I have been silent on this, as on many other things for a while. And gnawing at me, always, the guilt of not doing more. I was the one who said, we've got to stop taking it. I was someone who believed that to suffer oppression in silence is like tantamount to being part of the oppression. And yet, for days and weeks and then months, I did nothing at all about Blank Noise.
What does it mean to say you are involved with something when you fail to put in time and effort into pushing this cause? I don't think I can ever stop being involved - or thinking of myself as involved - as far as street sexual harassment is concerned. And yet, it gets harder and harder to find the fight within, and take it to the streets.Yet, every few days, I remind myself. That it is out there, the fight. Every few days, the fight comes back to me.
Even though I take buses very, very rarely and only as a last resort, and even though this is much against my own will. This is to say that I haven't stopped stepping out on the streets, however, and I have not stopped confronting harassment. This is to say, I haven't stopped feeling angry.This is also to say that sometimes I get really, really tired. Sometimes, I cannot bring myself to step out of an auto-rickshaw and cross the road, and instead, I make the driver take a series of very inconvenient turns on very jammed/dug-up inner lanes, just so he can drop me at the very doorstep. Sometimes, in the inner lanes of a posh neighbourhood, some stranger says something that is humiliating and is intended to humiliate, and very often, I am too tired to find something to say in response.
And this is to say that sometimes, I cannot find my tongue. I want to retaliate but find myself looking at the time instead, and up and down the road and counting the number of people there are about, and wondering what sort of people they are and whether they will think I had it coming, because just look at the time.This is to say that I have begun to understand how people who join movements feel. Not professional activists. Just ordinary people with jobs and deadlines and daily commutes, who decide to fight back, and then begin to think that it doesn't matter how long they fight and how hard. They are outnumbered, out-powered and for their particular cause, always too poor. And bad news just keeps coming in, year on year, each time wearing a new head, so that the problem just looks bigger and bigger. Like some sort of hydra-headed monster. Cut one head down and another appears, malevolent, reaching for you.This is to say that I have begun to feel a sneaking, shaky streak of violence crowd my heads on the streets, sometimes, and I have to stop and shake my head and let go of it. That I have a diminishing sense of proportion about what sort of reaction is justified, and when.This is to say that I have begun to spend more and more time wondering what to wear. It is stupefying and stultifying and I thought it was over, this reconnaisance of a wardrobe like I was going out to battle instead of hanging out with friends in some cafe or pub, but it isn't over.What happened in Mangalore was harassment. Not moral policing. Harassment. Violent, and deeply sexist harassment. It was a form of terror, actually. Using violence in the name of nation/religion/ideology. The attack was political and deserves to be treated as premeditated political violence.
My first, immediate reaction was that those so-and-sos deserve to be repaid in their own coin. One fine evening when they are chilling with their cronies, a gang of armed women should descend upon them and beat the living daylights out of them, abuse and humiliate them in public, with a dozen television crews looking on. But then, we are a democracy and, at least in theory, governed by criminal procedure codes. So my next thought was that these people should be picked up by the cops and have the living daylights thrashed out of them. That wouldn't be very lawful either. And Gandhiji wouldn't have approved, I guess. Though I have my doubts. If Gandhiji ever caught his sons attacking peaceful women sitting around nursing a drink, I have a strong feeling that he would use his danda after all.
Sometimes, I begin to wonder if I am wrong about this staycalmretortbutdonotgetviolent attitude to violent, abusive strangers. Sometimes, I begin to wonder if the world would not be a better place if governed by hard-drinking mothers who consistently use hairbrushes on their sons' backsides.
Because, this is to say that it won't go away. This constant fear of what might be done to you because you are a woman and somebody might accuse you of being something they think you shouldn't be and then proceed to insult you or hurt you physically, and then you might be stuck in law courts for the next fifteen years trying to have them tossed in jail for a few months. This terror that it might be your turn next time, Mumbai instead of Mangalore, is not going to go away. But this is also to say that hiding inside homes, or cars, or sticking to very elite venues won't make it go away either. So even if it isn't going away, its got to. Somehow.
I don't know how. I don't know if slow, steady conversation, sharing, documenting, information disseminating is the way forward. Or petitions and legal interventions should be the focus. Or whether street art and exhibitions will help. Or whether we should all turn into counter-terror volunteers. Or what. But somehow.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Thoughts, borrowed and echoed
It has been a while now, since I took time off from work. That is, paying work that allows me to feel independent.
One reason for this break was that I wanted time to focus on my own writing. That is, writing that I want to do, regardless of whether anyone wants to pay for it, publish it, praise me for it, or not. The other reason is that I had begun to feel I was on very uncertain ground. I needed to think about many things. About how I work, what I choose to write, in which genre, and whether my work means something after all.
I was not - am not - looking for reassurance. I don't need to be told "Oh, but journalists/writers like you are needed". I'm objective enough, unsparing enough, to know why a certain kind of writing is required and what it accomplishes. But I needed to figure out whether I am willing to pay the price I must, in order to go on writing.
All writers, across genres, have to pay the price for their choices. Some brilliant minds who would rather write about ecology end up writing inane pieces about how the manufacturers of X detergent or Y soap might kill the competition. Some feminists end up writing about the inevitability of Brazilian waxes or the merits of 'settling' for a man, as long as he'll marry you. Some have written about their own despair, and died of it. Some have written their truths and been exiled or jailed or murdered for it.
They could have chosen not to, you know. I think of that often, these days. That these days, it is so easy to give offense. I'm certain there's enough on this blog, for instance, to offend several groups. So far, I've not bothered to censor myself. Or haven't I? Have I said everything I could have said? Have I not stopped to think, rethink, saved drafts and slept over them a few nights, to make sure I wasn't saying something indefensible, to make sure I wasn't crossing any lines of offense?
It is fine to say "but that is the only responsible thing to do". Perhaps it is. And perhaps I have tried to be responsible, rather than afraid. But what if I did say something indefensible? What should have been done to me? What if I did cross all lines, offending everyone right, left and center, across caste, religion and gender lines? What would I lose? A reputation? A home? A career? Liberty? Life?
These are difficult questions. For a writer who is aware of the repercussions, and who isn't in these times, these are beyond moral or ethical dilemmas. These are matters of life and death. Because, really, it takes so little, and makes so little sense. Somebody has a problem with the title of a movie. People could die. Somebody has problems with a beautiful song. People could die. Somebody paints. Somebody could die. Somebody shoots a photo. Somebody could go to jail. No laws are broken. And yet, suddenly, you could be stripped of your right to life and liberty, your right to expect that your country will protect you as a ctitizen.
Take a well-known book that might well have had its demerits, but we aren't allowed to find out. "The Satanic Verses is a rich and complex literary novel, by turns ironic, fantastical and satirical. Despite what is often said, mostly by those who haven't read it, the book does not take direct aim at Islam or its prophet. Those sections that have caused the greatest controversy are contained within the dreams or nightmares of a character who is in the grip of psychosis. Which is to say that, even buried in the fevered subconscious of a disturbed character inside a work of fiction - a work of magical realism fiction! - there is no escape from literalist tyranny. Any sentence might turn out to be a death sentence. And few if any of even the boldest and most iconoclastic artists wish to run that risk."
The above paragraph is from a piece titled 'How Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses has Shaped Our Society' and it echoes many of my own concerns. Not because I wish to criticise religion in print but because I wish not to approach writing with fear in my heart. Because the only thing that fear produces is more fear and any work that has been infected by fear is at best, mediocre, and really, utterly worthless as a testament to a lifetime of thinking and creating. One might as well not write.
While I would urge everyone to read the whole piece, please do at least read this little section:
"The word, though, that is most frequently launched at the heirs of Rushdie is Islamophobic. Almost any criticism of Islam or any of its adherents is likely to trigger accusations of Islamophobia. For example, in 2007 the Channel 4 documentary Undercover Mosque exposed various preachers making hateful and violent statements regarding women, Jews, homosexuals and infidels. By any journalistic measure it was a compelling and revelatory documentary. But in the media storm that followed it was not the inflammatory preachers but the programme-makers who found themselves subject to an inquisition. The police tried to prosecute them for broadcasting "material likely to stir up racial hatred". And when that failed they referred the film to Ofcom for censure. It took nine months before the film-makers were fully vindicated and their professional reputations restored.
Of course, very few people sympathised with the preachers shown in the documentary but many did want to express their sympathy with Muslims in general, whom they saw, not without reason, as an embattled minority. And to the well-intentioned, the best way of doing this was to condemn anyone who criticised any Muslim, regardless of their extremism. As the playwright David Edgar put it: "Whether they like it or not, the current defectors [his term for those liberals who criticise extremist Islamic leaders] are seeking to provide a vocabulary for the progressive intelligentsia to abandon the poor."
One reason for this break was that I wanted time to focus on my own writing. That is, writing that I want to do, regardless of whether anyone wants to pay for it, publish it, praise me for it, or not. The other reason is that I had begun to feel I was on very uncertain ground. I needed to think about many things. About how I work, what I choose to write, in which genre, and whether my work means something after all.
I was not - am not - looking for reassurance. I don't need to be told "Oh, but journalists/writers like you are needed". I'm objective enough, unsparing enough, to know why a certain kind of writing is required and what it accomplishes. But I needed to figure out whether I am willing to pay the price I must, in order to go on writing.
All writers, across genres, have to pay the price for their choices. Some brilliant minds who would rather write about ecology end up writing inane pieces about how the manufacturers of X detergent or Y soap might kill the competition. Some feminists end up writing about the inevitability of Brazilian waxes or the merits of 'settling' for a man, as long as he'll marry you. Some have written about their own despair, and died of it. Some have written their truths and been exiled or jailed or murdered for it.
They could have chosen not to, you know. I think of that often, these days. That these days, it is so easy to give offense. I'm certain there's enough on this blog, for instance, to offend several groups. So far, I've not bothered to censor myself. Or haven't I? Have I said everything I could have said? Have I not stopped to think, rethink, saved drafts and slept over them a few nights, to make sure I wasn't saying something indefensible, to make sure I wasn't crossing any lines of offense?
It is fine to say "but that is the only responsible thing to do". Perhaps it is. And perhaps I have tried to be responsible, rather than afraid. But what if I did say something indefensible? What should have been done to me? What if I did cross all lines, offending everyone right, left and center, across caste, religion and gender lines? What would I lose? A reputation? A home? A career? Liberty? Life?
