The Outside Element

Blame it on the great Indian white skin fixation. Or, if you prefer, on a new body code that has corroded the flimsy wall between modeling and acting. Most of all, blame it on Katrina Kaif.

Years after she rode into Bollywood on the back of an oddity called ‘Boom’, she has blown away most of the criticism about her inability to speak Hindi, her disconcertingly foreign accent, her questionable talent. Half-white, slender and a ‘hit’ with millions of Indian men, particularly the ticket-buying middle class, what Katrina Kaif has given Indian cinema is debatable. But there is no doubt that she has given hundreds of non-Indian young ladies a generous dollop of hope. If she can do it, why not them?

Indeed, there is no reason why not. As long as a girl is pretty and can pass off as vaguely Indian, she’s got a fair shot at stardom in Mumbai. Giselle Monterio’s career took off with a couple of lines of (dubbed) dialogue in Love Aaj Kal, and now that she’s playing one of the female leads in Always Kabhi Kabhi, the Brazilian model is a lodestar for dozens of her compatriots, girls like Camila Granato, 22, and Taciane Matos, 18.

Both are from Brazil; both signed up with the Indian modeling agency, Toabh Talents; both share an apartment in Mumbai and both will be seen in the song from the forthcoming Mere Brother ki Dulhan.

Camila has been in a film before, where she was floating about in a party scene shot in Turkey, and Taciane has been part of Thank You. Neither watched Hindi movies before they came to India, although they did watch a soap opera called ‘Way to India’, which is quite popular in Brasil. Although they didn’t watch the show regularly, they realized that, culturally and socially, they have much in common with Indians.

That is part of the reason why several Brazilian models stay on, despite the fact that India is a bit of an “everything shock”, as Camila puts – cultural, civic, climatic and aural shocks await the models when they first arrive. Most of them are signed up with one of a handful of agencies that bring down international models to work in commercials and fashion shoots in Mumbai.

There is plenty of work available. Varun Katoch, business head at Toabh, says that he’s managing 31 models of which about 20 are foreigners. “But I could hire 200 models and still have work for all. There are tens of thousands of Indian brands and they all want professional models. The foreign girls often start modeling as young as 14 and by the time they come here, they are quite good at their job.”

Varun admits that a major factor for the foreign models’ presence here is their looks, but he says it is their height and clear skin that works to their advantage. He says, “We actually try and pick models who look a little bit Indian. Brown hair, tanned skin. They’re not all white white.”

However, once the models arrive, other windows of opportunity open up. It isn’t hard to find work in music videos and films. But Varun is measured in his enthusiasm when I ask about the models’ Bollywood prospects. “We do get queries from production houses. And there’s Katrina Kaif, of course. The girls hear about her and they want to try their luck. Sometimes, during ad shoots, directors will encourage them to try films. But then speaking Hindi is a must.”

What he does not quite say is that Hindi is the hurdle at which foreigners stumble. While shooting advertisements, the girls don’t really have to speak. It is enough that they look beautiful. Film requires a basic control over language, especially since very few Hindi film scripts have foreigners written into key roles.

However, another actress of mixed parentage (she speaks Hindi quite fluently) believes language doesn’t matter. “In Hindi films, a female actor just needs to look pretty. The only other thing that matters is who she’s hooking up with. They just get pedantic about the accent when it suits them.”

But the hopefuls are, well, hopeful. And they’re not leaving anything to chance. Evelyn Sharma, a half-Indian half-German 23-year-old, has enrolled in an acting course, is learning Hindi and taking Bollywood dance lessons. “I grew up in Germany and came to India as a traveling model. But I love acting. I have done some theatre and one American action film. But Inega, my agency, will not let me do bit roles in Bollywood. The first film is so important,” she says.

However, Evelyn admits that you’d have to be half-Indian or be able to pass off as Indian – “like Giselle” – to get a real break. “Bollywood is changing. More foreigners get lead roles. I know a Swedish girl who is playing the lead in a small production,” she says. After a pause, she adds, “I can’t wait for it to change.”

Whilst she holds out for a film break, Evelyn will be seen in a video with Daler Mehndi as he sings ‘Sheela ho ya Munni’. However, most agents are anxious that I get the right picture. More than one agency told me that their models may take on non-lead parts in ‘major productions’, but they’re not ‘dancers’ and they’re very emphatically ‘NOT extras’.

