smell the skinny latte, ladeez

"I don't like the jargon "sex workers". We are all sex workers these days, unless we are celibate, as we are all encouraged to pursue lifelong sexiness. Most young women are endlessly groomed to be desirable after all. Yet the men who have sex with young, frightened, addled girls choose to do so. Such sex, we are told, is about power. To have sex in a car with a heroin addict is very cheap indeed. It goes on day in and day out, and of course it makes me wonder about male sexuality. As does the use of rape as a weapon of war. To say these things is not to say all men are rapists. But some are. To not say them does not make it stop.

It is as though feminism had to sex itself up to keep itself interesting. We are not hairy man-haters who bang on about domestic violence and abuse. We are fascinating women interested in fashion, relationships and true intimacy. OK, so we have a few little problems like having it all turning into doing it all, and finding a nice guy to do any of it with at all, but look on the bright side! We have got a few more female MPs, our girls are doing well at school and isn't life grand?

Well no. No it isn't." 

That was Suzanne Moore in the Guardian. And this is my internal countdown to March 8 as I think about womanhood, liberalism and modernism. As Moore says: "Reasonably sitting around waiting for equality while empowering oneself with some silicone implants does not really seem to have worked wonders, does it ladeez?"

Aghast

Everyone who likes to talk about the public distribution system, foodgrains subsidy, tribal unrest etc, should look at the way crime unfolds, as it did recently in Alirajpur.

'the salesman of the public distribution outlet in village Chapria some forty kilometers from Alirajpur took out all the wheat, rice and sugar meant for subsidised distribution to the villagers during the night on 2nd February, 2011 and then lodged a complaint with the Police outpost in Phoolmal village nearby that some unidentified thieves had stolen the foodgrains and sugar. The policemen... made a visit to Chapria village on 9th February in search of a person named Kalia and not finding him caught hold of his wife Vechli and gave her a solid caning on her buttocks and thighs and left her writhing on the ground. When her cries brought the other villagers to her house the policemen threatened them with dire consequences if they did not bring Kalia to the outpost... the villagers next day... came to the office of the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath (and complained) to the Collector and the Superintendent of Police. The SP, a woman, was aghast at the purple weal marks of the beating on Vechli's body shown in the picture below and immediately ordered her to be taken to hospital ... The media too were given the story and the next day the papers were full of it... the doctor (at the hospital) had said that the wounds were superficial and needed only first aid and no hospitalisation. Shankar had to rush back to the hospital and give the doctor a dressing down to get the woman admitted.'
[Read full post here]

Imagine that you are Vechli, or Kalia. How invested in this thing called 'democracy' are you likely to be? And if some airhead sitting in some urban university decided that the moral of the story is: 'stop foodgrain subsidy for the poor', what would you want to do to him?

And here's another gem about police procedure and the rule of law. This time, from Mumbai.

'1:45am – People start calling their friends and relatives who could get us out of this mess. The 3 star police officer enters and tells us to shut up. When asked why we were brought here and treated like absolute shit, his response was “You were drinking in a bar without a liquor permit.”

“Why the fuck aren’t the bar owners in this room then?” asked someone to which we never got a clean response, ever.

A relative of one of the boys happened to be the leader of the Youth Congress in south Mumbai . He tried to talk the cops out of it by asking them how we were supposed to know about liquor permit. He said “I have been to LP for over 30 years and this has never happened before.” But the cops didn’t budge. They didn’t even do a breath analyzer test or any concrete medical test to even have any evidence to put us behind bars. It turned out that the lifting-shirt-up fiasco was the check for signs of assault.'

Read the whole messy story here.

Tragic and tender and brutal and funny

Those are the words in which this reviewer describes my last book. Am very flattered. Actually, I'm halfway over the moon. And I promise to work hard at my writing so that every book is tragic, tender, brutal and funny.

