Walkway with a view

I have a fantasy about cities of the future. I’ll be walking on air. Well, almost.

I’ll be high up, fifty feet above street level, using my own two feet, safe in a sort of cocoon. Say, a glass tube or a tunnel with skylights to let in fresh air and sun.

Perhaps there will be art on the walls, or posters. Perhaps, I’ll break into a little shuffle or tap dance if nobody’s watching. Perhaps I’ll have music plugged into my ears and will not have to worry about the frantic horns of approaching buses and cars. Who knows, maybe I will even be reading and walking simultaneously.

In this fantasy, I am free of all the things I like least about cities. Too much vehicular traffic, petrol and diesel smells, fumes, not being able to see the few tree tops that still remain, having the sky blocked out, being forced into a more sedentary lifestyle than I want, and incessant noise. All of that will probably still exist, but it will be downstairs. Cars are welcome to their jams, their air-conditioned traps, their symphony of horns. I’ll be floating above them.

To tell the truth, I wouldn’t have been dreaming of such futures if I had not already lived this dream in a tiny truncated fashion. Skywalks have showed me how pleasant a city could be if only one hovers above street level.

They got a lot of bad press when, a few years ago, Mumbai ended up with a clutch of skywalks. They were made supposedly to ease traffic around its suburban railway stations, but civic activists, journalists, urban design experts — everyone opposed them, and for very good reasons.

It is true that the skywalks made construction contractors a lot of money at taxpayer expense. It is true that they are philosophically flawed, for they are based on the assumption that pedestrians should expend greater energy climbing up a huge flight of stairs, just so cars have it easier.

It is true that our skywalks are not accessible to wheelchairs or to people who have knee problems (sooner or later, we’re all getting there). It is also true that they don’t get pedestrians very far either. At best, they help you get across a couple of crowded streets near the railway stations without a mishap. Nobody gave much thought to the potential destinations of citizens who choose to walk.

However, it is not true that skywalks aren’t used enough. One design element that works in their favour is that the skywalk is linked directly to railway overhead bridges, so commuters need not descend and then ascend an extra flight of stairs. In fact, some skywalks get so crowded during rush hours, I have to deal with over-takers and elbowers. The wear and tear — broken tiles, crumbling steps — is more proof of how frequently they’re used.

I do have two complaints about the design. First, they need ramps rather than staircases. Second, they need to be much longer, with exit ramps near markets, cinemas, public parks, hospitals, and post offices.

Still, skywalks may afford me only a five-minute walk but those five minutes are pleasant.

I can amble, or read my twitter feed, or talk on the phone without getting killed. Noise levels drop. Some skywalks even have a couple of benches, and I’ve seen elderly men reading the newspaper there, or students sitting down to chat. Some young people pause on their way to the station, their elbows resting on the railing, staring down at the street, or at the distant horizon.

Walking above street level changes your view of the city. One skywalk sits next to a madarsa and sometimes I see small boys on the upper floor, trying to learn to sit still and read.

Another skywalk runs above a parking lot that’s bursting with motorcycles. Motorcycles clearly bought for very short runs; for longer daily commutes, owners park them and take a train. Another skywalk runs down a busy market. Clothes, bags, shoes. I can’t see them clearly, and yet, when they are not at eye level, I can see these objects for what they are. I see them as glitzy, impractical, or just too uniform. They excite my curiosity but do not tempt me.

A little distance brings greater perspective. I am also able to look at people on the street below in a calmer way. Pedestrians executing a fine dance, twisting their torsos whilst in motion so as not to slam into others, drivers who take foolish U-turns and block the flow of traffic, teenage girls with babies on their hips, kids competing to sell bunches of roses that are utterly devoid of fragrance: all of them existing because of and besides each other.

First published in The Hindu 

On public theft practised as parking

Worse, every car sitting out on the road is a thief of opportunity. There could have been a fruit cart sitting there instead and it would boost the nation’s employment. There could have been a little bit of public art sitting out there instead, which would make the city a more aesthetic experience, or a more politically conscious space. There could even be a series of roadside kiosks that could be put to multiple uses – a phone booth, rain shelter, a flower pot, tree, donation booth, pop-up night school. Why not?