This little crisis of identity can be traced to the explosion of white skin in background Bollywood. All you have to do is hang around at Colaba Causeway and sure enough, a ‘talent’ scout comes along looking for foreigners. If you get cast, you might have to put up with a 12-hour shift, famously bad food, tacky costumes, and plenty of boredom. In return, you get paid between Rs 500 and Rs 1000. In fact, travel websites now ask tourists to hang around at Colaba as part of their ‘Experience Bollywood’ plan.

Clearly, this is not what they want to be – these cheerful, beautiful girls who have descended upon Mumbai from Germany, Brazil, Russia, or the UK. Yes, they’d like to be in Bollywood but not as props on a set, not as shadowy figures wiggling in the backdrop of a ‘classy’ video. They’re here for a sprinkle of stardust.

Or are they?

Taciane confesses there are days when she weeps. I ask why, and she has to remind me that she’s still a teenager. “Camila plays mama to me sometimes. She lets me put my head on her lap if I cry,” she says with a laugh. “Me and my sister used to sleep with our heads in mama’s lap, her fingers running through our hair.”

Camila explains that in Brasil, several girls start modeling not for the glamour but because they need to. Some of them support their families. Taciane, who grew up speaking only Portuguese, points out that unless you attend expensive schools, you will find it hard even to learn English. Camila was luckier and managed to attend drama and ballet lessons (though it is unlikely that her training will help her film career. Many Russian ballet dancers can find work only as background dancers in Mumbai). But both are excited about films. “It’s something different,” says Camila. “It’s more fun.”

I ask the girls why they don’t try to find work in movies back home. They say there is no film ‘industry’ there, and production values are worse than television.

Why not TV then? Taciane says she’d love to try her luck in TV – there’s money and fame, and she could be near her beloved mama. “But I’d have to go to Rio for auditions, and living in Rio is too expensive.”

Evelyn, who has already worked in an American production, says Bollywood is a bit easier to break into. “In LA (Hollywood), everyone is there to become an actor. It isn’t like that in Mumbai,” she says. A moment later, she shrugs and laughs. “I don’t know. Perhaps it is like that here too. But not everyone gets a chance.”

Mumbai, then, is a place where they do stand a decent chance. They’re already working in advertising and fashion. They already have half a foot in the door. Film work, of course, brings very little money. One agent reveals that Bollywood pays foreign models only as much – and sometimes even lesser – than Indian supermodels. “On an average, payments range between Rs 15,000 to Rs 50,000, for songs and minor roles. Sometimes, it might be Rs 1 lakh.” But no international model, he says, can afford to stick around in Mumbai unless they’re making at least a lakh a month.

Money clearly isn’t the main reason why the models are trying to work in Bollywood. Stardom, if it happens, is probably welcome but Evelyn says that a lot of her foreign friends are aware they may not become ‘superfamous’. They still want the film experience.

Why? I persist.

She comes up with a deeply insightful answer. “In commercials, you are always playing someone else. But it is only movies that let you be yourself even while you are acting. At least once in your life, you want that.”

Blame it on the medium then. Look at the way the camera lingers on the faces of actors, while it merely glances at dancers. The background girls make a living and are probably better trained, even more talented than the girl standing up ahead, pouting at the camera. But the dancers are reduced to flashing legs and silhouettes. It is the girl in the centre who is truly acknowledged. Because the camera loves her, so do we.

Ah well! Just go ahead and blame it on love.

A slightly edited version of this piece appeared here.

East or west, not quite the best

Try and imagine this. Take the names of eleven women you know. At the eleventh name, blink. That woman just disappeared from your life. Think of what it means to live like that, knowing that a pregnancy can so easily lead to a funeral. Or think of what it’s like to have your little sister killed by her in-laws.

Now think about your proximity to them. Not geographical proximity, no. Consider how close India is to her neighbours on the list of worst places to be a woman.

And think about how this could have happened to a nation that was created in the name of a religion that actually forbids dowry.

On that list, India is sandwiched between Somalia and Pakistan. Along with Afghanistan and DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), we form a cosy club of Worst Five (for women), according to a recent survey compiled by Thomson Reuters foundation.

Because we’re so upbeat about India, we’re squirming. We would like to say: ‘That’s not fair!’ We want to find some fault with the data. We want to shout: ‘But on what basis?’

Not on the basis on what women wear or how many boyfriends they have. We were judged on the basis of health, discrimination, sexual violence, human trafficking and conflict-related violence. And we were found grossly, cruelly lacking.


Read full piece here.

Force One, the only one?

I’m ashamed. Deep down in my cynical writer’s heart, I didn’t believe he would actually do it. But he did. And I am ashamed because I’d heard of him but never took him seriously until he died.