These are difficult questions. For a writer who is aware of the repercussions, and who isn't in these times, these are beyond moral or ethical dilemmas. These are matters of life and death. Because, really, it takes so little, and makes so little sense. Somebody has a problem with the title of a movie. People could die. Somebody has problems with a beautiful song. People could die. Somebody paints. Somebody could die. Somebody shoots a photo. Somebody could go to jail. No laws are broken. And yet, suddenly, you could be stripped of your right to life and liberty, your right to expect that your country will protect you as a ctitizen.
Take a well-known book that might well have had its demerits, but we aren't allowed to find out. "The Satanic Verses is a rich and complex literary novel, by turns ironic, fantastical and satirical. Despite what is often said, mostly by those who haven't read it, the book does not take direct aim at Islam or its prophet. Those sections that have caused the greatest controversy are contained within the dreams or nightmares of a character who is in the grip of psychosis. Which is to say that, even buried in the fevered subconscious of a disturbed character inside a work of fiction - a work of magical realism fiction! - there is no escape from literalist tyranny. Any sentence might turn out to be a death sentence. And few if any of even the boldest and most iconoclastic artists wish to run that risk."
The above paragraph is from a piece titled 'How Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses has Shaped Our Society' and it echoes many of my own concerns. Not because I wish to criticise religion in print but because I wish not to approach writing with fear in my heart. Because the only thing that fear produces is more fear and any work that has been infected by fear is at best, mediocre, and really, utterly worthless as a testament to a lifetime of thinking and creating. One might as well not write.
While I would urge everyone to read the whole piece, please do at least read this little section:
"The word, though, that is most frequently launched at the heirs of Rushdie is Islamophobic. Almost any criticism of Islam or any of its adherents is likely to trigger accusations of Islamophobia. For example, in 2007 the Channel 4 documentary Undercover Mosque exposed various preachers making hateful and violent statements regarding women, Jews, homosexuals and infidels. By any journalistic measure it was a compelling and revelatory documentary. But in the media storm that followed it was not the inflammatory preachers but the programme-makers who found themselves subject to an inquisition. The police tried to prosecute them for broadcasting "material likely to stir up racial hatred". And when that failed they referred the film to Ofcom for censure. It took nine months before the film-makers were fully vindicated and their professional reputations restored.
Of course, very few people sympathised with the preachers shown in the documentary but many did want to express their sympathy with Muslims in general, whom they saw, not without reason, as an embattled minority. And to the well-intentioned, the best way of doing this was to condemn anyone who criticised any Muslim, regardless of their extremism. As the playwright David Edgar put it: "Whether they like it or not, the current defectors [his term for those liberals who criticise extremist Islamic leaders] are seeking to provide a vocabulary for the progressive intelligentsia to abandon the poor."
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Two points of madness
Two points quickly made themselves apparent in the wake of the recent madness that was the attacks on Mumbai, starting November 26th. One, people – articulate, moneyed, powerful people – are upset and frantic to ensure that something like this does not happen again. This, I understand.
What I do not understand are certain extreme, juvenile and surprisingly lazy demands from grown-ups who should be able to think through the consequences of their words.
War.
Such a word, this one. We use it during cricket matches. We use it to describe a counter-terrorism operation. We use it to describe a terrorist strike. We use it to describe a verbal spat. We use it to describe separatist movements. We use it to describe non-separatist armed conflicts. We use it to describe breaking marriages.
War. On the front pages of the newspapers, everyday. Editorial teams putting together a checklist of things we should do to our neighbours. American politicians helpfully announcing in public that India plans to strike terror camps inside Pakistan (gee thanks!). Calls for compulsory military training... The rationale for these howls for war is that we are already at war and since we appear to have leads that point to a Pakistan-based terror group’s involvement, we should go invade the country. The ‘teach them a lesson they won’t forget’ rationale.
I sometimes wonder if this generation, the one that has not really lived through a real full-blown war, has begun to crave one. One of those things. Like disaster tourism, crisis tourism, the need to experience the thing physically. There was Kargil, but then Kargil was so far away. An inaccessible spot where the only people really threatened were the guys in uniform and the poor locals who had nowhere else to go. We saw the coffins on TV. We heard the boom-boom. But it wasn’t tangible, was it?
I remember asking my family about war once. I asked them for their memories because I had none. They all wrote back with faint, brushing encounters. The 1962 war. The 1971 war. My grandmother, knitting for the soldiers. Black paper on the windows. Windows tightly shut, dim lighting. Rationed sugar. Food rations. Strangers showing up at school to take kids away from the classroom, under the pretext of war.
And that was then. Before either nation had the nuclear option. Even if we don’t nuke each other, can you even imagine what a modern war would be like?
When the city was attacked by ten men with rifles and bombs, who were firing randomly, upon people of all religions and nationalities, we felt like the whole city was being held hostage. We hated the fact that other people died. But more than anything else, we hated the fact that we couldn’t go on living. That we were forced to be afraid. Afraid of eating out, taking a train, afraid of just being you and not knowing why you are a target. And if I was scared then, I am terrified now, when my country seems to be dragged towards the brink of war. Yet, I notice a glibness sneaking in, an easy, childlike enthusiasm for some fireworks. A 'War, finally!' attitude.
Can you imagine war, I want to ask people? Cowering inside your own house, perhaps feeling it shake, sticking black paper on windows, feeling like a target, day and night. Do you not understand the concept of ‘carpet bombing’ and ‘civilian targets’? Do you think that, while our soldiers are sent off to do battle at the borders, we will be able to sit around sipping coffee, making music, shopping at Linking Road? Do you think Bombay (or Delhi or any other major city) will not be a target? Can you imagine how afraid you will be then, because your kids are in school and you won’t know whether you should just pull them out until things are better, or what? Can you imagine contemplating a pleasant stroll down to the sea when there are bombers flying past, inches away from your bedroom window?
Three nights of a crisis, more or less in a limited part of South Mumbai, and we had an emerging black market for drinking water! And you want this country to go to war?
Who are we fooling about the real purpose of such a war? It is an extremely juvenile imagination that assumes that the extremist outfits based in Pakistan will be sending their cadre to enlist as jawans. It will be the same poor lot on that side, fighting because someone else has called for a war. It will be their little babies at risk. Their farms and schools and hospitals and hotels. And because we are such kindred cultures, they too will have people selling food and fuel on the black market. Probably drinking water too. And, I suspect, they will also try smuggling sugar across the border.
War, they want! War with who? The extremists across the border have been bombing their own country, for god’s sake! Those who came with bombs didn’t come in the name of a neighbouring country. They came from the nation called the lust for power, the nation of the psychologically damaged, whose leaders rarely sign up for suicide missions.
The truth is, people are calling for war because war is easily spoken of, and rarely experienced. All those people who are talking about aggressive action and military training, will they also agree to a compulsory stint in the armed forces? Will they let their children be put into uniform and sent off marching to lob a grenade or two across the border? Nobody minds getting a little toughie training. It adds to our sense of security. But just take a look at the composition of our armed forces. Take a look at what percentage of our officers come from the elite 1%, or even the upper middle classes. Take a look at the average soldier and what sort of options he had and why he signed up at all. He isn’t looking to save our collective backsides. He doesn’t lunch at the Oberoi and he sure as hell does not want to go to war. He’ll go if he has to, but I think he would appreciate it if we don’t sacrifice his head to humour a nation’s hurt ego.
And since we are on the subject of nations, there is that other point of madness: the calls for boycotting of elections, or worse, the notion that our cities and states are better off being ruled by CEOs. Corporates. Because ‘politicians’ are filthy so and sos, and we don’t want any of them.
If there is anything that scares me more than talk of war, it is this sort of talk that wants us to renege on our pledge to ourselves. To stop being a democracy. To turn into a theocracy or a collective of monarchies.
What on god’s earth is this ‘India’? A nation of what? A democratic nation? A sovereign, secular, socialist republic? That was the idea, yes. And look what we’ve done for over sixty years. We voted for religion. We voted for caste. We voted for sub-caste. We voted for class and privilege. We voted for whoever our parents or in-laws voted for. In short, we voted for ‘us’. That is, when we bothered to vote at all.
And now you have the gall to say: vote for ‘nobody’!
Why? Didn’t like your mug in the great national mirror called parliament? The Lok Sabha, the Vidhan Sabha, the city councils, the municipality: this is our face and if it smells like our unwashed armpits, it is because we like to bury our smuggy faces in our armpits so often.
I overheard a conversation in the train, recently. One woman telling another (in the first class compartment) that they should make friends with a third girl, who happens to work with the railways. Because, just in case they ever got caught ticketless, they could call her up and ask her to speak to her railways colleagues and get them off the hook. This is us. This isn’t our bureaucrats or our politicians. Us.
I am both appalled and wearied by the incessant chant, calling for heads to roll in the government, the police and intelligence. This blaming of politics and bureaucracy is just extremely lazy talk.
How blind are you that you cannot see that those heads are really ours? Our states, our cities already have CEOs. They are called ministers. The only difference between a minister and a corporate-style CEO is that the latter pretty much owns you, and you have almost zero power over him. He can fire you. You cannot fire him. Is this what we want India to become? A place where some rich dude rules us, can get rid of us, can silence us, and we cannot do anything to dislodge him?
If we don’t want this, then why do we keep saying it? Why have we gotten to the point that we cannot admit to ourselves that we are actually afraid of our responsibility in this great, big (and yes, flourishing) democracy?
We are, politically speaking, such an ignorant country that it makes me cringe to think of it. Forget elections. Many of us cannot even name our own prime minister and president and the local councillor or MLA. The vast majority of this country simply does not know! A lot of this has to do with illiteracy, yes, but a lot of it also has to do with not wanting to know. And it’s not just the poor and the illiterate. It is because anyone who can afford to takes pride in saying ‘Oh, but I am not a political person’. We want to cut ourselves off from the business of running a nation, or a city. We want the government to function like some sort of sub-contractual service provider. We don’t have leaders because we don’t want leaders. We wanted thekedaars; we got thekedaars!
Which is why I am doubly disturbed by this ‘vote for nobody’ campaign. Yes, I heard about 49O, and I know it is supposed to pressurize our political parties into choosing better candidates. But I am deeply concerned about the language used. To encourage people to vote in patterns that ensure that no clear winner emerges in any constituency is not a very healthy trend in a democracy. It is a lazy trend. It is lazy to just say ‘I choose nobody’ when you should be making an informed choice.
What is ‘nobody’? A ‘nobody’ is a negative. It is a political black hole, the kind that doesn’t do much for people who need light and gravity, both. Perhaps that is what they mean when they say ‘vote for nobody’. Perhaps this is our new face. A nobody face, which does not pretend to stand for anything and makes no excuses for its own ignorance or inaction.
