Why novels and printed books exist in the age of Netflix

Consider the difference between watching a film in a foreign language and trying to read a book in that language. The film will still give away a lot, but the book will give you nothing unless you’re willing to work hard to interpret the words. It is you who bring words to life.

A book is an extraordinary intellectual and emotional pact between writer and reader. Cinema can seek a response, but watching is a more passive exercise. Once you sit down to watch, images and words unfold. You can leave the hall or turn off a gadget, but the creation is what it is. When you return to the same film, the actors will still be wearing what they were wearing. If the girl wears a yellow hat in a book, it may be a bonnet or a fedora or a wide-brimmed floppy hat. It could be canary yellow or the colour of daffodils, and it might be edged with white lace. And if you don’t know the meaning of “hat”, you may imagine the girl wearing a yellow scarf.

Read the whole essay in GQ India mag: https://www.gqindia.com/content/novels-books-print-endures/

A button jab worth of equality

One of my favourite experiences while traveling in more developed nations is the button you can press whenever pedestrians want to cross the road.

I love those buttons affixed to poles at every crossing. They makes a pedestrian feel like she's something too. Something resembling a human citizen rather than a scurrying insect trying to get out of the way of unseeing, unstopabble metal beasts. It makes you feel like your life is a little bit more valuable than ten seconds in the lives of people who happen to be in cars. It reminds you that you are equally human and the fact that you're using your own two feet to get around makes you more deserving of consideration, not less.

This thing about bicycles and sidewalks and the constant dismissal of pedestrians as a component of street traffic – it's basically a class problem in India. There are hierarchies in developed nations too, but the class groups aren't watertight compartments. Those who drive cars also ride bicycles and also take long walks. Those who walk to work may well possess cars, choosing to drive only on weekends. People may drive to work but prefer to walk to restaurants or clubs in the evening.

In India, class is a visible phenomenon. Usually, the pedestrian is at the bottom of the heap. She, or he, does not own any motoring assets. And so, what right have they to expect that they can actually cross the road safely? And if they do cross, they must do so at their risk, and only after a patient wait at the traffic lights. They certainly don't get to control how long they must wait, or how much further they have to walk before they can find a proper zebra crossing and a traffic light?

Those who ride bicycles often cannot afford motorcycles or scooters or cars. Cyclists are mainly men running errands, not doing it for pleasure or exercise. Errand boys, tradesmen, freelance professionals may be carting packages as heavy as their own body weight. They could also be young students from middle class families but increasingly, in bigger cities, students take buses, trains, or rickshaws.

The adult middle class cyclist is an anomaly in India (I know of only six such among several hundred friends and acquaintances). I also remember the time when one of them was barred from entering a complex where discussions and arts' events are hosted. He was riding a bicycle and clearly didn't fit the security guards' image of someone who deserves to access art or join interesting conversations about society. It wasn't until he began to argue in English that class privilege was re-established and the guards relented.

Nowadays, some states are talking of barring cyclists and cycle rickshaws from major roads. There is not much noise about this, so I am guessing that most middle class people would prefer it that way. Or would they?

There must be a knot of worry in upper class hearts about bad times. What happens if they cannot afford chauffeurs to ferry kids to school and drive retired parents to hospitals? Will they have to find worse ways of making more money to pay for cars and fuel and chauffeurs, and houses with more parking space? What if all investments backfire? Will the kids die, trying to cross a road?

Surely, even the elite must prefer the idea of a country where such questions weren't necessary.

First published here: https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-mumbai/a-button-jab-worth-of-equality/article24275657.ece

The making of a river goddess

Somewhere in the Haryanvi village of Mughwali, there is a little acquifer. That is to say, there is a hole in the earth, bricked around, and a circlet of still water. There's a frog paddling in it.

Nothing about this image suggests “river”. As farmer Jarnail Singh points out, a river is that which flows; this is groundwater. Others disagree. This water, they insist, is the same river Saraswati, the one mentioned in the Rig Ved. Built around contestations of what it is, what it can achieve and what's at stake, is a 20 minute documentary film, “Searching for Saraswati”, showing tomorrow (July 10) on the New York Times website.


Read the full article on The Quint

On trolling and rape culture

To call it filth is to dress it up. To call it a disgrace is to lend it grace. Let us call it what it is. It is the manifestation of minds so steeped in rape that it is rape that drips from the tips of their fingers onto the screens of their smart phones.

The meaning of rape is a not-yes. It is not waiting, not listening, not looking for a shade of nuance between yes and no, or I'm-feeling-trapped, or what-might-be-the-consequences-of-this-decision? The meaning of rape is forcing people to do things they do not want to do.

Anyone can do it. Sometimes it is done by mobs, sometimes by friends, sometimes strangers ganging up on one who is not able to protect himself. Or herself.

An unsavoury, undemocratic political culture builds upon rape culture and vice versa. It preys upon the vulnerable and seeks to attach blame to its victims. Just as rape or sexual harassment are assaults upon a person’s physical and emotional autonomy, attacks are launched upon citizens who demonstrate an independent spirit, or exercise the smallest vestige of power, as our Minister for External Affairs, Ms Sushma Swaraj, has regretfully had to discover.

Read the full article on NewsCentral24x7

On literary loans and Bollywood

When does a borrowing turn into a theft?

The answer is obvious – ask before borrowing, and do not go about saying that the goods are your own property. There’s no way of returning borrowed words. The most we can do to avoid insinuations of robbery or mal-intent is to publicly credit the source.

With creative artists, credit is not a straight business. We respond to poems with fresh verses, and build upon foundational myths; we wrench a new politics, a deeper insight out of old tales. With film songs, crediting is especially tricky since much of popular Bollywood music borrows heavily from folk songs and the great Hindi/Urdu classics.

Recently, a very hummable song from Baaghi 2 was being discussed on social media. ‘Allah mujhe dard ke qaabil bana diya’ borrows in two ways. The first is a clean “lift” of one couplet:

“Betaabiyaan samet ke saare jahaan ki
jab kuchh naa ban sakaa to mera dil banaa diya”

This couplet is credited to Najmi Naginvi on Rekhta.org, though it is also often credited to Jigar Moradabadi. The latter is a more famous poet and one of his famous ghazals certainly uses the same meter, rhyme and refrain. Sample this:

“Laakhon mein intiḳhaab ke qaabil banaa diyaa
jis dil ko tum ne dekh liyaa dil banaa diyaa”

The second way in which the Baaghi 2 song borrows is by taking the structure and similar ideas from Jigar. In the tradition of Urdu poetry, this may not be considered outright theft. There’s a phrase for it: ‘zameen udaana’. Translated loosely, it means, to take the ground in which a poem is rooted. Another poet may take the same rhyme and refrain, and create something new. However, the full verse borrowed is nothing but theft.

