We get them married off, as soon as they turn 18, to poor boys from Haryana and Punjab. They only are in a hurry to be married."

Incidentally, he admitted that there was a bit of a conflict situation. A local muslim woman had been claiming that her daughter was being held in that ashram and had been fighting in court to get her back. Balnath refused to let the child go. Because of "legal complications... these muslims are not allowed to adopt Hindu children, and what if this baby is a Hindu?"

Although he had been running the ashram since 1979, he claimed to have received state funding only once. "Rs 40-45,000 from the UP government. But now, we get private donations. There is so much food and material that there is no need for government money."

The Balnath Ashram is not a special home or a shelter in the legal sense. Balnath admitted that he did not have a licence to run an orphanage; it is simply a registered charity that doubles up as a dump for unwanted children. The result is that it does not show up in government records as a children's shelter or home, and is not subject to routine inspections by the authorities.

On the same visit, we also paid a visit to the Ghaziabad probation office, and found that there was no government sanctioned child institution or shelter in the block. Not one.

The probation officer himself was unavailable (doing election duty because, clearly, some by-election or the other was more important than protecting children in non-existent shelters) but one of the clerks agreed to speak to us, anonmously, of course. He said that the closest children's home was the Rajkiya Bal Griha in Meerut.

Another interesting fact. There is only one inspector for one mandal, who sits at Meerut. The mandal includes Ghaziabad, Muzzafarnagar, Saharanpur, Rampur, Moradabad, Bijnaur and Meerut districts.

Seven districts. One inspector.

"In 2004, the UP government cancelled children's homes in all except 17 districts. It is true that this state order violated the Juvenile Justice (care and protection of children) Act, 2000. It is imperative that orphans or abandoned children be produced before a juvenile justice board. If the local police find them, they have to send them to Meerut. Else, they are just left at the Balnath Ashram. We know it doesn't have a license, but where's the option?"

When I asked why they didn't intervene, he said, "What can we do if we don't have an alternative? Take them out of the ashram, but take them where?"

For children with disabilities this is true many times over. Where does one take them?

While it is difficult to look after children with disabilities, it is a responsibility that, once assumed, must be discharged with persistence and grace. Unfortunately, there are few homes with special facilities. Besides, when it comes to abuse, it is hard to ascertain levels of ability, activists say, since traumatized children often refuse to respond, or display behavioural problems until they can be counselled.

Inu Annie Stephen, a strategy alliance coordinator for the Childline India Foundation, knows that the resource crunch is frustrating and limiting, especially when it comes to special services attuned to needs.

"One of the major challenges is differently abled children. Even government homes sometimes refuse to keep them. We have emergency services and organisations like the Missionaries of Charity, but even NGOs get fed up of our requests. The government is supposed to take in all kinds of children with whatever level of ability, but there are no special homes and there are no skilled staff to cater to special children."

Project Why is one of the few organisations that does have a special section. The founder, Anouradha Bakshi believes that families must be made to assume primary responsibility for children, including those with special needs. Her daughter, Shamika works as a special educator and has helped bathe and groom her students, but she also has to argue with parents' on the child's behalf, since families often send a special child to school dirtier than other siblings. Sometimes, no lunch is given, or rotten leftovers are set aside.

But teachers like Bakshi are a rarity. In places like the Balnath Ashram, the teachers were probably silent witnesses to the misery and squalor of girls who may or may not have been disabled. May or may not have been abused.

When activists began to prod and probe the ashram, they tracked down one of the women who had once lived on the premises. She admitted to one of the social workers that she suspected some of the girls were being abuses. But she did not call the cops. She did not blow the whistle. She did not insist that Balnath (or his male cohorts) not have access to the girls' rooms after a certain time of day. She did not insist that the girls be taught something that might make them independent. She simply lived there until matters soured between her and her husband (who worked there), and then she upped and left.

I don't know what will happen to the girls. I don't know where they are and I don't know if, when they turn 18, they will simply be turned out of the government-run shelter - without a clue about how they can make a living, without being taught the most rudimentary laws under which they can seek protection, without the tools of citizenry and dignity.