And guess what, I too have had enough. I am tired of having to deal with a philosophy that seems to equate doing nothing with having done something.
We will not bother to vote. We will not bother to create lobbies that pressurize governments into listening to our demands, even in non-election years. We will not vote for independents, because we are suspicious of their non-political antecedents. We will not find out how democracy really functions in this country. We will not even give generously to charity. We will ignore the Bhopal gas tragedy victims and their demands for a proper clean-up job. We will not spend half an hour visiting a municipality office to register a complaint. We will not pay our unskilled employees decent wages. We will not show up at our candidates’ doorsteps, demanding to know what happened to electoral promises, to remind them of what happens when people take loans but don’t pay up. And we certainly will not vote for those who actually have given their lives to social work and bringing change.
Instead, we will pay bribes, kickbacks, commissions. Or else, if we have the connections, we will use a high-up functionary in the bureaucracy or government to bail us out when we get into trouble. And we will go on moaning about the state of the nation and how it can all be fixed if we just stop voting and start making war.
What I do not understand are certain extreme, juvenile and surprisingly lazy demands from grown-ups who should be able to think through the consequences of their words.
War.
Such a word, this one. We use it during cricket matches. We use it to describe a counter-terrorism operation. We use it to describe a terrorist strike. We use it to describe a verbal spat. We use it to describe separatist movements. We use it to describe non-separatist armed conflicts. We use it to describe breaking marriages.
War. On the front pages of the newspapers, everyday. Editorial teams putting together a checklist of things we should do to our neighbours. American politicians helpfully announcing in public that India plans to strike terror camps inside Pakistan (gee thanks!). Calls for compulsory military training... The rationale for these howls for war is that we are already at war and since we appear to have leads that point to a Pakistan-based terror group’s involvement, we should go invade the country. The ‘teach them a lesson they won’t forget’ rationale.
I sometimes wonder if this generation, the one that has not really lived through a real full-blown war, has begun to crave one. One of those things. Like disaster tourism, crisis tourism, the need to experience the thing physically. There was Kargil, but then Kargil was so far away. An inaccessible spot where the only people really threatened were the guys in uniform and the poor locals who had nowhere else to go. We saw the coffins on TV. We heard the boom-boom. But it wasn’t tangible, was it?
I remember asking my family about war once. I asked them for their memories because I had none. They all wrote back with faint, brushing encounters. The 1962 war. The 1971 war. My grandmother, knitting for the soldiers. Black paper on the windows. Windows tightly shut, dim lighting. Rationed sugar. Food rations. Strangers showing up at school to take kids away from the classroom, under the pretext of war.
And that was then. Before either nation had the nuclear option. Even if we don’t nuke each other, can you even imagine what a modern war would be like?
When the city was attacked by ten men with rifles and bombs, who were firing randomly, upon people of all religions and nationalities, we felt like the whole city was being held hostage. We hated the fact that other people died. But more than anything else, we hated the fact that we couldn’t go on living. That we were forced to be afraid. Afraid of eating out, taking a train, afraid of just being you and not knowing why you are a target. And if I was scared then, I am terrified now, when my country seems to be dragged towards the brink of war. Yet, I notice a glibness sneaking in, an easy, childlike enthusiasm for some fireworks. A 'War, finally!' attitude.
Can you imagine war, I want to ask people? Cowering inside your own house, perhaps feeling it shake, sticking black paper on windows, feeling like a target, day and night. Do you not understand the concept of ‘carpet bombing’ and ‘civilian targets’? Do you think that, while our soldiers are sent off to do battle at the borders, we will be able to sit around sipping coffee, making music, shopping at Linking Road? Do you think Bombay (or Delhi or any other major city) will not be a target? Can you imagine how afraid you will be then, because your kids are in school and you won’t know whether you should just pull them out until things are better, or what? Can you imagine contemplating a pleasant stroll down to the sea when there are bombers flying past, inches away from your bedroom window?
Three nights of a crisis, more or less in a limited part of South Mumbai, and we had an emerging black market for drinking water! And you want this country to go to war?
Who are we fooling about the real purpose of such a war? It is an extremely juvenile imagination that assumes that the extremist outfits based in Pakistan will be sending their cadre to enlist as jawans. It will be the same poor lot on that side, fighting because someone else has called for a war. It will be their little babies at risk. Their farms and schools and hospitals and hotels. And because we are such kindred cultures, they too will have people selling food and fuel on the black market. Probably drinking water too. And, I suspect, they will also try smuggling sugar across the border.
War, they want! War with who? The extremists across the border have been bombing their own country, for god’s sake! Those who came with bombs didn’t come in the name of a neighbouring country. They came from the nation called the lust for power, the nation of the psychologically damaged, whose leaders rarely sign up for suicide missions.
The truth is, people are calling for war because war is easily spoken of, and rarely experienced. All those people who are talking about aggressive action and military training, will they also agree to a compulsory stint in the armed forces? Will they let their children be put into uniform and sent off marching to lob a grenade or two across the border? Nobody minds getting a little toughie training. It adds to our sense of security. But just take a look at the composition of our armed forces. Take a look at what percentage of our officers come from the elite 1%, or even the upper middle classes. Take a look at the average soldier and what sort of options he had and why he signed up at all. He isn’t looking to save our collective backsides. He doesn’t lunch at the Oberoi and he sure as hell does not want to go to war. He’ll go if he has to, but I think he would appreciate it if we don’t sacrifice his head to humour a nation’s hurt ego.
And since we are on the subject of nations, there is that other point of madness: the calls for boycotting of elections, or worse, the notion that our cities and states are better off being ruled by CEOs. Corporates. Because ‘politicians’ are filthy so and sos, and we don’t want any of them.
If there is anything that scares me more than talk of war, it is this sort of talk that wants us to renege on our pledge to ourselves. To stop being a democracy. To turn into a theocracy or a collective of monarchies.
What on god’s earth is this ‘India’? A nation of what? A democratic nation? A sovereign, secular, socialist republic? That was the idea, yes. And look what we’ve done for over sixty years. We voted for religion. We voted for caste. We voted for sub-caste. We voted for class and privilege. We voted for whoever our parents or in-laws voted for. In short, we voted for ‘us’. That is, when we bothered to vote at all.
And now you have the gall to say: vote for ‘nobody’!
Why? Didn’t like your mug in the great national mirror called parliament? The Lok Sabha, the Vidhan Sabha, the city councils, the municipality: this is our face and if it smells like our unwashed armpits, it is because we like to bury our smuggy faces in our armpits so often.
I overheard a conversation in the train, recently. One woman telling another (in the first class compartment) that they should make friends with a third girl, who happens to work with the railways. Because, just in case they ever got caught ticketless, they could call her up and ask her to speak to her railways colleagues and get them off the hook. This is us. This isn’t our bureaucrats or our politicians. Us.
I am both appalled and wearied by the incessant chant, calling for heads to roll in the government, the police and intelligence. This blaming of politics and bureaucracy is just extremely lazy talk.
How blind are you that you cannot see that those heads are really ours? Our states, our cities already have CEOs. They are called ministers. The only difference between a minister and a corporate-style CEO is that the latter pretty much owns you, and you have almost zero power over him. He can fire you. You cannot fire him. Is this what we want India to become? A place where some rich dude rules us, can get rid of us, can silence us, and we cannot do anything to dislodge him?
If we don’t want this, then why do we keep saying it? Why have we gotten to the point that we cannot admit to ourselves that we are actually afraid of our responsibility in this great, big (and yes, flourishing) democracy?
We are, politically speaking, such an ignorant country that it makes me cringe to think of it. Forget elections. Many of us cannot even name our own prime minister and president and the local councillor or MLA. The vast majority of this country simply does not know! A lot of this has to do with illiteracy, yes, but a lot of it also has to do with not wanting to know. And it’s not just the poor and the illiterate. It is because anyone who can afford to takes pride in saying ‘Oh, but I am not a political person’. We want to cut ourselves off from the business of running a nation, or a city. We want the government to function like some sort of sub-contractual service provider. We don’t have leaders because we don’t want leaders. We wanted thekedaars; we got thekedaars!
Which is why I am doubly disturbed by this ‘vote for nobody’ campaign. Yes, I heard about 49O, and I know it is supposed to pressurize our political parties into choosing better candidates. But I am deeply concerned about the language used. To encourage people to vote in patterns that ensure that no clear winner emerges in any constituency is not a very healthy trend in a democracy. It is a lazy trend. It is lazy to just say ‘I choose nobody’ when you should be making an informed choice.
What is ‘nobody’? A ‘nobody’ is a negative. It is a political black hole, the kind that doesn’t do much for people who need light and gravity, both. Perhaps that is what they mean when they say ‘vote for nobody’. Perhaps this is our new face. A nobody face, which does not pretend to stand for anything and makes no excuses for its own ignorance or inaction.
And guess what, I too have had enough. I am tired of having to deal with a philosophy that seems to equate doing nothing with having done something.
We will not bother to vote. We will not bother to create lobbies that pressurize governments into listening to our demands, even in non-election years. We will not vote for independents, because we are suspicious of their non-political antecedents. We will not find out how democracy really functions in this country. We will not even give generously to charity. We will ignore the Bhopal gas tragedy victims and their demands for a proper clean-up job. We will not spend half an hour visiting a municipality office to register a complaint. We will not pay our unskilled employees decent wages. We will not show up at our candidates’ doorsteps, demanding to know what happened to electoral promises, to remind them of what happens when people take loans but don’t pay up. And we certainly will not vote for those who actually have given their lives to social work and bringing change.
Instead, we will pay bribes, kickbacks, commissions. Or else, if we have the connections, we will use a high-up functionary in the bureaucracy or government to bail us out when we get into trouble. And we will go on moaning about the state of the nation and how it can all be fixed if we just stop voting and start making war.
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Mumbai, post.
The other day, I went shopping for veggies at the nearest supermarket, and found it almost empty. The girls employed there were kidding around with each other. I heard the word ‘terrorist’. One girl told another she’d set the terrorists after her friend. The other one alleged that she was one herself. Light laughter. Odd, somehow. Perhaps, necessary, somehow.
Yesterday, I’d stepped out with my own bag and a laptop, boarded a train and opened a book. My station arrived, I got off and ten seconds later, wondered why my shoulder felt light. I’d forgotten the laptop in the Ladies compartment.