I’m signed up on an environment e-group and had seen a press statement about Nigamanand — a Ganga-bhakt who had been on hunger strike for 68 days, who was arrested, then moved to Dehradun after poisoning fears at the Haridwar hospital.

What we do to our rivers can only be described as abuse (if this wasn’t a family newspaper, I’d use stronger language). I knew this. Yet, I thought that if a sadhu has been on fast for 68 days — if a sadhu was arrested in Haridwar! — newspapers would have written about it. My cynical side began wondering about the veracity of the press statement.

Next I heard Nigamanand was in the mainstream press. He was dead. And everyone seemed to be leaning forward as if to ask: “What? Swami Nigamanand? Who?”


Read the full piece here.

No more phool-patti ke ishaare

Think about it. When was the last time you saw a romantic song where a couple dance — or even just circumambulate in a skippy, dreamy sort of way — around a tree?

I’m not joking. I’m serious. Look up old romantic songs on Youtube. Many outdoorsy songs (up until the 1990s) included trees. Picnics were always happening. Romance was always brewing. People went cycling, just for fun. Grassy hillsides were meant to roll about in. Trees were meant to lean against, and sigh, or hug, or hide behind as you tried to surprise a lover. Leaves could be torn off when lovers didn’t know what to do with their hands. Flowers were pure metaphor.

Even urban love stories got a fair shot at cosying up to trees. Watch Dev Anand in ‘Abhi na jaao chhod kar’. Watch Sharmila Tagore and Shammi Kapoor in ‘Isharon isharon mein’ as they arch backwards, swaying, holding a fir branch. Or watch Amitabh Bachchan in ‘Kabhi kabhi’, lying under a tree with Rakhee. That was romance personified.

Our heroes and heroines are still dancing. But not around trees. 

Read further here

Lavzon ka pher badal

As long as you go on calling things by false names, there’s a good chance people will go on buying the lie. We can go on pretending that every morning our faces will be caressed by mist although we know it will actually be smog.

This is why no real estate developer calls his building ‘Smog Heights’. Instead, he peddles nature as if it were a byproduct of construction. This is why trash-incinerating firms give themselves names like ‘Ecopolis’ even though they are not recycling anything.

Language deceptions are all around us. Yet we rarely call people out on the deceptions embedded in their choice of words.

Photographers describe a certain model as being ‘comfortable with her body’ when they actually mean that she poses in bikinis without kicking up a fuss. Comfort has nothing to do with it. The poor model may well have undergone surgeries to change her body! Advertisers and fashion magazines call a woman ‘real’ when they actually mean to say that she’s not thin. We talk of mountaineers ‘conquering’ mountain peaks when we actually mean that they just about survived the climb.

And when we talk about how our small towns are getting ‘developed’, what we really mean is that they are starting to look more and more like bigger towns. But what does it mean anyway — development?

Read the full piece here

Because the courtyard is a mirror tonight

Abhinavgupta

Careful, Master!

The mirror lies
     all that is to our right
     it shows to our left,
     all that is to our left
     it tells to our right.

Thus
there is scope for doubt too
as to whether we are standing on our head
or our feet?

Or
is it not
that joining the sky and the abyss
an imaginary line
      cuts right and left at a point
              that is in fact truth's most sensitive point?


The poem above is a translation by Apurva Narain or the original one in Hindi, written by Kunwar Narain. I felt I just had to share some poetry with the world today. 


The poem is addressed to Abhinavgupta, who is supposed to be an ancient philosopher-aesthetician of the 11th century recognition school of Kashmiri Saivite monism' (which I don't know anything about).

To know her, if only a little

I'd recently done a brief review of: ‘I want to Live’ – The Story of Madhubala (by Khatija Akbar). I've been a lifelong fan of the lady and then I discovered these absolutely stunning photos. If you aren't in love with her already, I would urge you to look. I promise: Resistance will be futile.

Across a chasm of two generations, men and women and children continue to fall in love with that face.
Her face – even as a print on cheap glossy paper – remains compelling. But my generation knows little
about Madhubala’s life. We’ve heard about the giggles, the early death, the failed love, the disastrous
marriage to another man.

In fact, I’ve been getting invitations to join a Facebook group whose raison d’être is to make Dilip Kumar
visit Madhubala’s grave and say a fateha. One thing Khatija Akbar’s book does is to clear up a lot of
misconceptions. It’s good to know that Dilip Kumar not only visited her grave as soon as he heard of her
death, but was one of the few people who continued to visit her when she was very ill.

