The Winning Poem

Happenings

So often, this sort of thing will happen.
A man will meet a woman and find his voice
is deeper than a well in the sort of village the
Central Ground Water Board has notified ‘dark’, where
you aren’t allowed to dig tube-wells any more, and you need
to be registered with the district authorities
to get a new hand-pump outside the kitchen, and where
you itch all over, after a bath.

Or, a woman will meet a man and will find that her eyes
are flood-prone: low-lying swamps, the sort into which
the rubbish of decades of suburban non-planning has been tossed,
making them look hard when actually, you could just sink
into them. Especially when it rains.

Often, a man will meet a woman and find that his gut
is a sort of womb: a space in which something grows
from seed to obsession, where his roots curl into the certainty of failure.
An instinctive sort of space that swells and contracts and
even bursts. Like a second, misplaced heart.

Or, a woman will meet a man and will find
her arms are collapsible, like a set of folding chairs
creaking in the sort of balcony that gets swept once
a week by a servant who has turned into a domestic cry
for help: a servant with fifty layers of lard dimpling
her elbows and a lumpy belly, who stares off into space
leaving the chairs out in the rain, rusting.

Often, a man will meet a woman and find
a mountain on his back: a dusty hump at the base of his neck,
floating low like brown fog, and things are uphill
or downhill from here on. But there is no stopping
from here on.

Or, a woman will meet a man and find the distance from
highway to home triples overnight, and that some nights
are three times as long as others: when bad news
has crawled back all the way from the city center, riding
between sheets of the morning paper, which arrived two hours after
he left the house, six rotis wrapped in the torn aanchal of her oldest saree.
The sort of night that cannot bear to end.

So often, this sort of thing happens, that a man and a woman find
a word buried behind the balls of their eyes, and they dig all around.
They will speak of fish, the price of things, the temperature outside.
They will bite into the word held as a cube of ice in their throats.
They have seen mountains fold up in despair, but they swear
they will beat another year out of this one: hauling home a cutting wind
or boiling river, or a flower. They will kidnap oasis noons to string a sagging cot.
They will not say it, but they will sit, dumb. Defiant of what may come.

(C) Annie Zaidi

This poem was chosen for the first prize at this year's Prakriti poetry contest. Money and reassurance. What more does a writer want?

Dear Crossword

You and I have a long and fruitful relationship. As a schoolgirl, I was stuck in a place that was, effectively, rural. There were no bookshops for miles and miles. Perhaps there were some in the nearest town, but they did not have what I considered real books - novels, stories, plays, poetry etc.

My mother stocked up on books in the summer vacations and carted them back in large, bulky cartons for the school library. When we began to visit Mumbai in the summer, her major stops were Danai and Crossword.

And look at me now! I'm grown up and sitting on your shelves! True, usually on the wrong shelf. But never mind. It's been a long journey. Almost destined, eh? (And I am quite pleased to see that I'm a generously discounted title on your website)

But remember that first store near Mahalakshmi, where your staff actually knew their books? They seemed interested in books. Or else, they did a good job of pretending for they seemed keen to help you find what you might be looking for. But then you opened another outlet, and then another. Now there are probably a dozen (or more?) Crosswords spread across different cities. Which would have been nice, if only your employees were better suited to their jobs.

I'm not complaining as a writer. Although it is strange that a book clearly marked 'Non-Fiction' should be so insistently placed among 'Fiction' (in five different Crossword outlets) and it is not nice having to point this out all the time. In one store, I did complain, only to have a frightened-looking youth repeatedly say: 'Excuse me, ma'am?' and 'Sorry, ma'am!'

I guessed the poor fellow had no clue what 'Non-Fiction' means. But my book being mis-classified is not such a big deal. It's relatively new and nobody's heard of me. But why was Pankaj Mishra's Temptations of the West lying under 'Indian Fiction'? You may not agree with our views, but that is no reason to insult our reportage and memories.

Jokes aside, it is a huge waste of time trying to find a book buried in the wrong section. I'm complaining as a customer, dear Crossword.

I've been pretty faithful. I keep coming back, despite being disappointed, despite knowing that Landmark is better stocked (Oxford is worse, however. Their staff is so laconic, so disinterested in books, they have told me they didn't have a certain book when in fact, I did manage to locate it on their shelves - in the wrong section, of course. And the fact that the home page of their website bears the cover image of a fashion magazine rather than a book is seriously off-putting).

I keep returning to you, Crossword, for the sake of nostalgia. Or perhaps it is because you offer yourself up for literary events and support local literature in other ways - through prizes and (what used to be Sriram's great) recommendations. I respect that. I want you to do more of that.

But I am annoyed by the fact that you seem to have room for every new, half-literate book but not the ones that deserve to stay on the shelves. Why, for instance, would you not stock Kiran Nagarkar's Cuckold in all your outlets? Why would you not stock P. Sainath's Everybody Loves a Good Drought, or Pinki Virani's Bitter Chocolate? These books are great, and have done well over the years and there is no reason to not keep them in circulation.

I understand that you are a business and must cater to all kinds of reading tastes. But if you can stock five different types of books about henna designs, surely you can stock Nagarkar...

Oh, speaking of henna, can you please explain to me what a book called 'Mehendi Design' is doing in the 'Women's Studies' section at your Bangalore branch?

Yes, I know mehendi is usually by and for women, but a little political correctness never killed anyone. If it was just one book, I'd have understood - human error etc. But here are a few choice titles from the Women's Studies shelf in Crossword, Bangalore:

Eat, Love, Pray (everything written by a woman does not qualify as Women's Studies. You do know that, don't you?)

Koffee with Karan (he's not a woman and he does not interview only women)

Mirza Ghalib - K C Kanda (neither is a woman, and while Ghalib's poetry might refer to women now and then, the themes aren't quite feminine)

A marriage made in heaven (I didn't bother to look at the author or sub-genre)

Arrange Your Love Marriage (Clearly, you seem to think women are only interested in marriage)

Perfect Parties (or parties)

Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex (or bedding men)

Masti Fictions - Katha (Masti is the name of the author, not a sexual reference, and it says 'fictions' on the cover, for god's sake!)

The Meaning of Sunglasses (!!! Why did you even bother?)

Now I am upset both as a customer and as a woman. Also, I could not help noticing that there were no titles by Zubaan, which actually does publish a lot of books that are academic, non-fiction, feminist and even fiction that would qualify to be on YOUR Women's Studies shelf.[Follow the link and you will find a long list to choose from].

I also find it deeply disturbing to discover 'How to make your man behave in 21 days or less using the secrets of professional dog trainers' in the Poetry section. That there were about two dozen Tagores and almost no other Indian poets (English or Hindi) on that shelf is another matter of smaller concern.

Please, dear Crossword , fix this problem. I know that it is hard to find good sales staff who also read books, but can you at least hire fully literate people in the stores, and give them a crash course in book arrangement and broad literary/academic sub-genres?

Every year should bring some improvement, some small change. So here's a request - let's have a wee bit more poetry. Something that isn't Tagore, or Neruda or Ted Hughes priced at 900 insane rupees. Eh? Maybe even the odd performance or screening of poetry if there's enough content and willing providers?

There are all kinds of stores out there. Some are just businesses, who may as well be selling soap or candy. Some invest a little more in books, readers and authors. I trust you belong to the latter category. Which is why I'd like you to change for better, not worse. So dear Crossword, here's wishing you a happy new year. I have your yellow-silver card and I'm probably going to see you soon. I hope it will mean mutual, undiluted pleasure.