In our cities, we police public space through a moral lens distorted by class. People who park their cars on public land are treated as hapless victims: After all, what else can a car owner do if he/she does not have access to a garage? Poor things, forced to park outside. Anything could happen to the car, no? The government should do something to fix this parking problem. Tsk tsk!

Read the rest of the column here: http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/motoring/the-traffic-and-parking-wars/article17809944.ece

On the road, a watermelon

There's a photograph I love to think of. A moustachioed farmer, dressed in a white shirt and a dhoti, is running down the highway with a giant watermelon, twice as large as his head. It was taken by the photographer accompanying me on a reporting assignment in Madhya Pradesh. We were driving towards a village and just ahead of us was a truck loaded with watermelons and a few farmers.

A sudden brake and some of the watermelons rolled off. The truck stopped, the farmer got off to retrieve his watermelons. In the photograph, the farmer is grinning. He must be on his way to the market to sell his crop. He must be looking forward to getting a good price for those giant melons.

I was reminded of this photograph last week when I heard about another set of farmers who grow potato. In some parts of the country, there are farmers who are getting as little as one or two rupees for a quintal of potatoes. That's right. One or two rupees.

At first I thought, this must be a misprint. It seemed impossible. Clearly, it seemed impossible to the farmers too. In Punjab, some of the farmers reportedly offloaded their stock on the roadside. Threw it all away. And who can blame them? It must cost thousands of rupees to get the crop to the mandi and then to come away with so little that they can't even buy a bus ticket back home!

I picture those potatoes rolling down the highway. Or perhaps, not rolling but just sitting there, glaring at the traffic with tiny, fertile eyes: ineffectual speed-bumps for a nation that's getting ahead of itself.

It would be a very different scene, of course, if the farmers started sitting on the highway. Or perhaps they will come into big cities and block the major roads. There was a time, in 1988, when farmers did just that. They came in their tractors and with their cattle. They slept there and shat there for a few days. The bureaucrats and the politicians were quite displeased but also thoroughly shaken. In an essay about the history of Jantar Mantar as a site of perpetual protest, Neha Dixit has written that it was this grand event that led our rulers to confine all protests to one particular spot, Jantar Mantar.

This is, of course, an effective way to destroy the spirit of public protest. To be tucked away in one little corner of the capital, surrounded by dozens of other citizens with serious grievances, is to be rendered invisible. It is the very opposite of what people had set out to do.

I also recall the World Social Forum of 2004, in Mumbai. It was very colourful and, for a young journalist like me, quite an educative experience. Yet political activists – many of whom had been organizing people's movements for decades – looked on with a sort of indulgent amusement. By the time the forum ended, I understood why. All the causes, the slogans, the singing and dancing, the shows of solidarity were confined to a couple of square kilometeres in Goregaon. None of those voices reached even as far as the main road, just outside the venue. It did not lead to any heated debates in Parliament about the urgency of policy change.

Mumbai also has another of those carefully curated sites of perpetual protest – Azad Maidan – where residents, office-goers, children don't really notice the grief and rage of those who come to protest, and nothing gets disrupted. The city doesn't so much as blink, not until a few roads get blocked.

Naturally, keeping people off the road is crucial so cities – and the powers that be – go on functioning as they did before. So all governments use the police to control them. They enact laws which require us to take permission from the police before hitting the road. Oddly enough, the state rarely bothers to ensure that people are actually not on the road. The difference between the phrase 'sadak pe aa jaana' (to be reduced to living on the road) and 'sadak pe utar aana' (to descend upon the road) is the difference between the fears of ordinary citizens and the fears that govern our rulers.

The former is a universal, yet deeply lonely fear. It is the fear of the potato farmer who may have no option except to move to a big city, and sleep, squat, beg on the road or sit there trying to sell whatever strength he still has. He could, of course, descend upon the road, claiming it with his feet, his voice, and demand that the traffic stop and confront him with human eyes and ears. He could, but will he?