The lyric credit for this song on the official T Series channel on Youtube is listed as ‘Arko’. Neither Najmi Naginvi nor Jigar Moradabadi are mentioned anywhere. Interestingly, ‘additional vocals’ are credited but there is no room for the original source of the song’s theme, words, or its lyrical structure.

This is not unusual for Bollywood. The famous song Dillagi ne di hawa, thoda sa dhuaan utha, in the film Dostana, includes a line “Ankhon ka tha qusoor churi dil pe chal gayi”, which is from a ghazal by Jaleel Manikpuri, also sung by Mehndi Hassan.

The question of originality is tricky. In Urdu poetry, there is a longstanding tradition of paying tribute or treating a great master's work as the starting point from where you push off your own lyrical boat. There are even ‘tarhi’ mushairas where a new generation of poets is given an existing line of verse and asked to create a new poem around it.

Gulzar, one of the greatest contemporary lyricists, is rooted in this tradition. He often builds upon a single phrase by an old giant, such as ‘Zeehal-e-miskeen, makun taghaful' by Amir Khusrau, and ‘Jee dhoondta hai phir vahi fursat ke raat din’ by Mirza Ghalib, or changes a ‘Thaiyya thaiyya’ by Bulleh Shah into ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’. However, these verses are centuries old and there’s no dispute about their authorship. 

He did run into rough weather when he modified the first two lines of a poem by a near contemporary, Hindi poet, Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena who died in 1983. Gulzar had changed ‘Ibn Batuta/ Pehen ke joota’ to ‘Ibn Batuta/ Bagal mein joota’ for the film Ishqiya. True, the rest of the poem was totally different but it can’t hurt to list Saxena’s poem as a source of inspiration, since he is not as well known as Gulzar.

There is a long tradition of poets being called out by other poets if their borrowings become apparent. I was speaking with one of the young, upcoming voices in Urdu poetry, Abhishek Shukla, who tells me that even Ghalib was accused of borrowing ideas from Persian writers; a scholar called Yagana Changezi has pointed them out in a text called Ghalib-shikan. There are several such anecdotes about similarity of verses, and there may well be an authentic ‘khayaal ki takkar’, an accidental collision of ideas. Shukla says it has happened to him too and he is happy to acknowledge the similarity of the couplets in print as well as on social media. But some poets hide behind ‘takkar’ when caught shoplifting.

There’s a story about Firaq Gorakhpuri at a mushaira, where he heard a younger man recite his (Firaq’s) couplets. Firaq asked if those verses were indeed his own work, and the young man said, yes. But, starting to realize that he had blundered, or belatedly recognizing Firaq, he took refuge behind ‘takkar’. Firaq reportedly said that it is possible that a bicycle collides with another bicycle, or with a horse-carriage, or even a car. But what are the chances that a bicycle will collide with an aeroplane?

In another instance, Khumar Barabankvi was hearing his own ghazal being recited at a mushaira by a younger poet. When he stopped, Barabankvi said aloud: Young man, you may as well read out the last two couplets too.

If a poem is going in print, it doesn't hurt to add a footnote or use quote marks or italics for a borrowed verse. For film songs, however, it is incumbent upon the lyricist to mention it in the credits. If it is a tribute, it is evident only to the well-read who are familiar with the original. In a cultural context where most people do not read poetry but do listen to film songs, to not credit the line is very problematic.

However, within the film writers’ community, nobody wants to confront unpleasant questions such as the nature of creative pursuit, and who deserves how much? Finally, it all comes down to a writer’s personal work ethic. Varun Grover wrote a song based on Dushyant Kumar’s Tu kisi rail si guzarti hai and has acknowledged it. The official Zee Music Company channel on Youtube mentions it. Grover also did the hard work of running about to get permissions from the late poet’s descendants to use two lines, and he reached out to the publishers too. Many others don't want to do the work.

The other problem is that producers are parsimonious when it comes to writers. Even if the sums of money required are small, they are reluctant to pay it. I would not be exaggerating if I said that major production houses hesitate before paying writers even ten thousand rupees, but don’t bat an eye before coughing up two crores for filming the song.

In the internet age, due credit is a peculiar nightmare. One lyric website lists the very famous poem, “Ye daag daag ujala, ye shabgazida seher' as written by Gulzar for the film Firaq, while the actual poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz is listed as 'singer' (http://www.glamsham.com/music/lyrics/firaaq/yeh-daag-daag-ujaala-yeh-sabkajida-sehar/949/2312.htm).

Film writers would do well to stand up not only for their own rights, but also for establishing base rules and norms for writing credits. The merit (and income) of a lyricist is directly linked to an ability to generate fresh words and images, binding them into a succinct verse. If he (or she) chooses to give credit where it is due, he will only gain the respect of his contemporaries. Unless, of course, he is unable to write songs without the help of borrowed lines. In that case, what can other writers offer him except compassion?

First published here: https://www.dailyo.in/arts/bollywood-songs-entertainment-lyrics-plagiarism-ghalib-gulzar/story/1/25207.html

Nikki and the Post Truth Juggernaut

One can’t help it. One feels good about an Indian (well, okay Indian origin) girl growing up to do big things. Nikki – probably a pet name that her family lovingly used, a word that in Punjabi actually means ‘little one’ – has grown up into one of the biggest, most powerful positions in the world. She is an ambassador of one of the most powerful, most heavily militarized nations in the world, deputed to the United Nations, the ultimate world body.

Now she’s back in the country her parents left, seeking greener pastures. But what is she doing here? She, who is neither the President, nor the Vice President, neither handling trade nor defense nor external affairs portfolios?