The book tells us a lot about Madhubala. Her professionalism and charity is commented on early. We discover that her beauty was matched by her generosity and loyalty. That as a 14-year-old leading lady, she was cast opposite Raj Kapoor, who was only a clapper boy then. That she learnt to drive when she was 12. That she had a phobia of strangers, and odd suspicions about food and water. That she was dragged to court after she backed out of ‘Naya Daur’, and that she wasn’t the first (or even the third or fourth) choice for Anarkali’s role in ‘Mughal-e-Azam’.

The author has clearly battled major odds – Madhubala has been dead for half a century as are most of her contemporaries. So the book relies heavily on old film magazines. But what one misses most here is insight. The author has written this book as a paean to Madhubala but hasn’t bothered to sift through the research to build a faithful image of a famous woman.

A major fault here is that information hasn’t been subjected to a proper, thematic organization in each chapter. One chapter is marked ‘Co-stars’ but it simply lists the actors she worked with, without much information of what they meant to her. Where was the point of crowding the page with a list of names, which are anyway included in the Filmography?

Then there are some irritants in the form of remarks like: ‘it was an exciting time to be in films’. Has it ever
been otherwise? Besides, the 1940s and 50s birthed several mediocre films and Madhubala herself acted in quite a few. Yet, this aspect of her work has not been paid much attention.

We are treated to glimpses of emotional integrity and a rare intelligence through Madhubala’s own words. But
in many chapters, her words have been cited without any context. Where did she say (or write) them, and to whom were they addressed?

However, the main failings of this book are its haphazard organization of material, its repetitions (entire paragraphs are repeated) and its contradictions. For instance, the author suggests that Madhubala and Dilip Kumar never met on friendly terms after the Naya Daur court case. Later, we discover that they did meet cordially. Also, her strict work schedule is brought up repeatedly, but later Akbar says those rules were often broken, seriously impacting her health.

The domineering father’s behavior is explained away easily by saying that Madhubala received good values from him, after all, and was ‘never left loveless’. Yet, Madhubala herself hinted at extreme loneliness. Readers are expected to swallow the rhetoric of ‘values’ in much the same way as poor Madhubala must have had to.

Akbar’s approach to this biography is guileless and starry-eyed. It is almost as if she is afraid of what she may find if she analyses in depth the circumstances that shaped – and destroyed – a beautiful woman. This is, finally, a book about Madhubala the star, not an examination of a life.

Published here

Trading in toxins

The simple thing is to set fire to them. But that isn’t a good option, especially for plastics. Perhaps that was when someone came up with an idea — incineration. Then, someone came up with another idea — incinerate garbage and convert it into electricity. Then they took it a step further – “Let’s get carbon credits! Since garbage seems to be eternal, let’s just call it a renewable source of energy.”


So that’s why they began setting up WTE (waste-to-energy) plants in and around Delhi. Now, waste-to-energy sounds like a smart idea, but it isn’t. In fact, it is a failed idea. Timarpur had a WTE plant that had to be shut down after 21 days of operation (in 1990) because it wasn’t really generating much power. Delhi’s garbage was too wet — not good for burning.
...


So, naturally, Timarpur and Okhla people have been protesting. They fail to see why Delhi is subsidising and supporting WTE plants when the Supreme Court has already disallowed them in 2005. The Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh has already written to Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, pointing out violations by the Timarpur-Okhla Municipal Solid Waste Management Company Pvt Ltd (owned by the Jindal ITF Urban Infrastructure Ltd). Even the Delhi Pollution Control Board noted that “no public/public representative/any interested person/NGO attended the meeting for comments/objections on the Project” (sic). Sheila Dikshit apparently did go to meet ‘interested persons’ but stormed out of the meeting since they wouldn’t agree with her. Now ‘interested persons’ have taken their objections to the Delhi high court.


Read the full piece here.

Lessons of light & dark

I still remember with absolute clarity the day mom asked us: What makes shadows? In my mind, shadows were associated with darkness — with candlelight; with evening walks. So I answered: ‘Dark’. She switched off the lights and shut the windows. And hey! No shadows! Then she made us carry a desk into the blinding sunshine. Shadows!

I have never forgotten that lesson about light. That year, the class wouldn’t end when the bell rang. An experiment couldn’t be abandoned mid-way; a discovery was about to be made. Mom would always be apologising and begging the waiting Maths teacher for a few more minutes.