The asli, the nakli, and the biases

Had a conversation with a young man selling a bunch of pirated books at a traffic signal.

I asked how much he makes per sale. He said Rs 50-75, depending on how hard people like us haggle. Pestered me to buy one. I said I don't buy 'nakli' (fake/pirated) books.

He said he too has to survive.

I told him I am a writer myself but am not making even Rs 2 on the kind of books he sells, why would I buy from him?

He paused, then said 'But you couldn't have written ALL these books. Buy one book which you have not written.'

Couldn't argue with that logic. So I laughed and shook my head. Then I said I will buy when you sell 'asli maal' (original/real stuff).

The traffic light changed to green. As our taxi sped away, he called out 'When people like me sell them at traffic signals, even asli books will look nakli to you'.

Still chewing on that one. Chewing hard and finding the truth of it stuck in my graw.

An interesting aside - 6 out of 8 'international bestsellers' being pirated and sold by these boys are non-fiction. That's another thing to chew on, eh?

'An open letter addressed to Spring

Because I could not resist doing this one too. Another poem from Sarveshwardayal Saxena's 'Garm Hawayein', once again hurriedly translated. This one is called 'Vasant ke naam ek khula patr'.

'An open letter addressed to Spring'

Now you must stop ambushing me.
Look carefully –
Near that row of yellow flowers
On the sprawling green grass
I have just murdered a sentiment;
It is a separate matter that
Instead of red blood spreading there is
A blue circle.

To grow sick of yourself
Is a sharp knife
I carry around in a crowd
Waiting to run into myself.

I recognise that image of myself –
I have often seen him slipping away
In the dark hiding his face,
Or with you
Chatting away, head lowered,
At the slightest sound
Disappearing into a mob of flowers
Or following some tiny bird
Into dusty desolate lanes.

I know him very well –
Wherever a deck of cards is being shuffled
He sits there, quiet,
Morning to evening
At every raid after the gamblers vanish
He gets arrested
And then gets abused
By friends for being dumb.

I know him so well –
And I know too
He has learnt all this from you.
You have ruined him by making him wander
Pointlessly in forests and along waterfalls.
By way of work
All he has ever done is dry out clothes
That you chose to colour.
I have often seen him with you
Grabbing one end of a yellow footpath
Standing in a field against a strong wind.

I know him well
Like a hot iron rod,
He has been thrust into my head and heart
I cannot rest until I am free of him.
That is why I’m saying
Now you must stop ambushing me.
He has begun to see
There is a vast world between
Stomach and bread;
He decorates everything before ripping it apart
He plays the flute before sex.

I am going to kill him –
I have seen him make statues of dry twigs
And use dry leaves to make patterns on the floor,
He extends this world to another world beyond
He knocks down mountains
To extend homes into courtyards.
He has made the world larger
And life harder,
I am counting down
To his last day.
That is why I say
Now you must stop ambushing me
I have blood on my mind
I am lying in wait for him
Tomorrow is his last weekend.

You cannot hold me back any longer
Nor can you surround me and try to explain
That the thirst for beauty and the thirst for life is the same.
You’ve been saying this to him all these days
And making hard work of an easy life.
He peers into empty wells
And throws down pebbles
As if the soul is still asleep
And can be forced awake.

Those for whom he ruins himself
They go about tomtomming
His failures;
He doesn’t have a single friend
He mimics nightingales
He wanders in deserted streets
He suffers stones and abuse from everyone.

Meaning, meaning –
In his quest to lend meaning to life
He has become worthless
Sweeping out temples
And laying mats in meeting halls
He has become unsuitable for all careers.
He lends a shoulder to every bier
He wipes everyone’s tears
And yet, is called idle.

Meaning, meaning –
There is no meaning to anything any more
Nobody wants to look for meaning
The world has lost its senses.
Those who are not sick of sorrow
Are sick of joy
Mountains are drowning in cupfuls of water.
The higher our buildings
The smaller our hearts,
Nothing is true or false.
But he is not willing to accept this
No way is he willing to change
His ways.
Before he can
Die a dog’s death in his beloved world
I am going to kill him.

Now you must stop ambushing me.
Look carefully –
On the green grass near yellow flowers
I have murdered a sentiment
That linked me to him.
I know
The death of that sentiment is my own,
But I am not going to return
To the place where his body lies,
And you too get this straight
Don’t go there to offer flowers.

- Sareshwar Dayal Saxena

Last time, many of you had requested the original poem in Hindi. Am sorry but I don't have that much time, nor am I used to handling Hindi fonts on my keyboard, so it takes quite a bit of time to type out the original text. Do go out and get a copy of his book. It is published by Vani.

And to save you from disappointment, here is another poem I really liked, for which I did find the text online.

Trouble

Trouble on the streets is always new, no matter how often you've spotted it, smacked it back, run from it. Trouble will always creep up on you in new ways, just when you thought you had its number.

Trouble walks behind you, just a silent step and a half behind your back and you don't know. One of these nights, you are humming. Some old, sweet song because the night is oddly clear for a city sky and the evening star is hard and yellow and the air feels like rain. Not trouble, no. You cannot smell trouble in the air this night although you crossed a big, open meadow full of lounging homeless vendors of peanuts and the last few cricket fanatics of the day, and you remembered to wear your straitjacket of caution - a purposeful walk, quick steps, alert eyes that saw everything but rested on nothing.

Then you crossed a busy road and then a narrow lane full of eating joints shutting down for the night. No, you did not smell trouble that night. You only smelt the city's night. You did not hear a footstep echoing yours. You only heard a light silence that made you want to hum an old film song. And so you began to hum.

You were a hundred steps from one of the city's largest, busiest train stations. It was nearly nine at night and the worst of the fury of daily commute was over. You look forward to quiet train rides in half-empty compartments. And then you heard a voice behind you.

But a voice is just a voice. The city is full of voices and these days, even when people are out alone, they talk. It seems as if they talk to themselves, but they are perhaps on the phone. Or perhaps they are insane. There are enough of those voices too at train stations. The wise thing is to let them be. They may not mean trouble.

But then you hear the voice beside you. It is saying something like: Mera mann to dekh, kitna badaa hai. It seems to have been spoken to you.

And you - you who have forgotten all about trouble today - are taken aback. Someone is saying he has a big heart. Perhaps he is talking on the phone. Surely, he means it metaphorically.

You glance sideways, puzzled, for the owner of this voice is walking beside you. Not looking at you. Just walking beside you, except that when he walks, his arms don't swing.

It is then that you actually notice what he is doing. His *ahem* thing is out. He is holding and what he is actually saying (*ahem* excuse language, gentle readers) is: Mera lund dekh, kitna badaa hai.

You stop walking. So trouble has been tailing you, after all.

The train station is across the road, less than twenty steps away. There are crowds over there and perhaps you should just break into a run now. Or turn and walk back towards the petrol pump and see if the man will follow.

But the man has paused too. He is looking at you now. And though you can see him, you are blinded by a strange kind of anger that doesn't let you truly see (you will forget his face, his colour and features in a few second). You can run, yes. But you will not run. Not from this exposed little creature who thinks you are alone and scared.

This is not the first time trouble has stalked you in this shape and form. Last time, you ran. You crossed the road. You squealed in fear and disgust.

This time, you look at the man and open your mouth. You don't want to scream. You want to say something. Anything! Something that will tell him what you think of him. But only one word will come out of your mouth is: Police!

You stand there, then, shouting that one word over and over at the man: Police! Police! Police!