And for those who possess those things, Known Turf: Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales is also available on Kindle now, which means it will not be so insanely expensive for those who are abroad and gazing longingly at the book cover (insert self-deprecating but still hopeful roll of eyes here) on Amazon.

Triptych from yesterday's paper

Guns: Two groups allegedly affiliated to the Maulana and his opponents openly clashed on the Deoband campus to sounds of booming gunshots.

Wailing: The shop keepers said the women had been lying there for a few days and the wails from the younger one never stopped.

Quiet: The high hunger States are Orissa, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Bihar.

Hence, the nausea

There are things one knows about the world. That is can be ugly, for instance. And beautiful. Most things are a little of both, and most people can find it in themselves to see a little of both in and around themselves.

Being able to see both sides of a picture is important to writers like me, writers of non-fiction particularly. It is important to measure intent against action. It is important to balance outrage against insight. And it is important also to recognize that sometimes, a bad approach overshadows all good intentions.

Am still disturbed by news of how a charity is asking us to 'buy' little girls. Because if we don't 'buy' the girl, someone else will. And that someone else will probably sell them into slavery and prostitution.

Yes, yes, I know. The intention is supposed to be good. They are probably only trying to help. They probably want to save little girls from suffering unbearable, untellable traumas. And they are resorting to the tricks of the trade to do so - the language of the bazaar, the gimmicks of advertising.

If I know, why am I so offended?

I have spent the last few days thinking about this article. What exactly is the outrage about?

As the article says, there is something definitely creepy about 'disheveled Indian girl smiling bashfully as an unknown cameraperson pans up and down her body, lingering on her little hands, before finally settling on her face'.

I avoided seeing the actual video on the site for a few days. Just reading the language was off-putting enough. The site uses words like 'Innocent and Available... Experience the sensation of buying a girl'. But I made myself watch. Twice.

Nauseating is the word. I am trying to think of another word that might be more appropriate. And I don't know why. Maybe because we use words so generically these days. From jokes to bad theatrical performances to footage of human rights' abuses - everything is nauseating. Perhaps I should clarify that I did not exactly throw up. But I wanted to. When I saw pictures of distraught little girls with tags of $22 etc against their nervous bodies and the words 'purchased' written boldly, I found myself wanting to physically assault the person who came up with this idea.

Even an already sympathetic, already outraged and pretty tired journalist like me was disgusted by those visuals and those words. They did not help evoke any sympathy for the child - none that would not have been generated by an ordinary photo and an ordinary appeal. Dozens of NGOs have been using photos of children that melt tight fists and unseam the lightest of pockets. They have done so successfully without exhorting us to buy little girls like the one in the video.

Yes, I am afraid for the kid in the video, and all kids who might be sold for any reason whatsoever. And yes, I'd buy a damn pencil box if I was persuaded that it would stop the sale of a child. But I'm damned if I will contribute to an organisation or a campaign that uses, or pretends to use, the methods of child pornography to make an appeal. Who does such a video appeal to anyway? Why would anyone go to a website called The Girl Store? Why would anyone continue to watch visuals after the first few seconds? Who, except child pornography enthusiasts (or those who have been forewarned by outraged feminist magazines)? And does the person who made that website seriously think that people trawling the net for child pornography will suddenly be transformed by the words 'buy her life back'?

And just for the record, especially for the semi-literates who wrote content for that website, girls in India are rarely 'sold' into marriages. Even poor families often 'buy' into marriages. Which means they rarely benefit financially from the girl's wedding, even if they are poor. At best, they abandon the girl to her admittedly rotten fate. At worst, they cough up thousands of rupees to get rid of her in the time-honoured way - marriage. The problem is not so much poverty or illiteracy (girl children are rarely killed, bought or sold within illiterate and extremely poor tribal communities). The problem is the attitude that a little girl (or a boy) is a commodity that can be traded at certain times (of stress, of need). Which is the same idea this idiotic website is actually helping to promote.

Hence, the outrage. Hence, the nausea. Now somebody go shut down that store.

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?