A few years later, Chemistry descended upon us. As did a new teacher. His modus operandi was to read out entire paragraphs, affix us with a glare and ask, ‘Is it clear?’ If you said, ‘No sir’, he would read out the whole paragraph again.

Then it was time to learn the Periodic Table with its codes/abbreviations for elements. I’ve forgotten the rest but I remember that Chromium is represented as Cr. I read it as ‘Crrrrrr’, as if I was a crow trying to imitate a motorbike. The teacher threw me out of the class. That is my most vivid memory of him. And of the Periodic Table.

Read the full piece here

The price of clean

Say, the PWD engineer decided he wasn’t going to attend this enormous cost-cutting party. Say, he fined the contractor or blacklisted the firm. Can you imagine it? I can: Engineer babu is out alone one evening when he finds himself surrounded. Or there’s the ratatatatat of machine gunfire. Or perhaps, he tumbles out of a high window in a public place.

That’s how it was for Yogendra Pandey, executive engineer with the public works department (PWD). That he ‘fell’ to his death from the collectorate is known. That he had fined and blacklisted some contractors (and was considering blacklisting more) is known.

That he was beaten up is known. That he asked for security cover twice between 2008 and 2009, but was not given police protection is known. Then in 2009, he either jumped or was pushed from the highest building in Sitamarhi.

Which was it? Jump? Push? Either way, he was killed.

Engineers working with the government have a bit of a reputation. One strong indicator is that they’re much in demand as bridegrooms amongst dowry-happy dads; in the north particularly, it is taken for granted that money will be made ‘over and above’. But on the other hand, there’s Pandey. And he’s dead.

Read the full piece here.

Facebook politics

Friend requests come from religious hardliners and right-wing chest-thumpers. Also from leftists, libertarians, atheists, humanists. Last week, I was surprised to see a request from a student whose political views were listed as democratic. Surprised, because it is so rare.

Very few people choose ‘democracy’ when asked for their political views. In fact, I’ve gotten used to responses like: ‘I hate politics’. Or ‘Nil’. Or ‘xxxxx’... And this, I worry, is at the heart of our crisis: this ‘xxxxx’ which allows us to shrug off all political responsibilities. A democracy, after all, must be ‘of the people, by the people’ before it can become ‘for the people’.

... A lot of opposition to the Anna Hazare-led campaign for an all-powerful Lokpal stems from this hold-my-nose attitude to politics. While Hazare hasn’t crystallised his political views into the cryptic ‘xxxxx’, he doesn’t think he could win elections. Perhaps he believes that only big money wins elections, and he isn’t the only one. I meet far too many people who have so little faith in the Indian masses that they advocate dictatorship as a form of governance.


But I’m surprised at activists like Medha Patkar backing a supra-democratic institution. 

Read full article here.

Roadless bumps

There was no road leading to this village. We’d walked over an hour when I spotted, in the middle of this dusty, rocky, lonely terrain, a warning sign. It said: “Speed-breaker Ahead. Go Slow.” 

It was too hot to curse so we just tittered - clearly, someone was trying to be funny - and walked on. A few minutes later, there it was. A speed-breaker. At least a foot high and six feet across.

Now I think about it, it seems like a little bump of conscience on our highway to corruption. Somebody got hired to create a speed-breaker and by God, he was going to do it - road or no road! Or maybe it was a practical joke. Perhaps the contractor was thumbing his nose at the taxpayer.


Read the rest here.

A good bit of blackmail

Blackmail is all about fear and shame. It means that someone can make you do something you don’t want to do because you are ashamed of the consequences. When Gandhi-ji fasted, he persuaded colonial rulers and Indian mill owners to overturn decisions that hurt millions of people.Why didn’t they just let him die?... Mass murder was already happening — directly, like in Jallianwala Bagh, or indirectly, like the Bengal famine. If the government wasn’t ashamed of starving millions, why was it afraid of one old gent starving to death?

I think it’s because when somebody goes on hunger strike, his life is at the mercy of the collective. It is like saying — “I think my life is not worth living under these circumstances. You can choose to do something about it. Will you?”

You can argue. But you cannot deny that a problem exists and must be fixed urgently...

Which brings me to the question of why some fasts are ignored. Hazare’s fast lasted five days and the state blinked. But for 22 days in 2008, Bhopal gas tragedy victims and activists like Sathyu Sarangi were fasting at Jantar Mantar. When they were close to critical, they stopped and another bunch of activists took over. No blink.

Read the whole article here.

Mother India sequel?