In a mad rush, I turned back. I had no way of tracking down that same train even if I did follow it in the right direction. The train had started moving by then, so I jumped into the nearest compartment. I almost fell. A stranger reached out and grabbed me at the door, pulled me inside. Others asked me to sit down, catch my breath, relax. I was too worried to step away from the door.
Five years ago, I would have worried about somebody walking off with my laptop, about losing all the writing I’ve done over the last few years. Yesterday, I worried that somebody would notice an unclaimed bag and panic. I worried that somebody might call the cops and the machine might be either dismantled beyond salvaging, or that I would be called in to explain, and who knows if an explanation would be explanation enough.
A couple of days ago, a friend had told me about riding in an auto-rickshaw whose driver wasn’t in the mood for rules. He jumped a traffic light. The cops stopped him, asked for his papers. They asked him his name. Turned out to be a Muslim name. More questions. Many more questions. They wouldn’t just let him got with a fine and a warning.
A woman lives in our building. Introduced herself as ‘Nisha’. My mother, out of old habit, asked for her full name. She said, ‘Oh, it’s a long name, you won’t be able to pronounce it’. Turned out, her real name was ‘Badr-un-nisa’. Not that hard to pronounce, my mother said. If you’re familiar with it, Nisha said.
Another friend mentioned how, as part of a citizen’s initiative, she walked up to the nearest cop on duty and thanked him – the entire police force – for what the cops had done. He laughed in her face and said, why, because this time it was the big hotels, and all you rich people were in danger? He didn’t think our gratitude would last. So much cynicism, I thought, at a time like this? Odd, perhaps, but necessary, perhaps.
Yet another friend had minor shrapnel cuts on her chin. She had been out there with the other journalists, on the streets for two and a half nights. There was no food and drinking water was being sold on the black market. Spirit... city spirits.
Yesterday, I fretted and tried not to think unpleasant thoughts until the train stopped at the next station. I got off and ran back towards the Ladies compartment. The laptop was where I had left it, apparently untouched. Five years ago, I wonder if it would have been left alone.
By the time I found it, got hold of it and stepped down, the train had started moving again. I almost lost my balance. Once again, a stranger’s hands, and I didn’t fall, after all.
On my way back, in the compartment next to mine, a bunch of young women were talking rather loudly. One woman was asking if TADA was a place, because people were always being ‘put in TADA’. Somebody else said it was a special kind of jail. Another was explaining that it was a law. Somebody said something else about Tada-Bida. Light laughter. Odd, somehow. Perhaps, necessary somehow.
Yesterday, I’d stepped out with my own bag and a laptop, boarded a train and opened a book. My station arrived, I got off and ten seconds later, wondered why my shoulder felt light. I’d forgotten the laptop in the Ladies compartment.
In a mad rush, I turned back. I had no way of tracking down that same train even if I did follow it in the right direction. The train had started moving by then, so I jumped into the nearest compartment. I almost fell. A stranger reached out and grabbed me at the door, pulled me inside. Others asked me to sit down, catch my breath, relax. I was too worried to step away from the door.
Five years ago, I would have worried about somebody walking off with my laptop, about losing all the writing I’ve done over the last few years. Yesterday, I worried that somebody would notice an unclaimed bag and panic. I worried that somebody might call the cops and the machine might be either dismantled beyond salvaging, or that I would be called in to explain, and who knows if an explanation would be explanation enough.
A couple of days ago, a friend had told me about riding in an auto-rickshaw whose driver wasn’t in the mood for rules. He jumped a traffic light. The cops stopped him, asked for his papers. They asked him his name. Turned out to be a Muslim name. More questions. Many more questions. They wouldn’t just let him got with a fine and a warning.
A woman lives in our building. Introduced herself as ‘Nisha’. My mother, out of old habit, asked for her full name. She said, ‘Oh, it’s a long name, you won’t be able to pronounce it’. Turned out, her real name was ‘Badr-un-nisa’. Not that hard to pronounce, my mother said. If you’re familiar with it, Nisha said.
Another friend mentioned how, as part of a citizen’s initiative, she walked up to the nearest cop on duty and thanked him – the entire police force – for what the cops had done. He laughed in her face and said, why, because this time it was the big hotels, and all you rich people were in danger? He didn’t think our gratitude would last. So much cynicism, I thought, at a time like this? Odd, perhaps, but necessary, perhaps.
Yet another friend had minor shrapnel cuts on her chin. She had been out there with the other journalists, on the streets for two and a half nights. There was no food and drinking water was being sold on the black market. Spirit... city spirits.
Yesterday, I fretted and tried not to think unpleasant thoughts until the train stopped at the next station. I got off and ran back towards the Ladies compartment. The laptop was where I had left it, apparently untouched. Five years ago, I wonder if it would have been left alone.
By the time I found it, got hold of it and stepped down, the train had started moving again. I almost lost my balance. Once again, a stranger’s hands, and I didn’t fall, after all.
On my way back, in the compartment next to mine, a bunch of young women were talking rather loudly. One woman was asking if TADA was a place, because people were always being ‘put in TADA’. Somebody else said it was a special kind of jail. Another was explaining that it was a law. Somebody said something else about Tada-Bida. Light laughter. Odd, somehow. Perhaps, necessary somehow.
Friday, November 28, 2008
The incomprehensible and the uncomprehending
Couldn’t sleep last night. Though I’d heard the news, I didn’t switch on the television until yesterday. I just didn’t want to see. It wasn’t until afternoon that I finally saw. The empty streets, the burning hotels, the blood, the bodies, the funerals, the speculation. There was nothing to do but wait to hear something else.
Couldn’t help thinking of my grandmother. She used to say that not a leaf moves but for the will of god. No wind dares blow, no water dares fall, no tree dares grow but for the will of god. It is hard to deal with, this idea.
It is hard to deal with the idea of a god whose will is terror. Or a god whose allows violence along with all the other things – poetry and passion, stories and films, dance and song, flowers and fashion. It makes no sense.
Many of my friends would say, the idea of god doesn’t make sense. Amongst the many messages I got last night, there was one that said ‘if the world had followed Darwin and Dawkins, and there was no god, we would have been much safer today’. The other messages were more to the point. Some mentioned madness. Most just asked ‘are you ok?’
Yes, I’m safe.
I too sent ‘are you okay’ messages. Scrolling down my phone list and scanning names, I was reminded of the time I had sent out similar messages, when the last blast had happened in Delhi. And before that, when I was in Delhi myself, and the blasts had happened in Bombay, I had sent out such messages. And before that, there had been blasts in Delhi and I had gotten such messages. I had had a cruel thought once – thank god I don’t have close friends in Kashmir or Guwahati. A pointless, frustrated thought. Friends, cities, fear. There’s no containing them. They go everywhere, and you take a little bit of them with you everywhere too.
And everywhere, the same questions: who and why and what for? And throughout, this constant thought in my head: why don’t they get it? There’s an awful pointlessness to these attacks, which I just don’t get. Worse, I am convinced that ‘they’ don’t get it either. Whoever executes these things, I don’t think they fully understand what they’re trying to accomplish.
Terror is one of those words that seems to have exhausted itself. Terror. Terrorist. What does it mean? It means a bomb going off. It means men with rifles. It means people prepared to die so that they are able to kill. And I keep thinking, surely, they can see this – that this is all they are. People who are taking the risk of dying, just so that other people also die. People planning to kill so efficiently that they plant bombs in hospitals, where the dead are likely to be rushed. Which will ensure that more people die.
Random people. They don’t know these people. These people don’t know them. A random date and time, some chosen venues, and then its blood and funerals and fires. And television crews, and grief and more talk of the spirit that will keep the city going, because a spirit cannot be killed.
I don’t know what they want, these terrorists. I don’t know yet about their religion, their top guys, their financiers. But I do know that they’re somewhat dim. Stupid, at some level. They might know how to put together a bomb. They might know how to stay under the radar of international intelligence services. But you’ve got to be dumb not to see that whatever larger plan the terror groups had in mind when planning this madness, it is not going to work.
I don’t think they’re listening but I want to tell these people that if your plan is to make people succumb to your vision of an ideal state, you’re going to fail. If your plan is make people culturally orthodox, you’re going to fail. If your plan is to show off, to show the world how powerful you are and how a whole nation is quavering because of you, you are also going to fail. Because you will, in a few more hours, end up as a helpless corpse, dependent on the mercy of the security forces to be even granted the dignity of a shroud.
If your plan is to do something memorable, then too you will fail. It will not take two days for the headlines to change. Already the news channels have taken to expressing concern about the cancellation of cricket matches. You will be utterly forgotten, except perhaps in the nightmares of the hostages who saw your faces. Because people want cricket, not nightmares.
And if your plan is to make a nation any less democratic through your violent, undemocratic means, you are going to fail.
Can you not read the signs, damn you? Do you not even read the newspapers? If terror could truly change people, then we would not have had a promising voter turnout in Jammu and Kashmir. That was a sign. To me, it signified that people had chosen their destiny. Nobody knows yet what they chose, and whether or not the people of Kashmir really want independence, but right now, they have shown the finger to violence by choosing democracy. They have chosen to say, we’ve had enough of fear and ruthlessness, enough of being spoken for; we want to be heard now.
This isn’t about the spirit of the people. It isn’t about people feeling secure either. I see all this terror and am just exhausted. I am not feeling spirited, not at all. Yet, the only desire I have right now is to be able to get all dressed up, step out of my house, catch a train, walk into a café, chat with friends, make plans, talk about books, watch a good play. And I will. We all will. Like we did after the last blast, and the blast before that one, and the one before.
If the frequency of the blasts is going up, and if there are annoying security checks even at hotels and cinemas and shopping complexes, well, we’ll go through the checks and go on living. There will be music and travel and art and blasphemy and new religions and old philosophies. There will also be territorial wars and faith-based conflict and bias and sycophancy and illegal immigration.
What kind of brainless twit cannot see that people do not change so easily? That no number of blasts can cure people of the desire for normalcy and fun. For beauty and passion and laughter. For money. And also for justice and truth.
These are the things people live for. And often, die for. If you try and take these things away from them, sooner or later, they turn upon you, disown you, destroy you. Or if they cannot do that, they exile themselves. They either leave or die fighting. Sometimes, they take years to make up their minds, even a couple of generations. But at no time in human history have the forces of violence been able to succeed in ruling people too long.
I just wanted to tell you that. Terrorists, whatever your big bosses are telling you, they’re wrong. You’re going to fail on every single count. Because you have not read enough history, or even enough religion. If you did, you could so easily have been the person you really want to be. The person everybody wants to be.