First published in TheHindu

Some odd poems

I've written a few poems around the theme of the body over the years. Some of them have been published by Anti-Serious, a literary journal devoted to things that are actually quite serious, but through a not very serious approach.

Here is one, and the rest can be read in the link below:

Dream: Blackbird

Your hair is big like a preying bird’s
nest. You do not bother to smile
as I sit there like a supplicant, trying
to show you something. A PDF file?

My laptop is charged, prepared
for scrutiny but you are busy
plucking blackbirds out of the sky.
Your manners are beautiful. No feathers

stick out the sides of your mouth.
I’m thinking there must be tiny bones
piercing your graw — ribs or claws or
a twiggy neck scratching your tongue.

You spit nothing. You eat them whole.
I tell myself this is a dream and maybe
you have learnt to swallow thorns
from fish-eating Bengali neighbours.

In my dream, I try to imagine
your neighbours and somehow I know
these are the only neighbours you saw
that year you flunked and had to repeat

a class and learnt what failing was.
I think I will never meet your neighbours.
My heart pounds and in my dream, it turns
into a jack-in-the-box collapsed into my ribs.

There are no birds left in the sky.
I hit shut down and wait to hear
that microsoft windows sound.
I wait for some words but you look

at me as if you know how this will end.
Your eyes are black and feathery.
Your eyes are talons and I, a blackbird
cascading into the heart of the sun,

my eyes squeezed tight against vertigo.
Even so, I want to fall into the nest of your hair
so you can pick me up, swallow me whole.
You can. But will you?

I am a black morsel inside your mouth.
I am fine-boned and plump with hoarded fear.
You can. But will you?
My jack-in-the-box heart is powder

against your tongue, my wings are locked
between your teeth. God! I am so tiny!
There are things I want to tell you.
I am tiny and weak. I failed an exam once.

And I cheated in an exam once.
I had pure veg neighbours once
whose little girl constantly fought
with her mum and liked to eat the boiled

halva my mother sent across in a steel plate
with paisley embossing on its rim.
I want to say, we used to eat fat desi chips
with red chilly powder sprinkled on top.

I want to say more. Something about
why I am here and how hungry I am
but I am a tiny morsel in your mouth
and your teeth are grinding.

(C) Annie Zaidi

More poems here:

https://antiserious.com/annie-zaidi-inheritance-2-esophagus-street-poem-1053e679856c#.8io9wib18

On consent and colleagues

I wrote this about sexual consent in the context of colleagues, with a few helpful tips for people (men in particular) who are attracted to someone at the work place and want to act on their desire. 

"Let me also say that I'm well-acquainted with the messy mish-mash of fear and hope that is the human heart. I know people often seek to meet a crush using work as an excuse. "Bahaane-baazi", as we call it. “Can we collaborate?” “I've an idea I wanted to bounce off you.”

Women do it too. I've done it myself. But if a colleague is not interested in you romantically or sexually, s/he will politely sit through your bahaane-baazi meeting, and things will go no further. And that's fine too. Women colleagues have desires too, but they know enough to back away politely when confronted with what looks like a rejection.

I just want to tell you, male readers especially, that we – women who work in offices, work all hours, who go out to meet strangers in cafes to see if we can work with them, who go to meetings in offices that are actually converted residential apartments, who can never predict whether there will be other people in the office or not – are neither sexless nor available. And that you have no idea what it costs to manoeuvre a path to dignity."

Read the whole piece here: http://www.dailyo.in/lifestyle/sexual-harassment-at-workplace-office-love-desire/story/1/16178.html

Mayawati's Purse

मायावती के जुड़ी एक बात है जो मुझे थोड़ा परेशान करती है, उनके पुतले के हाथ में टंगा वो लेडीज पर्स.