She’s said she’s here to make India-US ties stronger. So, she’s visiting religious places of all faiths, and meeting freed child slaves. And of course, she’s talking selectively of terrorism. Iran, Iraq, Syria. The usual parroting of trigger words like missiles, terrorists, and mentioning nations that are suffering the consequences of war, at least one of which was ruined under false pretexts by other former Presidents and Prime Ministers. The truth of America being lied to so that Iraq (the Iraqi people) could be destroyed, the truth about the defense business interests of former Presidents, the truth of growing neo-Nazi groups after Trump won the election – none of it has changed the way American representatives speak of other nations.

Haley is not talking about domestic terrorism, neither in India nor in the USA. When pointed questions are asked about international concern over the rise of extreme right wing groups of the non-Muslim type in India, she speaks instead of religious freedom. Possibly this is because the ‘T’ word can’t possibly be used for a country that isn’t Iran, or Iraq, or Syria. Or Libya or Egypt or Palestine. Iran is special, of course, because it is not yet at war, and it is essential to diplomatically isolate a nation before you can bring it to its knees and take control of its resources. Thus, the rhetoric about India needing to think about who it wants to do business with.

One understands. If Nikki Haley is going to run for President, she needs to talk the talk. She needs to breezily mention a personal interest in strengthening ties between the USA and India, while also talking tough – telling us who we can be friends with, who we must do ‘katti’ with.

The United Nations that is supposed to help prevent wars and minimize their human impact. The USA has quit the human rights council after a report commented on growing income disparity and poverty in her country. It has fallen to Haley to call the UN human rights council “an organisation that is not worthy of its name" and “a cesspool of political bias”. Who can blame her? There’s no way to counter truth except by saying that it is false. There is no way to hide poverty and income disparity except by calling the question “ridiculous”.

She needs to go on saying ‘wealthiest and freest’ even as black moms and dads get shot in their own backyards, cars, homes, and while kids of all colour get killed in schools, and while homelessness is rife, and statistics suggest that the minimum wage in all American states do not permit workers to rent a two-bedroom apartment, so either these wealthy and free families are squished into tiny homes or they’re going to have to stay childless. It is actually ridiculous given that America is wealthy and free.

Despite being the child of immigrants, Nikki Haley can’t afford to take a pro-migrant stand. Instead, she will draw a line between legal and illegal migrants and keep parroting the word ‘law’ as if the meaning of that word was somehow leached of its own meaning. The law matters, she says, knowing full well that war, persecution and hungry children recognize no law. Faced with the relentless murders of unarmed protestors, journalists, medical aides, and little children in Palestine, she is going to have to say that “no country would act with greater restraint than Israel”.

There will be no mention of the poverty line in India, which is actually the starvation line, or the fact that it is these conditions that push children into slave labour and women into sex slavery. Haley certainly isn’t going to talk about India’s socialist dreams and a model of school and university education in the 1950s and 60s that enabled her parents to study without going into debt, and then to move abroad. She is absolutely not talking about the great privilege of families in India where young people finish college and can afford to apply to foreign universities, or pay their way through legal immigration services.

At any rate, it is good to see that Haley can trot out phrases that don’t necessarily add up to truth. It is a trait shared by career politicians everywhere. The desi phrase for it is: baatein gol-mol karna. To turn words around into a ball of nothing, to make suggestions rather than commitments. She’s proved adept.

As for India, the questions nobody has seen fit to put to her as a representative of the Trump administration are the questions that will decide the future of India-US ties.

First published in The Quint: https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/nikki-haley-silence-speaks-louder-than-her-words-here-is-why

Feed the nation's heart

The way to a man's heart, they say, is through the stomach. The way to keeping a nation's heart healthy is also sort of through the stomach. As long as people can invite each other to a meal in a civilised fashion, there is hope that their politics will remain civilised. The tradition of iftaar parties hosted by political leaders and prominent office bearers such as the President of India, has been part of an attempt to enact this civility. 

The most important iftaars are not hosted by Muslim leaders. They are hosted by those who neither observe Ramzaan nor celebrate Eid in their own homes. By hosting an iftaar, they merely indicate that they are mindful of Muslim citizens, that they are willing to share in their joys. The unspoken implication is that their sorrows and fears will not be dismissed. 

Some politicians put on a white cap, often associated with Muslim men, or a checkered scarf for that one evening and there has been criticism of such symbolism. After all, if you are not going to make the socio-political environment any safer for the minorities, why bother with caps? Even so, the wearing of the cap and scarf signals that the wearer is willing to listen, that he is willing to imagine the grief and loss caused through political (in)action. It signals that he counts diverse threads in the warp and weft of the fabric of his motherland.

When a political party, elected leaders or the President refuse to host an iftaar, they signal the opposite. The message that goes out is: We don't care; you are irrelevant. When a leader is happy to be photographed in every sort of headgear with the sole exception of a white cap associated with Indian Muslims, a message goes out: You will be isolated and rejected. And when senior ministers fail to show up at an iftaar hosted by our First Citizen, the signal that goes out is: You will be dishonoured. 

In contrast, politicians invite themselves over at the homes of Dalit citizens. Food and caste taboos remain strong in our nation and, despite legislation forbidding discrimination, we continue to hear of upper castes refusing to eat food cooked by Dalits, or refusing to use the same plates and glasses. Eating a meal cooked by Dalits is a way of signalling: I reject caste taboos.

Bringing along food packets, or food that the unsuspecting host cannot really afford to provide, to the home of a Dalit so that cameras can duly record the meal, is an insult. Still, the trick is played because it is worth playing. The signal that goes out is: We will make efforts to keep Dalits on our side, even if we do not disrupt caste hierarchies.

Political symbolism is not empty of consequence. When, instead of being content with not eating meat or eggs themselves, our leaders insist on serving only vegetarian fare at official dinners (hosted at taxpayer expense) they’re sending out a signal that they will control what other people eat, regardless of democratic norms or the will of the majority, which is largely meat-eating. 

Dinner diplomacy is daily business for those who meet representatives of other nations, businesses and their own party workers. Whether they want to or not, they deal with differences of culture, food, dress, even of faith. Parties like the BJP, widely perceived to be pushing a majoritarian agenda, do have Muslim or Christian members, after all. And for a party as rich as this, it is no great burden to host one iftaar. To do so would signal mutual respect. At the very least, it would be a polite nod at peaceful coexistence.

In rejecting iftaars altogether, our current leadership is sending out the worrying signal that does not believe in the possibility of friendship and peace. Differences that cannot be observed, cannot be celebrated, cannot be worn on your sleeve and on your head, can only be reduced to sharp points of pain. Each of us knows what pain and rejection does to the heart. We must be careful with the heart of the nation.