You could have been a martyr, if you joined the army or the police. Because that’s what’s happened, see? People are pouring out on the streets to pay their respects and to touch the dead bodies of the cops who died. Not yours.
You could have been an average young guy standing at VT station, waiting on the platform for his girlfriend to arrive. You could have seen her eyes light up as she got off a train, and you could have been happy. You could have danced!
You could have packed your bags and trotted off to a foreign country, perhaps. You could have sold flowers at a street corner. You could have made enough money to set up a flower shop. You could have learnt the names of all the flowers that have ever bloomed. You could have learnt to tell the difference between mogra, chameli, juhi and nargis with your eyes closed. You could have known how blessed this earth is, if you allow it to be. And you could have even looked forward to sinking into this delicious earth, which gave you a lifetime of fragrance and an impossible riot of colour.
You could have been one hardworking carpenter whose children and parents you have now taken away. You could have been a family man, patiently waiting for a train to go home for Bakr-eid, shiny tinseled fabrics folded neatly into your bags, thinking of the delighted little girls who would fight to sit in your lap and the quiet approval of a wife whose eyes hold the promise of heaven.
You could have been that man. But you are not going to be any of this, because you didn’t trust humanity. Because you didn’t trust in your own god. The one whose will decides how nations will grow and which way the wind will blow.
And guess what?
If your plan is to enter heaven, once again you will fail. Because there is no god – not even a strict, forbidding one – who takes into his bosom such scum who plant bombs in hospitals. Such scum who open fire upon anonymous old couples. Somebody so brainless, or so indiscriminating, that they don’t even stop to find out who they’re killing, and why. My mother says, god does not even reserve the right to forgive. He has said that only those you have hurt have the right to forgive you, and if they do not, then you cannot step into heaven. And nobody in this city is going to forgive you.
Don’t allow yourself the solace of thinking that you’ve done something very macho here. If all you can bring to this world is a death threat, you’re such a loser. A mosquito can do that. It is true that I am helpless against you (and the mosquitoes) or the havoc you cause in intangible, psychological ways that are may do worse things to us in the long run. But it is also true that in the long run, we are all dead.
So while I am alive, I am willing to go on trying to build the sort of world I want to live in. Who knows, if there is a god, then perhaps it is god’s will that my will be pitted against yours. And I think I am going to win.
Couldn’t help thinking of my grandmother. She used to say that not a leaf moves but for the will of god. No wind dares blow, no water dares fall, no tree dares grow but for the will of god. It is hard to deal with, this idea.
It is hard to deal with the idea of a god whose will is terror. Or a god whose allows violence along with all the other things – poetry and passion, stories and films, dance and song, flowers and fashion. It makes no sense.
Many of my friends would say, the idea of god doesn’t make sense. Amongst the many messages I got last night, there was one that said ‘if the world had followed Darwin and Dawkins, and there was no god, we would have been much safer today’. The other messages were more to the point. Some mentioned madness. Most just asked ‘are you ok?’
Yes, I’m safe.
I too sent ‘are you okay’ messages. Scrolling down my phone list and scanning names, I was reminded of the time I had sent out similar messages, when the last blast had happened in Delhi. And before that, when I was in Delhi myself, and the blasts had happened in Bombay, I had sent out such messages. And before that, there had been blasts in Delhi and I had gotten such messages. I had had a cruel thought once – thank god I don’t have close friends in Kashmir or Guwahati. A pointless, frustrated thought. Friends, cities, fear. There’s no containing them. They go everywhere, and you take a little bit of them with you everywhere too.
And everywhere, the same questions: who and why and what for? And throughout, this constant thought in my head: why don’t they get it? There’s an awful pointlessness to these attacks, which I just don’t get. Worse, I am convinced that ‘they’ don’t get it either. Whoever executes these things, I don’t think they fully understand what they’re trying to accomplish.
Terror is one of those words that seems to have exhausted itself. Terror. Terrorist. What does it mean? It means a bomb going off. It means men with rifles. It means people prepared to die so that they are able to kill. And I keep thinking, surely, they can see this – that this is all they are. People who are taking the risk of dying, just so that other people also die. People planning to kill so efficiently that they plant bombs in hospitals, where the dead are likely to be rushed. Which will ensure that more people die.
Random people. They don’t know these people. These people don’t know them. A random date and time, some chosen venues, and then its blood and funerals and fires. And television crews, and grief and more talk of the spirit that will keep the city going, because a spirit cannot be killed.
I don’t know what they want, these terrorists. I don’t know yet about their religion, their top guys, their financiers. But I do know that they’re somewhat dim. Stupid, at some level. They might know how to put together a bomb. They might know how to stay under the radar of international intelligence services. But you’ve got to be dumb not to see that whatever larger plan the terror groups had in mind when planning this madness, it is not going to work.
I don’t think they’re listening but I want to tell these people that if your plan is to make people succumb to your vision of an ideal state, you’re going to fail. If your plan is make people culturally orthodox, you’re going to fail. If your plan is to show off, to show the world how powerful you are and how a whole nation is quavering because of you, you are also going to fail. Because you will, in a few more hours, end up as a helpless corpse, dependent on the mercy of the security forces to be even granted the dignity of a shroud.
If your plan is to do something memorable, then too you will fail. It will not take two days for the headlines to change. Already the news channels have taken to expressing concern about the cancellation of cricket matches. You will be utterly forgotten, except perhaps in the nightmares of the hostages who saw your faces. Because people want cricket, not nightmares.
And if your plan is to make a nation any less democratic through your violent, undemocratic means, you are going to fail.
Can you not read the signs, damn you? Do you not even read the newspapers? If terror could truly change people, then we would not have had a promising voter turnout in Jammu and Kashmir. That was a sign. To me, it signified that people had chosen their destiny. Nobody knows yet what they chose, and whether or not the people of Kashmir really want independence, but right now, they have shown the finger to violence by choosing democracy. They have chosen to say, we’ve had enough of fear and ruthlessness, enough of being spoken for; we want to be heard now.
This isn’t about the spirit of the people. It isn’t about people feeling secure either. I see all this terror and am just exhausted. I am not feeling spirited, not at all. Yet, the only desire I have right now is to be able to get all dressed up, step out of my house, catch a train, walk into a café, chat with friends, make plans, talk about books, watch a good play. And I will. We all will. Like we did after the last blast, and the blast before that one, and the one before.
If the frequency of the blasts is going up, and if there are annoying security checks even at hotels and cinemas and shopping complexes, well, we’ll go through the checks and go on living. There will be music and travel and art and blasphemy and new religions and old philosophies. There will also be territorial wars and faith-based conflict and bias and sycophancy and illegal immigration.
What kind of brainless twit cannot see that people do not change so easily? That no number of blasts can cure people of the desire for normalcy and fun. For beauty and passion and laughter. For money. And also for justice and truth.
These are the things people live for. And often, die for. If you try and take these things away from them, sooner or later, they turn upon you, disown you, destroy you. Or if they cannot do that, they exile themselves. They either leave or die fighting. Sometimes, they take years to make up their minds, even a couple of generations. But at no time in human history have the forces of violence been able to succeed in ruling people too long.
I just wanted to tell you that. Terrorists, whatever your big bosses are telling you, they’re wrong. You’re going to fail on every single count. Because you have not read enough history, or even enough religion. If you did, you could so easily have been the person you really want to be. The person everybody wants to be.
You could have been a martyr, if you joined the army or the police. Because that’s what’s happened, see? People are pouring out on the streets to pay their respects and to touch the dead bodies of the cops who died. Not yours.
You could have been an average young guy standing at VT station, waiting on the platform for his girlfriend to arrive. You could have seen her eyes light up as she got off a train, and you could have been happy. You could have danced!
You could have packed your bags and trotted off to a foreign country, perhaps. You could have sold flowers at a street corner. You could have made enough money to set up a flower shop. You could have learnt the names of all the flowers that have ever bloomed. You could have learnt to tell the difference between mogra, chameli, juhi and nargis with your eyes closed. You could have known how blessed this earth is, if you allow it to be. And you could have even looked forward to sinking into this delicious earth, which gave you a lifetime of fragrance and an impossible riot of colour.
You could have been one hardworking carpenter whose children and parents you have now taken away. You could have been a family man, patiently waiting for a train to go home for Bakr-eid, shiny tinseled fabrics folded neatly into your bags, thinking of the delighted little girls who would fight to sit in your lap and the quiet approval of a wife whose eyes hold the promise of heaven.
You could have been that man. But you are not going to be any of this, because you didn’t trust humanity. Because you didn’t trust in your own god. The one whose will decides how nations will grow and which way the wind will blow.
And guess what?
If your plan is to enter heaven, once again you will fail. Because there is no god – not even a strict, forbidding one – who takes into his bosom such scum who plant bombs in hospitals. Such scum who open fire upon anonymous old couples. Somebody so brainless, or so indiscriminating, that they don’t even stop to find out who they’re killing, and why. My mother says, god does not even reserve the right to forgive. He has said that only those you have hurt have the right to forgive you, and if they do not, then you cannot step into heaven. And nobody in this city is going to forgive you.
Don’t allow yourself the solace of thinking that you’ve done something very macho here. If all you can bring to this world is a death threat, you’re such a loser. A mosquito can do that. It is true that I am helpless against you (and the mosquitoes) or the havoc you cause in intangible, psychological ways that are may do worse things to us in the long run. But it is also true that in the long run, we are all dead.
So while I am alive, I am willing to go on trying to build the sort of world I want to live in. Who knows, if there is a god, then perhaps it is god’s will that my will be pitted against yours. And I think I am going to win.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Tagged, again
I don't like personal tags much, but have been tagged by a friend and have not been able to shake off blogging ennui, so here goes. I'm not tagging anyone else, but please feel free to take the tag forward if you want it.
The Rules: People who have been tagged must write their answers on their blogs and replace any question that they dislike with a new question formulated by them. People who have been tagged must tag at least 6 people to do this quiz and those who are tagged cannot refuse. These people must state who they were tagged by and cannot tag the person whom they were tagged by. Get it? Now spread the love.
If your lover betrayed you, what will your reaction be?
No idea. Probably nothing but a whole bunch of tears.
If you could have a dream come true, what would it be?
Peaceful surroundings, plenty (of food and water and time, if nothing else), pen-paper, laptop, a room of my own, and a positively lovely, very liberal man who doesn't complain and thinks that this is his dream come true, too.
What would do with a billion dollars?
Invest. Buy a house, set some aside to take care of food bills for the rest of my life. Build my mother a room in our ancestral village. Maybe even try a little organic farming. Put the rest into scholarships for students and artists.