You wish you had one of those neat whistles you'd been given in Delhi. But you don't really need it now. The man ran the moment you said the first 'Police!', quickly putting away his *ahem* thing away as he runs.

You shout out a few more 'Police! Police!'s at his back. Just for effect. You turn and walk further. A building watchman is staring at you as if you are crazy. He has not got up from his chair though. He sits there and watches you go past. You glare at him, though it isn't entirely his fault.

And you cross the road and go into the station. The night is still clear. The air still feels like rain. But even though you are more bewildered than anxious, you will turn once, twice, to look over your shoulder. Trouble is like that. It returns, and you never know how soon.

dheere dheere aati hai bas maut

Excited about discovering another Hindi poet I like and once again feeling absolutely compelled to share his work with those of you who don’t have access to the language.

So here’s my very crude, hurried translation of Sarveshwardayal Saxena’s ‘Dheere-Dheere’, from the collection Garm Hawayein.

'Slowly'

Like an empty glass
near full bottles
I have been left here.

Slowly the dark
will come staggering up
and will sit down beside me.
It will not say anything
It will fill me, over and over
and then empty me,
fill me-empty me,
and in the end
like an empty glass
near empty bottles
leave me.

Friends!
You don’t know death
be it man’s or
a nation’s
be it time’s or
a form.

Everything happens slowly
Slowly bottles are opened,
the glass is filled
Yes, slowly
the soul empties
man dies.

What shall I do with the nation
that slowly staggered up
and has sat down next to me?

Friends!
You don’t know death
Slowly everything is sucked into
the belly of dark,
then nothing is past
Nothing remains to pass
Like an empty glass
near empty bottles everything lies –
nation near flag
man near name
time near love
form near price,
It all lies
like an empty glass
near empty bottles.

‘Slowly’ –
I hate
this word.
Slowly the weevil grows
Wheat dies,
Slowly termites eat everything
Courage runs scared.
Slowly faith is lost
Resolve goes to bed.

Friends!
What shall I do with a nation
that is slowly
slowly emptying
Like an empty glass near full bottles
It lies there.

Now I don’t want to know god
slowly,
Now I don’t want heaven
slowly
Now I want nothing
slowly
Not hate, not love.

Friends!
Nothing happens slowly
Only death,
Nothing comes slowly,
Only death,
Nothing is won slowly,
Only death,
Death –
Like an empty glass
near empty bottles.

Listen,
The drum beat is fading
slowly the procession of revolution
is turning into a funeral procession.
The smell of rot is spreading –
on the map of the nation
and in the eyes of love
borders are fading
and like rats, we are watching.
- Sarveshwardayal Saxena.

If you can, if you want to, if you feel you must

Helping to spread the word around:

Members of the Christian Medical College Alumni Association, who have helped to support social activist Binayak Sen's family and his legal battles through private contributions, now propose to open up the fund to donations from the public.
The Binayak Sen Support Fund was set up in May 2007 through initial contributions by 10 alumni “to provide assistance, as necessary, for the safety and liberty of Dr. Binayak Sen, and for the welfare of himself and his family.”
The Fund's trustees are eminent haematologist Mammen Chandy, president of the CMC Alumni Association Sara Bhattacharji, in her personal capacity, and the former Physiology professor, P. Zachariah, who serves as the managing trustee.
Explaining the need to open up the fund for public contribution, Dr. Zachariah said: “All the expenses so far, to the tune of Rs. 23 lakh, were met mainly from CMC alumni sources. But the expected expenses from now on, perhaps to the tune of Rs. 50 lakh, are beyond our means, and [to meet them] calls for wider support.”
Donations
The fund can receive only donations in rupees, either in cash or from a rupee account in an Indian bank. Payments from the fund are only made through bank transactions.
Contributions can be made at State Bank of India branches to “Binayak Sen Support Fund, SBI a/c no. 30181020786” or through cheques/drafts payable at the same and mailed to Dr. P. Zachariah, c/o CMC Alumni Association, Christian Medical College, Vellore-632002.

Beyond absurdity

Words fail me. Insanity, travesty, shame etc are words that sprung to my mind. But how does one even begin to deal with this outrage called 'sedition' in the context of Binayak Sen?

Sample this: Mr Sen — who is out on bail after being in jail for two years for alleged links with the Maoists — was being tried under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act. On the second day of the prosecution’s arguments, the public prosecutor attempted to prove that Mr Sen and his wife were part of an international terror network because Ms Sen had written an email to “one Fernandes from the ISI”. And what could this ISI be but Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence? But, as it turned out, ISI is the Indian Social Institute in Delhi, and Walter Fernandes its former head and a friend of the Sens. The court was also regaled with other suspicious bits from the Sens’ correspondence. “We have a chimpanzee in the White House” appearing in one of the messages indicated, according to the prosecution, that Mr Sen was using a code, as terrorists often do; and his wife addressed one of her correspondents as “Comrade”, as Maoists often do one another.

After all this craziness, which court would take the prosecution's case seriously? For god's sake, a police investigation team that not only mistakes the Indian Social Institute for the ISI but also presents it in court as evidence?!

For more details, read this. To sign a petition addressed to the President of India, go here.

If you have an opinion on paid news, now is the time to air it - direct to our lawmakers.

There is a parliamentary standing committee on paid news and they are inviting suggestions from the public in general and from experts or stakeholders especially.

How does Rs 240 crore sound?

How does Rs 240 crore sound? Good?

Yeah, am guessing. It sounds good to me. If it's in your bank account, it sounds very good. If it's even just in the national bank account, it still sounds good. It's good to just be in the vicinity of so many prefixed zeros, and hope that some of it will rub off.

Now how does Rs 240 crore a day sound?

Very good, eh? Lots you can do with Rs 240 crore a day. Even if you had a fraction of that, imagine the projects you could leap into with enthusiasm. Imagine how the roads might look, or the neglected garden you're always ruing, if even a tenth of that trickled down into your neighbourhood.

But it doesn't, you see. It could. But it doesn't.

Every day Rs 240 crore slips out of our reach - out of our country's borders and away from our collective arms.

Not so good, eh?

But it is true. Rs 240 crore makes its way out of the country illegally every single day while you and I sit around cursing high taxes, while also cursing the bad roads, the bad schools, the pitiful lack of maintenance of nearly everything.

The nation lost $213 billion (roughly Rs.9.7 lakh crore) in illegal capital flight between 1948 and 2008. However, over $125 billion (Rs.5.7 lakh crore) of that was lost in just this decade between 2000-2008, according to a study by Global Financial Integrity (GFI). These “illicit financial flows,” says GFI, “were generally the product of corruption, bribery and kickbacks, criminal activities and efforts to shelter wealth from a country's tax authorities.”

...

In just five years from 2004-08 alone, the country lost roughly Rs.4.3 lakh crore to such outflows. That is — nearly two and a half times the value of the 2G telecom scam now exercising Parliament and the media. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) pegs the 2G scam at almost Rs.1.8 lakh crore.

The silence around this larger scam - at least in parliament - is natural. The media's silence is a little harder to understand. Surely, they must know that the two are linked. Scams means illegal capital, and this capital needs a safe place to bury itself and snooze warmly until the inhospitable, damp winds of change have blown over.

We can't stop one without stopping the other. And no, privatising everything is not necessarily the answer. One of the conclusions drawn by the Washington DC-based GFI is that: “High net-worth individuals and private companies were found to be the primary drivers of illicit flows out of India's private sector.”