First published in The Quint: https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/why-no-iftaar-bjp-way-to-the-nations-heart-is-through-stomach

Driving to devastation

When I was little, I remember reading a story, or perhaps a play, where an Irish family is considering migrating to a new land, America. Moving across the ocean, with little prospect of ever coming back, is daunting. One of the characters is reluctant. But one young man insists: at home, there is nothing. Even if they survive, he says, all they can look forward to is potatoes. More and more potatoes.

This little scene got stuck in my head. I couldn't understand why somebody would object to a steady diet of potatoes. Could one ever have too many potatoes?

I didn't understand because I had never had to live on a potato diet. No bread. No corn. No rice. No lentils. Just potatoes, morning and night, day in and day out. And sometimes, not even that – not even a boiled potato.

It was only recently that I finally understood, once I started reading about the great Irish famine of 1945. It was also called the great potato famine, because the big disaster was a failure of the potato crop. A potato blight meant that suddenly, the vast majority of people had nothing to eat at all. An interactive map released by the Queen's University College, Belfast, shows that between 1841 and 1851, along the west coast, nearly half the populuation was wiped out.

How could this happen?

The answer lies in a complex mix of bigotry, oppressive feudalism, and imperialist policies.

By the eighteenth century, England's rulers were largely Protestant. England also controlled Ireland and Scotland in direct and indirect ways. Certainly, the Irish and Scots had their own distinct language and culture. Ireland also had a significant Catholic population that faced discriminatory laws. Catholic could not own property or join the army or hold public office.

Many of these laws were repealed before the famine. But land ownership was deeply skewed against the tiller who was being squeezed tighter and tighter. They worked for very meagre wages in exchange for being allowed a tiny plot of land on which they could grow the food that would feed their own families. The only thing that would grow abundantly on small plots was potatoes.

The big lords often lived far away, in cities. They neither knew nor cared about the difficulties of their tenants. They appointed middlemen to deliver their share of money. These middlemen further divided and sub-let the land in a way to extract maximum rent.

Already, vast tracts of land had been cleared to make way for cattle, to feed the diary and meat needs of England. But the poor did not own this cattle. And once they had been made paupers, their landlords evicted them and flattened their little huts.

Worse, there were laws that kept the prices of food artifically high. Cheap grain imports were not allowed but traders kept exporting grain and livestock. Through the worst of the famine, as millions perished, hundreds of thousands of gallons of butter left Ireland.

This is how we ride up to famine: because there's money to be made that way.

This story is familiar to Indians who know about the Great Bengal Famine of 1943. Millions died. There are many similarities – a diseased crop in one season, absentee landlords, marginal or landless farmers, a steady export of grain, imports being either disallowed or diverted.

With reference to Bengal in 1943, we speak of imperialism and racism at work. But the truth is, any shade of difference is enough – a different language or accent, a different religion or sect – once you set out to create inequality, institutionalise it, and to profit from the devastation of others. 

First published here: http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/motoring/driving-to-devastation/article24143802.ece

Reviews

I've enjoyed reading and reviewing two books this past month: Tabish Khair's "Night of Happiness" and Intizar Husain's "Day and Dastan", translated by Nishat Zaidi and Alok Bhalla. Here are links, please read the books.

https://scroll.in/article/881020/two-novellas-reacquaint-us-with-the-finest-urdu-writer-of-our-time-intizar-husain

And this one too:

https://scroll.in/article/880258/this-novel-reveals-things-about-contemporary-india-that-cannot-be-proved-or-we-prefer-not-to-see

A bit of heaven

There have been times when I've been asked what city I'd like to live in for the rest of my life. What sort of neighbourhood, what kind of streets, what shape of home?

I've never been able to come up with a good answer. The answers I do give sound unreliable even to my ears. Do I really want to be stuck in a big city? Do I really think I'm a small town girl? Is there anything worse than the sort of city which is neither metropolitan nor cosmopolitan, nor even eternally familiar?

It's a tricky question. What does your corner of heaven look like?

I find it easier to imagine my corner by eliminating the things it most certainly wouldn't have, if I had my way. I know that I wouldn't like my share of the sky eaten up by concrete. I know that I would not want plastic bottles and food wrappers in the vicinity, and if they were thrown, then – since we're talking of heaven where anything is possible – I'd like some sort of technology to be put in place that the thrown bottle or wrapper would fly right back to the hand of the thrower and attach itself there. The more one tried to throw a piece of rubbish into public property, or someone else's property, the more adhesive the rubbish would become.

In my corner of heaven, the air would not be corrosive. And the groundwater would not be poisoned or cancerous. Industries would not be set up in the vicinity, and if they were, then the owners of those industries would be required to put down roots in that same corner, so they might breathe that air and drink that water and bathe with it too.

All surfaces in this corner would not be covered over with concrete. If there were bricks or tiles, then gaps would be left for the rainwater to seep back into the ground. The streets would not flood each time it rained, and there would always be the assurance of water lying deep and clean a few metres below the surface of the earth.

I also imagine that a patch of heaven would be the sort of place where you don't have to clean out the gutters before every monsoon. And if you did have to clean and desilt, that it could all be done in a coordinated, collective manner. That one team didn't have to pull out massive globs of silt mixed with sewage, which they then left out in piles on the sidewalk, at regular intervals. That those piles would not have to wait for days until some more paperwork got pushed around and someone else was hired for this leg of cleaning.

An ideal city, a dream city, would not only be clean above all things, it would also be clean through small and big acts of collective responsibility. People who cleaned would have a chance to live in the little patch they cleaned themselves, so that they too had a stake in it. And people – a able-bodied adults, that is – who never cleaned private or public spaces would have the least right to live in the cleanest parts of town. In such a city, there might be embedded the principles of heaven.

First published here: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-mumbai/finding-a-corner-of-heaven/article24051903.ece

Not quite highway robbery

One of my enduring memories from the first time I visited Melbourne is walking around looking for lunch and spotting a compact row of bright blue bicycles that were neatly stowed on the sidewalk.

The first question that popped up in my mind was: “How come everyone here rides the exact same bicycle?”