जहां इतने नेताओं के पुतले बनते हैं तो उनके हाथ में फूल माला होती है या किताब. कभी हाथ उठा भी रहता है मानो देश की जनता को संबोधित कर रहे हों. तो क्या मायावती के पुतले के हाथ में कुछ और नहीं हो सकता था? कोई ऐसी चीज जो संवैधानिक हक या आजादी का प्रतीक हो?

आगे पढ़ने के लिए फर्स्टपोस्ट हिंदी की वेबसाइट पे जाएँ: http://hindi.firstpost.com/politics/mayawati-statue-with-ladies-purse-nk-16978.html 

Gulab, now in Tamil

Gulab, a novella I wrote that was published two years ago by Harper Collins India, has been lucky enough to find a Tamil publisher in Anangu, an imprint of a journal devoted to feminist themes and literature.

I am very pleased, of course. Cannot find a link to it but am told people can buy it online on this site: http://www.ethirveliyedu.in/ ). In the meantime, here's the cover:

एक छोटा सा लेख, औरत और जिस्म के बालों के सन्दर्भ में

हिंदी में अब ज़रा और आत्म-विश्वास के साथ लिखने लगी हूँ।  कविता या नाटक लिखने में कभी कोई ख़ास हिचक नहीं हुई मगर, हाँ, गद्द्य लिखते हिचकिचाती थी।  अब नहीं।  उम्मीद है, कॉलम अब नियमित रूप से लिखती रहूँगी।

ये रहा एक छोटा सा लेख, औरत और जिस्म के बालों के सन्दर्भ में:

वैक्सिंग से केवल लड़कियों की देह के बाल ही नहीं टूटते

http://hindi.firstpost.com/culture/why-waxing-shaving-threading-body-hair-removal-means-for-women-and-girls-nk-14219.html
   

Of the pavement

I've started a new column for The Hindu focused on the road. Here's the first:

There’s a phrase in Hindustani, ‘paidal-haal’. A pedestrian state of being. It is a metaphor, but it doesn’t suggest ordinary or unimaginative as it does in English usage. ‘Paidal-haal’ implies vulnerability and difficulty, a reduced state. Who, after all, chooses to go on foot if he can afford a set of wheels? And, if he can’t afford wheels, any wheels, why then!

The implication is that wheels make life easier. A car is better than a bicycle, three wheels are better than two, a four-horse chariot is better than a bullock-cart, and your own two feet are precious and must be used sparingly.

Read the rest of the column here: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/tales-from-the-footpath/article17344999.ece

From the mud pits

Wrestling is a sport I've gotten interested in and have been following for over a year now. I wrote two longer essays around wrestlers, especially in north India. The first was about how the sport has evolved and is riding a new wave public attention, and the second was about girls and sport, with some interviews with female wrestling champions.


The reason I'm so interesting in wrestling in particular is that it seems to me to represent the growth and evolution of humanity itself. It is one of the oldest sports and has existed in one form or another in all ancient civilizations, including the Greeks, the Persians and of course, Indian. Here's a brief comic I wrote about it, published in the Mint (Jan 28, 2017):

http://www.livemint.com/Sundayapp/OHScm12hb9h0aItl4MNcHL/From-the-pit.html

Wheels on my mind

Last year (summer of 2016), I had the good fortune of travelling abroad the Deccan Odyssey, a train that travels around Maharashtra to sites of artistic and historic significance such as Ajanta and Ellora, and also to two wildlife reserves, Tadoba and Pench. An essay about the experience was written for Conde Nast India. A brief extract here:

How many years did it take to just prepare the mud plaster surface? From how far away were the paints sourced? How does one go on painting, knowing the work may not be completed in one’s own lifetime? Walking through the monks’ bare cells—nothing here except a flat slab of rock to sleep on—felt like walking through a place of surrendered ego. Thinking of their calm acceptance of mortality, and the need to create beauty under all circumstances, filled me with a sort of hush. As much
 of a hush, anyway, as is possible at a popular site of tourism in India. At both places, I split from the group in search of silence and was struck, not so much by what the centuries left unchanged, but by the inevitability of change. Buddhist philosophy changed, drawing from both Tibetan and Hindu mythologies. Kings and nobles changed religious affiliation—Jain, Buddhist, Shaivite— and that decided what temples would be built. The hills themselves have been worn down to their present squat solidity. No destiny, not even one cast in stone, is set in stone.