A twelve-paise investment

So, 35 million children need to be provided for. And what can we do but provide?

Provide shelters. Provide uniforms, food, exercise. Provide skills, training, and a little laughter. Surely, we will provide all this, won't we?

Yet, feeding 35 million citizens is not a joke. Feeding, clothing, educating, sheltering, protecting 35 million is the sort of thing that makes economists and financial planners pull out their beards. Even so, they scrimp a little here, save a little there; make a fund here; make an allotment there. They scratch the bottom of the taxpayers' barrel and come up with Rs 1077 crores to be spent on children.

Mind you, ALL children. To be precise, in the 10th five-year plan, the total allocation for child-related programmes was about Rs 1077.08 crores. This would include the money spent on feeding kids in anganwadi centres and at mid-day meals in school.

Of the total amount we decide to spend on children, only 1% goes towards protection. The allocation for children in need of protection is no more than Rs 71.66 per child per year. Of this, 60 percent goes towards administrative costs. Running offices, shelters etc, paying salaries, etc.

What's left? In effect, per day, the state allows each child 12 paise per day.

That's right. Twelve paise.

The ministry of women and child development defines child protection as "protecting children from or against any perceived or real danger or risk to their life, their personhood and childhood. It is about reducing their vulnerability... ensuring that no child falls out of the social security and safety net and those who do, receive necessary care, protection and support so as to bring them back into the safety net".

It goes on to say that child protection ought to encompass prevention, care and recovery, and that "once victimized, (children) are entitled to services, which hasten their recovery and reduce further trauma."

It is said that children are a nation's investment in the future. What sort of return our nation's planners expect on a 12-paise investment is a question worth asking. However, I have another question for the planning commission: when was the last time they bought anything worth twelve paise?

A fistful of rice?
A bowl of grain?
The chaff of the grain?
A blanket? Socks? A piece of coal?
A notebook? A pencil?
A toy? A pill? A joyride?
Mud? Dung?
A visit to the shrink?
What?

Before the numbers fade

When somebody asked me about my politics (was I right, left, liberal, anarchist?), without thinking much about why, I responded by saying, "My politics is children".

Part of this was rooted in the fact that I'd been trying to write about child protection for nearly three months, and was at the moment trying to determine whether it was 17 skulls and 22 dismembered skeletons they're found in that drain in my city's backyard, or was it 18, or was it 38?

In our country - a young country, we proudly say - there is too much of everything. Too many babies. Too much crime. Too much bureaucracy. Too many religions and castes. Too many languages. Too much abuse. Too much poverty. Too much filth. Too much to bear, almost.

When children, one by one, disappear, and the police does not bother, it is too much to forgive. It took, at the very least, 22 children and the finding of their hacked-up bodies to jumpstart an investigation. It may have taken 38.

But, you see, children do go missing. They run away; they're kidnapped; they lose their way home; they go looking for adventure, or better food. And there are so many of them that we don't pay attention. On our street signals. Selling papers, books, flowers, pens, balloons, art. In our restaurants, waiting on us. And in our homes. On our streets, begging. In our red-light districts, being raped. In our disaster-struck villages, orphaned. They're everywhere. Millions of them, with about 45,000 being added to the 'missing' lists every year.

That's right. Forty-five thousand.

These are the ones that fall off our collective maps, because their skeletons are not found, stuffed into drains. They just vanish into the dark hole that is our streets, the fortress of our homes, the war-zone that is our international human trafficking rings. And melt into a pool of 35 million.

That's right. Thirty-five million.

These millions are, what the government of India collectively calls, 'children in need of protection'. Defined by the ministry of social justice and empowerment as children in 'extremely difficult circumstances', they include children in conflict with the law, victims of crime or natural disasters, orphaned, abandoned or runaway children, rescued child labourers, trafficked children, amongst others.

Children who, however briefly, are nobody's; and therefore, ours. To be cared for by the state, or state-supported institutions/organisations.

The next few posts will take a look at how we deal with these numbers. Our children.