Nearly all male actors have joyfully gotten into drag at some point in their careers, while all female actors long to play something meaty and ‘real’. Something like Mother India.Now Mother India is hard to do again. But a Daughter India can still be made. In fact, it could be an international production because the role reprised by Nargis is a global figure. Data suggests that one in five farms is headed by a woman and women farmers produce 50% of the world’s food. They will identify with this kind of film.

I think the script would go something like this. As in the original film, Mother India is abandoned by her husband, and must bring up two boys alone. She scrapes a living off her tiny farm. She also has a baby daughter.

When the two boys grow up, they take over the farm. If Mother didn’t have to shoot Birju for his bad behaviour, and he didn’t want a split of their land, they work together.

Daughter India grows up and has to be married off. The land has to be mortgaged. The interest rates are high. The brothers’ backs are almost broken with the effort of trying to pay off the debt. Their own marriages must be delayed.

Read on.

Not just a nightmare

It took me a while to realise that I wasn’t really dreaming; I was just remembering sketchy details my mind had collected from the newspaper. I hadn’t paid much attention to the report since it was a brief item on the inside pages. Either some girl was killed or her boyfriend was killed by her brother.
There had been another report weeks before that. A 19-year-old went to Kurla (LTT) Terminus to meet her boyfriend. Her brother-in-law took off in hot pursuit and, along with a neighbor, managed to haul her back. On the train ride home, something happened. Either she jumped off or she was pushed. Or else, she fell out accidentally.

One detail from that story continues to haunts me. Her brother-in-law was yelling at her. Perhaps he was shaming her for being so hungry for love, or being ungrateful. Then he began to criticise her slippers.

Read on.

Insane certainties

Kirekegaard has said somewhere that often people treat difficult life questions like naughty schoolboys — they copy the answers from a book instead of working out the solution to the problem. I suspect that most political activists or party ‘workers’ do the same. They don’t want to think. They just want to follow someone’s lead. Then it becomes easy to let go, for example during a bandh.
... This is what happened when pro-Telangana protestors went on the rampage during a bandh in Hyderabad last month. They set fire to the office of SSAAT, an organisation working with the government to ensure proper implementation of the NREGS. 


Read more here.

Not in our backyards

What angers me is the fact that Madhya Pradesh has been considering a nuclear plant in Chutka for over two decades but not with the blessings of the gram panchayat. The Bhopal gas tragedy dampened official ardour somewhat, but only for a while. In 2009, villagers found out through newspapers that a nuclear facility was headed for their backyards.

They sent letters again and again to district and state administrations, asking: Would they be displaced again? How will nuclear waste be disposed? Will the water still be fit for drinking? What will happen to the fish in the river?

It is 2011 now and the state still hasn’t bothered to reassure the people. Read more

Hearing, seeing, believing

Multiplexes have changed my generation forever and I’m not talking about hundred-rupee popcorn. I’m talking about what we see and hear. Ten years ago, I’d go to theatres with a dozen questions: Would I get tickets? Would I have a nasty fellow sitting next to me?

Would he hog the shared arm-rest? Would a bunch of brats make random remarks? Would I have to shout: ‘Shut up yaar!’? Would a large family ‘request’ me to exchange seats?

Nowadays, we take our seats for granted, stand up for the national anthem and go home without talking to strangers. Unless of course, it’s a special screening.


Read the rest here.

What happened was that she learnt to walk

I was asked to do piece on urban women's lives in modern India, and how that has changed over a generation, for the Italian version of Marie Claire. The piece appeared in Italian, of course, so I cannot link to the actual beautifully laid-out pages, but here is an English version:

Fifteen years ago, I lived in a tiny place. The only real event there was a fete where we kids took camel rides and ate chocolate cake. My mother had moved from a capital city to the middle of nowhere to work for a school. This immediately made me unique – none of my classmates’ mothers had jobs, nor did they move anywhere independent of their fathers.

I was one of the only single-parented children I knew. Ma was the only woman who wore sleeveless blouses, chiffon sarees and stilettos. She was the only one who had no time to cook. She was also the only one who insisted that each student learn to paint, dance, sew and cook, boys included.

Ma, however, did not make a conscious choice to be a career woman. She had wanted to devote herself to a family. But life doesn’t pan out like a Bollywood film, even if you wear chiffon sarees and stilettos. For women of her generation, a broken marriage meant that life met you like a fist full on the face. Some women lapsed into poverty or dependence. Some, like Ma, caught that fist in both hands and learnt to walk.