Will you fall in love with your best friend?
Best friends are usually women, so, I seriously doubt it. If said best friend is a man, and isn't already attached, will tell him. Even if it means risking the friendship.
Which is more blessed: loving someone or being loved by someone?
Being loved is blessed. Loving can be sheer hell.
How long do you intend to wait for someone you love?
Depends on whether he's asking you to wait, wants you to wait. And what exactly I'm waiting for.
If the person you secretly like is attached, what will you do?
Nothing. Try and stay in touch, be a friend. Sort of.
If you could root for one social cause, what would it be?
RTI. The right to information is something basic which can be used to tackle a lot of other ills.
What takes you down the fastest?
Kindness. Humour. Confidence. (Oh, alright, good looks too).
Where do you see yourself in 10 years time?
Don't see more than a month ahead. Try not to.
What’s your fear?
Stopping to believe in anything, not even myself or my own work.
What kind of person do you think the person who tagged you is?
Bluesprite is steady, emotionally honest, insightful and somebody I can relate to very easily.
Would you rather be single and rich or married and poor?
Married, poor and in love with someone who loved me, preferably, but if love is not an option, then single and rich.
If you fall in love with two people simultaneously who will you pick?
Not likely. But if it does, then whoever is less aggressive, more committed and has fewer stereotypical expectations from me as a woman.
Would you give all in a relationship?
Always.
Would you forgive and forget someone no matter how horrible a thing he has done?
I very rarely forget.
Do you prefer being single or in a relationship?
Prefer being single to being in a bad relationship or one that I don't really want. Relationships are too much hard work so they better be worth the trouble.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Mera-wala pink
When I was a kid, my favourite colour was red. I still remember a red silk dress I had, with thick silver trimming all over the bodice and sleeves. And if you're a close friend of mine, you'll probably have heard my little story about the huuuge tantrum I once threw in Hazratgunj, Lucknow: it was all about wanting a pair of red shoes.
I don't know at what point I stopped saying that red was my favourite colour, and when I went through a shifting spectrum of favourites - 'white' and 'black' and 'sea green' and, at one point, 'lilac'. Pink, however, was never my colour.
Nevertheless, there was a lot of pink in my wardrobe. And I didn't have a problem with that. Pink was just another colour - it was nice. Lots of other girls wore pink and I was told it suited me. That was all. I never really thought about it much until I grew up and heard phrases like 'baby blue' and 'baby pink'.
It was the women's magazines, I think, that started me off on this coloured gender association. Magazines like Femina and Cosmo would educate me about which colours to wear in which season, and what men were supposed to wear and what not, and what look marked you out as what type, and what colour to paint your room when you started to plan a family.
Knowing that it was a 'girl' colour didn't make pink my favourite. What did happen was that my brother stopped wearing it. And he gave up red too. And bright yellows. Actually, by the time he went to college, my brother's wardrobe had been reduced to shades of blue, white and black.
Still, I never paid close attention to this 'pink'ing of the female half of the globe until recently, when I bought a pink and white shirt for myself, and suddenly realised that it was the only pink item of clothing I had bought for myself over the last six years.
Then I began thinking about why. It isn't as if I have anything against it but there's something in me that's sort of turned off by a certain kind of pink. Not hot pinks. Not pale, rusty pinks. Not shades of maroon. Just the particular shade of pink that's typically associated with girls - the shade most men would not be seen dead in. Maybe that was my feminist streak rebelling against the stereotype.
Perhaps, it's all psychological. I did get quite exasperated when one of my landlords had the entire barsaati whitewashed pink, when he realised that his next tenant would be a single woman. I do not particularly like powder blue, but insisted on his repainting a room blue instead, just to make a point.
At any rate, all this got me obsessing about colours. I noticed colours on walls, on cars, on street signs, at cafes, corporate furniture, logos, banks, advertisements, electronic goods.And I noticedthat pink doesn't really figure in our world. There are no pink cars in showrooms. Over the last few years, I have spotted only one baby pink Ambassador (it reminded me of a giant,upturned cradle for some reason) near a shopping complex in Delhi; it had a laal-batti on top, so perhaps, it belonged to a woman sarkaari official.
I'm assuming that the cars are not pink because the assumption is that women won't be the ones buying the cars, even if they do drive them. Car colours are therefore mostly greys, whites, blacks, blues, and a couple of 'safe' ones like red and yellow, which men wouldn't mind being seen in. I noticed too that there are almost no 'pink' sign-boards. No pink cafes. No pink computers. No pinks on bank doors or cheque books. And even goods that are traditionally handled by women aren't really available in shades of pink. Not many pink refrigerators or washing machines or even mixer-grinders, for instance.
Where I did find pink was for services that were exclusively for women. There's a taxi service in Mumbai that's supposed to be especially for women. And sure enough, it had a pink thing going - the cars had a pink line painted somewhere and the female chauffeurs wore pink uniforms. More googling revealed that similar women's only taxi services in the UK and in Russia and almost everywhere else also had pink names and pink themes.
In small towns and villages where there is no conscious, generally accepted gendering of the colour spectrum, you see a lot more pink. Men wear pink turbans. Walls, doors and windows are painted a very pink shade of pink. Pink-n-gold parandis glitter around rear-view mirrors in autos and cycle-rickshaws. The horns of cows and bullocks are painted pink and so are many shop signs, and the nails of several men with big moustaches.
What is clear is that pink is seen as a women's colour in many places, and it is also clear that wherever this prejudice prevails, pink seems to vanish from the public eye. And I'm not surprised. If something is defined as definitely, exclusively meant for one group of people, the other group is made uncomfortable by it. In a world where everything must sell, nobody can afford to alienate customers. But of course, the final clincher is the fact that women never are alienated - or so the market assumes - by typically male colours/contours. They rarely protest at things always being blue or black or grey. They don't mind things not being pink. In fact, if they're like me, they may even wrinkle their noses at pink, perhaps sub-consciously resenting it.
Now, having thought all of this out places me in a weird situation. What do I do about pink? Get more pink? Get rid of it? Ignore it? And what do I do about blue? What does a modern feminist do?I don't know, of course. But for starters, I've bought myself a new pink toothbrush - a first in over a decade, (I refer to the colour, not the newness of the brush). Maybe I'll find a few answers in the sink some morning.
Written for Ultra Violet
I don't know at what point I stopped saying that red was my favourite colour, and when I went through a shifting spectrum of favourites - 'white' and 'black' and 'sea green' and, at one point, 'lilac'. Pink, however, was never my colour.
Nevertheless, there was a lot of pink in my wardrobe. And I didn't have a problem with that. Pink was just another colour - it was nice. Lots of other girls wore pink and I was told it suited me. That was all. I never really thought about it much until I grew up and heard phrases like 'baby blue' and 'baby pink'.
It was the women's magazines, I think, that started me off on this coloured gender association. Magazines like Femina and Cosmo would educate me about which colours to wear in which season, and what men were supposed to wear and what not, and what look marked you out as what type, and what colour to paint your room when you started to plan a family.
Knowing that it was a 'girl' colour didn't make pink my favourite. What did happen was that my brother stopped wearing it. And he gave up red too. And bright yellows. Actually, by the time he went to college, my brother's wardrobe had been reduced to shades of blue, white and black.
Still, I never paid close attention to this 'pink'ing of the female half of the globe until recently, when I bought a pink and white shirt for myself, and suddenly realised that it was the only pink item of clothing I had bought for myself over the last six years.
Then I began thinking about why. It isn't as if I have anything against it but there's something in me that's sort of turned off by a certain kind of pink. Not hot pinks. Not pale, rusty pinks. Not shades of maroon. Just the particular shade of pink that's typically associated with girls - the shade most men would not be seen dead in. Maybe that was my feminist streak rebelling against the stereotype.
Perhaps, it's all psychological. I did get quite exasperated when one of my landlords had the entire barsaati whitewashed pink, when he realised that his next tenant would be a single woman. I do not particularly like powder blue, but insisted on his repainting a room blue instead, just to make a point.
At any rate, all this got me obsessing about colours. I noticed colours on walls, on cars, on street signs, at cafes, corporate furniture, logos, banks, advertisements, electronic goods.And I noticedthat pink doesn't really figure in our world. There are no pink cars in showrooms. Over the last few years, I have spotted only one baby pink Ambassador (it reminded me of a giant,upturned cradle for some reason) near a shopping complex in Delhi; it had a laal-batti on top, so perhaps, it belonged to a woman sarkaari official.
I'm assuming that the cars are not pink because the assumption is that women won't be the ones buying the cars, even if they do drive them. Car colours are therefore mostly greys, whites, blacks, blues, and a couple of 'safe' ones like red and yellow, which men wouldn't mind being seen in. I noticed too that there are almost no 'pink' sign-boards. No pink cafes. No pink computers. No pinks on bank doors or cheque books. And even goods that are traditionally handled by women aren't really available in shades of pink. Not many pink refrigerators or washing machines or even mixer-grinders, for instance.
Where I did find pink was for services that were exclusively for women. There's a taxi service in Mumbai that's supposed to be especially for women. And sure enough, it had a pink thing going - the cars had a pink line painted somewhere and the female chauffeurs wore pink uniforms. More googling revealed that similar women's only taxi services in the UK and in Russia and almost everywhere else also had pink names and pink themes.
In small towns and villages where there is no conscious, generally accepted gendering of the colour spectrum, you see a lot more pink. Men wear pink turbans. Walls, doors and windows are painted a very pink shade of pink. Pink-n-gold parandis glitter around rear-view mirrors in autos and cycle-rickshaws. The horns of cows and bullocks are painted pink and so are many shop signs, and the nails of several men with big moustaches.
What is clear is that pink is seen as a women's colour in many places, and it is also clear that wherever this prejudice prevails, pink seems to vanish from the public eye. And I'm not surprised. If something is defined as definitely, exclusively meant for one group of people, the other group is made uncomfortable by it. In a world where everything must sell, nobody can afford to alienate customers. But of course, the final clincher is the fact that women never are alienated - or so the market assumes - by typically male colours/contours. They rarely protest at things always being blue or black or grey. They don't mind things not being pink. In fact, if they're like me, they may even wrinkle their noses at pink, perhaps sub-consciously resenting it.
Now, having thought all of this out places me in a weird situation. What do I do about pink? Get more pink? Get rid of it? Ignore it? And what do I do about blue? What does a modern feminist do?I don't know, of course. But for starters, I've bought myself a new pink toothbrush - a first in over a decade, (I refer to the colour, not the newness of the brush). Maybe I'll find a few answers in the sink some morning.