Just so you know. Because, as this report says: the “total capital flight represents approximately 16.6 per cent of India's GDP as of year-end 2008... (and) The total value of (such) illicit assets held abroad represents about 72 per cent of the size of India's underground economy which has been estimated at 50 per cent of India's GDP (or about $640 billion at end-2008) by several researchers. This implies that only about 28 per cent of illicit assets of India's underground economy are held domestically.”

In layman's terms, this means that you send off your stash of untaxed (and perhaps ill-begotten) cash to another country. Then you have it sent back indirectly. Say, you buy someone a fancy new car in Mumbai or Delhi with the money. Then, of course, you sit back in impossible traffic, ruing what the terrible roads are doing to your pretty wheels, cursing the 'ghorment' for not doing anything to improve your life.

Think about it. Rs 240 crore a day. Driven out quite often by private companies and individuals.

Speaking of poetry

I have been reading Tabish Khair’s Man of Glass lately (am on my second reading already). The book has three sections – each one a kind of retelling of the familiar. The first is a modern take on Shakuntala. The word ‘adaptation’ springs my mind and is perhaps best suited to describe the way in which Khair chooses to interpret the ancient Indian tale. Shakuntala here is not a passive girl who takes up with a king only to be forgotten. She is a young girl on a bicycle who bumps into a stranger, a foreigner, and happens to dreams of another world – a ‘palace of progress’. Her struggle is not so much the struggle to be remembered, as to remember herself. Even so, the essence of the story remains what it always was – a young girl’s desire for something alien to her own culture, followed by her search for acknowledgement and acceptance.

The voice he uses in this series is practically conversational – I felt like I was listening to someone narrate Shakuntala in contemporary English – and yet, it takes nothing away from the poetry. Here’s a bit from a poem I really like ('Forms'):

“…She is enveloped

by rumours of the world out there, palace

she cannot enter unless she knocks hard and

someone within takes pity on her….

Paper becomes her life, forms

and applications, names shrink

to acronyms: GRE, TOEFL, GMAT.

This is the price of admission to the world:

Everything has to be slotted and numbered,

the spill of language sliced

to algebra of alphabets. Very soon

she will turn number in files

in embassies where her skin will stain

for the first time, in offices and universities

across the seas bridged by capital

and barred to human bodies like hers, except

when the kings of Moon remember their own need.

            But who is there to tell Shakuntala to remember

Those graves in Europe with names written as numbers,

To recall the danger when tragedies become news,

When prisoners turn digits, people become JEWS?”

 

The second section is a few transcreations chosen from amongst Ghalib’s well-known work and the third is a series inspired from Anderson’s fairytales (the Grimm and Anderson so many of us read as children). I have either forgotten or not read several of the original stories which Khair has chosen to interpret as poems rooted in our very troubled times. But I love them all regardless.

A sampler from the story of Thumbelina, told as the poem titled ‘Prayer’:

“Grant me a little child

I can hide

When the mullahs come home to pray,

When planes are birds of prey.

Someone

Smaller than my thumb

I can put in my pocket and run.”

 

If you are keen on poetry (or even if you can just about stand poetry), I’d recommend Man of Glass.

Fragrance of peace

Irom Sarmila needs no introduction. But there's nothing like poetry to understand someone's politics. So here's a new collection of poems by the woman with the steel spine. 

'Fragrance of Peace' has been published by Zubaan recently. This collection of poems costs only Rs 125 and Flipkart is offering free home delivery. 

Need I say more?

Kuch khwaab, and thodi si daadagiri

The title 'Dreams death' is nowhere as poetic as Gulzar's line (kuch khwaab sisakte rahte hain, kuch khwaab magar mar jaate hain), but this short docu film has enough going on. There's truth and pathos and empathy and Gulzar's swoon-inducing voice. Watch it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQAXmdPqTzc

Before the film begins, you see a clip of Priyanka Chopra reminding viewers about a child's right to education. Applause-worthy. And she looks nice too! Now if only this tall, lissome Punjabi glamour-babe would read this:

Educationists add that often private schools get land, cheaper electricity and infrastructural support from the government. Add to this the tax exemptions they enjoy.

And then this: Ashish Diwedi, who was a part of the same school’s clerical staff till two years ago, says the school first volunteered to admit his children and a year later, turned around. “They offered me Rs.1 lakh per child to take my children out of the school,” he says.

It would be lovely if she could use a couple of her many media-ops (and let's face it: her whole life is probably one big media op) to address the parents who are so afraid of the whole nation getting a decent education. Perhaps she could tell them not to be so frightened of the poor, scared children who do indeed have a right to an equal education. Or perhaps she could just tell the private schools to start acquiring commercial land at commercial prices for their commercial enterprises, if they find the burden of nobility too heavy to bear.

After all, that land (and that water, or that electricity, or that road, paid for out of the whole nation's pockets) isn't theirs. Very few could afford it if the state didn't give it to the urban middle class/elite for a pittance. Nor, for that matter, can they really afford good teachers. Most teachers (at least, up until now) in India have had some sort of subsidized education or training or certification that was state-funded.

The great washed in India can barely afford anything as their own in any legitimate 'private' way. But they forget. Ms Chopra would do well to remind them. Just saying.

Jairam-ji for Renuka-ji, after all?

Update on Renuka-ji dam project:

Just got another press release from the Himalaya Niti Abhiyan and it seems like Jairam Ramesh met the group on hunger strike at Jantar Mantar in Delhi and assured them that the project would not be cleared by the Ministry of environment and forests.

But like they say, this is the ibteda. Therefore, aage, aage dekho...

Witness, the real movie.

So we all saw Slumdog Millionaire. Famous people took sides in the debate around whether Indian poverty should be milked by foreign peoples making Oscar-winning movies. Shouldn't we brown people have the first rights over our own poverty for whatever it is worth - all its spectacular sights and sounds and smells? Besides, it was a matter of izzat. Who knows what poverty and desperation is like, but really, we didn't need to be exposed to white people as being dirty and desperate, our kids blinded to beg, our little girls sold.

But whatever side of the debate we were on, we all agreed that the movie was good. What a story! A kid who has never been to school wins the Crore that has hundreds of millions swatting even when there are no exams to be cracked. And we all applauded loud enough when brown people won prizes given out by the same foreign people whose degree of comprehension and sensitivity we were doubtful of.

And then, of course, we forgot about it - the film, its story, what it was trying to talk about.

Slumdog Millionaire is not just about a poor boy who gets a million bucks and gets his childhood sweetheart at the end. If that was its core, it could easily have been a bank heist or a treasure hunt story. This is about a boy who 'wins' those bucks. Although he has not been to school. Nobody has even taught him informally. He has survived through his wits. And perhaps, life has finally opened a door - shown him a way to use all those hard-won scraps of information he stumbled onto along that dangerous survival track down which he was sprinting. That door was a show called KBC or Who wants to be a Millionaire?

But the main thing is, nobody believes him. Even the host does not believe that the boy knows what he knows, except for poor people in other slums, nobody believes he deserves to win. That story is a story of prejudice. Prejudice and disbelief lay at the heart of the narrative.

And though we have all seen the movie, it seems we never learn anything. We still carry around our prejudice and disbelief and barely concealed resentment at the fact that someone uneducated, someone who has been desperate and thus far unhappy, could have won something precious. Like a crore of rupees.

I don't watch much TV but I do read the news, and had heard about Rahat Taslim winning on KBC. She probably knew a lot of stuff I don't. For instance, while trying to write an article, I happened to need information about women elected representatives. I went online to google it, and happened to discover that Ellen Sirleaf was the first modern woman head of state in Africa. But I also came upon a website article expressing astonishment that a poor Indian woman should know this fact.