Read the full essay here: http://www.cntraveller.in/story/whats-like-ride-deccan-odyssey/

Announcing the inaugural Jawad Memorial Prize for Urdu-English Translation

Today (Dec 6) is my grandpa's death anniversary. This year also marks his birth centenary.

Ali Jawad Zaidi was born on March 10, 1916. He was many things, many good and wise things, but I see him as a thoroughly modern man. He was sensitive, erudite, hard-working and always trying to move the world in tiny degrees through his scholarship, his gentility, his innate goodness. He was a man open to change, not only in accepting and standing by the choices his children made, but also through examining his own cultural conditioning. He was broad-minded, simple in his habits and very open to joy.

As a writer, he was prolific. Those interested can read up more about him here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Jawad_Zaidi). He was a poet, a freedom fighter, a scholar. He could work in English, Urdu, Hindi and Farsi. His was a mind (and heart) not constrained by one tradition. He was steeped in the Urdu tradition, the north Indian Ganga-Jamuni culture and he believed it was important to hold on to your 'mitti', but he could also venture far from that mitti and keep returning. He could make up Phantom (comics) stories to tell to his grandchildren. It is his openness and his commitment to scholarship and multiculturalism that I want remembered most of all.

We (the Zaidi family joins me in this) want similar literary efforts to endure and be encouraged. As a very small step in this direction, we initiate the first Jawad Memorial Prize for Urdu-English Translation. I hope there are many fine entries. I wish my grandfather was alive to judge them himself. I wish he was alive just for my sake.

Details:

Translators are invited to submit translations into English of a single (published) Urdu short story to knownturf@gmail.com with 'Jawad Memorial Prize Submission' in the subject field.

Rules:

The contest will open tonight, Dec 6, 2016 and close on Jan 30, 2017.

The winning translation will get INR 10,000 in prize money. The runner up gets INR 5,000.

The original story in Urdu must either be free of copyright claims (65 years after the death of the author) or the translator must obtain the Urdu author's permission before submitting the story.

There is no word limit but please understand that this is a short story prize. Anything over 10,000 words is considered a novella, so please avoid stories above a certain length.

The judges will not be announced beforehand. Submissions will be judged blind, so please do not write your name anywhere on the document submitted.

The document must be an attachment with either a .doc or .rtf file. The author's name must be mentioned in the document, but not the translator's name.

The translator's name should be mentioned in the body of the email.

The winner of the prize will be announced on March 10, 2017.

The decision of the judges is final.



Good luck and trust in the love of the word.

Objective type questions for the Prime Minister

There are several things the nation wants to know and is wondering if the Prime Minister is going to tell us any time soon. I thought I'd put down some questions like these below:

10. When corporations fail to repay loans, how will they be chastised?

[Seizure of assets/ Black-listing for future loan/ Touching them with a twig wrapped in flowers, like bridegrooms are touched by the bride's siblings]

11. If a corporation defaults on a huge bank loan worth more than 6 zeroes, whose money is still keeping them and the lending banks afloat?

[Middle class savings/ Tax payers/ Don't know]

12. When will Kalluri and his team be charged with sexual crimes against Soni Sori? What about justice for Madkam Hidme, and others in Chhattisgarh?

[Eventually/ Never/ When BJP loses Chhattisgarh]

13. Will garbage segregation at home be made mandatory?

[No, middle class will object/ Not enough dustbins / Yes]

14. How many BJP leaders and party workers wash their own toilets at home?

[10/ 1000/ Zero]

Read the rest of the questions here: http://www.dailyo.in/politics/demonetisation-narendra-modi-aadhaar-delhi-pollution-najeeb-ahmed-soni-sori-minorities-dadri-hindutva/story/1/14193.html

In praise of literary festivals

I've mostly enjoyed literature and arts festivals and have learnt a lot through them. This year, I was invited to curate the Chandigarh Literature Festival. Here's the text of the speech I made at the opening:

Hello and welcome to CLF 2016. This is a literature and arts festival. It showcases books, screens and discusses films.