A moment later, I felt sheepish. I realised that it was a bike rental system. Precisely the kind of system I wish upon all cities. At home, of course, it is unlikely to work. First of all, there are no cycling lanes. When the national capital, Delhi, tried to create a cycling track along one stretch of BRT (a rapid bus transit lane) a few years ago, it was promptly hijacked by motorcyclists and auto-rickshaws. A few small cars tried to squirm in as well. Cops had to be stationed there to catch and fine three and four wheeled drives. It never was possible to fine scooters and motorbikes – because they insisted that they interpreted the bicycle symbol for the lane as a 'two-wheeler symbol'. At any rate, the BRT system was dismantled and the exclusive bicycle track vanished. Currently, bikes ride on the pavements.

Secondly, there's a good chance the bicycles would get stolen. We'd need to station cops or guards to make sure people paid rent and returned them.

I wanted to ask my friends in Melbourne: “How come your bicycles don't get stolen?” But it felt like a foolish question. Maybe they had some technology to track down stolen bikes. Or perhaps, bicycle theft simply wasn't worth the trouble and the risk of prosecution.

In India, of course, bicycles are useful, not just as a vehicle but also a potential source of scrap metal. And there are a great many people who take great risks for very little gain. That same year, there was a robbery in my uncle's house. One of the employees' bicycles was stolen at night, despite high boundary walls all around. The local security guards' bicycles had also been stolen a few nights before, so they had been keeping their eyes peeled. The thief was soon caught red-handed. He had made the mistake of returning to the same street to steal some iron rods that were lying outside a house.

Anything that's sitting on the road, or even just inside one's own property, if it's easily accessed from the road, is likely to tempt some desperate citizen. Iron rods aren't worth a lot of money – definitely not worth time spent in prison – and yet, people try to steal them. Metal drain covers are stolen sometimes. Dustbins aren't spared either. In Mumbai, I have seen elevated metal bins with their bottoms cut out. Metal tumblers are often chained to free drinking water outlets, so people don't walk away with them. Tumblers in train toilets are chained to taps. The taps in public toilets get stolen too.

I once lived on a street where the slabs of stone that covered an open drain were stolen. That monsoon, we were all wading through overflowing sewage.

I don't know how much a slab of stone costs. Nor do I know what it costs to cover drains. But one thing I do know: wading through sewage is an experience that diminishes your self-esteem. And thinking about the man who steals drain covers for a living, being caught and put in jail does not make you feel any better.

First published here: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-mumbai/not-quite-highway-robbery/article2389864.ece3

What More Does a Girl Want?

This poem had appeared in The Narrow Road zine.

What more does a girl want?

·        notebooks. new, with hard covers so the pages don't get torn from being carried in an overstuffed haversack in which pens of five colours sit with lipstick, eye pencil and leftover lunch rolled into a plastic bag that the grocer still gives her in defiance of the government ban.

·        dreamboats. princes from neon fairytales. more Tangled less Rapunzel, more Brave less Cinderella. maybe even Shrek. green ogres are okay if they have bothered to install solar heating.

·        accent. only one. it should mark her as someone who is from somewhere. a potpourri of place and race but with a distinct lilt and lisp. an aural scar of having tried and failed at belonging.

·        a ghost. tripping over the ankles of night, clanging chain dragging a four-poster bed by its left foot (note to self: do not repeat, find ways to make new, new. break old ground and

bury the dead).

·        photo frames. papier mache. jazzed up with gold paint and tinsels from a stationery shop right outside the school where the principal as good as spat once at her family's good breeding.

·        laundry basket.

·        nylon rope.

·        pepper.

·        radio.

·        sad horses that appear mysteriously outside the grocery shop that sits nervously beside a wine shop and does frantic midnight business in fried peanuts and triangular Amul cheese cubes.

·        silver shoes.

·        neon shoes.

·       sensible shoes that assure you she is no hurry. she has walked so far, so so so far to be here,

with you.

(C) Annie Zaidi

First published in The Narrow Road litzine

Trolling via road nomenclature

The naming of streets is a tricky business. In the old days, streets got their names off occupations. There could be named after a Baker, a Butcher, a Shoemaker. Or, after prominent landmarks, like Church Street. In India, we have our own versions, such as Chikoo-wadi, Parathe-wali Gali, Dariba Kalan or Chandni Chowk.

The naming of streets after people is a relatively recent phenomenon and quite a politic decision. To name a street after a person, with the assumption of perpetual visibility, is to say that this person is significant, and must remain in public memory. And therefore, we have streets named after monarchs, politicians, scholars, artists and very prominent businessmen. Very, very rarely do we have a street named for an activist. There is of course, Mahatma Gandhi; several Indian cities have an M.G. Road by way of acknowledging the father of the nation. One could say he was an activist-politician. However, the more confrontational and anti-establishment an activist is, the fewer the chances that his/her name will be enjoined to a street sign.

Unless, of course, it's someone else's activist. Those are easier to champion.

Recently, Dutch activists went about “renaming” streets after Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian teenager who was imprisoned for hitting an Israeli soldier. What makes it a fine act of diplomatic trolling is that one of these street named for Ahed leads to the embassy of Israel in Amsterdam.

I do not know whether The Netherlands officially supports such a renaming but, at any rate, the state seems not to be in a hurry to punish the activists who made the change.

Such trolling of another state via renaming of the street on which the embassy stands is not new. Iran did this masterfully way back in 1981.

Bobby Sands was a member of the Irish Republican Army which was opposed to British rule. Sands was in prison and had undertaken a hunger strike along with a handful of other IRA activists. He withstood the strike for 66 days before he died at the age of just 27.

In May 1981, news of his death filtered out to the rest of the world. He had many supporters, even as far as Teheran. The Iranian government decided to honour his memory – and stick their tongue out at the British – by renaming the street on which the British Embassy stood.

The UK officials, naturally, was not amused; they thought of the IRA as terrorists. So they responded by turning their backs on the new Bobby Sands Street. The front entrance was moved around to the back, so that the opposite street could be given out as their official address. Some reports suggest that, as late as 2004, the British were trying to lobby Iran to change the name of Bobby Sands Street.

Teheran seems quite adept at responding to other states in this manner. Saudi Arabia, with whom its relations remain fragile, was similarly taunted. The street on which the embassy stands was reportedly named after Sheikh Al-Nimr, a Shia cleric who was executed by the Saudi Arabia.