I am not bothered by the astonishment. Most of us would be, whether we admit to it or not. What bothers me is that somebody thought their astonishment important enough to put it on a website, and then to describe it in those terms: 'viewers balk at Rahat Taslim's 1 crore win'. Viewers balk, eh?

My first thought was that the writer did not fully understand the meaning of the word 'balk'. My next thought was that perhaps the writer didn't care. Perhaps, several readers didn't care either, because they did indeed balk at Ms Rahat's luck, even if luck was all she had.

Why is it still so hard to swallow that someone who had a hard life finally got lucky? When do we stop thinking of ourselves as somehow more deserving of windfalls than women who must sew clothes? Why do we never express such astonishment when middle class guys - people like us, or almost there - go on the same show and win, although we know quite well that we don't know many of the answers to the questions on the show? Just how deep is our prejudice?

Warmth to spare?

I'd just written about the gorgeous, frightening cold in Delhi.

If there's one thing you can do quickly to protect those who suffer winter rather than enjoy, it is this: donate some warm clothes.

Here's an appeal from Khoj.

'Dearest friends of Khoj,

It is that time of the year again and we need your help. Here is your chance to to ensure that Delhi stays warm during the coming winters!

Take out those sweaters/shawls/sweat shirts/shoes that you have been planning to wear since Christmas ten years ago and never actually did so. Add winter protection for Khoj to your winter shopping list. Share your winter warmth and we guarantee you will be contributing a smile to someone's face!

We look forward to all contributions, whether a single sweater/blanket or clothes by the dozen. We only request that they all be in wearable condition.

Send this message to your family, friends and colleagues at work. Each sweater counts!

Please drop all contributions to Khoj's office:
Khoj Foundation
409 3rd Floor, above RAO Travels,
Munirka, New Delhi

khojdelhi@gmail.com

Renukaji turns to Sonia-ji

Got this in a press note from the Himalaya Niti Abhiyan. I have not been following the dam issue in the Himalayas closely but clearly, all is not well.

The Renuka Bandh Sangharsha Samiti is on hunger strike in Renukaji against the Renuka Dam project which intends to supply drinking water for Delhi. The project was denied clearance by the Ministry of Environment and Forests but the state is just revising the project through reducing the height of the dam.

I am simply putting down below the campaign's fax copy, for those who'd like to and are able to do something with this information. Though I have to say I am a little shocked that they should choose to address it to Sonia Gandhi instead of Jairam Ramesh, who is only marked in the CC, along with Rahul Gandhi. I understand that Delhi is more or less run by the Congress government at this time and that a nod from Sonia Gandhi means more to the state government than a letter from a central ministry. But for every battle, small and large, people cannot go running with their petitions to 10, Janpath. It just isn't sustainable. Nor is a hunger strike, actually. Unless people can persuade their elected representative to starve through the winter session of Parliament. That might be worth a shot.

Dated: 15^th November 2010

Nac/hna/10-01

To

Smt Sonia Gandhi,

Chairperson, National Advisory Council,

New Delhi

1. In a victory for a safe ecological future and peoples’ livelihoods, the MoEF has rejected the Forest Clearance for the Renuka dam for the 2^nd time, based on the massive scale of deforestation that will take place in the submergence area.

2. After the rejection of Forest clearance for this project recently state government is acquiring agriculture land forcefully where as land acquisition proceeding should be stalled till all clearances are granted[1].

3. Award for 447 Bigha land has been recently issued and land compensation Rs 7,22,00,000 has been forcefully distributed including three residential houses with out any R&R of Project Affected Families[2]. This land is having thick forest plantation, HPCCL (the developer) has counted 32640 standing green trees on this 445 Bigha of land.

4. Tree estimates in Renuka dam submergence area

The Renuka dam was initially proposed to be 778 mts high from mean sea-level. Consequent to the rejection of the Forest Clearance, the promoter has proposed to lower the dam height to 762mts. HPCCL is preparing for fresh forest diversion proposal and manipulating the count of standing trees at the site.

HPCCL has counted the trees only in Reserve forest and wild life area. As per their counting total trees are 1,51,439 at sea level of 778 mts. While the actual total number of trees is more than 2,50,000.

HPCCL is currently recounting trees to the lowered height of 762 mts. so that number presented to the MoEF would be much less.

Trees in private land have not been considered for forest clearance case and not counted which is atleast more than 13 lakhs.

Initially, a tender was awarded on 16-3-2007 to a contractor to count the trees in private land. His estimate of 17 lakh trees on private land was uncomfortable for HPCCL, which raised objection to his survey. His contract was terminated with a payment of Rs 6 lakhs.

Our estimate is that the total number of trees in the proposed submergence area is more than 15 lakhs. HPCCL has sent proposal for forest clearance mentioning only 1,51,439 trees but it is compulsory to include private /deemed forest under FCA 1980 for clearance.

5. NAC Chairperson’s Concern over Productive Lands and and a brief on Agro-Horti-Silvi-Cultural Wealth of Renuka Submergence Zone

In light of the recent debate on the Land Acquisition Act 1894, we want to point out that the Renuka dam project will also drown 376 hectares of agricultural and 60 hectares of horticulture land (according the R&R plan), producing food and commerce vital to the people of this country.

"New industries and infrastructure cannot be built without acquiring land. This is obvious and there is no argument about it. But land acquisition must be done in a manner that it does not result in the loss of large tracts of fertile and productive agriculture land." Quoting Ms Sonia Gandhi, Chairperson, NAC The Indian Express: 9^th of September 2010

In the light of the statement above, we would like to point out some very important features of the land under submergence by the planned Renuka Dam in Sirmaur, Himachal Pradesh where land acquisition process is being conducted forcefully by using urgency clause of LAA 1894. The Renuka Dam will drown an area of 1630 hectares of prime agricultural and dense Shiwalik mix forest land (according to the R&R report from HPPCL), to supply drinking water to Delhi.

According to official records, the total cultivated area in the district of Sirmaur is 70,000 hectares, which is under great threat when any forest and contiguous agricultural land are submerged. Sirmaur’s agricultural land is characterized by a mixture of cash crops like tomatoes, ginger, garlic, and peas, as well as floriculture and horticulture such as peach, pears, mango, citrus fruit, pomegranate, apple etc, as well as ecologically sustainable subsistence agriculture with families growing their own maize, wheat, and rearing livestock.

The low lying areas which are on the Giri river bank and are marked for submergence in the Renuka dam and are the only flat agriculture land with excellent productivity, good soil quality, irrigation, ground moisture. The important feature of agricultural land here is that it is extremely diverse, with multi cropping and mostly 3 crops a year being grown.

The per Bigha income from growing tomatoes is Rs. 40,000/- per season, Ginger, a crop that made Sirmaur famous as one of Asia’s significant ginger producers, is almost a biological geographic indicator. Families also invest in floriculture as a commercial activity, and have a variety of fruit trees such as mango, litchi, pomegranate, jamun, and pears, amongst other things.

It is evident in this area of Sirmaur’s abundant and thriving agriculture, that fertile land is found in low lying areas slated for submergence, while most of the rest of the land in the district that is not under submergence, is not as productive.

Additionally, the dam submergence area is slated to drown 642 hectares of dense mix Shiwalik forest land, that has been reason enough to deny the project forest clearance. Parts of the Renuka wild life sanctuary are also being acquired for the dam submergence area.

Forest land is the supporting structure for fertile agricultural land. Without forests, lands do not remain moist, winds are not broken, and the whole ecology and balance of a region is destroyed.