Yet I grew up not thinking much about careers. There was a lot of marriage talk amongst girls my age and we took it for granted that it was a boy’s job to provide. I assumed marriage would not be difficult since I had many of the right qualities – neither fat nor thin, fair skin, English-speaking, soft-spoken, ‘convented’, not overly ambitious. It should have made it easy to take a step back from Ma, to live instead like my grandmother. But I had not contended with my own upbringing. Something more powerful than ambition had been embedded in my soul – knowledge that a woman could make her own money, and the love of freedom.

Independence – of thought, action, bank account – is a drug like no other. Even as a teenager, I was independent. I did not know how to ask anyone for money, nor did I like the idea of sticking with a man only because he took care of my bills. So I finally began to think of a career.

Grandma used to say there were only three and a half respectable professions for girls: 1. doctor, because there is no greater thing than to save lives (and there are nurses take care of the truly messy aspects of the job); 2. teacher, because you seem noble even if you are poor; 3. IAS officer, which means you have power and red tape at your disposal along with a big white car with a flashing red light on top.

And there was half an option called engineering. Now it was a great thing to be an engineer – you built bridges and dams, even invented things but grandma knew it was avoidable for a girl to wander in the sun, getting brown, dealing with shady contractors or recalcitrant labourers. But if you were an engineer who just sits in an office and makes plans, it was alright in her book.

Soon, however, it became clear that I was not going to be a doctor, engineer or IAS officer. Nobody suggested that I become an activist or researcher, or work in film or, worse, theatre – that was just madness. Since the only thing I did well was writing, I stooped to a slightly less respectable profession – journalism.

Even after I had my own income, I had minor conflicts at home about the usual things – traveling alone, being out late, boys, living in another city, living alone. But a decade later, everything has changed. Girl cousins and their friends are marketing executives, sound engineers, filmmakers, and radio jockeys. Many of them work in call centres and return home late at night. Some live alone. Every scrap of freedom that I had to fight for has come to these girls on a platter.

This can partly be traced to the mobile phone revolution. Once we were traceable at all times, our families began to relax. We would call home if there was trouble. They could hear our voice and be reassured. Part of the family's anxiety is also soothed by the fact that India has a tradition of earmarking spaces for working women where men are barred, such as women’s only compartment in metro trains and seats on buses. There are women-only travel groups and in some places, separate queues at ticket booking counters.

Some resistance remains, of course, both on social and education fronts. For instance, a cousin was interested in mechanics and wanted to specialize in marine engineering, but she was persuaded by her family to opt for computer engineering instead. They didn’t want her to end up as the only woman on a ship’s crew.

Still, every year, the envelope gets pushed further. When I was little, I didn’t know it was possible to join the army. By the time I graduated, my friends were taking up short service commissions. Now there is talk of allowing women in combat roles. It isn’t just the armed forces or the police that are a viable career option. All it takes is a long walk in any metropolis and you can see working women and feel the shards of shattered glass ceilings. There are female petrol pump attendants, female security guards at shopping malls. In Delhi, I once met a female auto driver who said she picked a legal battle to be allowed into the all-male auto and taxi union. Newspapers are introducing us to women racing car drivers, hiking experts, wrestlers!

But the fact that women have found new careers in the new millennium is not the real good news; the visibility of women at work is. Women with serious economic muscle are still rare but if they achieve something, they make headlines – being on a list of 100 most influential Indians, being the first woman stockbroker, climbing Mount Everest, creating a bank exclusively for unskilled women, making a fortune out of papads. Such women are a lode star. The rest of us look at them and know that dreaming is not a waste of time.

I still remember the sharp knock of joy I felt as a schoolgirl after athlete PT Usha almost brought home an Olympic medal. It was a heady feeling to know that a woman was not just running to make a career but for the sake of her passion and for the pride of the whole nation. Now girls like Sania Mirza and Saina Nehwal who are regularly in the news for winning tournaments and the fact that they have lucrative careers is not lost upon anyone. At this year’s commonwealth games, women won models in wrestling, athletics, archery, shooting, boxing. Slowly, they are pushing open the heavy doors of our patriarchal hearts. Now it no longer matters so much that sportswomen wear tiny shorts, as long as they bring home great honour.

Successful women change all of us, especially young girls who are struggling to stay in school. For instance, I read recently that a group of teenaged Muslim girls from low income families in Mumbai has taken up semi-professional basketball. For them, sport is a way out of poverty and premature marriage.