Over the last year or so, I've met a few friends who roll their eyes and say, what? Another litfest? Chandigarh has one? Two? Kasauli and Panchkula too? A few years ago, the joke going around lit circles was that, any day now, Gurgaon would have its own festival. Well, that happened too. Some people wonder aloud, do we really need all these festivals? I think that question is worth asking, and answering, every year.

You may have heard that India is incredibly book hungry. We are also hungry in a lot of other ways. A lot of people are hungry in the most literal sense of the word. At least one fourth of our population is below the poverty line, which is really the starvation line. More than half the nation is just about getting by without the basic, assured minimum – good diverse food, clean water, housing, medical aid, pension, terminal life care. A decent education comes just a little bit higher on the pyramid of needs. And books? Not schoolbooks, not books that help you pass exams, but books that allow you to drink at the fount of life, that let you grow into a fuller individual, someone who is better informed about human history and the human soul, books that can help you cope with a spiritual or economic crisis, books that attune you to the changeability of friends, of systems, of borders and moral boundaries, books that help you articulate the nameless terrors that have hounded you since childhood, books that let your mind climb into sky of possibility, books that comfort you when everyone else has failed you – how many Indians have access to such books?

Ten percent? Five? How many of us, once we have left school and college have access to a decent library? How many villages have a free or subsidised library? How many small towns have a good bookshop? How many bookshops in even big cities like Chandigarh? How many car showrooms? Even cities where there are a few good libraries tend not to have any outreach programs that would help fortify the connect between citizens and books. A library or bookshop is not a hospital, after all, where you go only when something is wrong and you need it fixed. They are more like parks for the mind – amusement parks, walking and jogging parks. They help create a fitter, healthier citizenry. Festivals are a step further along the same process of connecting books with citizens.

Those of us who are here today, we are a tribe. Some of us may not have other essential things – houses, cars or bikes, pensions – but we have books. Some of you may be thinking now, well I can afford to buy more books, but where is the time to read? Or you may be thinking, I don't read that much but I love stories. I want to engage with new ideas. I want to feel energised through knowing more, or being comforted by the beauty and balance found in two lines of a ghazal.

When we show up at literary events like this one, it is hard to say what we come looking for, what we hope to gain, how it will transform us. Yet, we know that words do have the power to transform. Our lives begin with a word – a name – and all the history that is attached to it. We become part of a larger community – a nation, a religion, a city, an organization – through stories. Then we keep writing and re-writing the narrative of who we are, where we are going, what we have to do.

Words and stories are not a luxury. They are critical to society. What is a luxury is our access to more complex stories. To be able to swap ideas, to challenge ideas, to hear people debating ideas in a safe and respectful environment – that is a luxury. A literature and arts festival provides that environment. This is why every town need its own festival. The arts need to expand. The bridges between the different arts need to be reinforced. For this, we need people to participate in the conversation around books.

This is what the Adab Foundation has been hoping to do over the last few years, and the conversations and readings you hear over the next three days are a step further along that road. I hope you will enjoy these discussions and participate in them. Welcome once again.

Lab-band, labaalab, lab-soz

Well, we are all doomed to turn into the thing we turn up our noses at. And besides, I did not necessarily enjoy all those non-discriminatory varieties of chai. One particular concoction, often encountered in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, made me want to throw up. It took me a while to figure out that the problem lay in the water (high on fluoride). In other states, especially Punjab, there was the opposite problem. There was no water at all in ‘doodh-patti’ (milk and leaves). This is essentially full-cream milk lightly flavoured with tea, a mark of either prosperity (cows and buffaloes in the household) or warm hospitality (you wouldn’t serve watery tea to a visitor). And then there was the delightfully named abomination, ‘khade chammach ki chai’ — tea with so much sugar, the stirring spoon stands upright in the glass.