It is in light of these facts; we would like to point out that the Renuka dam severely endangers the food producing farmers of the Giri Valley of Sirmaur district of Himachal Pradesh. The dam will also impact the local climate as well as affect climate change, cause deforestation and destroy bio-diversity.

People of the area are resisting against the acquisition of agricultural and forest land for the last three years, they are opposed to this Dam. We have noticed that the GoI is considering the view of local communities that are opposing Dams and Hydro-projects in Uttrakhand and the North East, and we urge you to do the same in Himachal.

6. We would also like to point out another reporting by the Indian Express epaper, that said: “Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has taken up with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh demands for a review of all hydro projects in the region and a “moratorium on any further clearances for hydel projects in Arunachal Pradesh” since “these are bound to be the subject of agitation” in Assam.”

It is a scandal with green cover which needs to be abandoned and a complete enquiry instituted on how institutions have colluded to hoodwink the decision makers.

We urge you to intervene in the matter of the Renuka Dam and save the beautiful Giri valley and the lives of local farmers by completely scrapping the project. To emphasise this demand. Renuka Bandh Sangharsh Samiti is sitting on hunger strike on 16^th Nov 2010 on the eve of Renuka Mela. Chief Minister of HP is coming for opening the fair and the communities feel that it is the appropriate time to inform the Government of its misdeeds.

Regards,

On behalf of

Renuka Bandh Sangarsh Samithi

Himalaya Niti Abhiyan

Environics Trust

Cc:

Shri Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Environment, GOI

Shri C.P Joshi, Minister, Panchayat Raj, GOI

Shri N.C Saxena, Member , NAC

Shri Rahul Gandhi, General Secretary, AICC

Out. Cold

I've been missing Delhi quite a bit these days. Missing the warm sweet potato-n-lime snack sold on leaf-plates. Missing the mysterious mornings when you feel as if all the misty apprehension we carry within our souls had somehow been scooped out and set loose upon the streets. I miss missing heaters. I miss my teeth chattering. I miss monkey caps. I miss rubbing my hands together and feeling the wind cut a rivulet across my eyes as I returned from work in an auto.

Winter makes all of us who have lived north of Mumbai nostalgic. For the fog. For the chill. For 'heaty' snacks. For good gajak and warm naankhatai and smoking little fires on each street. For mufflers on faces. For electricity in hair.

But then, I'm just a northerner in the sense that I'm north of Mumbai. I do not miss places where water freezes in taps and all hotels and restaurants shut down for four long months. I am not from places where schools have a very long winter break instead of a proper summer vacation. I'm not from the hills and certainly not from Leh or Ladakh.

I've travelled quite high in the hills in November but that was in a good year. A year where people had homes, even if the freezing water made pipelines burst. A year unlike this one, where people are living in tents.

I cannot quite imagine how, even though a friend has sent photographs of the way people are still living, post Cloudburst in August this year. He sent back a link to some photos, with a simple message in October: 'Please help them'.

I saw the photos and kept thinking, but this is September. The smiling faces of mothers and children - what do they look like right now? What's happening right now in Leh?

I wish the mainstream media was telling me more about how the state is handling the housing and clothing situation in areas affected by Cloudburst. I hope things are under control, but having seen how bad things can be in Delhi, I wonder if there is any reason to be so optimistic.

If there was one thing I did not like about a Delhi winter, it was the sight of homeless people out at night. It made the city heartbreaking, shocking and frightening. I was shocked and outraged the first winter I spent living alone in an unheated room in Delhi. Some nights were so cold I couldn't sleep. And then I'd see the rickshaw-pullers, curled up under a thin blanket, on a less-than-three-foot long seat.

I'd read snippets in the papers, of course - inside pages, single column, maybe two inches worth of news - about so many dozens dying in 'cold waves'. Such items appear regularly in newspapers in north-Indian cities. Each summer, there's a 'heat wave' and each winter, a 'cold wave' that rises up and snatches away a few dozen people. The papers rarely mention that these people were homeless, or that they possibly provided cheap, essential services to the city, such as transportation or public hygiene. There isn't enough room and anyway, it is understood. Why would anyone die of the cold if they weren't too poor to be able to deal with it?

It made me do one of my first stories for Frontline (appended below) in 2004. It also led me to visit a 'raen basera', an impossibly romantic Urdu word that describes an impossibly inadequate service to deal with this kind of crisis - homelessness in a Delhi winter. Sad, smelly and ill-equipped though the night shelters are, they're there.

With the massive migrant/refugee influx into most (state) capital cities, it is time India began to invest a little more time and money in creating more night shelters. They are as important as hospitals and serve the same purpose - they save lives.


"As the icy fingers of winter send deathly chills down Delhi’s spine, people have begun to hug themselves tight, as if their clothes were a good-luck charm offered by destiny. But for tens of thousands - perhaps hundreds of thousands - of homeless people out on the streets of the national capital, there is no good luck charm and if they had a destiny, they’d gladly set fire to it to warm themselves.

Over the years, Delhi’s population has gone up, and with it, the numbers braving the fatal north-Indian winter. Cold waves are an annual feature, as are the dead bodies found in the foggy morning.

According to media reports, in 2002, beat constables found 3,040 corpses during the winter. Of these, no less than 400 had died in a cold wave.

However, as far as the establishment is concerned, the winter threat to the shelterless isn’t worthy of a long-term policy or plan. The government has done precious little to build a comprehensive policy for urban homelessness, or even conducted a proper census.

Paramjeet Kaur, director of AAA (Aashray Adhikaar Abhiyaan), an NGO focusing on housing rights, says, "According to our survey in 2000, there were 52,765 people out on the streets. But we missed at least half. Currently, 12 shelters are run by MCD (Municipal Corporation of Delhi). 10 of these are only night shelters, and about 2,500 people can be accommodated. All of them are pay-and-use, with Rs 6 for 12 hours’ occupancy."

Last year, about 70 deaths were attributed to winter, a marked improvement over previous years. This was possible because a network of NGOs was working in collusion with the municipal corporations of Delhi (old delhi) and New Delhi. Religious institutions like Sacred Hearts Cathedral and Bangla Sahib, and educational institutions like Zakir Hussain College and Zeenat Mahal School, besides a few municipal schools, opened up their doors despite the extra load on water and sewage facilities.

According to a report based on the consultation ‘Space for the Homeless and Marginalised in Delhi’, organized by Action Aid India and the Slum and Resettlement Wing of the MCD in July 2003, the total homeless population in India is no less than 78 million (based on the 2001 census). The report says, "This problem was more acute in the three metros, Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi, which put together were reported to have 78% of the houseless population."

Even the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) admits that at least 1% of the population is homeless. This means that no less than 140,000 shelterless people. Incidentally, this figure does not include those who sleep in carts, rickshaws, or under flimsy plastic-sheet roofs. Compare this to the fact that Delhi’s night shelters cater to only about 2,500 people, and one wonders what the government supposes the rest should do during the harsh Delhi winter.

Lalit Batra of the Hazard Centre, another NGO working for housing rights told us, "At least 1 lakh jhuggis (slums) have been demolished since 2000. In Yumuna-Pushta alone, we estimate that roughly 30-50,000 have been rendered homeless. Only 30,000 were rehabilitated. The trend is that only 25% get accommodation after evictions. There is no way but for homelessness to rise."