The USA also tormented its rival, the former USSR, in 1984 when it decided to name a public square after Andrei Sakharov, a Soviet dissident who was put in jail. More recently, there have been moves to challenge Russia through naming a plaza after Boris Nemotsov, an opposition leader who was killed in 2015.

There seem to be fewer such challenges to the power of rival nations in India, nor public reminders of the abuse of state power. This is always a tricky thing to do, of course. Because once we do start reminding each other of the abuses of power in each other's backyard, we're going to start running out of streets to rename.

First published here: 

http://www.thehindu.com/society/trolling-via-road-nomenclature/article23583525.ece

A rough ride on the superhighway

At the turn of the millenium, the phrase “information superhighway” was tossed around a lot. I had no idea what it meant, even though my first job was at a web portal and the ante for speed of “breaking” news had just been upped to frightening levels. Still, we all threw that term around – information superhighway – as if we could see the thing.

In my head, it meant that the Internet was a smooth, multi-lane highway. The corollary was that older forms of information access and communication resembled bumpy village roads or narrow bylanes in unplanned cities. The unspoken consensus was that the superhighway was “better”. Who wants uneven roads that slow you down?

What we didn't know at the turn of the millenium was that a superhighway is only useful if it takes you somewhere you want to go. If it doesn't allow you to turn off at the right exit, then you may waste a lot of time and energy going back and forth until you find a way to get off the superhighway. It may take just as long to reach your destination, which may well be inside a narrow bylane. In information terms, this means that we waste a lot of time wading through data, following irrelevant links and active misinformation that travels very, very fast. It could even be that we absorb too much data but too little knowledge.

We do have access to a lot and our access is quick and often free. No library memberships or archive managers get in the way. What we have forgotten is the method and the grace of the slower road. The experience of walking down a street and being able to pause and ask a resident for directions, perhaps to the home of a person whose address you do not know.

There was a time I went looking for a young man in Punjab who had been caught trying to illegally migrate to a western nation (which meant, any nation west of the Middle-east, and which wasn't in Africa or South America). He was arrested, detained, and eventually deported. I did not have a phone number or an address. All I knew was the name of his village and his name, Bhupinder.

I remember going in a taxi, looking for his house and being unable to find it. I stopped several times and asked where I could find a young man called Bhupinder. Nobody seemed to know. Finally, I began to ask for the boy who went abroad but was arrested and deported. A couple of young men on a motorbike immediately said, “Oh! Pinda! You're looking for Pinda?”

The affectionate diminutive, Pinda, indeed described the man I was looking for. And he gave me his story.

Sometimes I wonder how I'd have done that story if I had gone to the village in a taxi equipped with a smart phone but no location pin. Would the driver have agreed to drive me around in circles, knowing that I didn't really know where to go? Worse, what if Bhupinder had grown up glued to a device and he didn't really have any friends who knew what had happened to him?

Sometimes, I wonder if, in our rush to get onto the information superhighway, we forget that we were not actually stuck in narrow gullies of information. We used to explore those gullies on foot or on bicycles, pausing often to pick up precision, tapping into a much finer web of knowledge and narratives, which is more than data.

First published here: http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/motoring/a-ride-on-the-information-highway/article23424811.ece

A martyr and a forever student

Two days after Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were hung, another glorious martyr gave his life for India. Most of us have forgotten him and if we do hold on to the memory of his name, it is through a few colleges and an award for journalists. His values and his remarkable courage have faded from our minds.

Ganesh Shankar ‘Vidyarthi’ was just 40 years old when, on March 25th, 1931, he was killed while trying to rescue people during a communal riot. Mahatma Gandhi had described it as a “shaandar” (glorious) death, one he envied. In this respect, he was not a man who followed in Gandhi’s footsteps. He was the man who showed Gandhi the way.

Read the full article here: https://www.dailyo.in/variety/ganesh-shankar-vidyarthi-journalist-died-fighting-riot-allahabad-adityanath-communal-violence/story/1/23138.html

A rough road to development

There's a conversation I often play back in my head. I keep wishing I could back in time and argue properly.

I had gone to an area where there was some conflict between business interests and the interests of local residents, who felt that the factory was not to their advantage. So I went to discuss their concerns with one of the managers and he sort of snapped at me. He asked, “What is development?”

Without waiting for an answer, he declared, “Development means, a man has food, and a hundred, five hundred rupees in his pocket, right?”

He patted the front pocket on his shirt as he said this, and I was so puzzled that I could not come up with an adequate response. It was only later that I started to be shocked at the poverty of this gentleman's imagination, the narrowness of his vision.

What he was actually saying was this: villagers would (perhaps) get jobs at the factory and therefore they ought not resist factories/ big businesses; they had no right to expect more from a changing nation than their continued survival.

I bet this same gent would have a totally different view of “development” for himself. He already takes for granted his food, clean and plentiful water, a few hundred rupees in his pocket, a home to shelter in, gas, education, healthcare and comfortable transport. For his own class, “development” would imply access to high quality higher education, preferably subsidised by the state, state-of-the-art medical facilities, organic chemical-free food, perhaps free museums of art and generously proportioned libraries.

He knew that the basics are not available to most villagers. If I'd prodded him, he'd have shrugged and said: “Well, that is the state's responsibility.” Or, he may have added: “But we are doing something about that; we set up a school and dispensary.”

He would have side-stepped the question of how the factory implies “development” if they suffer water, air, ground pollution, and the fact that they would be at the mercy of a private firm for health and education access.

If this is all “development” means – food on your plate, money for clothes and other essentials – then development can just as easily be attained through farming practices that have been in place for a thousand years. After all, ancient Indians did eat a wide variety of foods. They did have clothes and some coins in their pockets.

The question is: how have we “developed” over the last thousand years? In a nation where millions are hungry or have no resident doctor within a two kilometer radius, what is the meaning of cement and steel factories, of petroleum and cars? What is the meaning of electricity and anesthesia?

The answer to that is: we have developed erratically, unequally, unjustly. There is no doubt that electricity and anesthesia are vital developments. There's no denying that the poorest people also want roads and buses. The dispute is about what development costs us, individually and collectively, and who pays the price through natural resources and taxes, direct and indirect.