It is the last type for which I found a heart-stoppingly romantic description in a new documentary film on tea, Steeped and Stirred. A nonagenarian from Hyderabad said it was called ‘lab-bandh’, Urdu for sealed lips. In other words, tea so sweet it practically sealed your lips. The other two attributes of a truly desirous cup of tea, he recalled, were ‘labaalab’ (full to the brim) and ‘lab-soz’ (hot enough to scald the lips).

From a short article I wrote about my own relationship to tea and about a new documentary film made by someone whose passion seems to rival mine. Read the full piece here: 

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/takeaway/indias-affair-with-chai/article9215779.ece

Gandhi Jayanti 2016

October 2. I was almost content to let it pass without comment or angst. But I read three morning papers and none had a front page or half page or even quarter page ad about Bapu/ Gandhi ji put out by the government. There is one ad with a Gandhi figure sketch, paid for by a private corporation stressing 'swadeshi' enterprise. Other ads urge us to shop without pause - Snapdeal, Flipkart, Sony, etc - and no polite nod at Swadeshi values. I spotted one government ad with the PM's photo where he is posing with a long-handled broom, and the message is cleanliness.

Whatever discussion there was about MK Gandhi and what he means was confined to a few editorials. So I thought, perhaps it is time we took Gandhi back from advertisements paid for by sarkaari public relations departments and private businesses. Perhaps it is time to take a closer look at the idea of Swadeshi and the notion of enterprise.

Gandhi ji endorsed hartals. Gandhi ji worked through collective action, which also includes unionisation and the right to strike work. Gandhi ji did not just endorse local fabric manufacturers. He also sat at a charkha himself, and not just for a few minutes for the photographers. He made cloth. And he did so not just because he was boycotting British-made fabric but also because there is great value in making things for your own use and to trade with your local community. He wanted us to have skills and the confidence that follows. Human beings must not allow themselves to be reduced to fuel for the enormous appetites of factories, nor as fodder for the fires of religious institutions.

Gandhi ji cleaned toilets. Gandhi ji dressed in a half-dhoti, hand-spun. Gandhi ji asked for donations but he also insisted on careful and transparent account-keeping. Gandhi ji wrote about his own struggles with different ideas including religion, food choices, sex and violence. He argued and sometimes he changed his mind. Gandhi ji certainly did not spend 10,000 rupees at a mall simply in order to avail of a free steam iron worth 299 rupees.

Also, as long as he lived, right down to the last minute of his life, he took the side of peace. He begged for peace. He worked and prayed for peace. Those who killed him did not kill him because he was on a murderous rampage. They killed him because they could not beat his courage. For it did take enormous courage to go out where the riots were, after all the bad decisions and messy politics that led to Partition, despite knowing that the leadership (himself included) was to blame, and to beg people to stop the madness and the violence. To say, no matter what has happened so far, let us have no more of it. He was right in doing so. We all know he was right to do so. We all also know that it takes far greater courage to try to stop violence than to start or join the violence. I suspect that is why some of us try to shut up those who have greater courage. Because we don't have a courage to match theirs, and it frightens us.

Golden Girls

SIX O’CLOCK ON a winter’s morning. I was kicking myself for promising to show up at the Chhotu Ram Stadium in Rohtak. The sky was still dark, and even the street dogs were too cold to bark. I was certain the officials were mistaken: the kids would not turn up on time. But at 6.30 am I peeked into the practice hall and found a group of boys running circles at the far end. Closer to the door were the girls, already sweating.

The girl leading the group exercises wore a white cap that buttoned under her chin, giving her an endearing, childlike look. Nothing childlike about her manner, though. She was shouting out instructions, driving herself as hard as the others. The senior wrestling coach who had been showing me around pointed her out: Sakshi Malik, Commonwealth silver medallist.