The paradox is that the state does not seem to be making use of the resources that are available. In September 2004, there was a conference of ministers of housing from all the states and union territories, organised by the Ministry of Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation. According to the agenda report: "it is the ultimate goal of the National Policy on Housing and Habitat, 1998, to provide the basic need of shelter for all, but until such objective is achieved, it is necessary to provide some kind of shelter to the absolutely shelterless urban poor, particularly street children, destitute women and migrant labourers etc."

In keeping with this commitment, the scheme of night shelters for the urban homeless was introduced in 1988-89. According to the government, the scheme was supposed to progress as per demand. This means that the states would put forward proposals, which would then be sanctioned by HUDCO. By July 2004, HUDCO had sanctioned 99 night shelters across India. Maharashtra, which faces one of the worst situations of urban homelessness, has been sanctioned 40 shelters. Delhi has been sanctioned zero.

Also, under the scheme of ‘shelter and sanitation facilities for footpath dwellers in urban areas’, Delhi had been sanctioned zero, as of March 31, 2000. Almost every other state (including a much-maligned Bihar) has a better record of putting forward proposals for the urban homeless, which were accepted.

According to the same report, the National Slum Development Programme has sanctioned Rs 14,053 lakhs to Delhi between 2000-04, of which the entire amount has been listed as ‘unspent balance’. In short, Delhi has the money. It is not being used.

Women and children, the most vulnerable groups out on the streets, have practically nowhere to go. The only shelter within New Delhi limits has also been taken away. Palika Ashray Grih was a shelter that catered specifically to women, and was run by AAA. But the shelter was taken away by the NDMC (New Delhi Municipal Corporation) just before the onset of winter, rendering the inhabitants homeless again.

Miloon Kothari, Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, UN Commission on Human Rights, agrees that the government has no definite policy on housing in Delhi. "Historically, we have a grave crisis of housing. Every time the municipality demolishes slums, the vast majority are rendered homeless. We believe this is a violation of human rights. During the recent brutal eviction of women from Palika hostel, there were several human rights violations."

Palika Hostel was the first initiative by the NDMC towards a women’s shelter. On October 16, 2004, the women and children were forcibly evicted, many of them sustaining injuries during the whole procedure.

The women set up tents right outside the building and continue to sit there on a relay hunger strike. However, on November 5, NDMC officials pulled out the tent poles even as women and children were sleeping inside. The AAA team intervened and has since met the Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, sent telegrams to the Prime Minister’s Office, contacted the National Commission for women and complained to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). The NDMC and the chief minister’s office directed that the women be shifted to Nirmal Chhaya, a home for destitute women. But the women refuse to move because the complex is often mistaken for a detention centre and is even known in common parlance as the ‘women’s prison’, being situated next to Tihar Jail. Besides, it is a short-stay home and has no provision for housing women over 45 years of age.

Officialdom, meanwhile, does its pass-the-buck trick. Frontline spoke to various departments, all of which claim that the problem is not theirs. According to Nisha Agarwal of the Slum and Juvenile Justice wing of the MCD (Municipal Corporation of Delhi), "We have 24 children’s homes. The primary job is to look for the street children’s original home and families. They are brought to us through the police, concerned citizens and NGOs etc. Night shelters are not our mandate. That is MCD’s baby."

She added that night shelters are part of the poverty alleviation scheme of the government. "There are 17 or 18 night shelters maybe. They open up another 17 or so during winters. Last year, we helped MCD cope with the severe winter. We helped monitor the shelters but we don’t really have the budgets or the staff to cope."

Madan Thapaliyal of the NDMC told us, "We are not equipped to run shelters for the homeless population. We don’t have the infrastructure to cope. From December 15 onwards, we will give some extra night shelters. We make arrangements on the requirement of the central government. The responsibility belongs to the state’s welfare department."

Jitendra Narain, Director of the department of social welfare explains that, in a letter to UK Vohra, Secretary, NDMC, he had mentioned that though Nirmal Chhaya was available to the former residents of Palika Hostel, the timing was incorrect for proposing to shift them, with winter being round the corner.

Rashmi Singh, joint director in the department of social welfare, says that the right place to go and ask questions would be the urban development ministry. "We will not shrug off responsibility, because anything to do with social welfare is our business. The census doesn’t even give us the right figures. The secretary of this department had estimated 10,000 homeless people for Delhi. Yet, there is no formal survey." She clarified that the problem has to be tackled through a collective effort. "MCD has 17 night shelters and 7 converted community centres during winters. The development commissioner’s office sets up temporary camps. We have one short stay home for women, Nirmal Chhaya. YWCA has some facilities and there’s Bapno Ghar for women. NDMC has old age homes. Some NGOs are supported by us, round the year. But we cannot usurp the government’s role and mandate for urban homelessness. The Urban development ministry is the nodal body."

Miloon Kothari believes that although "nobody takes responsibility for the poor, but from a legal perspective, according to the NDMC Act of 1994, the NDMC is responsible. Any municipality of the world has to take up responsibility."

Ultimately, help had to come from non-government quarters. Paramjeet Kaur believes that unless more NGO’s, volunteers and civic organisations come forward, this year will be difficult. "Last year was a big achievement for us. We managed 43 shelters, 23 of them temporary and 20 buildings. We had support from MCD’s mobile health unit. How this winter turns out depends on how many volunteers come forward. It is not an easy task managing thousands of lives round the clock, especially those who have health problems. In winter, chronic diseases get aggravated. Every night, we’re on the vigil. Electricity and water is required. Blankets and bedding have to be washed. AAA is also trying to get them (homeless people) organised. We have helped the elderly form a group called Varishtha Nagrik Sangh. They have applied for old age pension and will now apply for ration cards. We run a food and health care program. They are issued ID cards and can stay free."

Kaur adds that the solution is not hard to find. "The state government needs to open up spaces. NDMC has only one shelter at Nizamuddin. You can’t bar certain zones. Delhi has the infrastructure. We only need to make multipurpose use of existing government buildings. Spaces over parking lots are available. Community centre buildings and Baarat Ghars can be used. We have shown MCD and NDMC that this isn’t a wasteful venture. After years, MCD actually made a profit in the year when we ran five community centres as night shelters!"

Among other things, they demand that the official recognition of winter’s duration be increased. MCD and NDMC make arrangements only after December 15. Since winter sets in earlier in Delhi, the government, they argue, should extend facilities from mid-November until Holi. Most activists agree that the homeless have no voice since they do not have votes. They are trying to rectify that by issuing ID cards and helping the homeless to vote.

This year’s general elections saw 500 homeless people on the electoral rolls, of which about 150 voted. They look forward to the day when the shelterless people of this country - all 78 million and more - get organised into a formidable vote bank. The government will have no option but to sit up and take note.

[A slightlyedited version of the story appeared in Frontline magazine in Jan 2005]

Not ikebana, at any rate

The easiest thing to be is a cynic. And I have often behaved like one. I continue to do so (my mother will be nodding her 'aye's at this) even now - constantly shrugging off small attempts at change, constantly asking 'when has it ever been any different?'

Perhaps, it is even wise. Perhaps, the total compounded wisdom of the world comes down to this: 'When was it ever any different? What makes you think things will change this time around?' I don't know if it makes any sense to go on thinking we can - I can - change anything at all. But then I read this:

In 1966, the specialists at the Pentagon went to US President Lyndon Johnson – a thug prone to threatening to “crush” entire elected governments – with a plan to end the Vietnam War: nuke the country. They “proved”, using their computer modeling, that a nuclear attack would “save lives.”