This word “development” is used arbitrarily because it gets a lot done. It wins elections. It describes aspiration. It helps suppress crimes against rural and forest-dwelling communities. It flattens out all arguments in favour of ecological preservation. It twists our public discourse away from other important words such as “rights” and “health” and “freedoms”.

If I could meet that gentleman again, I'd say that development has multiple meanings but none of those meanings involve throwing rural or forest dwelling people under a road-roller whilst pocketing a fat profit.

First published here: http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/motoring/a-rough-road-to-development/article23301709.ece

On Kedarnath Singh

I have a favourite poem. Not necessarily a favourite poet, but a single short poem that demands that I hold on to it, remember it, like a talisman of sorts. The poem is Kedarnath Singh’s “Aana Jab Samay Mile”.

I found the poem at a juncture when my link with Hindi literature had all but snapped. Growing up, the Hindi poems prescribed by the school syllabus intimidated and bewildered me. I experienced those poems as if they were remote, supercilious, unforgiving teachers, and as soon as I could, I distanced myself from them. I went back to reading exclusively in English. But a few years out of college, I met friends who were reading across a swathe of poets, ranging from Kedarnath Singh and Kunwar Narain to Gorakh Pandey and Paash. It was as if I’d needed my eyesight corrected all these years and now somebody had taken me to the optician.

It is difficult to describe the experience of finding a poet who speaks to you intimately, whose words reach inside you, drops pebbles into the lake of your mind, casually strolls through your bloodstream. I borrow the latter image from the poem “Surya” from Zameen Pak Rahi Hai(listen to the poet’s recitation), where he describes the sun as the only thing his people can trust.

Kedarnath Singh has had an immediate, deep impact on me. Many of his contemporaries are among my favourites, but Singh’s work has a quality of stillness infused with drama that resonates with my own sensibility. Emotion plays out with a seemingly artless restraint.

Consider the favourite poem mentioned above, where the poet addresses a beloved, asking her to show up in all circumstances: whether or not she has time to spare, to show up like fire in a stove, or like a thorn on the branch of a thorny tree, like a storm, like a Tuesday. Each image stands strong, distinct, and the poet sews the whole up into a poem filled with an ancient, eternal distillate: a human being devoted to love, waiting.

Singh is able to maintain a near-conversational tone in many of his poems, which makes it seem like he is, in fact, addressing you directly. He turns a warm gaze upon his country, his people, the objects in their lives, nature. However, he does not shy away from the role of the poet as public critic. Another of my favourites is “A Two-minute Silence”, where he uses a standard expression of shared grief upon hearing of someone’s death to unpack the little sadnesses that go unmourned, and follows it up with the great sadness that none of us dares to mourn:

'...for this great century
for every great idea
of this great century 
for its great words
and great intentions
a two-minute silence...'

[— Translated by Alok Bhalla]

He sometimes approaches the page with a certain whimsy that suggests he is not taking his craft, or indeed, his subject matter very seriously, and yet, by the time the reader has finished reading the poem, the tongue is covered with the thick residue of loss. This is most obvious in poems where Singh uses the writing of poetry itself as a device.

In “Ek Prem Kavita ko Padhkar” (the poet’s recitation), he writes about looking out for ducks in the third line, because that’s where they ought to have been. A woman does not appear until the twelfth line, and he writes her in, and then he cleverly shifts the location of the woman in the poem, along with the reader’s mood.

I had a chance to watch Kedarnath Singh read at an event once. It was a gathering of Hindi poets and critics and I was struck by the cheerful informality in the room. The stage was filled with literary luminaries who appeared to be unafraid of critique or jokes at each other’s expense. Singh remained unfazed by a joke about his numerous awards and the ease with which he gathered them, went up to the microphone, and in a even, low voice, began to read. The calm dignity that came off his person also inhabits his work.

He continues to occupy the quieter corners of my mind. His is a body of work filled with broken down trucks, ducks, potatoes, cranes, abandoned shoes, mothers afraid of abandonment, and books that rebel against cupboards demanding to be set free so they may return to the bamboo forest, to the sting of the scorpion and the kiss of the serpent. It is a body of work imbued with the love of everything in the world.

This article was first published in Scroll. Link here:

https://scroll.in/article/872685/reading-the-poetry-of-kedarnath-singh-1934-2018-is-to-be-reminded-of-his-love-for-everything

Something Approaching Home

I'd been told the village I was headed to would be twenty-five or thirty kilometers from the kasbah where my family home was. I could take a bus, they said. Well, two buses. Or a series of auto-rickshaws.

It didn't sound so bad. What was thirty kilometers? I had forgotten though; thirty kilometers in metropolitan cities is a whole different kettle of fish. Mumbai's local trains maybe akin to a tin of sardines but I don't have to be in the tin for longer than an hour. On rural Uttar Pradesh roads, it's like having fish pressed into a series of tins over the course of two-and-a-half or three hours, and being shaken violently all the while.

The auto-rickshaws I found were modified vehicles. They are smaller than tempos, which seat eight or twelve people, but slightly longer than the three-wheelers in metros, and not much wider. The passenger seat can properly seat only three, but four adults are squeezed in. The driver's seat is replaced by a long seat. Here too, four adults sit, including the driver. Behind the front seat is affixed another narrow seat. Here perch another four passengers, facing the four who occupy the, well, the seat that's originally meant to be the passenger seat.

Behind the passengers' seat, there is a narrow space where two tiny seats are affixed, facing each other. Two adults sit there. Two more passengers are taken on and they sit on the strip of metal that serves as the body of the vehicle at the back, which is open to the elements.

That makes for sixteen adult passengers, every one of them more patient and in better humour than me. I'd begun to crib as soon as four passengers were found, telling the driver to get moving. He politely ignored me until he had all sixteen wedged in tight.

There is an equally tight budgeting system for local auto-rickshaw drives, and equally narrow profits. I paid just twenty rupees for the longest stretch of my journey. Most others paid ten, or five. There was one passenger who got on and off mid-way, travelling a distance of two or three kilometers. She paid only two rupees. Or tried to. The driver cursed and humiliated her - “You think you can get into a vehicle for two rupees?” - and made her fork over another rupee. She parted with it reluctantly.

It has been years since I last saw someone haggle whilst trying to hold onto her dignity for a rupee. In Delhi and Mumbai, both passenger and the cab or auto driver routinely shrug off a few rupees for the lack of change. No wonder, I thought, people move to Delhi or Lucknow or Mumbai. This, the heartland, the homeland, squeezes you too hard.