A few of the girls jogged past, bending to touch the coach’s feet. Another girl, without being asked, jogged off and returned with a chair for me. I sat and watched. Sit-ups. Push-ups. Leaps. Squats. Ten. Twenty. A hundred. Then came the special wrestler moves. A girl spinning atop another’s back. A girl spinning circles around herself. A girl grabbing the leg of her sparring partner, forcing her knee into a forward buck until she toppled backwards – the move takes less than a second to unfold. But they do it ten, twenty, a hundred times a day.

Sakshi’s shirt was drenched when, two hours later, she sat down in front of my chair to cool off. We were going to have to talk like this. She stretching, me scratching away in my notebook. She had no time for interviews. Her father was already outside, waiting to pick her up.

I had the good fortune of meeting Sakshi Malik a few months ago while researching a few story ideas around wrestling, women and sports. She was already a star in wrestling circles but not as well-known yet as the Phogat sisters. I also interviewed Geeta Phogat, who did not make it to the Olympic team after all, and her parents, and a few other girls who are not professional players yet but who are starting to assert their right to play a sport in a public space. Read the full essay here:  https://griffithreview.com/articles/golden-girls/

Book Review : What Lies Between Us

Instead of building up to a climactic event, this novel seeks to examine a tragic chain of circumstances that leads to a young mother’s ultimate failure. This could have been the novel’s main strength for it could have set the writer free to investigate the links in the chain of tragedy and the complex nature of emotional betrayal within a family. However, the storytelling here is laid out flat as a delineation of a set of life events as told in a first-person voice that does not seem to hesitate at the door of memory.

From my review of the novel 'What Lies Between Us' in The Hindu:

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/the-inheritance-of-loss/article8954078.ece

Considering Lucknow

I was asked recently to write about my own relationship to a city. I spent much of my childhood in small townships that qualify neither as towns nor as villages. And though I have lived much longer in Bombay/Mumbai, and Delhi, I don't have the same emotional tie to them as I do with Lucknow, the city where I may have spent a little over a year as a toddler, and then several months of summer and winter vacations through my schooling and college years.

The city is linked in my memory with grandparents, with the extended family, with childhood itself. But it is more than just a personal bond. There are things to admire about the city's culture, its casual, familiar awareness of its cultural capital, the genuine consideration that drives the surface politeness. This is what I've written about, but in addition to the anecdotes in this short article, there are many other memories that have been dredged up.

I had once signed up for a short course in computer programming, at Aptech. I was studying in Ajmer but transferred to a Lucknow centre for the summer months. I sat for a very basic programming test there and clearly, I had flunked. When I called the centre to ask about how I'd fared in the exam, my instructor came on the line but was too polite to tell me outright that I had failed. So he said, "It's gone for a six. You know? It's gone for a toss."

I didn't know. It took me a while to understand that he was trying to say that I had NOT cleared the test. But because he told me indirectly, and gently, that sense of having failed did not feel personal. Somehow, it felt more as if the exam itself, that sheet of paper attached to my name, had gone and done something it shouldn't have. By now, I had understood and privately accepted that computers were just not my thing, and I dropped out of the course soon after. But I have never stopped being grateful for the indirect gentleness of the teacher.

As for Lucknow, what it means to me, here is the article:

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/read/lucknow-a-city-of-manners/article8947336.ece

Jihadi Janes and Jamillas

Tabish Khair has written a fine new novel about Islamic terror and what draws young girls, especially those living in relative comfort in western nations, to the horrific war in Syria. I reviewed it here (headline not mine):

The question gains urgency after recent terror attacks that were carried out by middle or upper class young professionals who attended good schools and degrees. They are not driven to despair by poverty; their families seem to have no clue about their violent plans.

As for the young girls who have left comfortable homes in liberal societies to join extremist outfits like Daesh, the imagination boggles. With reports of horrific sexual abuse, aside from the risks inherent in a closeted life in states where women are not granted equal rights – why? Who is to blame for all this?

Read the full review here: http://scroll.in/article/811856/do-young-girls-willingly-join-the-islamic-state-to-be-terrorists