It was a plan that might well have appealed to him. But Johnson pointed out the window, towards the hoardes of protesters, and said: “I have one more problem for your computer. Will you feed into it how long it will take 500,000 angry Americans to climb the White House wall out there and lynch their President?” He knew that there would be a cost – in protest and democratic revolt – that made that cruelty too great. In 1970, the same plan was presented to Richard Nixon – and we now know from the declassified documents that the biggest protests ever against the war made him decide he couldn’t do it. Those protesters went home from those protests believing they had failed – but they had succeeded in preventing a nuclear war. They thought they were impotent, just as so many of us do – but they really had power beyond their dreams to stop a nightmare.

Imagine! A bunch of people - probably not a very large bunch - stood around in a public place to let powerful people know that it wasn't okay - this, whatever was happening, it wasn't done, they weren't going to stand for it. And a nuclear war didn't happen.

Change isn't just about the things you accomplish at the end of a day, or a month, or a even year. Change is also about preventing bad decisions. Too many of us don't show up for protests when it really matters because we think nothing moves. But so often, nothing moving is a good thing.

The odd thing is, change can be wrought in so many small, painless ways, it is almost surprising we don't bother. Take this business of censorship. A few years ago, I remember being in Delhi and attending a show of the play, Line. I forget the name of the theatre company but I think it was a show supported by the First City foundation (somebody correct me if I'm wrong), which does support a lot of cultural activity in the capital. So far, so good.

The script, however, was not an easy one for the average conservative Indian audience to digest. There was sexual content and not of the comic, innuendo-laden type to which we are safely inured. It wasn't particularly brutal sex either. But it was discomfiting. Perhaps, that was the point of the play? We didn't have a chance to find out.

Mid-way through the performance, somebody was discomfited to the point that they asked the group to stop. The director stepped up and apologised and told us, the audience, that the rest of the performance stood cancelled.

Now, this was the point we could all have stood up and gone home. It should have been easy. The play wasn't bad and I don't usually walk out of a performance, but that wasn't the point. None of us had invested enough time and money into attending this show for us to make a fuss about it. The money wasn't the point either.

We - the self-nominated liberalati, culturati, media people in Delhi - stood in the foyer, uncertain. What should we do? Should we just go? Should we... ask somebody? We asked a few questions. Neel, one of the producers, told us that somebody (I can only assume that it was somebody important enough to call off the show) found the play offensive.

That was when we all stood there. Just stood a little longer than necessary and said, no, we want to watch this. Let the full show be performed. I am not very sure who spoke to whom, and when the decision was reversed. But reversed it was. The show went on.

At the end, I have this to say: My sensibilities were slightly offended. I got the point of it but as a woman, I found the premise of the lone woman character and the way the script used her sexuality... well, problematic. The script left me and my friends feeling mildly nauseous. But if a performance of Line was to come to my town, and was to be disrupted again, I would once again be willing to hang around in the foyer. I should be. Because today it's Line. Yesterday it was Sakharam Binder. Today, it is Arundhati Roy. Yesterday, it was Gandhi. People have to have their say. And we have to let them, no matter how strongly we disagree.

And for god's sake, we have to stop thinking that what we think, or do, will not matter. Particularly those of us who are in the business of thinking and expressing. NSR puts it best, as usual:

The best writers in every age have also been deeply engaged citizens, and to ask, as we are now doing in India, for writers to stick to their writing is a little like asking investigative journalists to stick to their knitting. What we’re really asking, when we pose the question of a writer’s responsibility, is for writing to be like bonsai-growing, or ikebana: a strictly ornamental occupation that challenges nothing, shakes up nothing.

Influences

It has been about six months since the last book came out. And I've been doing a fair bit of thinking about the writing life, about what it means to me to have 'become a writer' and what greater toll this way of living will exact. Still trying to figure those things out.

I've also been doing a lot of thinking about what a writer's responsibilities are, and what I might owe to whom. To that, the answer right now seems to be - not much, not to anybody much. A debt to gratitude to friends and family, of course. But that is the sort of debt we all owe. We cannot live without piling it up, and we must perforce pay it in the same coin - with support and time and affection.

But as a writer?

I'm not quite sure if I owe anyone anything simply by dint of what I choose to do. Nor do I assume that anyone owes me anything. Society doesn't owe it to me to allow me to make a living, writing what I choose. The government or cultural institutes don't owe me support. Readers don't owe me their time or attention.

But the most precious thing about having a book like this out and available (mostly) in the market is that people I don't know at all have read it and liked it, and said it transformed them. They have written back in, tweeted back in, looked me up on Facebook and sent messages.

I was already feeling a little giddy when one of my oldest girl friends, someone who avowedly reads only for 'time-pass' and usually romances or historical novels, began to read Known Turf. She was doing me a favour, really. Showing support etc. But a couple of months ago, she called to say she was surprised that I had actually spawned this thing. "It's the best thing I've ever read," she said.

Perhaps she was over-generous. After all, we have known each other fifteen years. But I will never stop feeling grateful for all the feedback from strangers who said I made them think about themselves, India or womanhood in new ways.

One such stranger tagged me on Facebook to do a list of 15 writers who influenced me or touched my life. 'The ones you carry with you in your head. The ones who shape your thinking and your dreams.'

It is really hard to think of those writers off-hand. I've been asked that questions by interviewers a couple of times and I find myself fumbling suddenly. Really, who are my influences? I've been reading since I was six years old. I ought to have a hundred! But when it comes to the crunch, my mind blanks. So I thought this is a good time to do a sparse list.

So I did the list, and since I was meaning to post something about writing in general on the blog, I figured I'd do a more detailed note here. Here's my essential influential 15:

1. Nissim Ezekiel

A poem called 'Beauty' was in my school syllabus but I cannot find it on the internet now. It jolted me into actually paying attention to poetry, instead of memorizing and led me to realise its power. If someone can find it, please send it to me.

2. Charles Dickens

Began reading his stuff when I was 8 years old - too young to understand much except the barebones plot. But his protagonists were often children and that helped. I read and re-read those books in college and understood a bit more. But I swallowed the subtext even in my childhood. I think it is just embedded within me now.

3. Hardy Boys/Franklin W Dixon (who didn't really exist).

Mysteries, adventure, high school romance. But I just couldn't fathom how Chet allowed Joe to date his sister. In India, where I grew up, boys would beat up anybody who tried to make their sisters into 'girlfriends'.

4. Jane Austen

The Karan Johar-Yash Chopra of her time. Everybody secretly likes.

5. Walter Scott

Historical romance. Still a bit of a sucker.

6. William Shakespeare

To be or not to be. All the world's a stage. One can go on and on and on.

7. Arun Kolatkar

Jejuri turned wheels inside me, opened so many windows in my head, I'm still reading and re-reading.

8. Agatha Christie.

Murder made everyday. I hadn't thought of killers as real, ordinary people who lived in respectable families and had mundane causes for wanting to kill, not until I read her. Never outgrew that style and genre either. Still love murder mysteries.

9. P. Sainath

Everybody Loves a Good Drought. One book that really did change my world view.

10. John Donne

Busy Olde Foole... allowed me to think of poetry as fun, and sexy. Not depressing all the time. He taught me to have fun with poems.

11. Arthur Miller

The Crucible. All My Sons. He said things.

12. William Golding

Lord of the Flies. Still get scared when I think about it.

13. Paash

Politically charged love poetry. Plus, what he lived like is an integral part of what his work is like. It changed the way I thought of poets and their task in the world.

14. Margaret Atwood

The primary way in which she influenced me was to make me very envious.

15. Salman Rushdie

I think he had the same influence on me that Marquez and magic-realism has on many young readers, except that I was introduced to Marquez at a later stage in life.

So that's it at this point.