Written for Ultra Violet
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Hurry up with that story now
Quick Tales.
That's the name of a writing contest that could win you Rs 19,999!
Here's the rules and here's info about the prizes. And here's something about the judges.
Hurry up with those entries, and maybe you can join this writing community if writing communities is what you're missing.
That's the name of a writing contest that could win you Rs 19,999!
Here's the rules and here's info about the prizes. And here's something about the judges.
Hurry up with those entries, and maybe you can join this writing community if writing communities is what you're missing.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Perfect faces, national poisons
Good news is, my brother has had a baby girl (on the 18th). She’s premature so is being watched closely but seems healthy. Everyone’s collective prayers seem to have been answered and I am now officially an auntyji.
Tomorrow, I shall distribute sweets. But two days ago, I was on a fast (though I had to interrupt it with a glass of nimbu-pani after getting light-headed and shaky in a very public space)
Coz the bad news is, in another city (where I also happen to have family) babies are born who have perfectly formed faces, but with the rest of their heads missing. The bad news is, we know who is responsible - one big, rich corporate giant who hasn’t paid for what could perhaps, if you were so inclined, be called a mistake. A giant that goes on making money, manufacturing and selling chemicals, in this very country where over 2o,000 have died.
I have to confess, there is a part of me – only a tiny part, I hope – that wants to forget. Like the prime minister, his cabinet, his planning commission and his advisers, and a succession of chief ministers in Madhya Pradesh have forgotten.
But I often think of those two other little girls I love – my little cousin sisters in Bhopal. They don’t live where the gas victims live. They don’t drink or bathe in that poisoned water. At least, I hope they don’t. Their parents, not native Bhopalis, don’t have 1984 as a constant backdrop to their negotiation with this country.
Like most families, we know what it is to lose children. And know that millions of rupees won’t compensate, certainly not Rs 1 lakh. Most people know how hard it is to forget one lost child – a grave somewhere, whose location you cannot forget, a toy not used enough, small clothes, a name that will no longer fetch a response. They know the lifelong ache of it, and the thousand and one curses one hurls against destiny or God or whoever took away that child, or gave a newborn child less than complete health.
Except that God didn’t. A certain corporation, led by people who make lots of money, did. And perhaps, several governments were conspirators – for not demanding the extradition of Dow's top bosses, not insisting that they show up in court in India, for not fining, insisting on a thorough clean-ups, insisting on appropriate compensation, and rehabilitation, and if need be, arresting and jailing them.
We all know that Dow wouldn’t have gotten away with this in its own country. We all know that, even if it went bankrupt and even if it never invested another cent at home or abroad, it would still have been made to pay and clean up and none of its future projects would be allowed to function unless they adhered to stringent safety norms and environmental clearances. Yet, in our country, they have gotten away with it and continue to make profits. And we sit back and let them.
Funny, about patriotism, isn't it? We get into fights with people in cinema theatres who don’t stand up for the national anthem. We file petitions if someone puts their feet up on a table which has a replica of the flag on it. We are so concerned about our ‘Indian culture’ that we cannot stand the sight of a short dress or a couple holding hands in a park. And for 23 years, a multinational chemical has been poisoning our people and we have not batted an eye. For 23 years, our mothers have given birth to deformed children. For 23 years, little girls have bled much before they reached puberty. For 23 years, we have settled for see-through lies, instead of justice. And we’re such patriots, aren’t we?
Perhaps it is just that, in tiny ways and large ways, we want to forget. Forget disasters and death. To get on with it, to move on, to make money and celebrate. And I wonder if, in this, we aren’t co-conspirators. What, after all, is a democratic government if it is not the will of the people? If the people chose not to forget, if the people remind the state that they have not forgotten… would a whole generation have grown up simmering under the knowledge that a huge injustice had been done and their own government was complicit?
Some people go on reminding. They travel on foot to Delhi. They sit, even now, without food or real shelter out on the street – reminding. Saying, let there be justice. 23 years is too long. One more day is too long. There are children drinking poisoned water. There are mothers giving birth to children, doomed to be unhealthy. One more day is too long.
But their hunger seems to have bypassed the state just like the hunger of a million others. And yes, I decided to fast in solidarity for a day, but who knows what it means? I could fast for a hundred days longer and so would a dozen others, but a dozen isn’t good enough. Perhaps, the hunger of a thousand would count. Or ten thousand, perhaps.
The thing is, I don’t know what else to do except sign petitions and fast and join protests and light candles. What should one do to bring about a justice that not enough people want?
It isn’t a good sign when I – who have not suffered a fraction of any kind of sorrow, loss or ill-health that the Bhopalis have – if even I cannot believe in my own government’s commitment to justice... And what’s worse, I cannot even bring myself to believe that even if this government goes, that the new one will live up to any commitments it makes. I am especially horrified that Dow has been allowed to set foot India again, in at least four different locations (at least two in Maharashtra), for different products and services, and through different subsidiaries. Some of these tie-ups are with very, very rich and very powerful corporations in India – the sort of corporations that could buy out a whole cabinet, if there was money enough involved.
I don’t know what to think or do. I really don’t know if Dow will ever be penalized the way it deserves to be. But if it isn’t, it will be one more sign that our democracy isn’t a healthy one. Some toxic poison has, perhaps, crept into its bloodstream and has messed it up genetically, so that generation after generation of leaders, businessmen, lawyers, judges – all have this twisted ability to turn a blind eye to justice.
Friday, July 04, 2008
Offered without comment, a bit from Salman Khan's blog:
Hmm. Well, I had heard of people doing weird things like trying to make babies coo into phones before they can speak. Who knows... some day, when I have a dog of my own....
When I return home from shooting everyday, as a routine, I first spend time with my two champions, whom I’ve named Myson and Myjaan. They are my life and I am passionate about them. While I do not humanize them I dislike referring to them as dogs or my pets. This is because they are a part of me, my family and they share my every joy and sorrow. They understand me completely and there is such a big bond, such a rapport that I share with them that it moves me beyond words. The best time whenever I get a Sunday off is the time I spend being with them. Myjaan is far smarter and naughtier than Myson, she always insists I pet her first and creates a big fuss if I get to Myson before her. They are also my sounding boards, they ground me and help me to think.
Hmm. Well, I had heard of people doing weird things like trying to make babies coo into phones before they can speak. Who knows... some day, when I have a dog of my own....
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
People, people!
Went to watch Aamir, this weekend, with my brother because I'd heard good things about it overall. The story, very briefly, tracks 24 hours in the life of an ordinary middle-class, educated man called Aamir. An ordinary, middle-class, educated, Muslim man.
This post, though, is not about the movie. It is about watching the movie.
So we get ourselves food and coffee and settle into a half-full auditorium. There's a woman sitting next to me, and next to her, her male companion. Fifteen minutes into the movie, she starts to talk.
It began as a staccato hum of whispers, which I shrugged off as the usual desi jahalat when it comes to auditorium behaviour. The hum rose in tempo and volume. Half an hour into the movie, she starts complaining quite loudly, "Bakwas film hai. Kya hai ye?"
I shrugged it off. Bad manners combined with bad taste, very likely. But did she walk into "Aamir" expecting a campus romance with chiffon sarees? Perhaps, her male companion had talked her into it and she was determined to let him know how much she resented it.
At the interval, she proclaimed: "Not even one hour and the interval. It won't even last two hours."
After the interval, she talked right through - to her companion, on her phone. She laughed at the protagonist as he wandered about the city, hounded and harassed.
She said, "Bombay mein aisi jagah kahan hain?" Her companion whispered something back and she laughed. "Haan, bas in log ki hi."
And a few minutes later, she said: "Kaisi film hai... isme sab musalman bhare pade hain."
Let me translate: "What sort of film is this? It is full of muslims."
Finally, I turned to her and told her I'd appreciate it if she continued her conversation after the movie had ended.
But you know, I've heard of many unlikely reasons for people not enjoying a movie. But this was a first. Oh well, one lives and learns. But people and prejudice... What do you do? Wonder if Raj Kumar Gupta knew he'd come up against this sort of attitude in the theatres?
This post, though, is not about the movie. It is about watching the movie.
So we get ourselves food and coffee and settle into a half-full auditorium. There's a woman sitting next to me, and next to her, her male companion. Fifteen minutes into the movie, she starts to talk.
It began as a staccato hum of whispers, which I shrugged off as the usual desi jahalat when it comes to auditorium behaviour. The hum rose in tempo and volume. Half an hour into the movie, she starts complaining quite loudly, "Bakwas film hai. Kya hai ye?"
I shrugged it off. Bad manners combined with bad taste, very likely. But did she walk into "Aamir" expecting a campus romance with chiffon sarees? Perhaps, her male companion had talked her into it and she was determined to let him know how much she resented it.
At the interval, she proclaimed: "Not even one hour and the interval. It won't even last two hours."
After the interval, she talked right through - to her companion, on her phone. She laughed at the protagonist as he wandered about the city, hounded and harassed.
She said, "Bombay mein aisi jagah kahan hain?" Her companion whispered something back and she laughed. "Haan, bas in log ki hi."
And a few minutes later, she said: "Kaisi film hai... isme sab musalman bhare pade hain."
Let me translate: "What sort of film is this? It is full of muslims."
Finally, I turned to her and told her I'd appreciate it if she continued her conversation after the movie had ended.
But you know, I've heard of many unlikely reasons for people not enjoying a movie. But this was a first. Oh well, one lives and learns. But people and prejudice... What do you do? Wonder if Raj Kumar Gupta knew he'd come up against this sort of attitude in the theatres?
Friday, June 06, 2008
Bits and pieces from the day
Fellow journalist Sourabh Gupta has been blogging at Matiyaburj. He's been doing some quite vivid postcard-posts from Bombay. Go look.
And I found this absolutely lovely poem that somehow fit my mood for the day. Here's a sample:
"It seems to me," said Booker T.,
"It shows a mighty lot of cheek
To study chemistry and Greek
When Mister Charlie needs a hand
To hoe the cotton on his land,
And when Miss Ann looks for a cook,
Why stick your nose inside a book?"
"I don't agree," said W.E.B.,
"If I should have the drive to seek
Knowledge of chemistry or Greek,
I'll do it. Charles and Miss can look
Another place for hand or cook.
And the full version's here.
And I found this absolutely lovely poem that somehow fit my mood for the day. Here's a sample:
"It seems to me," said Booker T.,
"It shows a mighty lot of cheek
To study chemistry and Greek
When Mister Charlie needs a hand
To hoe the cotton on his land,
And when Miss Ann looks for a cook,
Why stick your nose inside a book?"