Equality is still a distant dream, of course. Even if we do the same work, women don’t always get the same wages. And while it is true that women-only spaces set us free and make us feel safe, most of us think twice before stepping out late at night. Mumbai is considered a safe city for women – thanks to a decent public transport system and crowds that make your head spin at all hours – but most of us constantly worry about being molested on a deserted stretch. In Delhi, still called the ‘rape capital’, women worry unless they drive their own cars or can get someone to drop them home. Things are changing with the introduction of the metro and radio taxis – knowing the identity of the driver beforehand is a relief, and now there are women-only chauffeur services. But we still agonize about safety, about what clothes attract too much attention.

In that respect, one of the most visible changes has been in the way we dress. Most working women have switched to jeans or salwar-kameez, which was once restricted to parts of northern India. Those who claim ‘Indian culture’ is under threat have physically attacked young girls for wearing jeans or skirts (never mind that Indian men have switched to ‘western’ trousers) or for going to pubs. The good news, however, is that many urban working women are starting to go to pubs if they wish to. Attacks are met with howls of protest – quite innovative ones too, such as posting pink panties to the cultural police.

To tell the truth, we would be glad to wear sarees more often if they were easier to handle during commutes. In fact, we look forward to festivals and weddings so we can wear traditional clothes. But perhaps western clothes do mean something more than comfort to the less privileged Indian woman. I used to have a neighbor who said she felt like being clad in nothing but jeans all the way up to her neck! And she would have, if her life was not ruled by a disapproving husband.

An independent income is the first step towards choosing how we dress or live. But it isn’t the last. Single women still find it difficult to rent houses, particularly those who don’t work nine-to-five jobs. Landlords often have strict rules. There are restrictions on male visitors and the ‘cousin-brother’ who comes to visit is an oft-told joke in Delhi. Few women can afford to move out of their homes until their mid-twenties and as long as they stay with the family, there are restrictions on their love life. Even liberal parents usually expect a definite marriage plan, assuming they accept boyfriends in the first place.

On the other hand, I also know many women in their late twenties or thirties who are not married and are refusing to ‘settle’. They focus on their own work and their own pleasure. Besides, once we become independent, we force others to reassess what they can expect from us. This is reflected in the matrimonials (yes, we still have arranged marriages, though now girls often voluntarily join matrimonial websites).

Increasingly, middle and upper class men prefer a career woman as a bride, a qualified professional. Skills like cooking or sewing are not considered essential. This doesn’t translate into gender parity, of course. It is still women who do most of the housework, but most middle class women in India can afford to hire other poorer women to do the harder work. Domestic workers play a big role in setting better educated women free to pursue other professions.

Parents too are changing their attitudes since daughters are taking better care of them. In certain communities, parents would not even eat a meal inside a girls' marital home, and they would never accept money from a daughter. Women of my generation are rejecting this old notion of ‘giving away a daughter’; they don’t stop being daughters when they become wives. Nowadays we even have television advertisements where the daughter is shown driving a family far, or gifting cars to her old parents.

Recently, I had a conversation with an older man who was complaining that modern girls (like me) are not ‘soft’; we are too much like men. I remember thinking at that time that what he really means is that he can no longer talk to us like we’re clueless. He can no longer boast of how hard he fought the outside world, how bravely, while we ‘soft’ women hurry to undo the harsh effects of his big battles.

Sadly for him, I knew all about the big, bad world. And I like a bit of a good fight myself. I too feel the thrill of a new deal or a bonus. I put bread on my own table. I deliver lectures. I report the news and sometimes, I am in the news. Who knows, some day, I might even go wrestling in the mud. Because even though I like my heels to be soft, I like new experiences even more. If I have to choose, I know what I'll pick.

Above all, I like to be my own person, even if it means being tougher, harder, less attractive. And so, I am grateful for a mother who has showed me how to survive as a woman, alone. And it isn't just me who is grateful. Fifteen years later, her ex-students, both girls and boys, call Ma up to tell her that she changed their lives in some way. Perhaps, she did it just by being who she was – a working mom, a beautiful woman, a good teacher who helped them take baby steps towards equality and modernisation.

In other news

I've just started writing a column for DNA. The first piece is about a tree.

There’s a gulmohur tree outside my window, along with a bunch of other flowering plants, most of which I have managed to kill. Each time my mother leaves town, she tells me I must remember to water the plants. Each time, a few plants die. But the gulmohar survived both my negligence and a parasitical attack.

It wasn’t easy keeping that tree alive. My mother fought hard to save its life.

Read the rest here