The elderly woman on my right laughed and bantered a lot though, and kept trying to strike up a conversation. I kept saying, apologetically, that I didn't understand. She spoke a Bhojpuri so far removed from Hindi that it may as well have been Bangla or Marathi. She asked where I was from. I caught the word “ghar”, home, and understood. I said, my family belongs to these parts, actually.

The elderly woman gave me a sideways stare. After a while, she resumed her one-sided conversation in Bhojpuri. I gathered that she was trying to tell me the names of the crops standing in the fields on either side. I told her, I know a mustard field when I see one. She let out a small laugh that suggested she didn't think I knew anything at all.

First published in The Hindu: http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/motoring/something-approaching-home/article22946065.ece

Gaddhe mein sadak

A few days ago, I had decided to visit my ancestral home in eastern Uttar Pradesh. As the taxi neared our destination, I was re-introduced to that sardonic phrase: Gaddhe mein sadak.

It is hard to translate. The nearest phrase I can think of is ‘road-pocked hole’, an inversion of ‘pot-holed road’. It has been a while since I had encountered such a road. People often threw the phrase around in places around Delhi or capital cities like Lucknow, but the first time I truly understood what ‘gaddhe mein sadak’ means was in Bihar, over a decade ago. One hour out of Patna, it became apparent that I wasn’t travelling on anything resembling a road. The surface had been washed away entirely, leaving a series of uneven pits. Whatever remained of the tar road appeared like garnishing, sort of like chopped walnuts on top of a bowl of lumpy kheer.

Now, in Uttar Pradesh, I was confronting a similar road. It came as a bit of a shock after the highway, which is quite smooth. Too smooth, in fact. The driver had been complaining that the new method is dangerous. Tyres slide too easily; braking the vehicle takes longer. Apparently, the new roads being constructed are made of cement rather than tar. It is being said that some of these new roads are entirely concrete. There is no under-layer of pebble or brick. Drivers, he said, are concerned about such highways since everybody moves at higher speeds and being able to brake quickly is vital. But then, who consults drivers when road construction is sanctioned?

This time around, I personally felt the pain and danger of the too-rough road that connect various towns and villages. Whatever bits of tar and pebble yet remained create uneven edges. My foot turned over one such edge, I lost balance and next thing I knew, I was hopping around with a sprained foot for the rest of the week.

Along the way, I also discovered the unexpected benefits of traveling in over-packed tempos, which are the primary mode of transport in these parts aside from state transport buses.

The thing is, the road is awful beyond description. In a relatively empty auto-rickshaw or tempo, you’re swung about and shaken wildly no matter that you’re holding onto something for dear life. Your neck and spine is at risk. Your head gets bumped hard against the metallic frame of the vehicle. You could be jerked forward so that your knees smash into the floor of the tempo.

However, when there are six or sixteen (I counted; there were sixteen people. I will write more about how that went another day) in the tempo, you are all packed in so tight, there is no longer any question of anyone moving. I found myself safely squashed between two elderly ladies on right and left, four ladies seated across and sundry gentlemen and children in front and on the back seats. No matter how bad the road was, however the tempo lurched about, my spine was as upright as it would have been in a straitjacket. I suppose that was something to be grateful for.

First published here: http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/motoring/on-the-razors-edge/article22807230.ece

Maulana Azad and azaadi

Today is Maulana Abul Kalam Azad's death anniversary. I knew very little about him, except that he was one of the tallest leaders of India's freedom struggle. While researching something else this year, I came upon a booklet, a convocation address delivered by JP Narayan in 1966. Here, he describes Maulana Azad as 'father of speech', and speaks of the wonders of his oratory thus:

"At this point, my mind goes back 46 years to a memorable day in January 1921, when at a vast concourse of men in Patna, I listened enthralled to a stormy petrel of the Non-Cooperation Movement, who though young in years had magic on his tongue. His name quite appropriately was Abul Kalam Azad. Incidentally, at the same place there was also held in a corner an over-flowing meeting (there were no loud-speakers then) addressed by another young man, about whom all that was known was that he was the upcoming son of the great Pandit Motilal Nehru. It was the fiery words of the 'father of speech', however, that had set fire to the waters of the Ganga that flowed pacidly by."

Maulana Azad was President of the Congress, in 1941, when he was arrested after the Quit India movement was launched. I have been looking through newspapers of the time and what I found remarkable was not just that so many people were willing to court arrest towards the cause of independence, but also that so many of them found creative responses to news of the leadership being arrested.

Maulana Azad was arrested on January 3, 1941, at 5:15 at the Allahabad railway station. He was expected to leave by the Toofan Express and stop at Lucknow or Allahabad en route to Calcutta. The details of his itinerary had already been published in the newspaper a day before, so people as well as the British government knew exactly where to find him. He had also sent a telegram to Acharya Narendra Deo, asking him meet up in Allahabad.

Once news of his arrest spread, a public meeting was held in Aminabad Park in Lucknow. One Mr Hariprasad Saksena moved a resolution: “This meeting of the citizens of Lucknow offers its respectful congratulations to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad on his arrest and assures him the country stands behind the Congress.”

A women’s meeting held in Zenana Park also congratulated Azad on the arrest. Elsewhere in Lucknow, students observe a two minute silence to protest the arrest. In Cawnpore (Kanpur), 10,000 students went on strike. Bareilly, Sitapur, Ghazipur, Agra, Meerut, Moradabad, Nainital saw strikes and all these were just reports flowing in from UP. The Benaras Students Federation took out a Prabhat Pheri and congratulated Azad on his arrest. The principal of Rameshwari Girls College declared a holiday in protest and the girls observed a five minute silence. 

In Ghazipur, one Chowdhry Girija Prasad Singh, an honorary magistrate and a big zamindar, tendered his resignation from the magistrateship in protest against the Congress President’s arrest, and also surrendered his gun license and the gun.

I am intrigued by these little details because it is here that we find the keys to our freedom. It wasn't won in a day and it wasn't won by a handful of people. It was won through everyone committing themselves to it and standing up for it in their own way.

Maulana Azad lived to see a free India, lived to serve as its education minister. He oversaw the establishment of free primary education, subsidized higher education and the establishment of highly regarded institutions including the IITs. Leaders like him were needed then and are needed now.