"I don't agree," said W.E.B.,
"If I should have the drive to seek
Knowledge of chemistry or Greek,
I'll do it. Charles and Miss can look
Another place for hand or cook.
And the full version's here.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Modified rats smell too
I've thought and thought about food. Food crisis. Food prices. Ways of growing food. Intensive? Manual? Organic? What about access? Is it fair to push for organic when so many people are so short of food and why does everybody keep saying that organic farming techniques will bring down overall production? But what if they're right? But how will we know if we don't try the alternative?
All those questions, to which that latest, scariest addition is the question of GM food. Safe? No? How unsafe? Does it keep you alive? Does it warp your genes? Why isn't the government taking some sort of stand on it instead of saying one thing ("we don't let in anything until it's been proven safe") and doing another (allowing field trials, ignoring violations of trial procedures, ignoring research already conducted in other countries).
And though it happened way back in 2000, it was not until today that I read about how biologist Arpad Pusztai from the Rowett research Institute in Scotland was treated:
"The 69 year old Hungary-born Pusztai, who had been working at the RRI for 36 years, was removed from service, his research papers were seized, and his data confiscated ~ and he was prohibited from talking to anyone about his research work. All this for having spoken "all of l5O seconds," he says in a programme called World in Action on Granada TV in August 1998, about his findings on the effects of GM foods that ran counter to the prevalent scientific dogma that they were safe. He had also expressed concern that the testing procedures to establish the safety of GM foods may not be adequate.
Pusztai's controversial experiments, which he carried out in collaboration with his colleague Stanley W.B. Ewen, for over30 months between 1995 and 1998, comprised the use of GM potatoes expressing the gene for snowdrop lectin called Galanthus nivalis agglutinin (GNA) as feed to rats. (Snowdrop is a small white flower that hangs from a bulb and blooms in spring; lectin is a protein normally obtained from plants that have antibody characteristics.) This, he found, resulted in impairment in the condition of the rats. This was a surprising finding for Pusztai, because in six years of work with the lectin itself; he had found no toxic effect when it was mixed with feed as a protein supplement. But when genetically expressed it showed health effects.
Even before his work was published, based on incomplete information and data, it was denounced at various levels, including the Royal Society and the Parliamentary Committee on Science and Technology. Also, a campaign was unleashed in the media to discredit Pusztai. But it was a slap in the face of critics when Pusatai's paper got accepted for publication in The Lancet. This, in fact; prompted a senior biologist of the Royal Society to threaten The Lancet's editor with dire consequences."
You know what they say about smoke? It usually alerts you to a fire. And I personally am inclined to smell very large rats when people threaten editors with dire consequences.
You can read the whole piece here.
All those questions, to which that latest, scariest addition is the question of GM food. Safe? No? How unsafe? Does it keep you alive? Does it warp your genes? Why isn't the government taking some sort of stand on it instead of saying one thing ("we don't let in anything until it's been proven safe") and doing another (allowing field trials, ignoring violations of trial procedures, ignoring research already conducted in other countries).
And though it happened way back in 2000, it was not until today that I read about how biologist Arpad Pusztai from the Rowett research Institute in Scotland was treated:
"The 69 year old Hungary-born Pusztai, who had been working at the RRI for 36 years, was removed from service, his research papers were seized, and his data confiscated ~ and he was prohibited from talking to anyone about his research work. All this for having spoken "all of l5O seconds," he says in a programme called World in Action on Granada TV in August 1998, about his findings on the effects of GM foods that ran counter to the prevalent scientific dogma that they were safe. He had also expressed concern that the testing procedures to establish the safety of GM foods may not be adequate.
Pusztai's controversial experiments, which he carried out in collaboration with his colleague Stanley W.B. Ewen, for over30 months between 1995 and 1998, comprised the use of GM potatoes expressing the gene for snowdrop lectin called Galanthus nivalis agglutinin (GNA) as feed to rats. (Snowdrop is a small white flower that hangs from a bulb and blooms in spring; lectin is a protein normally obtained from plants that have antibody characteristics.) This, he found, resulted in impairment in the condition of the rats. This was a surprising finding for Pusztai, because in six years of work with the lectin itself; he had found no toxic effect when it was mixed with feed as a protein supplement. But when genetically expressed it showed health effects.
Even before his work was published, based on incomplete information and data, it was denounced at various levels, including the Royal Society and the Parliamentary Committee on Science and Technology. Also, a campaign was unleashed in the media to discredit Pusztai. But it was a slap in the face of critics when Pusatai's paper got accepted for publication in The Lancet. This, in fact; prompted a senior biologist of the Royal Society to threaten The Lancet's editor with dire consequences."
You know what they say about smoke? It usually alerts you to a fire. And I personally am inclined to smell very large rats when people threaten editors with dire consequences.
You can read the whole piece here.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Unheard of
The unheard of came slamming into my sleep. Last night, for the second night running, I woke to thunder and flashes of lightning - after a strange dream that someone was flashing a torch in my face, on and off, on and off. And the sounds of a susurrating piece of plastic, sliding from one end of the terrace to the other. It was like listening to a god howling through a gag.
It's rained! In May. And not the odd shower, but rain enough for an umbrella. Rain enough to bring muddy marks of slippers into the bedroom. Rain enough to have to watch out for cars whizzing past.
Rain so chill that when I woke up again, feeling cold and had to switch off then fan. And then, woke up again, feeling cold, so had to bring out a blanket, and stepped out of the house in a light-winter shirt. In Delhi. In May. Unheard of.
It's rained! In May. And not the odd shower, but rain enough for an umbrella. Rain enough to bring muddy marks of slippers into the bedroom. Rain enough to have to watch out for cars whizzing past.
Rain so chill that when I woke up again, feeling cold and had to switch off then fan. And then, woke up again, feeling cold, so had to bring out a blanket, and stepped out of the house in a light-winter shirt. In Delhi. In May. Unheard of.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Just linking
A friend's taking a renewed interest in his blog
A new blog by economists on development economics.
And
Look who's in Jesustan again!
A new blog by economists on development economics.
And
Look who's in Jesustan again!
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
An Annoucement
Jasmeen, the founder of Blank Noise, will be in Delhi this week and would like to interview people who have been involved with the campaign in this city. Each interview will take approximately 5- 10 minutes and will be about you and your experience on the streets. Interviews will be with both male and female Blank Noise members/ volunteers/ supporters.
She requests you to take a few minutes out this week to met her.
What and why?
This is a video based project that interviews men and women on the streets of various cities- Delhi, Lucknow, Chandigarh/ Ludhiana/ Agra, and Kolkata. It will hopefully also reveal and spell out the various realities that exist in public and how they influence each other based on their gender and socio economic background.
Jasmeen is looking for sound assistants and camera people to help with the shoot. Anybody who can volunteer their time, and is interested in shooting, assisting and traveling with Blank Noise after May 20t, please get in touch immediately.
Blank Noise volunteers with friends, aunts, mothers, grandmothers, uncles, fathers, neighbours- anyone you might know who would be willing to talk about eve-teasing/street sexual harassment, please bring them along.
For everyone interested in participating in this project please get in touch at the earliest possible. right now! blurtblanknoise@gmail.comwith BLANK NOISE VIDEO in the subject line.
She requests you to take a few minutes out this week to met her.
What and why?
This is a video based project that interviews men and women on the streets of various cities- Delhi, Lucknow, Chandigarh/ Ludhiana/ Agra, and Kolkata. It will hopefully also reveal and spell out the various realities that exist in public and how they influence each other based on their gender and socio economic background.
Jasmeen is looking for sound assistants and camera people to help with the shoot. Anybody who can volunteer their time, and is interested in shooting, assisting and traveling with Blank Noise after May 20t, please get in touch immediately.
Blank Noise volunteers with friends, aunts, mothers, grandmothers, uncles, fathers, neighbours- anyone you might know who would be willing to talk about eve-teasing/street sexual harassment, please bring them along.
For everyone interested in participating in this project please get in touch at the earliest possible. right now! blurtblanknoise@gmail.comwith BLANK NOISE VIDEO in the subject line.
Friday, May 09, 2008
mothers, flowers
Update: A photo of one of her paintings.
This Mother's Day, my mom (Yasmin Zaidi) is paying a Floral Tribute to her own mother who passed away last year. She's having an exhibition of pretty detailed oil paintings - of flowers - in Pune. (Details below) Those who can go see it, please do.
"Mother's Day - A Floral Tribute" begins on Mother's Day, Sunday, 11th May 2008, at the Corinthian's Club, and will go on for a few weeks. Be there for the opening at 11 AM, if you would like to meet the artist.
Yasmin Zaidi has been drawing and painting for nearly forty years now. She has always had a keen eye for colour and composition and an enduring love of nature, which dominates her painting.
However, she has not needed to retreat into the wilderness to transmit this love onto canvas. She has sought, and found, beauty in small gardens in crowded suburbs, bouquets of cut flowers and wild trees fighting against the overbearing concrete in urban spaces. She considers the creation of anything beautiful a "co-creation with the Creator".
The artist comes from a family that has had a close association with various forms of art. Her father Padma Shri Ali Jawad Zaidi was a poet and a scholar; her daughter is a journalist and poet, and her grandfather also painted, though not professionally.
Some of Zaidi's early poems were published by various newspapers and journals and she has painted for and written a children's alphabet book. Her long career in education meant spending at least two decades imparting her painting skills to young and eager students. Post-retirement, she has picked up the brush again and has been painting full time and much of her recent work has been almost exclusively centred around flowers.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Quiet.
I know. I have been quiet a long time. Part if the reason was that things were down and up and upside down for the last few months. I had quit Frontline, taken up another job and promptly ran from that place, biometrified and petrified through an endless series of rules that, well, didn't make for wonderful journalism. The break was put to good use. I attended the Kalaghoda Arts festival, chilled with family for a week and caught up with myself.
Lately, I started work for Tehelka and have been dividing time between the features' desk there - mostly editing and page-making rather than reporting - and my own desk (bed, table whatever) at home, trying to put together something longer, and hopefully, more insightful. Have felt the need to not blog for a bit, and have, therefore, not blogged.
In the meantime, readers of this blog are entreated humbly to have patience and keep coming back to read, in case I have something to say. In other words, don't go away!
In the meantime, readers of this blog are entreated humbly to have patience and keep coming back to read, in case I have something to say. In other words, don't go away!
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